How beads are made -several techniques

Blown, drawn, stamped...

http://youtu.be/DGvtWCX8QD4

photo sphere El Capitan

Cool photo - here's a portion of the whole spherical photo in the link.

Why does the snooze button give 9 minutes more sleep?

By the time the snooze feature was added in the 1950s, the innards of alarm clocks had long been standardized. This meant that the teeth on the snooze gear had to mesh with the existing gear configuration, leaving engineers with a single choice: They could set the snooze for either a little more than nine minutes, or a little more than 10 minutes. But because reports indicated that 10 minutes was too long, allowing people to fall back into a "deep" sleep, clock makers decided on the nine-minute gear, believing people would wake up easier and happier after a shorter snooze.

http://m.mentalfloss.com/article.php?id=22761

there was already a standardized gear system for alarm clocks when snooze buttons were invented. Because of this pre-existing setup, clockmakers had to decide whether a snooze should last nine minutes or longer than ten minutes. If you hit snooze at, let's say, 7:15, the mechanism would know to go off again at 7:24, when the last gear turned to 4. If you're having trouble picturing this, it might help to think about those popular clocks from the '70s and '80s with numerals printed on rotating cards. All four numerals moved independently of one another, so with a nine-minute snooze, the button was only connected to (and trigged by) the rightmost number.

https://unicornbooty.com/why-most-alarm-clock-snooze-buttons-last-for-9-minutes/

Scissor-folding bridge

What a clever idea. A scissor-folding bridge that can be transported to a disaster site where it can be extended across a river to a stranded community.

http://youtu.be/Ef8x6I8PFCA

It appears to take the weight of a car:

http://youtu.be/9RL9IB90M2o

The inventor's journey from observing a child's toy to a folding bridge is described a little bit here:
http://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en/top/kenkyu/now/no20/

From the Popular Science article: "When natural disasters hit, they often destroy bridges first. So engineers from Hiroshima University in Japan set out to build a quickly built, strong replacement. Inspired by origami, the new mobile bridge spans 56 feet and takes three people less than an hour to deploy. Often no foundation work is needed, making it ideal for areas affected by earthquakes or floods. Made of aluminum alloy and steel, it's lightweight and easy to transport, yet sturdy enough for cars to cross."
http://www.popsci.com/best-of-whats-new-2015/engineering

Be My Eyes ~ Lend Your Eyes to the Blind

Cool! Volunteers connect to a blind user's smartphone video feed to tell them what they're looking at.
http://www.bemyeyes.org/

http://youtu.be/Y7bxlR-MxxM

P2 Hoverbike Test Flight

The future is finally here.

http://youtu.be/h7aIXvyBC64

"No Thanks" Best DHS Checkpoint Refusals EVER!

Exercising their rights. Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to deal with these drivers? Or what it would be like to be this guy's roommate? It is interesting how, in every case, they let them go on their way.

http://youtu.be/6_3dDNPwJTU

Un-fitbit

Funny! Put your fitbit on a metronome or a power drill to falsify your exercise log

http://www.unfitbits.com/

Big Bertha tunnel in Seattle

Seattle's giant tunnel project is finally restarting tomorrow, after a two year delay from overheating, because "grit penetrated a seal casing that lubricates and protects the rotary drive parts"

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/2-years-after-breakdown-bertha-getting-ready-to-drill-again/

The following article on similar megaprojects makes two interesting points.

China is home to many megaprojects, and China "used more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the United States did during the entire twentieth century..." -Wow. 

And, those proposing civic megaprojects consistently lure public support by over-promising due savings and misleading by under-budgeting: 

"Referring to huge cost overruns during the construction of San Francisco's four-and-a-half-billion-dollar Transbay Transit Center, Brown wrote, "We always knew the initial estimate was way under the real cost…. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there's no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.""

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/bertha-seattle-infrastructure-trouble-megaprojects

Lots of great photos of the megaproject here. And here.

Cool, crazy, incredible

White Winter Hymnal

http://youtu.be/LrfnmkIoqRY

Meet the real woman behind the voice of Siri

http://youtu.be/z2bTymnb1uE

vocal range of Mitch from Pentatonix

Some fan was really obsessed with his range because I'm sure this took a huge amount of time. The note in the corner of the screen changes color when he sings the actual note. 

https://youtu.be/YjNJL00Y8xs

Drink coffee to live longer

I don't get it. Everything about coffee is bad. Caffeine increases blood pressure, promotes arrhythmias, and usually involves adding sugar and cream, which are also bad. How can there possibly be a dose-related decrease in mortality? They suggest some putative mechanisms with some very big words...

...During 4,690,072 person-years of follow-up, 19,524 women and 12,432 men died...Compared to non-drinkers, coffee consumption one to five cups/d was associated with lower risk of mortality, ...the HRs of mortality were 0.94 (0.89 to 0.99) for ≤ 1 cup/d, 0.92 (0.87 to 0.97) for 1.1-3 cups/d, 0.85 (0.79 to 0.92) for 3.1-5 cups/d, and 0.88 (0.78 to 0.99) for > 5 cups/d (p for non-linearity = 0.32; p for trend < 0.001)...

Conclusions—Higher consumption of total coffee, caffeinated coffee, and decaffeinated coffee was associated with lower risk of total mortality.

Circulation 2015 Nov 16; Association of Coffee Consumption with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality in Three Large Prospective Cohorts. Ming Ding, Ambika Satija, Shilpa N Bhupathiraju, Yang Hu, Qi Sun, Jiali Han, Esther Lopez-Garcia, Walter Willett, Rob M van Dam, Frank B Hu PMID: 26572796

How to calm babies - a specific way to hold babies.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j2C8MkY7Co8#action=share

$45B to charity - wow

That's an unprecedented donation. Wow!

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/technology/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-charity.html?_r=0&referer=https://www.google.ca/

The world's ugliest music | TEDx

Some theory behind the world's worst possible music. More interesting than you'd think.

http://youtu.be/RENk9PK06AQ