The Periodic Table of Rejected Elements

by Michael Gerber and Jonathan Schwarz

I am working on my table and I came across this one, which I really like.

Sales Guy Versus Web Dude

A little crude, perhaps, but stupidity has no bottom. From i-am-bored.com via Dan.


"The Web Server is Down. If you`ve ever called tech support and wondered what was going on,  this should answer some of your questions."
Update June 2016 replaced missing video.

How To Not Hire An American

The video is a little tedious, but perhaps I am a tad impatient with blather.

You can read all about it on the DAILY KOS.

Notes about the video:

• DOL PERM refers to Department Of Labor process for becoming a Permanent resident.
• The web site mentioned is: http://www.programmersguild.org/

A friend of mine is working a contract job at Intel. There are 20 cubicles on his aisle. There is one other Caucasian and one Chinese man. All the rest are Indians. I am not opposed to hiring foreigners, but I don't like people gaming the system, and that is certainly what it looks like. I am beginning to suspect Intel of being not a very good member of the community.

H/T to Andy.

ROBOTS ARE ALMOST AS LIBERAL AS PENGUINS

This was a comment on a blog about about Wall-E. I thought it was the best of the lot. Robot Wisdom auxilary had a link to a nice story on this same page.

More Cowbell

There was a kid wearing a More Cowbell T-shirt at the movies last night, and Dustbury is writing about the More Cowbell app for the iPhone, so I just gotta put the video up, because you can never have too much cowbell.

Digital People

Everything is getting digitized these days, even art. Nathan Sawaya is busy with Legos.

Update June 2016. Another page about Nathan.
Picture is missing.

Picasa & Planetary Gears

Eric Haines created this drawing and posted it on the web some ten years ago. I came across it while looking for a drawing to illustrate a post on my regular blog. I passed this one by because the original was too dark. Turns out I had the tool at hand to correct that problem. Eric clued me in: Picasa. Click on Auto-Contrast and presto! You get the image you see here.

Asymmetrical Looney Gear

I was looking for pictures of planetary gearsets and I came across this piece of weirdness. At first I thought it could not possibly work, but the animation convinced me otherwise. Not sure what it would be good for, but it sure is strange. Search for title on linked page to read more about it. Click here to watch the animation if it isn't running on this page.

Goll-oll-oll-olly Mr. Daily!

H/T to Just An Earth-Bound Misfit

Rhenium

I've been putting together a spreadsheet of the elements, and I came across this little tidbit in Wikipedia:

(Rhenium) is among the ten most expensive metals on Earth, at times exceeding US$ 11,000 per kilogram. About 35 kilograms of Rhenium are required in the construction of a commercial jet engine.

$385,000 worth of Rhenium to build a single jet engine!?!? Well, that would go a long way towards explaining why the things are so bleeding expensive. I would think that this would make their scrap value much higher than it is.

From The Expert Network:

Analysis: Rhenium is a critical metal, one without which it would be impossible to produce modern military jet engines, the most efficient jet engines for civilian aircraft, and rocket engines for military use and space exploration.

This is because when it is used in concentrations of 2 to 6% to make superalloys those alloys can be used to make jet and rocket engine components to contain and direct the superheated exhaust of jet and rocket engines without melting or losing their strength.

The higher the temperature at which a jet or rocket engine operates the more efficient and powerful it is.

Sorry about the picture. I got tired of looking at poor quality, fuzzy, smeared black and whites, and settled for this diagram of a Kawasaki gas turbine.

German Plane Landing Attempt

I had this in my list of videos on regular Pergelator, but it got deleted due to some vast media conspiracy, so I dug around and found another version and posted it here. Enjoy it while you can.

Gone Daddy Gone

Via Dustbury
I liked the first part of this video when the bugs are little, but I did not enjoy the last part with the human sized bugs. Gave me the creeps.

Tim

Mmm, mmm, good

Found on SondraKiStan, USA

Cuthbert Lift

I am poking around on the internet using some clues I found on my Dad's old computer, and I stumble across this guy who is trying to build a better elevator. He is using some of my ideas. Actually he probably thought of it all on his own, like many other people, but this Cuthbert guy has actually built a prototype of an elevator that might actually work. Here's a longish video:

Strange Horizons fundraising drive

Something I had never heard about, but I like the idea so much I gave them $25 without even reading any of their stuff. Strange Horizons:

"We're a nonprofit online speculative fiction magazine that pays professional rates for fiction; we're run by a staff of volunteers; we've published new material every week, freely available online, for nearly 8 years (and almost all of it is still available in our archives), including fiction, poetry, articles, reviews, art, and columns; we're funded entirely by donations, in a sort of public-radio-like model; in the US, donations to us are tax-deductible. Stuff we publish gets picked up regularly for Year's Best reprint volumes. Last year a story we published was on the Nebula ballot and another was on the Hugo ballot. Also, our Editor-in-chief, Susan Marie Groppie, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award."

From Boing Boing.