Nerducopia: 6 February 2011

I'll get to the battle of the week in a little while. First, I wanted to share some really cool sites I found last night while surfing through a service called Stumble Upon--probably one of the best web sites I have ever found. Give it a try yourself, but be prepared to lose hours as you click the Stumble! button over and over again.

These links represent some of my fairly eclectic nerd interests--a couple are historical, but there are plenty of others. Take a look!

http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf - This animated map tells the 5,000 year history of the Middle East in about 90 seconds, focusing on the empires that have occupied part or all of it since the high point of the Egyptian Empire.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1353574/Motorway-maximus-Unearthed-stunning-Roman-super-highway-built-1-900-years-ago.html - This article from The Daily Mail describes a newly-discovered Roman road that crossed Britain 1900 years ago.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/infographic-day-bottle-water-really-bad-yes - This graphic from Fast Company outlines the inefficiency--and downright wastefulness--of using bottled water instead of tap water. If you're looking to save the planet, looks like you're better off with a reusable bottle and a water filter.

http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/orrery_2006.swf - This is a model of the solar system, showing the positions of everything from the sun to Neptune, including our moon and many of the moons of the outer planets. Set the date to whenever you want and see how the planets were or will be aligned on that date. Yeah. Talk about getting your nerd on!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347 - The scale of the universe. How big is everything in relation to everything else? How big is an atom compared to a cell, or to a quark? This flash graphic puts everything in proportion. If it were any nerdier, it would have to include advanced math.

http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm - The Size of Our World. Pictures of models putting everything on its proper scale: Earth compared to the other rocky planets, then compared to the gas giants, then compared to the sun, then the sun compared to other stars.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/age/ - Your Age on Other Worlds. Fill in your birthdate, and the page tells you how old you are in days and years on any planet in the solar system. At the bottom is a detailed explanation for why the numbers differ, as well as why the length of a day and year are different on each planet.

Now go get your nerd on!
HN