Quite the way to get a point across to a tv network; but still, watching Zombies performing mundane tasks in New York is pretty funny.

• Yet to watch the Olympics opening ceremony, but I like Warren Ellis’ tweet-report version
• Plus, Danny Boyle’s programme introduction for the ceremony’s concept
• An interview with Alison Klayman, director of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
• Can Creativity be Automated?
• Editorial on how Writing is Acting
• Brian Lewis Saunders made self portraits for each drug he took
• Library of Congress’ map collection is basically a map-porn hub for enthusiasts
• 3 Really Long Wars and 3 Really Short Wars
• Video: Yeah, being in a dust storm would be pretty mental
• The sport science of table tennis is pretty wack too
• Mashable’s 25 Twitter Accounts That Will Make You Smarter

Also, this. Just cause.

Created by The Open University, this witty and informative ten-part series details the creation and history of the wife-swapping bastard that is the English Language.

Just to do something different too, I’m posting the rest ‘after the jump’ on it’s own page, cause 10 embedded videos in a row can be considered a little overkill.

(more…)

• It’s ALIVE! First ever software simulation of an entire organism
• iPv4 addresses: The UK is predicted to run out sometime this weekend
• Meet: the ‘bots’ that edit Wikipedia
• Ha! Good Luck! YouTube urges it’s users to start using their full names when commenting
• At the Olympic opening ceremony: The US will probably not ‘dip’ it’s flag and here’s why
• Will London Really Erase Banksy’s New Olympics Art?
• Damn! Some unlucky guy dropped a $77,000 bottle of Connac
• Sometimes, sometimes a man’s gotta track down The Big lebowski filming locations
• Christopher Nolan’s farewell letter to the Batman franchise
• Trivia: Why we don’t consume dairy products from mammals that aren’t cows
• Infographic: How the internet shat all over the music industry
• Is it a subconscious fear of space exploration and the universe that explains NASA’s budget cuts?
• How networks try to trick viewers into thinking their awful shows are critically adored (spoiler: lying)

Also, a downward lighting negative ground flash: at 7,207 images per second. Awesome.

Photographer Nick Moore is in the midst of various sound experiments, recording the effects of different audio frequencies on materials and played back in slow motion. The effects can be quite hypnotic and totally cool to see in action.

This first one shows off the rythmic behaviour of match flames next to a speaker running at 60 Hz.

And then there’s this one displaying what happens to a blob of mercury, which at normal speed doesn’t seem like much, but when slowed down, forms intricate ‘dancing’ geometric shapes.

This phenomena is called Cymatics and turns out, it has been around for a significant period of history.

One figurative example is the ‘musical’ boxes of Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel; where a sequence of 213 cubes protrude from the pillars, with each displaying a selection of geometric patterns. The meaning of these were unknown until a hypothesis in 2005 by Thomas Mitchell identified these as cymatics and correspond to the Chapel’s carved angels that are depicted playing musical instruments and each pointing to a certain note on a musical staff.

Though not upheld scientifically or historically, it sure is pretty damn cool math.

Hooray! More stuff from Bird Box studios and this funny animated short of two wildebeests contemplating crossing a river is really great stuff.

Here’s a simple and fascinating short video by NPR that visually explains how the human population has exponentially reached 7 billion people by using a collection of glassware and coloured water. The visual execution of this is really well done and to see the growth of the different continents over time makes for good brain juice.

This also reminds me of another video I’d meant to post ages ago, but could never figure out when/how to post it (that or I was just being a lazy sonnofabitch); but following on one of the last points in the above video: why is the world population expected peak at 10 billion? Given that we’ve gone from 1 billion to 7 billion in only two centuries, how can they come to this conclusion?

At TEDxSummit 2012, science polymath Hans Rosling gave a talk on the subject of this 10 billion threshold, framing it in the context of ‘Religion and Babies’ and trying to find the correlation between the two, which he concludes: it is non-existent. Instead, his research reasons that it’s actually the economic climate of a country that effects birthrates and via his fun humor and totally awesome data software, provides a very entertaining and informative talk on just where we’re heading.

Recommended.

I really do love the College Humor videos of all the Batman parody videos…