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