Infinity Imagined

I've found a new blog to follow, and highlight.

http://infinity-imagined.tumblr.com/

A recent series posted, on sea temperature flows. But go see, and enjoy, and hopefully you will be led to the world of imagination and wonder.

Leaping seconds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

Bikers

The old saying goes:

There are 2 types of biker, those that have fallen and those that will fall.

Another old saying says you aren't a biker until you've fallen.

I follow the first more than the second, but the second allows me to underscore an important moment for my eldest. She fell off the GN yesterday ... all by herself. No real damage to her or the bike, count one bruise, one indicator lens, and the mirror.

Of course it was her own fault, of course it was because she was going too fast, of course she had all her gear on, and of course she fault like an idiot afterwards. Moving on, she won't do that again.

That being: she climbed on, and gunned it quite a bit harder than she should have. I gestured for her to slow down, and um, she didn't. To be fair she did, just not enough. The fall happened under 5km/h, as the finest falls do.

We live and learn, and now the young rider has a decent amount of respect for the machine and speeds involved. Be grateful for gear, helmets and gloves and thick jackets ... dad is an **** when it comes to gear but he's right, even slow falls can get you hurt.

Welcome to bikerhood bikermouse ... no more of this falling business ok?

;-)

Two Classics, One Car

A 101 year old lady driving an 81 year old car. She changes the spark plugs herself.

Beach at night

4000 Years of Medicine

2000bc: Here, eat this root.
1000ad: That root is heathen! Here, say this prayer.
1865ad: That prayer is superstition! Here, drink this potion.
1935ad: That potion is snakeoil! Here, take this pill.
1975ad: That pill is ineffective! Here, take this antibiotic.
2000ad: That antibiotic is poison! Here, eat this root.

Syrian media war.

June the 15th: Member States of NATO and the GCC are preparing a coup d’état and a sectarian genocide in Syria.

Nowadays the media do not only support a war, they produce it themselves.

This procedure violates the principles of International Law, first of all Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relating to the fact of receiving and imparting information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Above all, the procedure violates the United Nations General Assembly resolution, adopted after the end of World War II, to prevent further wars. Resolutions 110, 381 and 819 forbid “to set obstacles to free exchange of information and ideas” (like cutting off Syrian TV channels) and “all propaganda provoking or encouraging threats to peace, breaking peace, and all acts of aggression”. By law, war propaganda is a crime against peace, the worst of crimes, because it facilitates war crimes and genocide.

Thierry Meyssan

Art should ...

Weather

The weather report was right ...

Hard and soft

“Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.”
― Lao Tzu

This echoes so nicely with the recent posts "Censors", and "Art and Politics". You have life and death, and we all choose one to serve.

Minature Traffic Jam

Yesterday while most of us were at work, some people were out playing with their toys. Dinkie toys, 13 243 dinkie cars to be precise.

The now famous Vilikazi st hosted World's Largest Miniature Traffic Jam .

I can't seem to embed the pictures, the link is to facebook, and it was sponsored by TomTom. I hope those cars were donated to one of the many orphanages in the area.

Very nicely done!

Venus in transit

Awesome.


Then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said no you're wrong. That's not Venus in transit, this is venus in transit. So my apologies.

Bloggees, may i present: Venus in Transit.

Good for everyone

The Telegraph

I seem to recall having seen this photo before, it's a fazer of course :) And it's not often something really can positively impact others by accident, or not. As a by product that is. Awesome article, i'll repost a few of the highlights.
__________________________________

The study’s aim was to look at the effect on traffic flow and congestion of some commuters changing from cars to motorcycles. Interestingly, some of the consequences were dramatic for all road users, not just the commuters who made the switch to two wheels.

Satisfied that the model reflected the real world accurately and the PCE value for motorcycles was accurate, TML next looked at the consequences on traffic flow of one in 10 car drivers switching to motorcycles. The results were astonishing. The travel time for the remaining 90 per cent of car drivers at the 7.50am peak increased by just six minutes instead of 14, while the queues started later and dissipated sooner.


With a tenth of car drivers now using motorcycles, the main queue is gone by 8.30am instead of 9.10am, while the number of “lost vehicle hours” decreases by 63 per cent to 706.

In other words, car emissions fell because they were not stuck in traffic jams for so long.

Art and politics

The Soweton

The late Eugene Terreblanche, reading the bible to his murderer, Chris Mahlangu, seated on his lap.

The piece was created in February for an exhibition -The State of Chakra - that will take place in August.

________________________________

Some comment is necessary i think, i repost these contentious issues because i can, literally. I can also speak my thoughts on the matter, so excuse me if i practice awhile. We may not have this privilege for long, and since it's about art, i'll call this waxing lyrical, only i can't sing here, for which you should be grateful.

Art, that picture is art. It can only be, because it's not really anything else? Not something i'd want to own to be honest, especially with the political overtones, but if i were in an art gallery, this is what i would be seeing right? The artist had a feeling, a thought, an impression, and instead of tying it all up in words, like we do, he painted an image. A single image that can convey quite a lot of different, sometimes opposing messages.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

The creation of Zuma as Lenin in the typical Soviet style, of course with the invocation of patriarchy and naked emperors, did the same thing.  It was an idea, presented in a single helping. No sentences and paragraphs to wade through first. BANG. You are now thinking about something the artist wanted you to think about. An art gallery is where you go to be imbued with the artistic expressions of others.

And it should be provocative, in many different ways. And if a simple painting can inspire action in others, so much the better. Brett Murray can never be a poor man now, his creations have authority in the art world. The personal expression of one man made a nation talk, that is more power than Zuma has ever had. Other works of art are forgotten by the next piece in the gallery, they may be nice, but they do not inspire one with passion.

I am enjoying this re-awakening of art. The South African story has inspired many people to express themselves in many ways. I learned recently that former minister of defense Adriaan Vlok was so remorseful over his actions that he began washing the feet of his victims, as penance. That too is art. Creating something unique and beautiful even for a moment in time, is art. It is the act of living itself that is artistic, merging creativity and experience to further the boundaries of one's own world.

We live in the land of Afrika Burns, where art is created with the sole purpose of destroying it, and immortalising it at the same time. How can the same place and time co exist with the madness of the last few days? Art reflects life, it comes out of life. What we saw this week with the destruction of art, and newspapers, is death, and by extension, murder. It is the opposite of life, and art, and is the mud from whence the lotus flowers bloom.

This painting is the answer to the other. They mirror each other ... a white artist painting a black man, and a black artist painting a white man. Both show South African leaders in a context seen by the painter, and both highly relevant not only to the artist, but to all of us, the viewers. Both are emotive, possibly insulting, and open to a fair amount of personal interpretation, and both are intentionally provocative. Curious that seen from the position of their "opposites", one is remembered for his lesser known male bits, and the other in a context of a religion.

So go paint something today, or someone, which is usually more interesting!

Censors

Censors are dead men
set up to judge between life and death.
For no live, sunny man would be a censor,
he’d just laugh.
But censors, being dead men,
have a stern eye on life.
—That thing’s alive! It’s dangerous.
Make away with it!—
And when the execution is performed
you hear the stertorous, self-righteous heavy
breathing of the dead men,
the censors, breathing with relief.
 
 
DH Lawrence, “Censors”

DaggaCouple - History of Dagga

http://daggacouple.co.za/

Teeheeheeheeheeheehee

Zuma in perspective.

The crucial connection comes through an evolutionary phenomenon that began as our ancestors encountered inequality in wealth, power, and reproductive opportunities, and which disposes some men to behave in reckless, risky, and violent ways. You might call it "the problem with men," and though it's not something that manifests in all males, it is endemically masculine, and at its most extreme it can poison societies. But, much as we have dealt with obesity epidemics not by blaming obesity sufferers but by understanding the ways that evolved human physiology and psychology can create innate vulnerabilities, so too can a better understanding this evolutionary phenomenon help us to deter its damage.

(...)

Despite a few significant holdouts, polygamy continues to dwindle. There are still Jacob Zumas in the world who use "tradition" to shield their polygamist privilege, much as the mega-rich can usually be counted on to venerate wealth and promote inequality. But millennia of evolution ensure that polygyny and inequality will always stir violent competition and risky behavior among men and the oppression of women. Fortunately, our sense of fairness also has evolutionary roots, as does our ability to cooperate for the greater good. And those better angels of our nature will consign polygyny and entrenched inequality -- and men like Jacob Zuma -- to the wrong side of history.

Zuma's Wives: How Humans Evolved a Link Between Inequality and Misogyny

Hat tip to Gus Silber ‏@gussilber

Do not ...

... pick the flowers.

Ok

Information Aesthetics

I like that phrase, say it with me: Information Aesthetics. Not only data, but attractive data, visually at least. I think it's a kind of design holy grail, merging form and function seamlessly into something that anyone can understand.

Your common pie chart is an example of visually presenting information, anyone can do it, and thankfully, it still looks better than the spreadsheet. But of course we're talking about the lowest levels. On the higher levels of intelligent data visualisations, where you're being highly selective about colours and shapes and the associations people have, it stops being an infographic, and becomes .. almost a book, with stories to tell.

Enter Moritz Stefaner, who holds a B.Sc. in Cognitive Science and an M.A. in Interface Design. Right.

Notabilia:

Quote: "I came up with a tree visualization, where Article for Deletion discussion is represented by a thread starting at the bottom center. Each time a user recommends to keep, merge, or redirect the article a green segment leaning towards the left is added. Each time a user recommends to delete the article a red segment leaning towards the right is added. As the discussion progresses, the length of the segments as well as the angle slowly decay."

I have to point out this is example number 1, i did not select this topic:

But you get the idea, a thread runs along with users arguing for deleting or keeping as a Wiki page. Clearly "Unusual sex acts" was dropped, but the single thread shows perfectly how the discussion went, arguments from keep, to delete, to keep, but clearly bending towards deletion. 

Now this next graphic is what excited me, to quite a silly degree in fact.

Commissioned for Citibank *spit* the whole interactive bit is unfortunately not available, only screenshots. But my oh my, what an interesting story it tells. Who, how much, where to, and from, all with a single glance. 

I'm not going to talk about the content, but if only all information was this easy to grasp. 

http://moritz.stefaner.eu/