Chris Marrows
RSSSee the movie that’s too small to see:
A Boy And His Atom
The Guinness World Record for “Smallest Stop-Motion Film”
The Fresh Ten Commandments: The Fresh Ten
The Fresh Ten
Recent events have made it clear that we are suffering from a broken moral compass. People today could use some general guidance.
Since the original ten commandments seem somewhat narrow and obsolete (too much focus on livestock, servants, and jealous god issues), here is a modest first draft of a fresh set.
- You shall treat all people with respect regardless of race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, or national origin.
- You shall not kill, assault, nor intimidate with threats of physical violence.
- You shall not rape, sexually coerce, nor intimidate with threats of sexual violence.
- You shall cultivate intellectual curiosity, be open to new ideas, and respect the scientific method.
- You shall not cheat, nor cheat others out of what is rightfully theirs.
- You shall not lie, deceive, nor spread lies about others.
- You shall not steal, that is to say take or use what rightfully belongs to another person in a manner that causes harm. (Stealing is a trickier concept than it once was. How do you say yes to Fair Use and no to software patents?)
- You shall keep your promises.
- You shall not waste natural resources nor pollute the shared environment.
- You shall take responsibility for your actions and their consequences.
These Penrose-style patterns are actually meticulously fabricated nanomagnets — each of those little white petals is less than 500 nanometers long. We posted a bit more about the technique and motivation behind playing with magnets on this tiny, tiny scale earlier today.
A physicist might see these images as the signatures of complex machinery, or perhaps as a pathway to next-gen electronics. Someone hungry might see pizzelle.
Light Source Self Portrait
Another photo from our Brookhaven Lab Photowalk, shot by Leon Hertzson. This picture shows off the crazy jumble of wires and beamlines that make up the National Synchrotron Light Source, all reflected in a concentric hemispheric analyzer.
This piece of equipment is stationed at the end of one of the x-ray beamlines and determines how fast electrons are moving. If you look closely, you can see the reflection of the photographer right in the middle.
If ‘1984’ or ‘The Trial’ had been a children’s book, Mr Messy would be it. No literary character has ever been so fully and categorically obliterated by the forces of social control. Hargreaves may well pay homage to Kafka and Orwell in this work, but he also goes beyond them.
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Marxian reviews of the Mr Men books. If you’re English, this is probably the best page on the internet. If you’re not, you should read it anyway.
Photograph: Jorge Duenes /Reuters
A helicopter flies past in Tijuana, Mexico, as the planet Venus makes its transit across the sun. See more pictures in our gallery of the transit.
As pithy a summary of administration mission creep as I have ever seen: “Businesses have a natural tendency to grow more complex as they mature. One moment they are appointing paper-clip monitors to deal with the supply of paper clips. The next the head of the paper-clip department is calling compulsory meetings.
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Schumpeter, The Economist
http://www.economist.com/node/21553425?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/simplifyandrepeat
The prejudice that research trips are "holidays" starts young
- Me: I'm going on a plane.
- 3 year old daughter: Where are you going?
- Me: Daddy is going to New York.
- 3YOD: But I don't want you to go to New York. I want you to go to work!
Oh, so Tim Minchin does Ben Goldacre’s hair? That figures.
Uncaged Monkeys was amazing, Tim Minchin singing White Wine in the Sun with Brian Cox on piano is now one of my highlights of this year, but everyone they had on stage was brilliant. Science meets comedy meets rock concert. Genius. I could have listened to any of them talk for hours.
(Source: no-prehensilizing)
About Chris Marrows
