Rob Wilson

The border between our physical world and the digital information surrounding us has been getting thinner and thinner. Designer and engineer Jinha Lee wants to dissolve it altogether. As he demonstrates in this short, gasp-inducing talk, his ideas include a pen that penetrates into a screen to draw 3D models and SpaceTop, a computer desktop prototype that lets you reach through the screen to manipulate digital objects.

Hey geeks! Join my drawathon.

Standing up too quickly can be a doozy.

Yup.

That was the last time I ever went to see an apartment described as having a “Quaint view”.

Taylor Wilson was 14 when he built a nuclear fusion reactor in his parents' garage. Now 19, he returns to the TED stage to present a new take on an old topic: fission. Wilson, who has won backing to create a company to realize his vision, explains why he's so excited about his innovative design for small modular fission reactors -- and why it could be the next big step in solving the global energy crisis.

What motivates us to work? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it isn't just money. But it's not exactly joy either. It seems that most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely presents two eye-opening experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work. (Filmed at TEDxRiodelaPlata.)

A freight truck carrying beer cans collides with a train at a railroad crossing in the Mexican city of Gomez Palacio, prompting hundreds of people to rush to the scene to salvage the spilled cans.

Jimi Hendrix’s 1968 song “Voodoo Chile” is already a classic. But it becomes all the more so when you see it performed by Luna Lee on a Gayageum, a traditional Korean stringed instrument. The first Gayageum dates back to the 6th century. If you like seeing western rock standards reimagined within an Asian aesthetic, then you won’t want to miss: The Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Performed on Traditional Chinese Instruments.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus and share intelligent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Related Content: 

‘Electric Church’: The Jimi Hendrix Experience Live in Stockholm, 1969

Hendrix Plays Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967

Enter Jeff Slatnick’s Wonderful World of New-Fangled and Resurrected Instruments

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Performed on a Gayageum, a Traditional Korean Instrument is a post from: Open Culture. You can follow Open Culture on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and by Email.

Most “optical illusions” are not really optical. They have less to do with the way the eyes work than with the way the brain processes the information sent to it from the eyes. For this reason, many scientists prefer to call them visual illusions. So if visual illusions are a trick of the brain, and human brains differ from the brains of other animals, does that mean our visual illusions are uniquely human?

The answer would appear to be no, judging from the cute video below from YouTube. The kitten is falling for the “rotating snakes illusion” developed in 2003 by Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka. The rotating snakes (click here to view in a larger format) are an example of the “peripheral drift illusion,” a phenomenon first described in 1999 by Jocelyn Faubert and Andrew Herbert of the University of Montreal. Cats are very adept at perceiving motion in their peripheral vision. It helps them elude predators and home in on their own prey. But this kitty is thrown for a loop by the illusory motion of the rotating snakes.

The peripheral drift illusion occurs when circularly repeating figures with regular sawtooth patterns of light and dark are viewed in the periphery. You’ll find that if you move your eyes around the various circles, for example going from center point to center point, the circles in your peripheral vision will appear to be moving but the one you are focused on will not. If you stop moving your eyes, a moment later the circles will all appear to stop moving. In the abstract of their 1998 paper (open PDF), Faubert and Herbert write:

Illusory motion is perceived in a dark-to-light direction, but only when one’s gaze is directed to different locations around the stimulus, a point outside the display is fixated and the observer blinks, or when the stimulus is sequentially displayed at different locations whilst the observer fixates one point. We propose that the illusion is produced by the interaction of three factors: (i) introducing transients as a result of eye movements or blinks; (ii) differing latencies in the processing of luminance; and (iii) spatiotemporal integration of the differing luminance signals in the periphery.

via Stephen Law

Humans Fall for Optical Illusions, But Do Cats? is a post from: Open Culture. You can follow Open Culture on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and by Email.

Trolling is a art.

Submitted by: Unknown

Tagged: gifs , costumes , trolls , poorly dressed , g rated Share on Facebook