Origami

Woah. Just viewed the work of the 'masters' of origami on Joseph Wu's website (click on the gallery tab) and was blown away.

Apparently, origami has exploded in the last few years, as mathematicians and physicists have taken interest in the ancient Japanese art form. Here's a before and after of a silverfish designed by physicist Robert Lang.


And if you really want to be impressed, here's an entertaining video of a person taking 10 hours and making 1361 folds to create a phoenix.

Dancers Suspended In Air

Check out Denis Darzacq's photos of dancers in mid flight.

Happy Valentine's Day

Enjoy "The Light" by Common and featuring Erykah Badu.

Umi Says

I remember seeing Mos Def at a Lyricist Lounge concert when I was in college. He showed up two hours late, because he was coming from a movie premiere in NYC. The Philly crowd was ready to kill him (Philadelphia crowds are notoriously ill tempered -- they booed Santa Claus at an Eagles game), but then he blew everybody away with his performance. Mos Def is one of my heroes, not only for his flow and uplifting message, but because he puts his soul into what he does. Something, definitely, to aspire to.

Flipping Pigeons

Here's a brief clip of pigeons literally doing somersaults in the air. Supposedly, the behavior is an adaptation to evade predation from peregrine falcons. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that the birds are doing it just because it's a lot of fun. Show offs.

Tony Jaa

Jet Li? Jackie Chan? Old news. Check out Tony Jaa, the newest martial arts superstar. The stunts he pulls off are amazing, technically & aeshetically -- and without any cheesy wirework. He practices Muay Thai (pronounced moy tie), which is being taught and used extensively in the mixed martial arts (MMA) world. Called the "science of eight limbs," Muay Thai is particularly devastating because it involves hands, shins, elbows, and knees.

You can rent two of his movies, both excellent: Ong-Bak The Thai Warrior and The Protector. In the Protector, Jaa battles a capoeira fighter. (Did you folks know that capoeira is a martial arts form as well as a dance form?)

Plants in Motion

Okay folks, we are moving at record breaking pace in class these days. We finished archaebacteria, eubacteria, protists, and fungi already, so it's onto plants. Here's a neat website that takes time lapse photographs of plants. When you're on the web site, use the menu bar on the right to check out the Quick Time movies -- I liked the germination and flowering movies best.

Why do we find certain things cute?

Evolution, stupid.

Natalie Angier wrote a great article in the New York Times explaining why we humans are so darn susceptible to cuteness.

"Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession." :-)

Hmmm...I guess this explains why I find just about every baby mammal irresistably cute. I wonder if people who find things cute are more likely to have children than people who don't? And I wonder if people's attitudes change about cuteness change after they've had children? Science Fair project, anyone?