October 30, 2012 Waterfall Swing Water recirculates through 273 independently controlled solenoid valves at the top of the structure to create a wall of water. This water starts from a collection pool on the ground and is pumped up to a large pipe that feeds the solenoids. Sensors mounted on the swingset gather information about the angle and speed of each swing. That information is sent to a computer that predicts the action of the rider. The computer then creates a hole in the wall of water, allowing the rider to swing through without getting wet.
October 29, 2012 Classic Wrecks: The Rusted Car as Art John Findra's love of classic cars is given creative expression through scale models, affectionately reproducing the rusty beauty of abandoned autos.
October 26, 2012 The Moon Illusion The Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener circles is an optical illusion of relative size perception. In the best-known version of the illusion, two circles of identical size are placed near to each other and one is surrounded by large circles while the other is surrounded by small circles; the first central circle then appears smaller than the second central circle. The same illusion applies to rising full moon.
October 25, 2012 The Writer Who Couldn't Read Imagine you wake up one morning and can't read. Your eyes work, but the letters on the page have turned into squiggles. They make no sense. Now meet Howard Engel, a writer of detective stories, who has this condition, but amazingly, has found a way to trick his brain to almost read again.
October 24, 2012 Flawed Symmetry of Prediction As the shadow of night falls across the American West a lone man begins his work. Far from the confines, calamity, and culture of society, multimedia artist and storyteller Jeff Frost sifts through the visual dregs of places and people who once were. Combining still and time-lapse photography with motion, music, and art, Jeff Frost reveals a world rarely seen. Rooted in science and the exploration of space, Frost’s work explodes with light, fire, and sound, utilizing 2D and 3D perspective, leading the viewer on a unique visual journey through worlds both real and imagined.
October 23, 2012 Slavoj Žižek on Revolutionary Terror In short, what the sensitive liberals want is a decaffeinated revolution, a revolution which doesn't smell of a revolution.
October 22, 2012 The Power of Quiet The world is full of noise and those that are the loudest are the ones we tend to follow but what about the quiet ones? Author Susan Cain shines a spotlight on introverts and reveals how over time our society has come to look to extroverts as leaders. Not suggesting that one is better than the other, Susan argues that the world needs an equal space between introverts and extroverts; that an innovative, creative world wouldn't be the same without the two coming together.
October 19, 2012 Michael Coffey — Bespoke Global Michael Coffey is renowned as one of the world's greatest living studio artists. He creates bespoke furniture from his studio and home in Massachusetts, USA. A master woodworker for over 40 years, he produces sculptural, one-of-a-kind, handcrafted works of art. Painstakingly making each piece by hand, Michael continues to invoke nature and modernity with the use of fine wood, fluid lines and dynamic craftsmanship
October 18, 2012 Combustion Combustion is a short film created at Possible Metrics — a tiny studio based in Montreal creating music-oriented audiovisual works. At its core stands Renaud Hallée, helped by many collaborators.
October 17, 2012 ISS Startrails This video was achived by "stacking" image sequences provided by NASA from the Crew at International Space Station. These Stacks create the Star Trails, but furthermore make interesting patterns visible. For example lightning corridors within clouds, but they also show occasional satellite tracks (or Iridium Flashes) as well as meteors - patterns that interrupt the main Star Trails, and thus are immediately visible.
October 16, 2012 Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass Excerpt from the American Experience documentary on the life of the poet Walt Whitman and the creative genesis which led to Leaves of Grass.
October 15, 2012 A Reassuring Fable — Carl Sagan We long to be here for a purpose, even though, despite much self-deception, none is evident. A video from The Sagan Series, an educational project working in hopes of promoting scientific literacy in the general population.
October 12, 2012 What Does Baikal Ice Sound Like? From IRKUTSK ethnik percussion group «ETHNOBEAT» — who play on frozen water with pleasure and delight in the soul.
October 11, 2012 2012 Nobel Prize: How Do We See Light? What was the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics given for? Capturing a single photon of light! Congrats to Serge Haroche and David Wineland.
October 10, 2012 What If Money Was No Object? Ask yourself. What would you do with your life if money was no object? That's what Alan Watt wants to knows.
October 9, 2012 Real World Telekinesis How do magnets affect things at a distance? How does the Sun heat our planet from 93 million miles away? How can we send messages across the world with our cell phones? We take these seemingly simple things for granted, but in fact there was a time not too long ago when the processes behind them were poorly understood, if at all… and, to the uninformed, there could seem to be a certain sense of “magic” about them. Director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Neil Turok, illustrates how our understanding of electromagnetic fields was developed and why there’s nothing magic about it.
October 8, 2012 Your Brain on Drugs: Marijuana This is what you look like, on the inside, when smoking cannabis. The effects of Marijuana on your brain, and how it defines your experience.
October 5, 2012 M.C. Escher — Metamorphose A documentary on the life and works of Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972).
October 3, 2012 Steve Lambert explains: It's Time to Fight Steve Lambert discusses his new audience, his gallery show, "It's Time to Fight and It's Time to Stop Fighting," and how he flipped an odd situation.
