Time
cevans | February 25, 2010
The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds is an experiment in scale: by condensing 4.6 billion years of history into a minute, the video serves as a self-contained timepiece. Like a specialized clock, it gives a sense of perspective. Every eventâ--âfrom the formation of the Earth, to the Cambrian Explosion, to the evolution of mice and squirrelsâ--âis proportionate to every other, displaying humankind as a blip, almost indiscernible in the layered course of history. This is useful, largely, for the sake of humility.
Each event in the Evolution of Life fades gradually over the course of the minute…
cevans | February 23, 2010
I made this compilation of so-called "hyperspace" scenes from science-fiction movies last year with my friend, the artist and businessman Mike Merrill. Although the film was initially meant to be a catalog of these scenes, the finished product has an ambient, meditative effect that speaks to the power of the very idea of the hyperspace.
The hyperspace (or, in the case of Star Trek, "warp speed") is an enduring concept in science fiction, seemingly because it provides a panacea for all conflict. Romulans hot on your tail? Human understanding reaching its limits? Unsurmountable distances to…
esiegel | February 12, 2010However time may be measured at the Naval Observatory, the clock seems to tick slowly here when Congress is out of town. -Richard Corrigan
The following is the mostly true (but somewhat fictionalized) story of the first clocks in the Americas. In the 17th Century, the finest clockmakers in the world were Dutch, going back to the time of Christiaan Huygens.
Image: A Dutch Longcase clock, courtesy of The Museum of the Dutch Clock.
Huygens determined that if you allowed a pendulum to swing just a little bit, the period of its swing could be used to keep time to incredible accuracy. By the mid-…
drorzel | February 2, 2010Just about everybody has heard of the Twin Paradox in relativity: one twin becomes as astronaut and sets off for Alpha Centauri, the other remains on Earth at mission control. Thanks to time dilation, the two age at different rates, and the one who made the trip out and back ends up younger than the one who stayed behind.
Of course, the paradox is not that the two twins have different ages-- rather, it's that from a simple approach to special relativity, you would think that each twin should see the other's clock running slow, since it seems like getting into a rocket and flying off into…
neurophilosophy | January 23, 2010"WHEN a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour," said Albert Einstein, "it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it's longer than any hour." Einstein was describing one of the most profound implications of his Theory of General Relativity - that the perception of time is subjective. This is something we all know from experience: time flies when we are enjoying ourselves, but seems to drag on when we are doing something tedious.
The subjective experience of time can also be manipulated experimentally. Visual stimuli which appear to be approaching are perceived…
neurophilosophy | November 19, 2009SYNAESTHESIA is a neurological condition in which there is a merging of the senses, so that activity in one sensory modality elicits sensations in another. Although first described by Francis Galton in the 1880s, little was known about this condition until recently. A rennaissance in synaesthesia research began about a decade ago; since then, three previously unrecognized forms of the condition have been described, and hypotheses for how it arises have been put forward.
Two new studies now provide some insight into time-space synaesthesia, the least researched of all the forms of this…
neurophilosophy | November 6, 2009A novel temporal illusion, in which the cause of an event is perceived to occur after the event itself, provides some insight into the brain mechanisms underlying conscious perception. The illusion, described in the journal Current Biology by a team of researchers from France, suggests that the unconscious representation of a visual object is processed for around one tenth of a second before it enters conscious awareness.
Chien-Te Wu and his colleagues at the Brain and Cognition Research Centre in Toulouse used a visual phenomenon called motion-induced blindness, in which a constantly…
sciencepunk | July 9, 2009Check out my guest post at the venerable Times Online:
Built into the streets of New York City is a solar calendar on a truly massive scale. Every year around July 12th, New Yorkers are treated to a spectacular phenomenon as the setting sun aligns directly with the east-west streets of Manhattan's main grid, turning them into canyons filled with golden light. The effect is known as Manhattanhenge in reference to the much older stone monument near Salisbury. The term was coined in 2002 by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the charismatic director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American…
grrlscientist | June 23, 2009tags: marshmallow experiment, future-oriented, time, Philip Zimbardo, TEDTalks, streaming video
In this video, psychologist Philip Zimbardo says happiness and success are rooted in a trait most of us disregard: the way we orient toward the past, present and future. He suggests we calibrate our outlook on time as a first step to improving our lives. [7:07]
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate…
sciencepunk | May 14, 2009I love to see new and inventive ways of measuring the passing of time, and especially I love this fabulous "Digital Calendar" (haha) that Bre Pettis laser-etched onto his fingernails.
ddobbs | March 6, 2009Ezra Klein reviews Obama's handling of yesterday's health summit -- a piece well worth reading for a taste of how sharply focused and serious Obama is about truly comprehensive health-care reform.
Karen Tumlty, a health-care expert, describes in Time her own family's grueling wrestling match with the health-insurance industry. A timely story -- no pun intended -- as it makes painfully clear that it's not just the 46 million people uninsured (did I just say "just" 46 million people) who fare poorly in the current system.
Genetic Future looks at how a Victorian-era height-prediction system…
drorzel | January 5, 2009It's NFL playoff time, which means that sports fans will be treated to the sight of the most high-stakes farce in sports, namely the ritual of "bringing out the chains" to determine whether a team has gained enough yards for a first down. We've all seen this: the play is whistled dead, a referee un-stacks the pile of players, picks up the ball, and puts it down more or less where the player was stopped. Then he tosses the ball into the middle of the field, to a second referee, who tries to replicate the spot closer to the center of the field. Then a guy on the sideline carrying a big stick (…
clock | January 4, 2009Star Wars Starships and Fighters Clock:
12 o'clock Star Destroyer
1 o'clock TIE Interceptor
2 o'clock Darth Vader's Tie Fighter
3 o'clock Jabba's Barge
4 o'clock Bespin Twin-Pod Cloud Car
5 o'clock Y-Wing Fighter
6 o'clock Super Star Destroyer
7 o'clock Rebel Blockade Runner
8 o'clock TIE Bomber
9 o'clock X-Wing Fighter
10 o'clock Rebel Snowspeeder
11 o'clock A-Wing Starfigher
clock | November 22, 2008NYTimes:
Eliminating daylight time would thus accord with President-elect Barack Obama's stated goals of conserving resources, saving money, promoting energy security and reducing climate change.
Eugene Sandhu:
In order to conserve energy, President-elect Barak Obama should eliminate daylight saving time.
Boing Boing:
President-elect Obama wants to get rid of daylight saving time in the United States to conserve energy.
The game of broken telephones? Or lack of reading comprehension, or just wishful thinking? I though we were the Reality-Based Community.
More....
clock | November 13, 2008Here are a few examples. One will feed you greasy bacon every morning. The other will donate to the GOP. Others will force you to perform either menial or mental tasks. I prefer a more gradual approach - a system that gradually increases the illumination in the room, the volume of sound (some pre-chosen music), etc. and only does something dramatic at the last, most critical point in time when you absolutely HAVE to get up.
more animals
[btw, check out the other pages on that site - there are some other cool inventions there, mixed up with some quite silly ones]
clock | October 6, 2008See here. Found on GearCrave:
GearCrave says:
If you are anything like me, you do not find anything as annoying as being jolted awake by a high-pitch electronic sound in the morning. Today, we bring you a soothing alternative. "Silence" is a conceptual alarm clock that will wake you up without emitting any sound. If you need to be awoken, you simply wear a special wireless rubber ring. When the designated alarm time comes, the clock will send a signal to the ring which will generate a tactile alarm. If you wish to continue your sleep, just shake your hand to activate the snooze function. As…