Sea and Lava

At the Daily Mail there is an incredible set of 33 photos of lava pouring into the ocean off Hawaii. The photos, by Nick Selway and CJ Kale, outdo one after another as one scrolls through them. There's also two photos of one of them (unspecified) getting a photo as he wades chest high in the surf next to the in-flowing lava. The waer is referred to by the Daily Mail as a "baking hot 110F" -- they probably mean "scalding hot" -- though 110 degrees Fahrenheit is just a very hot bath. Found at Dark Roasted Blend.

C0mm0n 4 D1g1+ P455w0rd5

x axis runs from 00xx to 99xx, y axis runs from xx00 to xx99; color on log scale

Nick Berry, a data technology consultant running the website Data Genetics, analyzed data of 4 digit passwords and pin numbers to determine which combinations are the most and which the least used and generally to poke around for other patterns. Using tables of data containing ~3.7 million passwords that had been hacked or uncovered and released, he determined frequency of use. The most common is 1234, which about 10.7% of people use, followed by 1111 (~6%), 0000 (~1.9%), 1212 (~1.2%). The least popular (which surely has changed by disclosing it) was 8068 (~.00007%), though there were many other low use numbers. His article is full of statistical goodness and interesting observations, including some thoughts on how to maintain safe passwords. Via MetaFilter.

US History: Republican Version

Many Republicans are intellectuals. Many are not. An assembly of their deep insights into history from the New Yorker:

1500s: The American Revolutionary War begins: “The reason we fought the revolution in the sixteenth century was to get away from that kind of onerous crown.”—Rick Perry

1607: First welfare state collapses: “Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow.”—Dick Armey

1619-1808: Africans set sail for America in search of freedom: “Other than Native Americans, who were here, all of us have the same story.”—Michele Bachmann

. . . and it goes on and on

Cut Paper by Jen Stark

Jen Stark is a mostly paper-craft artist -- and I don't mean that disparagingly -- who quickly came to prominence about five to six years ago, shortly after she got out of art school. She was an internet darling or sorts whose work was repeatedly featured at high traffic sites like boing boing and Neatorama.  And there's a good reason for that: her work is really simple, really beautiful, the kind of thing that seems obvious once you've seen it. I recommend her site, and not just for the paper work but for the drawings as well. I was reminded of her work through a post at Boom.

Robert L. Shultz's Graphite and Silverpoint Drawings

Via Devid Sketchbook, a series of meticulous drawings by Robert L. Shultz, who works in graphite and silverpoint. At left just one of many beautiful works.

Dew Covered Insects -- David Chambon

At 500px, a series on dew or mist  covered insects -- and some birds thrown in for good measure -- by David Chambon. Prefer your insects super close and mist free? Then go to my post, here.

"Hobbit" Character Stills

New character stills for each of the fourteen companions (and Gandalf!) in The Hobbit.

Devil Fire

This photo by Chris Tangey and published at The Australian shows a dust devil sucking up a brushfire. The Australian will not allow me to look/link the photo on their site without registering and starting a "free trial period," so no link for you. Seen at boing boing. 

The "New" Alcubierre Warp Drive for Faster than Light Speed Travel (Count Me as a Skeptic)

This, from MetaFilter:

In 1994, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a scheme for virtual faster than light travel using a real-world analog to the familiar science fiction trope known as "Warp Drive." The basic premise exploited certain space-time warping effects predicted by General Relativity to fold space-time, theoretically allowing a specially designed space craft to reach distant destinations effectively at FTL speeds without actually having to accelerate to light speed or beyond at all. There was, however, at least one major problem with the proposal: The math suggested it would require as much energy as the mass of the planet Jupiter to power the thing. But according to newer calculations based on a modified version of Alcubierre's original proposal, warp speed travel may now theoretically be within reach (warning: eyeball-gouging Space.com link), requiring drastically less energy than originally thought. Of course, not everyone's convinced there's anything to see here. And even so, prohibitive energy input requirements may not be the only serious challenge facing the development of real-world warp drive technology, so don't go packing your bags for that long overdue vacation to Risa just yet.

I, of course, always keep my spacekit packed and ready to go, just in case. [Note to self: make sure sunscreen has not passed expiration date since going back in time may not un-expire it.]

There are a couple of possible problems with the theory however ... just tiny ones.

Who Are You? (And What Defines Your Boundaries, Exactly)?

"Abundant taxa in the human microbiome that have been metagenomically and taxonomically well defined in the HMP population." From the Nature article  Structure, Function and Diversity of the Healthy Human Microbiome.

Scientific American (in an article getting some attention online) links to and discusses several articles in Nature and PLoS One regarding the diversity of the humane biome. The articles are reports of ongoing studies of the Human Microbiome Project ("HMP") to catalog and assess the affect of the numerous microbes that live on and in our bodies. There are -- as should come as no surprise to anyone who paying attention -- trillions of microbes living on us and in us at any time. What is surprising is the diversity of microbes from person to person. There is no doubt, however, that we need many of them to survive (and share those species in common, though lifestyle and genetic factors may affect their prevalence and our health).

New Trailer for "The Hobbit"?

This appears to be a new trailer for The Hobbit:

And this was the first trailer: 

Argh Yer Speakin as a Pirate

I have no idea what that means.  Yet verily this be September 19 and, fer no dercernible reason yar know, 'tis Talk Like a Pirate Day. Here I be with helpful links ter bail yer out with yer mateys:

• The Pirate Quote Generator. Of skeptical provenance.
• Real Pirate Quotes. No arrrs. Looks legit. Sadly.
• Pirate Quotes and Sayings. First quote from ... Johnny Depp; second, from ... Mark Twain. Not a strong effort.
• Mitt Romney Quotes. I have no idea how this got in here.
• Instructional Materials For When Yer Ready to be Freestylin'
• Video instruction
• How to Talk Like a Pirate from Wikihow
• Yet More Instructions

God speed to ye.

I feel like an idiot.

Has Cliffs of Dover Been Overdone? Yes.

Well, whatever ... still.

Romney's Statement and Where Non-payers of Income Taxes Live

Update: I thought this discussion at the Atlantic was better than mine, below.
_______________

I had already written a post on the map at right, when it came out yesterday that Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney said (video link) that Obama's core supporters are people who do not pay income taxes and rely on entitlements. I pay income taxes and I get no entitlements, and I am voting for Obama, albeit I am voting for him for non-partisan reasons.

If Romney's statement is taken simply  as "[t]here are ... people who will vote for the president no matter what," he's right. There are people who will vote against the President or for Mr. Romney no matter what, too.

The problem is he goes well beyond that. Instead of quibbling over his 47% figure, which a few sentences later in the same talk he inflates to "48, 49" -- and the 47% is inflated too -- he slaps people like me and a lot of other people int he face with what is a flat out lie.

The Dark Energy Camera's First Photos

The Dark Energy Camera (the "DECam") is a specially designed camera newly mounted on the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile and designed to take very wide field astronomical photographs towards the red and infrared wavelengths. The goal is to observe and catalog Type Ia supernova (which are white dwarf supernova), baryon (matter) wave fluctuations, galaxy clusters, and gravitational lensing. All of these are potential measures of the amount of dark energy (which drives the expansion of the Universe) and distributions and fluctuations of dark matter (which involves galaxy formation, distribution, and rotation).  According to Fermilab, the DECam has 62 charged-coupled devices (CCDs), which record a total of 570 megapixels per photo. Below the page break, is a very high resolution set of photos (which are how the DECam's photos are collected) from Fermilab's press release. The project involves Brazil, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as the US.

Scanning Electron Photographs of Food by Caren Alpert

Pop Tart

Via Colossal, huge, beautiful hyper close-up photographs of food by photographer Caren Alpert. Mostly these are what one would expect except a few thousand times more fantastic. As scanning electron photographs, I assume they're artificially colored (as scanning electron microscopes work by bouncing electrons off objects, not by sensing photons), nonetheless they look, well, delicious.

It's Doodles All the Way Down

A classic from Colossal, the amazing artwork of Japanese artist Sagaki Keita. His work is phenomenally detailed, large often formal pictures arising as the gestalt of tiny funny parts. What is amazing here is not just his effort and the quality of his craft, but his phenomenal imagination as one looks closer and closer.

Craft and imagination to the side, a computer program could be written to compile scanned doodles and generate larger images from them, allowing infinite regress as one zooms in closer and closer or out farther and farther. The doodles would be composed of doodles that would be composed of doodles ... in other words, a recursive dynamic photo mosaic (with fitting for irregular boundaries).

What makes Sagaki Keita's work wonderful, however, is the personal touch he brings; if it were purely created by computer, it would be nothing but a novelty.

Here Be Dragons: Maps on the Geological History of the United States

I previously posted on Codex 99's two part series on the development of the US "National Atlas," and one interesting thing I noticed were the changes in the geological maps of the US.  The geological history of the US has not changed.  So what has changed is what is understood or, more exactly, what is reported as fact since no unknowns or margins of error was reported with these maps. They are printed as known and exact knowledge, when it is evident that (at least until recently) that knowledge was quite inexact.

I Cannot Understate the Unimportance of this "Momentous" Post

When I first began this blog almost two months ago I descried it as "[a] blog about science, law, language, and the arts." Well, I've had exactly one post so far tagged "language" -- a rant (footnoted, I want to note) about how words do not have meaning but convey meaning. It was deeply insightful.

With this in mind, I wish to note for you, my dear likely well spoken reader, that people -- and by "people" I mean "people who are speakers of English in the United States" -- often use the phrase "cannot understate" to mean "cannot overstate," a loathsome phrase itself for many reasons.¹  My friends at the blog Language Log -- and by "friends" here I mean "intellectual superiors" -- which, by the way, says more insightful things about language in general and English in particular than I will ever muster here -- have carefully analyzed this situation. Here's Language Log's list of relevant posts (yikes):

The Color Field Paintings of Virginia Leonard

Virginia Leonard is an abstract expressionistic color field painter from New Zealand. Very beautiful, feeling work.

"The National Atlas (Part II)"

Codex 99 has completed its great series on "The National Atlas," which I originally discussed here. Part II covers the development of an actual National Atlas, the prior versions having been extensions of the US decennial census, efforts that were eventually abandoned. In the 60's beautiful large format paper maps were developed and published in 1970.  The maps of the Atlas can be found online at the US Library of Congress and University of Texas's Perry-Castañeda LibraryMap Collection. The National Atlas, such as it is, can now be found online through the US National Geological Survey, with similar maps available through the US Census Bureau. Codex 99 displays one beautiful NGS map, The North America Tapestry of Time and Terrain, similar to some of the content of the Atlas.

Hula Hooping From the Perspective of the Hula Hoop

At Burning Man -- Not Particularly Safe For Work (NPSFW?)

The Odd Fact

From Buzzfeed, a variety of facts that are supposed to blow our minds. You have to move down the list to find the really interesting things. Like if the Sun were the same size as a white blood cell, the Milky Way Galaxy would be the size of the continental United States. Hmmm ...

Know Your Cartoon Characters

As a public service, We here at Galileo Feynman bring you this important link so that you may know the difference between Gordon Shumway and Aloysius Snuffleupagus.  We will now return to our normal blogging.

2Cellos Play Smooth Criminal

Great Short Science Fiction

Apropos of nothing other than listing them for the dusty annals of posterity, here's a list of the best science fiction short stories and novellas of all time I've ever read. It's the list I'd recommend to someone if they were seriously interested in the genre. I'm told making such lists is what blogs are for. Anyway ... as is obvious I've linked to text or pdf versions where I could find them, and annoyingly called them all "classics," listing them in no certain order:

• The Time Machine, H.G. Wells [link] [back-up link]
  The classic story about time travel and the future of humanity as well as segmentation of society into the haves (the Eloi) and the have-nots (the Morlocks). The Time Machine has been adapted to film many times.
• Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes [link] [back-up link] 
  Classic story about modifying intelligence and the tragedy of technology; subsequently expanded to a novel and then a wide release movie. Very smart, well written, and moving.

"Boogie Woogie" -- This Rocks, Plain and Simple

Robots

Robots, a collection of images from Creaturebox at the Behance Network. That is all.

The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator

Via a link from James Gurney's wonderful blog, Gurney Journey, we have The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator, an unquestionably essential tool to be used here often.  Frankly, I'm surprised that no one's mentioned yet that the aura of the sexy fish verges on codifying a participation in the critical dialogue of the 90s.

Likewise, as a sometimes practicing "artist" (not that one would know that here), we find Gurney's own Artist Statement Generator invaluable.

"The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law"

This is actually pretty good. Here's the "first episode" -- you need to proceed in order -- but the series, in progress since December 2011, has just been completed. Via Meta Filter.