Fascinating and very informative video asking a question that I hadn’t thought of before: Why do mirrors flip images horizontally but not vertically?
“See” for yourself…
I found this video in Slate.com. You should check it out:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/02/17/physics-girl-mirrors-flipping-images.html
And, totally gratuitously and incredibly tangentially, the song “Ghost In You” by the Psychedelic furs, from their album Mirror Moves…
This story made me smile, and given the barrage of negative news one reads each day, isn’t it worth smiling about something now and again?
Photographer Irena Werning started a fascinating project. She takes old pictures of individuals and recreates them in the present. The results, as I said before, make me smile. Check them out:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/15/living/cnnphotos-back-to-the-future/index.html
Interesting Q & A found on Quora.com regarding the above question:
Its been many years since Star Trek: The Next Generation came and went, but way, waaaay back in 1987 when the very first episode of it appeared and the concept of a “Holodeck” was revealed (a neat digression: What came first, the Holodeck or the X-Men’s Danger Room?), for the first time I, a HUGE fan of the original Star Trek series, found myself questioning the whole concept of Star Trek’s society’s viability.
The question linked to at the top, whether the Star Trek economy is essentially a welfare state, is a –ahem– logical one to consider. If this society has moved beyond the use of money and all your survival needs are given to you for free (food, lodging, medical care, etc.) then one wonders: Wouldn’t that result in a society of worthless, useless beings who sit around all day playing their music or video games or movies, etc., while doing nothing else that is worthwhile?
And if you add to this society a Holodeck, essentially the ultimate “mind” playground where you immerse yourself into your own movie/video game/wish fulfillment arena, then whatever could make you want to leave it?
These questions have stayed with me for a while. So much so I wrote a short story called “Virtual” a few years back (shameless plug: it can be found in my Shadows at Dawn short story collection) that tackled the issue of getting so involved in a virtual world that you don’t want to face the real one. The key to making this scenario/story work for me was this line:
The virtual world could go on, but only when paid for with real world cash.
The author of the first link states that a Star Trek society could work and isn’t a “welfare one” in the classic sense. But I suspect that it is one that couldn’t work. Mind you, I’m not an Ayn Randian proponent, but I do feel that you have to have a motivation to progress.
Whether you’re literally or figuratively hungry to improve yourself in some way, to find a reward for your actions/work, whether they be monetary solely to keep your alive or more figurative in the sense that you wish to create some work that might be admired by others, money rewards be damned, there has to be some kind of motivation.
And I’m afraid the universe of Star Trek, at least as presented starting with Star Trek: The Next Generation, lacks that concept. In my mind, every one of the adventures presented in all the series could well be on set on a Holodeck, and the entire human race never bothered to leave their living rooms.
Count me among those fascinated with the so-called “barnyard” finds, ie old/classic cars left behind and almost completely forgotten in some barnyard or garage only to re-emerge years later.
This has to be the ultimate such find, where a whopping 60 (!) antique luxury cars were uncovered in France. Estimated value? At least 20 million…
Having said this, and at the risk of following a positive with a negative, I can’t help but wonder if the antique car market might be nearing a supersaturation level. Like all collectables, from artwork to books to albums to comic books to coins to stamps, there comes a point where the upper ceiling of value has been reached and from there you can only, inevitably, go down.
Maybe at that point I’ll finally be able to afford my dreamcars…Either a ’61 vette…
Or a mid to late 1960’s era Mustang…
Do I ask too much?!
Of course, if someone out there is willing to donate either vehicle to me, I’m available 24/7 at…
😉
After the stunning terrorist attack in Paris, France has put in place new rules halting action movie productions in the city:
To some degree I can’t blame them for wanting to halt these productions. As stated in the article, the fear is that a) the productions might become targets themselves, and b) people might be confused by the productions and, given the heightened sensitivity, might mistake a movie production for something “real”.
As I’m currently not working on any action film set in Paris (!), it doesn’t affect me at all, but there have been some interesting action set pieces filmed in the city before and its a shame there may, at least for the near future, be no more such sequences filmed now.
Perhaps when the world calms down and becomes just a little more sane things might go back to how they were.
Though that might be asking a lot…
I’m a sucker for mysteries. Grim though the subject matter may be, the disappearances of people are particularly intriguing. Here then, from io9, are 8 Mysterious Disappearances (And The Clues That Keep People Guessing):
http://io9.com/8-mysterious-disappearances-and-the-clues-that-keep-pe-1683740875
The mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island is a personal favorite, though one can guess what happened to them. What makes it more intriguing is what the colonists left behind, scrawled on trees.
Not to be outdone, Cracked.com offers several intriguing mysteries of their own. First up, 5 Creepiest Disappearances:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19765_the-5-creepiest-disappearances-that-nobody-can-explain.html
The one I find most intriguing is Jean Spangler (#3) and her ties to, of all people, Kirk Douglas!
Next up, 5 Creepy Unsolved Disappearances That Nobody Can Explain (although the article has almost the very same title as the one above, it is a different):
http://www.cracked.com/article_21624_5-creepy-unsolved-disappearances-that-nobody-can-explain.html
Next, 5 Creepiest Unsolved Crimes Nobody Can Explain:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18459_the-5-creepiest-unsolved-crimes-nobody-can-explain.html
Check out #1, The Lead Masks Case. While I suspect that the capsules eaten were indeed poison, the rest of the case is just so damn bizarre.
Finally, 6 People Who Just Fucking Disappeared:
http://www.cracked.com/article_16501_6-people-who-just-fucking-disappeared.html
If all those links don’t give you goosebumps, I don’t know what will!
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Mark Twain, attributing the quote to Benjamin Disraeli
Nearly two weeks ago the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts played each other in the semifinal football game and, during that game, a curious thing happened: It was found that the Patriots’ footballs (each team provides their own for a game, in hindsight a very stupid concept) were under-inflated.
This caused an uproar. The Patriots, who had already been fined heavily a few years back for cheating, were accused of the “same-ol’ same-ol'”. Others came to the team’s defense, alternately wondering if maybe the weather had an effect on the ball’s inflation (I suspect that was easily disproven as the Colts’ balls, all of them, were properly inflated while a whopping 11 of the 12 balls the Patriots provided were under-inflated) or saying that under-inflating the balls wouldn’t create any noticeable advantage for the team.
A few days back (you can read it here) I pointed out the research of Warren Sharp into what he felt was the “impossible” low numbers of fumbles New England has made since roughly 2007, when a change in rules favored by, among others, New England’s quarterback Tom Brady allowed individual teams to bring their own balls into games.
Since that article came out, there of course appeared counterarguments (hence the reason I posted the above quote). Some of the counter-analysis has been curt to the point of insulting both the research of Mr. Sharp and as well as the person and claiming he and his statistics are a scam.
Here, however, Jordan Ellenberg for Slate Magazine examines the pro and con points and comes up with a decidedly middle of the road reading: the low number of fumbles produced by New England might not be “impossible” as Mr. Sharp claims, but they aren’t meaningless:
Perhaps the payoff line in the article is this one:
New England may not be an all-time outlier in the history of fumbles. But no one disputes that they went from average to very, very good (with number of fumbles), and it happened suddenly, and it happened one season after the NFL allowed each team to provide its own game balls and the same season they were caught violating the rules in another controversy that had opposing fans alleging long-running wrongdoing. This might have happened because the Patriots acquired more sure-handed players in 2007 and moved to a spread offense, as Fustin suggests. Or it might have happened because the Patriots have had squishy balls for years, as everyone outside of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts suggests. The fumble stats alone are consistent with both theories.
For me, the proof lies in what happens from here on in. You just know the NFL will be a lot more careful about the balls being brought into games. There will be a level of scrutiny towards them as never before to make sure all the balls in any given game are exactly as they should be.
I’ll be very curious once that happens to see what New England’s fumble statistics look like and if the period from 2007 to 2015 will prove to be a statistical “aberration” and their fumbles fall more in line with your average team’s fumbles. If so, this should prove that under-inflated balls did prove to be an advantage.
We’ll see.
For those unfamiliar with Otzi the Iceman, this little video provides you with an introduction:
Well, there appears to be one more tattoo found on Otzi’s body:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/26/otzi-iceman-new-tattoo_n_6546884.html
The most fascinating thing about Otzi is that, as mentioned in the intro above, he was a murder victim. The fact that he died and was preserved for 5300 years makes him the old mummified corpse ever.
Stuff like this just absolutely fascinates me.
So you’re an American football fan looking forward to the Super Bowl this coming Sunday and, unless you also happen to be one of those rare football fans living in a cave, have heard about Deflategate or Ballghazi or whatever they’re calling it: The fact that the New England Patriots were found to have 11 of their 12 footballs deflated below the level they should be dictated by the NFL’s rules in the semi-final game against the Indianapolis Colts. (Worth noting: in the NFL, each team brings and plays with their own set of balls and it was found almost every one of the Patriots’ balls were underinflated while none of the Colt’s balls were)
I’ve heard a lot from commentators since then. Some outright state that deflating the ball to the levels found in the Patriots’ balls is not worth making much of. Others feel this is part and parcel of the Patriots’ modus operandi, ie they were already were found and punished for cheated a few years before and this is par for the course.
Frankly, I didn’t know if underinflating a ball would have that much of an impact on a game until I read this:
To all those who either scoff at the underinflation of balls or were, like me, unsure if such a thing would matter, please consider the statistics presented above. It shows the Patriots since around 2007 have led the league –strikingly!– in having the least amount of fumbles despite the large amount of plays performed, by an order of magnitude which is statistically incredible.
A few years back there were those who scoffed at the advantages of using performance enhancing drugs for baseball players, noting that having more muscles doesn’t help you hit a fastball. Yet the reality was that when the baseball league decided to clean up their act, the number of home runs dropped dramatically and are now near the norm statistically.
For me, this relates directly with “Deflategate”: The Patriots were using underinflated balls, who knows for how long now, and they were doing so because they obviously felt it was beneficial for them to do so. The statistics above may well point out the “why”.
Now that the Patriots’ have been “found out” and I’m sure the league will be far more careful in checking out ball pressure, I’ll be very curious to see how the Patriots’ fumble statistics look like in the future. Will they fall more within the normal range of other teams?
I will not be shocked if they do.
Nothing like starting the work week in total panic…thanks to your alarm not going off.
Will have to check what exactly happened. Electricity went out for a while on Saturday and I thought we had the alarm clock squared away. Turned out not to be the case and I feel like I’m still trying to catch up on things.