Random Acts of human Kindness in Russia:
Der Soundtrack dieses Videos ist so unglaublich cheesy, dass ich mir dieses Video voller guter Taten in Russland wirklich nicht ins Blog kleben kann. Sei’s drum: Faith in Humanity, restored.
Moores Law dates the Origin of Life before Origin of Earth
Interessantes Modell von zwei Genetikern, die Moores Law – die Komplexität integrierter Schaltkreise verdoppelt sich alle 1-2 Jahre – auf die Evolution angewandt haben. Rechnet man in diesem Modell rückwärts datieren sie den Ursprung des Lebens aus rund 10 Millarden Jahre vor unserer Zeit, während die Erde grade halb so alt ist.
Erscheint logisch, auch wenn die Jungs Kritiker, die auf Evolutionssprünge (Stichwort Punktialismus und Kambrische Explosion) hinweisen, mit Religionskritik kontern („Sharov and Gorden reject this argument saying that it is suspiciously similar to arguments that squeeze the origin of life into the timespan outlined in the biblical Book of Genesis“), die hier meiner Meinung nicht hingehört – Religion hat im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs nichts verloren, ausgenommen sind Kulturgeschichte und (Neuro-)Psychologie. Sei’s drum, ziemlich interessanter Ansatz bleibt das hier dennoch.
These guys argue that it’s possible to measure the complexity of life and the rate at which it has increased from prokaryotes to eukaryotes to more complex creatures such as worms, fish and finally mammals. That produces a clear exponential increase identical to that behind Moore’s Law although in this case the doubling time is 376 million years rather than two years.
That raises an interesting question. What happens if you extrapolate backwards to the point of no complexity–the origin of life?
Sharov and Gordon say that the evidence by this measure is clear. “Linear regression of genetic complexity (on a log scale) extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life = 9.7 ± 2.5 billion years ago,” they say. And since the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, that raises a whole series of other questions. Not least of these is how and where did life begin.
Becci Manson @ TED: (Re)touching lives through photos
Schöner TED-Talk von Foto-Composer Becci Manson, die nach dem Tsunami nach Japan reiste und bei Aufräumarbeiten jede Menge halb zerstörter Fotografien sammelte. Dann rief sie eine Aktion ins Leben, in der hunderte Freiwillige auf der ganzen Welt die Bilder wieder herstellten. Der Talk hat mich mehr berührt, als ich gedacht hätte, wahrscheinlich, weil ich seit über 15 Jahren mit Photoshop arbeite und exakt weiß, was sie meint, wenn sie davon redet, einen Kimono aus Pixelfetzen praktisch manuell neu zu „malen“.
Snip aus ‘nem Interview auf dem TED-Blog:
“Reiko Yamada brought us her photos one day in Rikuzentakata. Her home had been destroyed by the wave, but she and her three children managed to escape to safety. The wave ripped the second story off their house and washed it away. When they eventually found the top of the house, the photos were still inside and Reiko managed to salvage them. Although she accidentally smudged them as she tried to clean them herself, retouchers from Singapore and Australia helped restore them.”
Overall Manson says, “These stories always emphasize for me the importance photos have to people. It’s not always about the fact that it’s a photo of a certain person or event. It can often just be about the immediate memories the image conjures and evokes — like a certain smell or sound. Our connection to them is so much deeper than most of us realize.”
Saving the photographs of those who lost their homes and loved ones in the Japanese tsunami
5 Dudes take the same Pic every 5 Years since 1982
Tolle Tradition von drei Johns und Mark und Dallas.
Every five years for the past three decades, John Wardlaw, John Dickson, Mark Rumer, Dallas Burney and John Molony have been meeting at the California lake and taking the same photo. The first photograph of the high school friends was just happenstance. Wardlaw, known as Wedge in the group, had a family cabin at the lake where the friends gathered in July 1982.
Dude talks with his 12 Year old Self via VHS-Tape
Youtube Direktvhs, via Dangerous Minds
Jeremiah McDonald (hier auf Twitter) kam als 12jähriger auf die Idee, es wäre eine super Idee, sich mit seinem Ich aus der Zukunft zu unterhalten. Also nahm er ein VHS-Tape auf. Und mit dem unterhält sich nun der 32jährige Jeremiah. Brillant and genius if real, still cool if not.
Photography: Elderly Animals
Isa Leshko fotografiert alte Tiere. Hochinteressante Fotoserie über das Leben, Altern und Sterblichkeit aus einer eher ungewöhnlichen Perspektive. Ich bin selbst mit Hunden aufgewachsen und habe das Rentenalter von zweien bewusst erlebt, Sheila und Orca, beides Schäferhunde. Und beide male war da dieser Moment, in dem einem das Alter bewusst wird, wenn man festgestellt hat: Die kann nicht mehr so rennen wie früher. Und da! Das erste graue Haar an den Lefzen.
Jedenfalls: Hier noch ein Video, in dem Leshko ein wenig über ihre Arbeit und die Hintergründe erzählt.
The Record-School
I learned more from a Three-Minute-Record, babe, than I ever learned in school. Listen to the Bruce. He knows.
Laughs
(Vimeo Direkthahaha, via Ronny)
Cow breaks out of Slaughterhouse, runs for life, succeeds.
(Youtube Direktlife, via Treehugger)
Am Mittwoch ist eine Kuh aus einem Schlachthof in Queens ausgebrochen. Verständlich, ich hätte da auch nur sehr wenig Lust drauf. Sie rannte die Straße runter, einige Schlachter und Polizisten hinter ihr her. Bevor sie eingefangen werden konnte, machte sie noch ein paar Sachen kaputt und hier die wirklich gute Nachricht: Die Kuh, mittlerweile auf den Namen Molly getauft, wird nicht an das Schlachthaus zurück übergeben, sondern darf auf einer Farm im Umland so lange leben, wie sie nicht gestorben ist.
Cops cornered the moo-moo in Kahn’s yard, shooting it with a tranquilizer gun before lassoing it. A slaughterhouse butcher tried to help subdue her but nearly got gored by its stubby horns.
Stumbling and struggling not to go back to the slaughterhouse, the top sirloin rammed her head into a police horse trailer brought to the scene. At least a dozen cops teamed up to get the cow into the trailer, witnesses said. It was taken to the city Animal Care and Control facility in Brooklyn. “It was bugging,” barber Paul Echols, 23, said of the rawhide escapee. “I was worried. I’m not used to seeing stuff like that.”
The gallivanting hay-eater’s Houdini attempt apparently paid off. City officials said the animal – who they named Molly – will be headed for greener pastures. “We will find it a home,” said Richard Gentles of the city Animal Care and Control. “We’re starting to reach out to farm sanctuaries.”
Cow Breaks Out of NYC Slaughterhouse, Runs for Freedom (Video), NYDailyNews: No bull, cow escapes slaughterhouse and hoofs it through Queens
Bonustrack: Iron Maiden – Run to the Hills
The most interesting woman on Reddit
Auf Reddit lief vorhin eine Ask me Anything-Aktion mit dem Sohn einer Dame, die unter anderem mit Alan Ginsberg in den 60ern die Unruhen in Chicago erlebte, als Kind 2 Klassen übersprang und 10 Instrumente spielte, in der David Johnny Carson-Show auftrat, Weltklasse-Falkonierin war, in einem Büro des Playboy gearbeitet hat und damals durch den Lake Michigan auf die Arbeit schwamm, nach der ein Insekt benannt wurde, eine preisgekrönte Werbeagentur gründete und nun im hohen Alter einen Hunter auf Level 85 in World of Warcraft spielt. Und einen Ameisenbären namens Claude besaß sie auch. Und anscheinend ist das tatsächlich alles wahr.
Bookmarks for August 3rd: NYC Garbage Art, Hofmanns Potion, Spaceflight Psychology
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared on Vimeo
Retro Future: Space Art Update
Spaceflight Psychology and the New ‘Right Stuff’ | Wired Science | Wired.com
AFP: Icelanders hand in draft of world’s first ‘web’ constitution
Princess Leia Costume Made of Duct Tape
Heather Holliday, Sword Swallower on Vimeo
LEGO Dragon Breathes Actual Fire | Geekosystem
“Space Night – Earth Views” 4-10 komplett online
NYC Garbage, Trashy Art In A Cube From New York City
Hacker stock art – Boing Boing
Mac ‘n’ Cheese on Vimeo: Mac 'n' Cheese is an animated short directed and created by four students at the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands. This roughly two minute animation took about five months to make, and about a bajillion peanut butter sandwiches.Synopsis: When you find yourself running scared and running out of energy, there's only a few options left to outrun your opponent through the southern desert. Stopping at nothing, watch these two guys wear each other out and rip through boundaries hitherto unbroken.
Mona Lisa – 6,239 dot to dot drawing on the Behance Network: I created an A0 poster with dots numbered from 1 to 6,329 and took a time lapse video of myself linking them all up over 9 hours. Here's how it turned out.
The Mission to Get Osama Bin Laden : The New Yorker: What happened that night in Abbottabad.
Essential Mix by Paul Kalkbrenner (30.7.2011) [Mix,Download] | Dressed Like Machines: This Essential Mix is a live set of Kalkbrenner’s own productions and remixes, including tracks from his new album ‘Icke Wieder’.
Hofmann’s Potion (LSD documentary) – YouTube: The documentary delves into the little known early history of the world's most notorious psychedelic.Long before Timothy Leary urged a generation to "turn on, tune in and drop out," lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, was being used by researchers trying to understand the human mind. This documentary is a fascinating look at the story of "acid" before it hit the streets.Featuring interviews with many LSD pioneers, Hofmann's Potion is much more than a simple chronicle of the drug's early days. <br />
With thoughtful interviews, beautiful music and stunning cinematography, it is an invitation to look at LSD, and our world, with a more open, compassionate mind.
The Bible of Western War, Now Featuring Cartoon Animals | Danger Room | Wired.com: On War is Clausewitz’s attempt to distill warfare down to its enduring essentials. Its only equal is Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. If you’ve heard the phrase, “war is politics by other means,” you know the nickel version. If you want to go for the jackpot, stroll over to one of the war colleges or onto any military listserv to hear people debate Clausewitz’s relevance to their pet issue or dispute what he really said like he was Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall.But if you’d like something in between, Fitzgerald’s Clausewitz for Kids blog is slowly recasting On War, section by section, into a lecture series in the Prussian forest, conducted by Hare Clausewitz (get it?), the intense-looking rabbit officer pictured above in Napoleonic-era regalia.
CINEMETRICS: cinemetrics is about measuring and visualizing movie data, in order to reveal the characteristics of films and to create a visual “fingerprint” for them. Information such as the editing structure, color, speech or motion are extracted, analyzed and transformed into graphic representations so that movies can be seen as a whole and easily interpreted or compared side by side.
Christian Groß — SMS to Paper Airplanes: The text messages were filtered and analyzed using PROCESSING. The sender was encoded by the direction of the paper airplane, the length of the message with its size and the amount of positive emotional words with the amounts of folds. Additionally the paper airplanes were divided in two types depending on the length of their text. Finally, the paper airplanes resulting from this construction plan were placed in the room depending on the time when they were sent, as well as their emotional value.
Chicago: The Ferris Bueller high school – YouTube: You can make a strong case for The Blues Brothers as the definitive Chicago film, but Ferris Bueller's Day Off almost seems like a 103-minute commercial from the Chicago Office Of Tourism. That was no accident. Director (and Chicagoan) John Hughes described the film as his "love letter" to the city. He wanted to capture "not just the architecture, but the spirit."
In Test Tube, Hint of Chemicals Coming Alive – NYTimes.com: SAN DIEGO — Here in a laboratory perched on the edge of the continent, researchers are trying to construct Life As We Don’t Know It in a thimbleful of liquid.
John Waters on Rolemodels
Der großartige John Waters (Regisseur von Cry Baby, Pink Flamingos, Hairspray) über Eigenschaften, die seine Vorbilder haben sollen. Kann ich ziemlich genau so unterschreiben.
2 Be extreme: all my role models have to be. They have to be braver than I’ve ever been. Even to survive success is hard, no matter if it’s widespread success like Johnny Mathis had, or Bobby Boris Pickett, who his whole life just had to sing one song [The Monster Mash]. Today too many people are trying hard to be extreme. For the people I admire it was natural, and they turned it into art. […]
4 Be alarming – I think that’s important. And it’s different from being shocking. Alarming threatens the very core of your existence, it doesn’t just shock you – but you don’t know why it makes you nervous at first. You know, St Catherine of Siena drank pus for God. That was important to me because I thought: I want to be her, I don’t want to be half-assed! If I was going to be a Catholic, it would have been before the Reformation.
5 Humour. It’s very important to be well-read, but I never understand why people are so sure their partners have to be smart. What kind of smart do they mean? I’m not interested in talking about literature in bed! I like people who can make me laugh. Humour gets you laid, humour gets you hired, humour gets you through life. You don’t get beat up if you can make the person that’s going to beat you up laugh first.
6 Be a troublemaker. All art is troublemaking, because why go through all the trouble of making it if you don’t cause a little stir? […]
10 Be a little bit insane. That’s different from neurotic. You can stay home and be neurotic. You have to go out to be insane. You can be a little bit of both, but both need to be joyous. As long as you can find a moment of joy in even your worst behaviour, it’s something to be thankful for.
John Waters on 10 things every role model needs (via Dangerous Minds)
Stephen Fry about Everything
Der große Stephen Fry in einem halbstündigen Monolog über alles. Grandios. Oben der erste Teil, die anderen beiden drei nach dem Klick.
35 Years backwards thru Time with Sam Klemke
(Youtube Direktage, via BoingBoing)
„You know, 1993 was a very strange Year.“ Von Youtube: „Time Travel backward thru the years with Sam as he grows younger with the passing decades, from a paunchy middle aged white bearded self deprecating schluby old fart, to a svelt, full haired, clean shaven, self-important, inspired but clueless 20 year old.“
How Lightwriting saved the Life of a Businesskasper
(Vimeo Direktlife, via Brainpickings)
Schöne Minidoku von Sam Collins, der die Geschichte von Denis Smith erzählt, einem ehemaligen Businesskasper, dessen Job ihn in Depressionen und Alkoholismus trieb, der dann nach Australien flüchtete und dort Fotografie und Lightpainting entdeckte. Die Visuals sind für regelmäßige NC-Leser alles andere als neu, die Geschichte dahinter aber schon.
This 15 minute documentary tells the story of Denis Smith. Two years ago he was in a high pressure sales job suffering with depression, debt and alcohol problems. Then he discovered light painting, and his life changed forever…
