"Who keeps the metric system down?"

"Who keeps the metric system down?", originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

So, it is not only the Simpsons that keep it down (and the United States) it is The Container Store that contains the inches, pounds, quarts, feet, miles and various other measurements that make no sense to someone that was brought up with the logical SI system smartly based on 10, and micro, milli, deci, kilo, mega, tera, etc. I love meters, grams, and liters!

(OK, running and ducking for cover now, because here comes the comments from the Americans about the superiority of 3/8 inches, pints, and square feet...)

Are we there yet?

Now, THIS is worth reading.  Fantastic.

Bits and pieces from the internet: senseless and sense edition

The blog This is NOT Junk and Michael Eisen have a great post about senseless, automatic prizing of books on Amazon, leading to the advertised price of over $23 million for a book on Drosophila (fruitflies / bananflugor). Worth reading and pondering. [thanks to OK for finding it]

Your brain morphology might influence if you are conservative or liberal, reports a new study in Current Biology.   (Easy read version here: Science Daily)

Take a look at this map of internet use connections (full article here).  Why are some topics 'dead-ends', such as hydrology, physiology, and social works?  I would think those are strongly linked to other fields.  But remember, this is from how scientists click on links, so maybe these three fields largely keep to themselves?  Biodiversity and philosophy seems to be right in the middle of things, with many connections in different directions. Fascinating, like a starmap, but based on virtual internet data use from real people.  However, this is a 3-D map that has been flattened, so it is a bit hard to interpret. Imagine this as a cloud of dots you could twist and turn, then it might make more sense.


Sensible or senseless?  Felix Gonzalez-Torres' art installation "Untitled" of a heap of candy in a corner at the Art Institute of Chicago. The date of this art piece is 1991, so the candy is 20 years old right now.  What do you think about this?

Mathematical music

What happens when you try to play pi?  This, and it is beautiful!

World record: Smallest orchid flower...

This orchid flower is so small that you can barely see it (2.1 mm across), and the petals are just one cell layer thick (just like moss leaves). Read more here.  Discovery and photo by Lou Jost, in Ecuador.

Oh, and in case you wondered, the world record for the tallest dandelion is from Norway, with 108 centimeters.

Tree puzzle

This non-real resin-based split-sawed tree-trunk art-piece called Billion was just featured on Core 77 and was made by Vincent Kohler.  Interesting.  But I found myself looking and looking at the cuts and parts and I don't think those parts can be fit into a circular shape.  There are too many of the small square pieces to the central-right below the central trunk, don't you think? I think that if you take all the pieces and glue them back together, there will be too much wood in the bottom right corner.  No? Yes? Fascinating.  (Photo by Geoffrey Cottenceau)

Help, I am pixelated!

Here is a really cool animation movie. Unfortunately you have to ignore an ad first for 25 seconds or so, be patient, and the fun will come.


PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. -

Ten Amazing Numbers

Just look at the sequence occurring in this table.

1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321

Ok so lets try 1 x 9 etc.

1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111

And so it goes .!

9 x 9 + 7 = 88
98 x 9 + 6 = 888
987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888

Brilliant, isn't it?

And look at this symmetry:

1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

(from PP)

The scale of the universe

This is just enormously cool:  link

Milestone

milestone, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

My car passed an important milestone on its way to work the other day. 9 years, 130 000 miles, and who knows how many kilometers that is?

In memoriam: Benoit Mandelbrot

I remember the 1980s and the book CHAOS, and the amazing fractals therein.  The most famous was (is?) the Mandelbrot fractal, discovered by and named after Benoit Mandelbrot, who died yesterday.

From the New York Times article:

Dr. Mandelbrot traced his work on fractals to a question he first encountered as a young researcher: how long is the coast of Britain? The answer, he was surprised to discover, depends on how closely one looks. On a map an island may appear smooth, but zooming in will reveal jagged edges that add up to a longer coast. Zooming in further will reveal even more coastline. “Here is a question, a staple of grade-school geometry that, if you think about it, is impossible,” Dr. Mandelbrot told The New York Times earlier this year in an interview. “The length of the coastline, in a sense, is infinite.”

Math equation: Find x.

Next weekend AREA is taking the PSAT test for the first time, more as a practice test than anything else. Here is a figure to wish her good luck! And yes, I would think the answer is very creative and correct, but I bet the graders disagree. What do you think, AREA?

Teenagers and supernovas

This is especially for LA, who loves space:
Teenage girl discovers new type of supernova (read more by clicking on the link)

"What Caroline discovered is now known as SN2008ha, and it turns out to be a very interesting object — in fact, it is an entirely new class of supernova, never before seen."

Now that I think is cool. I find new species, but new supernovas are definitely a step above that.

And while you are at it - check out AstronomyCast!

Calculated joy

How many % cacao do you think? If you don't know, you can use the chocolator to figure it out. Here too.

Beautiful statistics

A researcher in Sweden, Hans Rosling, has come up with a new way of looking at correlations and statistics in a very visually pleasing way, check out the video here titled

"Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen"

It gives you a sense of the world behind all those dry numbers and tables you usually see. I love it! I want to make graphs like that! How did he do it?