Recently in Misc Category

There are a certain class of jobs that just boggle the mind. Whether it's putting out oil well fires, or demolishing high-rise buildings in the middle of a city. They aren't the kind of things you do unless you really enjoy the rush of adrenaline. Here's another one to add to the list—salvaging ships. Big ships.

High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas Wired

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Salvage work has long been viewed as a form of legal piracy. The insurers of a disabled ship with valuable cargo will offer from 10 to 70 percent of the value of the ship and its cargo to anyone who can save it. If the salvage effort fails, they don't pay a dime. It's a risky business: As ships have gotten bigger and cargo more valuable, the expertise and resources required to mount a salvage effort have steadily increased. When a job went bad in 2004, Titan ended up with little more than the ship's bell as a souvenir. Around the company's headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, it's known as the $11.6 million bell.

But the rewards have grown as well. When the Titan team refloated that container ship in Mexico, the company was offered $30 million, and it's holding out for more. That kind of money finances staging grounds in southern Florida, England, and Singapore and pays the salaries of 45 employees who drive Lotuses, BMWs, and muscle cars tricked out with loud aftermarket DynoMax exhaust systems. There's also a wall at Titan headquarters with a row of photos of the men who died on the job. Three have been killed in the past three years.
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Photo credit: Courtesy of US Coast Guard, via Wired.

Business Week has a nice little slide show describing the difference between all those "expiration" labels on food, and how they apply to particular foods. (The slide show interface is a bit confusing if your browser window is tall. It says "Here's a guide to these issues:" and then there's nothing but "More Slide Shows" and some pictures way down at the bottom. Just click on the images of food down at the bottom or the arrows above the picture.)

Thanks to vlb for the pointer.

I have a thing about Dragons, and when we got married, my wife and I chose the dragon and phoenix as our symbols. My wedding ring has a dragon design, hers a phoenix, and we have a coat-of-arms of sorts that became the motif for our wedding invitations, with the two intertwined. I stumbled across the web site for this jeweler today and couldn't resist passing on these two gems of interactive jewelry.

Large Commisions

Bryony Knox

Automated sculpture. Jaw and head
open to reveal enamelled flames.

Steel, brass, copper, silver and enamels.
15cm x 20cm x 14cm
Automated sculpture-lift leg and wings fly open and beak snaps shut.

brass, copper, steel and nickel
55cm X 35 cm X 55cm