For the Love of Art

It is amazing what people will do for the love of art (and maybe a cash payout)...

Technological Innovation

I need a "set up" like this to help me in my reading. I'm wearing myself out turning pages when a wonderful newfangled contraption like this would alleviate me of the strain and struggle of page-turning...

Funny

Here's the future. Beauty has been democratized!

A Canadian Solution to American Political Travails

Here is a reasonable proposition from a decent people to solve the insoluble problems of Americans in the upcoming elections...

My Kind of App

Here's a great app to get your mind off your troubles and cares...



Yep... life has a way of biting back!

Physics

This is a wonderful demonstration of how a simple physical setup following a very simple rule can create marvelously complex action:



For the details of the underlying physics, read this.

Math & Art & Science

Here's a nice video that combines humour and math with a little mythical earth history:



I especially enjoy the little bits of realism, like getting eaten by the Pythagasaurus. The problem with nerdy kids is that they don't have a healthy fear of the real world. Their math & science gives them a false sense of power and authority. The nice thing about art is that is can reintroduce these aspiring minds to the fact that math kills, like the Pythagasaurus. A little healthy fear is good for the budding scientist. And only the magic of art can help groom that fear.

The Essence of Being Human

Researcher Robert Sapolsky has nailed it. We are dopamine junkies...



Those of us who are flops in life can't handle time delay of more than a day or week. But as Sapolsky points out, the typical successful middle class dopamine junkie can hold out for the reward of "getting into the best nursing home". The truly long distance and heroic dopamine junkies are the ones who can delay gratification into the hereafter, waiting for the reward that Saint Peter offers them.

Who says that reductive science can't take the measure of man? This talk is an excellent example of reducing a human to a single neurochemical.

If you are dopamine-driven and still haven't had enough Sapolsky, click here, here, here. And repeat that for 100,000 times!

The Art & Science of Placebo

I love this little video. It is both a joy to watch and informative...



I want to get one of those "placebo buttons". I want a monster one. Something a foot or two across that it takes both hands to push. And I want it to have a satisfyingly strong spring behind it so that I have to give it a really good push to get the full placebo "effect".

Oh... and for me, geek that I am... this is probably the most effective placebo for dealing with a down day...



For those seeking "technical details", click here.

The New and Improved Obama

Why let Madison Avenue have all the fun with its "new and improved" products. The American people deserve an updated Obama 2.0 who speaks directly to the people's needs. Thankfully, Obama has risen to the occasion and is now talking the people's talk and walking the people's walk:



For you unjolly types that want Obama 1.0, here's the earlier, unenhanced, not new, not improved Obama...



How could not not enjoy the infinitely improved Obama 2.0?

A Philosophy of Life Given Today's Science & Knowledge

There is a wonderful exploration of what stance we should -- our worldview -- given what various sciences and and wisdom tells us. It is all nicely summarized in simple cartoons at the blog Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

The cartoon format is the perfect way to convert stark intellectual reality into "bite sized" musings appropriate for our poor finite brains. Don't let the blog name or the cartoon format put you off. It is well worth taking a few minutes to ponder the Big Questions. Click the above link and explore.

The Real History of Gold

Looking past the very short history of humans digging for gold, the real story of gold is the origin of the currently accessible gold. Here's the latest thinking:

During the formation of the Earth, molten iron sank to its centre to make the core. This took with it the vast majority of the planet's precious metals – such as gold and platinum. In fact, there are enough precious metals in the core to cover the entire surface of the Earth with a four metre thick layer.

The removal of gold to the core should leave the outer portion of the Earth bereft of bling. However, precious metals are tens to thousands of times more abundant in the Earth's silicate mantle than anticipated. It has previously been argued that this serendipitous over-abundance results from a cataclysmic meteorite shower that hit the Earth after the core formed. The full load of meteorite gold was thus added to the mantle alone and not lost to the deep interior.

I love the bit about paving the earth's surface 4 metres thick with gold. That should cause a panic attack among the gold bugs willing to pay $1900/ounce.

The Future of Ranching?

I always enjoy the application of new technology to the daily work world. Here's a vision of ranching of the future... maybe...



You can see that the cattle are both scared but curious and it is funny to see them follow the robot truck. Cattle just love to be in a herd and I guess the truck is a good stand-in for a "leader" so they will follow it anywhere.

Truth, Lies, & Magic

Here is an interesting magic presentation by Marco Tempest at a TED conference:

My Amateur Science Career

I never struck gold like this six year old...



When I was a lad knee high to a grasshopper and having great fun in the backyard with a shovel, I didn't have any world class paleontologist at hand to check my "discoveries" and sort out the world-shaking discoveries from the non-events. So all my "discoveries" remain anonymous. Oh well. I was that close to fame and immortality. Such is the cruelty of the world and the elusiveness of fame that I've been condemned to live in obscurity. C'est la vie.

Art & Science

A nice video of some visual effects by Kim Pimmel:



Here's her commentary:

I combined everyday soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid liquid to create an eerie tale, using macro lenses and time lapse techniques. Black ferrofluid and dye race through bubble structures, drawn through by the invisible forces of capillary action and magnetism.

Lawrence Krauss' "Quantum Man: Richard Feynnman's Life in Science"

This is a good review of "the complete" Richard Feynman. It has better coverage of the science than more popular biographies. It doesn't break any new ground on the personality of Feynman, but that would be hard to do after a half dozen other biographies, especially Feynman's own autobiographical books.

What most impressed me about this book was Krauss' ability to demonstrate the widespread influence of Feynman's work. Sure he got a Nobel prize, but that didn't get the publicity and "public intellectual" stature that a lot of physics "greats" get. Instead, he is known more for his quirky personality. But Krauss takes the effort to show truly how wide and deep the influence of Feynman's work is on modern physics.

This book reinforces, yet again for me, what I like most about Feynman: a great, deep thinker, who remained humble and focused more on the science than on the glory. Too many scientists ascend to positions of "august sage" and produce nothing in their later years. Feynman was working until the day he died still creating interesting new science.

It is hard to pick anything that gives the flavour of Feynman, but I liked this bit from the book talking about Feynman's 1959 lecture to the American Physical Society "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom":

Feynman began his lecture by saying that some people were impressed by a machine that could write the Lord's prayer on the head of a pin. That was nothing. He envisaged first writing the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin. But, he argued, that was nothing, because one could easily do that with regular printing by simply shrinking the area of each dot used in half-tone printing by a factor of 25,000. As he argued, even then each dot would contain about 1,000 atoms. No problem, he imagined.

But even that was timid, he argued. What about writing all of the information in all of the books in the world? He performed an estimate for doing so that is amusingly similar to one that I did when I tried to consider how much information would be required to store a digital copy of someone for transporting, in The Physics of Star Trek. He argued that it would be easy to store one bit of information (that is, a 1 or 0) using, say, a cube of 5 atoms on a side, or a few more than 100 atoms. He also estimated there were about 10¹⁵ bits of information in all of the books in the world, which at the time he estimated to be about 24 million volumes. In that case, to store all of the information in all of the books in the world would take merely a cube of material less than one-hundredth of an inch on a side -- as small as the smallest speck of dist to the human eye! Okay, so you get the picture.

Feynman loved to calculate. He was a theorist, but one with an eye for detail and an insistence that theory connect with fact, that until you could calculate specific numbers that matched experiment, you didn't have real science.

The book is well worth taking your time to read. Everybody should get to know one of the great minds of the 20th century.

A Peek at Richard Feynman

I'm reading Lawrence M. Krauss' Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science and enjoying it immensely. Krauss mentions how Feynman met a fellow named Ted Welton as a sophmore at MIT. So I did a quick web search and found this article, "Memories of Feynman", in Physics Today where Welton reminisces about the Feynman he knew.

Here is a bit from the conclusion of the article:

He [Feynman] will smile if he reads this, but I feel as I imagine Marcel Grossmann must have felt about Einstein or Chritopher Wren about Newton: amazed at having been given the privilege of knowing so interesting a character. After long reflection, I would think it apt to compare the young Feynman with the young Newton. Of course Newton had it easy; he had a new science to invent. Feynman could only perfect something already existing, but the ingenuity and energy with which he went about the job have been seen only rarely since the plague years.

Over the years I've read everything by Feynman or about Feynman that I can get my hands on. I really admire him. He is a very curious, very open, very honest, amazingly intelligent, witty, regular short of guy who is a mad genius. Here's a telling quip about him by Eugene Wigner:

He's another Dirac. Only this time human.

Here is an obituary for Ted Welton. Despite all his self-deprecation in comparing himself to Feynman, he did win one notable physics prize: the Humboldt Prize in Physics by the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Germany. I find it interesting how life is so arbitrary. Welton lived 22 years longer than Feynman.

For more on Richard Feynman, read the Wikipedia write up. But to enjoy the human being read these:

• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character, Richard Feynman


• What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character, Richard Feynman


• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, James Gleik

If Your Culinary Taste is for the Lively...

Here's how to prepare your next meal...



That is mildly interesting. But what I like as my next meal is something that doesn't look like macabre death, a discombubulated frog with one last twitch left in him.

I like a dish that jumps up and shouts "I'm very much alive". I want a dinner that is going to arm wrestle with me as I try to down it...



Yum!

Anybody for another course of dishes? Maybe something with sharp teeth and not just lively movement? Something that has an aura of both death and danger?

Here's a blog posting on Scientific American to explain all this mysterious animation. It is nicely titled "Instant Zombie -- Just Add Salt".

Step Aside Black Velvet Painting!

Here's a new popular art form that I can see taking a chunk out of the black velvet "art" market: pour painting.



I must admit it is mesmerizing to watch this stuff dribble. And if you get your colours right and time it right, the result is gorgeous. But I don't think it will replace serious art, the kind of art that requires a technical education and an appreciation of art history, composition, technique, etc.