thepinkbelly.com

The World Fatness Chart

This chart was created by blogger Wellington Grey based on recent obesity statistics from Wikipedia. A larger version of the chart can be viewed here.

The Shepard Scale Auditory Illusion

Here’s a cool auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.

A Shepard tone is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the base pitch of the tone moving upwards or downwards, it is referred to as the Shepard scale.

The way to really get the experience is to play it again, again, again, and again. And it’ll just seem like the sound keeps getting higher in pitch and tone. [via]

Dream Camera

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity. [via]

This reminds me of Until the End of the World, one of my favorite movies, where William Hurt's character uses his father's invention, a camera that records your brain reacting to the act of seeing, to collect "footage" for his blind mother. And, like the movie, dream-viewing looks like the next step. Yikes.

Daly City's "Little Boxes"

My parents live in Daly City and was surprised that I never knew its historic nature. From dalycityhistory.org:

The Westlake section of Daly City is a prime example of the postwar American suburb. Attempting to keep pace with the fast-growing population of the Bay Area, developer Henry Doelger, who had built thousands of homes in San Francisco's Sunset District, purchased a huge tract of land in 1945 just south of the City. His vision for Westlake was a relatively new concept at the time: a pre-planned community where houses would be built along with shopping centers, schools.

I learned about this from the RetroRenovation blog where I also discovered that there is a Flickr pool and book -- all dedicated to Daly City's "Little Boxes".

Man Redraws Entire Yearbook

An artist has redrawn his mother’s entire high school yearbook from 1968. That's over 1,000 different heads. He's selling the book on his website for $7 but he's also published the drawings on Flickr. [via]

Modern Day Cave Dwellers

In the caverns deep in the mountain in Anshun of southwest China's Guizhou Province, live nearly a hundred villagers. [via]

How Mirrors Are Made

I wasn't sure exactly how mirrors are made... but now I know.

Contronyms

A synonym is a word that means the same as another. An antonym is a word that means the opposite of another. A contronym is a word that, by some freak of language evolution, are their own antonyms. Here are a few examples:

• bolt - secure, run away
• custom - usual, special
• fix - restore, castrate
• grade - incline, level
• left - remaining, departed from
• fast - quick, unmoving
• screen - show, hide
• weather - withstand, wear away

I Did Not Know That Yesterday!

Are dogs' mouths really cleaner than humans? What are those little white marks on your fingernails? How is coffee decaffeinated? Why is Queen Elizabeth II's husband a prince rather than a king? How does a boomerang work? Find the answers to these and other perplexing questions at I Did Not Know That Yesterday! This blog does the research so you don’t have to.

The World's Longest Diary

Kircher Society has an interesting entry on Robert Shields of Dayton, Washington, who probably holds the world record of longest diary:

For twenty years, Robert Shields of Dayton, Washington, has kept a written record of absolutely everything that has happened to him, day and night. For no less than four hours each day, Shields holes himself up in the small office in his home, turns on his stereo, and types. His diary, at 35 million words, is believed to be the world’s longest.

Shields did this from 1972 until 1996, when he was disabled by a stroke. Shown above is a page from the diary, showing what he did every 5 minutes interval!