On seeing Audis everywhere

November 5, 2009


Ever since I started my current job, I see Audis everywhere.

My bosses both drive Audis. I had never noticed them before. Now, during my short commute to work, I swear I see at least 700 Audis. Silver. Black. Sometimes white. But always Audis. The model is unnecessary – after all, all Audi sedans look the same: which is to say, they look like understated luxury; all clean lines and simplicity and modern class.

It’s like there was a sudden boom in April 2006. Like, the stars aligned and now everyone had one. Just like my bosses.

Part of this is location. I work in the south end of Sioux Falls, which is a higher income area. Because it’s the South Dakota way to eschew flashiness in the ways of wealth, Audis have become the car of choice over the typical luxury vehicle: Jaguar, Mercedes, whatever. So there are a lot of them out there.

The other is the phenomenon of our mind focusing on what it knows. When we bought our Jetta, we suddenly started seeing Jettas everywhere. Not because there were more, but because it had finally entered our lexicon.

The same holds true for catching the clock at 11:11 (as in, you only remember it at that point because it’s so recognizable, and it seems like more often than not.) Or, for hearing the same songs on the radio over and over again.

Maybe this is what allows people to be so closed minded about certain political and social differences. Though they may have been exposed, they haven’t truly experienced a change in mindset. Therefore, it’s off the radar.

Sometimes, these coincidences – which seem like a divine aligning of the stars – are simply that: coincidences. But as humans, we seek answers beyond the uninteresting. We want to believe.

The fact is: if you suddenly start seeing marsupials everywhere, stop and look around. It doesn’t mean that there’s some kind of cosmic connection. It might simply mean you’re in Australia.

[Prompt: “Marsupials” – Katie Levitt, creative director, copywriter, blogger at Over Caffeinated Katie.]

Tags: BMOWP: By Request, On..., Science |

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On getting sick, and how it faintly and probably incorrectly relates to Hume’s Fork.

November 2, 2009


It starts with a tickle, sometimes observed as a scratch, often discovered through chance. Then, the cough, occurring on its own, without the baggage of an entire suite of symptoms. But those symptoms are there: the cough reaches down a little too far, brings up phlegm when it should simply bring up noise.

Then, the coughs show up every few minutes; no longer an anomaly, they now represent a symptom. And there are surely more to follow.

Headache. Puffy eyes. A body that moves as if shackled to the air. Heavy breathing after a walk up the stairs, your lungs kicking into overdrive earlier than usual. Aches.

The aches, oh the aches. Up until this point, you’re running on observation. You assume you’re getting sick, or maybe you’re thinking it will all go away soon, that it’s a frustrating but easily defeated anomaly. But when the aches come – creeping up, revealing themselves after a cough, or after you bend over, etc. – you know that things are shifting into cold hard fact.

Thus, the lifelong debate begins again. Because you’re still decent, and not completely wiped out, you feel like you should go home. Save yourself and your co-workers. Spend the afternoon on the couch watching old DVDs, resting, waiting for it to pass. But, you have stuff to do. And it will still be here when you return.

For a few hours, it’s always the same. Do you wait? Or do you play it safe?

And after those few hours are gone, it’s also always the same. You waited too long. Now you’re sick, and the sickness is threatening to define you, like the top tong of Hume’s Fork.

Up until the point of agony, you’re only feeling sick. You’re rationalizing the senses. You’re trying to force yourself into being well. And then – boom – there’s no longer any rationalizing, as the grays fade away and you’re just SICK. The headaches, the aches, the coughs, the nausea – it’s all defining, at that point, easily substituted for a analytical equation.

1 + 1 = 2. No room for thought or sense or feeling.

You’re sick. And that sickness has become all that you are; no longer experiential, but a matter of cold, hard fact.

In my increasingly confused mind, this works. Then again, I should be lying on the couch, watching old DVDs, resting and waiting for it to pass – not mangling Kant-based philosophy.

[Prompt: "Hume's Fork. Also, if you're interested, Hume's butter knife." - Michael Hall, who I know only through twitter and who is, as far as I know, the Real Michael Hall.]

Tags: BMOWP: By Request, On..., Science, Vilhauer |

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Penta-seen

August 31, 2009


I don’t want to get all High School Biology Teacher on you, but This. Blows. My. Mind.


©IBM Research – Zurich | Photo from IBM Research – Zurich’s Flickr page.

It’s a pentacene molecule. 22 carbon atoms. 14 hydrogen atoms. Smaller than I can even comprehend. And, for someone who spent two hours a day in science classes throughout college, surprisingly breathtaking.

Not because it’s so small. And certainly not because it’s a clear picture, or because of the technology involved.

It’s breathtaking because it’s exactly the way we always thought it would look. Five circles of atoms, hooked together in the same way as my Organic Chemistry 201 textbook.

But seriously. THOSE ARE ATOMS. IN A PICTURE.

(Via Make the Logo Bigger. Funny how I learned about a major breakthrough in science from an ad blog.)

Tags: Education, Photography, Science |

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The most hideous creatures

August 17, 2009


You never forget the first time you see an earwig.

Slimy without actually being wet, like the traditional stereotype of a used-car salesman; creepy in a way that most modern horror films wish they could emulate; as invasive as spilled mercury through the slats of hardwood flooring.

If you haven’t seen them before, consider yourself free. Free from the knowledge that such hideous squirming insects can even exist. Free from the horror of uncovering one in a peach; or between two rocks; or frantically writhing toward water, searching for salvation from the heat and dryness that seem to be their only downfall.

1984′s Winston Smith surely never knew about earwigs. There’s no way his final cage would have been filled with rats, otherwise.

They aren’t harmful (aside from creating earsplitting screams within your psyche). But they’re despicable little creatures, able to flatten to unimaginable depths, able to crawl THROUGH THE RIDGES OF A TUPPERWARE LID – indeed, they enter where even the last gasps of an airtight burp are driven out.

I first experienced them while spending time with my grandparents in Wyoming – they were brought in by hiding in foreign wood, deposited unceremoniously in our backyard, where they would squeeze through the threads of my grandmother’s hummingbird feeder and drown in a soupy mess of sucrose.

They are awful. And they’re in my backyard.

If you’re still curious, click here. I won’t sully this site with their repulsiveness.

Tags: Annoyances, On..., Science, Vilhauer |

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The Walker Library

October 8, 2008


from Wired Magazine onlineDeane alerted me to the coolest personal library in the world, but I haven’t had time to comment on it.

Now I do.

Holy moley, cacciatore. This is sweet.

It’s Jay Walker’s personal library. Walker, a dot-com boom and bust and apparent boom again, is filthy rich, from the looks of it. And he has transferred his wealth into the type of library that I think I’d create if I was, you know, filthy rich. One filled with great books. Artifacts. History. Legend. Wonder. Amazement.

Yeah. That’s a back-up Sputnik satellite. Yup. You are looking at the original prosthetic hand that played the part of Thing on The Addams Family. No, you can’t touch anything.

It’s a collection of ideas, in a sense. Walker didn’t set out to create a Very Expensive Library – he simply wanted to use his generous wealth to create a shrine to the ever-changing “great idea.” A quote from the Wired article illustrates this point perfectly:

Walker shuns the sort of bibliomania that covets first editions for their own sake—many of the volumes that decorate the library’s walls are leather-bound Franklin Press reprints. What gets him excited are things that changed the way people think, like Robert Hooke’s Micrographia. Published in 1665, it was the first book to contain illustrations made possible by the microscope. He’s also drawn to objects that embody a revelatory (or just plain weird) train of thought. “I get offered things that collectors don’t,” he says. “Nobody else would want a book on dwarfs, with pages beautifully hand-painted in silver and gold, but for me that makes perfect sense.”

What would I do in this library? What could I do? Aside from slide around on a puddle of drool created by my ever-gaping mouth?

The question I have is simple: “Where do I go first?”

From the article alone, I garnered these must see sites:

• A framed napkin from FDR outlining his plan to win World War II. I don’t need to tell you the cultural significance of this piece of history, a ridiculously behind-the-scenes artifact that should be locked up in one of the Smithsonian buildings. (I can hear my inner Dr. Jones coming out already; “That belongs in a museum!”)

• Bills of Mortality chronicle of London from 1665. Recount a weekly tally of plague victims during one of the world’s most horrific and interesting periods. It’s one of those books that you’d be afraid to touch, lest you contract some rare, immortal strain of plague.

• An original Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). The only thing cooler would be to see an original Bede, but I guess this will have to do – the most lavishly illustrated book of its time and one of the best examples of Renaissance-era history. Imagine – this is a book that is just one year younger than 1492, a date that has forever been etched into our minds as “A Very Old Date.” This is printing archaeology. Bibliophiles would have to hide their arousal.

• A raptor skeleton. You heard me. F’n dinosaur bones in your f’n library.

I’m smitten.

(via Deane on twitter, and again on Gadgetopia)

Tags: Books, Literature, Science |

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Cloak of invisibility

August 12, 2008


According to Scientific American, we’re getting closer to living out our weird Harry Potter-themed dreams.

Invisibility cloaks.

To be exact, it’s not true invisibility – it’s more of an optical illusion. But it’s getting closer, and the ramifications could be incredible, – at least, if not in real life, then throughout military and espionage fields.

From Scientific American’s site:

“We are not actually cloaking anything,” Valentine said in a telephone interview. “I don’t think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon. To be honest, we are just at the beginning of doing anything like that.”

Valentine’s team made a material that affects light near the visible spectrum, in a region used in fiber optics.

“In naturally occurring material, the index of refraction, a measure of how light bends in a medium, is positive,” he said.

“When you see a fish in the water, the fish will appear to be in front of the position it really is. Or if you put a stick in the water, the stick seems to bend away from you.”

Imagine. You swoop the cloak over your body, effectively rendering yourself invisible, the light from around you cascading in different directions, fooling your enemies like a magician cutting his assistant in half. You’ve gone missing. Secret.

Pretty neat. Of course, I’d rather have the Marauder’s Map. MUCH more useful.

Tags: Science |

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Studying expressionism

June 19, 2008


Where do our facial expressions come from?

Charles Darwin tackled the subject in his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and now a study published in Nature Neuroscience has revisited the question.

(Check out NPR.com for the full audio version of the article.)

It seems that facial expressions were developed to create a survival advantage. For instance, an expression of fear increases sensory information by opening up the eyes, flaring the nostrils and speeding up eye movements, allowing for better peripheral vision and faster breathing. An expression of disgust elicits an opposite response, scrunching up the face to shut out unpleasant sensory information. It all makes a lot of sense – so much that I’m surprised it hadn’t been noticed before.

Of course, it had never been studied before – at least, not since Darwin threw together his thoughts 125 years ago. It seems like such a simple subject, a natural point of curiosity. Why smile? Why frown? Why were these expressions ever developed, outside of simple communication?

It’s something that seems very interesting to me. Yet, despite purchasing Darwin’s book over a decade ago, I’ve never opened it.

I will admit, at times I feel a twinge of the excitment I used to experience while studying science years ago. It’s a facinating field, one filled with constant dicovery, one that slowly uncovers every secret of our life.

So though I’ve never opened Darwin’s book, I can’t help but thinking that, even if it’s just for a chapter or two, it’s about time I did.

Tags: Books, Journalism, Science |

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