You’ve likely seen this time lapse video of a magazine page being designed before:
Matt Willey recently recorded his decision-making on a feature design for the Royal Academy magazine. Anyone who’s designed a magazine will recognise the process — a very useful insight into how page designs get arrived at.
via Kottke
The Official Google Blog on the making of Radiohead’s latest music video; House of Cards:
In this new video, there were no cameras on set. Instead, two scanning technologies were used to capture 3D images. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produced structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne LIDAR system that uses multiple lasers was used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In the video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.
The video and a making of documentary can be found on the video’s homepage: http://code.google.com/radiohead.
via kottke
Yes, that is a real quote. It’s from Jesus Camp, an incredibly interesting—yet infuriating and disturbing—documentary recording the indoctrination of North Dakotan children to Evangelical Christianity.
I just had to search for The Creation Adventure Team after I saw a child watching the show in the film and came across this 3 minute segment – required watching.
According to the Bible, God created everything in 6 actual days. Yep; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And, uh, on the seventh, he rested. Huh, kinda like a week. And at the end he said, “This is good… very, very good.”
PsyBlog presents 10 psychological ‘mind’ myths that can catch you out:
The British Medical Journal has an article that I’ve spoken of numerous times lately (IRL), discussing how media coverage of suicides affects the rate of similar suicides.
There is clear evidence that the media may affect method specific suicide rates. In Britain an excess of about 60 suicides by burning occurred in the 12 months after the widely publicised political suicide by burning of a woman in Geneva.
It is argued that suicides occur only among those who are already suicidal and it is only the choice of method that is influenced by publicity. […] Although media attention may precipitate clusters of suicide, these occur only among those who would commit suicide sooner or later any way, the publicity merely acting as a precipitant to an inevitable event.
Why would I be talking about this? Bridgend is not too far away.
I’ve no idea how to pronounce his name, but Maciej Dakowicz’s photography speaks to me on a more… local level.
Now living in Cardiff, his Cardiff at night set depicts wonderfully(?) what is to be expected on a Friday or Saturday night out in Cardiff. This video is also quite enlightening.
Update: The BBC has eventually caught on.
Scientific American’s Getting Duped: How the Media Messes With Your Mind educates us on two important fallacies used to undermine arguments.
Statements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies can help you separate fact from fiction.
[…]
One common method of spinning information is the so-called straw man argument. In this tactic, a person summarizes the opposition’s position inaccurately so as to weaken it and then refutes that inaccurate rendition.
via Mind Hacks
The Flynn Effect is the gradual rise of the average IQ over generations, and the reason why IQ tests are periodically renormalised to reset the average to 100: an average IQ in our generation equals a higher than average IQ a generation or two beforehand. Or does it?
According to new research it appears that the Flynn effect is in reverse—or is at best correcting itself.
The researchers surmise that the performance decline is due to “some qualitative change in the emphasis on abstract reasoning and problem-solving [within the educational system] or a decreased emphasis on speed”.
This isn’t new, of course, and was noted almost two years ago with this interesting comment:
Does this mean we’re becoming less intelligent? Probably not. It likely reflects the fact that the skill set of population is changing and that we become practised at different tasks at different rates as modern life develops.
via Mind Hacks
Discussing an article in The New York Times on understanding and reducing suicide rates, Mind Hacks’ Vaughan presents us with some other interesting research on the topic.
If you want a flavour of really how simple the safety measures need to be to make a difference to suicide rate, research has found that putting pills in blister packs reduces lethal overdoses.
[…] Making it necessary to pop each pill out of its plastic packaging rather than tipping them out of a bottle means less people kill themselves.
The difference is likely a matter of minutes, but it gives time for brief impulsive urges to pass, and every popped pill requires a single deliberate action towards suicide that gives a chance for the distressed person to reconsider.
BBC Ouch! on the strange gift of sign language names.
When a sign name is given to you, it’s special. A bit like losing your deaf virginity. It’s thought up after an intense period of observation, when people have worked out firstly whether they like you enough to give you one (a sign name, that is), and they’ve taken all your habits and mannerisms into account to find a name that best sums you up.
Given examples are Hand-Rubber, Waffle and Splasher.
via Mind Hacks
