{ Carsten Höller, Soma | Museum Für Gegenwart, Berlin, until February 6th, 2011 | full story | more photos | designboom }
One of the more curious debates in science focuses on the laws of physics and why they seem fine-tuned for life.
The problem is that the laws of physics contain various constants that have very specific, mysterious values that nobody can explain. These constants are balanced in such a way that life has evolved at least once, in one small part of the Universe.
But why do the constants have these values? Various scientists have calculated that even the tiniest of changes to these constants would make life impossible. That raises the question of why they are so finely balanced.
One explanation is that this is pure accident and that there is no deeper reason for the coincidence. Another idea is that there is some deeper law of nature, which we have yet to discover, that sets the constants as they are. Yet another is that the constants can take more or less any value in an infinite multitude of universes. In ours, they are just right, which is why we have been able to evolve to observe them.
None of these arguments is easy to prove or disprove, although that may change as other evidence accrues, says Don Page, a theoretical physicist at the University of Alberta in Canada.
photo { Stephen Shore }
{ Photos: Peter Sutherland, Todd Fisher, Peter Zachary Voelker, Thobias Faldt | No Found to New Documents is a travelling exhibition that will evolve with time and place. London is its first stop. | Viktor Wynd Fine Art Inc, London | nofound.tumblr }
Damnatio memoriae is the Latin phrase literally meaning “damnation of memory.” It was a form of dishonor that could be passed by the Roman Senate upon traitors or others who brought discredit to the Roman State.
The sense of the expression damnatio memoriae and of the sanction is to cancel every trace of the person from the life of Rome, as if he had never existed.
In Ancient Rome, the practice of damnatio memoriae was the condemnation of Roman elites and emperors after their deaths. If the Senate or a later emperor did not like the acts of an individual, they could have his property seized, his name erased and his statues reworked.
Any truly effective damnatio memoriae would not be noticeable to later historians, since by definition, it would entail the complete and total erasure of the individual in question from the historical record. However, since all political figures have allies as well as enemies, it was difficult to implement the practice completely.
photo { Abby Wilcox }
{ 1. Luke Stephenson | 2. Romain Laurent | In Western Europe, military bows became obsolete during the C16th as firearms evolved. But in China, guns and bows coexisted for almost a millennium. Now one scientist thinks he knows why. | The Physics arXiv Blog | full story }
The longest-lived of camera films has just ended its 75-year history. The only laboratory that still processed Kodachrome, the first commercially available colour slide film, stopped doing so at the end of last year. Kodak progressively withdrew the film from sale between 2002 and 2009, though many photographers loved it enough to buy large stocks to keep in their freezers. Amateurs cannot develop Kodachrome, which requires a large number of carefully controlled treatments, so, with the end of laboratory processing, the film is finished.
Kodachrome is made up of layers of black and white film, each of which responds differently to coloured light, and a series of filters. Only during processing are the appropriate dyes added to each layer to produce a colour transparency. Compared to other colour films, at least up until 1990 when Fuji introduced the garish Velvia, Kodachrome had unique advantages: its colours were rich and naturalistic, its blacks did not have the greyish cast of so many colour films, it had remarkable contrast, its greys were subtle, and the lack of colour couplers between its layers (which tend to diffuse light) gave the film extraordinary sharpness.
photo { Arnaud Pyvka }
Every Monday afternoon at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., more than a dozen of Google’s top executives gather in the company’s boardroom. The weekly meeting, known as Execute, was launched last summer with a specific mission: to get the near-sovereign leaders of Google’s far-flung product groups into a single room and harmonize their disparate initiatives. Google co-founder Sergey Brin runs the meeting, along with new Chief Executive Officer Larry Page and soon-to-be-former CEO Eric Schmidt. The unstated goal is to save the search giant from the ossification that can paralyze large corporations. It won’t be easy, because Google is a tech conglomerate, an assemblage of parts that sometimes work at cross-purposes. Among the most important barons at the meeting: Andy Rubin, who oversees the Android operating system for mobile phones; Salar Kamangar, who runs the video-sharing site YouTube; and Vic Gundotra, who heads up Google’s secret project to combat the social network Facebook. “We needed to get these different product leaders together to find time to talk through all the integration points,” says Page during a telephone interview with Bloomberg Businessweek minutes before a late-January Execute session. “Every time we increase the size of the company, we need to keep things going to make sure we keep our speed, pace, and passion.”
The new weekly ritual—like the surprise announcement on Jan. 20 that Page will take over from Schmidt in April—marks a significant shift in strategy at the world’s most famous Internet company. Welcome to Google 3.0. In the 1.0 era, which ran from 1996 to 2001, Page and Brin incubated the company at Stanford University and in a Menlo Park (Calif.) garage. In 2001 they ushered in the triumphant 2.0 era by hiring Schmidt, a tech industry grown-up who’d been CEO of Novell. Now comes the third phase, led by Page and dedicated to rooting out bureaucracy and rediscovering the nimble moves of youth.
Although Google recently reported that fourth-quarter profits jumped 29 percent over the previous year, its stock rose only 13.7 percent over the past 12 months, disappointing investors and lagging the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Google is being outpaced by rivals such as Facebook in social networking. In 2010, Facebook served up more display ads than either Google or Yahoo!—and was visited by more U.S. Internet users. And Apple is setting the pace in mobile computing, with beloved products that use a proprietary operating system that can be closed off to Google’s services if the company so chooses.
On top of all that, there are antitrust inquiries in Washington and Europe, the defection of some top Google executives for opportunities elsewhere, and perhaps the most serious rap against the company: that its loosely organized structure is growing unwieldy and counterproductive.
Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and creativity primes promote individuals’ motivation to think outside the box and that this increased motivation leads to unethical behavior.
In four studies, we show that participants with creative personalities who scored high on a test measuring divergent thinking tended to cheat more (Study 1); that dispositional creativity is a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence (Study 2); and that participants who were primed to think creatively were more likely to behave dishonestly because of their creativity motivation (Study 3) and greater ability to justify their dishonest behavior (Study 4). Finally, a field study constructively replicates these effects and demonstrates that individuals who work in more creative positions are also more morally flexible (Study 5).
The results provide evidence for an association between creativity and dishonesty, thus highlighting a dark side of creativity.
{ Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely, Harvard Business School | Continue reading | PDF }
Imagine being attacked by one of your own hands, which repeatedly tries to slap and punch you. Or you go into a shop and when you try to turn right, one of your legs decides it wants to go left, leaving you walking round in circles.
Last summer I met 55-year-old Karen Byrne in New Jersey, who suffers from Alien Hand Syndrome.
Her left hand, and occasionally her left leg, behaves as if it were under the control of an alien intelligence.
Karen’s condition is fascinating, not just because it is so strange but because it tells us something surprising about how our own brains work.
Karen’s problem was caused by a power struggle going on inside her head. A normal brain consists of two hemispheres which communicate with each other via the corpus callosum.
The left hemisphere, which controls the right arm and leg, tends to be where language skills reside. The right hemisphere, which controls the left arm and leg, is largely responsible for spatial awareness and recognising patterns.
Usually the more analytical left hemisphere dominates, having the final say in the actions we perform.
The discovery of hemispherical dominance has its roots in the 1940s, when surgeons first decided to treat epilepsy by cutting the corpus callosum. After they had recovered, the patients appeared normal. But in psychology circles they became legends.
That is because these patients would, in time, reveal something that to me is truly astonishing - the two halves of our brains each contain a kind of separate consciousness. Each hemisphere is capable of its own independent will.
photo { Chris McPherson }
The big money isn’t in creating products, it’s in creating customers. A single, lifelong customer who lives his life spending the way you want him to is worth six or seven figures. A single one. Creating millions of these is the only way to make trillions.
You can make millions by selling a great product to people who need it, but you make billions and trillions by conditioning an entire nation of people to react to every inconvenience, every whim, and every passing desire or fear by buying something. (…)
Using the television as their primary tool, very-high-level marketers have managed to create a nation of people who typically:
▪ work almost all the time
▪ absorb several hours of advertising every night, in their own homes
▪ are tired and unhealthy and vaguely dissatisfied with their lives
▪ respond to boredom, dissatisfaction, or anxiety only by buying and consuming things
photo { Victor Cobo }
Over the last several months, 22,741 New Yorkers contacted the city’s Department of Sanitation and arranged for the pickup of refrigerators, air-conditioners and freezers. In more than 11,000 instances, the machines vanished before sanitation workers arrived in their white trucks to pick them up.
Who, then, is stealing the household appliances of New York City?
Scavengers, to be sure, abound in New York, especially during tough economic times. But the sheer magnitude of the thefts — 11,528 appliances, to be precise — over a relatively brief period suggests to some in city government and the recycling industry that a more organized enterprise may be at work as well.
In a study of 98 languages from a variety of linguistic families, they found the following “rules” seem to apply:
1. All languages contain terms for white and black.
2. If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red.
3. If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both).
4. If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow.
5. If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue.
6. If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown.
7. If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains a term for purple, pink, orange, grey, or some combination of these.
artwork { Mark Rothko, Red and Black, 1959 }
{ Delia Derbyshire - Sculptress of Sound documentary | Episodes 2 to 7 }
related { The Art of Noises by Luigi Russolo, theorist of electronic music. | Scribd | full text }
Arizona restaurant planning to serve African lion meat in its exotic tacos.
Monk caught with nun’s skeleton at airport.
Teen Thieves Snorted Cremated Remains.
Crematorium could help heat council swimming pool.
Ohio man says he didn’t know woman was dead during sex.
Murderer to inherit fortune from victim.
Swedish med students perform prof’s autopsy.
Czech gay asylum ‘phallometric test’ criticised by EU.
Woman Survives Jump From Hotel’s 23rd Floor.
Life Sentence for Chinese Driver for Evading Tolls.
Pat Robertson: Snow Is God’s Way of Punishing Americans Planning To Drive To Do Something Gay. [Thanks Tim]
Man charged for making bombs to clear snow.
Walmart launches an all-natural, partially “anti-aging” beauty line for 8- to 12-year-olds.
Butt-dialing mistake sends SWAT team to school. “You know how when you sit on your phone when it’s in your back pocket and it calls the last number that was dialed?”
Drug catapult discovered on Mexico border.
Rat Eradication Begins in Galapagos. Related: New York City rat map.
NY Times: Dealing With Assange and the WikiLeaks Secrets.
Oddly, as Chinese incomes have grown, so has their propensity to save. Why don’t Chinese spend more money?
Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Hit the Forests of Malaysia.
New cure for the hiccups: Rectal stimulation.
The Over-Interpretation of Dreams. Why people act as though their dreams can predict the future.
Researchers in British Columbia suggest that beautiful people make better first impressions. Related: Seeing a picture of someone doing something makes you think about the thing they are doing, according to new research.
This is a short sketch of some central ideas developed in my recent book Being No One. [PDF]
Would death be easier if you know you’ve been cloned?
Modern studies using MRI imaging have shown that brain size correlates with IQ by a factor of approximately .40 among adults. IQ test.
Secret Service Study Probes Psyche of U.S. Assassins.
Life expectancy rising slowly in the US.
The Physiology of Foie: Why Foie Gras is Not Unethical.
The long curious extravagant evolution of feathers.
The Raw and the Cooked: An Interview with Cătălin Avramescu.
The Sleeping Beauty Problem. Sleeping Beauty is put to sleep on Sunday night. A coin is tossed. If it lands heads…
A physicist turns the city in an equation.
Verizon’s iPhone story isn’t so black and white.
Coming soon: Holographic Skype. Researchers close to creating real-time 3-D TV.
Why So Many Augmented Reality Apps Fail in the Real World.
Visitors to Twitter.com Drop 14%.
Giant Black Solar Pyramids. Lunar Cubit is the winner of the Land Art Generator Initiative, a contest to make green-energy production beautiful.
Over the course of 45 years in the film business, Francis Ford Coppola has refined a singular code of ethics that govern his filmmaking. There are three rules: 1) Write and direct original screenplays, 2) make them with the most modern technology available, and 3) self-finance them. Interview.
The Evolution of Beach Culture. A look at the people and places that have shaped seaside culture.
Marina Bay Sands hotel, Singapore.
The lounge suit, battledress of the world’s businessmen, is 150 years old—possibly.
Ten things I Learned from Jim Cramer. (reply to emails, use every moment…)
Get ready to wear everything from invisibility cloaks and fabrics that can generate electricity to T-shirts you can hear and spray-on. The future of fashion.
A new generation is making street art that is conceptual, abstract, and even sculptural in nature.
February 2010, press and notable art-world figures were invited to Jeff Koons studio.
Video walk through of planned Eli Broad Art Foundation.
Concorde tours offer cockpit access.
Why are there seven days in a week?
Karate Hand Techniques - Japanese Terms.
The food scientist Beverly Tepper is director of the Sensory Evaluation Laboratory at Rutgers University. Her research combines nutritional science and psychology with the genetics of taste perception in order to better understand the links between flavor, diet, and health. We talked about some of the innovations she thinks will reshape our food in the coming years, where food scientists have gone wrong in the past, and what she thinks of molecular gastronomy.
(…)
To give you a specific example, the food industry often uses a technique called encapsulation to protect a flavor that they’ve placed in a food product. That means you coat it in some kind of material that allows the flavor compound to stay fresh and separate within the food product until you release it by eating it. The next generation of encapsulation uses nanotechnology, which will open up an entirely different dimension in the kinds of technologies that can be placed in foods and food packaging. For example, there are things that you can place on the inside of a food package that act as a sensor to tell you if the food is spoiled or release molecules into the package that fight bacteria.
photo { Todd Fisher }
The secrets behind your flowers.
Chances are the bouquet you’re about to buy came from Colombia. (…)
To limit coca farming and expand job opportunities in Colombia, the U.S. government in 1991 suspended import duties on Colombian flowers. The results were dramatic, though disastrous for U.S. growers. In 1971, the United States produced 1.2 billion blooms of the major flowers (roses, carnations and chrysanthemums) and imported only 100 million. By 2003, the trade balance had reversed; the United States imported two billion major blooms and grew only 200 million.
photo { Alison Brady }
The police began sorting through a trove of physical evidence. In Wells’ car, they discovered the 2-foot-long cane, which turned out to be an ingeniously crafted homemade gun. The bomb itself was likewise a marvel of DIY design and construction. The device consisted of two parts: a triple-banded metal collar with four keyholes and a three-digit combination lock, and an iron box containing two 6-inch pipe bombs loaded with double-base smokeless powder. The hinged collar locked around Wells’ neck like a giant handcuff. Investigators could tell that it had been built using professional tools. The device also contained two Sunbeam kitchen timers and one electronic countdown timer. It had wires running through it that connected to nothing—decoys to throw off would-be disablers—and stickers bearing deceptive warnings. The contraption was a puzzle in and of itself.
The most perplexing and intriguing pieces of evidence, though, were the handwritten notes that investigators found inside Wells’ car. Addressed to the “Bomb Hostage,” the notes instructed Wells to rob the bank of $250,000, then follow a set of complex instructions to find various keys and combination codes hidden throughout Erie. It contained drawings, threats, and detailed maps.
{ The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist | Wired | Continue reading }
