Study Reveals How Magic Works. Scientists are figuring out how magicians fool our brains in research that also helps uncover how our mind actually works. A great deal of what scientists now understand about how the human visual system works stems from research into our susceptibility to optical illusions. "It made sense to look at magicians to advance knowledge of human cognition, since magicians have been working on figuring out how certain principles of psychology work for hundreds of years," said researcher Gustav Kuhn at the University of Durham in England, a cognitive psychologist who has also performed magic the past couple decades.
"Magicians really have this ability to distort your perceptions, to get people to perceive things that never happened, just like a visual illusion," he added. The researchers looked into a magic trick called the "vanishing ball," in which a ball apparently disappears in midair. Kuhn videotaped himself performing two versions of the illusion.
A 5-minute drivelapse of the country. Eye Tricks: Gallery of Optical Illusions | Visual Illusions | Rubin's Vase & Hering Illusion. NASA time-lapse of Earth is actually mesmerizing | Technically Incorrect. Every time I see a time-lapse film, I think one thing: "They're about to sell me a car. " Yet this particular piece of footage, taken from the International Space Station between August and October this year, is curiously mesmerizing. Taken with a special low-light 4K camera, it manages to show the world as, well, other-worldly. Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo. Posted to Vimeo by the film's editor, Michael Koenig, it melds the passing of time over various continents and timezones into a quite stunning impression of a planet that still enjoys life and beauty, even if it's not always immediately visible.
Even the Northern Lights seem even more magical than usually promised. It's a five-minute whole that somehow manages to remove the mind from the deep, dark hole of financial crises, political debates, bankrupt nations and crushing inequality that is occurring beneath the lights and the clouds. C3 Technologies' 3D Mapping Looks Freaking Amazing. What could be better than Google Maps? C3 Technologies' stunning 3D city displays, which let you rotate, zoom and pan through the city as if you'd modeled it all on your computer. The technology, which uses footage captured from airplanes and processed through a formerly proprietary military missile-guidance system, absolutely must be seen to be believed. Check out San Francisco, starting around 2:00: C3—which was allegedly acquired by Apple last year, with the active theory being that Cupertino is seeking to trump Google Maps—is an offshoot of aerospace company Saab AB.
At press time C3 Technologies' website was no longer live, suggested they've surely been absorbed by a larger entity. Jonas Pfeil & Team's Amazing Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera. Trippy Multidirectional Face Illusions. Venezuelan artist Jesús González Rodríguez has a project called 1/2 that features strange Photoshopped portrait illusions. They each show half a face, but is that face looking to the left or towards the camera? There’s a how-to tutorial on Instructables if you want to learn how to do this illusion yourself. 1/2 Project (via My Modern Met via Laughing Squid)
Boost Your WiFi Signal Using Only a Beer Can. I love a good hack, especially one that requires me to throw back a cold one before hand (or during). This simple wifi boost has actually been shown to increase signal strength by at least 2 to 4 bars. And, well, I will drink to that. These instructions came to us via WikiHow and we think they are most definitely worth checking out. But here is the most important question: what kind of beer will you use? READ MORE: Intruders Beware: Homemade Robot Can Shoot 1,000 Rounds per Minute (Video) For this project you are going to need scissors, a utility knife, some adhesive putty and an empty beer can.
More than one empty beer can is acceptable but don’t kid yourself, the router only needs the one. The first step is to wash out your empty beer can, unless of course said beer is a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Once the can has dried, you will want to remove it’s pull tab. READ MORE: Iron Age Beer-Making Operation Discovered Only perform this next step if you have not been drinking.
The Hidden Infrastructure of the Internet - Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg - Video. The Internet is more than just a series of tubes, but how many people can actually describe the physical structure of the networks we use every day? Andrew Blum argues in "Tunisia, Egypt, and Miami: The Importance of Internet Choke Points" that the hubs that connect this "network of networks" are incredibly vital, and vulnerable, whether located in Egypt or the U.S. Ben Mendelsohn explores this subject in Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors, a short documentary created for his masters thesis at the New School. He takes us inside 60 Hudson Street in New York City, a nondescript building that houses one of the major nodes of the Internet on the east coast. In an interview below, he talks about the making of the film and why these structures matter. The Atlantic: What motivated you to research Internet infrastructure? Ben Mendelsohn: I completed this project for my MA thesis in media studies at the New School.
The issue of how this infrastructure is hidden fascinates me. It's true. Bundled, Buried and Behind Closed Doors - Video. The Internet is more than just a series of tubes, but how many people can actually describe the physical structure of the networks we use every day? Andrew Blum argues in "Tunisia, Egypt, and Miami: The Importance of Internet Choke Points" that the hubs that connect this "network of networks" are incredibly vital, and vulnerable, whether located in Egypt or the U.S. Ben Mendelsohn explores this subject in Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors, a short documentary created for his masters thesis at the New School.
He takes us inside 60 Hudson Street in New York City, a nondescript building that houses one of the major nodes of the Internet on the east coast. In an interview below, he talks about the making of the film and why these structures matter. The Atlantic: What motivated you to research Internet infrastructure? Ben Mendelsohn: I completed this project for my MA thesis in media studies at the New School.
The issue of how this infrastructure is hidden fascinates me. It's true. Surf Video Suspends Time Like 'The Matrix' - Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg - Video. 10 Cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion. 21st-Century China - Alan Taylor - In Focus. China, the most populous country (1.3 billion people) and the second-largest economy in the world, is a vast, dynamic nation that continues to grow and evolve in the 21st century. Recent events in China include a successful satellite launch that lays the groundwork for a space station, the completion of a massive skyscraper in a rather small village, the 26th Universiade games for student athletes, the celebration of National Day, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and much more.
This collection is only a small view of the people and places in China over the past several weeks. [49 photos] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: Chinese artist Liu Bolin waits for his colleagues to put a finishing touch on him to blend into rows of soft drinks in his artwork entitled "Plasticizer" to express his speechlessness at use of plasticizer in food additives, in his studio at the 798 Art District in Beijing, China, on August 10, 2011. Office workers are seen in a building in Shanghai, on September 21, 2011. "It walks like it shit itself" -Karl Pilkington : funny. 10 Life Lessons from Esquire's "What I've Learned" Interviews. Bre Pettis | I Make Things - Bre Pettis Blog - The Cult of Done Manifesto.
Dear Members of the Cult of Done, I present to you a manifesto of done. This was written in collaboration with Kio Stark in 20 minutes because we only had 20 minutes to get it done. The Cult of Done Manifesto There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. Update: James Provost made the awesome poster for the Cult of Done Manifesto. And Joshua Rothaas made this poster. Mapping European Stereotypes. By Maria Popova Geopolitical cartography is all about an objective view of the world’s political conventions. But there’s nothing politically correct in Bulgarian-born, London-based designer Yanko Tsvetkov‘s Mapping Stereotypes project — a series of amusing, often tragicomically true maps of Europe based on various subjective perceptions and ideologies. Tsvetkov’s maps are available for purchase as prints, mousepads and t-shirts on Zazzle. Glorious Retrofuture from Japan.
"QUANTUM SHOT" #732Link - article by Avi Abrams These are very rare and beautiful visions, published in Japan in the 1930s-1960s We are continuing our ever-popular series of extremely rare and fantastic retrofuture finds (see here), in which we unearth futuristic gems from various countries and strange sources (mostly non-US). Today we will be treading a fertile territory of science fiction art and futuristic illustrations from Japan - a country of unlimited dreams and super-charged imagination. (most images via Japanese sites, including 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) Here is the 1948 vision of the "moving platform", that actually envelops the train within (and moves with it for some time): This is how it works: Super-elevated bus from 1949 - complete with a "Dinosaur Truck" symbol: Propeller-drive trains from 1936 (beautiful shapes... graceful as swans): Shojo Otomo art from 1967 issue of Shonen magazine, featuring "Lost in Space" hardware: Even faster is this rocket transport (also from 1964):
Octopus. Fish Photographed Using Tools to Eat | Wired Science. By Mark Brown, Wired UK Professional diver Scott Gardner has captured what are believed to be the first images of a wild fish using a tool. The picture above, captured in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, shows a foot-long blackspot tuskfish smashing a clam on a rock until it cracks open, so the fish can gobble up the bivalve inside. [partner id="wireduk" align="right"]Tool use was once thought to be exclusive to humans, and was considered a mark of our superior intelligent and bulging brains. In recent decades, though, more and more animals have shown an ability to work with tools and objects.
Elephants pick up branches with their trunk to swat flies and scratch themselves, a laboratory crow improvised a hooked tool from a wire to extract an insect and primates use sharpened sticks as spears, rocks to smash nuts and sticks to poke into ant nests. Tool use in fish, however, is much more rare, and there’s never been any photo or video evidence to prove it — until now. Source: Wired.co.uk.