Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Clever octopus builds a mobile home - LiveScience- msnbc.com
The veined octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) uses coconut shell halves to build a shelter. |
An octopus that uses coconut shells as portable armor is the latest addition to a growing list of animals that use tools.
The veined octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) apparently can stack discarded coconut shell halves just as one might pile bowls, sits atop them, makes its eight arms rigid like stilts, and then moves the entire heap across the seafloor. These soft-bodied creatures perform this ungainly 'stilt walking' to use the hard shells for shelter later when needed."
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
How Facebook Can Ruin Your Friendships - WSJ.com
Elizabeth Bernstein writes an article about Facebook. She and Matt Brown, Gwen Jewett, Alex Gilbert, James Hills, Kimberly Kaye, Heather White and a number of other people I'm not particularly interested in, share some concerns about communication standards on the web. Social communication standards, that is, not TCP/IP, HTTP and the like. They find they get to know just a little bit too much detail about their 'friends' lives, and point out how people can 'miss behave' on facebook. I wasn't aware that that is very particular to social websites. Apparently they rather have their friends hide much of their personal lives, interests and likes, and are not so keen on knowing what their friends think of things. They languish for the rules of social engagement of the past century. Well, in the new rules they are welcome to. Everybody has their own tastes, and if you don't like knowing about me, good for you! It's called Social 2.0, and there's plenty of room, also for you guys!
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Windows7sins
The new version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, Windows 7, has the same problem that Vista, XP, and all previous versions have had -- it's proprietary software. Users are not permitted to share or modify the Windows software, or examine how it works inside.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Worldmapper
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Baboons have platonic relationships
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
The end of the line
here's my pledge (already kept it!)
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Friday, May 08, 2009
Friday, May 01, 2009
Animals do have rythm
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Amsterdam in StreetView
View Larger Map
Saturday, February 07, 2009
The bicycle illusion: Sidewalk science informs the integration of motion and shape perception.
Masson, Michael E. J.; Dodd, Michael D.; Enns, James T.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Vol 35(1), Feb 2009, 133-145.
The authors describe a new visual illusion first discovered in a natural setting. A cyclist riding beside a pair of sagging chains that connect fence posts appears to move up and down with the chains. In this illusion, a static shape (the chains) affects the perception of a moving shape (the bicycle), and this influence involves assimilation (averaging) rather than opposition (differentiation). These features distinguish the illusion from illusions of motion capture and induced motion. The authors take this bicycle illusion into the laboratory and report 4 findings: Naïve viewers experience the illusion when discriminating horizontal from sinusoidal motion of a disc in the context of stationary curved lines; the illusion shifts from motion assimilation to motion opposition as the visual size of the display is increased; the assimilation and opposition illusions are dissociated by variations in luminance contrast of the stationary lines and the moving disc; and the illusion does not occur when simply comparing two stationary objects at different locations along the curved lines. The bicycle illusion provides a unique opportunity for studying the interactions between shape and motion perception.
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