Weird News

[Chaos]

I thought it might be fun to share weird or bizarre news articles we come across.

Today's article is called "Scientists Turn Tequila Into Diamonds."

http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/11/07/2016240.shtml

Or, as RVR would call it, "Scientists Waste Tequila."

What weird, interesting, or kooky articles have you come across?

[mrbasehart]

Heh heh.  Cool!

There was an article by the BBC a little while back about self-healing rubber:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7254939.stm

No accidental births in the future!

[Chaos]

Have the prices of HDTVs been kept artificially high as a result of price fixing by LCD manufacturers? Apparently!

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/11/12/215212.shtml

[Tripe]

I liked this comment

... I'd expect this kind of BS from Sharp and LG but not from Chunghwa Picture Tubes.

Actually I wonder how much this will effect the cost of not only TVs but other devices that use LCDs

[TeamRAD]

Note to self, don't inject cooking oil into your face...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3439638/Cosmetic-surgery-addict-injected-cooking-oil-into-her-own-face.html

[Chaos]

Good thing she's not a smoker. Imagine sticking a fuse in that face and lighting it up?

[SmilinJackRoss]

"Scientists Turn Tequila Into Diamonds."

Or, as RVR would call it, "Scientists Waste Tequila."

This cracked me up. 

[jewishcarpenter]

Have the prices of HDTVs been kept artificially high as a result of price fixing by LCD manufacturers? Apparently!

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/11/12/215212.shtml

Son of a b......

[Chaos]

New "empathetic" robot displays emotions, offers to "kill all humans."

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/2oUQfz0RD2U&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/2oUQfz0RD2U&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1</a>

Source page: http://www.deviceguru.com/lab-adds-emotions-to-robotic-head/

[mrbasehart]

University of Bristol? That's 5 minutes away from me! *resists the urge to tool up for robot armageddon*

He has a good point about Gloucester and Weston though, those places can happily be wiped out.

[Tripe]

He sort of looks like Junkyard's evil cybernetic English cousin.

You just knew he'd be a Toryboy though.

[Chaos]

Here's another weird one: a new material that is impervious to water. I can think of a lot more interesting uses for it than the example they came up wtih in the article...

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/11/25/1432256.shtml

[mrbasehart]

Drops of water stay as spherical balls on top of the fabric and a sheet of the material need only be tilted by 2 degrees from horizontal for them to roll off like marbles.

Awesome!

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Drops of water stay as spherical balls on top of the fabric and a sheet of the material need only be tilted by 2 degrees from horizontal for them to roll off like marbles.

Awesome!

Didn't read the article but.....how do you wash it?

[mrbasehart]

Experiments also showed that the new coating is durable. Unlike some water-resistant coatings, it remains more-or-less intact when the fabric is rubbed vigorously, although it didn't survive an everyday washing machine cycle.

For Steven Bell, director of the Innovative Molecular Materials Group at Queen's University Belfast, it is this durability that represents the really exciting aspect of this work.

"Although the textiles did show some degradation in the mechanical abrasion tests, their performance was very impressive," he says. "The era of self-cleaning clothes may be closer than we think."

Not quite there yet...