A few days ago Emily Lakdawalla posted some images from the moon on her weblog at the Planetary Society: Fun with a new data set: Chang’e 3 lander and Yutu rover camera data.
“Here, for the first time in a format easily accessible to the public, are hundreds and hundreds of science-quality images from the Chang’e 3 lander and Yutu rover.”
Links to the original data and the mirror at the Planetary Society are at the top of the article.
Link via MetaFilter.
It’s common knowledge that there are some things that you cannot unlearn once you’ve learnt them, like riding a bike. Right?
Destin Sandlin, creator of the educational video series Smarter Every Day, learnt how to ride a bike that goes left when steered right and vice versa. It took him eight months until it “clicked” – but then he found that he couldn’t ride normal bikes any more!
I’d love to try riding his Backwards Brain Bicycle. When I first tried to ride a recumbent bike I had a similar experience because on a normal bike, you steer mostly by shifting your body weight and only turn the handlebars a little bit to help. On a recumbent, you can’t really shift your weight much, so you have to steer by making lots of tiny movements with the handlebars. (This is especially hard if your recumbent has under-seat steering, though I’ve heard that pivot steering is even harder). It took me a few tries until I managed stopped my brain from trying to shift my weight, but once it clicked, riding the recumbent was not too difficult. Since the directions are not reversed, I can still ride an upright bike like before.
The Guardian: Bears get a handle on opening car doors – but could it be their downfall?
“‘Food-conditioning’ and other adaptive behaviors have become common among bear populations – and could lead them into dangerous contact with humans.”
When André and I went to Yosemite in 1999, we were warned not to leave food (or toothpaste etc.) in the car because bears were able to open car doors and saw in a video that the bears would grab the top of the door and fold the window part down and out to get inside. We’ve since learned that this trick was more or less exclusive to bears in that area, and in other National Parks were were advised to lock food in the car overnight because bears couldn’t get it there – they couldn’t open car doors.
Before I read the article I thought that other bears now had caught up and were folding down car doors, but this bear uses the door handle of an unlocked car! The article also states that bear damages to cars has declined in Yosemite during the last 15 years – not because bears have stopped going into cars, but because they have learnt to use the door handle instead.
Link via Garret.
Spiegel online International: The Isolated Chancellor: What Is Driving Angela Merkel? By Markus Feldenkirchen and René Pfister.
“Chancellor Angela Merkel spent a decade amassing political capital. Now, with the refugee crisis showing no signs of abating, she has decided to spend it. With her legacy in the balance, she has finally found an issue to fight for. But why now?”
Discussion about this article on MetaFilter: “And when you let them in, you don’t grimace”.
Inquiring Minds Podcast: The Science of Gun Violence.
I listened to this podcast episode today (it aired on October 16,2015) and found it had much food for thought. They interviewed Brad J. Bushman, who is a professor of communication and psychology and has studied the causes, consequences, and solutions to the problem of human aggression and violence. He also is a member of President Obama’s committee on gun violence.
Unfortunately I didn’t find a transcript of the podcast, but you can take a quick look at Bushman’s research results in this set of presentation slides: Understanding Potential Linkages of Gun Violence to Media Violence.
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.