Sapere Aude
Month: July 2013
a woman’s iPhone stolen at a bar in San Francisco turned up a few days later in Lima, Peru. The owner of the biggest phone trafficker is an ordained minister. He aims to open his own church focused on outreach to convicts, alcoholics and the homeless.
the gospel of 2013
i’d enjoy an overlay like this for any text i read, anywhere.
This is some cool megaengineering: a 123km tunnel to cut travel time from 8h to 1h.
Deep beneath the Bohai Sea, Chinese engineers may soon begin boring the longest submarine tunnel on the planet. At an estimated 123km long, it would surpass the combined length of world’s 2 longest underwater tunnels—Japan’s Seikan Tunnel and the Channel Tunnel between the UK and France. To connect the bustling northern ports of Dalian and Yantai, the engineers will have to tunnel through 2 fault zones that have caused a slew of deadly earthquakes in the last century. And the project will cost a whopping $42.4B, nearly 3x as expensive as Boston’s Big Dig.
The drive between Dalian and Yantai takes around 8 hours. The Bohai Tunnel would shorten that to 1 hour. The State Council will begin reviewing the completed blueprint for the tunnel as early as next week.
The Bohai Strait tunnel would be 123km long, 90km of it under water. This would exceed the combined lengths of the 2 longest undersea tunnels on Earth, the Seikan Tunnel and the Channel tunnel. The project is estimated to cost $41n. Passenger vehicles would be loaded onto rail carriages and transported at up to 250km/h, shortening driving time between Dalian and Yantai to ~40 minutes. Currently ferries between the 2 cities, which are ~170km apart, require 8 hours to make a single trip. The investment was projected to break even within 12 years.
this is really awesome, and the first time in recorded history where ESRI produced maps that don’t suck.
The Urban Observatory is an interactive exhibit that gives you the chance to compare and contrast maps of cities around the world–all from one location. It aims to make the world’s data both understandable and useful. Brought to life by Richard Saul Wurman, RadicalMedia, and Esri, it is the first exhibit of its kind.
the noguchi museum is a trek (or a bike ride) from manhattan, but it is worth it.
This is the best HCI i have seen yet: use magnetic levitation to build a sphere you can position at will in a 3D space.
what’s that tv trope called where people ask someone a question just as they are about to leave the room? and what about the one where people take off their glasses before saying something semi-profound?
Museum of the American Gangster is a little gem on saint marks, complete with tommy guns and a basement with escape tunnels for the speakeasy operator.
Unions want more benefits and politicians would rather not incur the wrath of their constituents by raising taxes. To serve both masters, politicians incur more debt. But off the books, they also make completely unrealistic promises about retiree health benefits and pension plans. The promises are known as an unfunded liability – a promise to pay without a source of funds attached to it.
In honor of mexican independence day, a robot monkey.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 