Cool Things To Find

OK, so here at Digital Diner recently we've all been walking around singing "Dumb Ways To Die" which we told you about in a previous post.  It's really a catchy tune, but it's, um... well... kind of morose.  I mean, sure it incents you to stay alive or at least not die in an embarrassingly dumb way.  Yes, next time I'm in space I'll be sure to keep my helmet on just so you all don't laugh at me.  But still, wouldn't it be nice to focus on something a little more positive than death?  You know, something like discovery and science and all that sort of stuff that we hold dear here at Digital Diner.  If you are looking for a more uplifting version of this little ditty, try "Cool Things to Find" in the video above.  Stick that in your brain instead and maybe you can have a more positive day.

Of course, there is no way to unsee or unhear certain things... so if you think these parodies, copies and knock-offs are just pale imitations of the original, then maybe you should just give in, embrace the reality of the situation and watch/listen to the hour long version of the original below.

I don't know about you, but it's a bit of a toss-up for me.  Of course, the main tune is totally stolen from David Bowie's Changes... Don't you think "Turn and face the strain..." == "Dumb ways to die."  As we pointed out before, all songs are just copies of other songs these days anyway.

Anamorphic Illusions

This video is a little bit mind bending.  Things are not as they seem.  Several of the items are not real, they are just pictures printed on paper.  The fun part about it is that they are projections designed to look correct and 3 dimensions from a particular point of view.  When the camera looks at the image from that point of view all appears fine, but when you move the image, everything sort of breaks down.  Watch the video then continue reading below.

Lots and lots of birds....

Lots and lots of birds... really lots!

Click on the picture above and examine it a little closer.  Go ahead.  It is not the work of some crazy person with Photoshop.  It is actually a picture we took on Friday, as shot from our camera.  There really were that many birds all flying in close proximity.  It was crazy!
Every now and then, instead of eating a bird (Turkey) on Thanksgiving we head off to central California to watch birds.  There are several wildlife preserves there that have literally millions of birds. Now we are NOT big birders or anything like that, but when you get over a million of just about anything in a small area, it often makes quite a spectacle.  This is the case with these birds, mostly Snow Geese, that winter in central California.  We visited three areas, Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, Colusa National Wildlife Refuge and Gray Lodge Wildlife Area.  We saw Geese,  Ducks, Cormorants, Egrets, Herons, Vultures, Hawks, Coots, Grebes and plenty more.  The most amazing thing was the pure number of them.  The noise of the geese was a cacophony of sound that is best described as the cross between a large crowd at a football game, and what it might sound like if you could listen to all the telephone connections in the country at once.  Take a look at the (a bit shaky) video below that we shot, for some idea of what it was like.

Will we ever run out of new music?

Why is it that so many songs sound alike?  Is it because we are running out of new combinations of notes?  Michael at VSauce does a nice job of laying it all out for you.  While there is a limit to how many songs we can create with a given length, we aren't likely to run out of possibilities any time soon.  The real issue is that we seem to only like a very small section of the space of all possible songs.  Ah yes, once again, we are our own limiting factor.  There are a lot of good facts in here and I especially liked the link he suggested to the video below that shows how many songs are lyrics are interchangeable because they use the common meter.  Fun stuff!

Africa for Norway

It is that time of year again when the stars come out to promote their favorite charity or cause for the season of giving.  Many times these culminate in a star studded music video showing stereotypical shots of some poor people in Africa and asking us to give money to help fix it.  They have received their share of aid over the years and now they want to pay it forward.  They are concerned about cold people in Norway.  They can't imagine what it must be like to face those months of dark and cold, so they have started a campaign to send radiators to Norway.  It is called Radi-Aid.  Watch the video and enjoy.

What?  Africa saving Norway?  See what happened there?  I like it when you laugh, but then you have to think about why you are laughing.  Well my friends, Africa is a huge continent with all sorts of different people with a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds.  You see, often these causes are well intentioned, but they play to our stereotypes.  When someone mentions Africa, many people think about poor people living in huts with AIDs.  Part of the reason for this is all these fund raising efforts that propagate this impression.  Africa for Norway is an attempt to turn the tables on the notion that all Africans are poor and in need of help.  They are trying to promote a more balanced view of Africa and developing countries.  Here in the US, we have our share of poor and sick people.  If the media focused solely on them, the world would have a very different view of us.  As it is, Hollywood pumps out movies that promote an equally unrealistic view of the US, but with a very different spin.

Next time you are asked to give to a cause, think about whether they are playing on your stereotypes, or if there is a real need.  Most importantly, don't generalize your beliefs based on a specific instance of a problem.  The world is a big place.

More info at Africa for Norway (which by the way is created by some students in Norway, so it's not even really African)

Inspirational 15-year-old Maker from Sierra Leone

I love this story of a 15-year-old kid, Kelvin Doe, from Sierra Leone who is a extraordinary inventor and tinker.   I also love how his mentor sees that infecting a society with Maker ethic has the potential to change a country.   Kelvin is an engineering whiz kid who has made some amazing things just from parts he finds in the dustbin in Sierra Leone.  He built his own radio station and generator and a host of other very practical gadgets... all self-taught.  He recently was invited to visit MIT for 3 weeks.  It's a moving story.  Sorry about the ad at the end, but it seems like a worthy cause.

Via Boingboing
Thanks Bryan

Lasagna in Your Dishwasher

Here at Digital Diner we don't watch much TV, but we do love the MythBusters.  We also love scientific chef Alton Brown, host of Good Eats.  The combination makes for some great TV worth watching.  Last weekend's episode of MythBusters featured Alton Brown testing a bunch of culinary myths.  It's a great show.  Among other things they test whether or not you can cook a Thanksgiving dinner using the engine of a car (as you drive), and exactly what meats really taste like chicken,  but they didn't have time to include all the myths.  Below is one that didn't make it.  It answers the all important question, can you cook a lasagna in the dishwasher.  Watch and enjoy!

You can watch other segments of the episode here.

Global Warming and the Power of Crowd Sourced Data Collection

I just saw an interesting article at the Grist Mill that shows some of the statistics of global warming.  According to the data they have seen from NOAA, no place on the planet has seen record cold temperatures so far this year.  In fact, October was the 332nd consecutive month with a globally, above-average temperature.  That means that anyone 27 years old or younger has never experienced a globally colder than average month.  Pretty astounding.

Another interesting part of the article comes from Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground. He claims that the drought of 2012 will prove to be ultimately more damaging than superstorm Sandy was both in terms of deaths and financial damage.  That's pretty shocking.  The conjecture is that both the drought and the storm were aided by higher than normal temperatures.

Of course, for some reason global warming is a hot political topic with accusations of faked data and all sorts of nasty conspiracy theories.  Weather Underground helps me justify my stance on this issue... see below.

The Digital Diner Weather Station

Aside from the gloomy news on global warming, I think that it is interesting that they quoted Jeff Masters from Weather Underground as an expert on equal footing with scientists at NOAA.  We have been streaming data from our weather station here at Digital Diner continuously to Weather Underground and HamWeather (a lesser known weather service) since August of 2001 (11+ years!!).   Weather underground is a crowd-sourced sensor network of weather information where people like us contribute data from their personal weather stations.  They are collecting data from 36,000 stations around the world which is very likely more than NOAA is collecting.  This data can help lead to new understanding of really big issues like global climate change.  Let that settle in for a second.  A bunch of random folks can actually contribute to one of the biggest scientific issues of our time.  That may be why this database of weather data from regular folks like us has become valuable enough that the Weather Channel has announced their intention to purchasing Weather Underground.

Little Sister is Watching

I've got an extensive background in the study of sensor technology and I've heard many concerns about what happens when these sensors proliferate and the government can monitor our every move.  Will this technology help move us toward a state where Big Brother is always watching us?  I think we are already seeing some of this, just visit an airport for examples, but I also think we are seeing something else.  It turns out that little sister is watching too.  By "little sister" I mean the rest of us.  It's not just the government monitoring us.  We can often monitor the government, big corporations and any other conspiracy promoting organizations you don't trust using the same type technology.  While there may be people who argue that the government has some particular reason for wanting us to believe their data in support of global climate change, we have a more extensive set of weather data from non-governmental sources - the Weather Underground (incidentally the name Weather Underground a reference to a 1960s militant radical student group the Weather Underground).  I can't vouch for all the data on there, but I can tell you that at least our data from our weather station is accurate.  I think there are many other amateur meteorologists out there who can vouch for their own data on Weather Underground, and in this case it seems to correlate with NOAA data pretty well, so that makes me believe it is all accurate.  The temperature of the Earth is rising.  The bigger point is, so is our ability to understand our world.  Sites like Weather Underground, HamWeather and Cosm are providing a way for us to collect and share data to reach our own conclusions, not those fed to us by those who may have their own agenda.  Just as Wikipedia has become the defacto first source of information (the internet encyclopedia if you will despite the fact that schools are fighting it) there are new sources of information popping up every day that are created by people like you and me.  It is making it harder and harder for anyone to pull off an elaborate hoax.

Please dear readers, go prove to yourself that the world is as you believe.  If you question whether or not the world is round, send up your own balloon to take pictures.  If you want to know what's happening with sea life in the San Francisco Bay, volunteer to help count oysters and see for yourself.  Rather than getting bogged down in political debate, go do some science for yourself!

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Fall

Actual Fall in Oregon (photo by Horst Schoenhoff)

My Rendition of Fall in California

One of the things that we miss here in California it the vibrant colors of fall.  We just don't have so many of those brilliant red leaves that give fall that fiery appearance.  Instead we have a lot of trees that just don't change colors or loose their leaves while the ones that do mostly turn yellow then brown.  Here, fall is mostly the time of year when the rains start and all the oils that have been collecting in the road all summer come to the surface to make it even more dangerous than driving in snow...

Of course the lack of fall leaves has its up side.  This means that we don't have to rake leaves as much as people elsewhere do.  On the downside, this means that we don't get to jump in piles of leaves like the one in the video below.

Warning: Kids - Don't try this at home without the supervision of an adult... especially the math shown in this video.

Alice's Restaurant: the Quiz

About this time every year, my family used to play the Alice's Restaurant Massacree by Arlo Guthrie.  After all, it's a song about Thanksgiving...well, Alice actually.  OK, OK really it is a song about how a US Citizen could avoid the draft by being convicted of a minor crime like littering, but I digress.  The folks over at Mental Floss have put together a fun little quiz for those of you who, like me, have heard the song in all its glory more than once.  Without having heard the song in a couple of years I amazed myself and got 10 out of 12 correct.  (If I could only remember other things as well.)

Give the quiz a try and see if you can beat me.  You can listen to the song in all its 18:34 of glory here, but unless you are new to the song, you should try the quiz first.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Via Mental Floss

Be Safe Out There

OK kids, remember, don't sell both your kidneys on the internet.  Don't dress up like a moose during hunting  season.  Don't take off you helmet in outer space.  This sage advice and much more is woven into a brilliant little public service announcement called "dumb ways to die."  On top of it, it's a catchy tune.  Watch and tell me if you aren't singing the tune for hours... oh and be safe out there, OK?  I don't want to hear of any Digital Diner readers eating a tube of super glue... and for goodness sake, please DON'T press the red button.

Counting Oysters in the San Francisco Bay

The Watershed Project offices

Yesterday we visited the Watershed Project in Richmond to help them with their study of oysters in the San Francisco Bay.  

The oysters are making a comeback after a problem that started back in the mid-1800s.  Apparently, during the gold rush, the miners used a method called hydraulic mining.  They pointed a high pressure hose at the hillside and sprayed away all the soil to just reveal the gravel and rocks beneath it.  This left them with a much easier task of separating the valuable rocks from the others.  Widespread use of this technique caused a huge amount of mud and silt to be washed down from the Sierra Mountains into the San Francisco Bay.  This was very bad news for the oysters because they require a hard surface to cling to.  As all the rocks became covered in silt, the oysters died off.

Oysters are filter feeders that can each process up to 20 gallons of water per oyster per day.  In that process, they remove nitrogen-containing compounds and plankton from the water.  This tends to help overall water quality and has an impact all the way up the food chain, so they are vital to the ecosystem.

Bricks from around the bay waiting to be counted

The Watershed Project is hoping to create new habitats to promote oyster colonies to help the overall ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay.  As part of this work, they are studying where oysters are likely grow by placing bricks in the water at various candidate sites around the bay on specially designed stands.  The Oysters like the hard surfaces these bricks provide.  They place the bricks in August and in November (now) they re-collect them to see what has grown.  It was our job (and other volunteers) to help with counting the number of oysters that were on the rocks.

A muddy brick ready to be counted

The bricks had been retrieved and carefully organized by other volunteers so that we could tell exactly which brick came from which location, how it was oriented and its depth in the water.  We then proceeded to count and record each oyster on the front, back, top, bottom and sides separately.  With only three months of growth, many of these oysters were very small (as small as 1 mm), but it was our job to count every one on each brick.  We had to differentiate between oysters, barnacles, limpets and other clingy critters.  Differentiating between these different aquatic bivalve, arthropod and gastropod mollusks was a bit daunting at first, but we quickly got the hang of it.

It was messy detailed work, but somehow very satisfying

Bix and Widdakay hard at work

Take Your Show on the Road

I think these guys got a little bit confused when someone said that they should take their band out on the road.  I suppose what better way to go on tour?  ...and the driver has a built in soundtrack.... very nice.  In fact, now that I think about it a little more, this band is really going places.

Via LikeCool

Real Life Superhero Battles

Epic battle with electricity!  Here, have a lightning bolt!  wow!  It's Blue Zeus vs Red Zeus in a Tesla coil induced zapfest.  I have no experience in this area, but it seems to me that this would be really fun.  Just guessing.  I mean, what a feeling of power (literally).  And to be able to steer giant arcs of electricity toward your opponent...   amazing!  This performance was part of the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival @ Queens in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Human Powered Quadcopters

 

Human-Powered Helicopters: Straight Up Difficult from NPR on Vimeo.

By now, our readers know that we love quadcopters here at Digital Diner,  We also like riding our bikes.  The combination seems really interesting.  Apparently, several groups are trying to create a human powered helicopter, and the leading contenders are, you guessed it, giant quadcopters.  Take a look at the video and you'll see what amazing machines these are.

Life's Too Short for the Wrong Job

As someone who is actively looking for that elusive perfect job, the ad campaign by this German job search company certainly struck a chord.  We've all had those jobs where we feel that we're stuck in a box doing things that a machine could probably do better... These folks just illustrated it very nicely with large photographs attached to the side of various machines.  The say "Life is too short for the wrong job."  Very true.  Of course, sometimes the right job is just the one that gives you a paycheck.

See the rest of the pictures here.

via Toxel.

Marbles and Monty Hall

I was confronted with this problem by a kid about 1/4 my age.  He said, "imagine I have a bag with three marbles in it; two white and one black.  If you choose the black marble you win.  You reach into the bag and pull out a marble, but don't look at it.  There are now two marbles in the bag and one in your hand.  I now pull a white marble out of the bag and show it to you.  This leaves only one marble in your hand and one in the bag.  For best probability of picking the black marble, do you keep the one in your hand or pick the one in the bag?"  This is called the Monty Hall problem because it is similar to a dilemma faced by contestants on the TV gameshow, The Price Is Right (with host Monty Hall) every week.

The somewhat counterintuitive answer is that it actually is statistically better to go for the marble in the bag instead of the one in your hand.  It took about 45 minutes for this *$#! young fellow to convince me of this.

Here's why it's true:
When you take the marble from the bag, you have a 1 in 3 chance of choosing the black marble.  That means there is a better chance that it is in the bag (2 in 3 chances) than in your hand.  So far so good.  Well, if this little know-it-all kid, shows you one of the marbles in the bag that ISN'T the black one, there is still a 2 in 3 chance that the black marble is in the bag, but now all that chance is tied up in the one marble that remains in the bag... so you should take it rather than the 1 in 3 chance marble you are holding in your hand.

The video above explains the problem rather nicely, so if my explanation didn't do it for you, try the video.  It might be worth millions the next time you are on a game show.  Just remember to send me my cut of your winnings.

It's all about the teacher

Sometimes a really good teacher can make even a complex topic like chemistry seem clear.  In this case the teachers are some cute and well-behaved dogs that seem to know a thing or two about chemical bonds. All I can say is woof woof.

Ice Fishing Explained

I never really understood the appeal of ice fishing.  It's cold and miserable and you always run the risk of falling through the ice.  Not my idea of fun.  However, this video really puts it all into perspective.  Its very cleverly done.  See how long it takes you to figure it out.

Facial Interpretive Dance

I like the performance this fellow does of Paganini's violin concerto.  I think of it as interpretive dance for your face.  Human's are somehow wired to notice faces - so much that we think we see them on Mars.  We read each other's emotions through our faces and I think this fellow does a fine job matching his facial expression to the music.

Of course, there are a lot of people regularly manipulate their faces to evoke emotion as a profession.  They are called actors.  One of my favorite examples is child actor Henry Thomas.  The video below is his audition for the film ET.  In the beginning you hear the crew giving Thomas the background of the scene, then they start and Henry Thomas nails it.  He said later that he thought about his dog that had died inorder to bring these emotions to the front.  All I know is that it is an amazing performance.  In the end you hear Steven Spielberg say, "you got the job kid."  Yeah... you got the job.  If you haven't seen it before I recommend watching.

Science of Really Tall Trees

I can almost guarantee that if you watch all the videos in this post, it will change the way you look at trees.

A walk in California's giant redwood forest can be a transformative experience just being in proximity to these huge, ancient living things.  Sure tall trees are massively gargantuan biomasses that are awesome in their own right, but have you ever stopped to think about what it takes to allow a tree like that to exist?  The science is pretty interesting.  I mean, how does a tree suck water up hundreds of feet?  It turns out the answer isn't simple.  The video above offers an explanation and gives you some idea of what these giant living things go through every day.  Watch and be amazed!

Of course, once these huge trees exist, they literally change the landscape and the ecosystem around them.  Scientists like Stephen Sillett spend their lives trying to understand these giant beings and the plants and animals that depend on them.  The videos below give an interesting view into the world of giant redwoods and the scientists who climb 300ft up to study them (yes there's some great technical tree climbing action too).

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Slit Scanning Video

There is a cool technique for creating interesting videos making the rounds.  Its called slit scan photography.  As you know, video consists of a sequence of frames that are basically snapshots of moments of time that can be put together to give the illusion of motion.  Imagine splitting each frame of your video into horizontal lines and then creating a new frame of video by combining the first line of the first frame with the second line from the second frame and so on.  In this way each frame would show lines from multiple moments in time.  You end up with an effect where events happen first in the top of the frame and later in the bottom of the frame.  The result is, well, very interesting.  Take a look at the video and you'll see what I mean.

Very fun stuff from Adrien M / Claire B 

Amazing Parade Floats from Bloemencorso in Zundert, Netherlands

There is a celebration in Holland where they build the most amazing sculptures out of flowers that I've seen.  I know we have our Thanksgiving Day parade in NYC and the Rose Bowl parade in Southern California, but this is just different.  Bloemencorso is the annual parade of flowers in Zundert, Holland.  All of these floats are made of natural flowers.  Very impressive indeed!

The video below is much longer than I had patience to watch, but it was sure fun to fast forward through it to see the different creations.  You can see more videos on their website and in this gallery. 

Via This is Colossal

Spot The Space Station

On a clear night, just after sunset, go outside and look up in the sky.  Chances are that if you look carefully, you will see a few "stars" that are moving through the sky.  These are often satellites that are circling the Earth.  At sunset and sunrise when it gets dark down here on the ground, for a little while, the satellites are still up in the sunlight and what you are seeing is the sunlight reflecting off of them.  Try it!

One of the most fun satellites to search for is the International Space Station(ISS).  NASA has just posted a cool service that can send you an alert whenever the Space Station is flying overhead at your location.  It circles the Earth every 90 minutes or so, but the alert system will only tell you when the conditions are right for a good sighting, which will vary from a couple times a week to once a month. You can sign up at their Spot The Station web site.  If you do, it will send you an alert by text message or email when the Space Station is visible.  You can also use this applet anytime to find the location of the ISS.

Spot The Station

Workshop Weekend Reminder

A little reminder for San Francisco Bay area folks - We mentioned earlier that this coming weekend (Nov 10-11) will be the Workshop Weekend program in Oakland, and that among the classes will be something called "Awesome Aeroponics"which will be taught by Digital Diner's own Bix and Widdikay and friends.  We have some more good news.  If you sign up and use the coupon code AEROPONICS2012, you will receive a 25% discount on your registration.

I don't know about the other classes, but I can tell you that Awesome Aeroponics will be entertaining and informative.  You will learn about everything from Hyperlocavorism to Deep Water Culture, Nutrient Film Technique and Dutch Buckets.  In the end you will build and take home your own Aeroponic garden which you can use to grow a variety of different decorative or delicious plants in your own home or yard.  It will be a great class.  Come join us!