Math, Physics, and Engineering Applets Oscillations and Waves Acoustics Signal Processing The Impossible Voyage of Noah's Ark Building the Ark Accommodating All Those Animals Leaving Some Things Behind Sizing Up the Load Gathering the Cargo Surviving the Flood Writing. An initial difficulty.An initial difficulty: how to say the man's name.the man's name. The pronounciation eludes elucidation.The pronounciation eludes elucidation,way to say it cannot be assayed,assayed (or do I mean ascertained?),(or do I mean ascertained? Relativistic Baseball What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light? - Ellen McManis Let’s set aside the question of how we got the baseball moving that fast. We'll suppose it's a normal pitch, except in the instant the pitcher releases the ball, it magically accelerates to 0.9c. From that point onward, everything proceeds according to normal physics
Marine counterparts of land creatures The idea that there are specific marine counterparts to land creatures,[1] inherited from the writers on natural history in Antiquity, was firmly believed in Islam[2] and in Medieval Europe, and is exemplified by the creatures represented in the medieval animal encyclopedias called bestiaries and in the parallels drawn in the moralising attributes attached to each. "The creation was a mathematical diagram drawn in parallel lines," T.H. White said a propos the bestiary he translated. "Things did not only have a moral they often had physical counterparts in other strata. There was a horse in the land and a sea-horse in the sea.
Vintage social networking posters September 22nd, 2010. Both comments and pings are currently closed. A great series of vintage social networking posts by Moma Propaganda. PLEASE NOTE: To prevent spam, your first comment will be moderated so there may be a short delay before it appears. Feel free to leave your thoughts on multiple posts, and they will all appear in no time. Everything You Need to Know About “Click and Drag” If you’re a regular reader of the brilliant xkcd, then you probably got lost in today’s comic, “Click and Drag.” It features three short panels sitting above a seemingly larger, finite panel. However, when you perform the comic’s titular action, click and drag, the larger, bottom panels seems to sprawl on forever in various directions, revealing amusing quips, sad stories, and what is essentially an entire world. There are many impressive facets about “Click and Drag,” such as the panel measuring in at 1.3 terapixels, as well as small community of coders creating applets to help readers better navigate the behemoth.
Roko's basilisk Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment about the potential risks involved in developing artificial intelligence. The experiment's premise is that an all-powerful artificial intelligence from the future could retroactively punish those who did not help bring about its existence; even those who merely knew about the possibility of such a being coming into existence incur the risk of punishment. It resembles a futurist version of Pascal's wager, in that it suggests people should weigh possible punishment versus reward and as a result accept particular singularitarian ideas or donate money to support their development. It is named after the member of the rationalist community LessWrong who described it, though he did not originate the underlying ideas. [edit] Summary [edit] The Basilisk
This Movie Works Whether You Play It Backward or Forward Creating palindromes, strings of words that make an identical statement when read backward or forward, is a challenge, but doing the same with film poses an even more complex set of difficulties. Paris-based graphic designer Yann Pineill’s palindromic short film, Symmetry, is impressive because it succeeds in presenting a mirrored narrative that progresses organically whether watched from the beginning, from the middle, or reversed from the end. “I did a lot of research on symmetry, and since it’s a really vast concept that can literally be applied to everything, I wanted to talk about a lot of different things,” Pineill says. “It was only when I started to look into symmetry in movements, actions and time that I really pictured the whole thing as a palindrome.“
Moore's law Moore's law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper.[1][2][3] His prediction has proven to be accurate, in part because the law is now used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development.[4] The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law: processing speed, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras.[5] All of these are improving at roughly exponential rates as well.