Jul
15
2009
As six astronauts end a simulated 105 day space trip to Mars, HAINSWORTH.COM looks to the past to get a glimpse into our future travel plans. After 105 days in a human-sized hamster Habitrail, four Russians, a Frenchman and a German (walk into a bar) announced it was no big deal to be cooped up [...]
Jun
29
2009
The late King of Pop to join his monkey Bubbles in the plastic afterworld, claims Daily Mail. Michael Jackson’s apparent attempts at cheating death have failed: he missed the deadline to be cryogenically frozen. The British newspaper The Daily Mail is reporting German doctor Gunther Von Hagens, the man behind the process known as “plastination” [...]
May
27
2009
An awesome Flickr photo pool offers a window into the past lives of neighbourhoods.
Apr
28
2009
The finishing touches are being put on a historic Toronto landmark in preparation for a fall return. As the empire of Lord Black of Crossharbour crumbled around him, an opportunity arose to reclaim one of Toronto’s most historic properties. In 2006 Morgan Meighen & Associates reportedly paid $14M for 10 Toronto Street. At $1,800 per [...]
Apr
11
2009
Keep this handy poster in your time machine to help invent flight, penicillin, generate electricity, and invent the radio. Source: TopatoCo
Apr
10
2009
Declassification of certain U.S. military projects sheds light on the Groom Lake facility popularized by 40 years of tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists. I want to believe. The Los Angeles Times has interviewed five men who worked on the base in the 1960s. They weren’t reverse-engineering components from the Roswell crash of 1947, but they [...]
Apr
01
2009
A California State University in Fullerton psychologist has found a genetic link to the age at which you lose your virginity.
Mar
20
2009
Our eyes are designed to spot movement. Those of us with more twitchy tendencies are more likely to find Waldo, car keys. Our eyes never remain perfectly still, even when staring at one spot. Researchers in Arizona picked up a Where’s Waldo? book and recorded the eye movements of subjects searching for the lanky bespectacled [...]
Mar
15
2009
Today we learn that a single question accurately identifies alcoholics, your grandfather better lay off the Jack, and — SHOCKER! — girls drink too much when trying to impress boys. By 1.5 drinks, to be precise. Researchers at Boston Medical Center re-asked 286 patients who had undergone a lengthy previous test this question, suggested by [...]
Mar
13
2009
Wired Magazine offers a fascinating story about the man who orchestrated the 2003 $100M break-in of the Antwerp Diamond Center’s Titanic-like vault. The vault itself was 3 feet thick and protected by 10 layers of security — including infrared heat detectors foiled by oily hairspray and a magnetic field tricked by double sided tape. The [...]
Mar
10
2009
Michael learns about the pre-historic origins of Stonehenge, those that built it, and how The Flintstones may have been accurate in its depiction of which animal was higher up on the food chain at the time. Stonehenge was built over the course of almost 700 years, primarily due to red tape in the zoning department. [...]
Mar
05
2009
Readers of Modern Mechanix magazine were warned in April of 1933 that the lights could go out at any minute. Source: Explosion of Sun Overdue, blog.modernmechanix.com
Mar
05
2009
New Scientist reports the Obama Administration has pumped more cash into science and technology than at any other time in history — including the Apollo space program and the Manhattan nuclear bomb project. US$50B alone is going into renewable power and energy efficiency. Obama was likely thrown into the dark during the Great Blackout of [...]
Feb
26
2009
U.S. President Barack Obama apparently isn’t too pleased with his new pimped-out ride. The Lockheed Martin VH-71 (VH1 must have been taken already) cost the American taxpayer more than $1.5B and is essentially a hovering Oval Office much like Air Force One — in both capability and cost. As Obama prepares to spend his way [...]
Feb
21
2009
You discover all sorts of unusual things combing the logs and statistics at HAINSWORTH.COM. It was no surprise that Porn airs during Super Bowl Game was the most popular article here. What surprises me more is that Darwin Poster: Very Gradual Change We Can Believe In surpassed it. When a Tuscon, Arizona Comcast feed of [...]
Feb
19
2009
Photo of the Day Source: Flickr.com Prolific blogger and shutterbug Cory Doctorow took this snap of a sandwich board in London.
Feb
18
2009
HAINSWORTH.COM reader “Tarzan” Dan (if-that-is-your-real-name) tipped us to this voyeuristic peek into Michael Jackson’s mind — through the Neverland Ranch sale. The Associated Press reports more than 2,000 of his “treasures” will be auctioned off from April 14th to the 20th, from the train locomotives to the ferris wheels. But there are some more interesting [...]
Feb
14
2009
Wikipedia offers a fascinating look into our nearest evolutionary neighbour: the Neanderthal. Scientists began sequencing the Neanderthal genome three years ago from a bone fragment of a 38,000 old male, and came to a not-so startling conclusion for Darwinists: we share 99.5% of our DNA with this ancestor. Digging into the DNA has taught us [...]
Feb
09
2009
Wired Magazine has culled data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and other sources to conclude Playboy magazine centerfolds are taking on less and less realistic figures. The Body Mass Index of the average woman between 1960 and 1962 was 22.2, while the Playmate BMI was 19.4. By 2008, the average BMI of a [...]
Feb
08
2009
Photo of the Day Source: Flickr.com As the warm weather melted the wall of ice that had formed due to improperly installed eavestrophing, the water found its way into our basement. At least it appears I figured out the source of the leak. And after a trip to Home Depot to purchase a long handled [...]
Feb
05
2009
High school teacher John Moss found himself the victim of a student prank. After giving a junior an essay on Timothy Leary as punishment for an LSD related joke, the student countered by spiking his coffee with two shots of Leary’s favourite drug — moments before a class field trip. But thanks to his extensive [...]
Jan
30
2009
It’s nothing most married couples don’t already know, but according to scientists, men’s armpits smell of cheese — and women give off a grapefruit or onion-like odour. How did they come to this conclusion? Stick 24 men and 25 women in a sauna for 15 minutes. Sounds like a great party, to me. So why [...]
Jan
28
2009
Economists criticized it, and the homebuilding industry loved it. The latest budget from Ottawa will give a tax credit worth up to $1350 to an anticipated 4.6M homeowners doing reno work. Unlike a tax break, you get the money back regardless of your personal tax situation. You have to spend at least a grand, but [...]
Jan
27
2009
We’ve all been warned that excessive drinking can make it difficult, if not impossible, to make whoopee. According to a report in New Scientist, moderation is the key. But over longer periods, moderate drinking doesn’t seem to be linked to erectile dysfunction, says Kew-Kim Chew, an epidemiologist at the University of West Australia in Nedlands, [...]
Jan
23
2009
Winter this year has created some unusually icy conditions for homeowners, but our situation is more than just unusual. When we contacted our roofing contractor about an unusual build-up of ice due to poorly installed eavestrophing, we were told many homeowners are experiencing the same thing. But, as this video shows, our situation isn’t just [...]
Jan
21
2009
We get a birds-eye view of the action, Dubya gets the last word, and Whitehouse.gov no longer hides how many Americans were killed in 9/11.
Jan
20
2009
Vanity Fair offers a slideshow of 20 of its favourite illustrations depicting the man considered one of the top three worst U.S. Presidents in the republic’s history. Link: Vanityfair.com Meantime, Salon.com has tallied a list of Dubya’s “accomplishments” during his time in the White House:
Jan
08
2009
After getting a traffic ticket, a St. Louis Federal Reserve Board economist decided to do some research: do cops issue more tickets during recessions? Turns out, youbetcha. Controlling for other factors, a 1 percentage point drop in local government revenue leads to a roughly .32 percentage point increase in the number of traffic tickets in [...]
