Saturday, January 28, 2006

Anachronistic images photoshopping contest

Saturday, January 28, 2006
12:54 PM

Anachronistic images photoshopping contest: "Cory Doctorow:


Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: anachronistic images, like Sofia Loren as a Desperate Housewift, Gandhi with an iPod, or, pictured here, the Beatles crossing Abbey Road on Segways.


Link

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Photographer takes photos of real scenes that look like miniature sets

Saturday, January 28, 2006
12:53 PM

Photographer takes photos of real scenes that look like miniature sets: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Metropolis magazine has an article about a photographer named Olivo Barbieri who takes photos of real scenes and makes them looks like miniature sets. Shown here: the Santa Monica pier in Los Angeles.

Kevin Evans says: 'Detailed scale models, except they're not. Strange photographs of places using a technique that makes them look like small model dioramas. Truly amazing images.

200601271529'the Las Vegas photographs in which an innate sense of unreality collides most strikingly with Barbieri's projected vision. The city's simulated monuments are made to look artificial, in total defiance of their reality. For Barbieri it is 'the city as an avatar of itself.'

Link

Reader comment: Noah says: 'The technique Barbieri uses to get the surreal Depth of Field in his pictures is tilt-shift photography, you can get a nice detailed explanation at the above link. For homebrew photo buffs, there's a cool tutorial on how to make your own tilt-shift lens (without dropping $1000) here.'

200601271934Reader comment: Alex says: 'this photography blog features some very good examples
of tilt-shift photography. its in japanese, so i can't
give you any more details. i found the quality of the
images are superior to those featured in Metropolis.
beautiful stuff.'
Link

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney: "'Don't rule out working with your hands. It does not preclude using your head.'"



(Via Motivational Quotes of the Day.)

Punster nerds insert jokes on Pluto spacecraft's list of names

Tuesday, January 17, 2006
09:42 PM
´heh heh

Punster nerds insert jokes on Pluto spacecraft's list of names: "Xeni Jardin:
The Associated Press reports that the New Horizons spacecraft bound for the distant planet icy dirtclod Pluto is carrying a list of 435,000 names. Some of those names were contributed by Slashdot readers. The entire list is posted are at the New Horizons website, and includes Pluto Nium, Heywood Jablome, Kim Jong Il and Participation Certificate. Link (thanks, anonymous).

Image: 'The Atlas V rocket that will carry New Horizons to Pluto moves from the Vertical Integration Facility, left, to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Monday Jan. 16, 2006. The spacecraft which will take 9 to 14 years to reach Pluto is powered by 24 pounds of plutonium.' (John Raoux - AP)

Reader comment: Tom says,

Almost all of this list of Bart Simpson prank calls have made it onto the rocket to pluto, from IP Freely to Seymour Butz. The only one they managed to screen out was Homer Sexual...
Link

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Stores paint ads on roofs for satellite map services

Tuesday, January 17, 2006
09:39 PM
just when you thot it was safe to go back in space

Stores paint ads on roofs for satellite map services: "Cory Doctorow:


Some commercial outfits are painting giant ads on their roofs for the benefit of the aerial/satellite photos used by services like Google Earth/Google Maps.

Link


(via Digg)

Update: Many have pointed out that the Target store pictured here is on approach to O'Hare International in Chicago -- but the post linked above has other examples...

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky

Sunday, January 15, 2006
08:53 PM

Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky: "Though no one can say for sure when and why human beings first associated the number 13 with misfortune, the belief is assumed to be quite old and there exist any number of theories purporting to trace its origins to..."



(Via Urban Legends and Folklore.)

Sunday, January 15, 2006
08:48 PM
a fave rave

Foucault's Pendulum / Low-tech proof of Earth's rotation: "

Foucault's Pendulum



Science museums are among my favorite places to visit. In probably a dozen or so museums in several different countries I’ve seen an exhibit called ‘Foucault’s Pendulum,’ in which a heavy weight, suspended from the ceiling by a wire, very slowly changes direction over the course of a day, knocking over a small peg every hour or so or tracing patterns in sand. I was vaguely aware that this was supposed to have something to do with the rotation of the planet, but I never really understood what that was. And to be perfectly honest, I always thought that watching a pendulum swing for an hour so was about as exciting as watching wheat grow.


Then, in the early 1990s, I read Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum. The novel has little to do with the pendulum as such, but some of the characters muse over its philosophical implications, and the climax of the story takes place at the site where the original pendulum is now hanging—the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers (Conservatory of Arts and Trades) in Paris. Eco’s story piqued my interest, and while vacationing in Paris I decided to visit the Conservatoire and look a little more deeply into the science and history of the real Foucault’s Pendulum.


Getting Into the Swing

Jean Bernard Léon Foucault was born in Paris in 1819. He had planned to study medicine, but eventually realized he was too squeamish to deal with blood, so he turned his attention to less organic branches of science. In the mid-19th century—and for that matter, for most of history up until fairly recently—scientists did not confine themselves to a single, narrow specialty. Foucault was no exception in this regard; although he spent most of his career studying optics and astronomy, he was also responsible for major discoveries in chemistry, electricity, and magnetism. But the invention for which Foucault is best known is his pendulum.


In 1848, Foucault noticed something extremely surprising about a swinging pendulum. Even if you turn the point from which it is swinging, the pendulum continues to swing in the same direction. You can try this experiment yourself with a yo-yo (or, say, a computer mouse—as long as it’s not wireless). Tie the string or cable around a finger, hold your finger out at arm’s length pointing at some handy spot in the room, and set the weight swinging in a straight line. Now take a step or two in an arc so that your finger points at something else, and notice that the weight’s swing hasn’t changed direction, even though the point from which it was suspended has turned. Foucault thought this curious behavior of pendulums—their refusal to be bothered by the position of their point of suspension—might be used to make a stunning visual proof of Earth’s rotation.


The Pendulum and the Planet

By Foucault’s time, the rotation of the Earth was no longer in dispute, but there was still no direct way to demonstrate or measure it. Foucault reasoned that if he hung a pendulum from a fixed point and the direction of the pendulum’s swing appeared to change, that could only be because the Earth itself was moving underneath the pendulum. Over the course of a 24-hour day, if his theory was correct, a pendulum should trace out a complete circle—at least, it would if it were located at the north or south pole; at the latitude of Paris the offset would amount to a circle every 32 hours or so. (At the equator, incidentally, this experiment would not work at all.)


There was a complication, though. Because of the effects of air resistance, gravity, and friction, a swinging pendulum will eventually come to a stop, and in order to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth, it needed to swing for a significant period of time—at least an hour or two. To increase the inertia of a pendulum, and therefore the amount of time it will swing without stopping, you can increase either the length of the wire, the mass of the ball at the end, or both. So Foucault hung an 11-lb. (5kg) ball at the end of a 6-foot (2m) wire in his basement, and sure enough, before it stopped swinging the angle had rotated slightly clockwise.


Foucault then repeated the experiment with a much longer, 36-foot (11m) wire in the Paris Observatory, and the effect was again just as he had predicted. In 1851, he constructed an even grander, 220-foot (67m) pendulum in the Panthéon in Paris, and held the first public demonstrations, promising the crowds they would ‘see the Earth go round.’ Sure enough, the giant pendulum made a slow but predictable clockwise motion. Later, Foucault tried the same test with a spinning (rather than swinging) weight. It worked, and this led to his invention of the gyroscope.


Fixed Points and Local Motion

There is, however, even more to Foucault’s pendulum than the brilliant proof of the Earth’s rotation. The experiment works because the pendulum is hanging from a fixed point. Or is it? If you think about it, the building from which the pendulum is suspended is moving along with the Earth, which is in turn rotating around the Sun. The Sun, too, along with the rest of the solar system, rotates around the center of the galaxy, and so on. So it’s really not correct to think of the bracket on the ceiling as being a fixed point. And yet, curiously, it’s not just movement of the attachment point that the pendulum ignores—it ignores the movement of the planet and even the galaxy. The swing of the pendulum remains aligned with, apparently, the universe itself—or, to make it more comprehensible, think of it as being aligned with some very distant star. So the pendulum acts as if it’s hanging from some absolutely fixed location deep in the center of the universe. Whether this is simply an illusion or a deeply meaningful metaphysical discovery is still a matter of some debate among the few scientists and philosophers who worry about that sort of thing.


The pendulum Foucault originally used in 1851 at the Panthéon was moved in 1855 to the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. The Conservatoire includes a public museum, part of which is housed in a building that was once a church. The pendulum hangs from the ceiling of the choir, and is the museum’s star attraction. For several years during the 1990s when the museum was undergoing renovations, the pendulum was temporarily exhibited at its original home in the Panthéon, but was returned before the museum reopened in 2000.


In order to show the movement of a pendulum over longer periods of time than inertia will provide—and to satisfy museum-going crowds—most modern exhibits of Foucault’s Pendulum, including the one in the Conservatoire, use an electromagnet under the floor or platform beneath the pendulum to give it a tiny extra boost as it swings past. When I first heard about the magnets, it sounded like cheating to me—the image I had in mind was of moving magnets that influenced the direction of the swing. But in fact the magnets are circular and simply pull the pendulum very slightly toward its vertical center just as it approaches the middle of each swing, so the direction of the swing is unaffected. That in itself, I think, is a very clever piece of engineering.—JK



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A wonderfully detailed discussion of the invention of Foucault’s Pendulum and the science behind it can be found on this page written by Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki. A few of the details (such as the date of the Panthéon demonstration) are not quite right, but it’s nevertheless very worthwhile reading. (Interestingly, an earlier version of the same article on a different part of the site has an alternative discussion of the book Foucault’s Pendulum.)


There are many other sites dealing with Foucault’s Pendulum too—for example, The Foucault’s pendulum of the ‘arts et métiers’ museum from Paris, or David Babcock’s Conceptual Explanation.


The Catholic Encyclopedia has a biography of Foucault; it’s the only place I’ve seen his second name listed as ‘Bertrand’ and not ‘Bernard.’


The official Web site of the Musée des Arts et Métiers—the museum portion of the Conservatoire—is only in French but contains a great deal of helpful information.


cover art

Umberto Eco’s 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum is, as I said, not really about Foucault’s Pendulum—it’s also very, very dense and occasionally frustrating, but still among my favorite books and well worth reading. If you read the novel and feel like you need to make a pilgrimage to the Conservatoire, do note that a great deal changed in the renovations. The pendulum is still there, but the periscope, for example, is not.



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"



(Via Interesting Thing of the Day.)

Sunday, January 15, 2006
08:09 PM
damn straight

News: Survey: iPod owners more honest: ""



(Via iPodlounge.)

Sunday, January 15, 2006
07:59 PM
News?

Photo: lesbian kiss in Tiananmen Square under guards, Mao: "Xeni Jardin:

Link, and here is another angle, and another and another. (Thanks, Pete!)

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Friday, January 13, 2006

Friday, January 13, 2006
03:17 PM
soon to be fighting mokèlé-mbèmbé

US Navy SEALs see unknown ape in Africa?: "David Pescovitz:
At Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman reports that a US Navy SEAL unit encountered a group of strange apes in the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to Loren, the information comes from a reliable source and fits in with the area's history of weird cryptids. The drawing here, by Harry Trumbore, is from the forthcoming book The Field Guide to Bigfoot, by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe, to be published by Anomalist Books. It depicts the kalanoro, a 'short, three-toed, bipedal, water-dwelling, mean, scruffy-hair hominoid' apparently known to tribes in Madagascar. From the blog post:

Kalanoro2-1


What the former SEAL relates is that he was involved in covert operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1997 and 2002. According to his account, his team observed a group of thirteen 'chimpanzee-like' creatures between 4.5 to 5 feet tall, uniformly gray all over their bodies, with rows of seemingly porcupine-like quills running the length of their backs.



The unidentified apes walked bipedally and were observed by the SEAL team in the act of killing another animal. When the creatures became excited or agitated, the quills or spines stood erect from their bodies.



According to this informant, the US Navy SEAL team took three minutes of video footage of these creatures, but this tape apparently has been classified, due to their mission.
Link

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Friday, January 13, 2006
03:15 PM
hope you guesed my name hoo hoo

The One, True Hooters Calendar uncovered at last: "Xeni Jardin:
Earlier on Boing Boing, I blogged about a bootleg Hooters calendar (this is a 100% work-safe joke!), and many readers wrote in asking about higher-res, printable versions. Turns out the image I blogged was indeed bootlegged -- some www wisecracker copied the image from another guy's website. Tom, the gag calendar's rightful creator, says,


I started wondering why I was beginning to get e-mail about my '2006 Hooters Calendar' today from various odd places, and I think I finally figured it out: It made it to boingboing on Dec. 31. If you are interested, here is the first public appearance of my 2006 Hooters Calendar.
Link.

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Friday, January 13, 2006
02:53 PM
son to be a scifi channel original movie

Devil lamp photo: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Dsc00399
Over Thanksgiving we stayed in a condo in the mountains of Colorado. Each afternoon, a lamp in the living room would take on a devlish mood.

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Friday, January 13, 2006
02:55 PM
another great hoppy for the newage

HOWTO make a Chewbacca snot-rag-box cozy: "Cory Doctorow:


This is kid-friendly crafts-project through which you make a Chewbacca kleenex-box-cozy. Although the finished product looks more like Wolfman from the Hilarious House of Frightenstein than Chewy, it must be said.

Link

(Thanks, Bonnie!)


"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Friday, January 13, 2006
02:45 PM
probably fighting with giant apes as well

New search for living dinosaurs: "David Pescovitz:
At Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman reports on an organized research expedition to the border of Cameroon and the Congo Republic. The object of the quest, the fourth of its kind, is mokèlé-mbèmbé, a 'dinosaur-like' animal that's a subject of native lore and is feared by local fishermen. The beast's name means 'one who stops the flow of rivers.' From Loren's post:

The four expeditions have been greatly assisted by the cryptozoology-friendly government of Cameroon (they received all their official documents quickly). Furthermore, Pierre Sima has collected several new reports of Mokele-mbembe activity in the river system which borders the Congo Republic. Ed Holdroyd, an atmospheric scientist, has also helped the expedition by providing some superb high resolution satellite photographs of an undisclosed area of the river system where Gibbons, Marcy, and all believe the animals are currently active.



Through a combination of field expeditions, recons by Pierre Sima, native reports and the satellite images, the Milt Marcy Expedition feel that they can now track the migration patterns of mokele-mbembe much more effectively.
Link

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Tuesday, January 3, 2006

Tuesday, January 03, 2006
09:10 PM

Rejected by the Publishers: "The Sunday Times of London sent to publishers typed manuscripts that appeared to be the works of aspiring novelists but were actually from prizewinning novels."



(Via NYT > Books.)

Tuesday, January 03, 2006
09:08 PM

Helen Keller: "'Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.'"



(Via Motivational Quotes of the Day.)

Tuesday, January 03, 2006
08:47 PM
dogs living with cats...

Woman marries dolphin: "David Pescovitz:
Sharon Tendler married her boyfriend in a private ceremony in Eilat, Israel. They've been in a relationship for 15 years. Sharon is a human. Her boyfriend, named Cindy, is a dolphin. From the Associated Press:

'It's not a perverted thing. I do love this dolphin. He's the love of my life,' she said Saturday, upon her return to London.


When asked in the past if she had a boyfriend, she would always reply, 'No. I'm going to end up with Cindy.' On Wednesday, she made it official, sort of. While she acknowledged the 'wedding' had no legal bearing she did say it reflected her deep feelings toward the bottlenosed, 35-year-old object of her affection.



'It's not a bad thing. It just something that we did because I love him, but not in the way that you love a man. It's just a pure love that I have for this animal,' she said.
Link(Thanks, Jason Tester!)

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Tuesday, January 03, 2006
08:45 PM

Computerized wireless battle yo-yos: "Cory Doctorow:


Kodai's Djinn yo-yo toys are computerized, wireless video-game combat yo-yos. There's an urban legend that yo-yos originated as weapons, but now it's finally true for real. Djinn games are like Pokemon: each yo-yo contains a randomly selected monster based on a Chinese-zodiac-like cosmology, which is born when you begin spinning. The more your spin, the more powerful your monster grows. Once your monster is powerful enough, you can play solo-games or put it near other yo-yos for wireless head-to-head combat. It's pretty dizzying and I can tell you that if I was ten years old, this would be pure freaking crack for me. Just imagining the scolding I'd get for trying to charge my yo-yo in the back seat of the car is enough to make me pucker.

Link

(via Wonderland)


"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Monday, January 2, 2006

Chinese Proverb: "'When you drink the water, remember the spring.'"



(Via Motivational Quotes of the Day.)

Edward R. Murrow: "'Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.'"



(Via Motivational Quotes of the Day.)

2005 Asshole of the Year Awards: "It's an honor just to be nominated..."



(Via Kuro5hin.org.)

Monday, January 02, 2006
09:44 PM

Futurismic fiction: A transgenic, corporate dystopia: "Cory Doctorow:
Futurismic's latest short story is 'The Other Side of Silence,' by Ruth Nestvold -- it's the story of a transgenic corporate dystopia, and it walks through a number of genuinely weird and fascinating moral conundra in just a few thousand words.


'What kind of genmod are you children interested in?' the Chrysalis saleswoman asked as she ushered them down the hall to one of the viewing rooms. She had introduced herself as Nabuko in a perky salesperson voice which Judith found immediately grating. It didn't help that her Asian good looks were reminiscent of one of the women in Vance's catalogue.


'A dog,' Luther said stoutly.


'Luther, that's not a genmod,' Miriam said with all the wisdom and impatience of an older sister. 'That's just a normal animal.'


Nabuko chuckled in an obliging way. 'Actually, transgenic dogs are among our most popular items.'


'Why get a dog when you can get an ocelot?'


Luther was not about to be tricked. 'That's a cat. I know that's a cat. I want a dog.'


'We have some very interesting items in the genetically modified dog line,' Nabuko said, addressing Miriam. 'There are even modified exspec clones, including the direwolf. Would you like to take a look?'


Judith didn't like the sound of direwolf, but apparently Miriam did. 'Oh, okay,' her daughter said, with an obvious pretense of reluctance.

Link

(Thanks, Jeremy!)

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Monday, January 02, 2006
09:46 PM
one of our seven cats should get it

Cat helps human by dialing 911: "David Pescovitz:
Last Thursday, Columbus, Ohio man Gary Rosheisen fell out of his wheelchair and couldn't get up. Fortunately, his cat Tommy called 911. From the Associated Press:


(Police officer Patrick) Daugherty said police received a 911 call from Rosheisen's apartment, but there was no one on the phone. Police called back to make sure everything was OK, and when no one answered, they decided to check things out.



That's when Daugherty found Tommy next to the phone.



Rosheisen got the cat three years ago to help lower his blood pressure. He tried to train him to call 911, unsure if the training ever stuck.
Link

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Monday, January 02, 2006
09:43 PM
at least not anudder star trek...

Buffy creator on the future of TV: "Cory Doctorow:
Joss Whedon, creator of Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has an hilarious editorial in this week's TV Guide about the future of television:


The networks will all be creating exciting, innovative new spin-offs of today's shows. Approximately 67 percent of all television will be CSI-based, including CSI: Des Moines, CSI: New York but a Different Part than Gary Sinise Is In and NCSI: SVU WKRP, which covers every possible gruesome crime with a groovin' '70s beat. (Jerry Bruckheimer will also have conquered Broadway with the CSI musical 'FOLLICLE!' starring Nathan Lane as a frenetic but lovable blood spatter and Matthew Broderick as lint.)


Lost has that one-of-a-kind alchemy that really can't be copied. Therefore, look for the original series Misplaced, as well as Unfound, Not So Much with the Whereabouts and Just Pull Over and Ask!

Link


(via Making Light)

"



(Via Boing Boing.)

Monday, January 02, 2006
09:41 PM
she's dead spike

Homemade Buffy the Vampire Slayer Mah Jongg set: "Cory Doctorow:
Check out this elaborate and beautiful home-made Buffy the Vampire Slayer Mah-Jongg set -- from the bloodwood, hand-joined carrying-case to the elaborate, glossy tiles. The creator describes it as costing two months' worth of weekends, looks like six months' worth of weekends to me. Nice job.


Winds are good characters (Buffy, Giles, Xander, and Willow), dragons are bad guys (the Master, Angelus, and the Gentlemen), and pretties are either ancilliary good characters (Joyce, Cordelia, Kendra, and Tara) or what Lorien calls 'morally ambiguous' characters: Faith, Oz, Anya, Spike.

Link

"



(Via Boing Boing.)