Categories
New

Things 68: Tony, Build It, Ghost Man

Link
Having recently read about Buckminster Fuller’s utter conviction that learning from video was superior to traditional classroom learning, it does at least seem reasonable to accept that technology in some form could improve the standard learning environment. This report on “Cell phones in the classroom” (more accurately, computing devices in the classroom) is not entirely convincing, but raises some interesting ideas:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/cell-phones-in-classrooms.html

Quote
David Yelland somewhat accidentally became editor of The Sun from 1998 – 2003, despite being a lefty liberal sort. He’s got a book coming out, and although I’m not generally very political I did rather like this snippet:

Tony Blair Once asked me: “What’s the first paper you read in the morning?” “The Guardian,” I answered. “So why are you editing The Sun instead of The Guardian?” he said. “Why are you leading the Labour Party instead of the Tories?” I shot back. He laughed.

Full article is here. (Warning: links to Daily Mail)

Puzzle
Under what sort of circumstances does the tellingly misquoted suggestion “build it and they will come” actually apply? For example, build a wider road and more cars will come; build a random blog about stuff and nobody will really look at it at all.

Pictures
The ‘Ghost Man’ simply paints himself in order to blend in:

More here.

Categories
Old

Things 2: Acoustic standing waves, Aurora Sounds, Mammatus Clouds

(Originally sent in November 2007)

This week’s film, one line review
Unfortunately the story in Sleuth (2007) was changed from the original, so it was a bad story badly told.

I also saw the anime film “5 centimeters per second“, which was insanely beautiful.

Next week’s film
I’m going to see The Golden Compass some time next week. It’s too soon for ratings to appear on imdb or rotten tomatoes, although I am keen to see it just to boycott this boycott:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

Golden Compass Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vMmf8YALbc

Prognosis: The weakest of an otherwise amazing trilogy, it’s worth going to see this just to make sure the rest get made.

A Puzzle
If you forget to turn off your away notifier in Outlook and then send an email to someone that also has an away notifier on, does this cause an infinite loop? And if not, why not? Do you get an away notifier if you email yourself?

A Quote
LaPlace: “An intelligence that, at a given instant, could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings that make it up, if moreover it were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, would encompass in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atoms. For such an intelligence nothing would be uncertain, and the future, like the past, would be open to its eyes.”

A Link
The Golden Compass was called Northern Lights when it was first published.

These days there is not much left in the realm of human experience that science cannot explain, and I find myself extremely fascinated by the few things that are left.

Here’s an interesting link that relates to both of these things:
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=923

Perhaps needless to say, there’s a lot of other interesting stuff there.

A video
Continuing the audio science theme, here’s a beautiful demonstration of acoustic standing waves:

A picture
Mammatus clouds are extremely rare. They also look extremely photoshopped. See below and judge for yourself.

There’s lots more over at Dark Roasted Blend.

Categories
Old

Things 1: Chintz, Time Travel, Human Tetris

(Originally sent in November 2007)

I like the culture of sharing interesting things by email, but my obsessive nature makes me want to formalise the process. So here is the first edition of what may become a weekly thing. [My obsessive nature later drove me to create this blog in order to document historic ‘Things’ emails; these will now be republished here on Tuesdays – metatim, 25/03/10]

This week’s film – one line review:
American Gangster was an amazing story very well put together, that just fell a little short of being a true classic.

Next week’s film:
Sleuth (2007)
Imdb rating: 7.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes rating (summary of critics’ reviews): 33%

Sleuth Trailer:

[I originally linked to wherever I had found a trailer – now I’m posting on a blog I’m embedding whichever seems like the most canonical YouTube video – metatim, 25,03/10]

Prognosis: Looks like a bad version of a good story.

A Puzzle:
The following words all share a certain property:
Almost, Biopsy, Chintz

Can you find a number with that property?

A Quote:
From when I was about 14:

Me: “Wow! I feel like I’m going faster than I really am!”
My sister: “You are!”

A Link:
Cat and Girl is a very intelligent comic about hipsters, literature, life and science. Here’s one of my favourite ones:
http://www.catandgirl.com/view.php?loc=131
[archive has been recombobulated, here’s the new link – metatim, 25/03/10]
http://catandgirl.com/?p=1255

A video:
From the great tradition of Ridiculous Japanese Game Shows:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=84_QL1kEmH4

[original video removed – here’s an alternative – metatim, 25/03/10]


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll2kajMH2u0
[replacement video removed – here’s another alternative – metatim, 22/11/12]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hCzjku-Wfs
[replacement video removed – here’s another alternative – metatim, 06/12/13]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zxXXg46zi8

[Keeping up with takedowns clearly futile, so try searching like this – metatim, 02/08/15]

A picture: