Thai fishermen netted a catfish as big as a grizzly bear, setting a world record for the largest freshwater fish ever found (646 pounds). ~ The Mekong giant catfish was caught and eaten in a remote village in Thailand along the Mekong River, home to more species of giant fish than any other river in the world.
New Zealand’s Stubbies, Mullets, and L&P
Canadians bid A sad farewell to ‘stubby’
The Stubby behind your zipper (Be cool from the neck down).
Hey, this is a fun idea. Take a still photo from a movie. Edit out all hands and faces. Now guess the movie. This has been going on for over two years, so there’s a big archive. Here’s Quiz #237
Is a Giant Eel Stalking Loch Ness?
Forensics Investigator William McDonald thinks so. ~ Says McDonald, ~ “The creature is a mutation of an Anguilla Eel, and this 4-inch barbed tooth matches precisely what such an animal would possess along its mandibular structure. These are mean predatory amphibious fish that prefer the deep. In Spring and Summer there is ample fish to feed such a creature, but in winter, before the Spring migrations, they’ll stalk the shoreline at night, hunting local game.�
Or, it’s a deer antler.
US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.
From the looks of this picture, if you kill dogs and then bring ’em back to life, they kinda don’t like it.
That’s gotta hurt!
aceartinc. is an Artist Run Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba that is dedicated to the development, exhibition and dissemination of contemporary art by cultural producers.
Twitch, is an exhibition comprised of works that in some way animate the inanimate through electronics, physical computing, audio and installation art.
Experiments in Galvanism is the culmination of studio and gallery experiments where Garnet Hertz implanted a miniature computer into the dead body of a frog specimen. The computer stores a website that enables users to trigger physical movement in the corpse: the resulting movement can be seen in a gallery, and through a live streaming web-camera.
He is the same guy who created Cockroach with wireless video and Cockroach-controlled mobile robot system.
For some reason, I wish he had used electronic implants in the frogs leg muscles instead of using servos.
In the mid-to-late 1970’s, the Cray-1 was the fastest computer in the world, with a clock speed of 12.5 ns (80 MHz), computational rates of 138 million floating-point operations per second (MFLOPS) during sustained periods, and 250 MFLOPS in short bursts. Up until that time, there has been no other computer like it. The Cray-1 had spawned a new class of computers called the “supercomputer,” a computer highly optimized for computational speed, and is typically used for its mega number-crunching capabilities. Considered to be the first supercomputer, Cray Research’s Cray-1 was unveiled in 1976 by Seymour R. Cray, its inventor and chief design architect. Early versions weighed over five tons, featured the equivalent of 8 MB of RAM, and cost about $9 million.
In 1985 the Cray-2 was introduced, which could do 1.9 gigaflops (1.9 billion flops), operated at 244 MHz, had the equivalent of 2GB of RAM, and cost about $12 million.
For comparison, a typical PC bought in 2000 or 2001 uses a Pentium 4 processor with a clock speed of 1.5 GHz, benchmarks at around 1.8 Gflops, probably cost under $2,000, and fits under your desk. In short, it’s the rough equivalent of a 1985 supercomputer for one-six thousandth the cost.
Today’s typical PC is even faster, but so is today’s typical supercomputer.
Here are the current Top 500 Supercomputer sites.
IBM continues to establish itself as the dominant vendor of supercomputers with now more than half of the list (51.8 percent) carrying its label.
At the top spot, IBM’s BlueGene/L consumes 2.5 megawatts to run and cool the computer and takes up 2,500 square feet of floor space.
There’s a Cray at the #10 spot.
The last system (#500) in June 2005 has about the same computing power as ALL 500 systems combined, when the list was first created 13 years ago in June 1993.
The U.S is clearly the leading consumer of high-performance computing systems with 294 of the 500 systems installed there. Europe is still ahead of Asia, with 114 systems installed. In Europe, Germany claimed the No. 1 spot from UK again, with 40 systems compared to 32.
However, without special modifications, software doesn’t run any faster on a supercomputer than it would on a personal computer. Every day private and public analysts confront huge amounts of data from which to draw conclusions, find relationships and discover hidden trends. Visualization analytics tools let users “discover the unexpected”.
Supercomputer gallery.
I graduated High School in 1974. I can remember when they enacted the “Temporary 55 MPH speed limit”. That was a big jump from Day-70/Night-60 MPH. We figured it would save a lot of gas because people would just say “If it takes that long to get there, we just won’t go”. I remember joking about how we would someday be talking to our grandkids.
Me: We used to drive over 30 MPH all the time.
Grandkid: Gosh Grandpa! Didn’t the wheels fly off?
Me: Heck no. We used to drive from here to a different state and get there on the same day…
Soon, Iowa’s interstate speed limit will inch up from 65 MPH to 70 MPH. It’s been a long wait. Most rural roads will stay at 55 MPH.
Now we have a Temporary Patriot Act.
This weekend, the annual Des Moines Arts Festival transforms the city into one of the most noteworthy spots in the country for viewing the visual arts. Last year’s event was ranked as the fourth-best fine-arts festival in the nation.
This visual culture has produced a growing list of artists who were educated in Iowa and enjoy an international reputation for their work, such as Alex Brown, Anna Gaskell, Joey Kirkpatrick and Rita McBride. (more)
Marlene and I just got back from the festival. We had a nice time checking out the artwork and watching the fireworks along the river. Marlene especially liked the fine art photography of Don Ament. Sorry, I didn’t take our digital camera. What kind of a blogger am I?