And what do you call a Skoda with twin exhausts?

Ven der rockets go up, who cares vere zey come down? Zat's not my department, says [url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16444063[/url]

Ahahahahahahahaha that was a great video :smile:

makes you wonder
 

[url]http://ca.omg.yahoo.com/blogs/the-juice-celeb-news/snooki-simon-cowell-gwyneth-paltrow-promote-misleading-science-175443188.html[/url]

[QUOTE=xilman;285138]Ven der rockets go up, who cares vere zey come down? Zat's not my department, says [url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16444063[/url][/QUOTE]

It seems I was watching the right schlocky late-1950s [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052379/]SciFi movie last night[/url]. (Interestingly, the word 'schlock' apparently comes from the German 'Schlag' by way of Yiddish).

[QUOTE=science_man_88;285447][url]http://ca.omg.yahoo.com/blogs/the-juice-celeb-news/snooki-simon-cowell-gwyneth-paltrow-promote-misleading-science-175443188.html[/url][/QUOTE]

[i]Unsurprisingly, Snooki appears to be the worst offender. The über-tanned reality star appeared to have fried her brain in the sun earlier this year when she announced on "Jersey Shore" that she hates the beach because "the water's all whale sperm. That's why the ocean's salty."[/i]

That taste-correlation sounds a little too much as if it might be based on her personal experience. [Cue suitably ribald jokes based on the famous Melville novel].

--------------------------

And I do in fact have my own 'ribbeting' contribution to this thread:

[url=http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2012/01/tiny-frog-is-worlds-smallest-v.html]Tiny frog claimed as world's smallest vertebrate[/url]

The Linnean name chosen for the frog is interesting: It belongs to the [i]Paedophryne[/i] small-frog genus, from the Greek for "child-frog" ... but the species name [i]Amanuensis[/i] (many of the news stories, and also the Wikipedia page for the species, erroneously omit the first 'n') ... so a child-sized frog 'employed to take dictation'?

There is a possible Snooki connection in the above frog-prince tale - a description of what, if it existed in human form, would likely make an ideal mate for Ms. Snooki, except for the unfortunate remnant spine:

[i]There is another contender for the title of smallest vertebrate: one kind of male anglerfish is just 6.2 mm long. But this particular male lives his entire life attached to the (much larger) female, and his body is little more than a backbone and a pair of testicles - so many biologists feel he shouldn't count.[/i]

[url]http://health.yahoo.net/articles/nutrition/health-benefits-red-wine-exaggerated[/url]

Time to make a real tricorder with the new X-Prize just announced at CES:
[url]http://medgadget.com/2012/01/qualcomm-tricorder-x-prize-competition-officially-launches.html[/url]

[QUOTE=Jeff Gilchrist;286191]Time to make a real tricorder with the new X-Prize just announced at CES:
[url]http://medgadget.com/2012/01/qualcomm-tricorder-x-prize-competition-officially-launches.html[/url][/QUOTE]

so thermal and x-ray camera modes? possibly a normal camera mode for comparison to check respiration rate. blood pressure I don't see how to do remotely yet. though this list already sounds like camera modes that the ipod I have acts like it has.

[QUOTE=Jeff Gilchrist;286191]Time to make a real tricorder with the new X-Prize just announced at CES:
[url]http://medgadget.com/2012/01/qualcomm-tricorder-x-prize-competition-officially-launches.html[/url][/QUOTE]
Ha, that's great! I had to smile when I saw the name "Tricorder X" in a serious logo like that...makes me think of [URL="http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Starfleet_tricorder#TR-590_Tricorder_X"]this[/URL]:
[attach]7556[/attach]
(If you look closely at the picture you'll see that the fictional device is indeed fully named "TR-590 Tricorder X", of particular irony given the name of the real-life prize.)

[size=1]<geek>More precisely, the X in the fictional device's name is actually part of the model number, as in the Roman numeral for 10; earlier models of the tricorder included the TR-560 Tricorder VI and the TR-580 Tricorder VII. The TR-590 pictured above was used in the later parts of the [I]Deep Space Nine[/I] and [I]Voyager[/I] series.</geek>[/size]

In all seriousness, this is a really great idea to try to make one of these in real life...even an "early predecessor" so to speak, with the same basic functionality even if not nearly as advanced, would be amazingly useful in an enormous range of fields. [I]That[/I] would actually be some significant technological progress for a change! :smile:

Though really really awesome, it does leave out the many non-medical uses of the tricorder.

[QUOTE=Dubslow;286203]Though really really awesome, it does leave out the many non-medical uses of the tricorder.[/QUOTE]
Indeed...I noticed that too. The interesting thing is that, most likely, in order to replicate the more advanced (both medical and non-medical) functionalities of the tricorder, an entirely new kind of sensor technology would need to be invented--probably something that works more along the lines of a radar system rather than based on cameras and direct physical measurements. Once you have that, you open up an enormous realm of possibilities. (Well, as an example I suppose you could point to the sensor technology as presented in Star Trek itself: the tricorders work on the same principle as the ship's sensors, which can do all sorts of amazing things in a very wide range of applications.) I'd be very interested to see if someone can actually come up with something like that over the course of the 3.5 or so years the prize allots; it seems rather far-out at the moment, but a "race effect" can be quite a motivating factor in development of such things (the Apollo 11 moon landing being a perfect example).