Steve Irwin After Burn

Crikey. It's a dead guy in full color! Mighty Illusions, whom I've mentioned before, has an interesting illusion today that shows a performance problem with our retinas that is ascribed to a phenomenon known as persistence of vision. Basically the real world, at the nanosecond level, is a bit faster than our millisecond chemical detection systems. Another great example of "good enough" evolution.

In this illusion the Crocodile Hunter himself, Steve Irwin, is shown in black and white, after a few seconds, the picture is shown in negative color, and it is then switched back to black and white. Due to that slowness in our wetware, Steve now looks like he's in full color! You need to stare at the white dot on the crocodile's belly to make this work.

http://www.moillusions.com/2008/06/crocodile-hunter-steve-irwin-afterimage.html

There's another great link that shows this persistence problem in a simpler setting. The rotating pink dot turns green and finally all the pink dots disappear. It's very disconcerting.

http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

Jawdropping Concept from BMW

You've got to take a look at this video from BMW that talks about designing the car around a frame and then covering the superstructure with, get this, fabric. Just seeing the headlights get exposed gave me goosebumps. Autoblog has a full write up including over 80 high rez images. Yow!

The BMW GINA Light Visionary Model that was seen via video being installed in the BMW Museum in Munich last week has finally been revealed, and the futuristic design study shows how BMW designers are thinking outside of the box when it comes to the materials that make up a car and also how the car relates to the driver...

Link

J K Rowling Addresses Harvard Grads

J K Rowling, the author of the fabulous Harry Potter series was asked to perform the commencement address at Harvard University recently. It's an amazing speech and not only good for those graduating students but for most people that live in privileged first world nations. I'm a great fan of her work as it is the quality and depth of the world that she has envisioned and then subsequently written about with consistency and clarity that impresses.

On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination...

Link

Mighty Illusions

Today is National Illusion Day. Well, no, it's not really. But it should be. If there was ever a need for a day like National Illusion Day it's today. Of course, there's always April 15th, tax day, in which there's the illusion that your tax dollars were yours in the first place and, in the hands of the government, will do untold good for the nation/state but that's different.

I found a great video out on the site Mighty Optical Illusions (a little over-the-top but often has good stuff). It's a demonstration of 10 popular optical illusions in two minutes.



Link

P.S. For those of you that like the Dragon illusion, there's a printable foldable version here.

Nudibranchs

No, these are not some smutty photos of sticks without bark, these are the marvelous wondrous Nudibranchs (pronounced nudi branks). The word "nudibranch" comes from the Latin nudus, naked, and the Greek brankhia, gills. So the Romans, after a little wine and undersea sport, must have concluded that they were some sort of naked fish. No wonder Rome burned! These are gastropod mollusks: a type of sea slug.

Normally, I'm not much of a slug or snail man. Snails in my garden usually get the boot (as in squish) or are tossed over the fence onto the golf course (long story). There are great debates about snails, especially in gardens, but the nudibranchs are more like Slugs of the Sea.

These nudibranchs are downright beautiful with eye popping color. True to form, National Geographic has a brilliant slide show of the weird and colorful little guys, entitled Living Color. They're carnivorous and will pretty much will eat whatever they can get their hands, um, appendages on including others of their kind.

Oh, did I mention that they are toxic? Enjoy!

Tesla vs Karma

I just caught wind of this new electric car by Fisker called the Karma. Get it?! Car-ma. Hahaha. It's not as far along in production as the Tesla Roadster but it has two features that beat the Tesla hands down: four seats and a hybrid engine. It also comes with a price tag of $80K (still stratospheric) but better than the $92K Tesla wants. Oh, it also looks just as cool. Oh, and I can fit G and S in the back and their fencing bags into the trunk. Definitely an important feature for the chauffeur called Dad.

The hybrid engine is only designed to be used when the charge on the car runs down. Range is about 50 miles which handles an average day of commuting. The engine is an inline 4-cylinder so you're not going to get a lot of power out of it, it's going to help to supplement the charging of the batter.

You still have to plug it in at night (standard 120V or 220V) and if you can't find that shady spot in the school parking lot you can let the solar cells on the roof recharge the battery!

Vroom!



Now, one would imagine that Fiskar and Tesla would be slave driving their engineers and trying to get their cars out the door as fast as possible in order to establish a beachhead in this brave new market. Nah, they're suing each other. Here's the counter-suit. Hopefully, they haven't lost sight of the greater mission of saving the planet.

Update on CNET about Fisker and their plans for a more reasonably priced sedan.

Bugs in Your Brain

Did you ever think about your brain as a type of hardware/software device? There are a couple of fun Scifi books that talk about wetware, software/interfaces for your brain. I think the analogy is apt because your brain exhibits a characteristic that is prevalent in the software business: bugs.

A software "bug", according to the American Heritage Dictionary is a defect in the code or routine of a program. Software is incredibly complex in many cases and errors can creep in that make a program behave unintentionally. Some of these bugs are fairly benign and some can be severe. In Windows these severe bugs can result in the BSoD or the Blue Screen of Death.

Your brain, evolved over thousands of years, has organically grown up with some bugs. These bugs are not severe enough to hamper our evolution but they do make for some interesting phun! In an effort to provide some publicity for this blog I am taking advantage of a bug in your brain to plant a subliminal message. Click on the image on the right to see what I mean.

Now I wish that I was smart enough to have made this up on my own. The reality is that this illusion was part of a clever ad campaign for the Comedy Channel. The culmination of this ad campaign was this hilarious picture. Note the clothes on the bench.