I am spending Sunday afternoon catching up on some geeking; I am watching lots of videos on TED; I've posted a few of them before with the CERN article, and the training crows article earlier this month.
I just ran across Michael Shermer's presentation. Michael Shermer writes in Scientific American every month, and it is usually the article I most look forward to reading on my long boring daily commute by train. I have also read his book "Why people believe Stupid Things" and find it to be a really great book, comparable to the late Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World", another one of my favorite books.
His presentation touches on the idea of pareidolia -- the remarkable human ability to recognize faces where there are just blobs. Seriously, you religious people can be so gullible sometimes. I chould use some extra cash: I'm going to manufacture some religious icons in toast so I can cash in and make some money like the one sold to the casino for thousands of dollars.
I especially liked the ending. They play this song on the radio all the time here in Switzerland.
My friend Miz K always complains "The video is 3 minutes! It's too long!" Man, talk about a short attention span! The one above is 13 minutes long. Hope you can sit through it.
If you're also being lazy and wanting to geek out on a quiet Sunday, I also found these videos very interesting:
Showing posts with label TED. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TED. Show all posts
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider is "just down the road" from me here in Switzerland. Here is a very interesting presentation from one of the physicists about why they're bothering with this HUGE undertaking for the collider. I have a new co-worker from the office who used to work at CERN, but I suppose got tired of working with the crazy physicists (my words, not his) (go look in my LinkedIn profile). He's been doing a pretty good job of explaining the detector, how it works, how they built their computer network to do the job.
It seems to me that he left the more interesting job to come to my company, and I would have gladly traded with him. Gee, my office is only responsible for some of the most important computers on the Internet, but he's smashing atoms and watching the bits fly off.
Anyway, watch the video, I think Brian Cox does a really good job in explaining why this LHC is important, what they're doing, and he gives a brief lesson on particle physics and the "standard model"
If that's too serious for you, here's a checklist of the CERN scavenger hunt that my friend Chris invented when he and his wife visited CERN at its biennial open-house:
It seems to me that he left the more interesting job to come to my company, and I would have gladly traded with him. Gee, my office is only responsible for some of the most important computers on the Internet, but he's smashing atoms and watching the bits fly off.
Anyway, watch the video, I think Brian Cox does a really good job in explaining why this LHC is important, what they're doing, and he gives a brief lesson on particle physics and the "standard model"
If that's too serious for you, here's a checklist of the CERN scavenger hunt that my friend Chris invented when he and his wife visited CERN at its biennial open-house:
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