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By cookla, February 8, 2010 1:14 pm

This commercial is just so damn… cute.

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By cookla, February 5, 2010 11:25 pm

Artist: Owen
Song: Good Friends With Bad Habits
Album: New Leaves
Year: 2009
Director: Joe Wigdahl

Great concept for a music video; It portrays the song perfectly. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, it’s not too heavy. What’s your bad habit?

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By cookla, February 4, 2010 12:58 pm

Photographer Nikki Graziano takes pictures and then maps mathematical functions over them. I have been guilty of doing this in the past (the beach definitely is a great place to find nice curves!) This a fun and interesting way of combining math, nature, and art.

More info: link

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By cookla, February 3, 2010 8:44 am

Michael Paul Smith is a  model photographer with some amazingly realistic model pictures.

What started out as an exercise in model building and photography, ended up as a dream-like reconstruction of the town I grew up in. It’s not an exact recreation, but it does capture the mood of my memories.

And like a dream, many of the buildings show up in different configurations throughout the photos. Or sometimes, the buildings stay put and the backgrounds change.

Visually, this is heading towards the realm of ART. NO PHOTOSHOP WAS USED IN THESE PICTURES. IT’S ALL STRAIGHT FROM THE CAMERA.

It’s the oldest trick in the special effects book: line up a model with an appropriate background and shoot.

The buildings are 1/24th scale [ or 1/2 inch equals a foot ]. They are constructed of Gator board, styrene plastic, Sintra [ a light flexible plastic that can be carved, and painted ] plus numerous found objects; such as jewelery pieces, finishing washers and printed material.

More info and lots of pictures: link

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By cookla, February 2, 2010 9:03 pm

Artist: She & Him
Song: Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
Album: Volume One
Year: 2008
Director: Ace Norton

Only because I am head over heels in love..

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By cookla, February 2, 2010 3:28 pm

The world’s most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, emerged before chilly revelers in western Pennsylvania today to see his shadow, meaning winter will last another six weeks.

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By cookla, February 2, 2010 2:15 pm

The Oscar nominations are out and I was happy to see Pixar’s Up listed as a nominee for best picture! It’s up against some tough competitors, such as Avatar and Inglorious Bastards. While it is a long shot to win, it’s nice to see a Pixar animated film in contention for best picture. This is the first Academy Award nomination for producer Jonas Rivera.

On a side note, the George Clooney non-feel good romantic comdey, Up in the Air, was also nominated for best picture; Another great film from 2009.

The nominees for best animated feature film are: Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox,  The Princess and the Frog, The Secret of Kells, and Up

UPDATE: Fantastic Mr. Fox was included in the nominations. Apparently posting about the nominees as they’re being released causes some to be left off the list!

For more info and all nominees: link

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By cookla, February 2, 2010 1:21 pm

In an attempt to teach a friend everything about mathematics, Steven Strogatz of the New York Times will be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, over the next several weeks. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.

I’m going to try to follow this, as I’m always trying to either explain mathematics to someone or to get them excited about it! I hope that this little series turns out to be something grand.

So, the first weeks lesson? Pre-school with a lesson from Sesame Street!

The best introduction to numbers I’ve ever seen — the clearest and funniest explanation of what they are and why we need them — appears in a “Sesame Street” video called “123 Count With Me.” Humphrey, an amiable but dim-witted fellow with pink fur and a green nose, is working the lunch shift at The Furry Arms hotel, when he takes a call from a room full of penguins. Humphrey listens carefully and then calls out their order to the kitchen: “Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish.” This prompts Ernie to enlighten him about the virtues of the number six.

More info: link

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By cookla, February 2, 2010 1:48 am

The economic troubles of Zimbabwe in recent years have been reflected in the currency, such as this 100 trillion dollar banknote from 2008. Zimbabwe is not the first country to experience such hyperinflation, of course. After the First World War, Germany endured a severe economic crisis. In 1914, the highest denomination German note was for 1000 Mark, which was worth approximately 238 US dollars or 50 British pounds. In early 1922, the government issued 10,000 Mark notes, but by February 1923, Germans were using banknotes in denominations of 100,000 and 1 million Marks. Notes reached 50 million in July, 10 billion in September and 100 trillion when hyperinflation peaked in October 1923.

Just to give you an idea of what this meant for the average German, on November 1 1923, you could buy a loaf of bread for a measly three billion or truly splash out and get three pounds of meat for 100 billion. By November 15, 100 billion would get you two glasses of beer, not really enough to make you forget your troubles, while that loaf would now cost you 80 billion.

When it was all over, these huge banknotes were worth around 5 pounds or 24 US dollars. On November 15, the government introduced a new currency, one unit of which was worth a trillion of the old Marks. Prices eventually stabilized, but most of the population had nevertheless seen their wealth vanish.

Dark Roasted Blend takes a look at artful and unusual bank notes from around the world, past and present, including notes like this. Everything from the colorful to the creepy and even some currency origami.

More info: link