Google's Super Bowl ad

It didn't feature an athletic woman with a flimsy bra throwing a hammer through a screen, but I thought Google's Super Bowl ad was pretty well done:

Balls of mud that shine

I've posted about hikaru dorodango a couple times before but they're always worth another look. Dorodango start out as sloppy mud balls but through careful shaping and polishing with dirt and sand, they end up perfectly round and shiny. Here is a particularly beautiful and unusual example, made from some yellow soil in New Mexico:

That totally looks like leather! Here is a more traditional (and shiny!) example:

Both of these were made by dorodango artist Bruce Gardner. Here's some video of how the balls are made:

This video is good as well but if you want to create your own, these detailed directions will be a better guide.

Authentic imitation

The way that books used to be printed, the reader would have to cut open each page with a paper knife before it could be read, every page a tiny gift from the writer.

The printing happened on large sheets of paper which were then folded into rectangles the size of the finished pages and bound. The reader then sliced open the folds. Paper knives, variants of letter openers, were used for this purpose.

The deckle edge on modern books is an imitation of what those sliced open books looked like.

Beautiful planetary posters

All nine of the planets in our solar system are represented in these wonderful posters by Ross Berens.

Pluto. Never forget.

From the blog of Terry Richardson

Celebrity photographer Terry Richardson has a blog to which he posts quick snaps. Sorta like everyone else on the planet except that oh, there's Kate Moss and there's Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen and there's Justin Theroux and there's Doutzen Kroes and there's Tracy Morgan.

Somewhat NSFW in places.

Chatroulette

I spent about 30 minutes on Friday night on Chatroulette (very NSFW). You push the start button and you're instantly in a video chat with some random person. During my session, the average "chat" lasted about 5 seconds and I observed several people drinking malt liquor, two girls making out, many many guys who disconnected as soon as they saw I wasn't female, several girls who disconnected after seeing my face (but not before I caught the looks of disgust on theirs), 3 couples having sex, and 11 erect penises. In a Malkovichian moment, I was even connected to myself once...and then the other me quickly disconnected. In short, Chatroulette is pretty much the best site going on the internet right now.

Sam Anderson has a nice article in New York magazine about Chatroulette.

The best of Fortune visual design

Fortune magazine used to have some of the best graphics and design around...here are some of the best.

Zero rupee note combats Indian bribery

Petty bribery is common in India, but the introduction of a zero rupee banknote has given some would-be bribers pause.

One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success.

Pirating 2010 Oscar nominees

Andy Baio is back with his annual report on how many Oscar nominated films have shown up online prior to the awards ceremony (ripped from screeners, DVDs, etc.). For some reason, fewer films have been leaked this year and they are taking longer to show up online.

Are studios doing a better job protecting screeners and intimidating Academy members? Or was this year's crop of films too boring for pirates to bother with? I can't tell if this is a scene-wide trend or localized to the Oscars only.

Found functions

Photographs of curves found in nature and the graphs and functions that go with them.

(via snarkmarket)

Timothy McSweeney, RIP

Timothy McSweeney, after whom the McSweeney's literary magazine and web site are named, died late last month.

As a young man, Timothy was an artist of tremendous talent. The canvases he leaves behind are filled with haunting and beautiful imagery. They are also filled with a palpable desire-to be heard, to connect, to be understood better by others and himself. The letters that inspired this journal's name were a continuation of that same lifelong effort to more intimately know the world and his place within it.

Dave Eggers tells the story of the real Timothy McSweeney and why he named the magazine after him.

Right side upside down

A collection of upside down faces presented as if they were right side up.

I like best the ones where the hair doesn't give it away and you have to look to the cheeks or the eyes for evidence of upside down-ness. (via @brainpicker)

Life is but a holographic projection

An experiment to detect gravitational waves may indicate that our universe is a holographic projection.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram." [...] Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

My socks have been blown so far off they are in a parallel universe. We might be living in the shadow of Flatland. Read the whole thing...it's noodle-bending throughout. Reminds me of the discovery of cosmic background radiation. (via aegirthor)

The auteur's Super Bowl

What if the Super Bowl was directed by Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino? You'd get something like this. The Werner Herzog bit at the end is great.

Products that did well during the recession

They include camping gear, Hyundai cars, and upscale generic products. (via mr)

US National Archives on Flickr Commons

The US National Archives have added a number of photos to the Flickr Commons project. Flickr is quietly building the greatest collection of historical documents on the web.

Not your father's evolution

Recent evidence of horizontal gene transfer -- in which genes are exchanged from other organisms, not from ancestors -- has some scientists thinking that the dominant form of evolution for most of the Earth's history was between non-related organisms and not among ancestors.

In the past few years, a host of genome studies have demonstrated that DNA flows readily between the chromosomes of microbes and the external world. Typically around 10 per cent of the genes in many bacterial genomes seem to have been acquired from other organisms in this way, though the proportion can be several times that. So an individual microbe may have access to the genes found in the entire microbial population around it, including those of other microbe species. "It's natural to wonder if the very concept of an organism in isolation is still valid at this level," says Goldenfeld.

Read on for their hypothesis about how horizontal evolution drove innovation -- development of a universal genetic code and genetic innovation-sharing protocols -- in life forms early on in the Earth's history. Fascinating.

Vans, vans, vans

Photos of vans and the places where they were. Suddenly, I want a van. (via matt)

Iron-plated snail

A snail that lives near the hydrothermal vents in the Indian Ocean has developed an unusual defense mechanism: it uses the iron sulfide in the surrounding water to make an iron-plated shell with some interesting properties.

Part of its ability to resist damage seems to be the way the shell deforms when it's struck: It produces cracks that dissipate the force of the blow, and nanoparticles that injure whatever is attacking it

Vegetative state not so vegetative

Using brain scanning equipment and a cleverly designed interrogation technique, scientists have been able to ask questions of so-called vegetative patients; one of them even answered yes or no questions:

Several times when Subject 23 was asked to imagine playing tennis, Monti said, the region of the brain most closely associated with complex motor planning became highly active, and stayed active for 30 seconds after researchers prompted such imagery by saying "tennis."

Similarly, when researchers asked the patient to imagine walking through the house where he grew up and then said the word "navigate," Subject No. 23 responded with bursts of activity in the region of the brain involved in constructing and navigating a mental map.

The young, French-speaking man was the only subject who was then trained to answer simple yes or no questions -- whether his father's name was Paul (yes) or Alexander (no), whether he had siblings and how many -- using the imagery technique he had already learned.

Checking the patient's responses for accuracy and comparing them to the yes-no brain responses of a group of healthy volunteers, researchers discerned that Subject No. 23 was not only still "in there," but capable of purposeful thought and communication.

Who makes the most money in Hollywood?

Three out of the top 40 Hollywood earners for 2009 are the 20-something stars of the Harry Potter films...Daniel Radcliffe is sixth on the list, below James Cameron but above Jerry Bruckheimer. Robert Pattinson makes the list at #35 (Kristen Stewart is at #37)...I expect those totals will go up if the Twilight films continue to do well.

The world's tallest building, out of time

Martin Becka and Cedric Delsaux are a pair of photographers who feature Burj Dubai in their work. Becka's Burj comes from his Dubai, Transmutations project in which he uses the photogravure processing technique to make images of brand-new Dubai that look as though they were taken in 1880.

Delsaux's Burj image comes from a project called The Dark Lens, which features images of Star Wars characters populating the circa-2008 Earth. I believe that's the Millennium Falcon docking at the Burj:

Many more of The Dark Lens images are available on Delsaux's site.

An American jihadist in Somalia

Omar Hammami was a fairly normal kid from a small town in Alabama -- "as a teenager, his passions veered between Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain, soccer and Nintendo" -- who is now in Somalia, leading terrorist attacks for a group called Shabab, which is loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda.

In the three years since Hammami made his way to Somalia, his ascent into the Shabab's leadership has put him in a class of his own, according to United States law-enforcement and intelligence officials. While other American terror suspects have drawn greater publicity, Hammami exercises a more powerful role, commanding guerrilla forces in the field, organizing attacks and plotting strategy with Qaeda operatives, the officials said. He has also emerged as something of a jihadist icon, starring in a recruitment campaign that has helped draw hundreds of foreign fighters to Somalia. "To have an American citizen that has risen to this kind of a rank in a terrorist organization - we have not seen that before," a senior American law-enforcement official said earlier this month.

See also a New Yorker article about Adam Gadahn, an American who is now a member of Al Qaeda.

Garry Winogrand interview

A 1970 interview with photographer Garry Winogrand on how he's not trying to say anything with his work. Instead, he sets up photographic challenges for himself, which he then attempts to solve.

My only interest in photographing is photography.

Crash blossoms

Those funny double-meaning headlines -- like "Gator Attacks Puzzle Experts" or "McDonald's Fries the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers" -- now have a name: crash blossoms. (thx, paolo)

How computers changed the way people play chess

Garry Kasparov discusses the very interesting history and evolution of machines playing against humans in chess.

The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn't care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn't good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn't been done that way before. It's simply good if it works and bad if it doesn't. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.

The section about people using computers *during* matches is particularly interesting.

Updates on previous entries for Feb 2, 2010*

Freefall survival tips orig. from Jun 06, 2008
Aerial map of NYC from 1924 orig. from Feb 01, 2010
First two minutes of Lost season six orig. from Feb 01, 2010
The elements of the incendiary blog post orig. from Feb 02, 2010

* Q: Wha? A: These previously published entries have been updated with new information in the last 24 hours. You can find past updates here.

Twitch clicking game

From Casey Reas, a quick Chrome-only mouse-only game called Twitch. (thx, david)

Man carried across Manhattan by strangers

Comedian Mark Malkoff set out to disprove that New Yorkers are unfriendly and unhelpful by cajoling people into carrying him the length of Manhattan.

Hilarious. He made it all the way up to 141st St & Broadway! (thx, micah)

An Edible History of Humanity

Hmm, I missed this when it came out last year: An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage. Standage has a post on his blog with more information about the book.