I get very angry about most things going on in the world. Most of my time is spent in anger. But when I look around at the big picture, nature’s always looked out after itself rather well. There’s a whole world out there — fuck people [laughs]! There’s ants, there’s bugs, there’s birds. I try to maintain a certain, I wouldn’t say optimism, but a certain positive attitude towards the world, and one day I’ll be eaten by worms. I hope I’m a decent meal.
Terry Gilliam (wired interview)
(via heyashley)
On Aug. 15, 1977, a telescope at Ohio State University detected a strong narrowband radio signal in the constellation Sagittarius — one so unusual that astronomer Jerry Ehman marked the printout with an exclamation.
A source at this distance using a transmitting dish as big as the Arecibo radio telescope (the largest in the world) would require a 2.2 gigawatt transmitter-extraordinarily powerful but not out of the question. Another possibility is that a much weaker signal from a more remote source may have experienced gravitational microlensing by an intervening star. More than 100 subsequent searches of the same region of sky have failed to recover the signal. However, this is not surprising. A telescope such as the Big Ear listens to only about one millionth of the sky at a time and a similar dish on another planet would broadcast »
Sam Neill recreates Jurassic Park.
(via the daily what)
Beautiful posters of planets. (Ross Berens)
Let’s make everything we do fun. via VW and branflakesforbreakfast.
Kari…that’s so awesome. How can we make things that are good for you more fun? It doesn’t take much. It’s just rethinking the normality of what we’ve always known and saying why can’t we make this awesome?
In short, we can.
And btw, it was Kari’s first week at Portfolio Center! So proud…
This is a great way to finish off my Friday.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Tetris is always worth blogging about.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Underwater Video in the Red Sea (filmed with a Canon 5D Mark II)
(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
Acrobatic Octopus Arm Could Be Model for Flexible Robots
Unlike us, specific regions of an octopus’ motor cortex don’t correspond to specific parts of its body. Instead, each region controls different parts at different times. Their motor neural network seems as flexible as their bodies — a phenomenon that expands the range of neurophysiological possibility, and could refine the design of arm-flexing robots.
…
An octopus brain sends a general prompt, and the arm computes the specifics: It’s much simpler than running all those calculations in the brain itself. And all this is especially interesting to roboticists who want to build machines with flexible appendages, ideal for rescue bots working in disaster areas or surgical machines weaving through a body.
– Wired
Fridtjof Nansen (1861 – 1930)
Lester Young – Blues for Greasy
I heard the Lester Young birthday broadcast on WKCR last friday and I’m a better person for it.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
When Alexei Pajitnov first ordered a load of bricks from Karpov Abramtsevo’s workshop, workers there were wondering who could be interested in all those right-angled blocks. No one in 1985 could have imagined those concrete Tetriminos would become world famous and constitute Russia’s deadliest weapon against Reagan’s America.