Dain Fagerholm: Creature in Cube with Gem (stereographic drawing)
Movies as code
This site attempts to summarize popular movies using snip-its of fairly readable code.
Wind Map
An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future.
This map shows you the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US right now.
Ballet dancers slowed down
Watch Marina Kanno and Giacomo Bevilaqua from Staatsballett Berlin perform jumps and other impressive ballet moves in super slow motion. The detail at 1000 frames per second is incredible.
Radiohead’s Everything in Its Right Place is a nice touch too…
via Kottke
Mass produced hits
John Seabrook of the New Yorker shows how the Top 40 sausage is made.
Most of the songs played on Top Forty radio are collaborations between producers like Stargate and “top line” writers like Ester Dean. The producers compose the chord progressions, program the beats, and arrange the “synths,” or computer-made instrumental sounds; the top-liners come up with primary melodies, lyrics, and the all-important hooks, the ear-friendly musical phrases that lock you into the song. “It’s not enough to have one hook anymore,” Jay Brown, the president of Roc Nation, and Dean’s manager, told me recently. “You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre-chorus, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge.” The reason, he explained, is that “people on average give a song seven seconds on the radio before they change the channel, and you got to hook them.”
It’s depressing to think that some music has become less art and more science.
Facebook Threatens Legal Action Against Employers Asking for Your Password
Facebook Threatens Legal Action Against Employers Asking for Your Password
This is an interesting move by Facebook to protect the privacy of it’s users. Are they for real? Or is it a PR stunt intended to make them seem more serious about privacy than they actually are?
Designer Degrees
Scott Adams thinks there should be a new kind of degree, a “certification that a student has completed a series of classes specified by a particular designer.”
The designer would not be limited to one college for specifying classes. For example, if Warrant Buffett designed the Warren Buffett Business Degree, he would specify the general type of classes that need to be completed, and the student would be free to find those classes across any number of institutions and sources, including online classes or work experience. A graduate who earns the Warren Buffett Business Degree might take a few classes at the local community college, spend a year in China learning Chinese, work for an Internet startup for a year, join Toastmasters International to practice public speaking, read a number of specific business books, and so on.
This is a brilliant idea. The internet has made the technical aspects of it possible, and the questionable value of a college degree as well as the massive debt required to get one makes it desirable.