Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world’s lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. It’s basically just a gel made from silicon, except all the liquid has been taken out and replaced with gas instead. If you hold a small piece in your hand, it’s practically impossible to either see or feel, but if you poke it, it’s like styrofoam.
Aerogel isn’t just neat, it’s useful. It supports up to 4,000 times its own weight and can apparently withstand a direct blast from two pounds of dynamite. It’s also the best insulator in existence, which is why we don’t have Aerogel jackets: it works so well that people were complaining about overheating on Mt. Everest.
Just did a presentation on this actually
(via idledreamer)
korraspasm:
echosoftheirstory:
korraspasm:
Todays impulse purchases.
I REGRET NOTHING.
I have to buy the rest of the DVD’s but I didn’t have the money today…>.>.
So yeah. Art book and the first two DVD’s of Brotherhood.
FUCK YEAH GOOD DECISIONS!
I want going to buy the manga as well but there were two different ones and #1 was out of stock so :|.
Waaaaants :/
(Source: firelordkorraspasm, via firelordkorraspasm)
“…Is there something I can do?”
(via elle-xo-deactivated20111007)
No Labels
fsufeminist:
Absolut Vodka release a limited edition label free bottle to celebrate diversity and challenge Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender prejudice.
Meh I don’t know how I feel about capitalist activism, but I sure as hell love GSM rights and vodka.
(via lyssamae)
icarusicarus:
itspuckurtbitch:
dimmitutto:
xatu-apperatu:
chaniclebullie:
bombulum:
What does English sound like to foreign ears?
We’ve all heard examples of fake Chinese or German from speakers who lack familiarity with either language. While typically cringe-worthy, these examples do raise interesting questions regarding our own language. What does English sound like to non-English speakers? After more than 40 years, Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol” remains one of the most illuminating examples.
The entire song is nonsense verse, neither English nor Italian, but the sounds are meant to resemble English. Linguist Mark Liberman wrote an interesting post about this sort of thing over at Language Log discussing yaourter, the French word for an attempt to speak or sing in a foreign language that one doesn’t know all that well. This often involves trying to sing a foreign song with nonsense or random words filling in the blanks. Liberman shares this wonderful quote from a random Internet user:
Just for the story, in France, when we don’t speak English and we want to imitate the sound, we call it “yaourter”(to yoghourt), the imitation sounds like a very nasal language, kind of like a baby crying. It mostly imitates the “cowboy” accent.
I love this, I didn’t realize it until I saw the video that we sounded so awesome
also be aware that this is also an american sounding accent and british english would sound as different as it does to them as it does to us
this is cool as fuck
also be aware that this is also an american sounding accent and british english would sound as different as it does to them as it does to us
No, it doesn’t, ESPECIALLY in music. It was hard for me to tell that Spice Girls were British when I first started listening to them as an ESL student, until way after I could actually speak English. Before I learnt to speak English I didn’t even know there were different English accents and I couldn’t tell the difference between badly accented CHINESE english, French accented Englihs, Jamaican, and american, british, australian etc. accents. It all just sounded “English” to me, and I was pretty old when I had to start learning English starting from the ABCs, around 9 years old.
omg this is so cool! now i want to know what people think about spanish sounds
but the song is so damn catchy ; A ;
(Source: blogs.howstuffworks.com, via idledreamer)
