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Tuesday, 27 June 2006
Time and a word.

New words added to OED

posted by: kenjprice at June 27, 2006 23:06 | link | comments |

Questions of science, Science and progress, Do not speak as loud as my heart

Flight pattern

posted by: kenjprice at June 27, 2006 22:56 | link | comments (1) |
home and personal

Mechanical Turk

"Computers can’t do everything. Consider the following sentences:

John saw Jane at the store. She said, “Hi.”

You can tell right away that Jane is the person speaking. A program would have to perform serious computational gymnastics to reach the same conclusion.

Amazon invented Mechanical Turk for situations just like the one above: to solve problems that humans find easy but computers find hard."

So someone used it to analyse who said all the famous bible quotes. And got the whole job done for $75.

http://www.esv.org/blog/2006/06/mechanical.turk.recap

posted by: kenjprice at June 27, 2006 22:50 | link | comments |

Information transfer by genetics

Despite the misuse of almost all descriptions of information transfer, it pays to remind people that DNA information reaimns pretty important, and that people like Shannon had quanitified information quite accurately years ago. So it's no surprise that these can be combined.

"Jacob Schwartz once surprised a computer science class by calculating the bandwith of human sexual intercourse, the rate of information transmission achieved in human lovemaking. I'm too much of a theoretician to care about the exact answer, which anyway depends on details like how you measure the amount of time that's involved, but his class was impressed that the bandwidth that's achieved is quite respectable! "

Meta Math: The Quest for Omega Gregory Chaitin (p 67)

posted by: kenjprice at June 27, 2006 22:43 | link | comments (1) |

Let them eat Football

As you may have noticed,  Australia is no longer in the World Cup and hence soccer (football) reverts to its normal status of boring. Feeble-minded people will have another priority placed in their minds by the media. And morons will continue to be confused about why politics seems to always occur in sport, seemingly oblivious to the idea that teams are representing countries, which exist for political reasons. Another lap of the oval and they might figure it out.

However you may find this interesting: compare any two World Cup nations on other characteristics:

http://www.wdm.org.uk/whoshouldicheerfor/chooser.htm

posted by: kenjprice at June 27, 2006 22:36 | link | comments |
home and personal

Tuesday, 13 June 2006
Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe rewritten in one-syllable words

posted by: kenjprice at June 13, 2006 23:23 | link | comments |

powers of 10

there is an original powers of ten http://www.youtube.com/v/4i6B7HzijSo

and a Simpsons version of course. Search for it. Or try this one we prepared earlier

posted by: kenjprice at June 13, 2006 23:22 | link | comments |

medium is the new big

[fast-food chain] ... previously.sold a 16 ounce soft drink as a small, a 20 ounce soft drink as medium and a 32 ounce soft drink as Biggie. Now, a 20 ounce drink is a small, a 32 ounce drink is a medium and the new 42 ounce drink is a large.

42 ounces. That is... 1.25 litres. Why does anyone need 1.25L of soft drink?

posted by: kenjprice at June 13, 2006 23:15 | link | comments |

almost two seasons

you lay still and incomplete
stainless steel tugging remnant warmth
from waxblue flesh through green cotton.
skin fallen back to a weary outline
relieved of struggle
no famous striped jacket 
orbiting laughter now only memory
the hands that embraced, that might take on the world
so neatly and awkwardly placed

too soon. any time was too soon
the damaged shell, discarded
mixing with wet dark earth
diffusing, travelling with time
to some new and painless place
soaked in the sound of morning

just a blurred photo now
a brave love letter from Firenze
a promise to listen to music

and a deep and private place forever
 

posted by: kenjprice at June 13, 2006 22:51 | link | comments |
home and personal

Saturday, 10 June 2006
neat trick

How to run up a wall and flip

Yep, it can be done!

Before attempting, consider the risks (surface conditions, distance to a medical facility, skill of spotters, previous injuries, etc).

posted by: kenjprice at June 10, 2006 21:48 | link | comments |

colour illusion

This illusion, and several others, have been circulating for the past week or so. It's a fairly old technique, but this seems to highlight a property I had not seen before: if you don't shift your gaze, the colour persists for at least a few minutes (possibly, as long as you can hold your gaze)

posted by: kenjprice at June 10, 2006 21:44 | link | comments |

Wednesday, 07 June 2006
fractals in motion.

lovely animations of fractals

posted by: kenjprice at June 07, 2006 22:23 | link | comments |

A calendar of singularities

http://www.uibk.ac.at/mathematik/kalender05tage.html

posted by: kenjprice at June 07, 2006 22:22 | link | comments |

Help help I'm being repressed

A one-man reenactment of  scene from a great film

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fjph4G4z77M

posted by: kenjprice at June 07, 2006 22:21 | link | comments |

clever animation

http://abum.com/file/shadow/animations/17632.swf

Stick man vs Animator. This is very clever.

posted by: kenjprice at June 07, 2006 22:04 | link | comments |
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