Magic and science: Together again at last

Worthy 11 min video from Scientific American about "neuroscience and the art of illusion".

"Martinez-Conde, along with her husband and fellow scientist Stephen Macknik are the subject of our recent video on the neuroscience of magic. Joined by master pickpocket Apollo Robbins (who is not really a criminal, of course; he calls himself a "gentleman thief"), the trio gives us a new perspective on how the brain works as we watch the tricks and manipulations of the magician."

Along that note:

In the March 2012 issue of the Smithsonian Magazine, "Teller" reviles his basic methods for deceiving the human mind (and thus performing magic tricks). 

The Great Chemical Unknown

Scientific American has a nice diagram and summary of the # of restricted chemicals used in in production in the US, the number tested, and the number used.

"Chemicals used by the US consumers and industry: 50,000
Tested: 300
Restricted: 5"

"The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act does not require chemicals to be registered or proven safe before use. ....it has managed to require testing of only about 300 substances that have been in circulation for decades. ... Stricter scrutiny in Europe and Canada suggests that “10 to 30 percent of U.S. chemicals would need some additional level of control,”

oh... and then there's this:

• Everyday BPA Exposure Decreases Human Semen Quality: The more bisphenol A men were exposed to--at work or through the environment--the worse off their sperm were, according a new study that finds the link in humans. By Katherine Harmon October 28, 2010

The joys of engineering leadership

Good Google I/O presentation from Brian W. Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman : "How to loose friends and alienate people: The joys of engineering leadership". Good presentation on ways to be a good leader.

Guide to Greener Electronics

Greenpeace posted their list of the most environmentally responsible major electronics manufactures.

The guide ranks the 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change. Last updated: October 2010.

Our three goals for this guide are to get companies to:

* Clean up their products by eliminating hazardous substances.
* Take back and recycle their products responsibly once they become obsolete.
* Reduce the climate impacts of their operations and products.

Guerrilla Trucks

Newsweek reporter Ravi Somaiya has an article on "Why rebels and insurgent groups the world over love the Toyota Hilux pickup as much as their AK-47s."

"It’s the vehicular equivalent of the AK-47. It’s ubiquitous to insurgent warfare. And actually, recently, also counterinsurgent warfare. It kicks the hell out of the Humvee.

[...]

An experiment conducted by British TV show Top Gear in 2006 offers one explanation. The show’s producers bought an 18-year-old Hilux diesel with 190,000 miles on the odometer for $1,500. They then crashed it into a tree, submerged it in the ocean for five hours, dropped it from about 10 feet, tried to crush it under an RV, drove it through a portable building, hit it with a wrecking ball, and set it on fire. Finally they placed it on top of a 240-foot tower block that was then destroyed in a controlled demolition. When they dug it out of the rubble, all it took to get it running again was hammers, wrenches, and WD-40. They didn’t even need spare parts."

John Sculley On Steve Jobs

The Cult of Mac has a great interview by Leander Kahney with John Sculley. Sculley talks about about running Apple, and about Steve Jobs.

"Here’s a full transcript of the interview with John Sculley on the subject of Steve Jobs.

It’s long but worth reading because there are some awesome insights into how Jobs does things.

It’s also one of the frankest CEO interviews you’ll ever read. Sculley talks openly about Jobs and Apple, admits it was a mistake to hire him to run the company and that he knows little about computers. It’s rare for anyone, never mind a big-time CEO, to make such frank assessment of their career in public."

2D Barcode Patch

P8TCH is a cool site that allows you to take 2D barcode, and make an actual fabric patch for your bookbag, etc, which points to a url.

"Think of it as a short URL you wear. Each 2x4-inch, velcro-backed p8tch has a Mysterious Commando Design on the top, and a QRCode on the bottom ....Each p8tch comes with a secret passkey that lets you set the redirect target of the URL as often as you like. So it really is like a TinyURL, except one that you can control."

Also note ZXing, where you can encode your name/address into a 2D barcode

Hack a Day has a note on "How to put your logo in a QR code"

and NPR (on 09.26.11) points out that "Few Consumers are cracking the QR Code"... except for well off, middle age, white men....

Courtney Love on Record Labels

Salon.com back in 2000 posted an article by Cortney Love about the recording industry. (good read)

"Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software.

I'm talking about major label recording contracts"

Locals and Tourists (flickr)

Eric Fisher has an interesting idea: Analise all the geotagged photos in flickr, and map where the locals vs. tourists take pictures.

"Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more).

Red points are pictures taken by tourists (people who seem to be a local of a different city and who took pictures in this city for less than a month).

Yellow points are pictures where it can't be determined whether or not the photographer was a tourist (because they haven't taken pictures anywhere for over a month). They are probably tourists but might just not post many pictures at all."

Clayton Boyer Gears & Clocks

I first stumbled across Clayton Boyer's youtube entries on odd shaped gears. But when I checked out his website, he has some fantastic wooden clocks (showing the gears), and some great sculptures.

great places to live

American Planning Association has an interesting writeup on the great neighborhoods in America for 2010. Their great places section not only talks about what they like, but why they think "X" is important.

how related am I to my dog?

TimeTree.org is a cool...

public knowledge-base for information on the evolutionary timescale of life. A search utility allows exploration of the thousands of divergence times among organisms in the published literature.

So if you want to see how many years ago humans and dogs were the same, you can simply search this from the website.

See intro video:

100 Cats + IKEA = ?

What do you get when you stick 100 cats in an IKEA store?

A clever publicity stunt!

Right vs. Left

In an 10/2009 posting, the informationisbeautiful website (a website you should spend a *LOT* of time browsing around) presented an interesting diagram of the differences between the American political system.

Raytheon XOS 2 exoskeleton

In a UPI article about the Raytheon XOS2, the authors want to compare it to Ironman, but I see more parallels to the "Aliens Powerloader".