Tag: music

Categories
Old

Things 31: Literal Take On Me, Heinlein’s Standard Response, Squirrel Fishing

Films
I really enjoyed City of Ember, but I have to admit this is probably because I love films about things that are underground or the end of the world or mechanical contraptions, all of which it has.

I’m going to try to see Eagle Eye because it looks like it might hold my attention with a combination of a moderately creative idea and a lot of explosions.

Trailer:

IMDb: 6.9/10
RT: 28%… but critics never like this sort of thing!

Also of course there’s Quantum of Solace which is out next Friday.

Puzzle from before
In Things 30 I asked why we look after the ‘least fit’ despite the fact that we evolved through ‘survival of the fittest’. A lot of people turn this around and use it as an argument that we shouldn’t look after the weak, which is ridiculous for a number of reasons, but most of all it is ridiculous because of the answer to this puzzle.

The trick is that evolution optimises for survival of genes, not individuals, and individuals tend to share a lot of genes. Helping the ‘least fit’ is nothing more than a strategy that evolution tried out and turns out to have been extremely successful. Anyone advocating the ‘kill the weak for survival of the fittest’ argument needs to explain how it is humans have managed to thrive across the entire planet by being nice to their fellow tribe-members.

This week’s puzzle
Last weekend I drove a hire car from Edinburgh to Cardiff. As it got dark, other drivers started flashing their lights at me, even though I had my lights on. I pulled over and checked the lights – they were all on, front and back. What was the problem?

A video
The stop/go cat I linked to in Things 30 has become a massive viral hit. Here’s another one – literal lyrics put to the legendary Take On Me music video:

Link
Robert Heinlein’s standard response letter to fan mail:
http://kk.org/ct2/heinlein.php

A quote
Tarim: I used to want to be a juggler when I grew up, then I realised you couldn’t do both.

A picture
Results of my recent squirrel fishing at Regents Park (click for full size):

Categories
Old

Things 26: Shoe Friends, Gondry Music Video, Sushi Cat

(Originally sent August 2008)

I  am now initiating a more nuanced system for Things, as more people get added to the mailing list. [Things was originally, and still is, an email publication – T.M. 6/11/10]

There will now be two separate mailing lists.

By default, everyone will be placed in the BCC mailing list. With all email addresses in BCC, this means your email address remains private, and you do not get involved in any ‘reply to all’ discussion.

Anyone can ask to be put on the CC list instead. It’s redundant but I’ll say it anyway: the only other people on this list are other people that chose to be on the CC list. They can see each other’s email addresses and can reply-to-all at will.

So, if you want to be moved onto the reply-to-all see-each-others-addresses list, just let me know.

This week’s film
I saw Dark Knight for the second time at the IMAX, which I recommend. Seeing it for the second time there that is, not the first time. A lot of the action does not read well on such a big screen and would make things more confusing than they already are.

Next Week’s film
All the films out now are rubbish or I’ve already seen them enough times.

Last week’s Puzzle
Last week I asked why Olympic records keep getting broken. I had my own theories about this, but I asked John Broughton who gave me a very thorough response:

  • Better drugs. Drugs an athlete took to enhance their performance six years ago will still enhance their performance now due to long lasting body improvements, but will not show up in a test.
  • Better drugs. There is always an arms race between the drug tests and those developing new drugs that won’t show up.
  • Better incentives. More money in more countries is being shifted to support sporting activity.
  • Bigger potential population. Globally the middle class is expanding, meaning more people are able to take the time to obsess about something. Given a bigger pool, better contenders will tend to emerge.

This week’s Puzzle
Now in an experimental new format!

There is a plate in this office that reads “Shoes are like friends… you can never have too many!!” Since I disagreed with both halves of this comparison, I wondered if the fundamental tenet might still hold true. Are shoes like friends?

So, here is the challenge: complete the phrase “Shoes are like friends…” so it fits your own view of shoes and friends, and I’ll report on what people sent in next week!

A video:
My favourite Michel Gondry music video, mixing his penchant for in-camera effects with music, dance and mental disturbance:

A link
One of the things I love about the paranormal is how easy it is for it to exist. Confirmation bias is such a powerful effect that even – in fact, especially – the most rational people will happily ignore or explain away anything that does not agree with their world-view. So things like this can happen, and nobody really bats an eyelid:

’40 die after deliverance prayer – Family of 3 dies of food poisoning’
http://www.tribune.com.ng/16072008/news/news2.html [Link is dead, luckily the article was copied wholesale here – T.M. 4/11/10]

Interestingly, this news story has the more exciting headline and is actually much more plausible:

‘Portal to mythical Mayan underworld found in Mexico’
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1442474520080815

A quote
I was looking back on my life notes for the past 15 years to try and come up with a name for my forthcoming blog. I found that I once said this:

“You have to identify the things that will never happen, and avoid them.”

A picture
Food as art:

Categories
New

Things 83: Balloon Cat, Wrinkly Toes, Fake English

Picture
A fantastically delayed double-take from a cat:

Quote
Douglas Adams had an interesting point which he never quite distilled down to a quotable nugget. The best I can find is this:

“… it’s worth remembering that the fictions with which we previously populated our world may have some function that it’s worth trying to understand and preserve the essential components of, rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water.”

This is taken from his 1998 off-the-cuff speech at Digital Biota 2, which is well worth reading in full (~8,500 words). In it he gives the example of Feng Shui; in the book ‘Mostly Harmless’ he has the following passage applying essentially the same argument to astrology:

Astrology [is] just an arbitrary set of rules. […] The rules just kind of got there. They don’t make any kind of sense except in terms of themselves. But when you start to exercise those rules, all sorts of processes start to happen and you start to find out all sorts of stuff about people. In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It’s just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It’s like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are […] the graphite’s not important. It’s just the means of revealing their indentations.

So, I think that’s interesting.

Last Week’s Puzzle
Last week I asked why all street lamps aren’t at least partially solar powered.

My guess is that aside from the prosaic explanations of societal inertia and supplier convenience, solar panels would accrue dirt and lose efficiency over time, and cleaning street lamps is not practical. I note that solar-powered street furniture does exist but is usually short enough to be easily cleaned. More optimistically, there are now self-cleaning solar panels (although these are not designed for urban use).

This Week’s Puzzle
Most people have a vague idea of why fingers and toes go wrinkly after being in water for a long time – cell membranes, osmosis, water in skin, swelling, therefore wrinkles. What’s strange is how rarely this answer is followed up with the next logical question: why doesn’t that same reasoning apply to skin elsewhere on your body?

Video
A song intended to sound like English to an Italian audience, with some pretty nifty choreography:

Categories
New

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.