Grant Woolard gave us the Classical Music Mashup and the Classical Music Mashup II, as well as other awesome music projects. Now we have a third iteration on the theme, where he seamlessly overlays and meshes different classical tunes. This video contains snippets of 70 pieces from familiar composers like Beethoven and Chopin, branching out to Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and more, including outliers like Scott Joplin and Rick Astley. -Thanks, Grant!
It’s all in the cadence, Scott Beinster (a public-safety specialist for ShotSpotter) tells the New York Times how people can determine the origin of a loud “bang!” :
“When somebody pulls a trigger, they tend to pull it in a fairly steady rhythm until the end, when their finger gets tired,” Beisner says. A series of evenly spaced bang-bang-bang sounds is much more likely to be a gun than the more sporadic ba-bang, ba-ba-ba-ba-bang of firecrackers.
Sometimes it is difficult to know whether what someone hears is from a gunshot, and usually the answer comes from the sound’s intensity. Beinster details that multiple shots from a gun will be equally loud, unlike a continuous stream of fireworks (the sounds from them can be unequal in intensity). So the next time you hear bang, bang, bang consecutively - try to ask yourself : is it the equal bang, bang, bang, of a gun or the ba-bang, ba-ba-bang of fireworks?
image credit: via wikimedia commons
The New Republic Magazine states in June this year, “You will have to make sacrifices to save the planet. The US newspaper Metro, meanwhile, asks us: “What would you give up to end climate change?” Kate Laffan from Aeon states that this kind of headline worries her. Why?
These headlines... present us with stark choices: between self and society, wellbeing and morality. It worries me to see pro-environmental action being equated with personal sacrifice in this way. It also makes me wonder whether we could change the content of a third recent headline, this time from Sky News – ‘Majority of Brits unwilling to cut back to fight climate change’ – by reframing how we talk about pro-environmental behaviour.
A growing body of research suggests that, rather than posing a threat to individual wellbeing, adopting a more sustainable lifestyle represents a pathway to a more satisfied life. Numerous studies have found that people who purchase green products, who recycle or who volunteer for green causes claim to be more satisfied with their lives than their less environmentally friendly counterparts. In the most systematic exploration of this relationship to date, the social psychologist Michael Schmitt at Simon Fraser University in Canada and colleagues found that, of the 39 pro-environmental behaviours examined, 37 were positively linked to life satisfaction (the exceptions being the use of public transport or carpooling, and running the washer/dryer only when full).
In other words, going green is about what you gain, not what you give up.
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: Clker-Free-Vector-Images/ Pixabay)
The scenario goes like this: a drunken passenger talks to a pigeon, and instead of reprimanding the drunken passenger for their antics, an inspector writes a memo against the bus conductor. The funny thing about this scenario? The memo was issued for letting the pigeon ride free on the bus. Another funny thing about this scenario? It’s real.
Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation’s rule on this was (as quoted by Times of India) that conductors should collect one-fourth of the full fare when a passenger is carrying more than 30 pigeons. The rule doesn’t state on a passenger with one pigeon.
Putting the odd rule for bus fare aside, here’s hope that the conductor wouldn’t get punished for not charging the drunk passenger for his feathered companion.
(via weirdasianews.com)
image credit: via Times of India
Yes, the traffic just disappears. pic.twitter.com/XPcGrzadu5
— Daniel Holland (@DannyDutch) June 29, 2019
See if you can figure out where the motorcycles and cars go in this optical illusion of a video clip.
Maybe all those vehicles are going to Hogwarts at Bridge 9-3/4 ... or maybe it's not a bridge at all.
December 1972. It was the first physics conference of then 17-year-old Lee Smolin. His teacher at Hampshire College suggested that he drop in to the conference, listen attentively to the talks, and take the opportunity to meet people.
“Don’t be shy,” he said. “If you need an icebreaker, just ask them what they are working on.”
Having practised my line on the subway, I strode into the grand hotel. The first person I met was a young Texan named Lane P. Hughston, who took me to lunch and taught me twistor theory—a radically original description of the geometry of space and time as it would be experienced by a ray of light. I’d been reading Albert Einstein’s original papers on general relativity, but I’d never seen a theory so elegant. In the following days, I met and listened to lectures by many of the leading physicists of the time—including Roger Penrose, the inventor of twistor theory, himself.
At the time, several researchers were working on black holes, which I had recently started to learn about. A black hole is created after a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses. Inside, gravity is so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape.
At the last afternoon of the symposium, Smolin noticed a man who didn’t look like a typical physicist. He had what Smolin called an “Old Testament” beard and he wore black jeans and a turtleneck.
I tried my line on him, and his reply was so unusual that I remember it exactly. “My approach to research is to ask myself how I would create the universe, were I God. I’ve come to the conclusion that God could never understand calculus or, indeed, the real numbers. But I am pretty sure that God can count.” He showed me a game with an electron and a chessboard. The probability of the electron jumping between any two squares was related to the total number of ways of travelling between them. Through this game, he hoped to reduce quantum physics, concerned with the movement of particles, to a simple matter of counting. I had no idea what to think of this, so I quickly said goodbye, and in my haste, I neglected to ask his name.
Seven years later, as a new PhD visiting Stanford University, I was formally introduced to David Finkelstein, the first person to describe the inner structure of a black hole. In 1958, he had used simple mathematics to describe how something such as light travels near the hole’s surface, showing that the boundary can be crossed only one way—by photons falling in. Because of this, a black hole would appear perfectly black. Today, we call this edge of darkness the event horizon.
Check out this intriguing story over at The Walrus.
(Image Credit: qimono/ Pixabay)
Helen Clapp is a professor of theoretical physics at MIT. She recounts the biggest news of 21st century physics: the detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), an international collaboration by scientists. This gravitational waves were the result of the collision of two black holes which happened more than a billion years ago. It is to be noted that Einstein in 1915 hypothesized that gravitational waves existed, and his hypothesis would only prove correct a century later. But what are these waves, exactly?
Clapp said. “People describe these waves as ‘ripples in spacetime,’ with analogies about bowling balls on trampolines and people rolling around on mattresses, and these are probably as good as we’re going to get. The problem with all of the analogies, though, is that they’re three-dimensional; it’s almost impossible for human beings to add a fourth dimension, and visualize how objects with enormous gravity—black holes or dead stars—might bend not only space, but time.”
“Because gravity could stretch matter,” Clapp said, “We knew that a collision between enormously dense objects—black holes or neutron stars—was the most likely way we would be able to hear it. One scientist came up with a good Hollywood analogy—that the universe had finally ‘produced a talkie.’ Actually, the universe has always produced talkies; it was only that we didn’t have the ears to hear them.” The “interferometers became the ears.”
This is a really precise explanation of what gravitational waves, as expected of an MIT professor. The surprise here, however, is that Helen Clapp is not a real person; she is a fictional character in Nell Freudenberger’s recent novel, entitled Lost and Wanted.
How did Freudenberger write such a really accurate character? She has immersed herself into the world of physics. Talk about dedication and passion!
Freudenberger was determined to bring her protagonist to life as a working physicist. She read books by physicists Lisa Randall and Janna Levin, Steven Weinberg and Kip Thorne, among others. She interviewed Imre Bartos, an assistant professor physics at the University of Florida (formerly at Columbia University), and a member of LIGO, and David Kaiser, a professor of physics and the history of science at MIT, whose 2011 book, How the Hippies Saved Physics, figures in Lost and Wanted. Despite her research, Freudenberger admitted during a recent interview in her Brooklyn home, she remained nervous as a novice gambler about putting pen to paper about physics, worrying she would never fool anyone.
When Bartos and Kaiser read Lost and Wanted, they told me, they couldn’t have been more impressed. “The scientific descriptions are not just informative and accurate, but Nell also manages to make them sound matter-of-fact, as it would be when two scientists are talking,” Bartos said. “While a part of the science discussed is LIGO’s discovery of gravitational waves—arguably the scientific finding of the century—Nell flawlessly grasps the thinking of the scientists involved who look through the historical event and can’t wait to use the machine for yet unanswered questions.” Kaiser said the physics in Lost and Wanted never struck him as window-dressing. “I was really impressed by Nell’s ability to craft a fully realized central character who happened to be a theoretical physicist—rather than inserting a physicist character as a kind of cartoon stand-in, like the characters in a sitcom like The Big Bang Theory,” Kaiser said. “I also really loved the ways that Nell wove in ideas about gravity, quantum theory, and the cosmos that physicists really grapple with today, as legitimate features of Helen’s full and complicated experiences.”
Check out the story over at the Nautilus.
(Image Credit: Engin_Akyurt/ Pixabay)
Sifting through you pet cat’s litter box can be quite a task, so wouldn't it be nice if they can have toilets of their own? However, it would kinda be awkward if you and your cat share the same toilet - so maybe the wish can be altered to a kitty litter box that sifts on its own? If so, then this automated “cat toilet” may pique your interest!
Cat Robo is a high-tech cat toilet that automatically does the litter sorting for you! The device will rotate once your cat leaves, putting all the contents of the litter (and your cat’s finished business) into an opening that can catch the hardened dirty kitter litter and then placed into the bottom of the unit. The clean litter will return back to its place, where it awaits your cat’s next call of nature.
This device is available for 58,000 yen (US$532) from Nissen - an investment for you and your cat’s convenience!
image credit: via SoraNews24
Last week in Purulia district of West Bengal state in eastern India, Noor Ansari and his friends were shooting a clip for the popular mini-video app Tik Tok. They were so focused recording the video that they did not hear a train approaching, and they were hit. Ansari died due to the accident, while his friends were critically injured. Reports have said that the locals have warned the teenagers to stay clear of the tracks, but they did not listen. Ansari and his friends were not the first ones to fall in the Tik Tok craze.
Ansari wasn’t the first. TikTok’s popularity, especially in small-town India, has driven its users to take crazy risks and endanger their lives. A 22-year-old man broke his spine on June 15 while trying to do a backflip for the camera. Kumar, a resident of a village near Bengaluru, died a few days later.
[...]
On April 14, a young man in New Delhi allegedly shot his friend in the face accidentally while posing with a pistol for a video. Salman Zakir, the 19-year-old victim, died of the injury he sustained.
In the southern Indian city of Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, three students were making a video of them riding a single bike on Feb. 23. A bus rammed into them, leading to the subsequent death of one of them.
The total number of such deaths may be difficult to estimate. India also has the highest number of selfie-deaths in the world. So far, 159 people have lost their lives between 2011 and 2017.
TikTok allows its users to lip-sync to popular songs and scenes from movies, and the possibilities for creatively presenting such content are endless. No wonder the video-sharing platform, owned by China-based ByteDance, has 120 million active users in India. It was also among the top apps in India in terms of the number of downloads. India has nearly 500 million smartphone users and is an important market for TikTok.
TikTok “celebrities” are spread across India, often with millions of followers. This, in fact, made both TikTok and the Indian judiciary sit up and take note.
More details regarding this horrifying news over at Quartz.
(Image Credit: ByteDance/ Wikimedia Commons)
This one is simply stunning: glassblower Kiva Ford created this intricate sculpture of a glass skeleton of a snake encircling a globe containing a glass apple.
Gorgeous!
How do we define art? What is qualified as art? For retired fisherman turned writer and photographer Whit Deschner, anything can be a piece of art, especially if it’s a salt block.
For the past 13 years Deschner has been organizing The Great Salt Lick Contest, an event where a person can submit carved salt licks, whether he is a farmer, rancher, or just a guy who has access to grazing mammals. There is a catch, however; an animal must be the one responsible for the sculpture and that animal can only use its tongue to shape divots, swirls and whorls into the 50-pound square block.
What started out as a joke amongst friends has morphed into a friendly competition that also happens to be for a good cause. Over the years, Deschner has auctioned off hundreds of salt licks and raised more than $150,000 for Parkinson’s disease research at the Oregon Health and Sciences University. (Deschner was diagnosed with the disease in 2000.)
So why did Deschner choose a salt lick, of all things, as an artistic medium in the first place?
“I was at my friend’s cabin and he had a salt lick out back for the deer,” Deschner says. “The deer had sculpted the block with their tongues and I made a comment about how it looked a lot like the modern art you see in major cities. I wanted to figure out how I could make a contest out of the idea, just for a laugh.”
What are your thoughts on this one?
(Image Credit: Whit Deschner)
Mitten crabs strutted their very best form in Eastern China’s Hongze Lake Harvest Festival. The crab fashion show, where at least 150 participants joined is actually a 70-year old Huai’an tradition to celebrate the harvest of mitten crabs.
Some strutted on the runway decked with bling, some in traditional chinese wedding garments, some are dressed to match to their owners, and some are hand-painted. A new addition and development to this 70-year old tradition was that a drone now flew the models / contestants to the runway.
(via weirdasianews.com)
image credit: Barcroft Images via weirdasianews.com
There was once a Dutch settlement on an island in Svalbard called Smeerenburg which derived most of its trade on bowhead whales, known for having a lot of blubber. And so it became known as Blubber Town.
Despite only existing for over 40 years after which it was abandoned by its founders, tales of its bustling streets lined with churches, shops, and bakeries circulated and were inflated until it became a myth of its own.
Smeerenburg began with a happy accident. Searching for a Northeast Passage in 1596, famed navigator Willem Barentsz (1550–1597) stumbled upon the Svalbard islands. Here, along the rocky coasts, he found countless bowhead whales and saw an opportunity. The Dutchman planted a flag and claimed the lucrative waters for the United Provinces.
In 1619, having gained a near monopoly in whale trade, the Dutch established a foothold in the Arctic and founded the town Smeerenburg.
Word of a booming Blubber Town spread among whalers in the Arctic. There was no agreement on how large it had grown and when it was deserted. Most believed it was a bustling place.
By the eighteenth century, written accounts make clear that Smeerenburg was abandoned, but the myth of its former grandeur continued. In reality, Smeerenburg was never more than a desolate outpost.
Now, Smeerenburg has become kind of a tourist destination for those going on Arctic cruises.
In 1973 its ruins became part of Norway’s Nordvest-Spitsbergen national park. Visitors are warned against walruses and then invited to wonder at the brick foundations of the tryworks.
They can gape at the so-called “blubber cement” that still outlines the place where enormous cooking vessels once stood. The result of mixed whale oil, sand, and gravel, the asphalt-like substance is the most tangible remnant of Blubber Town.
(Image credit: Cornelis de Man/Wikimedia Commons)
Any fiction, any story, any narrative has the power to transport us from our current situation into a different world into which we can escape and while away the hours without realizing how much time has already passed.
For Elka Ray, crime fiction helped her not just to take her mind off of her homesickness but it also helped her connect with people and places through the stories she read and wrote. It gave her that sense of belonging, the feeling of being home.
As a kid, homesickness felt as much a part of me as blood or bone, whether a product of my nomadic childhood or inherited from my Ray ancestors, sailors and barkeeps—i.e. drunks and adventurers, obviously searching for something beyond their small English village.
Home sick. In German it’s Heimweh. Home hurt. The French describe it as a pain too. In Vietnam, where I’ve spent my entire adult life—it’s Nho nha. Miss home. Note how simple and evocative these terms are—words screamed by toddlers. This is a basic human emotion.
(Image credit: Rowan Heuvel/Unsplash)
This is Russian computer animation from 1968. While the cat itself is drawn, its movements were generated by computer data. It sure looks like a classic cartoon cat, but its leg motion is impressively uncanny. Boing Boing gives us a short translated explanation.
More than 40 years ago in 1968 ... A team led by Nikolai Nikolaevich Konstantinov creates a mathematical model of the motion of the animal (cat). The BESM-4 machine, executing a written program for solving ordinary (in the mathematical sense of the word) differential equations, draws a cartoon "Kitty" containing even by modern standards an amazing animation of cat movements created by a computer.
There's more here, in Russian.
