Looking for more ideas after Jilian Mayer’s ‘How to Hide From Cameras’ make-up tutorial? CV Dazzle explores how fashion can be used as camouflage from face-detection technology, the first step in automated face recognition. ‘Look book’ at cvdazzle.com, together with a visualization of OpenCV Face Detection.
Footage from Los Alamos National Laboratory showing the journey on 9th August 1945 of the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb from hangar to mushroom cloud.
I woke up the next morning and Fox News was reporting that unknown suspects had vandalized City Hall. I went back to the entrance and handed the guard my driver’s license and a letter explaining what I’d done. Several police officers were speaking in hushed tones near the gates, which had been washed clean. I…
Crisis Magazine reports on the unusual results that may occur when re-examining skeletons dug up a century ago in York: Upper-crust Africans living in a dismal Imperial backwater like 4th century Britannia? That’s odd More here, and yet more on the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ at The Independent, and Yorkshire Museum.
How original is Orwell’s 1984? We is set in a dystopian society, where our protagonist is introduced to Freedom by the local Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Both are eventually caught and everything returns, more or less, to how it was. Sound familliar? The plot to 1984 seems to have been lifted, almost entirely it seems,…
The voice of Poverty, in Aristophanes’ Plutus (408 BC): Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.…
How to measure the effect that price has on perceptions of pleasure? Although researchers have used fMRI scans in recent years to gauge brain activity, the study is one of the first to test subjects as they swallow liquid—in this case, wine—through a pump attached to their mouths More here. This research was supported with…
Who are you really shopping for this holiday season? It’s ok, you can admit it, if you’ve bought an item or two – or ten – for yourself. More at Team Coco.
The Jubilee Debt Campaign offers an interactive view of global debt: When talking about a country’s ‘debt’, newspapers refer to just the debt owed by its government. But this includes debts which are owed to citizens of that country (not necessarily a problem). And it ignores the debt owed by private companies and banks (which…
At the Internet Archive, an 1828 ‘Stranger’s Guide’ written by ‘Two Citizens of the World’ advises on how to avoid being swindled in London: Swindling, when performed on a large scale, obtains the title of speculation. We need merely mention one word to remind our readers of the affinity between speculation and swindling – that…