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A group of 9 university students performed these “Olympic Highlights” on the Kasou Taishou(also known as Kinchan and Katori Shingo’s All Japan Costume Grand Prix) special that aired last night on NTV:
Even though we are used to amazing special effects, we can still be impressed with old-fashioned cleverness. From Japan Probe -via Random Good Stuff
Every year, the Edge Foundation, an organization for science and technology intellectuals, asked a bunch of smart people one question. For 2008, the question is: What have you changed your mind about and why?
Over 165 people, including the who’s who in science and technology answered.
Here are a few that caught my attention (the whole list is quite interesting – you could easily lose an hour or two reading everything):
- Alan Alda, actor and writer, who changed his mind about God – twice!
Until I was twenty I was sure there was a being who could see everything I did and who didn’t like most of it. He seemed to care about minute aspects of my life, like on what day of the week I ate a piece of meat. And yet, he let earthquakes and mudslides take out whole communities, apparently ignoring the saints among them who ate their meat on the assigned days. Eventually, I realized that I didn’t believe there was such a being. It didn’t seem reasonable. And I assumed that I was an atheist.
As I understood the word, it meant that I was someone who didn’t believe in a God; I was without a God. I didn’t broadcast this in public because I noticed that people who do believe in a god get upset to hear that others don’t. (Why this is so is one of the most pressing of human questions, and I wish a few of the bright people in this conversation would try to answer it through research.)
But, slowly I realized that in the popular mind the word atheist was coming to mean something more: a statement that there couldn’t be a God. God was, in this formulation, not possible, and this was something that could be proved. But I had been changed by eleven years of interviewing six or seven hundred scientists around the world on the television program Scientific American Frontiers. And that change was reflected in how I would now identify myself.
- Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing co-editor, on the value of having comments on blogs and the logic behind hiring a comment moderator.
I grew to believe that the easier it is to post a drive-by comment, and the easier it is to remain faceless, reputation-less, and real-world-less while doing so, the greater the volume of antisocial behavior that follows. I decided that no online community could remain civil after it grew too large, and gave up on that aspect of internet life.
My co-editors and I debated, we brainstormed, we observed other big sites that included some kind of community forum or comments feature. Some relied on voting systems to "score" whether a comment is of value — this felt clinical, cold, like grading what a friend says to you in conversation. Dialogue shouldn’t be a beauty contest. Other sites used other automated systems to rank the relevance of a speech thread. None of this felt natural to us, or an effective way to prevent the toxic sludge buildup. So we stalled for years, and our blog remained more monologue than dialogue. That felt unnatural, too.
Finally, this year, we resurrected comments on the blog, with the one thing that did feel natural. Human hands.
- Freeman Dyson, who changed his mind about the importance of the atom bomb in ending World War II
When facts change your mind, that’s not always science. It may be history. I changed my mind about an important historical question: did the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bring World War Two to an end? Until this year I used to say, perhaps. Now, because of new facts, I say no. This question is important, because the myth of the nuclear bombs bringing the war to an end is widely believed. To demolish this myth may be a useful first step toward ridding the world of nuclear weapons.
- Charles Seife, who used to think that a modern, democratic society had to be a scientific one.
I used to think that a modern, democratic society had to be a scientific society. After all, the scientific revolution and the American Revolution were forged in the same flames of the enlightenment. Naturally, I thought, a society that embraces the freedom of thought and expression of a democracy would also embrace science.
However, when I first started reporting on science, I quickly realized that science didn’t spring up naturally in the fertile soil of the young American democracy. Americans were extraordinary innovators — wonderful tinkerers and engineers — but you can count the great 19th century American physicists on one hand and have two fingers left over. The United States owes its scientific tradition to aristocratic Europe’s universities (and to its refugees), not to any native drive.
In fact, science clashes with the democratic ideal. Though it is meritocratic, it is practiced in the elite and effete world of academe, leaving the vast majority of citizens unable to contribute to it in any meaningful way. Science is about freedom of thought, yet at the same time it imposes a tyranny of ideas.
What have you changed your mind about? And Why? I’ll start – you can read what I changed my mind about in the comment.
There’s an evolutionary arms race going on between a rare species of butterfly and ants:
Maculinea alcon butterflies infect the nests of Myrmica ants by hatching caterpillars nearby, hoping that the caterpillars will be ‘adopted’ and cared for by ants that mistake them for their own young. The caterpillars achieve this by mimicking the surface chemistry of the ants. Getting this chemistry right is important: if an ant doesn’t recognize a caterpillar as one of its own it will eat it, says David Nash, a zoologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Successfully adopted caterpillars are bad for the ant colonies, as ants may neglect their own young in favour of the intruders. But the ants are fighting back. “The ant larvae seem to be evolving as a result of being parasitized,” says Nash. “It’s an ongoing evolutionary arms race.”
Link (Photo: David Nash) – via 3quarksdaily
Last year, San Francisco’s public transit sytem (Muni) commissioned artist Helena Keeffe to create artwork for its bus stops.
The result is Muni Maps, a series of six posters "[featuring] a route map that has been annotated with an individual operator’s portrait, hand-written notes, interview excerpts and related drawings — depicting the public transportation experience from the perspective of the operator."
Link – via Information Junk
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Cursor*10 by nekogames is a simple yet maddeningly fun Flash game. I won’t give away how it’s played – you get to find out for yourself (hint: cooperate .. with yourself!) – but the object is to race up the staircases to the 16th floor.
Link (and it’s possible – I’ve done it, so y’all know it’s not that hard!) – via Kotaku
In 1781, a group of 44 settlers founded a town named "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula," ("The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels on of the River Porciúncula"). We now know it simply as Los Angeles.
Photo: Andy Green
A lot of people want to get their picture taken with presidential candidates, but not Iowa college student and political junkie Andy Green. He got them to take a photo with his Mr. Potato Head. Yep, you read that right: Mr. Potato Head.
The story of the young man and his spudhead began in 2004, when Green inherited the toy from his dying grandfather. Grandpa Robert had kept the faux spud on his bedroom shelf, Green says, and treated it like nothing more than a decoration. Green, however, wanted to show the toy around. So wherever he went — and Green’s traveled quite a bit — so went the spudhead. To the Statue of Liberty, Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, the Marine Corps War Memorial.
His parents and younger sister have a three-word explanation for this.
"That’s just Andy," says his mom, Jenny Green, a secretary at Clinton Community College.
Later, Obama won the Iowa Caucus beating his main rival Hillary Clinton by a wide margin. In hindsight, perhaps Andy’s observation of how the two of them interact with his plastic spud help to explain why:
He reserves his most intense reactions for Obama and Clinton, both of whom he’s seen face-to-face a few times.
Clinton, Green says, seemed "distant," "cold," "fake."
"Look at her photo with Mr. Potato Head. She’s really smiling, but it looks like a really forced smile. It’s only because I told her she’s one of the last ones to have her photo taken."
Meanwhile, Obama, Green says, was "engaging," "open," "just like one of us."
"Look at his photo with Mr. Potato Head. He got into it. He’s really having fun."
Scientists spotted a rare adult, unpigmented Adelie penguin in Antarctica.
Penguins lacking pigmentation are referred to as "leucistic" and do not usually survive until adulthood because they attract predators and don’t breed.
Don’t tell the Norwegians, they might just shoot it!
Link (photo: Mawsons Hut Foundation/Brett Jarrett)- via I have seen the whole of the Internet
Police officers gave Stephanie Cole, 58, a ticket for driving too slow on an English motorway (highway for us Yanks). How slow? Try 10 mph!
When police caught her there was a sign on her car which read: "I don’t do fast. If I’m too slow for you DON’T hoot just overtake!" [...]
She had been travelling from her home to a Staples stationery store when she was arrested by police on 30 August.
"I really didn’t want to go on the motorway, but I desperately had to go to Staples for an ink cartridge," she said.
"I don’t know any other way to get to it so I went that way," she added.
When officers stopped Mrs Cole, she told them she had "no confidence" on the motorway.
Because there isn’t a minimum speed, the cop gave her a ticket for "driving without reasonable consideration." Link
