It's time for another installment in our highly popular "tangled wiring" series.
Judging by the amount of our image submissions, the life of sysadmins and IT technicians is not getting any easier, when it comes to unraveling wiring messes. Plus some countries seem to have never developed the concept of tidy wire management. But what if sophisticated cable connections simply have to be made? The set-up in this room seems to be working, but we do not have information exactly how well it works (click to enlarge) -
The wire is a simple thing. It only has two ends.
The potential for chaos, though, knows no limits. The following photos instill in us a certain sense of dread, as we do not want to come anywhere close to them in reality, or even poke them with a stick -
Sven Briels sent us this picture. He says: "This wonder of engineering was feeding the airconditioning in my hotel in Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Note the switch bundeling under it :)" -
Note the labels! Somebody went to the trouble of labeling this mess (did it help?) -
Wired magazine recently published shots of the internet's "densest meet-me room" - where 260 ISPs get all inter-connected, with very little room for error.
"If this facility went down, most of California and parts of the rest of the world would not be able to connect to the internet."
Why would anybody do something like this? Perhaps they hoped that if they multiply trans-dimensional pipe loops and increase the structural complexity, it'll turn the liquid inside into gold, or even better, into vodka... they failed, in either case:
If some plumbing is too messed up, you can use the weirdest pipe joints as a sculpture outside:
Just to compare, this is what the truly awesome pipe work looks like:
You gotta love this vintage arrangement (Toto's keyboardist, Steve Porcaro, arranging the wiring on his analog synth system in the studio, probably sometime in 1977-78):
But then again, maybe it's not even worth to spend an extra time and effort to organize these pesky knots? After all, the Universal Law is the ultimate increase in entropy and chaos, so why even bother...
"Lake Vostok lies in the heart of the Antarctic continent hidden beneath 4 kilometers of ice. As big as Lake Ontario in North America, Lake Vostok is one of the world's biggest freshwater lakes.
The lake was named for the Russian research station that sits above its southern tip - a place where in 1983 the temperature fell below -129°F (-89°C), the coldest ever recorded temperature on Earth."
As an added interest for its scientific exploration, this freshwater lake can harbour ancient forms of life (according to this article) "If one recent published research report can be believed, at least one spore-forming microbe survived unthinkable extremes of time, reviving after being dormant for 250 million years."
More than 145 lakes have been identified beneath the thick Antarctic ice sheet. Most of these lakes, covered between 3-4 kilometers of ice, are several kilometers long. See the exceptional flash animation about how these lakes form and evolve here
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Cars That Would Not Die
Great addition to our "Ghost Cars of the World" article:
(photos by De Daap)
"Some Venezuelan examples. I actually travelled with the Ford (what's left of it) when my friend and I needed a ride to an airport. The only thing that matters for drivers in Venezuela, is the car stereo. Many cars are old American V8's, which probably even run on two cylinders if needed. And then, fuel is cheaper than beer or bread (in this order)."
Keep sending us the pictures of "zombie vehicles" you find.
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The Mitchell Corn Palace
The original "palace" was built in Mitchell, South Dakota, in 1892 - the present structure is built out of reinforced concrete, not corn. "Every spring, however, its exterior is completely covered with thousands of bushels of native South Dakota corn, grain and grasses that are arranged into large murals" (source)
"Pope Benedict XVI waves to the faithful, flanked by Archbishop James Michael Harvey and his personal secretary Georg Genswein, during his weekly Wednesday general audience at Paul VI Hall at the Vatican"
Is it just my imagination, but does the sculpture behind has some kind of a lizard head?
An interesting series of images, will be good addition to our "Ice Storms!" article: Every flower, every blade of grass got ice embellishment:
(original unknown)
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A Thing from Space
These "presents" fall out of the sky from time to time. There are space satellite debris, pieces of technological trash littering our orbit. According to this source, a strange tangled ball below is a part of a rocket launched at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 1998. It landed in Australia on a farmer's property:
A 70kg titanium piece of Delta2 rocket engine landed in Saudi Arabia in 2001:
A rusty friend of R2D2 fell somewhere in Texas:
Here is how the tracking site represents "space trash population" around Earth. Green dots are current satellites. Red dots - 2,377 pieces of debris from just one satellite - that have been catalogued by NORAD:
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Life-like Baby Doll
"Precious Dreams": very special sculpture/toy, designed and lovingly made by Ruth Annette. See more photos and info here.
