Category: Science, Engineering & Technology
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Came across this article in the NYT about "art genome mapping." The idea is to create a massive data base of art through the ages which supposedly can analyze your artistic inclinations and direct you to works of art you may enjoy. Amazon has done this for years with books and Netflix does it with films and Pandora with music. Most…
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"To sleep, perchance to dream…" Therein truly lies the rub, as Hamlet continues to muse in his famous 'To be or not to be' soliloquy. What does that have to do with all maladies? It might sound more than a bit far-fetched, but in my opinion, every chronic condition that develops in priorly healthy people…
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One of the patents Apple successfully defended against Samsung recently is one on the pinch gesture to zoom using a multitouch interface. It has been pointed out that, given multitouch, this gesture is about the most obvious imaginable to accomplish a zoom, and you shouldn’t be able to patent such obvious things. Pointed out too…
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On an otherwise slow news day (CNN's Anderson Cooper is gay, the US apologized to Pakistan so the war in Afghanistan can go on, another high profile banker resigned) physicists at CERN confirmed the discovery of the elusive subatomic particle Higgs boson. Now, this was no ordinary scientific event. Decades of speculation, ambitious nomenclature (God Particle) and gigantic…
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I am in Fort Worth for a couple of days. I took this picture of downtown Fort Worth reflected on the glass facade of a building. I was wondering why I took the photo this morning from the balcony of my hotel room directly across the street while enjoying a cup of coffee. I normally don't take photos unless I…
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Does the latest music album sound more than perfect to your ears, as it dribbles or blasts out of the earbuds of your music player? Not a note out of place, no little rough edges that would make you squirm? There's a reason for that in this world of hyperdigitization. Auto-tuning is the trick. Steve…
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Instrument maker Keith Hill responded to Elatia's query related to Prasad's recent post on violin sounds. It failed to appear in the comments section (TypePad!). I am publishing Hill's opinion as an independent post. Elatia, This is the third time I have read about this interesting experiment, from three different sources. The first thing I would say is that I have yet…
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If you enjoy a good debunking, this one’s a doozy. A scientist and contemporary violin maker conducted blind comparisons, getting professional violinists to try and choose among three old Cremonese violins, including two by Stradivari, (total value 10M) and three high-end modern violins (total value 100k). They used a clever blinding protocol: With modified welders’…
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Can you name the creator of each of these 15 designs?
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The motto below the cat picture, "He who dislikes the cat, was in his former life, a rat." seems no longer apt. We have been seriously maligning rats, who apparently show empathetic behavior and even a degree of altruism that was hitherto unsuspected. Or maybe just unnoticed and unstudied. "The first evidence of empathy-driven helping…
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