This is a nice orrery, I like the cool ability to shift between Copernican and (insane!) Tychonian renditions.
Check it out here:
Posted under Astronomy, Science, Very Cool
This post was written by Marc
on May 3, 2011 at 9:30 pm
Shooting Water Jugs with Guns
This guy makes it seem almost cool to be Russian. Great accent and a fun little video to help eliminate the myth that you would EVER want to be on the wrong end of a gun.
It’s not until you shoot a gun for the first time that you truly realize the awesome forces at work when you squeeze that little trigger. It can be both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
I clearly remember the first time I shot a rifle (a .22 I believe at my uncle’s place). I even more vividly recall the first time I shot a full water jug. *That* was an eye-opening experience. When I retrieved it, the jug was inside out.
Please enjoy!
Posted under Very Cool
This post was written by Marc
on March 15, 2011 at 11:09 pm
Powers of Ten Video
I’ve said it before (it’s buried in there) and this video emphasizes the point. We are not capable of easily comprehending big numbers. Our brains, our frames of reference, our entire life experience and the evolutionary path that led to us are all confined to a reality that seems to consist of around 4 orders of magnitude.
Most of us can easily grasp time in terms of days, weeks and years, but start to move over about 10 years and challenges begin to occur and events blur and merge or degrade. Around 25 years and it seems we are completely divorced from the person that we were over a generation ago. Around 100 years is the limit of true understanding for us. Beyond that, time becomes an intangible backdrop to history yet we can still seem to maintain some kind of understanding and relationship to it if for no other reason than we can still kind of relate to civilizations that have prospered within the 1,000 year time frame. After that, when folks begin to talk in numbers such as 10 thousand years or 1 million years we simply stop trying to grasp the oceans of time we are spanning and recoil into just working with numbers. These spans of time hold no personal relevance for us.
Distance is similar. For the whole of human history before the 20th century, nearly everybody lived, worked and died within tens of miles of their birthplace. A travel-filled day might involve travel over single digit miles. Our conception of the earth (if we even deigned to consider such esoteric matters) was simply our village (homestead), some neighboring villages (maybe) and then everything else. This map is, while funny, is scarily accurate even today. It’s who and what we are.
Videos such as this can help put our egocentric view of the world into some perspective, but you will still not be able to fully grasp the true magnitude of what is being conveyed after about 4 or 5 orders of magnitude. This informs our view of reality. If we can admit that we have such a weakness with conceptualizing “big” and can be comfortable with that fact, imagine the impact that has when you don’t necessarily *have* to have the answer for everything right *now*….
A full description of this video is available here at the APOD site .
Posted under Metaphysics, Opinions, Very Cool
This post was written by Marc
on February 7, 2011 at 7:07 am
North Georgia Canopy Tours
I’m pretty sure I was put on to this by a link from Mark Denney on Facebook.
The North Georgia Canopy Tour website looks pretty good and I think it will be fun.
We did something similar when we were in Belize this past November (here are some shots of Michelle doing a zipline and rappelling) and the Scenic Caves Nature Adventure North of Toronto in Collingwood (some videos of me on the final zipline here) I really enjoyed it.
I don’t think the North Georgia offering is available to the general public until April 16. I’d love to hear from anybody when they do it to see what you think.
I’m thinking of waiting a couple of weeks so they can work some of the inevitable kinks out of their system (payments, timing, etc.) .
W
Posted under General, Very Cool
This post was written by Marc
on April 5, 2010 at 6:50 am
Mad Guitar skillz (Canon)
Apparently I’m about the only one on the planet who hasn’t seen this video, but I’m putting it up here so I don’t lose it and for anybody else who shares my tastes to appreciate. I found it on this page along with several others that I was surprised to see I had never heard of.
Normally I’m not a super fan of electric guitar – often solos remind me of so much masturbation on stage that appeal mostly to the performer rather than the audience.
This South Korean Guitarist, Jeong-Hyun Lim, has taken a wonderful classic and put a modern and positive twist on it IMHO.
Posted under Very Cool
This post was written by Marc
on January 2, 2010 at 10:15 am
Christmas Tauntauns (reprise)
I really can’t say *why* I like this so much but I like to resurrect it each Christmas:
This song is just so infectious that once I hear it I just can’t get it out of my head. I’m also a sucker for the virtual camera angles and the overall quality of the production. This is a really great piece of work.
Posted under Amusing, Very Cool
This post was written by Marc
on December 14, 2009 at 9:09 pm
