Category: News

It looks like it won’t be too much longer until we can make lifecasts of ourselves on demand.

World’s First 3D Printing Photo Booth to Open in Japan | Spoon & Tamago

3D printers – it’s a word that offers glimpses into the future that seems so far, and yet is so close. The technology, which allows you to replicate 3D objects the same way you make a photo copy, has been around for a couple years now, but, for the most part, has been far too expensive and inaccessible to the public.

But now, what’s being called the world’s first 3D printing photo booth is set to open for a limited time at the exhibition space EYE OF GYRE in Harajuku. From November 24 to January 14, 2013, people with reservations can go and have their portraits taken. Except, instead of a photograph, you’ll receive miniature replicas of yourselves.

8 million fewer people voted this time around. That’s a 7% drop from 2008. I’d like to think many of those people realized how useless it is to vote.

Turnout Steady in Swing States and Down in Others, But Many Votes Remain Uncounted – NYTimes.com

In many of the states where the campaigns focused most of their attention, more people voted than in 2008. Turnout is likely to have declined in many non-battleground states, however.

Of course, gold is not the only thing of value. There’s plenty of less durable goods to be had, like livestock. The two-legged kind are particularly valuable.

Converting the National Debt into Gold | MyGovCost | Government Cost Calculator

What we find when we plug in the numbers as of 1 November 2012 is that the entire national debt of the United States is the equivalent of a solid gold cube that is nearly 80 feet tall by 80 feet long by 80 feet wide. Transporting all that gold would require over 431 of those standard 20-foot long shipping containers.

The only problem with that is that all of the gold that has ever been mined on Planet Earth would only make a solid gold cube that is 66.1 feet high by 66.1 feet long by 66.1 feet wide, which would work out to fill just over 249 of those 20-foot standard shipping containers. Even if Fort Knox held all the gold in the world, the U.S. Treasury would still be more than 182 shipping containers short of being able to pay off the national debt in gold at today’s spot prices.