'Virgin Oceanic' Mission

Whoever said money can't buy you an unlimited canvas to paint your wildest dreams was clearly out of their cotton-picking, cubicle-working mind. Richard Branson does that every single time he comes public with another one of his outlandish expeditions, projects and expeditions, boldly going where no civilian is technically allowed. On this episode of 'You're Mad You're Not as Rich as Me' Branson has unveiled his pet project of the deep seas, the Virgin Oceanic project.

Branson's company has built two custom underwater crafts: a one-man submarine, and a catamaran that will serve as the docking station for the sub. The submarine apparently has the capability to dive to the deepest parts of the world's five oceans, and through the Virgin Oceanic mission, will attempt to do so. It will not only be the first initiative to try a one-manned expedition, but also completely privately-funded. I suppose Branson got tired of base-jumping and would rather duel with the threat of 13 million pounds of water pressure bearing down on him. Despite his random thrill-seeking, this a pretty cool initiative. The video and other data collected will be ahead of their time. Makes you wonder why Branson isn't hob-knobbing with governments a little more. Check out a video trailer of the two watercrafts, both setting sail later this year...

Respekk: Virgin Oceanic

America's Emotions via Twitter

If you want to see how someone's day is going, chances are you can check their Twitter and get a pretty good idea. That said, aside from your own personal friends, it's really impossible to get a serious feel for the rest of the world's affect (look it up) at any given time... Until now. Computer scientist Alan Mislove from Northeastern University and his colleauges in Boston have done a study that finds that the west coast is happier than the east coast, and across the country happiness peaks each Sunday morning, and hits a low on Thursday evenings. The study is called 'Pulse of the Nation'.

Mislove took all public tweets between September 2006 and August 2009, filtered out users from outside the US (and those with no location listed), then filtered them against a psychological word-rating system called Affective Norms for English Words. ANEW ranks lower scoring words as negative and higher ones as positive. Positive words like 'love', 'diamond', and 'paradise' have higher scores, while negative words like 'funeral', 'rape', and 'suicide' have lower ones. He then took those scores, calculated the average mood of all the users in a state hour by hour, and plotted the scores on a 'mood map'. The mood map transforms every hour based on how many users in a state are tweeting, and how that state is tweeting (happy or sad). The result was the video above, a 24-hour map of the emotional ups and downs of Twitter.

The dope part about this study is that you can see where you fit in as a regular Twitter user. Weekends are usually fairly happy, while the middle of the week is pure drudgery. Also, the West Coast's overall happiness compared to that of the East Coast is dumbfounding. Even crazier is the fact that the Midwest seems to always be somewhat unhappy (sorry Detroit). It's interesting to see such a wide base of data being portrayed so simply. If you want to see an extended write-up with more infographics, click here. Other wise, check out the video and see how your mood fits into the pulse of the nation...

Deaf Baby Gets the Gift of Sound

It's crazy with how much modern science has accomplished in lieu of what it could accomplish. How can anyone deny the magnitude of somethings as simple as hearing through technological means? This 8 month old child had cochlear implants put in his ear. When the doctor turns them on, the boy hears his mother's voice for the first time. I dare you not to feel a little warm and fuzzy after seeing this. Hopefully they'll get into ocular implants soon. Guess we'll keep dreaming...

The World's Deepest Underwater Volcano ERUPTS

For most of you, this might go right over your heads. But for those of you interested in the past (and future) of the world, this is beyond DOPE. The West Mata volcano in the Pacific Ocean is the world's deepest underwater volcano. In the video, you see it spewing molten-hot lava out into the ocean, in what is probably going to be a new island in about 2,000 years. This pretty much hearkens to 2012, where the world's plates and molten core work in concordance to drive the North Pole to Minnesota. I find the inner workings of our planet fascinating. Hopefully you will too...