think or thwim

Phil and Lynne Richardson spent four years camping at a watering hole in northern Zimbabwe with the lions that live there. From National Geographic:

Walking With Lions is more than just another wildlife documentary… What’s unique about these films, particularly with lions, is that the filming is done out of the vehicles. It’s done by foot, and lions are very dangerous animals. The Richardsons decided to film the wildlife on foot because this particular spring was surrounded by a gorge and impossible to reach by vehicle. This spring was the only source of water for miles around, and one pride of lions had made this their home, an ambush site for wildlife that come to the spring to drink.

The result is an amazing documentary that follows the lives of a generation of lions and shows their their encounters with the water buffalo, elephants, and other animals that rely on the spring in intimate detail.

:: Ursi

From the NEL Colectivo.

:: Fun Forever

I don’t typically recommend fiction, but Waking Life is exceptional. It’s a mind expanding exploration of consciousness and philosophy. The main character has a series of encounters like the one below within a lucid dream. Hence, the psychedelic animation:

You can watch the entire film at Google Video.

Will Wright designs his games like the toys he played with in Montessori school.

Montessori taught me the joy of discovery…It showed you can become interested in pretty complex theories, like Pythagorean theory, say, by playing with blocks. It’s all about learning on your terms, rather than a teacher explaining stuff to you. SimCity comes right out of Montessori—if you give people this model for building cities, they will abstract from it principles of urban design.

In this TED talk he describes his game design philosophy and demonstrates his upcoming game, Spore, which he says is not so much a game as an imagination amplifier.

Oscar Pistorius holds world records in the 100m, 200m, and 400m running on prosthetic legs called Cheetahs. Now he wants to run in the 2008 Olympics.

Wikipedia has a table comparing Pistorius’ times to Olympic records.

Cheetahs are made in Iceland by Ossur.

Our perception of time speeds up as we get older. It also speeds up when we’re in an accident (everything seems to move in slow motion).

Here’s another thing that surprised me even though it was published in 1935. Dr. Hudson Hoagland’s wife was sick with influenza. He noticed that time seemed to pass slowly for her when she was running a fever. She was agitated because in her mind he was taking too long. However, in his mind, he was really pretty quick. He asked her to count to 60 at the rate of 1 count per second and timed her on a watch. In her fevered state, she was done in 37 seconds. During the course of her illness they repeated the experiment at different temperatures, and discovered a linear relationship between the count and temperature:

From Studio JSPR.

The shower head and knobs really work. They connect to the actual water carrying pipes inside the wall. The rest of the pipe tiles are just for show. You can make any design you want.

:: Apartment Therapy

This is the best segment of a documentary called Ants! Nature’s Secret Power. From the movie:

The structure covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. In it’s construction, the colony moved 40 tons of soil. Billions of ant loads of soil were brought to the surface. Each load weighed four times as much as the worker ant, and in human terms, was carried over 1/2 mile to the surface. It is the equivalent of building the great wall of china. It is truly a wonder of the world…

So we filled it up with concrete. Sorry ants.

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert and one of my favorite minor celebrities, discovered a relatively unknown comic strip that he thinks is funny. It’s called Basic Instructions by Scott Meyer, and I think he’s right. It’s good. So Scott Adams has been giving Scott Meyer advice on how to become a nationally syndicated cartoonist and minor celebrity. Yesterday he said he’s going to start putting that advice in his blog so we can all follow along at home.

Here’s a sample of what Scott Meyer does on the web:

Here’s another one I really like: How to Make It Up to a Friend You’ve Insulted in Your Comic.


And here’s a new one trying to be less wordy and fit the standard newspaper format:

Here’s Scott Adams’ first post about it.

Today Scott Meyer had this to say:

I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who took the time to go look at my work. Your comments have been very useful, and so overwhelmingly positive as to make me question their authenticity. (Scott told you I was paranoid.)

My web host was, as you’re aware, brought to its knees, but don’t waste time feeling sorry for them. Having spent a great deal of time on the phone with them yesterday I can tell you they deserve all the punishment you doled out. (The tech support guy informed me that my strips took up 89k, which is “almost a meg.”)

basicinstructions.net