These talented ladies sing this song rather nicely also!

Daito Manabe used a system that converts music to electrical impulses and wired up his friends’ faces to twitch in time to the song.

Frostie dancing to Ray Charles’ “Shake Your Tail Feather.” I really do believe this bird is dancing!

Now you don't see it, now you do. Something in Bootes truly in the middle of nowhere — apparently not even in a galaxy — brightened by at least 120 times during more than three months and then faded away. Its spectrum was like nothing ever seen, write the discoverers, with "five broad absorption bands between 4100 and 6500 Angstroms and a mostly featureless continuum longward of 6500 Angstroms." Even the cause of the spectral features is unknown.

The Hubble space telescope has found a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere. We’re talking about an object much larger than the sun. Some are even suggesting that this could be a new class of object. Of course, without actually understanding more about it, the speculation seems a bit wild. “The object also appeared out of nowhere. It just wasn’t there before. In fact, they don’t even know where it is exactly located because it didn’t behave like anything they know. Apparently, it can’t be closer than 130 light-years but it can be as far as 11 billion light-years away. It’s not in any known galaxy either. And they have ruled out a supernova too. It’s something that they have never encountered before. In other words: they don’t have a single clue about where or what the heck this thing is.”

[Sky and Telescope]

Ants and Bees
Ants use pheromones to transmit messages about predators. Bees wiggle around to tell their comrades the location of food supplies. Thompson says people, too, could benefit from broadcasting more whole-group communications. While mass emails may seem annoying, one-way bulletins can actually increase group efficiency by giving everyone access to information and letting them decide how best to act on it.

Geese
When geese fly in a V, the birds rotate in and out of the lead position. This is both to conserve energy and, according to Thompson, because no single bird has memorized the whole route. Collective leadership is the norm in much of the animal world, he says, though rare for humans. In the context of business, groups with rotating leaders possess greater initiative, resilience, and agility than those led by one executive.

Worms
The brain of the tiny C. elegans worm has a mere 302 neurons. It doesn’t need any more, because some of those neurons have an exceptional number of interconnectors. Translate this to the workplace: If an issue arises, the best-connected group members can serve as guides and help the team avoid bottlenecking at the top. These “hub” people can also quickly fine-tune strategy when new information comes in.

From the article at Wired Magazine.

Example:

2000 AD: We children beg you, teacher, that you should teach us to speak correctly, because we are ignorant and we speak corruptly…

3000 AD: *ZA kiad w’-exùn ya tijuh, da ya-gAr’-eduketan zA da wa-tAgan lidla, kaz ‘ban iagnaran an wa-tAg kurrap…

Check out some more fascinating examples from article FUTURESE
The American Language in 3000 AD.

Imagine flat people in a 2-dimensional universe

Have I piqued your interest  yet? Despite all the complex mathematics and geometry involved, this wonderful site will help you visualize the 4-dimensional universe with the help of animations, examples and simple calculations.

If you think all this is superfluous and pointless, you should understand that studies in this field of topology and speculation has connections to quantum theory (which helped create the computers and cell phones you use) to astronomy (black holes and the origins of the universe).

If you’ve heard of the tesseract or the hypercube, you’ll realize that these are 4-dimensional objects. If these objects moved around in our 3-dimensional universe, they would appear to behave in a odd and magical way.

See for yourself.

Visualize the 4th Dimension

North is this way!

They tend to point in the same direction when eating or resting. The researchers studied deer in the Czech Republic and looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth. Strange indeed.

Read More

Cloaking Device?

Unfortunately, this is not some new military invisibility technology or otherworldly spacescraft. It’s a work of art created with mirrors by Michael De Broin, deep in the forests of Alsace of Germany.

Here is the model De Broin used to fashion the final, large-scale sculpture.

De Broin says the sculpture, called “Superficial,” is about a “notion of transparency,” and that:

The large stone, tucked away deep in the woods, became a reflective surface for its surroundings. In this play of splintered radiance, the rock disappears in its reflections. Because it reflects one cannot be mislead by its presence, yet we cannot seize it, rather it is the rock that reflects us.

Find out more at www.environmentalgraffiti.com

Transparent Rocks

The original book cover

Several months ago, I just finished reading the highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy. Upon finishing the last few pages of the book, I suddenly became overwhelmed with sadness for the two protagonists. The entire novel is a slow, gradual build-up to the final pages where the lives of a father and son are chronicled as they make their long journey to the coast of North America.

Many have found this novel to be slow and uneventful. Perhaps they didn’t realize the intention of the author in creating this masterpiece. The story centers around a father and son, wandering post-apocalyptic America searching for hope and survival. It describes their daily lives and struggles, the strangers and eerily vacant locales they encounter and the horrors that are left behind after some unspoken calamity.

New book cover

This author is a Pulitzer Prize winner and was endorsed by Oprah in her book club. McCarthy paints such a detailed and haunting future that a movie is being filmed starring Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Charlize Theron. It is said the director is intimately tying the film to the book without moving astray from the story.

A pretty recent version of the script for post-apocalyptic drama The Road found its way into the hands of the folks at Quiet Earth, and they’ve posted a review of it. Apparently this version of the script, which is dated late 2007, is true to the original Cormac McCarthy novel except for a few minor changes. Quiet Earth’s Agentorange says his only worry is that this script is so dark that it’s actually hard to imagine it getting made into a Hollywood flick.

Agentorange writes:

If this is the script that gets filmed, then The Road will not only be the most important post-apocalyptic film ever made but it will profoundly affect the cinema going world. But I can’t help but wonder; is the world ready for a film this dark? . . . That’s not to say there aren’t some changes and surprises along the way. However, I’d say most if not all the changes are for the better. In some cases, scenes have been extended to create even more tension. If you’ve read the book you’ll know what I’m talking about when I mention “the house” scene. It is one of the tensest scenes in the screenplay and it has been extended to the point that it is almost unbearably suspenseful.

I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to fully immerse themselves in a world that is wonderfully written and beautifully described. This is not an action packed novella but you’ll find yourself emotionally attached to the characters and contemplate how you would react those situations in a future not entirely far-fetched.  <*>

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee