Robots Making Cars

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Robots Making Cars

Footage from the BMW assembly plant in Munich Germany (a guilty pleasure to watch):

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Not just robots, but also a few people are present in this Audi A4 production line video. Curious which company is a leader in making such robots? - It's KUKA, see video, and an amazing demonstration of these industrial robots' synchronized operation.

Today's pictures & links:

Remains of Soviet Tu-144 supersonic airliner (found in a really sad state)

Remember our article about world's race for designing the best supersonic airliner? - American Supersonic Airliners - Well, supersonic commercial aviation is not enjoying the best of times nowadays - but at least we'd like to see the best examples to be preserved and, at least, shown some respect...

Russian Tupolev Tu-144 is rusting and slowly falling apart within the grounds of the Kazan Aviation Institute:

This page has a lot more images... amazingly, according to this video, some parts of the plane are still "alive" and can be activated!

Some interesting plane remains can also be found in Quebec (Montreal's John Abbott Campus) - Click here

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A Big Blue Brain in Brussels

The Blue brain is the work of artists Chris Christoffels and Jose Roland and the structure is built to represent creativity. Amen to that.

Read more about it here

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Amphibian Vehicle "Arachnoid"

Designed for the exploration of very humid jungle environment. See more details here

Renaud's Alterra1 site features lots of other cool vehicle models

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Great Bird Dream

Bartolomeu de Gusmão built this Big Bird "Passarola" in 1709, but it seems that little is known about the actual flying attempt:

(image via)

"The slight documentation that exists suggests that in 1709 Bartolomeo Gusmao, he who had set fire to the King of Portugal's curtains with the first lighter-than-air device, also demonstrated the first model glider and was granted a patent to build a full-scale man-carrying one. When constructed, however, the Passarola (Great Bird) remained earthbound. It is unknown what the Passarola actually looked like, but a contemporary artist's rendition depicted a tail, movable wings, even the head of a bird. No further accounts of Gusmao's experiments have been discovered."

A neat addition to our tales of early attempts at flying and gliding - see Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines

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Mixed fresh links for today:

Incredible qaudruple transit on Saturn - [space]
Total size of derivatives bubble, Picture!, info - [thought-provoking]
Absolutely nuts "gastrophysics" food - [weird]
Love / Hate Affair with Cables - [funny]
Top most unusual places to set up your office - [weird]
John Lennon, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton together! - [video]
Reenactment of USAir Flight 1540: Hudson Landing - [video]
Opening a beer with a helicopter - [wow video]
Extreme Sheep LED Art - [wow video]
Robots Making Cars - [wow video]
Neat Food & Drink Ads - [promotion]
Make stunning Flash websites for free! - [promotion]

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Some fun facts you probably did not know:
(check out more at this DRB page: Don't Know Much About...)

"A diamond will break if you hit it with a hammer." - info

"Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th." - info

"What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France" - info

"Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only one testicle" - could be a myth, see info
"Hitler's diet was primarily vegetarian throughout the latter part of his life; however, he didn't adopt a vegetarian diet for moral reasons, but because he suffered from gastric problems"

"Napoleon was NOT unusually short" - info
"Actually, "Napoleon was too short" was a rumor based on the measuring system in different areas of the world. He was 5′2″ in French feet, but 5′6.5″ in Imperial feet. He was actually just above average for men in that time. Also his nickname of ‘le petit caporal’, lead people to believe he was short when it actually was a positive term about his camaraderie with ordinary soldiers"

"Colgate faced a big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command "go hang yourself." - info

"The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar an England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes" - info

"The Moon is moving away from the Earth." - info

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If you can call it urban art...

Pac-Man (and Ghost) are expanding the limits of their virtual existence, and are now prowling the streets of Moscow. The video (a little on the longish side) can be watched here, or this is Pac-Man's appearance inside one Russian university (Vlas & Elnik are responsible for these outrageous acts)

(image via)

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TerraFugia Flying Car Makes First Flight

We wrote a lot about proposed and in-development flying cars in our "Futuristic Transportation" series (remember PALV: Personal Air & Land Vehicle?). Well, most of them remain concepts, but there has been a bit of a good news: "The Terrafugia Transition, the first plausible "flying car" (or more precisely, a "roadable aircraft"), took its first official flight earlier this month."

- via

More images and info on this page

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Aaaaahhhh!

This is serious...

(image credit: Andrei Zvyagintzev)

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Alien and Predator in a friendly mode (when they are not on a movie set)

This is the ad campaign for New Zealand's Sky Television - click on images to enlarge and see'em in full glory.

The Aliens vs Predator campaign was developed at DDB New Zealand by executive creative director Toby Talbot, head of art Mike Davison, art director Gavin Siakimotu, 3d Artists David Partridge, Ben McGrall and Ben Parry. - via

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When did you open your computer case last?

You might be in for a surprise... Just whatever you do, don't disturb the poor thing, he gets so tired after long nights of coding:

(image via)

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Better Safe Than Sorry

There are lots of potential threats distributed through BitTorrent networks - and since filesharing became extremely popular - one needs to be protected from these threats.

The new site VerTor (http://vertor.com), which is short for Verified Torrents, offers a service that provides users with torrent files that were scanned for viruses, checked for protection (DRM), with text/audio/graphic information extracted. It is user-friendly and ad-free as well. If you're tired of fakes, ads, messy searches, and just want a great service, Vertor.com is the best torrent site to visit! Read their About page.

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Yet another extreme sport

Skateboarding is not a crime! This is obviously a car ad - so don't try it with your buddies.