Joshua Allen Harris' plastic bag animals

He crafts his animal sculptures out of plastic bags, and ties them to subway grates.  When the train goes by, they inflate.
Here's a whole menagerie.

Musical event of the day

No questions now.   Just click and watch:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkYZ6rbPU2M

Where does 'blue' end and 'red' begin?

Here's another color-related study, also using the Mechanical Turk.
This one showed 1300 color swatches to people, and asked them to identify the color by name.

Results are plotted on a color wheel.

Color Chart: Reinventing color 1950 to today

A flash-animated guide to the MOMA exhibit.  Lots of fun!

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment.

Pictures of the day

High Dynamic Range pictures look fake but aren't;  all the information they show is in the original scene, only buried in shadow or hidden by glare.  Still, there's something extremely eerie about them. 

I wonder what the pendants judging the French Salon would make of them, if they considered Manet too wild & crazy to be acceptable.  After all, they're the bunch who started the meme that photography isn't an art.

Can Scientists Dance?

Oh, the humanity!  Not only do you have to pass your Quals,
surmount the foreign language requirement, take all your
required classes, and write your dissertation, but now you have to DANCE it.
Or, at least you would if you participated in the "Dance your PhD" contest.
 
The rules were simple:
    Using no words or images, interpret your Ph.D. thesis in dance form.

A vending machine for crows

Or, perhaps more accurately, "a self-contained training machine for crows, causing them to learn that dropping coins into a funnel will provide them with peanuts for food." 
Or, more succinctly, "training crows to steal change, for fun and profit."

I'm not sure what I want more;  the franchise for a chain of these around e.g. Central Park or the Tivoli Fountains, or one that rents giant transparent crow-deflecting umbrellas to sell to pedestrians passing through those areas.