ideonexus

Month: June 2008

  • John Coleman, Global Warming, and the Price of a Gallon of Gas

    John Coleman, weatherman for KUSI in San Diego, has an unintentionally hilarious rant posted, Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas, where he blames Global Warming Theorists for the high cost of oil and what he seems to think is the impending destruction of civilization because of it. Mind you, it’s not…

  • NY Hall of Science: Optical Illusions

    Dancing Shadows The photo set for this exhibit is a big let down, mostly because the real life display is so dynamic. A still photo doesn’t capture what spinning geometric shapes does to your brain. A photo of a spring that isn’t there has none of the effect of actually trying to reach out and…

  • International Weblogger’s Day 2008: Change

    It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charels Darwin Homo sapiens experience change throughout our lives, but when it comes to changes on the scale of our civilization or environment, we have the perspective of walking along the Earth’s surface,…

  • The Hip Hop Chess Federation and Other Variants on the Immortal Game

    In honor of the recently established Hip Hop Chess Federation, which combines the mental discipline of chess with the physical discipline of the martial arts and the intellectual strength of Hip Hop music (I’m not up on the new stuff, but am a longtime Public Enemy fan), I thought I’d post some inspirations for the…

  • Studio 360: When Particles Collide

    Large Hadron Collider Credit: US LHC Actress Marth Plimpton reads a short short story Lydia Millet was commissioned to write for Studio 360 on the idea of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) producing a black hole, and the cultural, political, and spiritual ramifications of this ludicrously remote possibility. What happens if the worst happens? is…

  • Clay Shirky Here Comes Everybody

    The fictional religion Bokononism featured in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, describes an interesting theory of social relations. In this worldview, there are two types of organizations, granfalloons, which are artificially imposed relationships, big bureaucracies such as political parties (because they are big tents) or corporate organization, and karassi, which are naturally-emergent social networks. Here Comes…

  • Alien Peeping Toms

    Space Aliens Grille & Bar Photo by dacotahsgirl I am 99.9 percent certain that the video of an alien peeking through a window is a fabrication. I am aware of the experts who have examined the video and claim its authenticity, but, to my mind, this is like having experts certify Dittoheads have hearts, no…

  • Life in Our Cosmic Backyard

    Arthur C. Clark’s book 2010 has an early scene that was left out of the movie. A Japanese spacecraft has raced to Jupiter’s moon Europa, ahead of a joint American-Russian expedition, to claim the satellite, and all its water, for Japan. Soon after the craft lands, Earth receives a radio transmission from a lone, doomed…

  • NY Hall of Science: Mathematica

    NY Hall of Science: Mathematica Great Big Mobius Strip (An Object that has only one side) One of my biggest academic regrets was not taking Calculus. Mathematics, as it was taught in my high school, was a dull, sterile subject with little bearing on reality. It wasn’t until I got into computer programming that I…

  • The Telectroscope

    Visiting the Telectroscope art installation in DUMBO was fortunately a convenient excursion, located a block down the street from Grimaldi’s Pizzaria (best pizza in New York). Seeing Londoners Through the Telectroscope What’s a telectroscope? Here’s a description from the installation’s website: Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In…

  • NY Sun Works: The Science Barge

    After sleeping in late recovering from an all-night Chinatown-Express bus ride into NY, I hopped over to Hudson River Park to check out the Science Barge, first project of the NY Sun Works for sustainable engineering. The Science Barge Sarah Hanna, Educational Coordinator for the barge, gave us a tour of the facility, which is…

  • 2008 World Science Fair

    I and my sister spent the whole day last Saturday hanging around New York University taking in the 2008 World Science Festival. It was the first. It was a hit. I plan to attend again next year. Disney Imagineering Dr. Anne Savage Shows a GPS Collar for Elephants We started off the morning with a…