Mitchell Joachim of Terreform, on sustainable architecture

Ficus - the home of the future! Let's all move to the tropics!

Google Liquid Galaxy live demo at TED

It's running on 7 Linux machines. At the very end of the video you can hear "School's Out" by Alice Cooper in the background. See, nerds are cool.

Or go and watch it in highdef @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atV2foTBbyE

Modular Robotics - Self Assembly Included

Self assembling robot pieces...

The Modular Robotics Laboratory (ModLab) at the University of Pennsylvania

Emily Levine's - Theory of Everything (not physics)

The tricksters' view of the world is open...

Japanese Death Poems

Japanese death poems were written by a person as close to the moment of death as possible. Ideally, as they finished and put down the ink brush, they would exhale their last breath and die before the ink was dry.

Seems that most were written by monks, priests, noblemen, and other well educated members of Japan's history. They reflect on what it means to live and die, and their philosophy on both.
Some are beautiful and reflective, such as Koraku's

The joy of dewdrops
In the grass as they
Turn back to vapor.

Others display a wonderful humor about the inevitable, such as Morikawa Kyoriku's (1656 - 1715)

Till now I thought
that death befell
the untalented alone.
If those with talent, too,
   must die
surely they make
   a better manure?

My favorite so far is from Moriya Sen'an:

Bury me when I die
beneath a wine barrel
in a tavern.
With luck
the cask will leak.

 To read these and others go to the
Google Book search for Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death
By Yoel Hoffmann
Or better yet, support the guy and buy the book like I did!
Here's an easy link to Hoffmann's book on Amazon - ya cheap schmuck!

 

The God Equation

I came across this on PZ Myers' blog "pharyngula". Read more on PZ's take on this The God Equation?  
So now we have the God equation (again).

This one is

• Hl is the radio frequency of the hydrogen fine transition in space
•  π (pi) we all know from high school math is the relationship between the circumference and diameter of a circle
•  Ω is the number 0.0123456789; it represents all the characters of the base 10 number system
• C is the speed of light in a vacuum - approximately 300,000 km/sec
  

In addition to the points that Mr. Myers brings up, I would like to know what are we solving for? An equation has a variable for which we are to solve. If everything is defined, where is God? Is He the culmination of light speed, a decimal carried out to 10 places, the frequency of an element in space, and pi?
That's silly.

Additional possible equations:

• From the The Church of Yahweh the sufficient condition for the self existent being to be able to generate a universe I + WILL = EXISTENCE.
• X is God according to ( a + bn )/n = x There is a story that has made the rounds in mathematical history books about the well-known mathematician Euler embarrassing the philosopher Diderot. This quote is from http://scidiv.bellevuecollege.edu/Math/Euler.html which was Condensed from Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell (1937, Simon and Schuster), and An Introduction to the History of Mathematics , 4th ed., by Howard Eves (1976, Holt, Rinehart and Winston):
  

  Diderot had been invited to the court by Catherine the Great, but then annoyed her by trying to convert everyone to atheism. Catherine asked Euler for help, and he informed Diderot, who was ignorant of mathematics, that he would present in court an algebraic proof of the existence of God, if Diderot wanted to hear it. Diderot was interested, and, according to De Morgan, Euler advanced toward Diderot, and said gravely, and in a tone of perfect conviction: "Sir, ( a + bn )/n = x , hence God exists; reply! " Diderot had no reply, and the court broke into laughter. Diderot immediately returned to France.
  

  However, this is apparently a fabrication. Read of the debunking on http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/euler.html explained by Dirk J. Struik, from his book A Concise History of Mathematics, Third Revised Edition, Dover, 1967, p. 129:
  

  This is a good example of a bad historical anecdote, since the value of an anecdote about an historical person lies in its faculty to illustrate certain aspects of his character; this particular anecdote serves to obscure both the character of Diderot and of Euler, Diderot knew his mathematics and had written on involutes and probability, and no reason exists to think that the thoughtful Euler would have behaved in the asinine way indicated. The story seems to have been made up by the English mathematician De Morgan (1806-1871). See L. G. Krakeur and R. L. Krueger, Isis, Vol. 31 (1940), pp. 431-32; also Vol. 33 (1941), pp. 219-31.
  

Too bad that story was a hoax; I liked it. Stupid philosophers, they should get some comeuppance!
Anyway, let's wrap all of this up with an enlightened quote from a Nobel Prize winning Physicist Steven Weinberg, "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

So be good for goodness sake!

Jack-O-Beaker Muppet Labs Experiment 2Q975: Carve-O-Matic

Jack-O-Beaker!
Okay, even above Animal, Beaker is my favorite Muppet. He's the ultimate nerdy anti-hero lab assistant.
I already miss Halloween...

Oxygen

Oxygen
nascentparadigm's senior thesis from the Ringling College of Art + Design

This Side Up - A Short Animation by Liron Topaz

This Side Up - A Short Animation by Liron Topaz

If Only...

Ode to Joy by Beaker

Ode to Joy
classical music by a classy puppet...er, um Muppet.

Remember When MTV was Cool?

Liquid Television was an experimental short animation show on MTV - back when it was cool. Example One:
Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions - written and directed by Henry Selick

More Galaxies than People

Feeling big today? Think about this:
"There are far more galaxies than people." -Carl Sagan

But, by the same token, don't feel bad; think of the uniqueness of you in the face of the rest of the cosmos. Only once ever has a configuration of atoms come together to have your thoughts and experiences.



Now, finish your beer, get another, and go watch SportsCenter...

 

Philosophy of Death

Philosophy of Death
By Shelly Kagan from Yale U.

There are 26 lectures. The first one can be skipped; it mostly lines out what the course will cover - not science, not religion, but the philosophy of death. Also the first lecture covers some classroom expectations and grading scale (boring).

So skip the first one and jump into the second one - Dualism vs. Physicalism

http://academicearth.org/courses/death

Academic Earth is a Web site that offers full video lectures from many great universities.

The Galaxy Zoo

You can help classify the heavenly bodies - sweet!
The following is quoted from their Web site:
"The Galaxy Zoo files contain almost a quarter of a million galaxies which have been imaged with a camera attached to a robotic telescope the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, no less). In order to understand how these galaxies — and our own — formed, we need your help to classify them according to their shapes — a task at which your brain is better than even the fastest computer."

So go now and help; it'll be the coolest nerdy thing you've done since selling your Everquest character for $200 and a case of Mountain Dew!

http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

Free Games to Waste a Day or Ten Minutes

A calming puzzle game, Loops of Zen:
http://www.quickflashgames.com/games/loops-of-zen/

However, if you want to throw knives at politicians and celebrities:

Knife Throw 2
http://www.quickflashgames.com/games/knifethrow2/

Fish Itch Also

Preliminary research on mice indicates that there are nerve cells that pass along an itch signal to the brain that appear to be seperate from the pathway for pain.

NPR - Scientists Identify 'Itchy' Neurons In Mice
by Jon Hamilton

Hold your breath for micro-sculpture

Willard Wigan: Hold your breath for micro-sculpture from Ted Talks. You might think that you've seen small sculpture before, but no. No you haven't.

Icky (living?) Thing in a Sewer

Dateline...
A Sewer pipe, Cameron Village, Raleigh, North CarolinaApparently, it's just a cluster of invertebrates called bryozoan, which are commonly found in both the sea and fresh water environments, says Thomas Kwak a biology professor at North Carolina State University's Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.
Research:

• PZ Myers a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, writes about it in Server blobs of North Carolina


• WRAL (local news site to area of filming) -Mysterious 'sewer creature' sparks curiosity - by Dan Bowens

Does it live?

Enjoy Some Flea Market Photos - VIII

I really can't stand Ann Geddes' so called art, babies with flower petal hoodies and other babies as seemingly random vegetable matter. This one is a baby kitten doll in her style; isn't that cute...ralph.
So it's a baby wearing a donkey outfit next to a teddy bear wearing a camper's outfit sitting on a plate in a picnic basket. I'm not hungry anymore...


I know this one may not initially look all that odd or offensive. Two sculpted faces (in the style of the 80s) looking hopefully to the future. However, consider that the sculpture is made of leather. That's right; not one leather face but two. It's even creepier to touch; believe me.

This one is not so weird, but in a previous post, I pointed out wastes of resin castings. It is missing Beethoven in the mix.

Yips Meet a Telephone

Poetry Contest part 4 - The Saga has Sputtered Out

This post references a few previous posts; the last one was
Poetry Contest part 3 - The Saga Continues

What a disappointing ending. I was trying to get an interesting story out of the scammers at Poetry.com and they just stopped contacting me. Evidently, my poem wasn't good enough for their anthology. It might have something to do with me not paying for their fine leather bound books...
It's been more than six months and nothing, but wait let's go visit them again and read some of the past winners. That's always good for a chuckle.

Hmm...the website looks different. Let's take a look at the "Welcome" link. Well, this says it all, "*Lulu.com, an award winning Internet company, recently purchased the URL 'www.poetry.com' from the previous failed business that owned it."

Stay tuned; I'll be submitting there soon. Maybe I'll get that story after all...

Physical Optical Illusion

I picked this up from Richard Wiseman's blog.

I'm a Fan

It's Crop Circle Season Again

Well, summer is approaching, the grains have reached the perfect height, and it's crop circle season again...
No, it's not UFOs, but it is awesome rural graffiti!
Check out the jelly fish!

Jonny Lee and Wii

Let's all go to RadioShack! Watch Johnny Lee's Ted Talk presentation and you'll know why.

Enjoy Some Flea Market Photos - VII

Since when do clowns belong in baseball? Rodeos sure, but not baseball. I hate clowns. Although Bobcat Goldthwait did make a funny clown movie once (Shakes the Clown), but that hardly makes up for the fact that clowns suck. They're never funny or cute or wanted at parties.

Brass monkeys those funky monkeys...

Help me robot angel! Do robot angels dream of collecting little kids gold teeth?
Brass angel? Why not gold or silver? Brass is for monkeys and saxophones.

Enjoy Some Flea Market Photos - VI

Okay, at first I was "Ohh weird, pain killer cookbook" then I was, "Eww, creepy, that child is too happy about something," then I was, "Aww, that's sad. Why is he happy and hungry?"
That a whole lot of emotion for one cookbook. Then I thought, if you are poor enough that you need recipes to ease hunger pangs, then perhaps you should not be spending money on a cookbook. Instead, spend that money on some more food. I wonder how many copies it sold?

I have joked for years with my wife that I was going to start collecting salt and pepper shakers; I may start with these...

One More Disembodied Foot Found in Canada

Well, here we are again, it's random, severed foot time. Place your bets! I've got ten bucks on left foot and male.
Everyone get your tarps and hacksaws.
I'll admit for the first few feet, I thought, 'No big deal. Feet fall off all the time; the world is an imperfect place.'
(See Breakfast Club quote)

Canada 7
USA 1

But now the count is up to seven (for Canada and only one for the US - sounds like the winter Olympics gold medal count). Normally, some consider that a lucky number, but in this case...nah.

Quebec farmer finds winter boot containing severed foot
Published: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | 5:56 PM ET
Canadian Press Andy Blatchford, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Dang, it's a right foot. Double or nothing on it being male, that hasn't been determined yet.

For a catalog of the previous six visit the Wikipeda article Discoveries of human feet on British Columbia beaches, 2007–2008 (yes, can you believe that there is a Wikipeda article on the number of severed feet that wash up on Canada's shores - tis a weird, weird world we have here)

And if you read the Wikipeda article, and I did, you'll see that four of the eight feet match two people, one man and one woman who was wearing New Balance running shoes. Also, there was a hoax foot - not funny.

The CBC is maintaining an interactive map of the locations of the found feet. They have pictures of some of the shoes. "What!" you say, "Yes, they do!" I say. Go look. Of course, they took the feet out, you sicko.

So the count is as follows:
New Balance (woman) 2
Nike (man) 2
Reebok (man) 1
Low-cut Hiking boot (man) (unidentified brand) 1
Unidentified shoe (man) 1
Unisex boot (sex as yet undetermined) 1

In addition to the source that brought this to my attention (credited below) I did some independent Google searching for more facts. Normally, no big deal but when I did there were some 'Sponsored Links' shown that I hope were auto-generated, because if someone planned them, EWWW! Gross! This is not Photoshopped; this is a genuine screen capture!


"Cut Feet Online" and "Low prices on severed foot." Someone needs to review their keyword auto-gen system. Please! You do a Google News search for "severed foot" and see what you get; I'd be interested to see yours.

Oh and to give total source credit, because a good English major hates plagierism and always quotes the sources; I got the articles from a tweet by Rachel Maddow. A news woman interested in severed feet - swoon...

Amazing 3-D Appearing Murals

Just go look:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1187338/Off-wall-The-astonishing-3D-murals-painted-sides-buildings-trompe-loeil-artist.html

Enjoy Some Flea Market Photos - V

Dolphin or Whale and Butterflies

Okay, they're whales. Really, they don't look anything like dolphins. Anything.
"Hey, I calls 'em like I sees 'em! I'm a whale biologist."
And if you don't get that quote, you should watch more Futurama!
Butterfly Ball. Do they do this in nature?

Okay,... Ball Cluster. That's all I'm saying. Ball Cluster. Do people really buy ball clusters of butterflies? What a waste of resin. We could have used a few more thousand resin frogs, or birds, or clowns, or little girls with umbrellas, or wolves, or Beethovens.