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Alcohol Photographs

drizzit12 — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:53:29 +0000

These amazing pictures, produced by Bevshots, show different types of alcohol and mixed drinks after the drinks have dried onto slides. The entire process can take up to three months, and it can take many attempts before a clear picture is acquired. The photos show the carbohydrates of the drinks after they have crystallized, forming sugars and glucose. No two drinks look the same, and each photo has been magnified up to 1,000 times in the Florida State University’s chemistry department.

The picture above is of sake, and you can find the rest of the names at the bottom of the page. These photos can be purchased from Bevshots to be hang around your house and amaze your friends. Enjoy!

Names (left to right, top to bottom): Bloody Mary, Champagne, Daiquiri, Dry Martini, Margarita, Pina Colada, Sake, Scotch, Tequila, Vodka, Whiskey, White Russian

Top 10 Coolest Bridges

drizzit12 — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:15:10 +0000

Cool Bridges

There is no question that bridges serve a highly practical purpose; they have provided passages for ancient armies and drastically shorten distances that commuters travel, saving not only time but gas and money as well. However, bridges also contribute to the aesthetics of any city, be it metropolitan or countryside. Please enjoy some of our favorite bridges from around the world. Please note, this list is by no means comprehensive. The list is simply an attempt at epitomizing bridges that are aesthetically pleasing and represent some of the many different types of bridges found. There also isn’t any sort of ranking; they are listed in alphabetical order. If you have a bridge that you think should be an addition to a follow up article, feel free to leave a comment. Enjoy! And no, the picture above is not in this list.

Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge

Location: Akashi Strait, Japan
Length: 2.430 miles (3.911 kilometers)
Type of Bridge: Suspension Bridge
Why it’s special: At 1.237 miles (1.991 kilometers), the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge has the longest central span of all suspension bridges. The central span was actually only 1.990 kilometers long, but the Kobe earthquake of 1995 moved the two main towers a whole meter away from each other. However, the bridge was still under construction at the time, and luckily, only the towers had been built. The bridge is estimated to have cost around $5.5 billion to build.

Bloukrans Bridge

Location: Nature’s Valley, South Africa
Length: 0.280 miles (0.451 kilometers)
Type of Bridge: Arch Bridge
Why it’s special: At 708.661 feet above the Bloukrans River, the Bloukrans Bridge is the highest single span arch bridge in the world. Unsurprisingly, it is a favorite for many bungee jumpers, and it is home to the third highest commercially operated bungee jump in the world.

Erasmusbrug

Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands
Length: 0.498 miles (0.802 kilometers)
Type of Bridge: Cable-Stayed Bridge
Why it’s special: Other than its stunning looks, the bridge actually features a 272 foot long (83 meters) bascule portion, the longest panel of that particular type in the world. Interestingly, the Erasmusbrug is nicknamed “The Swan” because of the shape of its supporting pylon.

Gateshead Millenium Bridge

Location: Gateshead, England
Length: 0.078 miles (0.126 meters)
Type of Bridge: Tilt Bridge
Why it’s special: The Gateshead Millenium Bridge is the first and only tilting bridge in the world. Aside from being aesthetically pleasing, the bridge is also highly functional. As you can see, the bridge can rotate to allow boats to travel down the River Tyne.

Golden Gate Bridge

Location: San Francisco, California
Length: 1.700 miles (2.700 kilometers)
Type of Bridge: Suspension Bridge
Why it’s special: The Golden Gate bridge may seem to receive too much attention considering the fact that it doesn’t appear as high-tech as some of the other bridges on this list; regardless, it’s still one of the most gorgeous structures to ever have been built. Not only is it a landmark and icon of San Francisco but also of the U.S. Since its opening in 1937, the bridge has only been closed for weather related reasons three times, which is a hell of a lot better than my beloved Evergreen Point Floating Bridge here in Seattle.

Magdeburg Water Bridge

Location: Magdeburg, Germany
Length: 0.570 miles (0.918 kilometers)
Type of Bridge: Water Bridge
Why it’s special: Does this really need an explanation? It’s a water bridge!…But for all you physics and engineering junkies out there, the bridge only needs to be able to carry the weight of the water it holds because when a ship travels through water, it displaces an amount of weight equivalent to its own weight, regardless of how heavy the ship may be.

Millau Viaduct

Location: Millau, France
Length: 1.53 miles (2.46 kilometers)
Type of Bridge: Cable-Stayed Bridge
Why it’s special: The Millau Viaduct has the distinction of being the tallest bridge in the world. It may not appear so in the pictures (other than the fact that the bridge is surrounded by clouds), but at 343 meters tall, the tallest mast in the viaduct is actually just a bit taller than the Eiffel Tower, which stands 324 meters tall. Not only do the pylons hold the world record for highest height but the road itself is the highest in Europe. Additionally, the Millau Viaduct is highly functional; it’s the newest of the four different routes between Paris and Perpignan, a city in the south of France, all of which have contributed to decreasing the heavy traffic that used to be characteristic to the three older roads.

Oresund Bridge

Location: Oresund Strait
Length: 4.874 miles (7.845 kilometers) – Doesn’t include the artificial islands or tunnel
Type of Bridge: Cable-Stayed Bridge
Why it’s special: What’s not to like here? Part cable-stayed bridge, part underwater tunnel. And did I mention it spans the Oresund Strait (thereby connecting Denmark with Sweden, for those of you who are geographically challenged). But for $5 billion, I guess I would expect something as extraordinary as the Oresund Bridge. While the underwater tunnel may seem rather pointless, it was actually designed as such in order to avoid interfering with airplanes commuting to and from the nearby Copenhagen Airport. Interestingly, sixteen unexploded World War II bombs were found on the seabed during construction. Badass.

Ponte Vecchio

Location: Florence, Italy
Length: 0.052 miles (0.084 kilometers)
Type of Bridge: Arch Bridge
Why it’s special: It’s the only bridge in the world that has shops built along its sides. While it originally featured butcher shops, the bridge is now home to souvenir sellers, jewelers, and art dealers. A medieval bridge believed to have been originally built around 996 AD, Ponte Vecchio has been destroyed twice by floods. Today, the bridge is one of the main attractions of Florence and greatly contributes to the mass tourism that is a feature of the city.

Quebec Bridge

Location: Quebec City, Canada
Length: 0.613 miles (0.987 kilometers)
Type of Bridge: Cantilever Bridge
Why it’s special: The Quebec Bridge features the longest cantilever bridge span in the world. In typical Canadian fashion, the bridge has also collapsed twice (I actually have dual-citizenship, but I felt it was appropriate to take a jab at my native country). Regardless, it’s still a beautiful bridge and is certainly an engineering feat in itself.

10 Most Hilarious Ways to Get a DUI

xcar27 — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:57:06 +0000

Everyone knows that drinking and driving isn’t safe, and that there are laws in place to prevent the operation of vehicles while under the influence of alcohol. For example, in the United States there is a national law that a blood alcohol content over 0.080 is considered ‘drunk driving.’ However, what you may not know is how widely those laws can apply — and how dumb people can end up with hilarious DUI arrests. Without further ado, I present the 10 funniest DUI cases — and STS’s new game “Did You Know You Can Get a DUI On A…?”

1. Riding Lawnmower

On the list of “Dumb Ways You Can Get a DUI” the riding lawnmower is a very popular choice. And, for reasons we can’t fathom, especially popular in Tennessee. Go figure. This April, in Blountville Tennessee, Martin Junior McMurray took police on a low-speed pursuit for a half mile on his lawnmower, swerving between lanes and ignoring their police sirens. He failed a field sobriety test, blew a 0.15, and had an unopened can of beer in his pocket. A hero.

Now, this seems almost too impossible to believe, but it appears the very same week Athens, Tennessee police arrested Jimmy Graham Junior (why are they all ‘juniors?’) for intoxication on his riding lawnmower. He was also charged with stealing fishing poles out of his neighbors garage. Video of his sobriety test below:

Source 1 Source 2

2. Motorized Wheelchair

Everyone knows the Aussies like to drink, but hows this for a story. In 2008 a man was found asleep in his motorized wheelchair on a highway in Northern Australia, very very drunk. Like blowing a 0.301 kind of drunk. It was also 10 A.M, and he was 64 years old. He claimed he was driving the “nine mile trip” to his friends house.

Source

3. Zamboni

Maine is big into hockey, so it makes sense that they would have ice rinks everywhere. Which means it makes perfect sense when a man from Portland, Maine was arrested right around Christmas time in 2008 for “trying to drive an ice smoothing machine inside a Portland, Maine civic center.” Adam Patterson, a 22 year old, had crashed the Zamboni “into a wall near a storage area.” He was pretty drunk, and my favorite part of the story — “Authorities say he had also tried to operate two forklifts.” Champion.

Source
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4. Motorized Barstool

6’1″, 230-pound Kile Wygle, a 26 year old from Ohio, welded a barstool to a 5 horsepower lawnmower engine and built himself every drunkards perfect form of transport. Well, until he crashed it at around 20 mph and had to be taken to the hopsital for minor injuries. This happened in March of 2009, and he entered a plea of not guilty for his DUI charges. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, because when the police asked him how much he had had to drink, he responded “a lot.” Later clarified to “around 15 beers.” He also said that his motorized barstool can hit a top speed of 38 mph, which is pretty speedy, so he must be smart.

Source

5. 3-Wheeled ATV

This one hails from Kentucky. Just curious, anyone noticing a bit of a trend developing here? Anyway, 18 year old Justin Dale Peters drank “about three beers” and took a 3-wheeled ATV for a drive. He attempted to evade the police, before stopping in a driveway with his hands held in the air. He blew a 0.09 on the breathalyzer, which is disappointingly low.

Source

6. Motorized Lay-Z-Boy

In August 2008 a 62 year old Minnesota man drank “eight or nine beers” and drove his motorized Lay-Z-Boy reclining chair into a parked car. Well, more specifically he left a bar while driving his chair (did he drive it to the bar as well?), and then hit the parked car. The chair was powered by a lawnmower engine (another trend we got going) and was outfitted with a stereo, cupholders, and a magazine rack. He pleaded guilty to drunk driving. But, the story doesn’t end there — the chair has been auctioned off to support the Proctor Police Department. For $3,700. Now that’s just ridiculous.

Source 1 Source 2

7. Horse

A Colorado man received a class-B traffic violation in 2009 for drunkenly riding his horse, named Cricket, to a strip mall in Arvada. He said he was out for a “joyride” and was given a $25 ticket. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time he has done this.

Even funnier, an Alabaman woman took her horse for a midnight jaunt through town in 2009, and was arrested for being intoxicated and carrying drug paraphernalia. Like, crystal meth and “pills”. 40 year old Melissa Byrum York apparently used the horse to “ram a police car.” I’m really not sure how that works.

Source 1 Source 2

8. Barbie Power Wheels

Our second entry from overseas, and also from a part of the former British Empire. This is Paul Hutton, 40, from Essex. And he drove a home-built electric vehicle designed for 3-5 year olds, with a top speed of 4 mph, at twice the legal limit. He was initially given a 3-year driving ban, because he had received another drunk-driving offense in the last 10 years. Because the vehicle is “easy capable of being outrun by a pedestrian” his sentence has been reduced. The best part? Its a pink Barbie car. The police confiscated the vehicle, but Mr. Hutton hopes to get it back. I mean, who wouldn’t?

Source

9. Tricycle

A 58 year old from Oregon was arrested in August 2008 for riding an “adult-sized tricycle” while he was hammered. Do they even make those? Like, is that even a thing? Adult-sized? Anyway, he was booked for drunk driving on a public road. At 2 PM. He rode through a stop sign and down the wrong side of the road, where he was pulled over and failed a field sobriety test.

Source

10. Cruizin’ Cooler

Ah, its time. For the single greatest man-invention ever. The Cruizin Cooler, a motorized cooler scooter that can cruise at about 15 mph. You sit on it, ride down to buy yourself a 6 (or 30) pack, and the beer stays chilled on your ride home. Advertised as the “fastest cooler on the planet” it can even come with a trailer (or many trailers). Genius! Well, it came out in 2006 and took almost 2 years for someone to get a DUI on one. 57 year old Leslie J. “Bomber” Marr, from Whitehall NY is the one. He faces felony DUI charges (Felony!) and charges for aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. The cooler contained 14 beers, and Mr. “Bomber” Marr was swerving and riding on the sidewalk. According to police he’s been “riding around town on that cooler for years.” And that is awesome!

Source

Arctic Surfing

snarfer — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 06:24:49 +0000

This photo was taken near the tiny fishing village of Kremmervika during an expedition to surf the arctic circle. The team was led by film maker Yassine Ouhilal who was accompanied by world class surfers Matt Whitehead, Cyrus Sutton, Christian Wach, and Pat Millin. They started in the 700-person town of Ballstad on the island of Vestvågøy in Norway in the spring of 2008 and traveled north through the Lofoten islands, surfing along the way. Eventually they made it all the way to the coast of Russia, but soon found out that most of the country’s northwestern Arctic coast is off-limits to anyone not in the military so they were unable to get in the water. While planning the trip, charts showed that waves would be better in the winter, but it was deemed suicide to try surfing during the coldest and darkest part of the year. Even the spring temperatures hovered between 20 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit; not exactly the most ideal surfing weather. As they traveled around they often found beautiful, calm beaches that taunted them with signs of large waves that came just days before. When asked what prompted surfers from California and Australia to travel to the arctic to surf, Millin replied “I guess it’s the isolation. That’s why I wanted to come here. How many people are surfing in Hawaii right now? How many thousands?” The following is an excerpt from an Outside article about their expedition that helps explain even further.

We’ve been driving for 14 hours straight. Just as we’re about to give up on surfing for the day, Whitehead spots the fluorescent lines of whitewater squiggling into a bay. Ouhilal stops the car on the roadside.

“Yeah, that’s surfable,” he says. Whitehead jumps into the backseat and rustles through the nest of wetsuits. Minutes later, he vanishes into a thicket of thorny bushes and bounds down the snow-and-moss-covered rocks that lead to the beach.

By the time Ouhilal and I make it to the clearing, ten minutes later, Whitehead is paddling for his first wave, a neck-high point break that lazily arches its back along an exposed black-rock reef and then catapults him down a wall of glassy water. I watch as he rides a few feet in front of me, the wave’s face reflecting the crescent moon before it shoots him into inky blackness.

For this session there are no cameras, no poses, nothing to prove. We’re just three people floating in the Arctic Ocean, surfing a wave that’s been breaking alone for tens of thousands of years. We’re the first to feel its shape, trace its movements, be a part of this big, marvelous, living thing. An hour later, as we pull ourselves from the water and retrace our steps back to the van, everyone is smiling. Whitehead names the break Broken Hearts, after a local Ballstad girl who shirked his advances last week. “To me, that makes it all worth it,” says Ouhilal. “To do this—it’s a very special thing.”

Below are some pictures taken by Yassine Ouhilal as well as a movie he produced about the expedition. Well worth it to watch.

Sources: News.com and Outside Online

Packing Tape Spider Web

xcar27 — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:00:45 +0000

A group of designers in Austria have created a gigantic spider-web out of 117,000 feet of packing tape. The design collective, known as “For Use” created the web out of nearly 100 lbs of tape, and the web is strong enough that visitors can climb inside and explore it. The current display is set up in Odeon, a former stock exchange building in Vienna. Beyond just a technical achievement, it’s also stunning to look at. More pictures and a video below:

Source

Black & White Photography

drizzit12 — Mon, 31 May 2010 03:51:46 +0000

I have always loved black and white photography for its simplicity, which allows photographers to focus on the emotion behind the photo and really challenges people to look for a meaningful shot, as opposed to relying on cool colors to attract people’s attention. One photographer’s work that I love is Ricardo Diez Daeza, whose work is displayed in this post.

Born in 1977, Ricardo Diez Baeza is a Spanish-born photographer currently residing in Brussels, Belgium. His development cooperation work for international organisations as well as his curiosity have had him been traveling the world for the last years. His camera always with him, he has developed his skills and compiled quite an extensive array of pictures. With time he has focused on his black and white photography. Spending most of his time roaming the streets of the cities he visited in the quest of the ever eluding perfect picture, he tries to show the day-to-day lives of the everyday person. His view is that no matter where you go, at the end of the day, in every place you go to, you find the similar people with similar issues. This aspect was showcased in his exhibit “New York vs. Nairobi” in 2009

Check out his other work, as well as his blog, at http://diezbaeza.com

The Beauty of Big Cats

snarfer — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:29:24 +0000

Although Big Cat is not a biological classification, it is generally used to classify the difference between cats such as those kept in homes and those that live in the wild and tend to be much larger and more interesting. These include the Lion, Tiger, Leopard, Jaguar, Cheetah, Cougar, Snow Leopard, and the Clouded leopard. All of them are carnivores and efficient hunters, but many are endangered due to habitat destruction and poaching.

Sources: Wikipedia, xemanhdep

Baby Otter Playing with Toys

snarfer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:35:47 +0000

An incredibly cute video of an Otter playing. The otter is not a pet, this is filmed in the house of an animal caretaker. Otters do not make good pets.

The songs in the video are: Xavier Rudd “White Moth” and Fisher “Beautiful Life”

Papercraft “Castle on the Sea”

xcar27 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:24:57 +0000

This gigantic papercraft sculpture is the work of Japanese art student Wataru Itou. Translated from Umi no Ue no Oshiro to A Castle on the Sea, the work is on display at Umihotaru, essentially a parking lot in the middle of the ocean, located between Tokyo and Chi Prefecture on the Tokyo Aqua-Line highway. The castle took 4 years to complete, and features working LED lighting, and a moving train. And yes, it is made almost entirely out of paper.

POTD: Animal Friendships

snarfer — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:11:53 +0000

This is a collection of pictures of animals getting along with each other. They are from a blog called LetsBeFriends, and it is surprising that some of them were able to be taken. The best ones are the bird and mouse, frog and mouse, dog and cat, and dog and baby deer. Enjoy, and as the source says “If they can do it, then so can we.” A bit sappy but the pictures are still good.

Source: Let’s Be Friends