impressive cigar box work
Increasingly juggling seems to be synthesized with other performance disciplines such as acrobatics and dance. It's about the manipulation in time and space of objects, as well as the interrelationship between the body and those objects.
Oh, and check out the abs on this guy. I gotta go work out now.
Asymmetry and calculus in architecture
I found this talk by Greg Lynn tremendously thought provoking, specifically because of my reaction -- the idea of complex non-linear structures whose interrelated parts form an organic whole excites me, yet I instinctively disliked every example shown. I could see the sense of what Lynn was trying to communicate in every example, yet was disturbed by the results. Have I been brainwashed by what Lynn calls symmetry and the problem of 'ideal shapes'?
There's one shot in his presentation where he shows a mass of structural steel beams that are curved and loop all around -- fascinating. With these sort of techniques one can imagine structures that are almost alien to our present experience.
Staggering honey bee colony losses last year
35% of honey bee colonies in the U.S. were reported totally lost last year. Don't you think that's frightening?
A new overview survey was recently published outlining the scale of honeybee colony losses in the U.S. from Fall 2007 to Spring 2008.
The authors estimate that between 750 thousand and one million honey bee colonies in the U.S. died in that time period, many from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). They speculate about numerous factors such as varroa mites, stress from constant colony relocation (use of bees for agricultural pollination is heavily industrialized, more than the layperson might expect), weather, starvation, and poor quality queens. Some kind of contagious element is hypothesized as the key factor behind CCD.
The rate of death appears to be significantly higher than in previous recorded years. It will be interesting to see whether this has an impact on food commodity prices.
Photo by autan on flickr.
A new overview survey was recently published outlining the scale of honeybee colony losses in the U.S. from Fall 2007 to Spring 2008.
The authors estimate that between 750 thousand and one million honey bee colonies in the U.S. died in that time period, many from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). They speculate about numerous factors such as varroa mites, stress from constant colony relocation (use of bees for agricultural pollination is heavily industrialized, more than the layperson might expect), weather, starvation, and poor quality queens. Some kind of contagious element is hypothesized as the key factor behind CCD.
The rate of death appears to be significantly higher than in previous recorded years. It will be interesting to see whether this has an impact on food commodity prices.
Photo by autan on flickr.
Unfinished Game debate
I've been reading the comments in Jeff Atwood's post about this problem:
Let's say, hypothetically speaking, you met someone who told you they had two children, and one of them is a girl. What are the odds that person has a boy and a girl?
The number of people who instinctively think it's 50% is high, as you'd expect. But the number of people who continue to insist that it's 50% after being shown that it isn't, is disturbing. What's most disturbing is that the target demographic for Atwood's blog is the software development community - programmers! Yikes.
Let's say, hypothetically speaking, you met someone who told you they had two children, and one of them is a girl. What are the odds that person has a boy and a girl?
The number of people who instinctively think it's 50% is high, as you'd expect. But the number of people who continue to insist that it's 50% after being shown that it isn't, is disturbing. What's most disturbing is that the target demographic for Atwood's blog is the software development community - programmers! Yikes.
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