Manatees Love Grapes
Instant camera attached to cat - When you attach a camera to a cat and set it up to take pictures of the things it sees, you get to see some interesting things.
Well, I thought the hardest part is done by developing the software and soldering the controller board. But it is more the housing to protect the camera. You can not imagine what kind of requirements have to be fulfilled if you want to equip your cat with a camera. I built a small housing out of plastic plates and put it on the collar of the cat for evaluation purpose. This housing was last seen as the cat walked out of the door… Probably the wires I used for attaching were not strong enough. Or someone released the cat from the interesting looking piece. For the second try I used the plastic package of a child toy (Kinderueberraschung), put a stone in it for loading it with some weight and attached it again to the cat collar. This time the part returned - dirty and scratched outside, water inside. What the hell is the cat doing !? This raised the requirements for the camera protective housing a lot:
- Shock resistant - cat jumps from tree, housing hit ground
- Scratch resistant - Cat cleans itself with claws or sneaks above the ground
- Water resistant - If cat drinks, the piece around their neck will hang into water
- Theft resistant - If equipment draws attention cat will loose it, especially if it is easily removable.
From the looks of the pictures, the work was worth it.
What “dynamic range” means - Take sixty quick seconds and learn what it means when the audio engineers of today are required by record companies to produce music that is lower in quality than previous generations. By “lower in quality,” I do not mean the music itself.
You see, record companies want the albums from their artists to sound louder—especially useful on the radio, as the music competes with car noise. Yet, (to simplify) you can only program a CD to play between, say, 0 and 100 in loudness. Thus, for that “loud” sound, the entire dynamic range (the difference between the loud and soft parts of the track) gets compressed into the 98-100 region of loudness. Music has no “punch” and in some cases must be distorted to fit.
An Islamic bank is the majority owner of the Caribou Coffee chain: true! - This actually kind of makes sense, this Islam bank has about an 88% stake in the company… and it makes sense, because Wikipedia tells me that coffee became popular in Islamic countries with the ban of alcohol by the Shari’ah.
Lest you get the wrong idea, an important note:
In July 2002, the First Islamic Investment Bank announced that they had severed all ties with Dr. Al-Qaradawi, so the issue is now moot. First Islamic also hired Washington, D.C., law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to review its charitable donations, and they have certified that no charitable contributions from Caribou’s coffers go to groups banned under U.S. law.
That is to say, I link to this purely for the sake of trivia. It’s a rather interesting commentary on our globalization.
Nathan Sawaya builds incredible Lego sculptures - I’ve linked to Lego builders before, but this guy takes it to a whole new level. The artistry in capturing the human form in Legos is great. I especially like the yellow guy, with Legos spilling out.
Toilet seats down: a scientific and humorous analysis - It turns out that game theory, specifically Nash equilibrium, can be employed to analyze the situation of the toilet seat being left up or down. The author here, building on previous examinations (which were published in peer reviewed publications), addresses the “costs of yelling.” That is, when anger is directed by a woman against a man who has not left the seat in the correct position.
Discussion and conclusions
For “mankind”, the analysis in this paper has the following appeal: Once again, it has been found that the social norm of leaving the toilet seat down is inefficient; hence, “mankind” may feel vindicated.For “womankind”, the analysis in this paper is appealing for the following reason: It has been shown that the social norm of leaving the seat down is a trembling-hand perfect equilibrium. Hence, this norm is not likely to go away, at least in the near future.
Finally, I thought the title of publication responsible for this was funny: “The Science Creative Quaterly—in which, with respect to our name, we are as confused as you are.” (via df)
You Picked the Wrong Day to be Crappy - Ostensibly, this is a post about football, but the title, “You Picked the Wrong Day to be Crappy,” applies to so many things, that I simply had to share.
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