Animal of the Month: The French (no insult intended). Anyone who would even consider having this as their national tourism logo is deserving of praise:
I don’t normally post anything that I’ve seen on Digg or Reddit, but this turns jaw dropping at around 1:28 [3:45]: moogaloop.swf
“Over its forty year life the mouse has seen some interesting re-inventions, and the new Orbita mouse is one that’s eye-catching. Its designers have taken the idea of a scroll wheel and inverted it, making the entire top surface of the mouse into a scroll dial.”
“I am totally fascinated by Swiss Trompe L’oeil artist Felice Varini whom I just discovered.Dont be fooled by your first percetion of this work. These are not photo rendered images, it is master craft! He has worked on many interior spaces and exterior spaces which are even harder to believe. Varini’s work is comes together in full in only one exact point where the entire geometric calculation is percieved. From anywhere else it looks like some graphic design made of lines, concentric circles, and triangles of color. Here a gallery of some of his works.”
I love these things: You print them, cut the piece of paper and glue, and you have a brand new toy in less that 10 minutes! I think this is one of the great successes of modern technology.
Best for last: I watched this thing over and over.[1m] via
I’m not sure if it is the gorgeous priest (this is the first time I’ve had that thought), the overall beauty of it, or the love on their faces. check out this live performance of the song and realize how amazing a singer she is.
I saw watching a TV show called “Whatever, Martha!“ Old ‘Martha Stewart Living’ shows are watched and commented upon Mystery Science Theater 3000 style by Martha Stewart’s daughter Alexis and her friend Jennifer. It is freaking hilarious.
Advanced Beauty is a wondrous new DVD compilation comprised of 18 visuals by 20 artists, or rather sound sculptures, as curator Matt Pyke of UK-based Universal Everything would say. These transient pieces made by processing are for us to see how far you can really push the aesthetics of software generated visualisations and play around [...]
“For those who haven’t seen the footage, McCain and Obama appeared last night at a charity dinner in New York to roast themselves and each other. Some of it was very, very funny. McCain was really, really funny…. (candidates’ speeches, McCain, Obama – 14:53, 13:39 respectively)
Awesome vision of Alice in Wonderland (written by a logician, for those who did not know what Lewis Carrol’s day job was.) [scroll down a little to see the Alice pictures. And I would be forever in someone's debt if they bought me a print.]
“Either you’ll be intrigued by the fascinating way Dutchman Levi van Veluw applies materials on his face, neck and head — or you’ll be kind of appalled by this weird appearance.[...]”
— All I want to know what this man does for Halloween.
“Okay, this is one of the funniest videos I’ve ever seen. It’s that evil little succubus Rachael Ray getting all naughty with an ear of corn – and being far more excited about it than any human being should be….
Videos of the coolest cars designers could draw in an hour. Unbelievable skills and cars. (I think this would be a good idea for philosophy: 1 hour philosophy challenge. You would have to write something on a philosophical topic in no more than 1 hour of actual write time. Expect to see this in the future some time and contact me if you want to help setting one up.)
Video of this man selling vegetable peelers: “By night, Joe Ades dines with his fourth wife at exclusive restaurants, sips Veuve Clicquot at the Pierre, and goes home to a three-bedroom Park Avenue apartment. By day, he is something else altogether. At 72, the “peeler guy” in the Turnbull & Asser shirts is a New York legend.” —– I can personally vouch for the impressiveness of his presentation. If I wasn’t broke at the time, I would have bought a peeler.
The Electric Nomad is a standard sized electric guitar that features all the usual features usability and playability of a normal electric guitar however it is designed so that it collapses.
“Sometime over the course of new arrivals’ first year in the city, they find themselves becoming New Yorkers.” Also confirms above survey with anecdotal evidence.
Two and a half pages on how to write better, not just for philosophy. I like, “You should assume that the first draft of each sentence will have to be fixed up.” (my emphasis)
Warren Buffet’s letters to his shareholders. Makes for surprisingly good reading… I just wish I had his sort of bad news, like, there’s no way you can expect us to keep doing this well. – I’m sorry that our predictions from last year were off. Of course, we did much better this year…
I recently had a discussion with Mr. R. Brown about eating meat. He tried to maintain that vegetarians have the moral high ground. Even though I successfully defended my omnivorous position (even against his cannibalism tack), I’m thinking Zizek’s ad hominem is now the way to go (26s) [via]:
Johnny Chung Lee pretty much shocked the entire video game world (and lots of others) with this video (5.8 million views, 5/5 star rating with 21,000 votes):
This is a pretty nifty bit of engineering, using the off the shelf Wii Remote and a relatively cheap extra (safety glasses with IR leds <15$) to provide a very high level virtual reality setup.
Secondly Nintendo has recently come out with the Wii Balance Board. This peripheral can accurately measure your weight distribution.
If we combine the potential of head tracking with weight distribution it would be possible to create a very accurate Matrix-style dodging bullets experience, simulating what is seen in this clip:
This would be a damn sweet feature if integrated into a full action game. It could likely be accomplished with head-tracking alone, but the combination of board, head-tracking, and Wii Motion Plus makes for near full body integration. The Matrix franchise is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the technology, seeing as everyone wears sunglasses in the movie anyway.
“What sort of person subjects children as young as 12 to beatings and a life of prostitution? An evidence list submitted in the case of Corey Davis, a Queens man who billed himself as “Magnificent,” might provide some insight. Mr. Davis, 36, is facing a minimum of 23 years in prison after pleading guilty in March to a federal charge of sex trafficking involving a 12-year-old runaway.
“… But then things went dark, weird, and creepy: one girl laughed, but then so did another, and then another, and then another, and then another.
After exposure, the incubation period from nothing to hysteria was short, from a few hours to a couple of days. There was no fever, no physical symptoms, just laughter and occasional crying between short moments of exhausted recuperation. When victims were restrained they sometimes became violent…”
This is a video of a reporter being waterboarded in order to investigate torture and ‘agressive’ interrogation… It is weird stuff. Be sure to check out the accompanying article.
“This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers.”
(they’re all out of free posters now, but the file is available so you can print one for yourself)
Check out this video describing the technology that is going to be used in the new Nintendo Wii Motion Plus. General relativity needs to be accounted for to accurately measure motion in 3D space (true 6 degrees of freedom) by using both accelerometers and gyroscopes. But perhaps the most interesting part of the site is the disclaimer at the bottom (my emphasis):
“InvenSense sensors should not be used or sold in the development, storing, production and utilization of any conventional or mass-destructive weapons or any other weapons or life-threatening applications as well as in any other life-critical applications including but not limited to medical equipment, transportation, aerospace and nuclear instruments, undersea equipment, power plant equipment, disaster prevention and crime prevention equipment.”
Culture
Nadia Comaneci, Montreal 1976 TEN!!! [1:06] (via plump plum)
Last but not least this is what I consider to be a throwback to vintage internet. We are talking a space background repeating image here people; I don’t think I’ve seen that since ’97. Plus something for nearly everyone: lots of links, e.g. useful information like an up to date guide to SEO, and Women Chess Grandmasters.
“But Ms. Roche told the audience here that her inspiration for the book came not from those women, but from the feminine-product aisle of her local store. Peeking out at the audience from under dark brown bangs, speaking in a childish voice that accentuated her transgressions against propriety, Ms. Roche explained, to howls of laughter, how the lemon-scented products called out to her in uncensored terms that she was, as the commercials put it, not so fresh, or at least not fresh enough.”
The Miracle Fruit, a Tease for the Taste Buds
A small red berry called miracle fruit temporarily rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors, rendering lemons as sweet as candy.
A study conducted by Britain’s First Research Group for Breast Health attached to the University of Portsmouth could throw some light on the little understood causes of ‘Breast Pain’
… you know there was some lucky male lab assistant required to measure breast motion
Isolated tribe spotted in Brazil
One of South America’s few remaining uncontacted tribes is photographed from the air on the Peru-Brazil border.
Aesthetics, Etc.
19 Artists You Can’t Afford To Miss Out On
“From half-naked pink girls to Isometric grinning trees, these artists are sure to satisfy the sucrose cravings in your eyeballs. Check them out before they get too famous and start making stuff nobody gets.”
The Wii has a lot of potential as a golf simulator/ practice program. With the introduction of the Wii balance board the opportunity for using weight distribution has become a real factor, and, though I know nearly nothing about golf, balance and weight distribution during a club swing has to be critical.
Now using the balance board to monitor weight distribution is somewhat obvious. However, very accurate motion sensing from the controller would also be required to really pinpoint the motion of the swing. By some pretty basic reasoning about cost and manufacturing I heard once, it is fair to say that Nintendo is providing middle of the road accelerometers- they are good, but there is still a lot of noise (inaccurate random data) to be dealt with. Lots of noise means that a lot of processing of the data from the motion sensors is required to get a clear picture of what is going on, and if lots of processing occurs, then the nuances of the motion are also getting smoothed over. My solution is to connect the nunchuck controller to the main controller in a rigid way.
A mockup of the connected remote and nunchuck in the
shape of a traditional controller.
The nunchuck controller is incredibly light and would add almost no bulk to the main controller, while doubling the number of accelerometers. With double the accelerometers, a clearer picture of the motion would be provided.
Secondly, to get a more complete picture of the orientation of the Wii controllers, the sensor bar which is normally placed near the television should be placed on the floor where the golf ball ought to be. With the sensor bar on the floor where the golf ball should be the controllers would be able to pick up the location of the sensor bar and provide non-inertial data about its velocity. As the controllers swing past the sensor bar, the location of the infrared lights would act as fixed points with which to measure velocity.
A picture of someone on a Wii balance board with
the sensor bar on the floor.
All on-screen menu navigation can be done in the traditional way by using the directional keys; pointer-enabled functions are nice but unnecessary for this sort of game. Moving the sensor bar around the room would be a clever way to also have a swing trainer for baseball.
“Partly inspired by Franz Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’ and partly by the American system of capital punishment as well as the current political situation, the piece is an ironic approach to killing and torture machines. A moving megaphone speaker encircles an electric dental chair. The chair is covered in pink fun fur…” [via]
I once worked for a pathology department, and my job required that I go to the morgue on a regular basis (multiple times a day). The human body is completely awesome. These pics are a little gruesome, but then again, so are we.
Speaking of being completely awesome:
Five-year-old inventor comes up with a better broom. (At 5 I invented the bag-o-bags: a bag that contained other bags, so that you would have lots of bags. It was a homework assignment in kindergarten. I recall being pissed because I didn’t think it was fair that at 5 we should be asked to know enough to solve anything. My parents still tease me about it till this day.)
[Full details at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/10911334/ ] Pyrrho: Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes LaertiusA Workshop in Ancient PhilosophyOctober 18/19 2013, Common Room of the Heyman Center, Columbia [...]
