crome.org

I remember seeing this a long time ago.

Good stuff

This is really an impressive commercial, with almost no computer aid in the shot.

I just saw this Instructable on how to make a flip-book, and was inspired to make one myself.

I couldn’t fathom the thought of using a Word template with 150 odd individual pictures, so I wrote a simple script to composite all the images.   Here’s the original video:

And here’s the flip-book version:

Clearly, Henry and I need to make a better video, and better flip book, but it’s promising…. more to come.

Thanks for the photos Rob

Wanna see a black hole that’s 18,000,000,000 solar masses? That’s big.

Last time I was in China, I couldn’t resist getting this cheap fan for the kids.

Joe and friends: Jeanne fell in the Czech Republic and 79 to finally announced that the betrothed, to congratulate them all

Follow this link for more information.

Spontaneous human combustion is real.  Well, the story that there are people who have combusted, leaving only the hands feet and head, with little burning on surrounding material, is true.  Of course, the cause of the combustion is the question.  It’s not really spontanious, but rather that the people are rendered inside their own clothes, in an oxygen poor environment, and their clothes act as wicks for the rendered fat.

Read this excellent description of the process here at NeuroLogica.

Henry and I made it on to failblog.

Rob turned me on to this book, Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air.  This is a really good treatment of the world’s energy consumption and production, and how much energy could possibly be produced by various means.  He reduces all energy production and consumption tot he same units, so it’s easy to grok.  The book is free and downloadable in PDF form.

For example, you hear that unplugging your cell phone charger when not in use will save the planet.  Well, your cell phone charger takes 0.5 watts, and if plugged in all the time it takes 0.5 W * 24  hours/day = 12 W-hour/day Driving your car takes about 40 kW, and if you drive for 1 second a day, that’s 40,000 W * 1 s / (3600s/h) / (24h/d) =  46W-h/day.  So… unplugging your phone charger when not in use is approximately equivalent to 1 second of driving.

If unplugging your phone charger when not in use makes you feel good, that’s fine, but don’t think you’ve done your part because you do this.  It’s pissing in the wind.  We need to make BIG changes to have BIG effects.

Another fascinating tidbit:  A single annual intercontinental flight on an airplane that’s 80% full consumes approximately the same amount of fuel & energy as a daily commute of 30 miles in your car!  One flight, and you’ve doubled your annual fuel consumption!

Asymmetry in snails. They use the same gene we do for the purpose.

Humans are asymmetric — especially internally.  It’s critical that we are, we couldn’t live if we had symmetric innards.  PZ Myers just posted a really interesting article on the new discovery that snails use the same gene for asymmetry as we do.  Some scientists idientified the gene, then knocked it out.  The snails with that gene knocked out come out as straight tubes instead of curled up in an asymmetric manner.

For a science geek like me, it’s a pretty nifty experiement.

Dolphis can steer their sonar using some kind of beamforming technology.

Dolphins can steer their sonar +- 20 degrees left and right by emitting multiple clicks.  This seems somewhat similar to beamforming, or perhaps more akin to a directional microphone.  I don’t understand the physics of it, but perhaps I can get hold of the actual paper and figure out more.  Sounds pretty nifty.

http://www.crome.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/dolphin-sounds.mp3