Ghost Quiz In 1885, Cecilia Garrett Smith and a friend were experimenting with automatic writing using a primitive Ouija board on which a planchette was guided by a visiting “spirit.” “We got all sorts of nonsense out of it, sometimes long doggerel rhymes with several verses,” but the prophecies they asked for were rarely answered. When they asked who the guiding spirit was, the planchette wrote that his name was Jim and that he had been Senior Wrangler at Cambridge. Intrigued, they asked Jim to write the equation describing the heart-shaped planchette they were using, and they received this response: This they interpreted as , which J.W. “I am quite sure that I had never seen the curve before, and therefore the production of the equation could not have been an act of unconscious memory on my part,” Smith wrote later. One wonders what Jim thought of all this.
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The Hike Guy It didn’t seem like long after I stepped off the Pacific Crest Trail last October that I began pondering what my goals would be for 2012. You would think that hiking 1,700+ miles last year should have quenched my thirst for hiking; that I should be hanging up my boots and looking for a good desk job, but no. In fact, I feel more and more at home on the trail with every mile I hike. Pondering my next hike from atop Mt. GOAL # 1 – To hike 150 miles in the next 80 days As much as I love hiking, this hike guy has been busy doing everything except hiking. A “hike” must be mostly off of paved surfaces. So maybe you’re asking, “Why June 1st? Overview of the SHR GOAL # 2 – Thru-hike the Sierra High Route. The Sierra High Route (SHR) is a 195-mile trek through the high country of the Sierra Nevada in California. GOAL #3 – Spend 50 days in the Sierra Nevada. I fell in love with the Range of Light last year and I hate long-distance relationships. GOAL #4 – Get a job! So there they are.
Image evolution What is this? A simulated annealing like optimization algorithm, a reimplementation of Roger Alsing's excellent idea. The goal is to get an image represented as a collection of overlapping polygons of various colors and transparencies. We start from random 50 polygons that are invisible. In each optimization step we randomly modify one parameter (like color components or polygon vertices) and check whether such new variant looks more like the original image. If it is, we keep it, and continue to mutate this one instead. Fitness is a sum of pixel-by-pixel differences from the original image. This implementation is based on Roger Alsing's description, though not on his code. How does it look after some time? 50 polygons (4-vertex) ~15 minutes 644 benefitial mutations 6,120 candidates 88.74% fitness 50 polygons (6-vertex) ~15 minutes 646 benefitial mutations 6,024 candidates 89.04% fitness 50 polygons (10-vertex) ~15 minutes 645 benefitial mutations 5,367 candidates 87.01% fitness Requirements
Learn How to Pass (or Beat) a Polygraph Test | AntiPolygraph.org Nerdy Nomad Maps home page Down to: 6th to 15th Centuries | 16th and 19th Centuries | 1901 to World War Two | 1946 to 21st Century The Ancient World ... index of places Aegean Region, to 300 BCE Aegean Region, 185 BCE Africa, 2500 to 1500 BCE Africa to 500 CE African Language Families Alexander in the East (334 to 323 BCE) Ashoka, Empire of (269 to 232 BCE) Athenian Empire (431 BCE) China, Korea and Japan (1st to 5th century CE) China's Warring States (245 to 235 BCE) Cyrus II, Empire of (559 to 530 BCE) Delian League, 431 BCE Egyptian and Hittite Empires, 1279 BCE Europe Fertile Crescent, 9000-4500 BCE Germania (120 CE) Greece (600s to 400s BCE) Gupta Empire (320 to 550 CE) Han China, circa 100 BCE Hellespont (Battle of Granicus River, 334 BCE) India to 500 BCE Israel and Judah to 733 BCE Italy and Sicily (400 to 200 BCE) Judea, Galilee, Idumea (1st Century BCE) Mesopotamia to 2500 BCE Mesoamerica and the Maya (250 to 500 CE) Oceania Power divisions across Eurasia, 301 BCE Roman Empire, CE 12 Roman Empire, CE 150 Roman Empire, CE 500
Futility Closet Bug Out Bag – The 7 Types of Gear You Must Have to Survive Bug Out Bag For someone new to being a Survivalist building your first Bug Out Bag can seem like a big task. Everybody you read about has been tweaking theirs for months or even years and has a pile of gear built up. It’s hard to know where to start, but if you cover all of the basics in a survival situation you will still be much better off that 99% of the people. A Bug Out Bag, also called a BOB, I.N.C.H Bag (I’m Never Coming Home Bag),Get Out of Dodge Bag (GOOD Bag), or 72 Hour Bag is usually designed to get you out of an emergency situation and allow you to survive self-contained for up to 3 days. A lot of people plan their Bug Out Bag to sustain them for much longer than that, but there is always a limit to what you can carry on your back and a 3 day target is a good place to start. Here are the 7 basic types of gear you will need for your Bug Out Bag: 1. It should go without saying that water is a survival basic for any situation. 2. Backpack Meals 3. 4. They Don’t have a ground tarp…
Cool Abandoned Places In The World 8 - Glorious Mind Posted by admin on 10 Dec 2012 / 2 Comments Cool Abandoned Places In The World -Part 8 :Varosha In the early 1970’s, the Varosha quarter in Famagusta, Cyprus was one of the Mediterranean’s most popular and glamorous tourist destinations. The bright blue waters and beautiful sandy beaches were draws for such stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, and Brigitte Bardot. Population of the area grew to about 39,000 people, but by the end of 1974 the town would be conquered by Turkish troops, fenced off completely, and have a population of zero. The island of Cyprus has been the subject of a constant tug-of-war battle between Greece and Turkey for centuries. Homes still have closets full of clothes, cabinets full of dishes, and there is even a car dealership still stocked with ‘brand new’ 1974 model-year cars. So why is the area still barricaded and patrolled by Turkish troops? Varosha in its heyday:
Airline Routes Are a Pretty Good Predictor of Twitter Connections - Rebecca J. Rosen - Technology A study finds that -- surprise! -- the Twitter world mirrors patterns in our offline world. You know the maps that show the criss-crossing lines of global air routes? Well, if you could make a map of Twitter, with arched lines tracing the connections among the places that tweeters and their followers live, it would look quite similar -- and not just in that it would be a map of connections all around the world, but much more of a direct resemblance: Air routes are a pretty good predictor of relationships on Twitter. This is the conclusion of a new study from three Canadian researchers, who compared Twitter connections and airline routes. Though local connections make up a good bulk of Twitter ties (39 percent), the frequency of airline connections between two places is a good proxy for ties that go outside of one's hometown. That it would be any other way makes little sense. Image: Imaginary air-route map from Airminded.org.
Most Interesting Libraries of the World The Royal library Black Diamond at the waterfront of Copenhagen owes its name to the black granite from Zimbabwe used for the facade of the building. The name was used by the public first and has been adapted officially later. Design by the Danish architects Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen. Photography by Mirage Bookmark Flickr.com