bookofjoe

Gold Toothpick-Earwax Spoon — 16th-Century Spanish Mashup Extraordinaire

Breaking news on NationalGeographic.com:

Gold Toothpick-Earwax Spoon Found

Divers searching for a shipwrecked Spanish galleon on Sunday brought back a solid gold find: a combination toothpick and earwax spoon [above].

The 3-inch-long (7.6-centimeter-long) grooming tool dates back to the late 16th or early 17th century and was probably worn on a gold chain, experts said. It weighs only about an ounce (28 grams), but its value could exceed U.S. $100,000, Blue Water Ventures diver Chris Rackley told the Associated Press.

Rackley found the object while hunting for the remains of the Santa Margarita, which sank in a violent 1622 hurricane about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the coast of Key West, Florida.

"We were on the trail on the Margarita site following the artifact scatter pattern to the north," Blue Water head archaeologist R. Duncan Mathewson told AP.

"This is the furthest point on that trail where gold has ever been found before, so it confirms that we're on the right trail."

Santa Margarita was part of Spain's Tierra Firme treasure fleet carrying goods between Europe and the New World. In addition to its 143 passengers and crew, the galleon sank carrying a wide array of coins, pearls, gold bars, and other treasures.

Searches for the lost ship and its valuables have been ongoing since the 1980s. Last year Blue Water was part of a joint team that uncovered a major stash estimated to be worth more than two million dollars.

FakeTV — 'Makes it look like you are home watching TV, even when you are not'

From the website:

FakeTV — Dynamic and Convincing Occupancy Simulation

FakeTV accurately simulates the light output of a real television.

The effects of scene changes, fades, swells, flicks, on-screen motion and color changes look just they came from a real TV.

A potential burglar thinks the home must be occupied so he moves on to an easier target.

From outside the house it looks like someone is watching TV.
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Burglars will almost always circle a home once before entering.

They are looking for the easiest way in — and for signs of life.

FakeTV gives them just those signs.
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FakeTV becomes part of your home, and we have designed it as such.

Yes, it is highly functional — but it is also stylish.

The opalescent diffuser lens gives an attactive glow and the optical illusion formed by the LEDs on the screen is, frankly, fascinating to watch.

Although we discourage you from doing so — it is never healthy to look at any bright light source for an extended period of time.
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The light from a television is something entirely different from other light sources.

It is constantly changing and gives the impression of being "alive."

FakeTV recreates that light and creates that impression.
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So why not just leave a television on whenever you are away?

Well, aside from consuming a lot of power needlessly, televisions get gradually dimmer with time.

Does it make sense to use up the life of an expensive TV when nobody is watching it?
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When you look at a real TV you see images on the screen.

But when you look at the light it casts in a room, the light from the screen melds to a uniform glow that changes with the changing images on the television.

FakeTV uses a built-in computer to control super-bright LEDs to produce light of varying intensity and color that light up a room just like a real TV.

The light effects of real television programming — scene changes, camera pans, fades, flicks, swells, on-screen motion, and more, are all faithfully simulated by FakeTV.

Just like a real TV, FakeTV fills a room with color changes both subtle and dramatic in thousands of possible shades.

Like real television programming, FakeTV is constantly shifting between more and less dynamic periods, more vivid and more monochromatic, and brighter and darker scenes.

FakeTV is completely unpredictable and it never repeats.

The effect is uncanny.
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From outside the home FakeTV is essentially indistinguishable from a real television.



Test subjects were not able to tell if it was FakeTV or the real thing.

"I think that was a news program, but now a bunch of commercials just came on. It must be the real TV."

No, that was FakeTV — the whole time.
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How does something the size of a coffee cup produce as much light as a television set many times its size?

Recent advancements in LED technology have brought about super-bright LEDs, some more than 10 times as bright as the plain old LEDs we are all familiar with.

FakeTV packs a dozen of these technological marvels into a package that includes a computer and some well-designed optics.

Super-bright LEDs are very expensive but we have a special partnership with Kodenshi, allowing us to offer FakeTV at a remarkably affordable price.
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The FakeTV diffuser lens is a bit of science (optics is what we do here) that borders on art.

FakeTV is not just a flickering light or flasher.

And neither is it just a random light source.

Yes, there are random number generators in the computer in FakeTV and FakeTV never, ever repeats.

But real TV is not random — any more than music is random sounds.

The light from TV is highly characteristic.

Discovering what makes the light from a TV look like, well, the light from a TV, was the key to making FakeTV so realistic.
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To develop FakeTV we took data using real televisions of different types and makes.

We characterized TV programs, analyzing the light output for intensity and color variation.

We generated a lot of computer files of television data.

Then, we came up with mathematical formulas that behaved just the same way.

We programmed those into FakeTV's computer and ran the same tests.

We tested these in the field, as well, and verified that our test subjects simply could not tell the difference between FakeTV and the real thing.

Okay, we got a bit compulsive with this.

Surely, no burglar has ever studied the light intensity output of a television, or measured the degree of color variation.

But we human beings are remarkably good at discerning patterns and subtle differences.

We did not to take the chance that a prowler might see the light from our television simulator and think, "something is not right here," even if he could not identify it.

We kept at it until we could see and measure no differences.


Features:

• Most televisions turn on with push buttons and do not work with timers — burglars know this, thus making FakeTV very effective

• Computer-controlled, super-bright multi-color LED Light output equivalent to a typical 27" TV

• Built-in light sensor automatically turns FakeTV on each evening at dusk and off at dawn

• Consumes only the electricity of a night-light

• AC adapter included

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$38.95.

[via J-Walk Blog]

World's Top 10 Peaceful Nations in 2008

And the winner of the annual survey is... Iceland!

Below, the top 10 as ranked by Britain's Economist Intelligence Unit.

Below, the bottom 10 (least peaceful) nations on Earth, with Iraq at the bottom of the bottom.

Hello Kitty Named Japanese Tourism Ambassador to China

What took them so long?

Why sometimes it's good to run away from your problems

"... Heaney — recalling the physical fact that the longer the lever, the less the force necessary 'to move the mass and get the work going' — reminds us that geographical, temperamental, and cultural differences, whether small or immense, can provide a stance from which to move our subject matter with greater clarity. At times, he suggests, what is 'intractable when wrestled with at close quarters becomes tractable when addressed from a distance.'"

From Lisa Russ Spaar's introduction to her new anthology, "All That Mighty Heart: London Poems."

Grilling Multi-Tool

From the website:
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Griller's 6-in-1 Multi-Tool

Our Griller's Multi-Tool has the essential equipment for grilling greatness.

The sleek unit packs six tools: electronic cooking timer with alarm; digital clock; utility knife; bottle opener; bright LED light to check doneness; and a built-in whistle to call everyone to the table.

Clips to a belt loop or lanyard (included), then extends on a retracting reel.

Runs on three button cell batteries (included).
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$19.95.

Was China's earthquake triggered by a nuclear accident?

Though I haven't seen this possibility mentioned anywhere, I'm certain that the folks at Fort Meade have spent a fair amount of time and effort trying to get a definitive answer to that question.

When I saw a map showing how close China's supersecret main complex for making nuclear warhead fuel — codenamed Plant 821 — is to the May 12 magnitude 7.9 earthquake's ground zero, accompanying William J. Broad's May 16, 2008 New York Times story about Western efforts to monitor possible radiation leakage as a result of the quake, I couldn't help but turn cause and effect around and wonder, what if?

More from Broad's article: "Closer to the epicenter of the quake that struck Monday is Mianyang [top], a science city whose outskirts house the primary laboratory for the design of Chinese nuclear arms. It is considered the Chinese equal to Los Alamos.

"Nuclear experts said that closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, in rugged hills a two-hour drive west of Mianyang, China runs a highly secretive center that houses a prompt-burst reactor. It mimics the rush of speeding subatomic particles that an exploding atom bomb spews out in its first microseconds.

"North in an even more rugged and inaccessible region, nuclear experts said, China maintains a hidden complex of large tunnels in the side of a mountain where it stores nuclear arms.

"'It's very close to the epicenter,'

said one specialist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because, to the best of his knowledge, the exact location of the secret complex had never been publicly disclosed."

Huh.

What is it?

Answer here this time tomorrow.