Prototype For New Understanding #1

... by Brian Jungen. Currently at the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery.

Not So Harmless

The folks over at Creation Science Evangelism are coming up with answers to some of those awkward questions that arise when you believe the bible is the word of God that must be taken literally.

So. How did marsupials get to Australia? Well, according to CSE, once Noah released the animals on Mount Ararat, natural instincts and climatic conditions determined how the redistribution of the animal population took place. An immediate consequence of the worldwide flood was a brief but severe ice age which locked ocean water into vast ice fields. This lowered ocean levels and created a land bridge to Australia.

Okaaaaaaaay... let me say a few things about the Koala. They are not travelling animals. The Koala has an unusually small brain. It rests motionless for about 18 to 20 hours a day, sleeping most of that time and lives almost entirely on eucalyptus leaves. And if things get a bit stressful they get chlamydia.

They did not hop off the ark in Northern Turkey and roam to New South Wales in a small herd eating a convenient trail of long-disappeared eucalyptus. With cock pox.

Here they are offering advice for someone with concern for her young niece being taught evolution in school:

Help, my niece is being taught evolution!

There are essentially two things that you can do from here. You can encourage the isolation of your niece, and get her out of that environment, or you can insulate her and prepare her for that environment. Isolation can be done through private Christian schooling, or even home schooling. Ministries like ours exist to help you insulate your children. Our desire is to get them ready to face this world and the things it will confront them with.

The CSE ministry was established in 1989 by Kent Hovind. In 2001 Hovind started Dinosaur Adventure Land, a young earth creationist theme park in Pensacola, Florida. The park depicts humans and dinosaurs co-existing in the last 4,000-6,000 years. According to the IRS, Hovind's theme park and merchandise sales earned more than $5 million USD from 1999 to March 2004.

Hovind is currently serving a ten-year term in Edgefield Federal Correctional Institution, South Carolina for 58 tax offenses, obstructing federal agents and related charges.

Phun

Ripping off of BoingBoing is only done in extreme circumstances -

Blistering Barnacles

Here's Charles Darwin in October 1852 coming to the end of his seven year study into the Barnacle:

I am at work at the second volume of the Cirripedia, of which creatures I am wonderully tired. I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before...

If you happen to be about to purchase his first volume of the Cirripedia, beware:

My first volume is out; the only part worth looking at is on the sexes of Ibla and Scalpellum.

You have been warned.

Can you believe I walked past a shop offering a framed print of the above Tintin rocket. With the right amount of red wine, I'd say it's the greatest thing ever.

Sheep Worrier

If you've become a bit of a city boy or city girl I can recommend getting back to nature once in a while. You'll need to find a pub in the middle of nowhere with a total lack of street lighting. Roll up to the pub after a mile trek from wherever you're staying. After some drinks sitting outside you'll be driven inside by the insects. Roll out a good few pints later and it is dark. Pitch black outside.

Back in the city you could see the moon in the night sky. On the walk home from country pub you'll see the Milky Way. I think it's like this... our galaxy is a fried egg. From where we're at, look out at the kitchen ceiling and you're not going to see too many stars. Look into the yoke in the middle and you're going to be looking at a lot of stars. The upshot is, you get a band of stars across the sky.

Have a nice walk home. Hope you remembered your torch and don't worry any of the local farm animals... speaking of which, this laser will target over 10km, beam divergence 4 inches at 1km. Apparently.

Cosmic Motors

Daniel Simon now has a trailer for his Cosmic Motors book.

Genius Logo

2600: The Hacker Quarterly magazine's name comes from the discovery in the '60s that a plastic toy whistle that was given away free in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal could emit a tone at precisely 2600 hertz, the same frequency that was used by AT&T long lines to indicate that a trunk line was ready and available to route a new call. This would effectively disconnect one end of the trunk, allowing the still-connected side to enter an operator mode.

Anyway CCC2007 had a nice banner design, don't you think?

Mikrokopter

Check out this amazing video. The music is... different. Play it through your stereo at full volume in a dark room and flicker a desk lamp pointed at your face on and off. Well that's what it was like when I turned up to a Klaxons gig and saw Simian Mobile Disco when I was tired and sober.

Anyway, these are Mikrokopters - radio controlled quadrotors. They make use of 3-axis accelerometers and gyros to stabilized flight, and I2C serial bus motor control so it can respond quickly enough that it all works beautifully. The guys there have made it all open source and even provide a shop to buy the bits from.

Colour Coding

This is the Droid Sans Mono font and a Vibrant Ink colour scheme in Visual Studio. Makes me want to finish all the stupid programs I've started to write in C#. More info here.

It looks like they've come to the same setup that trillions of pounds spend on flight display systems has reached:

London 3D

Some nice work on a 3D London Tube map here.

Specialized Gone Sticker Crazy

For your viewing pleasure.

Survival Skills

Remember. When finding yourself in a survival situation, panic kills. Stop and think. The beer bottle opener is on the end there.

Whatever

Star Wars vs Liam Lynch mashup can be found in volume 6 here.

HDR

High Dynamic Range images involve taking more than one photo with different exposures. You combine them in a kind of best-bits-of-each way. Some results are breathtaking.

Biathlon News

Biathletes try to reduce their breathing and heart rate when shooting. Well, you can practise that skill right now.

Nowt for 5 Months. This Had Better Be Good.

Just too much to post. What could it be then? World's first artificial life form a step closer? No. It's... more carbon-laden bike stuff. Not particularly new either. There'll probably be some lycra clad lovely along soon.

Nothing changes you know.

Astronomical Clock

If you've got a Sony Ericsson phone and don't read instruction manuals, you might have a cool panoramic mode on your Camera that you don't know about. You take three shots and after the first, it overlays a half-transparent bit of the first picture so you get the second shot pointing in just the right place. Okay, the 'joins' are a bit wonky here but with the amount of beer drunk on the previous night, it's amazing I could do anything.

Anyway, you can see the Astronomical Clock in Prague on the left of the photo. Strongly recommended. The display on the hour is so underwhelming, you get to see a few hundred tourists wondering to themselves if that really was it. Then they'll start turning to each other, asking if that was it, and if they can go or perhaps hang on, 'cos that can't have been it. I'm afraid that was it.

People of Prague, What the Hell Are You Trying To Tell Us?

If, on the off chance that it's a sign saying it's okay to play football, drive and sledge a house, then I take it back - it's an excellent sign. But then, why they hell is it so randomly spaced? I didn't have OCD until I saw this sign. Why the hell is the car up there if the slegde is on the ground?

Some Guy in Cheadle Has Big Problem With Paving, No Problem With 50 Foot Phallus

Some guy has got three pages on examples of bad paving in Cheadle (this one's poorly set guttering with large crevices) but no problem with the 50 foot phallus in the high street. Check out the giant "Market Cross" half way down this page. NSFW.

Low Flying

M31

I'd like to show you the amazing astrophotography of Bob Fera - specifically an amazing composite image of galaxy M31 - but seeing as it's all copyright you'll just have to make do with this motorway sign.

If that's not good enough, check out his website here, and track down the Andromeda Galaxy. It seems he takes these from his home's observatory or some car park in California.

Noise Cancelling Headphones

I got to try these Bose QuietComfort 3 Noise Cancelling Headphones recently. They were amazingly good. I'd never used noise cancelling headphones before, and it was shocking to find out how effective they were. Very comfy too. And very expensive.

Breadbin News

Just spotted this on Grand Designs and it seems everyone else has seen it already. If you haven't, it's a breadbin. With a tail.

Heavy Sea

Container ship in heavy sea - the video keeps cutting to a shot below deck, showing the flex the ship is taking which is pretty amazing.

Non Stop Rock N Roll Voodoo Action

I think Vince Ray has a shop in London somewhere near Soho. As everyone should own some of his art I'll check it out and get back.

Software Bugette

Here's the engine from the F-22 showing its thrust vectoring capabilities, in somebody's garage by the looks of it.

Anyway, it's an expensive plane but six F-22's flying from Hawaii to Japan experienced some problems when they flew over the international date line and their software decided to wig out completely at the notion that the date to the east of the line is one day earlier than that to the west of the line. They lost a lot of important functions like navigation but managed to land safely thanks to the good visibility by follow their refueling tanker back to base.

Cillit Cillit Bang Bang

...Our fine scum cleaning friend.

Mountain Bike Downhill

Judging by the You Tube comments I'm not the only one who's jealous and wants to know where this is.

Dahon Misses Chance to Include Lycra

Nice example of a folding bike from Dahon. Yep, they've included carbon fibre bits. Nope, there's no lycra in sight here. Come on marketing, it's not rocket science.

MapMyRun

An excellent use of Google Maps over at MapMyRun. Being able to search other people's routes is great - some people have it so good - here's Key West, Florida.

Small World Voting

Rate the entries for Nikon's Small World - a light microscope competition. This moomin planktonic mollusc larva only gets 2.46 out of 5 somehow.

Most Dangerous Roads in the World

Here (except one is a footpath).

Should Science Speak to Faith?

Over on Scientific American...

Richard Dawkins:

...You would stop short of the following extreme:

“Dear Young Earth Creationist, I deeply respect your belief that the world is 6,000 years old. Nevertheless, I humbly and gently suggest that if you were to read a book on geology, or radioisotope dating, or cosmology, or archaeology, or history, or zoology, you might find it fascinating (along with the Bible of course), and you might begin to see why almost all educated people, including theologians, think the world’s age is measured in billions of years, not thousands.”

Let me propose an alternative seduction strategy. Instead of pretending to respect dopey opinions, how about a little tough love? Dramatize to the Young Earth Creationist the sheer magnitude of the discrepancy between his beliefs and those of scientists: “6,000 years is not just a little bit different from 4.6 billion years. It is so different that, dear Young Earth Creationist, it is as though you were to claim that the distance from New York to San Francisco is not 3,400 miles but 7.8 yards. Of course, I respect your right to disagree with scientists, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt and offend you too much to be told—as a matter of deductive and indisputable arithmetic—the actual magnitude of the disagreement you’ve taken on.”

Lawrence M. Krauss:

In my lecture to the Catholic group, for instance, I took guidance from your latest book and described how scientific principles, including the requirement not to be selective in choosing data, dictate that one cannot pick and choose in one’s fundamentalism. If one believes that homosexuality is an abomination because it says so in the Bible, one has to accept the other things that are said in the Bible, including the allowance to kill your children if they are disobedient or validation of the right to sleep with your father if you need to have a child and there are no other men around, and so forth.

Apocalypse. Tomorrow.

I'm summing up here, but check out Wiki for more...

Jehovah's Witnesses expected a visible and dramatic return of Christ in 1873. And then in 1874. Soon after the 1874 disappointment, they decided Christ had returned to the earth in 1874, but invisibly.

Then armageddon was going to occur in 1914. Then 1915. Then 1925. Right now it's imminent.

So. Not great on dates. There's also a cap on the number that can get into heaven. 144,000 apparently.

JWs disagree with blood transfusions. When parents refuse blood for their children, hospitals can ask the courts to intervene but there are cases where the child has died before the court order can be obtained. It seems statistics are hard to come by. From the JW memorial...

I refused to allow myself, or my son, to recieve blood. The hospital was to petition the court in the morning to allow treatment against my wishes, but my son died before it could be accomplished...
- Buck Parker was one day old when he died

At least the parents will still have a chance of being in the lucky 144,000. Apart from that culpable homicide bit.

Magic or Physics

Physics.

Santa Monica, Washington Pier at 5am

Some really nice stuff tucked away in the forums of LuminousLandscape.

Mmmm.

Check over at EvilMadScientist for a genius sugar doughnut maker home-built 3D printer.

Arseole

Here's a molecule of Arseole.

Anyway, research suggests Gardasil, a vaccine against human papilloma virus (HPV) - the cause of most cervical cancer - could prevent more than 700 deaths a year in the UK. A committee of experts has recommended that all girls of 12 should have jabs. While senior doctors warn that hundreds of women will die of cervical cancer because government advisers have delayed a decision to introduce the vaccination programme, some ethical and religious groups oppose the scheme altogether.

Here's Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice :

Anyone giving this drug to a girl is telling her: "I think you are a slag".

Young women will be thinking they have more protection than they actually have. No-one will bother to warn them that they are not protected against Chlamydia and that even condoms offer barely any protection against sexually-transmitted diseases either.

And here's Colin Hart, the director of the Christian Institute charity:

It's basically a sex jab, encouraging the view that girls can be sexually available. It is a disease that you can only get through being sexually promiscuous.

Arseole is rarely found in its pure form. The molecule.

EasyJet EcoJet

EasyJet plans for more environmentally friendly flying - their design for short-haul routes features rear-mounted open rotor engines. In easyJet’s current configuration and operation, the projection for the eco-liner would generate less than 47g of CO2 per passenger km. For comparison, easyJet’s current operations generate 97.5g of CO2 per passenger km and the Toyota Prius emits 104g of CO2 per kilometre.

Dollar Koi

More dollar origami. I don't know the artist but you can probably chase it up over on DeviantArt.

Amazing Tabletop Football

Not much more to say.

MAV

Nice video here showing the latest Honeywell Micro Air Vehicle having a fly around. It's a tiny ducted fan design and I wish I got to play around with these things under the pretence of work.

Hubless Concepts

Quattroflex by Russian art student Alexey Bykov. Reminds me of the hubless Nulla bike...

Nice. Watch.

Elio Linea is a prototype watch by designers Pierre Haulot and William Boullier, which shows you time on a linear scale (like a computer downloading gauge).

Make An Origami Shirt Out Of A Dollar

...and get your food spat in next you go to the restaurant after leaving your smart ass tip.

Alley Cat Races

Check out a New York race on YouTube here. You can get a better quality version here, plus one in London! I've ridden Oxford Street a bit and it makes the London video seem even more insane.

Watch out though - it will make you want to grab that passing car/truck/bus for a free ride.

Rocket Science

Here's the small X43 Scramjet attached to the nose of a Pegasus rocket, hung under a B-52. I think. You can see the plan - drop it high up, get really fast, then fire scramjet. The first one went a bit wrong and they blew it up, but by the third flight it had achieved just under Mach 10 (I think that's 1.8 miles per second). It faced the massive friction-generated temperature of 1900 degrees Celsius - they used carbon-carbon (space shuttle panel material) and water was circulated behind the leading edges to keep it from melting.

It's not just NASA - the Australians are really big on developing Scramjet engines. The University of Queensland Hyshot program (with international help) has reached Mach 7. I guess they want the potential London-Sydney flight times of 2 hours.

Black Hole Gonna Eat You. Possibly.

Here's the ATLAS detector from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - there's a man standing at the bottom of the picture - which is the particle accelerator thing at CERN in France/Switzerland that smashes protons together.

This ATLAS detector bit is the worlds largest superconducting magnet. To test it, they cooled it down over a six-week period last year to reach –269°C . It was then powered up reaching 21 thousand amps. Afterwards, the current was switched off and the stored magnetic energy of 1.1 GigaJoules, the equivalent of about 10,000 cars travelling at 70km/h, was safely dissipated. I think it measures particle mass by seeing how much their path is deflected.

Anyway, the LHC is really powerful and I think it gets switched on in November if they get their finger out. People inside and outside of the physics community have voiced concern that the LHC might trigger one of several theoretical disasters capable of destroying the Earth or even our entire Universe, including the creating of stable black holes. The CERN people were nice enough to commision a report you can read and they think it's unlikely.

They conclude "no basis for any conceivable threat".

Running the Numbers

An interesting series of work by Chris Jordan coming to the Von Lintel Gallery in New York. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something - here's part of an image depicting 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours.

Thanks to Mikul for that.

Royksopp - Remind Me

Here's the nice video for Remind Me by Royksopp. It won the 2002 MTV Europe Music Award for best music video.