My wife, who works for an airline, will occasionally go to cities on her day off. It’s a nice perk for working in the airline business. Well today she went to San Francisco with some friends and had a rather annoying run in with the guardians of the airways, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). You have to understand that my wife collects snow globes. She loves the things. In recent months she’s been buying one from each city that she visits. As each visit is just one day she just carries her purse. It’s best to travel light you know. Today when she was going back home the TSA stops her and tells her that her snow globe is not to be allowed on the plane. The liquid inside of it might be some deadly weapon that just happens to have little bits of glitter floating around in it. She shows them her employee badge and tried common sense on them. She’s dealt with officials before and she should have known that this was an exercise in futility. She asked why couldn’t she bring the show globe on board? If someone was going to mess with the aircraft wouldn’t they stash whatever it was in the luggage and just use a transmitter? I’ll give her this, she has guts. That’s why I love her. I wouldn’t have even begin to think of stating the obvious to someone that could chuck me in a secure room for hours and hours. The guard said that she could bring it on board if she was wearing her uniform or, get this, if she were to ask an employee to carry it through for her. Huh? If she gets a uniformed employee to walk the snow globe through security it goes from being a device that might kill hundreds back to it’s natural state of a fancy dust catcher? Needless to say she didn’t have her uniform on her (it was, after all, her day off) and she didn’t see any airline employees that she knew. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe it’s because San Fran isn’t her home base? Wow…
I will have to side with the TSA drones decision to not allow the snow globe on the aircraft. It does after all contain liquid. And as we all know all non-life essential liquids are strictly forbidden. (Remember to chuck the bottle of water you just bought from the cafe right next to your gate in the trash before you get on the plane. You’ed think there would be a sign in the shops reminding passengers of this.) But why can this written in stone rule be broken if you just hand the liquid to a uniformed employee? She had all her badges with her, they have her photos all over them. She has all sorts of security endorsements on them and everything, it’s quite impressive. Anyway, she lost her snow globe and has decided to bring her lunch box with her next time so she can check it in and have it ride in the hold.
I can’t wait until the next plot is uncovered so we can lose granola bars, pens, and pocket combs
Robotic Frisbees of Death
Reminds me of a certain flying camera that I blogged about a while back. Except the part about shooting molten metal at the targets that is…
"The 3-D maneuverability of the Frisbee-UAV [unammned aerial vehicle] will provide revolutionary tactical access and lethality against hostiles hiding in upper story locations and/or defiladed behind obstacles," the company promises. The circular drones will be lanuched "from munitions dispensers or by means of a simple mechanism similar to a shotgun target (skeet) launcher," Triton adds. Once in the air, they’ll be tele-operated by soldiers on the ground. Or, if needed, the fightin’ frisbees will pilot themselves as they hunt for guerrillas. Once they catch up to the baddies, the drones will use a series of armor-piercing explosives, shooting jets of molten metal, to eliminate their targets.
The Car of Nikola Tesla
Now, if you ask me, Nikola Tesla was not only a genius in the truest definition of the word but also a master of showmanship. With talks about death rays and other fanciful things a car that can run off the power of the ‘aether’ sounds right on the mark. I would not be all that amazed if the ‘black box’ turned out to be a way to attract venture capitol.
In the summer of 1931, Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current and the holder of some 1200 other U.S. patents, along with his nephew Peter Savo, installed a box on the front seat of a brand new Pierce-Arrow touring car at the company factory in Buffalo, New York. The box is said to have been 24 inches long, 12 inches wide and 6 inches high. Out of it protruded a 1.8 meter long antenna and two ¼ inch metal rods. Inside the box was reputed to be some dozen vacuum tubes — 70-L-7 type — and other electrical parts. Two wire leads ran from the box to a newly-installed 40 inch long, 30 inch diameter AC motor that replaced the gasoline engine. As the story goes, Tesla inserted the two metal rods and announced confidently, "We now have power" and then proceeded to drive the car for a week, "often at speeds of up to 90 mph." One account says the motor developed 1,800 rpm and got fairly hot when operating, requiring a cooling fan. The "converter" box is said to have generated enough electrical energy to also power the lights in a home.
[via neat-o-rama]
Nikola Tesla’s ‘Black Magic’ Touring Car: Tesla’s Free Energy Pierce-Arrow
Abusing Amazon Images
A guy named Nat Gertler discovered that the images on Amazon could be manipulated by feeding their servers parameters in the images URL. He’s put together a nice little FAQ on what does what. This is definitely going to go into the ‘to be used for evil’ category.
[via presurfer]
Book Pinhole Camera
I spotted this while doing my daily Flickr scan. Take a book, carve out a space inside of it, add film and you have a pinhole camera. Very covert, very James Bond, very cool.
DIY Film Emulsion
It’s practical chemistry time folks. With a few moderately easy to obtain chemicals (Gelatin, potassium bromide, potassium iodide, and silver nitrate) you can create your very own glass plate films. These would be used in a medium format camera or even a pinhole camera (if you can stand long exposure times).
You can find more information on alternative photographic processing from these books:
Silver Gelatin: A User’s Guide to Liquid Photographic Emulsion
Historic Photographic Processes
Or from these links:
Alternative and Historical Process Links
[via MAKE]