Obama: Trick the Bridesmaid:

[Video Link] “Let’s creep in the frozen aisle and think one thought: trick the bridesmaid to get her to take it off.” I appreciate the work Bad Lip-Reading does to make politician’s speeches bearable.

[Weird.]

[This is pretty genius. I harbor a secret desire to attend. Anyone? -egg]

(Warren Ellis)

MIT research on “printing” buildings:
MIT News Office posted a survey of the fascinating research at the university, and by alum, on an array of 3D printing technologies and applications.

Another variant underway now is a system being developed by Neri Oxman PhD ’10, the Media Lab’s Sony Corporation Career Development Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and her graduate student Steven Keating for “printing” concrete. Their ultimate aim: printing a complete structure, even a whole building.

Why do that, instead of the tried-and-true method of casting concrete in wooden forms that dates from the heyday of the Roman Empire? In part, Oxman explains, because it opens up new possibilities in both form and function. Not only would it be possible to create fanciful, organic-looking shapes that would be difficult or impossible using molds, but the technique could also allow the properties of the concrete itself to vary continuously, producing structures that are both lighter and stronger than conventional concrete.

To illustrate this, Keating uses the example of a palm tree compared to a typical structural column. In a concrete column, the properties of the material are constant, resulting in a very heavy structure. But a palm tree’s trunk varies: denser at the outside and lighter toward the center. As part of his thesis research, he has already made sections of concrete with the same kind of variations of density.

“Nature always uses graded materials,” Keating says. Bone, for example, consists of “a hard, dense outer shell, and an interior of spongy material. It gives you a high strength-to-weight ratio. You don’t see that in man-made materials.” Not yet, at least.

“Printing off the paper“

List of If This Then That recipes:

ifttt.com is like Yahoo’s Pipes, but easier to use. Here’s a list of 728 useful “recipes” sorted by popularity.

Popular ifttt.com recipes

Shain Erin’s dolls for sale on etsy:

Shain Erin is an artist who makes adorable dolls that any child would love to snuggle with. You can buy them in Shain’s etsy store.

Hydraulic typewriter mixes cocktails out of the letters you type:

Morskoiboy created an hydraulic typewriter that mixes cocktails — the typewriter keys inject different liquids into a big LCD-like display, which then decants them into a waiting beaker.

So, if you’re interested, let me explain this contraption and the mechanism that makes it work. At the top of the machine there is a slot into which a bottle with alcohol, water, or even milk can be screwed. The essence of the art here lies in the ability of the syrups or liqueurs to tint the neutral color of the liquid. In the picture below you can see the connector itself and the regulator (which is actually an IV Rate Flow Regulator I picked up in a drugstore), which opens or closes off the air flow into the bottle and thus acts as an on/off switch. Once it enters the machine, the liquid spreads across the fourteen tubules.

Now I can literally taste the flavor of my words!

(Thanks, Sergey!)

Neutrino jokes:

One of many highlarious jokes making the rounds about those crazy neutrinos traveling faster than light. (Thanks, Ariel Waldman!)

Hunting Space Invaders:

Isn’t augmented reality cool? Awesome photoshop work by Ryan Snieder.