think or thwim

This used to be the full movie at Google Video, but I changed it to the trailer at the request of the copyright holder.

Deborah Scranton gave video cameras to 24 US soldiers and asked them to document the invasion of Iraq from their point of view. In the end she edited the footage from three of them into this remarkable documentary.

She talked about making the movie at TED.

Her next movie will be about the US-Mexico border with footage taken by border patrol agents and local ranchers.

What’s the difference between singing and talking? Diana Deutsch discovered that a spoken phrase morphs into singing if it is repeated four or five times.

In this short clip from Radio Lab she is explaining how she discovered the phenomenon to the host Jad Abumrad.

Here’s the original phrase again. Does it sound different?

I tried the same thing with a clip from another show. This is from a radio show called Think produced by KERA in Dallas. Krys Boyd is introducing her guest, James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.

I just picked a short phrase at random and looped it. Listen to the looped phrase to fool your brain.

Here’s the original again. My brain was tricked.

Diana Deutsch has a couple of CDs demonstrating her discoveries. There are samples on her website:

• Musical Illusions & Paradoxes
• Phantom Words and Other Curiosities

A short animation about two competing societies done in a cool silhouette style.

Part 2 is at benditomachine.com. There are more to come.

(thanks again Itai)

Take the typing speed test.

Then test your reaction speed here and here.

Petri Purho is creating a new game every month. In June his creation was Crayon Physics - similar to the MIT sketch understanding system. In this video he demonstrates his upcoming longer, more detailed version called Crayon Physics Deluxe.

Download the original Crayon Physics at his website: Kloonigames.com

Purho says “It’s a butt ugly prototype, that was hacked together in five days.” There are only seven levels, but it’s well worth trying out.

There are also user created levels:

• The first four.
• Another one.
• Lots more.

(thanks Itai)

My son is 5 years old, so he knows a lot about good toys. My wife is an occupational therapist, a Montessori teacher for 3-6 year olds, and a supermom, so she knows a lot about toys that are good for learning. These are toys they both agree are great. Some are standards, but many are probably not obvious for 3-6 year olds.

Computer

OLPC XO Laptop Until November 26, in North America you can order an XO laptop for your child and one will be given to a child in a developing country. See my earlier post.

Toys

No noisy stuff or batteries required. These are learning tools that happen to be fun. They have the added bonus of being fun for adults too.

	Rush Hour Kids play with this for hours. There’s also a Rush Hour Jr., but my son likes the older version.
	Wood Blocks These are great for learning shapes and basic physics. We have 3 sets of these at our house, and that’s the right number to build anything we want to build.
	Ball Tilt Combine this with the wood blocks above, and you can build some cool stuff.
	Magnets Everybody has probably played with these by now. Avoid Magnetix brand. They have weak magnets. (a reader pointed out that if a kid swallows more than one magnet, don’t wait for them to come out. They need to be removed before they get into the intestines - article).
	Legos You can never have enough Legos. Not everybody knows that the best deal is to buy them by the pound at Ebay (or better yet - garage sales).
	Wooden Trains I took this picture of our living room this morning. When we’re not playing with the track it’s stored in the cedar chest we use for a coffee table. Those little train tables are too limiting for me. Most of the normal track and train cars were bought at garage sales. Some of the bridges were bought at discount stores. We spent less for all of this than a Brio Starter set, which is far too expensive for us. The Kidkraft set I linked to is a decent price if you want to buy new. Ebay can be a good source for these too.
	Movable Alphabet We actually have 5 sets of refrigerator magnets. Montessori starts with lower case letters because we use them the most.
	Easel This one has paper storage and trays on both sides. Ours doesn’t, and we wish it did. The wife wants to make sure I mention that you should break kid’s pencils in half. The shorter length and lighter weight is easier for kids to manipulate when they are learning to write. It gives them more control. Crayons should be about an inch long to encourage correct grasp.
	1/2 Size Guitar This is the one thing on this list our son rarely plays with, but if my wife or I played I’m sure he would. It is the real thing, and it’s a good one for the price.

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The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs was started in 2006. Over the next year it became a very popular. There were a lot of theories about who was writing it, but until he was outed in August of this year, Dan Lyons, senior editor at Forbes Magazine, was not a suspect.

The blog itself is basically a joke that got out of control and started snowballing, and I couldn’t stop it.

-Dan Lyons explaining how he became the writer of Steve Jobs’ unofficial blog.

In this talk at Google, Lyons gives us the inside story - which is very funny. His presentation is 20 minutes long. Then he answers 30 minutes of questions.

fakesteve.blogspot.com

Dan Lyons | Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs

Lawrence Lessig sums up his last 10 years in 19 minutes at TED. From their summary:

He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you’ve ever seen.

Here’s what I wrote about it last year: What’s Wrong with Copyright

Aaron Koblin plotted FAA data to visualize one day of airplane flights over North America.

:: Pasa la vida