How I built a toaster — from scratch [Video]

It takes an entire civilization to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil … it’s frankly amazing he got as far as he got. A parable of our interconnected society, for designers and consumers alike.





Ride-in Dalek Toys: Seek, Locate, Annihilate!

These fully licensed, uber awesome ride-in dalek toys stand at over 50″ tall and feature 360 degree movement, lights inside the sitting area, and 10 Dalek sounds. They also come equipped with 6v rechargeable batteries.

[Zappies]

Hubble Finds a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Next time you complain about ageing reruns on TV, spare a thought for astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope. They suspect they’ve just seen something from 13.2 billion years ago.

NASA has reported the sighting of what appears as a tiny dim object, but is actually a galaxy of blue stars about one-hundredth the size of the Milky Way. Being 13.2 billion light years away, that means that the picture now being seen existed just 480 million years after the start of the universe. (And that is one of the few times you’ll see the phrase “just 480 million years.”)

Although Hubble can’t distinguish individual stars in the galaxy, its shape, which lacks the spirals we are familiar with, suggests that at the point in time now visible it was relatively young, perhaps 100-200 million years old.

The most interesting element of the discovery is that it suggests the pace at which new stars were created in the early years of the universe may have been much faster than previously believed. NASA now estimates that the total number grew tenfold in the period between 480 million and 650 million years after the big bang.

And yes, while there’s a lot of number crunching going on, don’t think the astronomers are unemotional folks. Rychard Bouwens, a Dutch astronomer who led the team that made the discovery, told the Washington Post that “The idea that you can detect something from the beginning of cosmic time by looking at a patch of sky for 87 hours is just wild… I’m kind of wowed by it myself.”

Never Ask to See the Joker’s Hideout

None of Joker’s henchmen were comfortable with their boss’s new plan, except Mr. Pink, who seemed way too eager.

[via sirmitchell.tumblr.com]

Wired Tales: Science fiction inspired by science fact

Wired is a science and technology magazine. Weird Tales is a fantasy and horror pulp fiction magazine. And Wired Tales is a new project from freelance writer Will Hindmarch. The challenge? To write a couple of short stories every month based on features in Wired magazine.

The first issue launched yesterday and I heard about it (as did many people I’m sure) from a tweet from Wil Wheaton. This issue features stories based on the January issue of Wired – the first, “The Pharmaware Rep,” inspired by Steven Levy’s essay on artificial intelligence as well as a story about the development of the DSM-V. The second story is about space aliens, which is always a nice addition. The stories themselves are solid, but what really sells me is the concept. Science fiction inspired in a very direct way by science. And though you wouldn’t really call these stories “remix” anymore than you would call them “fan fiction,” there is a definite nod to remix culture in the execution, especially with the nice use of Creative Commons-licensed photographs. The author is a designer as well, and everything is nicely laid out and more professional looking than you might expect for something self-published on the web.

I still have my dead tree subscription Wired and I admit I hadn’t even taken January’s out of the wrapper before I downloaded this first issue of Wired Tales – and reading the articles first and then going to stories was a neat way to experience it. I’m looking forward to what’s to come… The introduction to February’s Wired features the headline “Welcome to the Underworld” and promises an issue that’s not full of optimism for the future but instead getting “a little dirty.” My vote is for a story about the future of street drugs mashed up with the end of privacy.

[Image Source: travelinlibrarian (CC)]

The Most Action-Packed Tamil Movie of All Time

We’ve featured the trailer for Enthiran (“Robot” in Tamil) a while ago on [GAS], and now that the movie is out on the big screen, some footage of it has started appearing online. You guys have to watch it. This is absolutely ridiculous and awesome.

[Via TDW]