randform

Together with collegues from London and Tokyo neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes did an experiment (however up to now only with 21 test persons as it seems), where a person had to choose wether he/she wanted either to add or to substract two numbers. And even before the test persons saw the numbers and before they started to compute it was possible – by using a MRI brain scan – to tell with a 70% chance, what kind of desicion the person was going to make, or in other words: using the MRI the scientists could “read the mind” of the test persons (with a 70% chance). Freely chosen decisions are usually happening in the prefrontal cortex.

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update 22.02.2011: the above image is a mashup of a photoshopped poster for the below referenced film starring at theatre Houdin from an unknown author and some fotoshopped rainbow colors from some astrophysics film.

In 1896 Georges Méliès produced with “Le manoir du diable” the first horror movie in film history. And even more this 2 minute stop-motion special effects film was also the first colour film in film history. The colouring in this film was done by hand on each single image. Colouring black and white films can be seen as a kind of “branding” . It actually took quite a time until it was possible to automatically color films with a -more or less- full color spectrum. This was achieved in 1932 with the Three-strip Technicolor process in the animation “Flowers and Trees”. The first colored feature film in film history was then “Becky Sharp” of 1935 displaying the typical bright technicolor colors.

I was always wondering why films and images of cosmological events like e.g. about the big bang or supernovae look as if they were shot in technicolor, although they were digitally processed.

The reason for this is that the unvisible light spectrum (and the brightness) gets transferred into a visible spectrum via a human interference:
-> Where do those images come from

While we all await the total lunar eclipse (here in europe at least), astronomy picture of the day has a solar eclipse video from STEREO B, one of the two solar examination space observatories (guess how the other is called!).

For all of us who can expect to have a cloudy sky tonight (the moon will enter the deepest shadow about 22:30 MEZ) I made a look-alike illustration of what to expect: scattered light from earth will dye the moon red.

signpost at FEZ
The FEZ Berlin a children, youth and family centre (actually the largest in Europe) is one of the jewels of Berlin. FEZ-Berlin is run as a non-profit organisation of the Land Berlin and is divided into three main components: the educational work with children, youth and families, the Berlin State Music Academy and the indoor and open air pools.
It was originally founded in 1950 as the Pionierrepublik „Ernst Thälmann“.

For the educational work it hosts among others an ecology garden, a kids museum, a real kids train, which dates back to 1956 and the Orbitall -a space exploration centre for kids dating back to 1979. With various activities like e.g. the space camp mission kids get prepared for the future.

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(image from wikipedia)

Yes it is sometimes hard to find a parking spot like e.g. in Berlin-Mitte with a big ‘89 Mercedes Benz 230 CE in goldmetallic.

And if it is me who is trying to squeeze in with such a car than this probably means: there once was a nice german car…:)

For the environment its usually better to drive a car till the end, rather then buy a new one.

But then if one really needs a new car one will find that “new” german cars are sofar producing far too much sourtasting CO2 gas in order to be cool enough. Sorry german engineer in da house: you first need to reduce your bad gas.

May be one should have a look on e.g. this japanese or other hybrid cars. But they make only sense if they are charged via renewable energies. Ethanol cars, e.g. very popular in Mexico are also not a bad option to look at, also if they may spoil the corn prices.

The Java applet f.wish by boredom research (see also the interview on furtherfield)- is a graphical reinterpretation of the Lam Tsuen Wishing Trees on folly.

At f.wish you can hang your personal and public wishes (e.g. for next year) onto a tree and read those of others (see above).

f.wish has a nice spongy letter-from-spring-gravity simulation (with the partial use of the traer.physics library for processing). Sean Carroll of the physics blog cosmic variance was just discussing physics and in particular gravity in games like this (partially physically uncorrect) game but also a Ninja game and the book “physics of the buffyverse” (seems to be similar in intention to this book) were topics in his post.

Another gravity game has a possibility to change directions while flying but no walls and thus you may get lost in space easily. And there is a dial which shows you how far you are lost.

sport fans of sport club Vëllaznimi, Gjakovë, Kosova

When discussing videogames in this old randform post, I was also mentioning examples where “virtual identities” where mingled with real war. It would be exagerated to see this already as a trend. Nevertheless I recently found a similar example of this mingling – however this time in marketing strategies, namely in the new marketing campaign “James Blunt returns to Kosovo”.

A lot of people think the NATO troops in 1999 brought peace into Kosovo and may be they did, however it is not clear yet how the conflict will end. But regardless of what the result may be – the main message of that conflict was sofar more or less: there seems to be no other solution than to fight violence with violence. The same old story. In a civilized “post war Europe”.

Where in fact – not only Kosovo – but the entire war in former Yugoslavia was a slap into the face of civilization. Sarajevo – city of culture and mulitethnicity – wiped out like nothing. Accumulated traumatas are again going to be distributed over generations. But back to the campaign.

James Blunt – whose marketing adepts were already quite extensively playing out his double identity of being a former soldier in Kosovo and likewise a heartful popsinger returns now to Kosovo according to this campaign.

Is this in order to make him more attractive following an old evolutionary paradigma that a warrior is guaranteeing a better fitness? Is this for giving more authenticity to his virtual identity? Make him more real?

As I already said may be the Kosovo mission was sucessful, despite the violence of the mission. This is one thing. It is something else which is leaving me with a stale flavour after watching the above video teaser, namely the citation of James Blunt (at least thats what I hear towards the end of the video, blame me if its wrong):

“….in Kosovo the issues were real….”

.

or was this just a Blunt-vs.-Bond joke by Blunt – sotosay a my-own-private-Kosovo, what I was hearing? a sudden ironic self-reflecting outbreak?

two ironic James Blunt cover versions:
->my cubicle and
->bloody cold.

(James Blunts original song)

for he knows who.

-> youtube link with electricpiano chopin
->new scientist video and here
->ants robot
->updated ants page