Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.
This was recorded about 2 months ago. Today Bloggingheads finally posted it – SURPRISE! Now everyone who didn’t figure it out before will know that the nice lady who made SSTB is also in the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Please, please watch the whole thing – you may be surprised.
Update: comments on this video inspired a Mimi & Eunice comic!
Cultural Evolution: A Vehicle For Cooperative Interaction Between The Sciences And The Humanities by William Benzon was just published at On The Human, a project of the National Humanities Center. The paper focuses on Cultural Evolution and uses Sita Sings the Blues as a primary example. For the next two weeks (until July 19) the comments are open to all. There’s a lot of Academese there, but I’m assured plain English is also acceptable.
Also from Bill Benzon: Sita Sings the Blues’ Agni Pariksha in context.
During the Spring of 2001 I had the privilege of freelancing for CERN‘s Public Relations department in Geneva. My task was to try to explain what scientists were seeking in the Large Hadron Collider, especially an explanation of asymmetry. For this, I created possibly my best informational graphic ever:
Unfortunately CERN never used this, nor the 6-page pamphlet it was part of. But now that we have a more mature interwebs, I can share all 6 pages right here! Click on thumbnails below for high res PNGs (except for page 6, which was too big as PNG so is instead JPEG).
Remember the days before digital copying? Every copy introduced small errors; a copy was always a degraded, inferior version of its parent. But entropy has a beauty of its own, as in this beautiful film By Alexander Stewart (it’s not embeddable, so you have to follow this link):
Errata is an animation made by photocopying copies of copies. Starting with a blank sheet of paper, each successive copy becomes a frame of animation, meaning that each on-screen image is a copy of the last. All movements, pans and zooms in the film were accomplished using standard zoom and shrink features on copy machines; the animation camera used to shoot the copies onto 16mm film was not used to manipulate or direct the film’s motion. Comprising thousands of copies made on a dozen copiers, the resulting imagery is a moving Rorschach test of analog textures, bleeding ink spots and pareidolic cloud formations.
In contrast, digital copies are perfect – indistinguishable from their “originals.” Compression, however, retains that exciting element of entropy, as artist hadto demonstrates:
Granted he intentionally increased the compression from frame to frame; the discussion on the video page is enlightening (and led me to Errata in the first place).
Aaron Simpson pointed me to this excellent mock-trailer:
Originally found on RichardDawkins.net, it’s a parody of what looks like a truly dumb “Intelligent Design” PR piece.
You’ll notice there’s a little clip of my short film The Stork at the beginning. No, the producers didn’t ask for permission and no, that doesn’t bother me because yes, I enjoyed the piece so much I’m honored to be included (also the clip is really brief – blink and you might miss it). But hey Sexpelled producers – get in touch anyway, I like your style.
Continue reading “Avian Transportation Theory”
from plexpixel:
Emru adds:
I’d just like to make one small correction: although there’s a better chance of a match from someone of the same ethnic background, it doesn’t mean I have no chance of matching anyone else. It’s better for me (and everyone else waiting for a transplant) if everyone registers. Registering is easy and, at worst, as painful as a blood test.
I wanted to spread the word here. Emru did a big article on me and Sita in 2005.