Links and write-ups about beautiful things from around the web!
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The visibilizing analyzer
The Language Log on how science fiction often misses the mark with predictions of technology (the why is up for debate, of course):
Less than 50 years ago, this is what the future of data visualization looked like — H. Beam Piper, “Naudsonce”, Analog 1962:
She had been using a visibilizing analyzer; in it, a sound was broken by a set of filters into frequency-groups, translated into light from dull red to violet paling into pure white. It photographed the light-pattern on high-speed film, automatically developed it, and then made a print-copy and projected the film in slow motion on a screen. When she pressed a button, a recorded voice said, “Fwoonk.” An instant later, a pattern of vertical lines in various colors and lengths was projected on the screen.
This is in a future world with anti-gravity and faster-than-light travel.
The comments that follow are a great mix of discussion about science fiction writing (why do the galactic scientists in Asimov’s Foundation rely on slide rules?) and 1960s display technology limitations (vector vs. raster, who will win?). I like this site.
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On gunpowder, ice cream, and sound symbolism
From the post Language of Food: Ice Cream, a fascinating article linking the history of gunpowder, ice cream, linguistics, and even a bit of marketing insight:
Something similarly beautiful was created as saltpeter and snow, sherbet and salt, were passed along and extended from the Chinese to the Arabs to the Mughals to the Neapolitans, to create the sweet lusciousness of ice cream. And it’s a nice thought that saltpeter, applied originally to war, became the key hundreds of years later to inventing something that makes us all smile on a hot summer day.
If you like food, language, or science, the full post is worth a read.
(Via Language Log)
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Comedy Is Always Happening
Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening. Steve Martin, from his autobiography Born Standing Up.
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GelSight 3D Rubber Imaging
GelSight, a high-resolution, portable 3D imaging system from researchers at MIT, basically what looks like a small piece of translucent rubber injected with metal flakes. Watch the video to see some of the microscopic scans they’re able to get using this. I love non-showy SIGGRAPH tech demos like this one.
(Via ACM TechNews)
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Spreading the Word About Good Stuff
I had an urge to write. When I saw something that I thought might be publishable, I wrote something. I just wanted to spread the word about good stuff. From the NY Times obit of Daniel D. McCracken, who starting in the 1950s wrote books on computers and programming aimed at non-scientists, a true pioneer in the field. Spreading the word about good stuff is a noble achievement.
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Logically boring
From Lewis Carroll’s Symbolic Logic, which aimed to make logic understandable via quirky syllogisms and illustrated tables:
- No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste;
- No modern poetry is free from affectation;
- All your poems are on the subject of soap-bubbles;
- No affected poetry is popular among people of real taste;
- No ancient poem is on the subject of soap-bubbles.
Conclusion: all your poems are uninteresting.
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Nomographs
From a post titled The Art of Nomography on Dead Reckonings (a blog dedicated to forgotten-but-beautiful mathematical systems! I’d better subscribe to this one…) :
Nomography, truly a forgotten art, is the graphical representation of mathematical relationships or laws (the Greek word for law is nomos). These graphs are variously called nomograms (the term used here), nomographs, alignment charts, and abacs. This area of practical and theoretical mathematics was invented in 1880 by Philbert Maurice d’Ocagne (1862-1938) and used extensively for many years to provide engineers with fast graphical calculations of complicated formulas to a practical precision.
Along with the mathematics involved, a great deal of ingenuity went into the design of these nomograms to increase their utility as well as their precision. Many books were written on nomography and then driven out of print with the spread of computers and calculators, and it can be difficult to find these books today even in libraries. Every once in a while a nomogram appears in a modern setting, and it seems odd and strangely old-fashioned—the multi-faceted Smith Chart for transmission line calculations is still sometimes observed in the wild. The theory of nomograms “draws on every aspect of analytic, descriptive, and projective geometries, the several fields of algebra, and other mathematical fields” [Douglass].
More about nomograms and abacs on Wikipedia.
(Via O’Reilly Radar)
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Floral Acoustics
I’ve heard that plants attract insects and other pollinators using nectar guides (nature’s own user interface!), but I’ve never heard of this adaptation: the plants depicted above manipulate sound rather than light to attract attention, a bit of floral acoustics.
Ralph Simon at the University of Ulm in Germany and his colleagues analysed the leaf’s acoustic properties and found that its unique shape produces a strong, constant echo across a range of sound-source angles. They then trained bats to seek a feeder hidden in artificial foliage. The animals found feeders topped with the cup shape in an average of 12 seconds — around half the time it took them to locate unadorned feeders or those under other leaf shapes.
(Via Nature)
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Stop Motion “Pinball Number 12”
I’m not sure how I feel about the minor key version of the song (hard to beat the Pointer Sisters original), but…OMG STOPMOTION PINBALL NUMBER COUNT!
OnetwothreefourFIVEsixseveneightninetenELEVENTWELVE!
(Via Make)
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Shel Silverstein on the Johnny Cash Show
[Video no longer available]
To override that last post of questionable coolness, here’s something decidedly cool: Shel Silverstein on the Johnny Cash Show, where he talks about being Uncle Shelby, plays a very quick duet with Johnny (“Boy Named Sue”, naturally), and finishes up with a solo of “Daddy, what if…?”.