I thought Pandora was cool. And it is. But Slacker...

The only drawback is the volume thing. It varies from artist/album to artist/album. Small price to pay. So give Thingy Radio a try.

You likee.

Labels: neat-o, tunes

It was this Yahoo! news item that sent me on a 45-minute cymatics binge. They seem to be very confident that this is what they're saying it is, and if it is, it's really incredible and probably shouldn't be relegated to the "offbeat news" pages of CNN and the like. It's the stuff of life, of the human story.

While flipping through the channels today, I didn't hear about this. But I did learn that Britney Spears lip-synced publicly for the first time in three years.

Anyway, here's Mitchell's video:

Labels: neat-o

I'd heard of cymatics before, but had never seen anything about cymatics until recently. This is some fascinating stuff. Suggestion: Turn down your volume a bit. Not because this is loud, but because the pitches near the end of this are of the dog whistle variety, and my ears are still ringing from the experience. You can also turn it down completely and just watch what the different tonal vibrations do to the sand. At the end, the patterns look almost Mayan to me.

Labels: neat-o

A while ago my friend Josh sent me this video of the Lyrebird. I had only heard of the Lyrebird from an old XTC song. If there's a more amazing bird on the planet, I'd like to know what it is. To me, what's really astonishing about this is, this bird doesn't seem to require practice. When we attempt to imitate, we usually get better at it over time and with repetition. What mechanism does the Lyrebird have in its walnut-sized brain that allows it to almost perfectly emulate such a variety of sounds in its environment, and without the need to hone each sound as an individual skill? Is practice merely the product of human limitations? This thing is amazing. Turn up the volume and watch—to the end.

Labels: neat-o

Check out this fast-forward through a drawing of Lost character John Locke. I probably won't bother launching Adobe Illustrator ever again.

Labels: neat-o

I thought I was sitting still when my uncle wrote to remind me that we're moving at 2,160,000 kilometers per hour, which is...you know, fast.

Labels: at home, neat-o

Hubble photos are some of the most amazing pictures you'll see (at least to these eyes). Here's a nice compilation of some award winners. Seeing pictures of things so unfathomably vast and eerily beautiful always takes my mind to the Bigger Questions.

I had no idea that there were giant man made tunnels under Niagara Falls. This site about them is pretty interesting.

The world will soon have its first Swedo-cablinasian. Cheers! Some pundits are already wondering if this development will distract Tiger and hamper his game. It's as if, after 8 years of covering him on the PGA Tour, they still don't know the guy.

Labels: neat-o

Tyler would like to discuss how a commercial plane was forced to land because a woman farted, and normally I'd be eager to do that, but I was just scanning the wires and saw that the presence of water on Mars has been proven now thanks to new photos. This should be the #1 headline on the local news everywhere, unless Paris Hilton did something provocative today. It was hard to doubt the idea of water, at one time at least, with all the strange formations and channels that have suggested water for a long, long time, but the real thrill with this news, I think, is this stunning concept is finally being accepted by "the mainstream", which incidentally would make a decent band name.

Where there's water, there can be life. I still remember an issue of LIFE magazine that arrived when I was a kid in the early 80s. It was all about how NASA would terraform Mars for human habitation by, oh, they probably said 2000 because back then 2000 seemed so far off. I don't recall their guesstimate, but I'm almost certain that the date has passed. Anyway, the presence of water I recall was something that they really needed to have to make it that much easier to start the process, which is still one of the coolest concepts I've read since then.

Can we keep this sort of thing in the news, please? Pleeeeaaaase?

Labels: neat-o

Gotta love things like this when they're done well. Check out Little People: a tiny street art project. (London)

Labels: neat-o

Check this out. On some obscure Russian beach, soldiers discovered an unknown creature that looks like something from that old movie The Dark Crystal. New species, deformed known species, or just a whale of some kind that looks different from the advanced decomposition? Makes me think of the lizardine creatures of old seafaring lore, long considered merely lore, or the product of drunken sailor imaginings. This certainly fits the description, and it really does look different. Hopefully there'll be some kind of follow-up...but it was found in Russia, so maybe not.

Labels: neat-o

Doesn't it seem like an archetypal dream to imagine that the greatest discovery ever would be made accidentally by a couple of Irish blokes? I'm not sure which is more interesting, their alleged findings, or the hate mail they receive.

Labels: neat-o, ponderage

File under Cool: There's this thing on Long Island they call The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. It's part of Brookhaven National Laboratory, where a lotta brilliant people mingle. It's been around for several years now—maybe you've heard about it. This thing is visible from space, and while it has provided some arcane data that less than 1% of the population can comprehend, it's most widely known for its debated potential to create a world-ending black hole.

By slamming gold ions into each other at the speed of light, they generate thermal bursts a million times hotter than the sun. Apparently doing so can teach us about the state of the universe shortly after the Big Bang, and about matter itself. Neato.

But back before they turned the thing on for the first time, scientists tried to assure a doubting public that the risk of the collider producing a black hole capable of instantly swallowing the Earth, which apparently is mathematically plausible, is "not likely". I remember reading those words and thinking, "oh shit. Those sound like fated words." But then I thought, fate requires a presence. It requires an audience. If RHIC created a black hole that turned the lights off on Everything, those words would be fated words indeed, but they'd be nothing at the same time. Not that such goofy semantics matter...I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, I was recently reminded about the RHIC collider so I checked out their Website and was happy to learn that they stopped being wishy-washy about The Big Oops!, putting such fears to rest aggressively. File under whew?

Labels: neat-o, ponderage

Just had a friend point me in the direction of a new band he thought I'd like. He was right. Not only are the songs of Ok Go really good in a poppy rock urban-suburban paisley artpunk sort of way, but their video for "Here It Goes Again" is a rare piece of originality and cleverness amidst a heap of cookie cutter bullshit and acts that take themselves far too seriously to be interesting. But I wouldn't really know, because that very heap is why I don't watch any music videos anymore. But hey.

Labels: neat-o, tunes

I'd say something about Calvin & Hobbes...y'know, something like how it was a diamond in a pit of coal, and how most every other cartoonist published on the not-so-funny pages should bow in servility and apologize for their relative mediocrity, but this page does all that well enough. Thanks for the link, Todd.

Labels: neat-o

It was just a matter of time, wasn't it? Apparently "they" can grow meat like plants. This is meat that never had a face, which I'm sure will tickle the folks at PETA. Yep...using stem cells and related lab wizardry, it looks like we're headed for clinical meat farms. Y'know, I'm not quite sure where I am on this one. I mean, the way we raise, feed, slaughter, and butcher animals for our backdoor BBQs ain't pretty, so we look away and pretend that it's just some magic yumminess on a bun. When I'm eating a steak I don't think, "this once ate protein pellets and sloshed in its own shit for years, doing little else than pissing, pooping, mooing, and stutter-stepping on its way to my esophagus." And neither do you, I suspect.

But we've come to take that whole thing so completely for granted that it seems darker and more disgusting to grow that burger in a petri dish. Doesn't it? But I have a feeling this little story will have legs (rimshot). I think this is going to happen. There'll always be a market for the slaughterhouses, but I'll bet that if this becomes a viable food source, it will split the vegetarian establishment into two, possibly three bitter houses of self absorption:

Labels: neat-o

With all the talk of "Intelligent Design" around here and in the general media lately, a wee light shined somewhere in my neocortex last night as I tossed and turned my way into a sloppy sleep of fits and starts. For starters, I've always believed in some form of higher power(s) or intelligence(s) but I've never been particularly interested in trying to define the God concept. I've never been comfortable with the way that most people treat the divine unknown. When beliefs form in people a self-righteous platform that they claim others must adhere to, or else...you have a dangerous situation in one way or another.

However, I personally don't know anyone who is strong in their religious beliefs and also a fanatic, let alone a deluded fool like Bin Laden. The people I know who are strong in their faith do not ask others to stare down the barrel of their beliefs. They live their lives as best they can according to their faith and they don't ask anyone to copy them. I respect that. For me...if there's one thing that I truly believe, it's that some things are unknowable. And I'm okay with that.

That being said, the debate over teaching the notion of "intelligent design" deserves to be controversial; it shouldn't be easy to jump onto one side of the fence or the other. It should be immensely difficult, and where you stand should be the product of heavy introspection, investigation, and open mindedness. It shouldn't come from one's own indoctrination, but that's another debate.

So...my watch implies a watchmaker. Does the world imply a worldmaker? One thing that does lend credibility, in my mind, to the notion of intelligent design is 1.618, or the golden ratio—also referred to as phi. Good ol' Euclid defined it way back in some year or other B.C. It's "the only number whose square can be produced simply by adding 1 and whose reciprocal can be produced by subtracting 1." Was that a yawn? Fair enough.

How about this: "If you take a golden rectangle—one whose length-to-breadth is in the golden ratio—and snip out a square, what remains is another, smaller golden rectangle. The golden ratio is also difficult to pin down: it's the most difficult to express as any kind of fraction, and its digits—10 million of which were computed in 1996—never repeat....It was this elusive nature that led the 15th-century Italian friar and mathematician Luca Pacioli to equate the golden ratio with the incomprehensibility of God." (Quote culled from an article in The Guardian.)

But in my opinion, it's not the math anecdotes (mathecdotes?) that make it interesting. It's that the number shows up everywhere in nature. It's in the patterns of leaves, the honeycombs of bees, the physics of black holes, the chambers of a nautilus, the shape of galaxies...it even shows up in some crop circles. It's everywhere.

You can even find an awareness of the golden ratio in the Parthenon, the Great Pyramid, in DaVinci's Vitruvian Man, and the musical compositions of Debussy and others. Even "a cross-sectional view of the top of the DNA double helix forms a 10-sided figure, made up of two five-sided figures, which have diagonal ratios of 1:1.618." The more you read about 1.618, the creepier—and the more exciting—it becomes.

Need a better explanation? Try this. It won't disappoint.

So, is phi a grand mathematical accident that just so happens to bind everything in the universe together? Or, could it be what the folks in encryption call a primer, a key that unlocks the door to greater truths...a key that allows us to understand and solve greater problems...? That's the question I asked myself and it kept me up all night. It just feels right.

I don't think of God as a dude with a white beard sitting on a golden throne with angels floating around him playing harps. I'd be more inclined to think of god as an unseeable thing; something without form as we know it, the same way math itself has no form. But maybe God, whatever that means, left 1.618 out there for mankind to find as evidence of intelligent design. Or maybe 1.618 existed before, or independent of God, and God merely used it to create the universe. Or maybe we created God out of a need to understand why these constants of nature exist. Or maybe nature itself is God, and vice versa, and we see it every day.

I have no idea. And that really, really works for me.

Labels: neat-o, ponderage

National Geographic has a neat little application that serves as a teaser for their two hour special on May 30th. (Click Launch Interactive.) Sit back and let the imagination take control. It's an interesting ride. That upcoming special looks pretty good, too.

This commercial is a couple years old, but I still love watching it. Tell me this isn't the coolest commercial ever. Go ahead, tell me. (Gotta love Rube Goldbergs.)

The best part of this headline is "baffles scientists". I just love that. I'll be following this one.

Maybe The Matrix was on to something.

Looks like somebody won the "find a blimp" contest.

South Korea leading the way in cell therapeutics? Well done, Seoul. But I hate to think that U.S. scientists will have their hands tied on this because of politics. I think Bush is wrong on stem cells and it's frustrating that he's determined to delay the inevitable. It's going to happen, George. Don't put American scientists behind the 8-ball. (Why does all the talk focus on the concern about cloning humans, as if we're going to see carbon copies of Adonis walking the streets...? Isn't this about the ability to grow replacement tissue and finally get a leg up on our most debilitating diseases?)

How about real-time earthquake forecasting?

The Onion's new "News in Pictures" section is hilarious. Check it out. #6 kills me.

Not Cool. Not At All.

When CNN determines that American Idol merits a front-page headline, you realize that you really are in the twilight zone.

I thought I was done with this, but this subject is like a Medusa head. Are dark corners of the American media determined to help create another 9/11? I don't know, but it seems as if I'm forced to ask myself this at least weekly. And then there's the ACLU. Hiding behind their false platform of civil liberties, you have to wonder what really motivates this group. You have to wonder what their real goals are. Again, we have the IMPLICIT message that the strategic claims of terrorist prisoners are true, while the word of the U.S. military is not to be trusted. I hope the ACLU doesn't lull the world into thinking that they are all about justice and freedom. They have an ugly underneath.

I once did some volunteer work for Amnesty International, back in the early 90s. They've done some good things. But they're not all good, either. Likening Guantanamo Bay to a gulag should piss off any American possessing more than a limbic system. This is such bullshit. I'm getting so sick of this anti-American BS all over the media. Gee, Amnesty...why didn't you say anything about Saddam's torture camps that terrorized its citizens for decades?

If you need more evidence that the (worldwide) media is out of control, full of shit, and determined to undermine the U.S., Google Iraq torture camps and count how many articles there are on Saddam's (former) torture camps versus articles that either implicitly or blatantly bash the U.S. military for their treatment of captured terrorists.

The world is going insane.

Labels: neat-o