think or thwim

This clip is from a 2004 documentary called The Mystery of the Self-made Mummy about a Buddhist monk who’s body was mysteriously preserved without any evidence of traditional embalming techniques.

The monks were filmed in 1985. For more details see this 2002 article in the Harvard Gazette. From the article:

Some Westerners practice g Tum-mo, but it often takes years to reach states like those achieved by Buddhist monks. In trying to find groups he could study, Benson met Westerners who claimed to have mastered such advanced techniques, but who were, in his words, “fraudulent.”

Benson decided that he needed to locate a religious setting, where advanced meditation is traditionally practiced. His opportunity came in 1979 when the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet, visited Harvard University. “His Holiness agreed to help me,” recalls Benson. That visit was the beginning of a long friendship and several expeditions to northern India where many Tibetan monks live in exile.

I submitted the story to Slashdot, where a commenter pointed out that it is probably an exaggeration. It looks like the Navy extended Bussard’s fusion research contract, but not the funding: Fusor.net

Original Post: Navy Extending Funding for Robert Bussard’s Fusion Research

Evolution of the Church

Cake or Death?

From Eddie Izzard | Dress to Kill

There aren’t many things I want. This is one of them. 100% Electric. 135 mpg equivalent.

This 2005 BBC Horizon episode is about the discovery of tiny humans (homo floresiensis) that recently lived on the Indonesian island of Flores.

:: Smashing Telly

The film makers call it “a closer look at the world’s most successful science project,” but it’s not just about Hubble. The first part is about the life of the satellite itself. That’s interesting, but the film really gets good at 26 minutes when they start showing some of the stuff we’ve seen with it. They show the life cycles of stars and interactions between moving galaxies. Really awesome. Guaranteed to make you feel very small and humble.

:: Ursi’s Blog

Michel Versluis at the University of Twente in the Netherlands filmed pouring liquids with a high speed camera to understand this strange behavior.

From an April 2006 Nature article:

It could happen with everything from tomato ketchup to yoghurt, paints, shampoo and liquid soap, Versluis says.

The reason you have probably never noticed this so-called Kaye effect is that it is generally over in an instant. The whole process, from the emergence of the jet to its merging with the incoming stream, typically takes about 300 milliseconds, says Versluis. “It’s usually so short that you don’t see it with the naked eye.”

Versluis says the effect should happen in any liquid that displays shear-thinning behaviour. This means that as the liquid flows, its viscosity decreases; that is, it gets thinner….

Pouring a column of these viscous liquids on to a surface initially creates a coiled heap. But at some point the stream slides down the side of the heap. A thin layer of shear-thinned liquid acts as a kind of lubricant between the two, preventing them from mixing. The stream may then spring up from a dimple on the surface of the heap, just as an Olympic ski-jumper leaps from the lip of a ramp. The researchers’ video images show a kind of U-shaped stream launching off the surface.

:: Justinsomnia

The quantity and quality of online videos is expanding at an overwhelming rate. If you want to watch fiction there are plenty of choices out there, but I stick to nonfiction. I haven’t had time to explore most of these yet, but here are some new developments to add to the list:

TED

The best conference in the universe has redesigned their site and uploaded 30 new videos in the process. The new site has a cool category browser, relatively luxuriously large video player, comments, and rating such as inspiring, long-winded, misguided, funny, etc.

Pop!Tech

Another conference similar to TED. It looks like it may be just as good, but I’m just not familiar with it yet.

Fora.tv

A virtual conference. It’s a collection of presentations and forums on politics, business, technology, arts, culture, science, and religion.

The Research Channel

Started as a cable channel for researchers at major universities to share their work. It has expanded to include 3000 online videos.

Neave.tv

Paul Neave put together a collection of 100 YouTube, Google Video, and Blip.tv videos shown full screen with a nifty interface.

Blinkx.tv

“Blinkx is the world’s largest and most advanced video search engine.” It uses speech recognition and visual analysis to crawl the web for video and audio media. It’s supposed to be a good source for full length shows.

This makes me giggle.

Unfortunately the soundtrack was added later, but it’s still funny. The commenter wrote in to Boing Boing after they posted it:

I’m a long time boingboing reader, and I just wanted to quickly point out that while I created the video, it was not me playing the game - I found the video originally on tuduo.com , a Chinese website, and then added my commentary over top of that - I really didn’t expect this to get so big so I didn’t add a little disclaimer on the video. Thanks for putting it up, I appreciate your compliments! I’ve updated the Google video details to reflect this, and I’m looking into putting subtitles on the end of the video in order to make sure that people don’t think I’m stealing this - I look at it as performance art.

He sounds like this guy.

:: Boing Boing

Update

According to my stats people watch this for an average of 8 minutes 48 seconds.