jfiore

How does a 7000 pound, 35 foot diameter chandelier using high-brightness LEDs sound to you? Well that's what was installed the other day at the Stanley Theatre in Utica, NY. The manufacturer, Meyda Tiffany based in nearby Yorkville, claims that it is the world's largest LED chandelier. Here are…

There's a nice series of articles on acoustics and pyschoacoustics over at Audio Design Line. Part One, for example, looks at pressure waves, propagation velocity, frequency, wavelength, and related items. The sequence is a nice overview if you're interested in the mechanics of music and audio but…

Due to a conversation regarding facts and theories on a message board I sometimes visit, I decided to write a short item for my students answering a simple question: "If a fact is fundamentally true, isn't it better than a theory?" At first glance, it may appear that a fact is more valuable than a…

Once again, Daylight Savings Time is upon us, and this year it's arrived earlier than ever. Undoubtedly, you'll hear someone mention the supposed energy savings due to the earlier switch-over, but I'll counter that with an item from The Chimp Refuge's closet of past goodies: Don't Bank on This…

It has been said that running training and the resulting personal performance level is an experiment of one. While there are certain general training characteristics to which all humans undoubtedly respond, the speed and level of adaptation to a specific training stimulus vary from individual to…

Check out this composite radar image from the National Weather Service, 20:18 UTC, February 10, 2008: This is great imagery of lake effect snow bands. For folks who live to the immediate east of any of the Great Lakes, this is a well-known effect responsible for significant accumulations of snow.…

Here's a fun experiment you can perform to test your coordination and, if you're like a lot of people, experience the precise moment when your brain and muscles go off to la-la land. First, stand up and extend your arms directly out in front of you. Rotate your right arm clockwise (CW) and your…

Just how well-wired are your brain and muscles? Co-ordination and drummers is a common theme here at the refuge, but it's time for something you can try at home with just your bare little fingers. We're in the midst of an ice storm, so what better time to whip out the camera, put on some classic…

The other day I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine about politics. And of course, what mixes better with politics than religion? There was a mention of the stances of various presidential candidates with regards to homosexuality, and I said that in Leviticus it states that if a man lies…

Our Sunday newspaper magazine section features a two page ad for a new "miracle" heating device that looks like a fireplace and features a "hand-crafted Amish mantel". Check this out: The HEAT SURGE miracle heater is a work of engineering genius from the China coast, so advanced you simply plug…

Suppose you're driving down the highway at 70 MPH due west to a destination some 100 miles distant. Which of the following constitute "change"? Speeding up to 85. Stomping on the brakes. Leaving the highway to travel due north at 30 MPH through a freshly mowed field. Swinging the car around and…

Check out Al Franken's ads for his Senate bid. It would be nice to have an intelligent, thoughtful (and humorous) voice in Washington. If he lived in New York State I'd vote for him.

Here's a lovely new item from Pat Condell entitled "Hook, Line and Rapture": My favorite bit involves Pat talking to God in a dream about a bible: "I said 'What bible? That's just a blank sheet of paper.' and he said 'Yeah, this is the non-fiction version'".

If you're like many regulars to ScienceBlogs you probably found the cool Purple Nurple optical illusion over at Omni Brain. I don't really understand why a static object appears as though it's pulsing, but I do enjoy the effect. Did you ever wonder how much an optical illusion can be distorted and…

Too lazy to follow the positions of the presidential candidates? Try this quiz. It presents 25 questions. You answer whether you oppose or support the item and whether its importance is minimal, important, or key. It will then rank the candidates according to how they line up with your answers,…

Audio Design Line has a handy new link for its top ten articles of 2007. Lots of good stuff here including the loudspeakers & cables series referrenced a couple months ago, class D amplifier design, and audio data compression (you know, that MP3 stuff and the like). Fun reading for a frigid…

Astrology. Classic woo. Not much to say about it other than the fact that for some very strange reason a lot of people still believe in it, at least a little. Maybe it's because almost every newspaper in the country still has an astrology column. I don't know. For the sake of my students, several…

As readers of this blog may have noted, I have a thing for patterns and sequences. Maybe it's my musical training (e.g., inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion of a motif) or my love of palindromes, but I have a habit of reading signs and whatnot backwards (right to left). Sometimes funny…

Richard Dawkins is heading to the US heartland for a series of speaking engagements: He is to address a series of 2,000-seater venues in the American heartlands. The tour will coincide with the publication of his best-seller The God Delusion in paperback in the US in January and act as a prelude to…

The latest issue of Embedded Systems Design has an interesting article on combining C code with assembly code for DSP applications. In some cases, they show an ten fold speed up for an assembly plus C implementation versus straight C code. Now before anyone starts hollering, please remember that…

Given the arrival of winter solstice, you might be interested in this. It graphs sunrise, sunset, length of day, angle of sun, and other items given your location. And although most people may be aware that winter solstice is the day with the shortest daylight of the year, I'd guess that not many…

Arthur C. Clarke is 90 today. He has three wishes: Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke listed three wishes on his 90th birthday Sunday: for the world to embrace cleaner energy resources, for a lasting peace in his adopted home, Sri Lanka, and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings. Like many…

Mitt Romney gave his speech on religion today at the George Bush library. Read it here. It's filled with the usual horseshit that one might expect from a man like Mitt: "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his…

A new Pat Condell video regarding the "inappropriately named teddy bear" fiasco in the Sudan. As usual, it's vintage Condell:

Pat Condell answers some critics in the atheist community regarding so-called "hard line" atheist arguments to believers in the supernatural. It's six and a half minutes well spent:

Readers of this blog know that, as a drummer, I am very keen on left-right symmetry of co-ordination. The drummer's world is often filled with patterns (get the pun?) and being able to execute them equally well from the left versus right side opens creative possibilities. Time to get those mirror…

I have added two new categories to the refuge, Audio Island and Pattern Juggling, for the convenience of those interested in a couple of my "off the beaten path" jaunts. I have gone back and retagged a bunch of old posts and will use these tags in the future. Audio Island is basically a catch-all…

I am a fan of the BBC show Top Gear. Mind you, I'm no gear-head, but these guys do some funny things and I like to hear their take on various new car models. Last night I caught an episode that I had not seen before where the three hosts come to the USA, rent cars, and drive to New Orleans. On the…

In early October I posted a series of pics regarding the low water level at Hinckley Reservoir in upstate NY. The combination of low rainfall and demand had reduced the lake some 35 feet below spill level. I had hoped to post some pics in Spring 2008 to contrast these to normal levels. That won't…

The local paper ran an article yesterday regarding smoking statistics in upstate NY. The major point of the story is seen in its headline "Region's smoking rate is among highest in state". The basic stats involve a region of upstate NY including 11 counties ranging from Utica, down to Cooperstown,…