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12/3 Moment of Zen: Ooh, a Maze!

In Case You're Not Sure What To Do With All Your Free Time

Here's a maze in the shape of Einstein's Head. Click for full size version.

12/2 Moment of Zen: Pizza Flags

Can You Have Your Flag and Eat It, Too?

When Project Food Blog, a competition between food bloggers for attention and a cash prize, announced that contestants would have to reimagine and present their distinctive version of pizza, Taiwanese-American participant Jen of Tiny Urban Kitchen was a little stumped. Despite her extensive knowledge and experience with Asian cuisine, she'd never made a pizza.



As pictured above, her unique take was to make turn pizza-making into a travelogue of sorts: each of her pizzas takes the form of the flag of a country she's visited, and is described not only in terms of its toppings, but with photos and brief anecdotes from her travels. Click above to read about her travels and how she managed blue for her flag pizzas without food coloring.

12/1 Moment of Zen: Native Name Map

Enough Rockets

Always thinking of new and interesting ways to view the world, the folks at National Geographic made the map of the US based on translations of place names from their origins in Native American languages. While not exhaustive, they picked some remarkable ones. Guess which place's name means, "It makes a loud noise over there all the time," which means, "A good place to dig potatoes," and where "Gnat Town" is. Click the picture above to go to NG's interactive version of the map, where you can magnify different areas to read the fine print. Click here to read about the process of translating these names through their many origins to their current form.

11/30 Moment of Zen: Nuclear Photography

Rocket Week Continues

While the US Government documented its nuclear experiments in excruciating detail, most of those images are still highly classified. German newspaper Der Spiegel recently ran a story about some of the military photographers who worked on this during its heyday in the mid-late 20th century, including a slideshow of some of those images that have been released. Images of the blasts themselves, like the one above, were shot on special XR (extended range) redscale film, which makes them look like something surreal.

11/29 Moment of Zen: Space Junk In Kazakhstan

The Russian Space Program still rents its land from Kazakhstan, near a town the USSR built for the purpose and named Baikonur (Kaz. "rich with light"), and fires off its rockets about as far inland as you can get. While most of the USA's space program cast-offs splash down in the water, Russia's land out in the desolate scrub of the steppe, which better resembles the expanses of Nevada where the US performed its nuclear tests in the mid to late 20th century (incidentally, Kazakhstan was the major proving ground for the USSR's nuclear program as well). There, they are quickly harvested for their titanium-rich scrap metal. Click the picture to see more photos of space junk harvesting.

11/23 Moment of Zen: More Creative Uses for Squash

Squash Use #327: Thwarting Robbers

A would-be convenience store robber in Manchester, NH was undone when one of the store's customers bonked him over the head with a squash earlier this month. Click the picture above (Squash Use #164: Making Pictures of Dinosaurs) for more on this story

11/22 Moment of Zen: Volcanic Lightning

Volcanos: Hogging All The Awesome?

Explosions, lava, ash, steam, lightning? As if volcanos weren't impressive enough, vulcanologists (volcano scientists) are increasingly documenting the occurrence of lightning as part of a volcanic eruption. Here's some more links to pictures of volcanic lightning and possible scientific explanations.

• Volcanic Lightning in Iceland


• National Geographic gallery of Volcanic Lightning


• Discovery article about lightning and volcanos

11/17 Moment of Zen: Population Mapped As Area

Click map for larger version

What if the largest countries had the biggest populations?

Curious folks decided to see what would happen if they lined up the lists of the world's countries in order by land area and by population, then, for each list number, map the name of the country with that population onto the shape of the country with that land area.

A couple things to notice:

• Four countries, the US, Yemen, Ireland and Brazil, have the same position on the population list as the area list.


• The South Asian countries, usually squished into a small corner of the map, occupy several of the largest areas, including Canada (India), Greenland (Vietnam) and Australia (Pakistan).

11/16 Moment of Zen: Herding Billiards

11/15 Moment of Zen: Masquerade (Basket)Ball

Sorry for the pause—I had a 4-day weekend from Homework blogging with Veterans' Day and a bit of professional development.

11/10 Moment of Zen: Space Bubble

Scientists Excited At Cluelessness About Bubbles

Something big is going on at the center of the galaxy, and astronomers are happy to say they don’t know what it is. A group of scientists working with data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope said Tuesday that they had discovered two bubbles of energy erupting from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The bubbles, which will be in a paper to be published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal, extend 25,000 light years up and down from each side of the galaxy and contain the energy equivalent to 100,000 supernova explosions.



“They’re big,” said Doug Finkbeiner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, leader of the team that discovered them. The source of the bubbles is a mystery, [but] what it’s apparently not is dark matter, the mysterious something that astronomers say makes up a quarter of the universe and holds galaxies together.

11/5 Moment of Zen: The Trabantimino

The Amazing Collapsible Family Muscle Car

37-year-old artist and photographer Liz Cohen, has spent the last eight years in body shops across the country, building a custom hybrid like no other – with her own hands. Her collapsible Trabantimino is part Trabant, the VW of Soviet East Germany, as extinct now as the Berlin Wall, and part 1973 Chevy El Camino. Currently on display at the Salon 94 Gallery.

11/4 Moment of Zen: Azhdarchids

What do you get when you cross a giraffe with goose?

Apparently, you get an Azhdarchid, the largest flying animal to have ever lived, standing about 20 feet tall (male giraffes average about 18') and with a wingspan of up to 50 feet. Click above to read more about the azhdarchid and several other lesser-known prehistoric monsters at Environmental Graffiti.

10/22 Moment of Zen: Fake Science

...and Other Important Facts

Click above to see more "informative" pieces of flapdoodle and poppycock, addressing such important scientific questions as, "Why do leaves turn brown in the fall?"; "How do mustaches grow?"; "How does Horsepower compare to Spongecake Power?" and "How are bees like the Swedish government?"

10/20 Moment of Zen: Inflatable Helmet

Inflate-a-helmet?

Apparently, the Swedes have thought of everything. First, hobbit holes; now, this.

10/19 Moment of Zen: Home Space Photography

The Upper Stratosphere by Balloon and iPhone

The Brooklyn Space Program, largely the brainchild of Luke Geissbühler and his son, Max, sent its first spacecraft up recently, passengered by a brave little iPhone, which was filming for the over 75% of its near 2-hour journey. Propelled only by a weather balloon, the whole trip made it about 19 miles - over 100,000 feet - into the air and took some stunning images. Click either picture to visit the Geissbühlers' video about the project, largely composed of footage taken during the flight.

10/15 Moment of Zen: Hobbit Holes in Sweden

Apparently, there are hobbits in Sweden, near Lake Kolarbyn. Click above to read more about it.

10/13 Moment of Zen: Never too many DINOSAUR COMICS

On this day, I give you the gift of Dinosaur Comics in abundance. Yes, the pictures are the same every day and yes, it does get more awesome the more you read it.

10/12 Moment of Zen: Brocken Spectre

Moment of Zen

Seeing Yourself in a New Light

A rare optic sight, the “Brocken spectre,” which occurs when a person stands at a higher altitude in the mountains and sees his shadow cast on a cloud at a lower altitude, was observed in the Tatra Mountains in Zakopane, Poland, Thursday.

That or it's Bigfoot. It can be hard to tell.