Ebberly's Place

At 16.1 million square feet, Dubai's International Airport Terminal 3 has not only became the shiniest airport terminal ever, but it's also the largest in the world, beating the 10.6 million of the previous record holder, the firebreathing Olympic terminal 3 at Beijing International Airport.

The UK Ministry of Defense has just declassified nineteen secret files detailing UFO encounters over the past decades, one of them involving a USAF Sabre fighter pilot who was ordered to fire at will against an unidentified flying object in British airspace. Unfortunately-or fortunately-lieutenant Milton Torres lost the contact after the UFO left the scene at a whooping 9,941 miles per hour. According to him, it had the proportions of an aircraft carrier: The blip was burning a hole in the radar with its incredible intensity. It was similar to a blip I had received from B52s and seemed to be a magnet of light. It had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier.

Shoe-maker ASICS commissioned a gigantic Lite Brite in NYC in celebration of something or other (probably a shoe launch) this month that takes the Guinness World Record for largest Lite Brite painting. You know, those things you played with when you were six? At 300,000+ pieces and 11x15 feet, it demolishes the previous record of 125,000+ pieces by PA artist Mark Beekman that took him over 15 months to complete.

Little Eno got off to a rough start when his mother was accidentally killed by a car in the spring of this year. Luckily, staff at the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores found him early enough to save him. Unlucky for the aquarists, raising a baby otter is a lot of work, requiring around the clock bottle-feeding until he was old enough for fish. Additionally, they had to teach him to swim and hunt. Now six months old, he loves to romp (but apparently still enjoys eating and sleeping). Check out the cute pics inside.

Anybody reading the headlines these days knows the world teeters on the biggest worldwide recession in modern history and our leaders are scrambling for solutions. It is very timely that I recently had the opportunity of interviewing Mr Steve Bolles, founder and President of Merchants Barter Exchange, one of America's great innovators of economic change and stability right now. Bolles is far from reclusive, but rarely entertains interviews, however due to the seriousness of the current global crisis he extended this offer.

After arriving at the field jail, we never left the car. Instead, we were diverted to the LAPD's West LA division to be processed. We arrived sometime after 5pm. We were held inside, on benches, before we were each placed in separate 'tanks,' or holding rooms, maybe 6 x8 feet each. We were each alone in our rooms, and it stayed that way for roughly an hour and a half, except for the moment I was allowed out to use the restroom. While I was being led to the restroom, I saw the man who assaulted Maurice Carriere for tearing down part of the Yes on 8 poster he had on his truck. (Full story here.) I told the officer escorting me that I had seen the assault and had photos of the attacker in his truck, as well as the bloodied protester, but I was ignored. I did hear the man who had been driving the truck say something to an officer at the station's front desk about a "hippie faggot" assaulting him. I did not hear anything else.

A man who built a Lamborghini in his basement has had to dig into the foundations of his house to remove it. Ken Imhoff began building the sportscar after falling in love with it during the movie Cannonball Run. He built his own version in the basement of his home in Wisconsin, USA, over a period of 17 years. However, when he finished assembling it, he was confronted with the problem of how to get the car out.

Probably the most sought-after surfing experience is the tube ride (a.k.a. "getting barreled"). A tube ride occurs when the top of the wave pitches over the surfer so that he or she is completely enclosed in an oval space behind the curtain of falling water. Inside the "green room," you are hurtling through a tunnel of water and the only way out (without wiping out) is straight through the opening in front of you. Hollow waves are foot-for-foot the most powerful variety of breaking wave, and good tube riding is really difficult. It requires timing, experience, and skill. The video shows us some world-class surfers making it look easy!

The Department of Defense has put out a call: design a pack of robots. A so-called Multi-Robot Pursuit System would be used to "search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject." Each robot has to weigh 100 kilograms or less, act autonomously (with a human squad leader), negotiate obstacles, and provide immediate feedback. The robots would report back to a human operator, and defer to that human when the robot AI determines that a "difficult decision" is required. The first phase of development is to create the sensors for detecting humans and to conduct feasibility experiments. Then comes the building of a prototype with fully functional sensors. At that point, a third phase would try to establish whether a pack of such robots -- about three to five in number -- could realistically be used for missions involving, according to the proposal, "search and rescue, fire-fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical, and radiation sensing with mobile platforms."

Something different, for a change.......

Get YOUR sugar fix here - There's something for EVERYONE!!

Check out these cave crystals a thousand feet below the Mexican desert!!

Like Elvis in '68, Microsoft is itching for a "comeback," and Windows 7 is the perfect excuse. In fact, this week in LA at the Professional Developers Conference, Windows 7 officially shoved Vista aside. Having suffered through the often deserved criticisms of that ill-fated OS installment, Microsoft's people are thrilled to tears to be able to talk about something (anything!) else. On Sunday, they took journalists through a lively 7-hour orientation on Win 7, then handed off a Dell XPS M1330 loaded with pre-beta Build 6801. Thankfully for the overworked, underappreciated developers at Redmond, it's surprisingly stable, and its look and feel already puts Vista to shame.

So, how do we turn icky, blech-y, Mr. Ivory-should-be-ashamed-of-how-much-bacon-he-eats kitchen grease into glorious, bubbly, clean soap? Read on!

What can I say folks? There are HUNDREDS of these BREATHTAKING SPACE PICTURES in here!!! A word of WARNING is definitely in order: YOU WILL GET LOST IN HERE FOR HOURS, IF NOT DAYS!! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!