Jan/102
Rare photos of the cool.
Found a website that rivals The Impossible Cool. Nothing better than perusing photos of the coolest people eva!
Dec/090
The known Universe.
Another great video showing the incredible time and distance scales of the known Universe:
This one was put together by the American Museum of Natural History. Awesome.
Dec/091
The incredible machine.
This completely insane diagram details the metabolic processes that are happening at any given moment in your body. It's what makes you work. (Via Reddit, where you'll find a 50MB TIF version.)
Dec/090
Chromoscope the Universe.
Ever wanted X-ray specs or super-human vision? Chromoscope lets you explore our Galaxy (the Milky Way) and the distant Universe in a range of wavelengths from X-rays to the longest radio waves.
Your puny human visual sensors can detect only a small sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. Use the handy Chromoscope slide-bar to see what you're missing, and view the Universe as god does (or satellites, whatever).
Nov/090
Incredible artwork.
I was recently at a show in Toronto and went to an after-party with some very talented artists. My friend Dilan passed this link on to me. Kris Kuksi is from Missouri and his sculptures are based around the distaste in pop culture, greed and materialism. Some of these sculptures are valued at over $500,000 and some took hundreds of man hours to produce. I think they're worth every penny.
Sep/090
Jazz hands.
Amazing renditions of exotic animals. The artist's painted media incorporates the hands for a canvas to great effect. Amazing to say the least. Designed and painted by Guido Daniele. His full works can be seen Here.
(via Blue Blots)
Sep/090
Fractal police.
Check out this video that shows the repeating patterns at different scales in the Mandelbrot set:
I'm not a big fan of The Police, but this song really works with fractals!
Sep/090
Bobby McFerrin and the power of the pentatonic scale.
Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale, using audience participation, at the event "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus", from the 2009 World Science Festival, June 12, 2009.
What's going on here? How was the audience able to intuitively get it after only being shown two notes? What's special about the pentatonic scale that allows this to work around the world? After defining the first two notes, there are three scales that could follow. Why does the audience collectively, instantly, choose pentatonic? Interesting analysis here:
Now the audience is singing along in either the major scale or the major pentatonic scale, and we can't be sure which one it is, because the first three notes of each are identical. So to break the uncertainty, Bobby defines a fourth note: the note below the base note, as being three half steps below the base note in pitch. Now there isn't any more uncertainty. Only the major pentatonic scale has such a half note progression (in the regular major scale, the note below the base note is only one half step below in pitch). And the audience sings along, anticipating note after note both higher and lower than any Bobby had defined.
A few more awesome Bobby McFerrin videos are after the break.
(Via BoingBoing.)
PH0T0ADAY.
FLICKR TAG W0RD.CA.
