Adam Victor Brandizzi

Image: Flickr

Avon, Colorado, has a bridge called Bob. The four-lane, 150-foot span, built in 1992, connects Avon with the Beaver Creek ski resort across the Eagle River. The town council held a naming contest and received 85 suggestions, including Avon Crossing and Del Mayre Bridge. It was 32-year-old construction worker Louie Sullivan who said, “Oh, heck, just name it Bob,” a suggestion that set city manager Bill James “laughing so hard he had to leave the room.”

Sullivan said he was surprised at the town’s vote; previously he had considered Avon a bit stuffy. “It raises my faith in their sense of humor,” he said.

Here’s a subtly impossible figure devised by UC-Santa Cruz computer scientist David Huffman. If it’s a three-sided pyramid, then its edges define the intersections of three planes and should meet in a single point. But they don’t:

This is intriguing because the figure doesn’t immediately look impossible. In Vagueness and Contradiction, philosopher Roy Sorensen writes, “The impossibility of an appearance is sometimes concealed without overloading our critical capacities.”

Possibly this is because we sense that other solutions are possible that can reconcile the error. Zenon Kulpa points out that the pyramid becomes intelligible if we imagine that the farther side hides a fourth edge, giving the figure four sides rather than three. He describes two families of such solutions in “Are Impossible Figures Possible?”, Signal Processing, May 1983.

Asphyxia is an experimental film project by Maria Takeuchi and Frederico Phillips that explores human movement through motion capture technology. The team used two inexpensive Xbox One Kinect sensors to capture the movements of dancer Shiho Tanaka and then rendered the data inside a near photo-realistic environment. From their description of the project:

The project is an effort to explore new ways to use and/or combine technologies and different fields in an experiment without many of the common commercial limitations. The performance is centered in an eloquent choreography that stresses the desire to be expressive without bounds.

Motion data was captured using inexpensive sensors and that data paved the way through an extensive number of steps. Once all the scanned point cloud data was combined, that was then used as the base for the creative development on the piece. A series of iterative studies on styles followed and several techniques and dynamic simulations were then applied using a number 3D tools for various results.

You can see a making of video here. If you liked this you might also enjoy Walking City, Choros, or these 2013 idents for CCTV. (via Prosthetic Knowledge)

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was a writer, known for his contribution to science fiction (including The Three Laws of Robotics, I, Robot and the Foundation series) and his staggering work in other genres and non-fiction.

Asimov had a formal education in chemistry, earning his PhD and working as a chemist for the Navy during WWII. He taught biochemistry and later became a professor at the Boston Univeristy of Medicine, all while writing stories for fantasy magazines in his spare time. He finally left the University in 1958 to focus on writing. Asimov’s output was truly mind-blowing, writing over 500 (!!!) books and 90,000 letters. He said: “Writing is my only interest. Even speaking is an interruption.”

Asimov’s non-fiction books were mostly on astronomy, but his other titles covered general science, history, mathematics, physics, Shakespeare, the Bible and mythology. He was completely self-taught in these areas and was successful for being able to take difficult scientific concepts and make them entertaining for the general public. He said he could “read a dozen dull books and make one interesting book out of them.” To get some idea of how vast Asimov’s knowledge was, his books appear in nine of the ten Dewey Decimal Classes.

The quotes used in this comic are taken from a fantastic interview Asimov did in 1988 (which you can watch on YouTube). In it, Asimov predicts how in the near-future, personal computers will help anyone learn anything ‘that strikes their fancy’ in the privacy of their own home and at their own leisure. Of course, that prediction came true with the internet, and even though the technology from The Matrix isn’t available yet, where we could upload information directly into our brain and shout “I know kung-fu!”, it has never been easier to learn whatever you want, no matter how niche. Thanks to reader Jenny for sending me the quote and the Brain Pickings article that featured the interview.

RELATED COMICS: Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot. Richard Dawkins The Lucky Ones. Albert Einstein A Human Being is Part of the Whole. Jack London I Would Rather be Ashes Than Dust.

– I admit not having read any of Asimov’s books. Where should I start? The Foundation series? His story Nightfall was voted the best short science fiction story of all-time, so maybe that?
– Asimov said that one of only two men he knew who was smarter than himself was his good friend Carl Sagan.

anewcross:

A NEW CROSS - ASHES COMING SOON

supersonicart:

New work from Soey Milk.

theartofanimation:

Honghong

azertip:

Oren Haskins

azertip:

Tara

"Found this pre-owned game cover at my local Gamestop." - blond_ale

THE VAGABONDS

Meet the Vagabonds - refugees from the 1994 robot pogrom in Russia. Quite obsessive about anything organic and expressive - feathers, fur, cloth and bright colors: exotic concepts for beings with hearts made of metal, plastic and epitaxial graphene. 

From simonstalenhag.se

tastefullyoffensive:

by Pie Comic

im-simply-me:

I will never not reblog this. 

A história que só continua quando é apagada

colourthysoul:

Edwinn H. Blashfield - Angel with the flaming sword (1890-1891)

sosuperawesome:

Paper art by Morgana Wallace on Tumblr

Walking Dead S1
ClipArt Cover Art

Thinking video game thoughts, because it’s Mar 10 a.k.a. Mario Day!

“Chess" student short film by Etienne Vautrin (Emile Cohl scool).

From trailer of “Great Promise” animated short-film by Eusong Lee.
http://vimeo.com/120464312

hoodbypussy:

Évolution inversée

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
― Pablo Picasso

wolverxne:

Wolf Challenges a feeding Bear | by: Anne-Marie Klaus