I am not sure if the guys behind this site are serious or not, but The Mad Revisionist has a detailed argument on why the whole moon thing is a hoax. There are no arguments on why the moon doesn’t exist, but it argues by saying that there is no incontrovertible evidence to show that it exists either, hence it must not exist. I think they are just being funny since their ‘scientific experiments’ would put even Einstein to shame

UPDATE: While we are on the topic of weird things, this has to be one of the weirdest auctions on ebay. (ebay link while it lasts)

Tags: funny, jokes, humor, revisionism, conspiracy

Suresh at The Geomblog has details about the mathematics behind the new CBS thriller Numb3rs where an FBI agent uses the mathematical skills of his genius brother to solve his cases. More power to them!

Tags: numb3rs, cbs, maths, mathematics, tv, show

Beats me, but some guy sure needs to know the magic of building antennas using C++. From comp.object:

HI everyone,

I was trying to build an antenna in C++. I don’t know where to start. can anyone help me?? if there is some code that would be even better. I don’t care about the type of antenna as long as it communicates.

THanks

Shastri

That’s not too hard. Well, there is a slight problem about antennas being hardware and C++ being a programming language, but we shall not be bogged down by such technicalities. No sir! Here’s one suggestion on how to do it (from the same thread):

If you created a mathematical model of the geometry and electromagnetic properties of the antenna; and a mathematical model of the electromagnetic environment that the antenna was in, then you could subdivide space into a set of tiny three dimensional cubes and apply Maxwell’s laws in each cube. (This is called Finite Element Analysis, or “Meshing”). In each cube (or finite element) you could calculate how the electromagnetic environment in that cube induced currents in the antenna in that cube.

Ah well, it’s that simple. Or you can just use HTML instead.[via The Daily WTF]

Tags: humor, comp.object

From Life magazine’s 100 Photographs that Changed the World on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. (emphasis mine) On October 22, 1962, after accusing the U.S.S.R. of installing nuclear missiles on Cuba, President John F. Kennedy ordered a blockade of the island. When the Soviet ambassador to the U.N. refused to deny the charge, U.S. ambassador Adlai Stevenson confronted him with these photos of missile sites taken by the high-flying spy plane, the U-2, and the Soviets were compelled to back down. The presentation of seemingly incontrovertible evidence would become known as an “Adlai Stevenson moment.” Robert F. Kennedy later admitted that he and his brother found the grainy images quite baffling, and banked on the interpretation proffered by the CIA: “I, for one, had to take their word for it.” Only a handful of these great pictures are available online but every one of these pictures comes with a great story. [Gallery 1 | Gallery 2 | Amazon]

Tags: life, photographs, history

   __    ___   ___  ____  ____      __    ____  ____
  /__\  / __) / __)(_  _)(_  _)    /__\  (  _ \(_  _)
 /(__)\ \__ \( (__  _)(_  _)(_    /(__)\  )   /  )(
(__)(__)(___/ \___)(____)(____)  (__)(__)(_)\_) (__) 

[quick link | wikipedia resources]

Tags: ascii art, ascii, art

Here’s something to cheer you up at the beginning of the dreary week ahead (or to inspire you to do something similar at the end of the week). Andy Riley’s simple cartoons document the efforts of a bunny to commit suicides that are sick and hilarious at the same time. The complete collection is available as two books – The book of bunny suicides and The return of bunny suicides.

[A collection of bunny suicides]

UPDATE 1: The above link does not work anymore (I’m guessing they were removed due to copyright problems). Also, the books seem to have generated their fair share of controversy due to its depiction of violence towards bunnies. Chill guys, we know it is just supposed to be funny!
UPDATE 2: Another link to the Bunny suicides collection.

Tags: bunny suicides, cartoon, funny, andy riley

Sounds weirdly fantastic, but Hit Song Science (HSS) from Polyphonic aims to automate the process of finding which CD has the potential to be the next big hit by comparing the principal components of a song against a database of 3.5 million hit singles. Apparently the music industry is already using this software (which doesn’t come cheap at €4,000 per CD) and the HSS score of a song is on its way to being a generic term denoting a band’s potential for success.

Since HSS tries to fit the features of a song into an (already clustered) database of previous hits, the apparent intention is to find out if the song has the stuff that people have liked previously. Wouldn’t this system lead to bands creating more music of the same type since anything innovative would probably end up having a low HSS score? (Or as this article claims, would it give label execs more freedom to try exotic stuff since they have more hits on their hands?)

Tags: hss, music, hit, polyphonic, hit song science, record

The Christian Science Monitor has a collection of views from newspapers around the world on Bush’s second presidential term. Opinions range from optimism and praise for his foreign policy to discomfort at the thought of a more confrontational second term. Quotes from their roundup:

Bush’s speech focused on the ‘power of freedom’, saying that the best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. On that, not many people will disagree. The differences are over what he understands by ‘freedom’ and how the benefits of democracy should be spread in the world – or indeed whether it is any country’s business to export democracy to others… It is possible to have the freer world that Bush speaks of, but the idea that those who are strong and have a larger arsenal have an unchallenged right to impose their will on the weak, undermines democracy. – Nation (Kenya)

Critics who were hoping that he would get mired in detail about Iraq were mistaken. Instead he went back to basics, reaching out to the belief of most Americans in the fundamental importance of freedom and using that to explain his policies at home and abroad. At times it sounded more like a sermon than a speech. Mr. Bush may not be much of a speaker. But sometimes the message is more important than eloquence and what he had to say yesterday had the power of real conviction. – Irish Independent

Tags: america, president, bush, inauguration, world, opinion, democracy

Koders is a specialized search engine that searches for source code in many programming languages. You can also choose to search for code available under a particular license. For those who wish to implement a source code search engine on their own computers, gonzui is an open-source tool (cross-platform) that indexes your source code files and allows you to search from your browser.

Tags: koders, gonzui, open-source, search, engine, code

The Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona has a site that computes the effect of an impact on earth. You can feed in the size of the projectile and other parameters such as the impact angle, impact velocity etc and it gives a complete analysis of the resulting effects on earth. Very geeky and very interesting!

Tags: earth, impact, calculator, planet