I just find this well-crafted optical illusion incredibly satisfying. It took a few replays for me to get a sense of how I’m being tricked. The design of the ramps was worked out by Japanese mathematician Kokichi Sugihara with help from a software algorithm he developed.
Martin Gardner died on Saturday. He was 95 years old. It’s hard to give a sense of Gardner’s wide ranging interests and contributions to someone who’s not familiar with his writings. And he was a writer. According to the NY Times obit, there are over 70 books with his name on it. Not to mention of course the mathematical recreation column for Scientific American through which most people first heard about him (me included).
He was a gifted explainer of science, literature, and philosophy. One of this books, The Night is Large, has taken up permanent residence on my nightstand. I can flip open the book and invariably find something of worth on pseudoscience, Laffer curves (remember that?), Newcomb’s paradox, Alice in Wonderland, time travel, and an entire essay on the subject of nothing.
Here’s a brief excerpt from one of his essays on the 19th century pseudo-science of phrenology, which supposes a relationship between skull shape and personality:
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At TED, Nathan Myhrvold explains how he and his team came up with the idea of a laser zapper in trying to solve the bigger problem of preventing the spread of malaria. The demo is worth the wait, or just skip to 12:25 to see mosquitoes incinerated in flight. Read more …
I wasn’t a big fan of Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker. His too-cool-for-school pose turned me off and his core philosophy was that any investment bank who would hire him must be a joke. And he really, really wanted to work for Salomon’s Brothers and make a lot of money, which he later said he didn’t deserve. I believe him. Read more …
A bit of Edmund Tyrone’s monologue from Long Day’s Journey into Night:
Everything not covered in the Technoverse.
All