Psychic Dustbunnies

Christmas Ninjas

If you're looking for Christmas presents it's hard to go wrong with ninja gear.  Not sure what the best ninja gear is to get your significant other?  This site will help - 'hundreds of years ago ninjas roamed the earth hiding behind things and killing local officials.  Today there are just as many, but they are even better at hiding."
- endangeredman.com/source/ninjitsu.html

Pykrete & Churchill = 'bergships'

Just came across this article in cabinet magazine about the prototype warship of WWII made out of Pykrete (an ice & wood pulp mixture), the inventor, Geoffrey Pyke, called them "bergships". It was certainly a time when any and all ideas were entertained to get the edge in the war.

Pyke envisioned ships as vast and solid as icebergs. You could make the sides of your boat tens of feet thick, hundreds if you felt like it, and bullets or torpedoes would bounce away or knock off pathetically ineffectual chunks. And when a torpedo did knock a chunk away — so? You were floating in a sea of raw repair material. Given how long it took pykrete to melt, and the minimal onboard refrigeration equipment needed to stay frozen and afloat, it would be months or years before the boats exhausted their usefulness. In battle, the ice ships could put their onboard refrigeration systems to good use by spraying super-cooled water at enemy ships, icing their hatches shut, clogging their guns, and freezing hapless sailors to death.
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The prototype Habbakuk was 60 feet long and 30 feet wide, weighing in at 1,000 tons, and was kept frozen by a one-horsepower motor........The prototype ice-ship, abandoned in Patricia Lake, did not melt until the end of the next summer.

The University of Alberta also has an article about it in UofA Engineer Magazine as does the Navy News