the paradox of india

These images symbolize the strange mix that is today's India: a country with centuries of history and tradition leaping head-first into the modern technological and scientific world.

P.S.: Pictures from ???? I lost track of the source of the pics :( Will update if I come across them again

Unusual buildings

Dome House, Florida


Ryugyong Hotel, North Korea


Habitat 67, Canada


Basket building, Ohio USA


Kansas City Library, Missouri USA

UFO house, Taiwan

More can be found here: http://unusual-architecture.com/

Presidential breakfast cereals

Obama and McCain breakfast cereals: More details here

Exploiting depth in photographs

These are some photos that exploit the lack of depth in a photograph. These clever angles make for interesting pictures because they capture a 3-d world on a 2-d medium. I think the technical term for it is 'perspective distortion' - objects closer to the camera appear larger than those in the background.

More such pics can be found at http://www.flickzzz.com/2008/08/no-photoshop-here.html

2008 US Presidential Elections ... the story so far in 2 minutes

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

haha... visit http://www.jibjab.com/originals for more.

using AI for animation

This presentation talks about using an 'evolutionary' method to generate animations through simulation. What is fascinating is that the models use neural networks to adapt their behavior i.e how to react to different stimuli. A very interesting use of AI. This animation technology has apparently been used in GTA4 and the latest EA Madden. (Note: the talk was filmed in 2003).

An aspect that caught my eye in the presentation was this: when the different stages of the '2 legged walking model' was presented, I noted how similar it is to the various stages of a baby learning to walk - kicking, standing up, walking a few steps and falling , and finally, able to walk without falling down.

Hiding an elephant: via Photoshop

A "photoshop" contest with the theme "Hide an elephant". The entries are very creative and some are hilarious. Check out http://www.worth1000.com/contest.asp?contest_id=19677&display=photoshop

Learning to appreciate classical music

and the concept of 'shining eyes'. A brilliant talk by Benjamin Zander.





Or visit this page. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html

Corn starch - defying the laws of common sense physics

Corn starch + water seems to defy the usual properties of a liquid. I wonder if there is a more practical application of this phenomenon. Maybe something like an impact protector shield.

India - Old and New

The Naagin (Man Dole Tan Dole) original song (1954) and the new one from Decibel (2007).

Confidence in "Who wants to be a millionaire"

Watch this clip from Who wants to be a millionaire. The contestant, John Carpenter, is attempting the million dollar question. He is so confident of his answer that he uses his lifeline to call his dad and say "I'm about to win a million dollars". Now, thats confidence for you. And a touch of showmanship and a touch of arrogance!

sudoku in court

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/10/australia


A three-month-long drugs trial costing $1m (£485,000) has been abandoned in Australia after it emerged that jurors had been playing sudoku for almost the entire duration of the hearing.

The accused, two men who were facing possible life sentences on drugs manufacturing and firearms charges, spotted members of the jury playing the puzzles. While one of the accused was giving evidence, he noticed the jurors were writing vertically and not horizontally. The second accused man saw the same thing.

Impact of Friends on India's popular culture

"Ever since Monica, Joey, Chandler, Ross, Phoebe and Rachel started hanging out at a coffee shop in the early 90s, the concept of the platonic friend has becoming enormously popular." Source: http://monkinhotwater.blogspot.com/2007/08/its-mans-worldnot.html


This is an interesting observation by this blogger. I used to wonder why "Friends" is by far the most popular sitcom in India when there are several other sitcoms which are better/more funny. The above observation may be an interesting pointer as to why. Guys and girls hanging out in a platonic way was rarely shown on TV/Cinema in India. If an Indian movie has one hero and one heroine, they obviously get paired up. Two heroes implies two heroines, and so on. If there is an extra hero/heroine, that person is 99% probable to die, either by some incurable cancer-like disease or killed by the villains or in an accident. In the remaining 1% cases, she sacrifices her love or finds a new partner (usually a guest appearance by a big name actor).

Friends changed this equation and showed it was okay to have 'unpaired' lead actors and they could still hangout together. Maybe this influenced young people watching the show to change their attitudes regarding the opposite gender. Spending time with a mixed-gender circle of friends no longer had to be about pairing up. Of course, its not that connections don't happen; just that the anxiety and tension associated with hanging out with someone of the opposite gender was significantly reduced. I wonder if there is a formal study that describes the impact of the show on the popular culture in India, growth of coffee shops, etc. I'm sure coffee places like "cafe coffee day" owe a large part of their success to the show.

Leave-Me-Alone box

Here's a machine that effectively does 'nothing'. Well, you flip a switch and the machine flips it back.




Read more about it here. You can even order one- it would make a nice gift, maybe for an office-mate.

Optical Illusions

This is not a spiral. They are a concentric circles. (Try and trace them with your mouse pointer!)



A set of horizontal straight parallel lines.


A and B are the same color. (Go ahead and try to pick the color in Paint/Gimp or a similar tool!).


The white triangle is not actaully drawn. Its just an illusion.

A and B are the same size. Notice how the left edges are not aligned along the same vertical.


Diagonal straight parallel lines.
The two orange circles of the same size. This is more like Gullivers travels. A human is a dwarf in a land of giants and, a giant in a land of dwarfs. It's all relative.




For detailed explanations of the above illusions and for some more illusions, see here

Innovative Business Cards

Declaration of Romantic Intent (Form V-22)

Dear (name of Recipient), I wish to inform you that I consider you to be a (superlative) human being, a quality which I consider (adjective of magnitude) attractive.

Scared eggs

Full set of furniture in a small box

An armoire, a desk, a height-adjustable stool, two more stools, a six-shelf bookcase, and a bed with a mattress: all in a small box. It is easy to assemble,no tools required. More details about the Casulo box can be found here.

Creating a buzz with viral marketing

Apparently these bizarre ads in Canada have got many people looking around for answers as to what is actually being advertized here. I like the name of the medicine "Obay".

WWII as a MMORPG

Source: http://www.4guysfromviewpoint.com/?p=76

*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow has joined the game.*
*T0J0 has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0J0: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]: sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got crap to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: Eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*
Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
Roosevelt: wtf! thats bullsh1t u fags im gunna kick ur asses
T0J0: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
Hitler[AoE]: wtf
Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
Hitler[AoE]: thats bullsh1t u hacker
Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
Stalin: WTF u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
benny-tow: haha
benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa im gonna need help in italy soon sum1
T0J0: o **** i cant help u i got my hands full
Hitler[AoE]: im 2 busy 2 help
Roosevelt: yah thats right biznitch im comin for ya
Stalin: church help me
Churchill: like u helped me before? sure ill just sit here
Stalin: dont be an arss
Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late
Eisenhower: LOL
benny-tow: hahahh oh sh1t help
Hitler[AoE]: o man ur focked
paTTon: oh what now biotch
Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
*benny-tow has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: lame
Roosevelt: gj paTTon
paTTon: thnx
Hitler[AoE]: WTF Eisenhower hax hes killing all my sh1t
Hitler[AoE]: quit u hacker so u dont ruin my record
Eisenhower: Nuts!
benny-tow: wtf that mean?
Eisenhower: meant to say nutsack lol finger slipped
paTTon: coming to get u hitler u paper hanging hun cocksocker
Stalin: rofl
T0J0: HAHAHHAA
Hitler[AoE]: u guys are fockin gay
Hitler[AoE]: ur never getting in my city
*Hitler[AoE] has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: OMG u noob you killed yourself
Eisenhower: ROFLOLOLOL
Stalin: OMG LMAO!
Hitler[AoE]: WTF i didnt click there omg this game blows
*Hitler[AoE] has left the game*
paTTon: hahahhah
T0J0: WTF my teammates are n00bs
benny-tow: shut up noob
Roosevelt: haha wut a moron
paTTon: wtf am i gunna do now?
Eisenhower: yah me too
T0J0: why dont u attack me o thats right u dont got no ships lololol
Eisenhower: fock u
paTTon: lemme go thru ur base commie
Stalin: go to hell lol
paTTon: fock this sh1t im goin afk
Eisenhower: yah this is gay
*Roosevelt has left the game.*
Hitler[AoE]: wtf?
Eisenhower: sh1t now we need some1 to join
*tru_m4n has joined the game.*
tru_m4n: hi all
T0J0: hey
Stalin: sup
Churchill: hi
tru_m4n: OMG OMG OMG i got all his stuff!
tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES
Stalin: d00d gimmie some plz
tru_m4n: no way i only got like a couple
Stalin: omg dont be gay gimmie nuculer secrets
T0J0: wtf is nukes?
T0J0: holy sh*tholysh*thoylshti!!!111
*T0J0 has been eliminated.*
*The Allied team has won the game!*
Eisenhower: awesome!
Churchill: gg noobs no re
T0J0: thats bullsh*t u fockin suck
*T0J0 has left the game.*
*Eisenhower has left the game.*
Stalin: next game im not going to be on ur team, u guys didnt help me for ****
Churchill: wutever, we didnt need ur help neway dumbarss
tru_m4n: l8r all
benny-tow: bye
Churchill: l8r
Stalin: fock u all
tru_m4n: shut up commie lol
*tru_m4n has left the game.*
benny-tow: lololol u commie
Churchill: ROFL
Churchill: bye commie
*Churchill has left the game.*
*benny-tow has left the game.*
Stalin: i hate u all fags
*Stalin has left the game.*
paTTon: lol no1 is left
paTTon: weeeee i got a jeep
*paTTon has been eliminated.*
paTTon: o sh1t!
*paTTon has left the game.*

The 'Nine' Clock

Now thats a clock for nerds.

Extreme camouflage

Watch this video. Towards the end you can see an amazing wonder of nature - underwter camouflage. The video also shows the dynamic colorfulness of marine life. These biosystems are extremely powerful compared to the human designed systems. If we are able design anything half as good, it would be a significant achievement.

Sound waves as fire extiguisher?

A very interesting article about the interaction of sound and fire (candle flame). A video of the experiment can be found here.
Mythbusters also seem to have explored the same: http://mythbustersresults.com/episode76



From the article:
"In 2004 Dmitriy Plaks and several of his fellow students at the University of West Georgia tested whether sound waves can douse fires in hopes of using sound to extinguish flames in a spacecraft. They placed a candle in a large topless chamber with three bass speakers attached to the walls. The candle was lit and the Canadian rock band Nickelback's "How you remind me" was pumped through the subwoofers. Within roughly 10 seconds, once the song hit a low note, the flame was out, according to results published in 2005 in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

"We don't know exactly what's going on," Plaks says, now a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Physicist James Espinosa at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., a former advisor to the student team, notes that the candle wasn't running out of oxygen to fuel the flame because the chamber was large and open to the air. He also doesn't believe that wind—which would actually displace the warm air around the candle with cooler air—had put out the fire, although only high-resolution thermal images would have been able to verify that.

There is another indication that the fire hadn't been extinguished by wind: frequency (the time it takes for succeeding peaks of a sound wave to pass a fixed point). "There's some special frequency at which a candle flame extinguishes," Espinosa notes. The students tested a range of frequencies from five to several hundred hertz. They found that the effective range was between 40 and 50 hertz, within the range of human hearing."

My guess that it has to do something with resonance of the sound waves. Maybe we should equip our firetrucks with large speakers blaring music or sound at different frequencies. This should speed up the process of containing fires.

Genuinely 'authentic'

Sunset

Human Tetris

So much for security of checked-in baggage

Read this funny story from a air traveller. It also raises a few questions regarding security. Source of the story: http://www.elliott.org/first-person/round-trip-on-the-conveyor-belt/

Round trip on the conveyor belt

In North American airports, there are warnings posted above the luggage carousels: “Please don’t step on the conveyor belt.” These signs are often missing when you travel internationally, and I recently discovered why.

Two years ago, I was in China with a friend who is a professor at the University of Texas medical school, and a group of his students. We had traveled from the old capital of Xian, westward through the oasis towns and deserts of central China, ending up in the 2,000-year-old Uighur city of Kashgar, near the Afghanistan border.

At a sprawling bazaar known locally as the Camel Market, I picked up several small handmade Uighur knives as gifts. Instead of packing them into my checked-in luggage, I slipped them into my carry-on bag by mistake.

We flew out of Kashgar the next day from an incongruously modern airport recently built to open up this very remote part of China to trade and tourism. Everything went fine until my carry-on bag passed through the X-ray machine.

A security screener opened my bag and removed the knives. Although he spoke no English, it was clear they were not allowed on the plane.

But instead of tossing my mementos in the trash, he handed them to me and pointed in the direction I had come, back toward the ticket counter. Interpreting this as a suggestion that I might be able to check the knives through, I returned to the ticket counter.

The ticket agent also spoke no English, but nodded knowingly as I held up the knives. Speaking in Uighur, he pointed to the empty luggage conveyor belt

“Well,” I thought, “he’s trying to tell me that my bag has already gone and there’s nothing he can do.” I thanked him and turned to leave.

But he stopped me with a tap on the shoulder and again pointed to the conveyor belt. This time he made a more sweeping gesture from me to the conveyor belt.

Reluctantly, I stepped into the slot where bags are passed though the counter. No objection from the agent.

I walked over to the conveyor belt. Still no protests.

I climbed on to the carousel. The agent smiled and flipped a switch. The belt lurched forward.

I passed through the slit rubber curtain into a dark, cavernous space. My moving sidewalk looped and rumbled through the bowels of the airport. After a while, a faint light appeared, leading through another slit curtain that spilled into a baggage loading area.

The baggage handlers were not at all surprised to see a knife-wielding American emerge from the conveyor belt. They helped me find my bag and I repacked my knives.

Now the only question was: How do I get back to the terminal? No one spoke English, so there was no point asking for directions. Gestures didn’t do much good either.

Seeing no other way out, I turned around, pushed through the slit curtain, double-timed it back up the belt and burst through the top curtain into the check-in area.

The ticket agent was clearly expecting me, since other bags were stacked on the floor in front of the belt awaiting my return.

I bowed to him in thanks, not only for saving my Uighur knife collection, but also for surviving my behind-the-scenes tour of a Chinese airport.

Ron Robins is a retired attorney.

Laptop with antique appearance

More pics at http://m3.alexweidmann.com/piles/?s=steampunklaptop