Archive for March, 2009
March 31, 2009 at 11:26 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Take another look at this picture of the Rokeby Venus from last week’s post on mirrors in art:
Now, imagine you’re actually in the room with Venus, as depicted in this painting. You suspend your astonishment long enough to conduct a quick test of the principle of how a flat mirror works. Consider what would happen to Venus’ face in the mirror as you approach it. As you walk towards the mirror, would the proportion of the reflection taken up by Venus’s face increase or decrease? In the painting, the face takes about 2/3 the width of the mirror. Would that proportion get bigger or smaller as you get closer? Let’s make this a poll:
What happens to the proportion of the mirror occupied by Venus’s face as you approach? ( online surveys)
Now imagine the cupid moves the mirror so you see your own reflection in it. [...]
Original post by Dave Munger none@example.com
March 31, 2009 at 11:23 pm · Filed under 1398
Nature Clinical Practice Neurology has a salient article on ethics and medicine. The article asks the question: is it ethical to confront an individual with whom you do not have an official doctor-patient relationship, if you think they have a medical problem? Should you or should you not tell them if you see a medical problem?
Neurology is unique among the medical specialties in that much of the clinical examination can be appreciated visually and taught by use of video recordings.3, 4 Since 2003, we have conducted a ‘neurological localization course’, during which participants are taught correct clinical examination techniques with the help of patients.5 Trainees are often impressed by the wealth of clinical information that can be gleaned by observation alone; for example, how the externally rotated, slightly plantar-flexed attitude of the lower limb of a supine patient can hint at the possibility of an underlying [...]
Original post by Jake Young none@example.com
March 31, 2009 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Personal genomics company 23andMe has just launched an online community of “mommy bloggers” - a move I can only describe, in rather hushed and breathless tones, as sheer marketing genius.
I’ll give you a moment to let the vision sink in. Imagine a group of women hungry for information about the best way to ensure the future health and wellbeing of their unborn children. Now imagine a website packed with sincere, caring mother-types - most of them well-established bloggers with a strong existing fan base - writing about the real day-to-day issues that mothers care about (in the words of one recruit: “momming, aging, and my twenty year quest to lose the same ten pounds”; no doubt there will also be photos of puppies). Now imagine that those same bloggers have all been given a 23andMe genome scan and are writing excitedly about their results and what they mean for their [...]
Original post by Daniel MacArthur none@example.com
March 31, 2009 at 10:26 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
As many of you are aware, the UCLA research community has been under assault from the Animal Rights Activist community for a couple of years now. There has been an escalating series of attacks on the individual investigator’s homes and property, the most recent being the successful fire-bombing of a researcher’s car.
This researcher has been instrumental in creating a chapter of Pro-Test in the UCLA community.
Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…
Original post by DrugMonkey none@example.com
March 31, 2009 at 10:12 pm · Filed under 1378
I’m currently teaching Introduction to Psychology which has a number of university honors students who are required to do extra work in a certain number of their courses each semester in order to get ‘honors credit.’ The University leaves it up to me as to what they students should do to get this credit. I decided, along with my students, to let them explore the psychological literature through blogging. Each week they pick a relevant piece of literature (in this case - aggression, attractiveness, and political psychology) and write a short blog post about it.
I’ve found the blog to be a very wonderful way of getting students to explore the literature. It gets them writing as much as the standard end of the semester term paper as well as allowing a constant communication between me and the blog poster as well as the other honors [...]
Original post by The Omnibrain none@example.com
March 31, 2009 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
To be fair, the Russians aren’t attacking. In fact, the US military knew this was coming and expected it. Debris from launched spacecraft and rocketry regularly fall back into the atmosphere. Stilll, residents who didn’t know that might well have thought that the Russians were invading when they dialed 911. Things might have gone rather differently a few decades ago.
The mysterious boom and flash of light seen over parts of Virginia Sunday night was not a meteor, but actually exploding space junk from the second stage of a Russian Soyuz rocket falling back to Earth, according to an official with the U.S. Naval Observatory.
The Russian-built Soyuz rocket lifted off Thursday from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to launch a new crew and American billionaire Charles Simonyi — the world’s first two-time space tourist — to the International Space Station. The spaceflyers arrived at the space [...]
Original post by Urbanist
March 31, 2009 at 9:26 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
[YouTube - Link]
A rattleback or wobblestone is an object with a smooth bottom that can
be spun like a top. Unlike conventional tops, however, the rattleback
has an asymmetry which gives it a preferred direction of spin. If spun
in the opposite direction, it will begin to wobble, and then change the direction of its spin.
It
would seem that if a spinning object changes the direction of its spin,
it is defying the law of conservation of angular momentum, but
apparently it is the rocking/wobbling motion that is converted into
counter-rotational motion, not the initial rotation.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
Original post by Queuebot
March 31, 2009 at 9:24 pm · Filed under 1372
In his art series Family Tree, photographer Bobby Neel Adams take portraits of family members (father/son, mother/daughter and so on) tear them down the middle and gluing them back together (no photoshop manipulation is involved).
The result reveals a fascinating "visual DNA" or facial similarities between the two generations of people.
Link - via andrewsullivan
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.
Original post by Queuebot
March 31, 2009 at 9:18 pm · Filed under 1374
To protest the hyperinflation that has rendered the Zimbabwe currency worthless and to raise awareness of the dire economic situation there, the Zimbabwean Newspaper created an ad campaign featuring huge posters, wall murals, flyers, and even billboards all made out of trillions of Zimbabwean dollars. Check out the photos from the newspaper’s Flickr photostream.
The Mugabe regime has destroyed Zimbabwe. It has presided over the brutal oppression of the opposition, a cholera crises, massive food shortages and the total collapse of their economy. Furthermore anyone brave enough to report this has been bullied, beaten and driven into exile. One such group is ‘the Zimbabwean Newspaper’. However, not content with having hounded these journalists out, the regime has slapped an import ‘luxury’ duty of over 55% on them which makes the paper unaffordable for the average Zimbabwean. In order to subsidize the paper they need to sell it in England and South [...]
Original post by Queuebot
March 31, 2009 at 9:07 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Our pal AskMen has a neat (and somewhat controversial) list of the 29 Best Cities to Live In (if you’re a guy), based on various criteria such as sports & entertainment, power & money, dating & sex, fashion and so forth (all things important to guys, I suppose).
Sitting at no. 3 is the place I used to live nearby, San Francisco:
Why You Should Live in San Francisco
San Francisco is a cityscape of irresistible drama. Steep hills and skyscrapers overlook a gorgeous bay that changes color with the sky. That drama filters into every aspect of the city’s life, from its topsy-turvy power politics to its go-hard recreation (3,480 acres of parks including three golf courses) and go-harder nightlife (including 2,870 bars). Since the days of the Barbary Coast, San Francisco has boasted one of the great bar and dining cultures, and is home to some of the best restaurants in [...]
Original post by Alex
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