This site is pretty cool: purves-lab’s “See For Yourself” section. It lets you interact with various optical illusions, many famous, but quite a few I’d not seen presented before.
This illusion is very famous: which one of the two line segments is longer? You know the answer, of course; they are both the same length. But this page adds a little twist by letting you adjust the bottom line’s length until they look even to you, and reports the results. For me, there ended up being a 16% difference in perception versus reality.
Many of the illusions are more maddening (and fascinating) than this.
September 14th, 2007
3 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Science/Technology
These I stumbled on more-or-less randomly. They fit under Link Criterion #2: interesting enough so that I’m now making it a point to visit their site at least once a week. (Link Criterion #1 is that the author’s a family member or friend. This explains why ROTK is still linked, even though it hasn’t been updated since May.)
These first two guys come from different sides of the fence.
BlackSun is a staunch atheist (despite the name, the author is white) with an eye-catching website. It’s a rather different animal from the other links, being quite heavy and serious. In fact, I have no hard evidence that the guy even has a sense of humor. If you need a break from my silliness, it works.
Batman…er, I mean, l3ruce Wayne (sorry to blow your cover, buddy!) is a strong advocate of ID (intelligent design). He just started blogging last month, and is putting some gusto into it. He plays chess, and I need to test his skill on FICS sometime.
The third guy, Shazgood, is Irish, which means he drinks and says “begorrah” a lot. He started his WordPress blog 3 days after I did (we’re brothers, man!). The page is rather attractive, and was also found via chess tag channels. But there’s other stuff, too.
September 14th, 2007
5 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Entertainment
I’m an infrequent listener of rap/hip-hop (someone who wants to explain the practical difference between the two, please go ahead). A big part of why I do at all is the potential for clever or silly wordplay. You hear this stuff, and it alternatively makes you laugh, groan, or stuns you into thinking, “Who thinks of this stuff?”
Take the song “Grillz”, which is about those caps for the teeth made out of gems or precious metals. The whole song’s rather silly, probably intentionally, in no small part because of lyrics like these:
“I got the diamonds and the ice all hand set
I might ’cause a cold front if I take a deep breath.”
“Call me George Foreman, ‘cuz I’m sellin’ everybody grillz.”
“Where I got ‘em you can spot ‘em on the top and the bottom.
Gotta bill in my mouth like I’m Hillary Rodham.”
(Guess they couldn’t find anything to rhyme with “Monica” or “Lewinsky”.)
Run-DMC is responsible for one of my favorite couplets of all time, which clarifies the name of group member Darryl McDaniels :
“It’s McDaniels, not McDonalds.
These rhymes are Darryl’s, but the burgers are RONALD’S!”
It’s the over-the-top emphasis on “RONALD’S” that sets it apart, and really deserves to be heard on a CD instead of read on a webpage.
September 14th, 2007
6 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Entertainment
