Surfer Almost Swallowed By Whale [VIDEO]
Hoo. Santa Cruz surfer Barbara Roettger got way up close and personal with a pod of humpback whales when she unwittingly found herself in the middle of a lunge feeding session; two massive whales popped up right next to the surfer and her kayak friends, seemingly out of nowhere. It’s pretty rad.
Jordy Smith Surfs With Sharks
Jordy Smith (who recently signed with Buchulife) and Dusty Payne in Round 1 of the Rip Curl Pro Search in San Francisco get scared out of the water by a big shark. I think his name was Bruce. Follow the link to check it out. Video contains bonus footage of Jordy dancing and singing “Staying […]
Biker Pauses Mid-Rally To Save A Drowning Calf [VIDEO]
This is pretty badass – footage of a Gauteng biker assessing a motorcycle rally course for the Amageza Challenge and taking a short detour midway through to save a calf drowning in a nearby canal. In the event that you’ve grown tired of Gaddafi footage, and would like to watch something awesome instead.
Wikileaks Temporarily Plugged Due To Lack Of Funds
It turns out publishing classified diplomatic files online isn’t all that lucrative! Whistle blowing site, WikiLeaks has announced that they’re pausing their publishing process to concentrate on raising funds. Julian Assange claims that the financial “blockade” mounted by Visa, MasterCard and other companies, has forced Wikileaks to “temporarily suspend its publishing operations and aggressively fundraise.”
Microsoft Holodesk – Interactive 3D Display [VIDEO]
Microsoft has been on a fancy-user-interface-technology kick this week, between the fancy touch-screen projectors and electronic fabric announcements – but the Holodesk sort of wins at the moment, at least for those of us who think 3D environments you can manipulate with your hands are cool.
William Shatner Sings Bohemian Rhapsody [VIDEO]
Do I really need to say more words to make you click on this link? It’s William Shatner. Singing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. In his Shatner voice.The video itself is pretty great, but that’s mostly because in the video, Shatner’s face is the sky. Fun fact: Shatner claims to have first heard Bohemian Rhapsody last year.
Quantum Levitation: The Coolest-Looking Science [VIDEO]
‘Quantum Levitation’ even sounds cool. The guys from the University of Tel-Aviv’s School of Physics Superconductivity Group recently demonstrated ‘quantum locking,’ at the Association of Science – Technology Centers Annual Conference by getting a supercooled magnet to levitate above a locked track. The science is clunky, the video looks very cool.
Microsoft’s Fancy New Touch-Screen Projectors [VIDEO]
The nice thing about initiatives like Microsoft Research is that you get to have an early gander at the things that you’re going to be spending stupid amounts of money on next year. Like the OmniTouch, for instance, which projects “touchscreen” interfaces onto pretty much whatever surface you want – desk, paper, or the back of your hand.
Hands-On Video For Siri On The iPhone 4S
Apple’s Siri, the fancy voice-activated feature that was supposed to make people feel less disappointed about not getting a shiny new iPhone 5, was actually pretty cool when Phil Schiller showed it off on stage. But how well does it do in real life? See the hands-on after the jump.
Adobe Made That Fictional CSI “Enhance” Tool A Reality
You know that thing in sort-of-science-fictional shows or awful police procedurals where they have a blurry photo which they zoom into indefinitely and then use television magic to ‘enhance’ it and keep it from turning into the pixelated jpeg it should be? Adobe Photoshop can do that now.
Quadriplegic Controls Robotic Hand With Brainwaves [VIDEO]
Well hey there, science. A recent breakthrough at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre has allowed a 30-year-old man who hasn’t been able to move arms, hands or legs in the past seven years to take control of a robotic hand, marking an unprecedented achievement in neuro-robotics.
UCT Ikeys Rugby Captain Invites Gay Players To Join Club [VIDEO]
It Gets Better is a viral video campaign begun in the States in response to a horrific string of teenage suicides last year. Watch this video of Nick Fenton-Wells, the captain of the Ikey Tigers at the University of Cape Town, urging gay players not to be afraid to get involved in sports at UCT.
Iranian Actress Given 90 Lashes For Being In A Mildly Subversive Film
More specifically, Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr was sentenced to 90 lashes for starring in “My Tehran For Sale,” a movie about how Iran mistreats its actresses. The actress was arrested for being in the film – which was never officially distributed in Iran – in July, and her sentence was handed down this weekend.
“Occupy Wall-Street” Spin-Off Protests Spreading Across USA
The New York protest movement, “Occupy Wall Street,” currently enjoying a crowd of 15 000 supporters, has inspired folk in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and other cities around the United States to join in on the fun/outcry. Some level of police violence is being seen in all cases, with Seattle police forcibly removing all “occupation” settlements.
First Lady Of Iceland Joins Debt Crisis Protestors [VIDEO]
Dorrit Moussaieff – wife of Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, Iceland’s president – made a dramatic gesture over the weekend by hopping a security fence to join in with a group of protesters hurling eggs and yoghurt at politicians, demanding that the government do more to help the lower-income bracket.
AlphaDog: The Latest In Terrifying, Military-Grade Robotics [VIDEO]
Boston Dynamics, a tech company working under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has released the latest in its BigDog project line – Alpha Dog, an SUV-sized, four-legged robot equipped to carry a little under 200kg in gear over a range of 32km, in harsh conditions. It’s a giant, terrifying, military robot dog. Take a look.
Arrested Development To Return For Fourth Season And A Movie
Pop-culture rumour news is dangerous to talk about, but Arrested Development was one of those shows that won a religious sort of fervour from its fans, with FOX playing the role of Judas or something. So when creator, Mitchell Hurwitz announced the show’s return over this weekend’s New Yorker Festival, the internet got its preach on.
NASA Is Going to Harpoon An Asteroid [VIDEO]
NASA wants to put somebody on an asteroid by 2025 because they don’t know how else to get people’s attention. And to succeed in this entirely worthwhile endeavour, they’ve designed a mechanism by which to harpoon asteroids, so that vehicles can land on the thing despite the weakened gravity. Call me Ishmael.
Catalonia’s Last Bullfight [PICS]
On Sunday, 20 000 bullfighting fans packed Barcelona’s La Monumental bullring to watch the last corrida that Catalonia will hold; the event was headlined by Spain’s premier matador, José Tomás. The regional ban on bullfighting, which was approved at the end of last year, goes into effect in January.
NYPD Increasingly Violent Towards “Occupy Wall Street” Protesters [VIDEO]
As the “Occupy Wall Street” protests enter their ninth day, an increasing number of videos and photos have begun surfacing, showing near-indiscriminate use of tasers, mace and kenneling by the NYPD on demonstrators, who are protesting a financial system that apparently favours the wealthy and powerful over ordinary citizens.
Insane POV Footage Of Russian Free-Climbing Stalin’s Skyscaper In Moscow
It’s Friday, so come get your secondhand vertigo on and watch this Russian adrenaline junkie scale the 133 meter “Stalin’s skyscraper,” near Krasnye Vorota, without any sort of safety gear. The camera’s mounted on the climber’s head, so I guess he had a helmet, but I’m not sure that counts at 133 metres.
Scientists Can Reconstruct The Pictures In Our Heads Now [VIDEO]
It’s always nice when the world catches up with 80’s sci-fi films. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have succeeded in reconstructing people’s visual experiences using MRI and image libraries. Which means that if you click on the link you can see somebody’s brain try to replicate the Pink Panther film trailer.
Now There’s Vaguely Terrifying Face-Stealing Technology [VIDEO]
Watch developer Arturo Castro shows off his fancy new FaceTracker API, which allows users to harvest photographs of other folks’ faces, and project them onto their own. Here we see Castro variously becoming Vladimir Lenin, Chairman Mao, and Steve Jobs. Because, why not?
Women’s “Sex Strike” Ends Fighting In Philippine Villages
Awesome. Women on the Philippine island of Mindanao, growing tired of the continuing separatist warfare interfering in their everyday goings-on, decided to take matters into their own hands. And by hands, I mean pants. They organized a “sex strike”, which brought a quick end to fighting between the two villages.
Russian Oligarch Sucker-Punched By Rival Billionaire On Talk Show
Independent and Evening Standard owner, Alexander Lebedev showed up in an interview on Russian TV with fellow super-rich-Russian, Sergei Polonsky last night. Apparently Polonsky came off threatening, because midway through the interview, Lebedev’s KGB training kicked in, at which point he proceeded to beat the Russian oligarch.
The Muppets Have Another Ridiculous Parody Trailer [VIDEO]
I’m not clear on where the time and money required to make these things is coming from. Following last month’s OK Go-themed video, a new The Muppets trailer has been released, this time playing off David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which makes sense given how much common ground the two franchises share.
NASA Unveils Launch Vehicle To Take Astronauts To Mars
Because what every good recession needs is a plan to go to space. NASA today announced their new launch vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS), which should be able to take astronauts past the moon to near-Earth asteroids, and eventually to Mars some time in the 2030s.
Watch The Wildfire Spread In Texas [VIDEO]
To demonstrate the lethal speed at which the Texan wildfires are spreading, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department have released footage of the wildfire consuming the 6 000 acre Bastrop State Park – 84% of which has been burnt down as of today, in spite of firefighters’ efforts to save a number of historic Civilian Conservation Corps cabins.
The Award-Winning Invisible Cycling Helmet [VIDEO]
Swedish designers have made a cycling helmet that isn’t totally obnoxious, which is pretty great. It won an award. Understand that no matter how nice this helmet is, it still isn’t okay to wear this guy indoors, because that’s rude. Still, it just won the Index:Award, the largest monetary prize for design in the world.
How To Market Bulletproof Glass Like A Boss [VIDEO]
The president and CEO of Texas Armoring Corporation wanted to put potential customers’ minds at ease about the efficiacy of his company’s bullet-resistant glass. So, like any other sane person, he got one of his employees to shoot at him with an AK-47 while he stood behind the glass.