How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques
Daniel Russell stood in front of a crowd of investigative journalists in Boston last week and showed us this picture of a random skyscraper in an unknown city: Russell posed a riddle: What’s the phone number of the office where this picture was snapped? Let that sink in. Nothing in that office was even in the photo. “Once you know these tricks, you can solve problems that look impossible,” Russell said. There are plenty of Google search cheat sheets floating around. Here are some of my favorite tips shared by Russell at the 2012 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference. Most of what you know about Boolean is wrong.Don’t bother typing AND in your search queries – Google treats it like any other word.But OR in all caps actually works. Part of the skill here is being fascinated about language. Think about how somebody else would write about the topic.Search is all about someone else’s language. This is a very good thing because you can now follow a topical area.” Related
Treating Piriformis Syndrome
Massage TodayMarch, 2008, Vol. 08, Issue 03 By Whitney Lowe, LMT Sciatica is a term that describes radiating neurological pain that courses down the back side of the lower extremity. When the term is used, most people think of intervertebral disc pathology as the source of the problem. Lumbar disc pathology certainly can produce lower-extremity neurological pain, but other conditions can produce identical symptoms. The sciatic nerve, formed by nerve roots from the lumbar and sacral plexuses, is the largest nerve in the body. Description In the gluteal region, the piriformis muscle can compress the sciatic nerve, creating a condition known as piriformis syndrome. Figure 1:Sciatic and superior gluteal nerve compression by the piriformis.Mediclip image copyright (1998) Williams & Wilkins. Certain anatomical variations play a role in piriformis syndrome. Piriformis syndrome routinely occurs from external pressure such as sitting on a wallet. Treatment Strategies References
Hungary's Thick Red Line
A few months ago, Richard Mosse's photographs of the Democratic Republic of Congo became quite popular because the infrared color film he used made the landscape a brilliant shade of purple. Spanish photographer Palíndromo Mészáros has produced photographs with a similarly unnatural hue, but the red that dominates his work "The Line" isn't caused by his camera setup. His work documents the aftermath of a 2010 toxic waste spill in Western Hungary, which killed nine people and forced the evacuation of thousands. Mészáros' photographs don't show any of these residents, but instead focuses on the very visual effect that the spill has had on the landscape. Like Ruangkritya, Mészáros told me via email that he was motivated to take photographs that would look different from the images that had appeared in the media. Further reading: Mészáros's own site, and this writeup on the excellent Spanish photo blog 30y3.
Photography Optical Illusions | creativityfuse.com
Here are four photographers who create mind-bending illusions by transforming the spaces and figures that they photograph. The first two artists project geometric shapes into architectural spaces while the second two artists use paint to transform figures until they are unrecognizable. George Rousse is a french artist who paints vibrant shapes in large empty warehouse spaces. . Georges Rousse Rueselsheim 2003 Georges Rousse Cantabria Georges Rousse Cantabria (in progress) Georges Rousse Casablanca 2003 Georges Rousse Bending Space Georges Rousse Bending Space (in progress) Like Rousse, artist Felice Varini makes some mind-bending creations. Felice Varini Cinq Cercles Concentriques Noir 1993 Felice Varini Cinq Cercles Concentriques Noir 2 1993 Felice Varini Five Dancing Circles 2009 Felice Varini Five Dancing Circles (alternate view) 2009 .Liu Bolin is a Chinese artist born in 1973 who takes the Finding Waldo concept to a whole new level. . Liu Bolin Hiding in the City No. 77 2008
How smart are killer whales? Orcas have 2nd-biggest brains of all marine mammals
Neuroscientist Lori Marino and a team of researchers explored the brain of a dead killer whale with an MRI and found an astounding potential for intelligence. Killer whales, or orcas, have the second-biggest brains among all ocean mammals, weighing as much as 15 pounds. It's not clear whether they are as well-endowed with memory cells as humans, but scientists have found they are amazingly well-wired for sensing and analyzing their watery, three-dimensional environment. Scientists are trying to better understand how killer whales are able to learn local dialects, teach one another specialized methods of hunting and pass on behaviors that can persist for generations -- longer possibly than seen with any other species except humans. These researchers have yet to find evidence that an orca in the wild has ever killed a person. For starters, there's puzzlement over exactly how to categorize them. Yet the orcas' DNA tells a different story.
The Internet map
The map of the Internet Like any other map, The Internet map is a scheme displaying objects’ relative position; but unlike real maps (e.g. the map of the Earth) or virtual maps (e.g. the map of Mordor), the objects shown on it are not aligned on a surface. Mathematically speaking, The Internet map is a bi-dimensional presentation of links between websites on the Internet. Every site is a circle on the map, and its size is determined by website traffic, the larger the amount of traffic, the bigger the circle. Users’ switching between websites forms links, and the stronger the link, the closer the websites tend to arrange themselves to each other. Charges and springs To draw an analogy from classical physics, one may say that websites are electrically charged bodies, while links between them are springs. Also, an analogy can be drawn from quantum physics. Anyway, the real algorithm of plotting The Internet map is quite far from the analogies given above. Semantic web The Internet Phenomenon
