links for 2010-08-15


  • Lady Clankington, heiress and adventuress, is quite well-known for her appetite for the new and unique. Indeed, she was once the subject of quite a stir, for gentlemen known to be in her employ had been disappearing without a trace and horrors of the most frightening sort were left to the imagination. Upon later investigation, it was discovered that these individuals weren't even men at all!

    Due to her voracious desire for endless…adventure, her husband (an industrialist of some note) expired from exhaustion long ago. In a fit of frustration, Lady Clankington employed the genius of one Dr. Visbaun to create a cadre of strapping automatons that would finally grant her the only company able to keep up with her unending desire…for adventure. As brilliant and well-built as these mechanisms were, even these poor fellows kept wearing out.

    (tags: sex steampunk)
  • Sea water, which is 832 times denser than air, gives a 5 knot ocean current more kinetic energy than a 350 km/h wind; therefore ocean currents have a very high energy density. Hence a smaller device is required to harness tidal current energy than to harness wind energy.
    (tags: tidalpower)
  • "I cannot believe that this has been abandoned in time," said Tom Nardone, founder of the Mower Gang. The small group of volunteers was standing on the Dorais Velodrome in northeast Detroit on Friday. The motto on their shirts said it all, "Winning Detroit's Other Turf War."
    (tags: bike)
  • Evolution isn't generally considered a race, but no matter – the tiny stickleback fish is a clear winner. Faced with suddenly colder water, the species managed to adapt in record time – fast enough to potentially beat climate change.
    (tags: evolution)
  • Until now, RNA was mostly dismissed as DNA's lackey, a messenger and intermediary between DNA's complex instruction manual and the creation of life's essential proteins. But Yale researchers discovered that the pathogenic stomach bacterium Clostridium difficile possesses more complex RNA structures that are able to detect molecules and control the expression of certain genes – abilities previously thought to be the sole domain of DNA and proteins.