ART+NATURE+SCIENCE+TECHNOLOGY=Beautiful Gestalt

According to Answers.com, Tropism is the "turning or bending movement of an organism or a part toward or away from an external stimulus such as light, heat, or gravity." With that tidbit of knowledge under your cap, you'll better understand the nature of the aptly-named "Tropism Well". What a wonderful new invention/work of art/blending of technology and nature!

"An elegant sculptural installation piece, The Tropism Well is both beautiful and intriguing. It is also unashamedly functional, existing simply to quench your thirst. When you approach one it will gently bow down and pour water into your glass." Watch the Tropism Well in action here.

Some Days It's an Easy Choice

Reading - A Multi-Sensory Experience

"The smell of e-books just got better"

If you’ve been hesitant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, you’re not alone. Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book.

But all of that is changing thanks to Smell of Books™, a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer." Read more here!

Oh...and just ignore those nasty recall rumors...

Weird Remotes

Yep, that's right - weird remotes.

At least this one won't get lost under the cushions

Now I can Print-out My Dream Car

...but I probably still can't afford it! For years I longed for the Ultimate in cars - the 1969 Mustang. Now all I need is a lot of paper, a lot of ink, and a lot of glue!

"Brooklyn artist Jonathan Brand has constructed every single part of a 1969 Mustang coupe using nothing but paper. The 31-year-old made a digital blueprint of the car and then printed it on a large-format inkjet printer." Read more here - pictures + video!

Vintage Computer Pictures

You can have the blazing fast speeds and terabytes of storage of today's highfalutin computing machines.

For Absolute Cool Factor, however, nothing beats the physically mammoth banks of controls, drives, punches, readers and cores that were a part of my early computing experiences--with their mighty 8kB of memory and 8MB of storage! Check out computing in the 1960's!

Flipped the same switches, had the same muttonchops!

Let's Get Small - How Large IS a Solar Flare?

Today saw a new sunspot on the sun's eastern limb produce a X1.4-class solar flare. Just how big are these monsters? This big:

SkyscraperPage.com

This site provides a wealth of information for the skyscraper enthusiast. See to-scale illustrations of all major skyscrapers--past, present (62,473 buildings illustrated!), and planned for the future.

"These are skyscrapers currently under-construction around the world! Buildings are ordered by official height. This ordering method deals only with a building's roof height or spire height, whichever is greater, and doesn't take antenna heights into consideration." Skyscrapers to be

The World's Largest Photo Library

How many photos gave ever been taken? This article at 1000memories.com tries to arrive at that answer, and along the way relates some astonishing facts:

• Every 2 minutes today we snap as many photos as the whole of humanity took in the 1800s.
• It is estimated that 2.5 billion people in the world today have a digital camera.
• Facebook’s photo collection has a staggering 140 billion photos, that’s over 10,000 times larger than the Library of Congress.

So, how many photos would you guess have ever been taken? Click for the answer

The McGurk Effect - You Hear What You See!

One of the stranger illusions I've encountered. You won't believe your own ears! Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, fa, fa, fa...

The Big Blue Ball

Source: Wikimedia.org - public domain

Looking for a Toaster, Found a Party

So, there I was surfing the 'Net. looking for a new bread roaster, or broodrooster as they're more commonly known in these parts. Next thing you know, things go all kattywompus and corks are poppin'. Pretty noisy, too, woke the neighbors!

Maakt Winkelen Pret!

Exploring Ground Zero, Ten Years Later

Interactive, zoom-able, 360° panoramic picture of the rebuilding at Ground Zero. While it can be hard to get a grip on the enormity of the dimensions involved here, this picture helps.

You can also drag the slider and view side-by-side then-and-now pictures of various areas around the site.

View the panorama

Puzzling!

From the fine folks at HowStuffWorks.com - a series of jigsaw puzzles that you solve online, all with a science theme.

Added bonus?

You won't get to the end and discover that you're missing a piece!
Click to scope it out!

September 11 Digital Archive

"The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, a tally that includes more than 40,000 emails and other electronic communications, more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images." Visit the Archive

Alveolata Noctiluca Neonlight

What is it? A Japanese Flash-based art site. Click your mouse to cycle through the various pieces; move your mouse to interact with the artwork.

http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~macopism/noct/data/

Why is a curve ball so hard to hit?

For most of us in the stands who have never faced down a southpaw with a mean curve, it's difficult to image exactly what the batter is seeing when confronted with this hard-to-handle pitch. Take a look at this optical illusion for a better understanding!

Dolphins Playing with Bubble Rings

Link will take to you a video of dolphins playing with bubble rings, with a fairly in-depth description of the process involved. You don't have to understand the science to appreciate the beauty, however!

Graceful dolphins

Windoodles -"The art of temporary vandalism with dry-erase markers"

 

http://windoodles.tumblr.com/

Help feed others and increase your knowledge at the same time!

FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme. FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide education to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

Check it out!

So these Two Computers Were Chatting...

Hurricane Irene from Beginning to End

NASA/NOAA satellite photos combined in an awesome video--Hurricane Irene from August 21th through the 29th!

Watch video here!

Weird & Strange Food from Around the World

"Weird Food is a list of odd things that people eat. Every culture invents a food that is weird or disgusting to outsiders. These strange foods are cultural markers to show who's a member (insiders like it) and who's not a member (outsiders hate it.) Maybe a kid ate first it on a dare. They pass it on to the next generation. Then they nudge each other and laugh when outsiders gag."

Skinput Uses Your Skin as a User Interface

"Thanks to research done by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon, you may soon be able to use your very skin as a control interface for most any device!"
Read more

This Artificial Intelligence stuff is getting out of hand

Had a depressing encounter with a web site today - see what I mean

"It's time to get things started!"

Hope your school year started with a bang!

Full video - http://youtu.be/oiMZa8flyYY
(and if you're not already a fan of OK Go, you really need to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w;
if you're not a fan of the Muppets, well, you just have my sympathy!)

The day Niagara Falls ran dry

It's taken 41 years, but a previously unseen set of photos of the mighty Niagara Falls reduced to nothing more than a barren cliff-top have finally surfaced.  Read more

The Origin of the Lowly Ampersand

More than you probably ever wanted to know:
https://www.adobe.com/type/topics/theampersand.html

Protect Your Treasures!

source: http://www.wondermark.com

Scientists see sunspots form... 60,000 km below the Sun's surface!

The Return of the Wild West?

Minecraft developer issues challenge to the death to settle lawsuit:
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/9038258448/hey-bethesda-lets-settle-this

What do you think? Is this the start of new and viable approach to settling legal disputes?

Welcome to the Funny Farm

Use the text box to enter your guesses, find the four hidden clues.

This is a collaborative exercise we'll use in class, but feel free to take a look now! "No single mortal will be able to solve this puzzle alone, so get a few friends and do it together."

http://shygypsy.com/farm/p.cgi

"The wise man's tools are analogies and puzzles. -- Royksopp"

Smithsonian WILD - 200K+ camera trap images

This site is designed to showcase some of the exciting research conducted by the Smithsonian Institution and its collaborators around the world, and to highlight the incredible diversity of wildlife that exists in a range of habitats across the globe.

The use of motion-triggered 'camera traps' has become an incredibly useful tool for scientists to answer an enormous range of conservation and ecological questions. <more>