Indulge your inner geek

Back before my iPhone tragically fell in a river I had this cool little app called Skyview. You might have to dish out a buck or two to get it, but it is worth it. One thing I think everybody should try is to track the International Space Station and watch it pass over on a clear night. When you find the station it might be directly on the other side of Earth, but it takes surprisingly little time to come around, though I guess it is going 7.71 kilometers per second. There's no mistaking it when it passes over; it move too fast to be a plane, and it doesn't blink. It looks more like a star.

On the subject of fast things, the fastest outbound spacecraft is the Voyager I, which is now leaving the solar system at a speed of 17 km/s. The fastest man-made objects on record are the Helios probes, reaching 70 km/s on their closest approach to the Sun.

At the very least, useful information to have for trivia night.

Cyclical Time

For us in Western society the perception of time is quite simple: it goes in a straight line, it is unrecoverable, and it ends. We see time as linear. This is not wholly wrong, of course, it is easy to see why we view the passing of time in this way, but what can be said for time as a cyclical phenomenon?

The Sunday Funnies

The first video is an Onion video that has a slightly unnerving twist near the end, and the twist is also the punchline.

The second is a clip from the BBC series The Trip, which I really liked. It is available as a movie as well, which I take it is just a edited and shortened version of the episodes.

Next is Eric Clapton showing off his guitar skills. Turns out, he plays like he only picked up a guitar for the first time last week.

Then a comic strip with the most hardcore game of tic-tac-toe ever.

Lastly is Ze Frank telling us some true facts about the angler fish; including the doomed male angler fish.

Shoeprint: the place to get your shoes printed

I have heard scraps and passing remarks about 3D printing, but I never took it very seriously. I assumed the technology was impractical and probably not as impressive as it sounded. What I didn't realize was that people have been working on 3D printers for two decades now and there are even consumer models available:

Books

Another list; this time a list of books I like. In no particular order, and certainly not all-inclusive:

The Republic

I came across this video where professor Larry Lessig of Harvard speaks about what he thinks is the core problem with the US republic; basically, money. It is an interesting talk if this sort of thing floats your boat. If you don't have the hour to spare, here is an article that discusses the same ideas: