Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ played with vegetables (yes!), thanks to MaKey MaKey.
Via Buzzfeed
I think this is really cool.
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Videos
.@ProfBrianCox creates a cloud chamber
Physics was never a strong subject for me, but this is fascinating.
Great profile of Esther Takeuchi, inventor of medical batteries, by @ironicsans
Amidst this discussion about why it is important to increase the representation of women across the board (apart from the speaker pledge, people have started discussing attendee pledges quite rightly), is this PBS profile of Esther Takeuchi, who is said to hold more patents than any other woman in the US. She mentions how including different people in solving a problem can help the situation because we all come at it from different angles. I particularly like this quote:
Inclusion isn’t just mandated because it’s politically correct. I think it’s imperative for us to actually make progress.
The Pale Blue Dot (with videos by @thisisorder and @adamwinnik)
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
Here’s a neat animated video with the first few lines of Carl Sagan’s famous 1994 lecture at Cornell, which formed part of his book published by Random House [via Brainiac].
And here’s another animated video, this time with the whole text of his speech [via glad.is].
The real meat of life (via @tedtalks)
If there’s one video in the recent past that’s made me want to get out and explore the world around me better, whether it’s the adjacent neighbourhood to mine or the furthest country, it’s this one by Ben Saunders.
To experience, to engage, to endeavor, rather than to watch and to wonder — that’s where the real meat of life is to be found.
On Apollo Robbins and inattentional blindness
Fascinating story in the New Yorker of pickpocket and soon-to-be adjunct professor at Yale, Apollo Robbins, who has turned his ‘speciality’ into a force for good rather than evil. He works with the Department of Defense in the US ‘to consult on the military applications of pickpocketing, behavioral influence, and con games’.
Also interesting is this bit about ‘inattentional blindness‘ which I definitely suffer from: my better half loses no opportunity to remind me of this now and then when I’m deep into reading or watching something!
The intersection of magic and neuroscience has become a topic of some interest in the scientific community, and Robbins is now a regular on the lecture circuit. Recently, at a forum in Baltimore, he shared a stage with the psychologist Daniel Kahneman—who won a Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics—and the two had a long discussion about so-called “inattentional blindness,” the phenomenon of focussing so intently on a single task that one fails to notice things in plain sight.
When I think back to the System 1 and 2 thought processes that Kahneman talks about, it’s no wonder he had so much to talk about with Robbins. Inattentional blindness is in a sense a sort of variation of System 1 thinking, I guess…
I dug up this video that shows him demonstrating his work to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in Las Vegas, Oceans Eleven style – quite entertaining to watch.
How to eat a pomegranate without the mess (HT @hanadilahmed)
I’ve never formally admitted it but eating pomegranates has never really interested me because the process of de-seeding them takes too much effort. Turns out there’s an easy way to do it, and it doesn’t involve putting it in water (which, again, I wasn’t aware of till now). Ah well, you live, you learn.
Reminds me of the urban legend about the space pen and the Americans spending millions of dollars trying to invent a pen that worked in space while the Russians just used a pencil (which was again rubbished in a talk by someone recently, I can’t remember whom). Sometimes the marketing industry goes to ridiculous lengths to convince people about things that they’d be much better off just being honest about. It’s really simple these days thanks to the internet.
‘Shoes, take me home’ – hats off to you @dominicwilcox!
Your wish has been granted, Dorothy – click your heels and GPS will be activated. How cool is this?!! A lovely project by London designer Dominic Wilcox.
One of the things I thought when I saw this was that it’s something you’d find in a box of fairy tale objects-come-true. There’s something there…
Lovely little video about Bangalore (via @om)
Moving target: the locus of innovation via @theeconomist
Harvard Business School’s Dean Nitin Nohria talks about the dispersion of innovation and what it means for businesses today at The Economist’s Ideas Economy event.
