I've been told that if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a bowling ball, it would be smoother than said bowling ball. My question is, what would a bowling ball look like if it were blown up to the size of the Earth?
—Seth C.
A good, professional-quality bowling ball is smoother than the Earth.
Phil Plait, of Bad Astronomy, took a look at the claim that the Earth was smoother than a billiard ball. He concluded that the Earth was smoother but less round, based on published billiard ball roundness tolerances. However, he couldn’t find any information on the size and shape of a billiard ball’s pits and bumps.
These scans (along with various measurements of ball roughness[1]) tell us that a high-end bowling ball is quite smooth. If blown up to the scale of the Earth, the ridges and bumps[2] would be between 10 and 200 meters high, and the peaks would be between one and three kilometers apart:
By Earth standards, this is quite smooth; our highest mountains are 40 times higher.
What would this bowling ball world (we’ll call it “Lebowski”) be like?
For starters, bowling balls are a lot less dense than rock, so Lebowski’s surface gravity would be a quarter the strength of Earth’s:
It would also (at first) have no atmosphere.
The finger holes would be about a thousand kilometers across and a few thousand kilometers deep.
On Earth, holes this big would expose the molten interior. But Lebowski doesn’t have a molten interior.
The Earth’s core is hot for two reasons: It’s still glowing from the heat of all the dust collapsing together when it formed, and it’s full of radioactive metals. Lebowski wouldn’t have either of these, so its core would start out cold.
The holes would be far too big to hold themselves open against gravity; On that scale, the polymers in the bowling ball would behave more like a liquid. In the space of about half an hour, the holes would undergo a slow-motion collapse.
As they collapsed, the material around the holes would heat to a glow. At the center of the hole, a white-hot jet of charred hydrocarbons would fountain outward into space.
When it was over, Lebowski would be left with massive scars, each marking the location where an abyss collapsed to form a molten sea.
Japanese artist Mari Miyazawa plays with her food. Like, a lot. As a parent, she sent off her kids with homemade bento lunches, that much is normal; but where Miyazawa differs from most mothers is that her bento creations are works of art.
They’ve been featured in photo exhibitions and on TV shows in Japan and abroad. You’ve probably seen bento art before, but Miyazawa is maybe the most prolific and skilled of the many bento artists out there.
Bento art is called キャラ弁 in Japanese, a combination of the word for “character” and “bento,” and Miyazawa is a master at creating different characters using lunchtime materials.
Bento Theater
Not content with just her amazing bento box art, Miyazawa has dipped her toes into animation as well. Her YouTube channel is full of what she calls “Bento Theater.”
Maybe the best part about Miyazawa’s YouTube channel is the instructional videos; she’s kind enough to show us all how she whips up her amazing culinary works of art.
Putting together these dishes might not be especially easy or practical for you to do. Still, Miyazawa’s artistry is inspirational and might be enough to encourage me to
It occurred to me today that I never posted a nice image of my colored naked ladies pattern. I completed it for my senior show but in the hustle and bustle forgot…Even now, I don’t have a good photo of the fabric it was printed on, but I’ll get one up soon!
The image below is the tile-able pattern available to all for non-commercial use, if you want to use it for personal stuff (blog/desktop background etc), please credit me. Please do not print it on anything else without my explicit permission.
this is so great that i feel bad that it makes me claustrophobic.
“This a photograph taken from the teenager (shirtless guy) named Austin Schafer’s Twitter account, of a kid being tied up and beaten by upper classmen at Columbia High School in Nampa, Idaho.
This is a recent photograph and one where the school’s authorities have not taken action yet. Remember this kid’s name and repost this picture.
The Neanderthal trash who are bullying him deserve to have this picture plastered all over the Internet for prospective college admission offices to see so their career pinnacle can be asking me which kind of soup I want at Olive Garden.
If you’ve been a victim of bullying or know someone who has, please repost.”
Kiszivárgott/hivatalos stream van az új Daft Punk albumról (view in iTunes - listen a borítón), ünnepeljük a Daughter-féle depressziós Get Lucky feldolgozással:
You can read about Japan for years and learn a lot about the country; but there’s something missing if you can’t hear and see those same things.
That’s why I love documentaries about Japan so much. They give you a look into some of the most interesting things happening in Japan without having to buy a plane ticket there.
Cruising around YouTube, you can find a lot of documentaries about Japan that you can watch for free that cover lots of different subjects and angles. Here are some of the most interesting ones I’ve found:
Children Full of Life (2003)
Japanese school children consistently score incredibly high in virtually every subject compared to children in the rest of the world. Some of that it’s because the Japanese method of teaching is very different from, say, the American way of teaching.
Sometimes though, children thrive not because of the teaching methods, but because of their enthusiastic and dedicated teacher. Such is the case with Children Full of Life, which follows Japanese school teacher Toshiro Kanamori and his students.
Kanamori’s methods are unorthodox, even in Japan, but his results are evident. The children clearly love Kanamori, and learn empathy, openness, and other life lessons that usually aren’t found in school curricula.
Children Full of Life is an emotional, touching documentary and an incredible look into the world of a Japanese child.
It’s a disturbing documentary for sure, but also incredibly eye-opening. If you’ve ever wondered about what the depths of Japan’s infamous suicide forest looks like, then be sure to check this out.
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987)
For better or worse, many people still think about WWII when they think about Japan. You’ve probably learned a bit about Japan’s takeover of Asia, its bombing and defeat, and its occupation and reconstruction.
But in between all of that big picture stuff, things fall between the cracks. One of those lost stories is of Kenzo Okuzaki, a former soldier in Japan’s imperial army who’s come to repent for his former life and rebel against a system with which he’s become so disillusioned.
He went to prison for crimes such as murder, slandering the emperor, and shooting a slingshot at the Imperial Palace. Okuzaki’s car is plastered with political messages (and a beginner’s sticker), and he’s incredibly aggressive in his everyday life about his message.
Okuzaki’s story is a microcosm of post-war regret, shame, and anger that most people outside of Japan aren’t really aware of. Japan did horrible things during WWII, and Okuzaki’s story is just one of the most extreme examples of the country’s post-war introspection.
A Normal Life: Chronicle Of A Sumo Wrestler (2009)
Sumo wrestling is one of the most readily identifiable Japanese things out there; ask people around the world what they think about when they think of Japan, and no doubt sumo is one of the top subjects.
A Normal Life is a French documentary that follows the beginning of a career in sumo through the eyes of Takuya Ogushi, a young man from Hokkaido. You get to see his first nine months at a Tokyo sumo stable, learning the basics, dealing with homesickness, and bulking the hell up. Gotta put on mass!
It’s nice to have a look at sumo in a modern-day context, seeing all of the ins and outs of the sport, rather than relying on old images and stereotypes. And you really start to feel for Ogushi, who quickly realizes he’s in over his head.
Interview with a Cannibal (2012)
We’ve written before about Japan’s most famous cannibal, Issei Sagawa, but the difference between reading about him and listening to him speak is massive, and disturbing.
It goes without saying that this interview is unsettling and a bit graphic, so be prepared before watching this upsetting video.
Baby Drain (2013)
It’s no secret that Japan’s population has been slowly, but steadily shrinking for decades now, but the practical effects of smaller population aren’t always talked about.
The short documentary Baby Drain takes a look at one of the most visible effects of the shrinking population. The results may seem obvious in retrospect, but it’s not until you see the effects first-hand that they really stick.
Baby Drain looks at schools with class sizes of one, hospitals that care for the elderly, and the fantasical future of robotic care.
The movie is a little alarmist (the narrator claims a few times that the Japanese could go extinct) and, coming in at a mere 17 minutes, Baby Drain isn’t a typical, feature-length documentary; but it’s still incredibly insightful.
The Japanese Version (1991)
If you’ve studied Japanese culture, The Japanese Version can come across as almost laughably naïve. The documentary opens up with astounding revelations like Japanese people “take off their shoes indoors” and “they eat strange things.”
But this early 90s American documentary shot by two guys who basically know nothing about Japan is valuable not for the deep insights that it provides, but for the perspective it’s made from.
The fact that the filmmakers have no clue about Japan means that you get to see the country and the culture through a different set of eyes. The Japanese Version is almost less about Japanese culture and more about the filmmakers’ own biases and preconceptions.
The Japanese Version is dated, focuses a little too much on “weird Japan,” and there are some inaccuracies/simplifications (“the whole [Japanese] language comes from China”); but it’s still an interesting and educational snapshot, if you understand the context.
Cycling Japan’s Abandoned Rail is refereshing because, unlike a lot of documentaries about Japan, it doesn’t deal with the very basics of Japanese culture, nor does it go for the “weird Japan” angle.
You can read our full write up and find all five parts here.
Bonus!
Check out some wallpaper-sized and animated GIF versions of the header image of this post, courtesy of our hard-working illustrator, Aya!
Humans are good at throwing things. In fact, we’re great at it; no other animal can throw stuff like we can.
It's true that chimpanzees hurl feces (and, on rare occasions, stones), but they’re not nearly as accurate or precise as humans.[1][2]Antlions throw sand, but they don’t aim it. Archerfish hunt insects by throwing water droplets, but they use specialized mouths instead of arms. Horned lizards shoot jets of blood from their eyes for distances of up to five feet. I don’t know why they do this because whenever I reach the phrase “shoot jets of blood from their eyes” in an article I just stop there and stare at it until I need to lie down.
So while there are other animals that use projectiles, we’re just about the only animal that can grab a random object and reliably nail a target. In fact, we’re so good at it that some researchers have suggested rock-throwing played a central role in the evolution of the modern human brain.[3][4]
Throwing is hard. In order to deliver a baseball to a batter, a pitcher has to release the ball at exactly the right point in the throw. A timing error of half a millisecond in either direction is enough to cause the ball to miss the strike zone.[5]
To put that in perspective, it takes about five milliseconds for the fastest nerve impulse to travel the length of the arm.[6] That means that when your arm is still rotating toward the correct position, the signal to release the ball is already at your wrist. In terms of timing, this is like a drummer dropping a drumstick from the 10th story and hitting a drum on the ground on the correct beat.
We seem to be much better at throwing things forward than throwing them upward. Since we’re going for maximum height, we could use projectiles that curve upward when you throw them forward; the Aerobie Orbiters I had when I was a kid often got stuck in the highest treetops. But we could also sidestep the whole problem by using a device like this one:
It could be a springboard, a greased chute, or even a dangling sling—anything that redirects the object upward without adding to—or subtracting from—its speed. Of course, we could also try this:
But the deflector box seems easier.
I ran through the basic aerodynamic calculations for a baseball thrown at various speeds. I will give these in units of giraffes:
The average person can probably throw a baseball at least three giraffes high:
Someone with a reasonably good arm could manage five:
A pitcher with an 80 mph fastball could manage ten giraffes:
Aroldis Chapman, the holder of the world record for fastest recorded pitch (105 mph), could in theory launch a baseball 14 giraffes high:
But what about projectiles other than a baseball? Obviously, with the aid of tools like slings, crossbows, or the curved xistera scoops in jai alai, we can launch projectiles much faster than that. But for this question, let’s assume we stick to bare-handed throwing.
A baseball is probably not the ideal projectile, but it’s hard to find speed data on other kinds of thrown objects. Fortunately, a British javelin thrower named Roald Bradstock held a random object throwing competition, in which he threw everything from dead fish to an actual kitchen sink. Bradstock’s experience gives us a lot of useful data (and a lot of other data, too). In particular, it suggests a potentially superior projectile: A golf ball.
Few professional athletes have been recorded throwing golf balls. Fortunately, Bradstock has, and he claims a record throw (to first contact with the ground) of 170 yards.[7] This involved a running start, but even so, it’s reason to think that a golf ball might work better than a baseball. It makes sense; the limiting factor in baseball pitches is the torque on the elbow, and the lighter golf ball might allow the pitching arm to move slightly faster.
The speed improvement from using a golf ball instead of a baseball would probably not be very large, but it seems plausible that a professional pitcher with some time to practice could throw a golf ball faster than a baseball.
If so, based on aerodynamic calculations, Aroldis Chapman could probably throw a golf ball about sixteen giraffes high:
This is probably about the maximum possible altitude for a thrown object.
… unless you count the technique by which any five-year-old can beat all these records easily:
I and practically everybody I know has been excited for Daft Punk’s upcoming album, Random Access Memories, and for good reason—Daft Punk has been one of the biggest names in dance music for almost 20 years.
Daft Punk is obviously extremely popular around the world, but I think that it owes a thing or two to Japan in particular. Besides Japanese animation company Toei creating Daft Punk’s anime OVA (yes, Daft Punk has an official anime), Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, there’s one Japanese man whom Daft Punk seems to owe a lot.
Last time Daft Punk went on tour, they performed on a giant, illuminated pyramid, towering over crowds of thousands across the world. The similarity wasn’t lost on me when I found out that Japanese electronic musician Isao Tomita did more or less the same thing in the 80′s.
Even though Tomita’s music was much, much different than Daft Punk’s (Tomita did mainly electronic covers of classical music), Tomita’s 1984 performance known as “Mind of the Universe” bears a striking resemblance to Daft Punk’s modern-day pyramid of light.
Left: Isao Tomita’s “Mind of the Universe.” Right: Daft Punk’s “Alive 2007” tour.
Mind of the Universe was performed at a music festival in Linz, Austria, and Tomita went balls to the walls for this performance. One blog notes that in addition to the pyramid of light from which Tomita directed the whole show, he also
employed 13 channels of sound, including one from a helicopter 1500 feet above the river, multichannels sound systems on either side of the river, and on a ship that also carried musicians and a chorus of 100 Austrian singers.
Tomita’s music definitely isn’t the kind you’ll hear a DJ spinning at a rave, but you can’t help but admire the sheer spectacle of it all. Here’s some video from the legendary 1984 performance:
Besides his epic Mind of the Universe, Tomita did a ton of incredible work. He also did a massive performance at the Statue of Liberty called “Back To Earth,” and did a show for Australia’s bicentennial that was part of a $7 million gift from Japan.
He also composed music for a Japanese Olympic team, and for the movie that The Lion King ripped off, Kimba the White Lion. Nowadays, Tomita is doing more mundane work (music for Disney theme parks), but is still keeping quite busy, considering he’s been active for more than half a century.
Tomita is definitely more Switched-On Bach than Random Access Memories, but that doesn’t mean that he’s irrelevant.
He directly laid the groundwork for some early Japanese electronic musicians like Yellow Magic Orchestra (a member of which was his assistant) and, far in the future, current Japanese electronic musicians. It’s not that much of a stretch to say that vocaloid superstar Hatsune Miku has a bit of Tomita DNA in her.
In fact, last year Hatsune Miku and Isao Tomita came together to create a symphony performed in Tokyo. When it comes to old school meets new school, it’s hard to top Tomita x Miku.
So when Daft Punk’s new album comes out an people are going hysterical out in the streets, remember that somewhere, Isao Tomita paved the way. Especially that giant pyramid of light part.
There’s nothing like a well-conceived picture to drive a point home. You know the point, right? Sure you do. (Hint: It’s in the title.)
Shall we run through these items? (I don’t even know if I can run through them—feel free to leave details/corrections/reminiscences in the comments!) Far right first. Easy. That’s a top-of-the-line Sony Walkman. You could take it with you running, which accounts for the sporty lemon yellow hue. (It plays cassette tapes, kids.)
Next up is a Polaroid instant camera and what…a carphone? Dominating the middle area there is an early Mac laptop, a digital watch, and a pager. Moving counterclockwise we’ve got a JVC camcorder, and that beautiful piece of clunk on the far left is an early Apple PDA, deliciously named the Apple Newton.
Together these items played music on the go (limited to one tape), took pictures on the go (limited to one roll of film), made phone calls (limited by biceps strength), did computer-y stuff (very, very slowly), told you the time and woke you in the morning, alerted you to find aphone to call someone (said phone was usually plugged into a wall and sometimes accepted quarters), took video (and played it back), and recorded notes and names and addresses.
The smartphone on the bottom there doesn’t just do all that—it does it all as good or better at a fraction of the size and cost. And these are just a few of the physical items “absorbed” into smartphones. Other examples include flashlights, maps, mail, books, handheld video games, calendars, guitar tuners…the list goes on.
Moral of the story? Moore’s Law is no joke, and it’s coming soon to an industry near you.
Oh, the irony. Above is a screenshot of a player who pirated Game Dev Tycoon wanting help because he can't progress due to piracy in the game. This is one of the most amazing things you will ever see. You can't make this stuff up.
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