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David Pescovitz:
“What’s special about this number?” is a math-geek cool site explaining the significance of thousands of numbers between 0 and 9999. It was created by Erich Friedman, a math professor at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. From the site:

0 is the additive identity.
1 is the multiplicative identity.
2 is the only even prime.
3 is the number of spatial dimensions we live in.
4 is the smallest number of colors sufficient to color all planar maps.
5 is the number of Platonic solids.
6 is the smallest perfect number.
7 is the smallest number of faces of a regular polygon that is not constructible by straightedge and compass.
8 is the largest cube in the Fibonacci sequence.
9 is the maximum number of cubes that are needed to sum to any positive integer.
10 is the base of our number system.

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

Originally by David Pescovitz from Boing Boing on February 21, 2007, 6:06pm

Xeni Jardin:
Klaus Harmony, “The Mozart of Erotic Film,” was born in Baden, Germany, in 1941.

[He] was the foremost German composer of erotik film scores in the 1970’s, crafting music for over nine classic movies in just thirteen years. In collaboration with filmmaker and long time friend, Friedrich Wohlfäht, he expanded and thrust the genre beyond its known limits.

Link to a website with many mp3s of his work, with much wakka-chikka-wakka-chikkage, and refreshingly candid pornomuzik album titles like “Who Needs Dialogue?” (Thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Reader comment: Craig Hollinshead says,

If Klaus Harmony was the Mozart of erotic film music, then Gert
Wilden was the Beethoven of such music…or Bach…or maybe W. Axl
Rose, who knows. Anyway: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3

lance grabmiller says,

More classic(al) porn soundtrakcs: Link

Jorge Santos says,

That music reminded me of the classic 70s car chase music. This is a link to a forum with a few links to some samples. See also blacksploitation.

Originally by Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing on February 21, 2007, 3:10pm

Mark Frauenfelder:

During World War II, meat was rationed. This booklet, “Stretch Your Meat with Cream of Wheat,” showed homemakers how to make tasty dishes by mixing meat with rice wheat cereal. Link

Originally by Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing on February 21, 2007, 1:12pm

Mark Frauenfelder:
CC says:

Chile heads rejoice! Recent tests have confirmed that there is a new “world’s hottest chile pepper” : the Bhut Jolokia. Clocking in at a whopping 1,001,304 scovilles, it’s 100 times hotter than a jalapeño. This is good news both for mouth masochists looking for the ultimate burn, but also for food producers who will be able to produce the same amount of chile burn as an additive with far fewer chile peppers. (NMSU photo by Darren Phillips)

Link

Originally by Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing on February 21, 2007, 12:48pm

Originally from BLDGBLOG on February 22, 2007, 6:47am

I adored James Burke’s late 70’s show Connections, (not the cheap 90’s knockoffs for TLC) where he “took an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention and demonstrates how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events built off one another in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology.” He would be proud of Craig Mackintosh of Celsias for making the following connections between caffeine and global warming.

Craig starts with National Geographic on Coffee: It’s hardly a coincidence that coffee and tea caught on in Europe just as the first factories were ushering in the industrial revolution. The widespread use of caffeinated drinks—replacing the ubiquitous beer—facilitated the great transformation of human economic endeavor from the farm to the factory. Boiling water to make coffee or tea helped decrease the incidence of disease among workers in crowded cities. And the caffeine in their systems kept them from falling asleep over the machinery. In a sense, caffeine is the drug that made the modern world possible. And the more modern our world gets, the more we seem to need it. Without that useful jolt of coffee—or Diet Coke or Red Bull—to get us out of bed and back to work, the 24-hour society of the developed world couldn’t exist.

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 21, 2007 at 09:07 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 21, 2007, 8:07am

It is an exhibition so large that it needed two museums- Detroit’s new Museum of Contemporary Art and the Cranbrook Art Museum. Four teams of urban geographers, cultural experts, architects, journalists, and artists have been looking at urban shrinkage in Detroit (consequences of suburbanization) Manchester, (deindustrialization) Ivanavo, Russia (post-socialism) and Halle/Leipsig which is evidently a bit of everything.

There are over sixty works in the show, looking at how cities change and adapt.According to Mocad, “One goal of the project is to develop a better understanding of how and why population and business in these cities have declined. Another goal is to recognize ways such change can help us understand and approach contemporary urban issues. The exhibit examines both the positive and negative side effects of urban decline, and also offers the opportunity for new ideas (including an international ideas competition) to be presented.”

Hugely successful in Europe, The Washington Post notes that it did not resonate in New York, but “Shrinking Cities” is deeply engaged art, passionate about moral and practical issues that don’t always animate the contemporary art scene in New York. It has all the edge, the irony, the gamester play with the conventions and boundaries that one expects of a major exhibition of contemporary art in a thriving metropolitan center. But it also has gravitas.
In Detroit until April 1 at ::Mocad

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 21, 2007 at 09:07 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 21, 2007, 8:07am

a new application that allows the visualization of any sort of data (e.g. website usage or offline data from external sources) on a 3D globe. this visualization can be shown on websites, or displayed onto large screen in a lobby, waiting room, conference room or CEO’s room.

see also 3D data world globe & 3D world blogosphere viz.

[link: 3dlivestats.com|thnkx Sanvito]

Originally from information aesthetics on February 22, 2007, 12:31am

a method for generating flow maps using hierarchical clustering given a set of nodes, positions, & flow data between the nodes. flow maps aim to show the movement of objects from one location to another, such as the number of people in a migration, the amount of goods being traded, or the number of packets in a network.

the advantage of flow maps is that they reduce visual clutter by merging edges. most flow maps are drawn by hand & there are few computer algorithms available. this particular technique is inspired by graph layout algorithms that minimize edge crossings & distort node positions while maintaining their relative position to one another.

see also pivotgraph.

[link: stanford.edu]

Originally from information aesthetics on February 19, 2007, 11:27pm

As best as we can make out from the myriad stories doing the rounds, the environmental group Planet Ark were about to announce a new campaign next week, in partnership with Philips. It was to be called Ban the Bulb. But the new federal Environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, stole their thunder (and, it seems, their idea) by announcing today that incandescent light bulbs were to get the flick (as the newspapers are headlining the move). The government are claiming it as a world first, (for a nation maybe, but as we reported, California recently suggested a similar move for that state — which has almost double the population of Australia, as it happens). The minister reckons it should save 800,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions during the three year phase-out period, with an annual emission reduction of 4 million tonnes by 2015. Incandescents will be banned by legislation in about 2009-10, though some special needs, such as medical use, may receive dispensation. Of course, the replacement lighting offering these savings will be compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). Though we imagine the LED guys will seize the opportunity too. An interesting stat that came out with all this, was that globally lighting is equal in emission contribution to about 70% of the world’s passenger vehicles. Which should remind us that turning off lights when a room is vacant also helps too, even better than using CFLs. ::Department of Environment Press Release (PDF), via ABC, SMH and the Australian.

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 20, 2007 at 08:59 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 20, 2007, 7:59am

Originally posted by el_salmon from del.icio.us/tag/electronics, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 21, 2007 at 08:59 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 21, 2007, 7:59am

Paul Notzold, working with Federico Hatoum, have been working on a community drawing tool that allows you to use SMS to draw on buildings. The piece will debut in the Streets of Rome, Italy from March 1 - 3. TXTual Healing and TXT-A-Sketch will both be on view as part of the Urban Portraits show at rialtosantambrosio

You can see video and photos here.

Originally from Wooster Collective, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 20, 2007 at 08:59 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 20, 2007, 7:59am

VJ Benton C. Bainbridge has been doing a solid amount of experimental live video work for 20+ years (see his site for huge array of clips, projects, + quirky vintage video hardware), and was recently in Melbourne to VJ for the Beastie Boys at the Good Vibrations festival. Benton was kind enough to put me on the guest list and invited me sidestage to take footage with one of his video cameras. Which meant for great close-up views of both the Beasties and a Snoop Dog performance.

Random thoughts on the show :

Benton had to work really hard, lotsa set-up, lotsa scheduled clips and camera changes to suit different songs, was very, very busy the entire set. Black & White fish-eye travels through New York never seemed more appropriate. The L.E.D. screens used were super-bright ( Benton: “It’s the only time I’ve had to ask to have a screen brightness turned down.”). Snoop Dog’s entrance, slinking across the stage, had me hunching over with laughter - he seemed like such a cartoon character in the flesh (reinforced by the size of his diamond crusted microphone and the clouds of smoke trailing behind him ). Beasties put on a good party set, swapping between beat-driven brat-hop, and wah-wah percussion fuelled distorto pop. Fun, but felt a bit dated too. Something is lost, something is gained with events of this scale. Photos from side-stage.

Tags: benton bainbridge, beastie boys, snoop dog, good vibrations,

Originally by jean poole from { { { { - - Sky Noise — >>> on February 19, 2007, 5:59pm

Whew. I gots me a big ole backlog of great mp3 links to share this week, so I think I’ll just dive right in…

• 
  Another sad passing last week, a bit under the radar, (except it didn’t get by us, thank you) was Franakie Lane. Say good bye to him the best way…with music. 1961’s Hell Bent For Leather.
• Meanwhile, over in the Netherlands, they said goodbye to Robert Long.
• The life and work of Polk Miller, a Southern slave owner who mimicked the black vernacular - to questionable ends.
• Just what I’ve been waiting for: Christian Moog.
• The evolution of Cocaine Blues.
• Lounge music for 30,000 feet.
• Peanut Butter Wolf gives you a Valentine’s present.
• The eerie score to the original Phantasm - and the far more surreal Phantasm 2.
• Ski better with Hans Gmoser.
• Rock on with some Cinderella. No, not the hair-metal artistes, but a sweet Filipino pop band.
• Nico live in 1985, and Tiny Tim live in 1968.
• 
  One of Jersey’s earliest punk bands, The Burnt.
• Before Sleater-Kinney there were female ass-kickers like Liliput, (aka Kleenex) and San Francisco art punks Inflatable Boy Clams - who have a whole fansite devoted just to their one double 7" single.
• This week’s Corporation Rock pick is "I am Florida Power", from Florida Power’s Singing Truck Driver.
• Just a taste of the amazing first Bathory album. Shouldn’t you own this, already?

Many many more MP3 links, video links and a secret fun surprise after the jump.

• From Crud Crud: "Why is the moon made of cheese? Is the ocean
  really filled with God’s tears? Who buys midget porn? What was the
  event, the force, the explosion that resulted in Uge’s Mad Charles?"
• The B Side celebrated V-Day with a red label 45 featuring the word love.
• Miss Sexy Voice, Ella Mae Morse.
• If you like Oscar Brown Jr. or Josh White, you need to hear the folk/jazz/doo-wop/funk of Terry Callier.
• Sammy Davis Jr. goes country.
• I can’t decide: No Wave with Y Pants, or New Wave with Dalek I Love You? Ah heck, take them both. 
• It’s a pretty way to die, listening to French 80s Casio grooves with Mary Moor.
• Pop songs turned on their ear by David Lynch. (get it?!?)
• Speaking of Lynch, check out Mr. Hopkinsons’s Computer’s cover of the Twin Peaks theme.
• Or how about an album from Twin Peaks’ Peggy Lipton?
  Fun facts: not only did Peggy star in the Mod Squad, but she retired
  from acting when she married Quincy Jones. That is her daughter
  co-staring on The Office.
• 50 Incredible Rap Songs! Nothing terribly old school, but who can resist an offer like that? Aw heck, here’s 20 more!
• A kinda crappy tribute to Sgt. Pepper’s, but some gems in there from the Fall and Sonic Youth.
• 
  Which reminds me, who could outsell the Beatles in East Anglia? Why, the Singing Postman, of course.
• It’s the pop folk album from Bruce Lee’s brother (complete with touching tribute).
• Locust St. wraps up an exhaustive look at 1958 with a slew of great tracks (that Clyde McPhatter slays me).
• Polkas con Cabrito.
• New wave mime with Tik and Tok.
• If I had to pick a favorite Nurse With Wound, it would have to be this one.
• Before Bob Log III there was Doo Rag.
• Martin Subotnick’s electronic epic The Double Life of Amphibians.
• As sampled by Negativland, the chanting and anti-rock warnings of
  a creepy religious cult as heard on the Sounds of American Doomsday
  Cults (Volume 14). More on the church in question.
• 90 minutes of college radio, circa 1983.
• Or if you weren’t yet that hip, how about the anthemic themes to all those crappy 80s movies you used to watch.

Things not to share:

• Bad 80s songs aside, that’s still no excuse for crap Jimmy Buffett soundtrack throwaways. From gems like The Great
  Outdoors, Arachnophobia, and Urban Cowboy, it adds up to music that only Parrot-heads could
  love (though I do like that song from Fast Times).
• Edward Furlong doing The Doors (scroll to the end of the post, if you dare).
• Fabio’s After Dark collection.
• The way un-funky homemade funk of D.C. and Company.
• "It’s like Jim Steinman and David Foster decided to have a synthfight, and we all won." Ouch…Wax UK.

Music Videos:

• 

  Biggest news of the year: The lost footage from Leonard Nimoy’s Ballad
  of Bilbo Baggins video. Yup, that’s Ricky Nelso introducing the clip.

• Carl Stalling was amazing, but Flip the Frog works pretty darn well with some Howlin’ Wolf.
• 
  Charo takes Las Vegas!
• We’re all about the Roy Head right now, thanks to his son’s potential American Idol sweep.
• That new Hugh Grant movie looks terrible, but the rip-off 80s video within is pure genius.
• The overrated Lady Sovereign takes on a jelly donut.
• 
  The Arabic pop version of Shaft!
• 
  The Virgin of Guadalupe meets the Voice of Xtabay
• 
  The Ramones cover of Time Has Come Today, sung in church, of course.

Okay, I’m going to sneak this non-music link here into the end. Wax On
Wax Hoff, perhaps one of the creepiest and somehow most enjoyable pointless flash games I’ve run
across. Watch those nipples!

Originally posted by Clinton McClung from WFMU's Beware of the Blog, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 21, 2007 at 09:04 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 21, 2007, 8:04am

If you can buy a 1metre high set of deer antlers on Ebay for less than a case of beer ( as my friend did recently), what else could available?

Needles, Haystacks.
Sure. Categories to browse are useful for computer parts or more lately, for friends who seem to acquire their second hand clothes via Ebay. And Musicthing provides a good filter for endless musical oddities available on Ebay eg actual kraftwerk synthesizers, etc. For finding genuinely weird items, that database is too big for anything but the search button. Which means choosing the right keywords. And lets limit search to items from within Australia.

Antlers? Just to see what else my friend missed. For a deer-less island, impressively no less than 5 sets of antlers could be found.
Taxidermy? Offered actual wall-mounted deer antlers with full heads starting from around $750 ( many on offer ), but also an american skunk “excellent condition” (bidding was at $207), a rattlesnake head ($45 ), a giant tarantula ( $100 ), a predictable assortment of sharks teeth, kangaroo pouches and crocodile heads, and most temptingly - a taxidermied rabbit holding a hunting shotgun and wearing camouflaged unifrom ( $90 ). Taxidermy is an artform, y’hear?

Voodoo? 166 results, but mostly brand oriented stuff, no juicy spells or 21C witchcraft..
Bizarre? 42 items - leather pants, frank zappa CDs, monster bracelets.
Spiritual? 101 items - books, ‘healing cds’ crystal balls. yawns
Terrorist? 11 items including a hessian “Terrorist” body bag ($18 ) , a ‘suspected terrorist’ T-Shirt ($25) and a How to survive a terrorist attack manual ( $25).
Robot ? 353 items, with an ‘Automatic Conveyor Robot Donut Maker’ starting at $5,950.00.
Rare? 12630 supposedly rare items on offer, mostly CDs.
Nuclear? 30 items : A useful ‘Map of Uranium Coal Nuclear Fuels in India & Burma’ ($75), and a British Army NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) Suit ($130).
Skeleton? 281 - including a Life Size Human Anatomical Skeleton Female Model 170cm - ($133 )
Ticket? Not so strange, just curious to see how many available - 1439, the bargain ‘buy now’ price of $4250 for a “Date With Destiny” and motivational speaker Anthony Robbins, being particularly alluring.
Ebola? 1 in Australia, 17 worldwide, including 1x very special “EBOLA VIRUS SCIENCE MEDICAL Custom Italian Photo Charm” yours for $17.50 at time of bidding.
Enema? Perhaps appropriately, all 7 items were Blink 182 albums.
Medical? 261, Drugs? 95, Hypnotism? 26, Brain? 137 etc etc.

Perpetual, Peer to Peer Garage Sales?
What to make of all this availability? Skeletons in closets, crap in basements, all the world’s backyard sheds all in the one shippable database? On the one hand, it means avoiding waste and clever re-use of items rather than increasing demand for more new products, but there’s something disturbing about the number of planes in the sky at any one point, that are probably be filled with Ebay gear zipping from country to country. There’s merit in maximising what can be provided locally.

Related : The Slow Food movement, which aims to work towards “local production and consumption which will exploit “best practices” of science and professions worldwide but ultimately prove cheaper due to less reliance on transport and energy and chemical and technology intensive methods.”

Where to now for Ebay?
They’ve made a few purchases of their own in recent years:
skype.com - the dominant VOIP net phone software. Presumably to faciltate even easier sales, as well as broaden how they line their pockets. Plenty of better alternatives available tho.
paypal.com - popular online payment system. Now challenged by Google’s Checkout payment system.

Related: on the payment front, ‘micropayments’ are an interesting idea that many creators find attractive - users click easily to donate tiny payments which means that artwork that has enough merit to generate an audience, can also generate an income without advertising. One such micropayment system recently closed - bitpass.com
Arguments for? www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-6/icst-6-full.html
Arguments against? www.nothings.org/writing/upay.html

Tags: just the usual:, ebay, antlers, taxidermy, ebola, skype

Originally by jean poole from { { { { - - Sky Noise — >>> on February 20, 2007, 9:17pm

Mac OS X only: Freeware application Home and Away automatically mounts network volumes, launches applications, and opens files based on what network you’re connected to.

If you carry your Mac laptop around to a lot of different networks, this tool could come in very handy. To test it out, I set up Home and Away to connect to my Windows-networked music drive - which holds my iTunes music library - when it’s connected to my apartment network, then launch iTunes, and it worked like a charm. There are, of course, quite a few inventive ways you could use Home and Away. For example, you could run it when you start up your computer to have your Mac launch a location-specific batch of applications whenever you’re connected to a particular network. Home and Away is freeware, Mac OS X only. — Adam Pash

Originally from Lifehacker on February 21, 2007, 2:30pm

About.com’s guide to candle and soap making (yep, there’s even a guide for that) details how to recycle your leftover wax scraps into new, usable candles.

I’ve got a lot of candles in my apartment that are all but used up, leaving me with all kinds of leftover wax that I don’t want to see go to waste. Not surprisingly, recycling your candles isn’t all that difficult. An interesting idea from another web site suggests using a birthday candle as a new wick, which seems like an inventive idea if you don’t have your own wicks on-hand. Either way, recycling your old candles is a great way to save some money with a relatively quick and easy DIY project. Thanks Priyank!— Adam Pash

Originally from Lifehacker on February 21, 2007, 7:30pm

Mac OS X only: Freeware application Slife monitors the applications you’re using on your Mac, then presents you with a timeline of your computing activity.

To be frank, Slife is incredible. Not only does it keep track of the application you’re using, but it also tracks the interactions - like web pages you visit and emails you’ve read. An application must be supported in order for Slife to track it, but you’ll find that most of the good ones are; unsupported apps can be added to Slife through plug-ins and “scriptlets.”

If you regularly find yourself wondering where the day went, just fire up Slife before you start working and you’ll know exactly what you’ve been up to, sliced and diced in a bevy of useful views. I found Slife to be a little confused from time to time about how long I’d been using an app, but overall I’m very impressed. Slife is freeware, Mac OS X only. Thanks Wil! — Adam Pash

Originally from Lifehacker on February 21, 2007, 6:30pm

Hickory Hill (2004, 10.1MB, 2:02 min)

Surfacing (2003, 8MB, 2:25 min)

Engaging & sensitive work from Jennifer Proctor.
What is the word for video..like..painterly for
painters?..well, these videos are that word.
More here

Originally from DVblog on February 21, 2007, 2:00am

If your toothbrush is looking grody these days, you’re not replacing it often enough. Smart Money offers a list of common household items and how often they should be replaced.

Toothbrushes? Every 3 months. Cosmetics? Between 3 months and 2 years. Running shoes? Every 300 to 500 miles. This one will have you wondering exactly how long you’ve had those air filters in your heater after all. Thanks, Catherine! — Gina Trapani

Originally from Lifehacker on February 21, 2007, 10:30am