bookofjoe

What's it like to ride at bicycle at 102 mph?

Videre est credere.

From DEVOUR: "Inspired by the great men of the salt flats, Tom Donhou decided to test the limits of speed himself. He ditched the jet-propelled motors and built a high-speed bicycle that can reach up to 102 mph."

Discovered: Largest-ever flower preserved in amber

As close as we will ever get to "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

YouTube description:

First described over 150 years ago as Stewartia kowalewskii, a corolla preserved in amber from at least 34 million years ago was reanalyzed and reclassified by researchers.

Measuring 28 mm in diameter, it is the largest-known fossilised flower to be preserved in amber, nearly three times the size of other preserved flowers.

The analysis of pollen extracted from the anthers of the flower inclusion revealed strong affinities to Asian species of Symplocos.

Renamed Symplocos kowalewskii, the fossilized flower represents the first record of Symplocaceae from Baltic amber.

Research paper: "The largest amber-preserved flower revisited"; Eva-Maria Sadowski and Christa-Charlotte Hofmann, Scientific Reports, 10.1038/s41598-022-24549-z

Images: Carola Radke, MfN (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin)

More here.

Read the original scientific paper in its entirety here.

Skid Mark Brief Safe — My most popular post EVER

What this says about my readership I really would rather not think about.

The Skid Mark Brief Safe post appeared on January 19, 2007.

It was quickly picked up by Boing Boing, at the time the über-blog of coolness, before spreading itself across the internets.

Put bookofjoe into the Google search box and up comes that post on the first page, #2 of 991,000 results (below).

Back in 2007 you could pick one up for $39.95.

Amazon carries it but alas, it's currently out of stock.

The most recent Amazon review is dated January 16, 2023, six days ago (5 Stars BTW) so you just need to be patient and revisit the site occasionally to see if your shi...p has come in.

heh

Otherwise you're gonna have to make your own.

No — I refuse to pander and make a video.

There are limits, even for me.

If you're not happy with your results... oh stop

But wait — there's more! (we were afraid of that...)

This post appears here exactly three (3) days after the fifteenth (15th) anniversary of its January 19, 2007 debut.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Below, the seventeen (17) comments on the original post, the last of which appeared over two-and-a-half (2.5) years later, on October 29, 2009.

Jay Blume U r00L!