Married to the Sea

from married to the sea

Texts from Hillary Clinton

From TextsFromHillaryClinton tumblr

A submission from Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Original image by Diana Walker for Time.

10TH APR 2012 | 1,347 NOTES

Thanks to @CapitolHillKid and @AdamConner for finding the photo.

Original image by Kevin Lamarque for Reuters.

10TH APR 2012 | 302 NOTES

Original image by Diana Walker for Time.

9TH APR 2012 | 1,425 NOTES

texts from my dog

From SadAndUseless dot com

 

At least I waited until lunch break to post this on the blog...

Drunk Canuck sings Bohemian Rhapsody in back of cruiser

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

Obama Protests at Harvard in 1991

Married to the Sea

Radical Pictures of Dogs Underwater

Lifted straight out of The Washington Post

Raptorjesus camp

Well, alright then. I might even be offended by this one.

Some things never change

Campaign Season #6

Mitt slings santorum at Rick. Rick slings back.

Entrepreneurs

Campaign Season #5

Stephen Colbert SuperPAC makes a great point.

Maharishi Honey Plan for World Domination

Correlation vs. causation

Campaign Season #4

Whoever makes those pickup truck ads seems to have landed another gig:

Morning Sugar Shock

In a study of 84 children’s cereals from the four big manufacturers (Kellogg’s, Post, General Mills and Quaker Oats), the majority contained more sugar than three chocolate chip cookies. Read related article.

Source: Environmental Working Group. The Washington Post. Published on December 6, 2011, 8:02 p.m.

Ferrari pile up

Japanese one-percenters commit seppuku:

Harvard researchers build flexible robot

Lifted straight out of www.washingtonpost.com

LOS ANGELES — Harvard scientists have built a new type of flexible robot that is limber enough to wiggle and worm through tight spaces.

It’s the latest prototype in the growing field of soft-bodied robots. Researchers are increasingly drawing inspiration from nature to create machines that are more bendable and versatile than those made of metal.

(Robert Shepherd/Harvard University/Associated Press) - A soft-bodied robot navigating, top to bottom, an obstacle course. Harvard researchers have built this flexible prototype robot that can crawl and move in a wavelike motion. Unlike rigid robots, soft robots can be used to squeeze into tight spaces.

Gallery

 Each year robots are getting more sophisticated and entertaining than ever before. Check out these captivating robots that can do almost anything — from reciting Shakespeare to serving shaved ice cream with a smile.

The Harvard team, led by chemist George M. Whitesides, borrowed from squids, starfish and other animals without hard skeletons to fashion a small, four-legged rubber robot that calls to mind the clay animation character Gumby.

In recent years, scientists have been tinkering with squishy — sometimes odd-looking — robots designed to squeeze through hard-to-reach cracks after a disaster like an earthquake or navigate rough terrain in the battlefield.

“The unique ability for soft robots to deform allows them to go places that traditional rigid-body robots cannot,” Matthew Walter, a roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an email.

A team from Tufts University earlier this year showed off a 4-inch caterpillar-shaped robot made of silicone rubber that can curl into a ball and propel itself forward.

The Harvard project, funded by the Pentagon’s research arm, was described online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new robot, which took two months to construct, is 5 inches long. Its four legs can be separately controlled by pumping air into the limbs, either manually or via computer. This gives the robot a range of motions including crawling and slithering.

The researchers tested the robot’s flexibility by having it squirm underneath a pane of glass just three-quarters of an inch from the surface.

Scientists maneuvered the robot through the tiny gap 15 times using a combination of movements. In most cases, it took less than a minute to get from side to side.

Researchers eventually want to improve the robot’s speed, but were pleased that it did not break from constant inflation and deflation.

“It was tough enough to survive,” said Harvard postdoctoral fellow Robert Shepherd, adding that the robot can traverse on a variety of surfaces including felt cloth, gravel, mud and even Jell-O.

There were drawbacks. The robot is tethered to an external power source and scientists need to find a way to integrate the source before it can be deployed in the real world.

“There are many challenges to actively moving soft robots and no easy solutions,” Tufts neurobiologist Barry Trimmer, who worked on the caterpillar robot, said in an email.

Robotics researcher Carmel Majidi, who heads the Soft Machines Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, said the latest robot is innovative even as it builds on previous work.

“It’s a simple concept, but they’re getting lifelike biological motions,” he said.