How many passes does the team in white make? An experiment in awareness.
[Test your awareness – YouTube]
Elephant Self Portrait
This elephant is simply incredible! I wonder if he came up with the design himself or if he was taught it and that’s all he does. Either way, WOW.
[Elephant Painting – YouTube]
This particular “artist” appears to be an elephant called Hong who lives at the Maetaman Elephant Camp in Chiang Mai, Thailand. An article about Hong published on The Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project (AEACP) website notes:
Two years ago, Hong began painting with her mahout, Noi Rakchang, and has steadily developed her skills. After learning how to paint flowers, she moved on to more advanced paintings. She now has two specialties. One is an elephant holding flowers with her trunk, and the other is the Thai flag. An elephant with so much control and dexterity is capable of amazing work. Just for clarification, with these realistic figural works, the elephant is still the only one making the marks on the paper but the paintings are learned series of brushstrokes not Hong painting a still life on her own.
We are sure that as Hong continues to investigate her artistic side, her paintings will become even more beautiful.
Backmasking on The Hour
Back in February 2006, CBC’s The Hour made a road trip through Alberta. They interviewed me for a short segment about backmasking in which they featured my website.
For your viewing pleasure, here is the clip. (Just bear with me getting through the first 15 seconds).
[The Hour: Backmasking – YouTube]
The producer that arranged the interview gave me a DVD with this clip. She said she didn’t have any problem with me putting it on YouTube so please enjoy!
826 Valencia
I just watched Dave Eggers TED talk about the 826 Valencia project. It’s inspiring and funny; please enjoy:
Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs. But you don’t need to go that far, he reminds us, “it’s as simple as asking a teacher: How can I help?” He asks that we share our own volunteering stories at his new website, Once Upon a School.
Moon 2.0
From http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/:
“The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth.”
[Moon 2.0 – YouTube]
Cheesy video? Yes. Feeling inspired anyway? How could you not?
Control Room
Control Room is a documentary on the perception of the United States’ war with Iraq, with an emphasis on Al Jazeera’s coverage. It makes it clear that the endeavor for unbiased reporting is a difficult, almost impossible task.
Control Room running time is 1 hours and 26 minutes. Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
[Control Room – YouTube]
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Advanced Photography Research at Stanford
Last fall Robert Scoble and Thomas Hawk interviewed Marc Levoy, Stanford University Professor of both computer science and electrical engineering.
Levoy shows them leading edge research about automatically stitching images together, digitizing real world three dimensial objects like statues, and among others, camera technology that allows you to refocus the image AFTER you shoot it!
You can view the interview here.
See also: CNet’s article about the multi-dimensional focusing technology.
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Knitted Animation Music Video
This amazing music video by Director Simon Laganière, for the Quebec duo Tricot Machine, uses artwork of entirely knitted yarn to animate each frame. (A tricot is a plain, warp-knitted cloth of any of various yarns.)
Over 700 unique knitted pieces were created for the video by designer Lysanne Latulippe of the fashion label Majolie.
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Obama for President
This electrifying speech by Oprah Winfrey solidifies my belief that nothing could be better for the United States and possibly the entire world, than Barack Obama as President.
[LA Rally: Oprah Winfrey – YouTube]
Here are a few stats from urbanfervor:
Obama has received, on average, 51.2% of the votes in each of the states to have held primaries through Super Tuesday yesterday. Clinton has, on average, taken 42.3% per state. Obama has won 70% or more of the vote in three states, Clinton has won 70% of the vote in none.
Obama has won 60% or more in 8 states. Clinton has won 60% or more of the vote in only Arkansas, where she was once First Lady of the state and a successful corporate attorney.
Obama won 80% of the vote in one state, Idaho. Clinton has not won more than 69% in any state.
Obama has won 10 states by at least 15 percentage points over Clinton. Clinton has won only five states by such margin, including Arkansas again, New York, where she currently serves as the Junior Senator, and Florida, which was uncontested and is virtually worthless delegate-wise.
In the states Obama has won, he has won by, on average, 25.5 points. In the states Clinton has won, her average margin of victory is 15.09 points.
Obama hasn’t just won more states by big margins, he’s won the most tight battles. In elections decided by five or fewer points, Obama has won 3, Clinton only 1.
A couple months ago everyone was penciling Clinton in as the nominee. Probably time to rethink that. I think a lot more people out there are a lot more excited about Obama than are for Clinton. The more we see him and get to know him, the more we like him. As the primaries continue on, with the money he has raised and the enthusiasm he has generated, I can’t see him not winning the nomination.
I hope he’s right. I’m tired of not loving the United States—the world is watching and hoping for change.
Here’s Obama himself, answering some questions at Google headquarters.
[Barack Obama: Q and A from Google employees II – YouTube]
Amazing Ant Colony
This remarkable video from the documentary Ants! Nature’s Secret Power shows a glimpse into the fascinating world of the ant. The narrator describes the intricate ant nest as an accomplishment equivalent to the building of the great wall of China.
The structure covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. In it’s construction, the colony moved 40 tons of soil. Billions of ant loads of soil were brought to the surface. Each load weighed four times as much as the worker ant, and in human terms, was carried over 1/2 mile to the surface.
I also recommend the TED talk by Deborah Gordon: How do ants know what to do?