I'm eating my feeelings

"Coping with Humans": A Support Group for Bots (Extended Version)
Yes, it's an ad for IBM, but I think we have some characters here. Well, all except Watson. He doesn't seem to have much character.

Update June 2019 replaced missing video.

Green Screen

Why you can't wear green on TV
You may have heard of movie scenes being shot in front of a blue or green screen. I knew that it allowed them to add the background later. These two women give us a very quick demo of the process in action. Via Dustbury.

Theory of Fat #4862

The Human Endocannabinoid System
Click the pic to embiggentate

Washington Post has the story: Study finds sleep deprivation can give you the ‘marijuana munchies’
That sure matches my experience. Wikipedia has a long article about the Endocannabinoid system, which seems to be at the crux of this. Every wonder why smoking dope gets you high? It's because your body is already making and using the very same stuff as the active ingredients in pot.

Pic of the Day

Quarry

Limestone quarry, possibly in Indiana, possible source of rock for Empire State Building. Via Detroit Steve.

Blindsight

Spaceship Theseus

Jack Baruth got me started with his article on Road & Track about how people can really not see things that are right in front of them, like, in his case, a man on a motorcycle. While talking about what you see, what you think you see, and what you miss, he mentions the Science-Fiction novel Blindsight by Peter Watts.

Besides being the title of a novel, Blindsight is also a neurological phenomenon:

Blindsight challenges the common belief that perceptions must enter consciousness to affect our behavior; it shows that our behavior can be guided by sensory information of which we have no conscious awareness. - Wikipedia

I've started reading the book and it's pretty great. You can buy a copy from Amazon, or you can read it online here.

Dan Ghiordanescu has a page of fabulous artwork he did for this book.

Pic of the Day

US Pavilion for Expo 67, designed by R. Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao, erupts in flames. Montreal, May 20, 1976.

I remember hearing about Expo 67*. This was back when World Fairs were all the rage. There was one in Seattle when I lived there. Space Needle, Monorail, all that. I'd heard of the this dome, but I don't remember ever hearing anything about the fire, so this is news to me. Via Detroit Steve.

*The Expo 67 webpage seems to be infinitely long. There are several screens of content at the top, but after that it appears to be simply empty space.

Lost at Sea

Queen Mary strikes the HMS Curacoa
Diorama on Ebay*

I'm reading The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, a fine story about a bumbling reporter in a small Newfoundland town. In Chapter 9, he pays a visit to the harbor master who has a large painting in his office of the Queen Mary running down the HMS Curacoa during WW2. Well, that's a bit of a horror story, but did it really happen? This is a novel, after all. Turns out, that yes, it is a true story.

 The Queen Mary leaving the King George V drydock on 3 May 1947, after repairs to her bow, which sustained damage from her collision with HMS Curacoa.

Then this morning I come across this story:

Manfred Fritz Bajorat's yacht Sajo (Barobo Police)

Mummified body of sailor found on drifting vessel

Manfred Fritz Bajorat went sailing. About a year ago he apparently had a heart attack and died. His boat drifted around in the ocean for a year before anyone noticed.
    There are couple of points I'd like to make. One is that if you are out in a boat and you are anywhere near where there might be big ships, you need to keep an eye out for these big bruisers if you don't want to end up like the Curacoa. On the other hand, Manfred hasn't been paying any attention at all for the last year and he didn't get clobbered.
    The other thing is that all those stories about people who go on grand adventures are told by people who came back. You never, well almost never, hear about the ones who died on the way. It's a real fluke that we heard about Manfred. If his boat had sunk, for any number of reasons, we wouldn't have heard anything.

*The Ebay listing for the diorama expired some time ago. Yesterday, however, the Ebay listing was still visible. I didn't have enough reason to make a post of it then. Then this morning the story about the German sailor pops up and now I do, so I go looking for the Ebay listing and it's gone. The only reason we have a picture is that Google hasn't caught up yet.