Gizmodo: armageddon

Nuclear Slide Rules: The Old Fashioned Way To Calculate Armageddon

Sean Fallon — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:30:00 EST

In an age when nukes existed but pocket calculators did not, the potential damage of a nuclear strike could be quantified using cardboard slide rules like this one.

Using data gleaned from the book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, these circular "computers" could calculate weapons effects like yield and range when the big one dropped. The instrument pictured here is circa 1960, and is one of several pictured in a gallery on the Oak Ridge Associated Universities website. [ORAU via Dinosaurs and Robots via Boing Boing]

Amish Farmers Fight Government to Battle Bovine Mark of the Beast

matt buchanan — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:40:00 EDT

Generally, the government doesn't meddle too much in Amish affairs—it doesn't make them educate children after the eighth grade, for instance, 'cause of the First Amendment and all that. So it's kind of surprising to see many Amish threaten to quit farming in a battle with the government over lojacking their livestock with the Mark of the Beast.

They've joined up with a lawsuit challenging the National Animal Identification system, which requires livestock to be tagged with an RFID chip. The government says the chips help them track livestock disease. The lawsuit says that the RFID chip is in fact a "Mark of the Beast," as foretold in the book of the Bible that set up one of Arnold's worst movies ever, End of Days:

"Use of a numbering system for their premises and/or electronic numbering system for their animals constitutes some form of a 'mark of the beast' and/or represents an infringement of their 'dominion over cattle and all living things' in violation of their fundamental religious beliefs."

It's a serious enough violation of their religious beliefs that, if enforced, many would not be able to farm, even though they maintain a bunch of heirloom crops and livestock—which they note could be genetically handy if disease or a terrorist attack seriously batters our food supply. Personally, I'm not quite ready for Armageddon, so maybe the government should back off, just in case. [Threat Level via Fark]

Question of the Day: Tech or Nature - Which Will Kill Us First?

Sean Fallon — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Anyone who watches the History Channel regularly knows that Armageddon is inevitable. It is the "how" and the "when" that remains a mystery. Back in the day it was a simple catastrophic natural disaster—a comet or a volcano that would wipe everything out. However, as intelligent beings we have "evolved" to a point where we are capable of engineering our own demise. Now we have natural disasters AND the consequences of our technological progress to worry about—which begs the questions: will it be technology or nature that dooms mankind? And how will we meet that end? Oh, and feel free to come up with your own interesting scenario.

Michael Bay Says HD DVD Is a Big Microsoft-Funded Conspiracy

Matt Buchanan — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:30:36 EST

Michael Bay, acclaimed director of smash hits Pearl Harbor and The Island, has never had love for HD DVD, (though it seemed like he got reasonable). Now he says HD DVD is all a giant conspiracy being bankrolled by $100 million checks from Microsoft to slowly kill both HD formats: "Microsoft [officials] want both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads." He's probably right, but we don't think Microsoft is really all that JFK-conspiracy brilliant. Bill Gates yes, Microsoft not so much. Happy accidents. [Michael Bay via Electronista]