Nothing About Potatoes – Page 34 – Things I found on the internet. Cannot guarantee 100% potato-free.

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Things 21: Trolley Problem, Hamster Gaming, Sky Font

Post author By metatim
Post date September 21, 2010
1 Comment on Things 21: Trolley Problem, Hamster Gaming, Sky Font

(Originally sent July 2008)

This week’s films – one line reviews
If you like nice fluffy happy films you have to see Wall-E. If you like dark mind-bending films you have to see The Dark Knight. These are both extraordinary films that demand and deserve your attention.

Next Week’s film
I’ll be watching Mamma Mia.

I’ll be watching Dark Knight again.

One of the above is true, the other is completely ridiculous and out of the question.

A Puzzle
Inspired by the events in The Dark Knight, here is the standard “trolley problem” (where trolley actually means tram):

A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are 5 people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately, you can flip a switch which will lead the trolley down a different track to safety. Unfortunately, there is a single person tied to that track. Should you flip the switch?

A Quote
“The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I’m sitting here refreshing my inbox.”

-XKCD: http://xkcd.com/137/

A Link
Baby bats in mini sleeping bags:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-495789/Adorable-baby-bats–honestly–snuggled-wool-animal-shelter.html

A video
Live action hamster video gaming:

A picture
A wonderful font. (Unfortunately this breaks the nice cute/dark dual theme this Things had going. Oh well).

Tags bat, cute, ethics, film, font, game, hamster, possibilities, puzzle, quotes, video

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Things 81: the TV show, Spotify Poetry, Mad Scientists

Post author By metatim
Post date September 17, 2010
1 Comment on Things 81: the TV show, Spotify Poetry, Mad Scientists

Video
Laurence correctly identified that this is exactly the kind of multi-level high-speed animated insanity that I enjoy (and am currently wondering if I can design an infographic for):

Link
Share a Spotify playlist, make poetry. A nice little art form. I like this one:

Don’t Look Back Into The Sun
Choose
The Whole Of The Moon
Instead
It Won’t Hurt
Too Much
I Don’t Know Why
But It’s Better If You Do
Wish Upon A Star
Just
Not The Sun
It’s Too Hot For Words
Think About It
Be Careful
Remember
Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Quote
I’ve wanted to post this quote for a while, but couldn’t remember it well enough to find it. Here it is courtesy of The Week, via The Times:

Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up familiar with it.”

Picture
An excellent observation from the webcomic Cowbirds in Love, as conveniently recommended to me by the futuristic magical curation power of Google Reader Play (click to view full size on their site):

Last Week’s Puzzle
Last week I asked how a very strange photo of a physically impossible propeller was achieved. The answer is simply this, and you can see more examples here.

Puzzle
Each week a different section of Things is skipped in order to cut down the length. This week there is no puzzle. This is not a trick. There is no puzzle.

Tags animation, answer, comic, meta, music, poetry, quotes, science, video

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Things 20: Cake Division, Dinorun, Christian the Lion

Post author By metatim
Post date September 14, 2010

(Originally sent July 2008)

This week’s film – one line reviews :
Hancock was like a TV mini-series compressed into 90 minutes, with the first half used to trick people into going to see it, and a plot that looks like it suffered from too many cooks.

Next Week’s film
Kung Fu Panda

Actually I saw this on IMAX last weekend, but would rather see it again in the cinema than see Prince Caspian, which I find so unappealing even Eddie Izzard as Reepicheep can’t make up for it. Kung Fu Panda was a very solidly entertaining piece of work, as the figures below attest.

IMDb rating: 8.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 88%

My youtube review:

A Puzzle
Alternatives to a first mover or an infinite past:

-time as a loop

-space and time merge as you go back in time (this makes no sense to me but is apparently one theory)

-time is an illusion

The real lesson here is that we have absolutely no right to expect our intuition for what makes sense, which we developed in our own particular tiny bit of the universe, to be any kind of a guide on this scale of issue.

This week’s puzzle
When you find yourself having to divide a cake between two children you know that at least one will complain they got the smaller slice. There is a classic strategy to solve this problem that is well known, which I won’t reveal since if you’re not familiar with it then that is an excellent puzzle already. For those that know: what if there are three children?

A Quote
A wonderfully distilled observation on what I think is one of the most fascinating debates of our generation:

Stewart Brand: “Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive […] that tension will not go away.”

A Link
Dinorun – an old-school style game in which you play a dinosaur attempting to outrun extinction. Worth playing at least once just to see how awesome it is to be wiped out by an unstoppable wave of annihilation:

http://www.pixeljam.com/dinorun/

A video
Another bit of cross-species friendship – “Christian the Lion”, who was friends with some 70s dudes.

Short version with the best-suited music but, er, inappropriate message at end: