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When Mount Vesuvius erupted in August of 79 AD, Pompeii was buried in volcanic ash and rock. As time passed, Pompeii was forgotten. Learn more about the catastrophe that destroyed Pompeii — as well as the city’s rediscovery — in this podcast.
Totally Rad Shark Week Project – Come See!
by Charles W. Bryant | August 6, 2009
Today I wanted to point all you fine folks in the direction of a really cool project I had the pleasure of working on for Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Most of you may have heard about the infamous shark attacks in 1916 on the New Jersey shore and 11 miles inland at Matawan Creek. If not, I strongly encourage you to go right now and listen to the excellent podcast the ladies of Stuff You Missed in History Class did last week. Candace and Katie killed it on that one and Candace followed up with an excellent blog post about putting the attacks in context.
That said, I was charged a few months ago with brainstorming for Shark Week content for our parent company, Discovery Channel. Being familiar with this compelling story, I thought “wouldn’t it be cool if I could write some ‘found diaries’ of some of the key players of the events of 1916?”
Design is often inspired by nature. It’s called biomimicry, and I’m guessing that you’ve probably heard of this concept, right? Well, if you haven’t, I think you’d be surprised to learn some of the interesting ways that nature has influenced the products we use each and every day. Car design is no different. In fact, one of the most legendary show car designs in automotive history was created as a direct result of a deep-sea fishing trip.
We’re right smack dab in the middle of Shark Week, HowStuffWorks.com’s parent company, Discovery Channel’s week-long bonanza of shark programming. It’s a big deal around here: there are feeding frenzies in the break room, one guy in legal wears nothing but Body Glove all week long, there are live seals living in the podcast studio and no one seems to be entirely certain where they came from. But hey, it’s Shark Week.
TechStuff Podcast Roundup: 3-D Printing and Robot Sharks
by Jonathan Strickland | July 31, 2009
Greetings, TechStuff listeners! Once again, Chris and I took advantage of the opportunity to open up our brains and record our conversation for posterity this week. Honestly, if you put a microphone in front of us we’ll fill up every available second with important data, trivia and a seemingly endless supply of corny jokes and awful puns. Because that, as they say, is how we roll.
When I was in college, I took a class on the gothic novel. One of the last novels we read was Vladimir Nabokov’s “Bend Sinister,” in which professor and philosopher Adam Krug runs afoul of his government. His son, David, is killed in an event that happens largely outside the bounds of the page. Part of our class discussion centered on how leaving it up to our imaginations made the scene more horrifying — a trick that’s part of some of the scariest horror movies.
Normally, the scariest thing I might encounter at work is a long line for the coffee machine in the morning. But these days, I’m confronted by something far more frightening: sharks in the office. Sharks are everywhere here at HowStuffWorks because we’re all gearing up for Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Did I ever think I’d have a job where I’d be continually bombarded by images of scary sharks? Not in my wildest dreams.
But even though I’m not a huge fan of all those terrifying pictures that zoom in on a shark’s unknowable eyes and ferocious fangs, I do feel lucky in that I’m not as scared of sharks as I used to be. One of the first things I learned about sharks is that they just don’t attack as much as you might think, as humans aren’t particularly tasty to sharks.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell one whale shark from another — it takes a ridiculously complicated computer algorithm designed by NASA. Just look at that photo. The array of white spots on a whale shark’s body is essentially a star scape — and just who makes it their business to map and decipher the heavens?
Shark attacks are the stuff of nightmares. If you visit Frenzied Waters, you’ll see for yourself.
The site is part of a viral marketing campaign that began when several prominent bloggers received packages in the mail. Each package contained a jar, which in turn held contents related to a victim’s death due to shark attack (including a sign about a beach closing and a pair of ripped, bloody swimming trunks). Who were the victims? The bloggers themselves played that role.
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