Locoson Unleashed: February 2012

Friday, 24 February 2012

Badass Bridge

(via TDW)

Residents of Slovakia’s Bratislava Region are inching ever closer toward naming a newly erected pedestrian bridge linking the capital to Austria after action movie star Chuck Norris.
An Internet poll set up by the regional assembly will be used to decide on a name for the foot-and-cycle bridge that spans the Morava river. So far, the iconic tough guy is leading the pack with 74% of the vote.
Norris really has no competition to speak of: Austro-Hungarian empress Maria Theresa is currently in second place with a pitiful 8%.
Regional governor Pavol Freso will have the final word on the bridge’s official moniker once the poll closes in April, but he has already vowed to bow to the will of his constituents.

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Monday, 20 February 2012

Vinspiration

Fun Fact: The Vin Diesel Facebook page has over 30 million likes. That’s 19 million more than Jesus.
Who’s your God now?

Death Star Construction Costs

Economics blog Centives devoted a recent post to one of the most important questions facing the global marketplace today: how much would it cost to build a Death Star?
Basing their calculations on the density of a modern warship, they estimate that the first Death Star would have required 1.08×10¹⁵ tons of steel. That would use up all the iron in the Earth’s crust, and quite a bit from the Earth’s core, which might not be the most advisable place for a mining operation.
Assuming we could gather and refine all that iron — a process that would take 833,000 years at today’s production rates — the value of the steel at current market prices would be around $852 quadrillion.
That’s 13,000 times the world’s GDP for the steel alone. We’re not even talking weaponry, wiring, and trips to Ikea.
So, rest easy. Even with a sizable loan from a certain Hutt crimelord, there’s no practical possibility that any government in 2012 could construct an operational Death Star.
(via TDG)