One of the true stories that is a favorite of mine, is that of structural engineer William LeMessurier (pronounced "Leh Measure"), and the CitiCorp Center. Do you know it? I had had it brought to my attention online, and wound up reading the 1995 New Yorker article. Worth reading, but ( Read more... )

I have been remiss! My sweetie took me to see the Strandbeest exhibit at the PEM, and I have not told you about it.

It turns out to my considerable surprise that the Strandbeests are even more cool up close. I had been wondering vaguely about their construction: it turns out they're made of heat-molded beige PVC; the resultant joints and members ( Read more... )

I don't quite know how to go about googling for this. I'm looking for a technical term in business, accounting, finance, tax law, economics or other jargons, that refers to a specific sub-species of what may or may not be "overhead" expenses. Let me describe what I'm looking for.

Overhead in general means: all ongoing business expenses not ( Read more... )

Via Boing Boing.


( Read more... )

Hi, peeps! I have a... home improvement project I'm working on. I'm going to be cagey about the details, but I'm hoping you can advise me anyways ( Read more... )

Maciej Ceglowski, of Pinboard.in, in his "Our Comrade the Electron", has, as far as I am concerned, written the sequel I always wanted but didn't know I wanted to Neal Stephenson's "Mother Earth, Motherboard ( Read more... )

I'm just gonna quote Randall's XKCD blag post on it entire: Back in early March, I posted comic #1337, Hack, about a wayward spacecraft. ISEE-3/ICE was returning to fly past Earth after many decades of wandering through space. It was still operational, and could potentially be sent on a new mission, but NASA no longer had the equipment to talk to ( Read more... )

(h/t conuly)

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/10/abc/ The process of ABC is basically to build support structures around the existing bridge, construct the new roadway on top, then demolish the old bridge while simultaneously sliding the new bridge into place and onto its new ( Read more... )

(h/t jtdiii)

Roman concrete was better than the modern stuff for sheer durability. Turns out, it's made at a lower temperature and its manufacture produces vastly less greenhouse gasses than that of modern, Portland-cement-based, concrete. The Roman recipe resulted in a binder with aluminum in it, which forms up into crystals much like in actual rock ( Read more... )

OK, the online thesauri aren't cutting it. Is there some nice English word which means the precise antonym of "undermine" (also see "sap", v.t.)? That is "to make victorious in battle by building up" and "to make capable of victory by providing a rampart from which to fight ( Read more... )