As the generation that fought World War II passes on, it can be difficult for younger people to remember that it was a war fought not by the elderly in black and white, but by millions of Americans in vivid color. These gorgeous images, via Shorpy, remind us just how vivid that war was.
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On the heels of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision rulings that married same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits and clearing the way for same-sex marriage in California, Sesame Street’s romantic relationship between Bert and Ernie was graphically outed on The New Yorker’s magazine
cover. One week prior to the official date this issue will hit
newsstands, the sexual orientation of the puppets which has long been
the fodder for late-night TV hosts exploded on social media channels.
As part of its efforts to promote the unsung heroes of computing history, Google is celebrating the Manchester Baby’s 65th birthday. Despite the cutesy nickname, the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine was the first computer to use electronic memory rather than punchcards for programming, heralding the software revolution. The secret was in the Williams-Kilburn cathode-ray tube, which could store a (then) staggering 128 bytes worth of data. Of course, that’s not much by modern standards, but given that the 5-meter machine weighed in at over a ton, we still think it could take your fancy laptop in a bar-room brawl. If you’re curious to learn more and hear the immortal quips of Professor F.C. Williams, head on past the break for the video.
Source: Google
China is the world’s largest beer market with over 500 breweries straining to slake the thirst of a billion potential imbibers. With production surpassing the 50 billion liter per year mark in 2011 – double that of the USA – one might expect at least a little variety among the flood. We’re glad to state that this is indeed so, and our countdown of China’s 8 coolest beers proves it.
For the most part, we humans are better at things than we were thousands of years ago. But there are some things the ancients had down pat. Roman concrete, for instance, is just way better than anything we can whip up today. Finally, after some 2,000 years, modern-day scientists have figured it out. And it’s a secret worth knowing.
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‘Pandas’ and ‘Innovators’ were British Airways’ only passengers this
week on a couple of their historic flights. In two unprecedented
promotions, giant pandas boarded one flight on Tuesday, June 11th to
announce BA’s first new route to China since it launched flights to
Shanghai in 2005. The very next day, 100 innovators took part in the
airlines’ "UnGrounded" initiative, enlishted as a think tank hackathon
team.
I think we all know that inventors are awesome. Even when their inventions don’t work, they still show an incredible amount of creativity that many people don’t possess. I’m one of those people that can’t think that far out of the box to create something (other than art and fiction, that is). This video is a salute to inventors–and it’s pretty funny as well.
An effective anti-malaria vaccine has been developed by a team of researchers at the Osaka University Research Institute for Microbial Diseases in Japan. The results of clinical trials conducted over a two-year period on location in Uganda, Africa, and published in the U.S. journal PLOS One confirm the BK-SE36 dry powder vaccine lowered the risk of acquiring malaria by a whopping 72 percent.
In A Tale of Two Cities,
when Charles Dickens penned his famous quote, "it was the best of
times, it was the worst of times," while he was relating how opposing
factions viewed the French Revolution, one might make a similar
observation regarding the return of the cicadas.
On May 6th, 1949 EDSAC (or Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) ran its first programs, calculating a table of squares and generating a list of prime numbers. The massive vacuum-tube-powered machine was put into service at the University of Cambridge and almost immediately changed how research was done at the school. It was among the first general-purpose computers capable of storing programs in rewritable memory, which took the form of mercury delay lines. Maurice Wilkes, the designer of the EDSAC, certainly earned his place in computing history, but David Wheeler’s later contributions were equally important. Using the EDSAC he invented subroutines, an essential component of modern programming that allows developers to reuse bits of existing code to simplify the act of writing software. This milestone piece of machinery is little more than scraps at this point, but a team at the UK’s National Museum of Computing is working to build a working replica. The hope is to have the computer up and running by May of 2015. For some more insight into how the EDSAC changed the face of computing, check out the video after the break.
[Image credit: University of Cambridge]
Source: Google
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