280,951 Post-It Notes

280,951 Post-It Notes, and a lot of spare time.


EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

Or click here to view it full screen (worthwhile).

Space Elevator Oops

Tensile versus Shear Strength, from XKCD

Don't forget to click thru for the mouse-hover message!

Lord of the Hadrons

Three Particles for the Heisenbergs under the sky,
Seven for the von Neumanns in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Schrödinger on his dark throne
In the Land of Dirac where the Strange lie.
One Particle to rule them all, One Particle to find them,
One Particle to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
To give them Mass where the Charms lie.

[Hat Tip to Sir Al Dente -- Thanks Al! (What a Looney!), and of course JRR Tolkien]

PS: Anyone else remember the Superconducting Super Collider?

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Found by happy accident at Visual-Literacy.org, A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods:

Each element represents a different type of data visualization, and hovering the mouse-pointer over any of them will pop-up an example. "Hi" stands for Histogram as demonstrated in the captured pop-up below.

Very nicely done! See for yourself.

This happy accident occurred while I was searching for "element-pun" material in response to comments on a recent post at The Endeavor. Thanks John!

This is fun ...

 I just discovered a nice blog tribute to ... oh ... but telling would spoil some of the fun. This series of posts at The Armchair Generalist is still fun, even if it is after Halloween.

Here, have some more fun:

How Superman Defeated the Ku Klux Klan

TV Shows Little Girls Watch

Monkey Business: Scientist Monkeys Around With The Economy

Internet Rules

Piano Stairs are fun too.

I Love the Internet

Giant Steps

Just because it's cool.


[HatTips2 dancohen, Open Culture, @hughmcguire, and MetaDeb]

Not to ruin the nice Coltrane vibe, but compare that to a saxophone playing robot. The video below shows the robot in action. The tone is awful, but it will give you some idea of what Coltrane is doing on the keys. Unfortunately it only shows the left-hand keys and we miss out on all the right-hand action, but you see can some of the high-note valves moving, which are operated by the right hand.

[Sax-playing robot image from Hosei University Takashima R&C Laboratory]

[Video nicofar]

The keys are the easy part. The robot can get the notes, but isn't even close to making sounds like Coltrane.

You're a Good Man, Charles Darwin

From the Dresden Codak webcomic, the work of the very talented Aaron Diaz.

There is more to see, and you can see it bigger, at Dresden Codak.

 

Feed Me!

Though a miracle of science - Mario Bros. horror brought to life!

Now if you will pardon me, I'm going to be hiding under my desk armed with hedge clippers until the first good hard frost. 

The Many Talents of Al Franken

Let's see Norm Coleman do this:


[Hat Tip 2 Pharyngula, again, dammit]

Cole Cuts

The political lampoonery of John Cole.

[John Cole]
[John Cole]
[John Cole]
[John Cole]

[Hat Tip 2 OldCola]

Jeff Hawke

Forty Years since man first walked on the Moon? My how time flies!

[A full size image from this Jeff Hawk Comic can be found here]

This panel of the comic Jeff Hawke published in 1959 depicts the prediction of the date of the first human landing on the Moon with an error of a couple of weeks.

The memorial on the rock says: ON AUGUST FOURTH, EARTH YEAR NINETEEN HUNDRED SIXTY-NINE, THE FIRST BEING SET FOOT ON THE MOON AT THIS POINT. HIS NAME WAS HOMO SAPIENS.

Hat Tip 2 Contrary Brin, who has more insightful commentary on the subject.

Tiny Wandering Tweenbots

Tiny, helpless, unintelligent. Turn these things loose in a complex environment, like maybe Central Park in New York City, and they are toast. Right?

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Wrong! According to reports, they reach their intended destination every time.




What a simple and beautiful experiment. Read more about it at Tweenbots.


[Via Built on Facts]