For your listening pleasure. Hopefully.
7.17.2008
It made me wonder ...
What would life be like if my legs were Mexican and my torso Irish? Probably awesome.
7.16.2008
7.15.2008
Graffiti time lapse
random internet video but kinda cool...time lapse video of graffiti moving over buildings. it's aliiiiiiiiive!!!
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
7.14.2008
quantum physics explained by a cartoon superhero professor
so i remember doing this experiment in physics lab, but i don't remember it being explained like this. if they had explained it like this, then i might have paid better attention. or maybe they did explain it and i just wasn't paying attention. anyway, it was on digg, but i thought i should put it up anyway cause it's pretty cool and just weird to think about.
7.09.2008
7.08.2008
Creatures thinking with their appendages. Now why does that sound familiar??
Octopuses given Rubik's Cubes to find out if they have a favourite tentacle
By A Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 9:33 AM on 07th July 2008
Marine experts have given 25 octopuses a Rubik's Cube each in a study aimed at easing their stress levels in captivity.
Scientists believe the intelligent sea creatures have a preferred arm out of eight that they use to feed and investigate with.
They are now testing this theory with a month-long observation project in which the octopuses will be given food and toys to play with.
Enlarge Experts have launched a study at sea life centres across Europe to find out if octopuses have a favourite tentacle
They will then record whether the creatures use a specific limb to pick up the object or if they are octidextrous.
It is hoped the results of the Sea Life Centre study will shed light on 'handiness' in the animal kingdom.
Claire Little, marine expert at the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth, Dorset, said the study could eventually help to reduce stress among octopuses.
She said: 'It will be very interesting to see the results.
'Uniquely, octopuses have more than half their nerves in their arms and have even been shown to partially think with their arms.
'We hope the study will help the overall well-being of octopuses. They are very susceptible to stress so if they do have a favourite side to be fed on, it could reduce risk to them."
The octopus research will take place in the 23 branches of the Sea Life Centre attractions Britain and Europe.
A diagram of an octopus will sit alongside the tanks with the arms on the right labelled R1, R2, R3 and R4 from front to back. The left arms will be numbered in the same way but with an L instead of an R.
Items such as a ball, a jam jar and lego bricks will be dropped into the water for the octopuses to play with.
Visitors will then be asked to note down which arm was closest to the object and which arm picked it up.
If the octopus uses several arms, they must write them all down but in the order they touched it.
Staff at the centre will also do the same during feeding time.
Miss Little said: 'Visitors will be handed a form asking them to participate in our study.
'We will add the results to all of the data that has already been collected about octopuses. It will also help towards solving the mystery of handiness in the animal kingdom.'
The results will be analysed by Sea Life Centre biologists and the results will be announced in the autumn.
By A Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 9:33 AM on 07th July 2008
Marine experts have given 25 octopuses a Rubik's Cube each in a study aimed at easing their stress levels in captivity.
Scientists believe the intelligent sea creatures have a preferred arm out of eight that they use to feed and investigate with.
They are now testing this theory with a month-long observation project in which the octopuses will be given food and toys to play with.
Enlarge Experts have launched a study at sea life centres across Europe to find out if octopuses have a favourite tentacle
They will then record whether the creatures use a specific limb to pick up the object or if they are octidextrous.
It is hoped the results of the Sea Life Centre study will shed light on 'handiness' in the animal kingdom.
Claire Little, marine expert at the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth, Dorset, said the study could eventually help to reduce stress among octopuses.
She said: 'It will be very interesting to see the results.
'Uniquely, octopuses have more than half their nerves in their arms and have even been shown to partially think with their arms.
'We hope the study will help the overall well-being of octopuses. They are very susceptible to stress so if they do have a favourite side to be fed on, it could reduce risk to them."
The octopus research will take place in the 23 branches of the Sea Life Centre attractions Britain and Europe.
A diagram of an octopus will sit alongside the tanks with the arms on the right labelled R1, R2, R3 and R4 from front to back. The left arms will be numbered in the same way but with an L instead of an R.
Items such as a ball, a jam jar and lego bricks will be dropped into the water for the octopuses to play with.
Visitors will then be asked to note down which arm was closest to the object and which arm picked it up.
If the octopus uses several arms, they must write them all down but in the order they touched it.
Staff at the centre will also do the same during feeding time.
Miss Little said: 'Visitors will be handed a form asking them to participate in our study.
'We will add the results to all of the data that has already been collected about octopuses. It will also help towards solving the mystery of handiness in the animal kingdom.'
The results will be analysed by Sea Life Centre biologists and the results will be announced in the autumn.
7.07.2008
While we're on the subject . . .
...the daily battle for beauty is not only skin deep, but reaches farther down the intestines. Turns out, you’re pretty if your shit also smells pretty, hence the tremendous success of this shit-prettifying product.
“…The Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic sells something called “Etiquette Up,” which proposes to make your insides beautiful. This is accomplished by taking their medicine, which promises to eliminate feces odor. One Tokyo body-aesthetic salon named Grace reportedly “made more than $ 840,000 over a three-year period by giving unauthorized ‘hydro colon cleansing.’ “
We realize it’s just one way of being beautiful inside and out (somebody smart who’s not writing for this blog said that human beauty depends simply on being in the pink of health), but it doesn’t stop us from conjuring wild naughty after-treatment scenarios with this “fecal cosmetic”: is it fair to assume that those who use it don’t really flush after taking a dump; maybe their crap is so beautiful it compels them to gaze at it and call it cute names, like “Little Dumpling.”
“…The Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic sells something called “Etiquette Up,” which proposes to make your insides beautiful. This is accomplished by taking their medicine, which promises to eliminate feces odor. One Tokyo body-aesthetic salon named Grace reportedly “made more than $ 840,000 over a three-year period by giving unauthorized ‘hydro colon cleansing.’ “
We realize it’s just one way of being beautiful inside and out (somebody smart who’s not writing for this blog said that human beauty depends simply on being in the pink of health), but it doesn’t stop us from conjuring wild naughty after-treatment scenarios with this “fecal cosmetic”: is it fair to assume that those who use it don’t really flush after taking a dump; maybe their crap is so beautiful it compels them to gaze at it and call it cute names, like “Little Dumpling.”
7.03.2008
Just how much poo are we talking here?
Bacteria that eat waste & shit petrol
Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide ‘renewable petroleum’.
“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”
He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.
What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.
LS9 has already convinced one oil industry veteran of its plan: Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm’s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. “How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?” he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being “prerevenue”.
Inside LS9’s cluttered laboratory – funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems – Mr Pal explains that LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. “Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.”
Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.
For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.
The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.
Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.
The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.
However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.
That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.
“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.
Are Americans ready to be putting genetically modified bug excretion in their cars? “It’s not the same as with food,” Mr Pal says. “We’re putting these bacteria in a very isolated container: their entire universe is in that tank. When we’re done with them, they’re destroyed.”
Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. “I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.”
Source: Timesonline. See also: Driving on Algue, Arnolds hybrid hummer, Green Blues.
Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide ‘renewable petroleum’.
“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”
He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.
What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.
LS9 has already convinced one oil industry veteran of its plan: Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm’s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. “How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?” he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being “prerevenue”.
Inside LS9’s cluttered laboratory – funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems – Mr Pal explains that LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. “Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.”
Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.
For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.
The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.
Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.
The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.
However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.
That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.
“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.
Are Americans ready to be putting genetically modified bug excretion in their cars? “It’s not the same as with food,” Mr Pal says. “We’re putting these bacteria in a very isolated container: their entire universe is in that tank. When we’re done with them, they’re destroyed.”
Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. “I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.”
Source: Timesonline. See also: Driving on Algue, Arnolds hybrid hummer, Green Blues.
7.02.2008
Sweet.
'the wooden mirror' by daniel rozin
---
interactive artist daniel rozin works in a very particular artistic milieu, making mirrors from unreflective surfaces.
one of his creations, 'the wooden mirror' is a testament to his skill in this area. the mirror uses 830 square pieces
of wood which are hooked up to an equal number of small motors which move the wooden blocks according to a
built in camera. the camera picks up movement in light and somehow transfers the signal to the wood. the result
is an eerie representation of reality depicted in tiny wooden pixels. since building 'the wooden mirror' rozin has
experimented with a number of other materials.
http://www.smoothware.com/danny
---
interactive artist daniel rozin works in a very particular artistic milieu, making mirrors from unreflective surfaces.
one of his creations, 'the wooden mirror' is a testament to his skill in this area. the mirror uses 830 square pieces
of wood which are hooked up to an equal number of small motors which move the wooden blocks according to a
built in camera. the camera picks up movement in light and somehow transfers the signal to the wood. the result
is an eerie representation of reality depicted in tiny wooden pixels. since building 'the wooden mirror' rozin has
experimented with a number of other materials.
http://www.smoothware.com/danny
7.01.2008
Imagine how cool you'd look outside of water.
This is just what we've been waiting for. An underwater mask that doubles as a camera. Just what we needed to catch camera-shy fish unawares. And this isn't your average disposable snapper. The Liquid Image Underwater Digital Camera Mask is a five-megapixel digital camera with six megabytes of flash memory.
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