This week’s whimsy is brought to you by micro-origami unfolding in water.
The exquisite pieces of origami that unfold in this video were created by artist Etienne Cliquet for a piece entitled Flotilla. He used a computer-controlled machine to precisely cut the tiny designs, which are just a few centimetres wide, then folded them by hand. “I wanted to express the paradox between the fragility of things and the disturbing potential of micro and nanotechnology,” he says. [New Scientist]
Please share any bits and pieces you have come across recently that have surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you.
NB: the weekly whimsy thread is a stoush-free zone
I know its very popular, but still – i was shocked to read this morning that Youtube gets 3 BILLION views per day, and 48 hours of video is uploaded every minute:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/25/as-youtube-turns-6-years-old-daily-views-shoot-up-to-3-billion-yes-3-billion-daily/
I’m not sure if this is whimsyor not but, two ladies of my acquaintance, one a dyed-in-the-wool liberal voter and the other undeclared both dislike Tony Abbott intensely. When questioned on why so, they both referred to his demeanour: the ‘bovver boy swagger’. Well, well who’d a’thunk it.
“Pope shuts down monastery that liked to party”
“The basilica had become a hub for the Friends of Santa Croce, an aristocratic group, and had been criticised for some unorthodox practices including dances in which nuns pranced around the altar.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/25/3226078.htm
Well, it gave me a laff, anyway.
Lucio Battisti (1943-1998)
http://solopsist.blogspot.com/2007/06/veggie-punny.html
Adapted from the latest XKCD hover-cursor-text, the following fun experiment:
1) Go to any wikipedia entry.
2) Click on the first link NOT in italics or parentheses.
3) Repeat step 2
Within 10 (ten) iterations, you will either reach the entry for ‘philosophy’, or (MUCH more rarely) find yourself in a loop.
Meh, I tried the xkcd thing twice with the featured article as a starting point, and ended up with a loop both times, so I gave up.
FDB @ 6:
Doing that for “IKEA” brings the Wikipedia entry for “Languages.”
However, I’m not too sure if I quite followed the rules correctly, as the seventh link (not in italics) was for “Italic Languages”.
The path went thusly:
IKEA.
Privately held Company.
Company.
Companies Law.
Law.
System.
Latin.
Italic Languages. (disappointingly, not in italics)
Indo-European Languages.
Language Family.
Language.
I suspect Language could be an end point, along with Philosophy, given all articles that start
No parentheses allowed though, FMark.
The Economist is scathing about Australian politicians, http://www.economist.com/node/18744197?story_id=18744197:
“Some Australians talk big but actually think small, and politicians may be the worst offenders. They are often reluctant to get out in front in policymaking—on climate change, for instance—preferring to follow what bigger countries do. In the quest for a carbon policy, both the main parties have chopped and changed their minds, and their leaders, leaving voters divided and bemused. There can be little doubt that if America could come to a decision on the topic, Australia would soon follow suit.
“Its current political leaders, with notable exceptions, are perhaps the least impressive feature of today’s Australia. Just when their country has the chance to become influential in the world, they appear introverted and unable to see the big picture. Little legislation of consequence has been passed since 2003. A labour-market reform introduced by the Liberals was partly repealed by Labor. A proposed tax on the mining companies was badly mishandled (also by Labor), leading to a much feebler one. All attempts at a climate-change bill have failed. The prime minister, Labor’s Julia Gillard, admits she is unmoved by foreign policy. The leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, takes his cue from America’s tea-party movement, by fighting a carbon tax with a “people’s revolt” in which little is heard apart from personal insults. Instead of pointing to the great benefits of immigration—population growth is responsible for about two-fifths of the increase in real GDP in the past 40 years—the two parties pander shamelessly to xenophobic fears about asylum-seekers washing up in boats.”