clear.your.mind

We all know the future in books is the digital and portable format (maybe) and Amazon, being one of the world biggest distributors knows it too (maybe) and they came up with the most extraordinary invention of all times (maybe), a digital reader.

It’s called Kindle and it just launched today, you can read about it on EndGadget, but you can see some pictures of it too before that!

EndGadget Kindle Launch

Look at Jeff Bezos face, he is so proud!

Can someone remember this episode? the “homer-car”? looks like an “homer-car” situation on Jeff Bezos face there!

1990 is back!

We all know Mr.Bezos is one of the most brilliant minds out there, he is probably the first and ultimate entrepreneur and business owner for most of us, a living legend, but hey, this Kindle thing looks awful, no doubt about that either (just a personal note!). If they can make it look like an iPod (technology wise too) they won’t have any problem with it, but if not…

The “laundry soap” or Kindle, as Amazon called it, it has a built in WiFi connectivity and it can download books in a breeze, one of the smartest ideas ever (we are all tired of software install, download to the pc, etc).

Looks ugly even up-close!

We really hope they can make it look better (maybe not 2008 if they don’t want to go that far, but they could use some 1995 radios as design base! they can really benefit from those ones! anything better than this thing!) and we know they will in the future. It will be beautiful and easy to use. Even the software inside looks ugly (they didn’t had 37signals on their pocket? maybe is time to use some of those talents there hey…)

Kindle is promising, it is what’s coming, and you saw it first here, at clear.your.mind. Tell your kids!

This one is really freaky; it shows how to make fire with a potato, toothpaste, salt, cotton, and toothpicks; it can be useful if you are lost in the woods with those elements. Of course you can always carry a match, but hey, this will impress all your survival companions and set you up like the macho alpha!

The Lakshmi case (the little indian girl who was born with a parasitic brother attached to her body) wasn’t the first one out there, it was the most recent one we know, but it isn’t definitely the first one, which is shocking! Parasitic twins occur when a twin embryo begins developing in utero, but the pair does not fully separate, and one embryo maintains dominant development at the expense of the other. Unlike conjoined twins, one ceases development during gestation and is vestigial to a mostly fully-formed, otherwise healthy individual twin. The undeveloped twin is defined as parasitic, rather than conjoined, because it is incompletely formed or wholly dependent on the body functions of the complete fetus, as shown on this video:

I thought it was a rare, but it seems I was wrong! it happened a lot!

This is one of the coolest thing I ever seen! An awesome, custom-built mechanical lion created by a local artist and taken out for its first ride, in Brugge, Belgium; looks awesome! This kind of stuff makes me think how cool would it be to go to the local coffee store with your own mech.

For those who don’t know what the heck is a Lenticular Cloud here is the quick definition courtesy of Google©

A Lenticular Cloud, is a very smooth, round or oval, lens-shaped cloud that is often seen, singly or stacked in groups, near or in the lee of a mountain ridge. These clouds are caused by a wave wind pattern created by the mountains. They are also indicative of down-stream turbulence on the leeward side of a barrier.

So they look like an UFOand it must be amazing watching them in person. I would love to see one of those; not for taking it a picture, not for filming it, just to see them straight in front of me.

From the wikipedia: Power pilots tend to avoid flying near lenticular clouds because of the turbulence of the rotor systems that accompany them, but sailplane pilots actively seek them out. This is because the systems of atmospheric standing waves that cause “lennies” (as they are sometimes familiarly called) also involve large vertical air movements, and the precise location of the rising air mass is fairly easy to predict from the orientation of the clouds.

“Wave lift” of this kind is often very smooth and strong, and enables gliders to soar to remarkable altitudes and great distances. The current gliding world records for both distance (over 3,000km) and altitude (14,938m) were set using such lift.

If you want to see more Lenticular Clouds, here is an excellent link with high quality pictures and videos directly from Youtube: Strange Clouds

That appears to be the word out there. Anousheh Ansari, the first female tourist on space just came back from her journey saying the following:

he time went by really slowly, but finally the moment arrived and they were ready to open the hatch. Mike and Misha called me closer and told me to take a good whiff because this would be the first time I would smell “SPACE.”

They said it is a very unique smell. As they pulled the hatch open on the Soyuz side, I smelled “SPACE.” It was strange… kind of like burned almond cookie. I said to them, “It smells like cooking” and they both looked at me like I was crazy and exclaimed:”Cooking!”

I said, “Yes… sort of like something is burning… I don’t know it is hard to explain…

Anousheh keept a blog all this time on http://spaceblog.xprize.org/2006/09/22/the-trip-up/ and there you can read her experience on space; it’s very interesting to read because the author is a normal person, so it’s written very casual and it focus on those small things we would notice if we were on her shoes during this space trip.

It actually smells!

A BoingBoing reader, Jennifer Saylor, says that in a 2001 “Fresh Air” interview, NASA astronaut Capt. Jerry Linenger describes the smell of space this way:

Flying into MIR, it smells sort of like dirty sweat socks in a guys’ locker room. Actual smell of space, though, that’s a very interesting question. When we would open a hatch, for example, that was exposed to the vacuum of space, uh, there’s always a double hatch, and so you open the one hatch, you now have the pure smell of space. And it’s a uh, tough — you know, any aroma is tough to describe, but it has a distinct smell, and it’s sort of a burned-out, uh, after-the-fire, the next-morning-in-your-fireplace sort of smell. And that’s the real smell of the vacuum of space.

From the Wikipedia: If you ask me, I would say that it’s because the sun is burning or because the universe was created by a big explosion (the big bang!), but who knows!

She won’t be able to smell those!

Ansari has received multiple honors, including the George Mason University Entrepreneurial Excellence Award, the George Washington University Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Southwest Region. While under her leadership, Telecom Technologies, Inc. earned recognition as one of Inc. magazine’s 500 fastest-growing companies and one of Deloitte & Touche’s Fast 500 technology companies. She was listed in Fortune magazine’s “40 under 40″ list in 2001 and honored by Working Woman magazine as the winner of the 2000 National Entrepreneurial Excellence award.
The Ansari family was recently honored with an Orbit Award by the National Space Society and Space Tourism Society for underwriting the Ansari X Prize.