revelation of silence » link of the day

vermin supreme

E. — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:33:20 +0000

Must see. I mean it.

to see in the dark

E. — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:06:15 +0000

Wonderful images by BENEDETTA BONICHI:
To See In The Dark

history of the english language

E. — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:01:03 +0000

I received a message by Open University to remove this video here. I wonder if it is illegal to imbed youtube videos? It doesn’t matter, since the youtube video has been taken down as well:

“HOW THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE …”
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by The Open University.

I’ll google this in a few days and hope I can find a “legal” source for this wonderful video.

A wonderful 10 minute video about the development of the English language. The best chapters for me were the chapters about science (“Acid” 1626, “Gravity” 1641, “Electricity” 1646, “Pendulum” 1660, “Penis” 1693, “Vagina” 1682, “Cardiac” 1601, “Sternum” 1667, “Tonsil” 1601) and words from other languages (Carribbean: BQQ, canoe, cannibal; India: stairs, bungalow; Africa: voodoo, zombie; Australia: walkaround, nugget; Holland: cookies).

relationships in english

E. — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 04:56:44 +0000

Link of the day: “The Top 10 Relationship Words That Aren’t Translatable Into English”

Cafuné (Brazilian Portuguese): The act of tenderly running your fingers through someone’s hair.

scientific realism vs. scientific anti-realism

E. — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:56:25 +0000

“Debates about scientific realism are centrally connected to almost everything else in the philosophy of science, for they concern the very nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific realism is a positive epistemic attitude towards the content of our best theories and models, recommending belief in both observable and unobservable aspects of the world described by the sciences. This epistemic attitude has important metaphysical and semantic dimensions, and these various commitments are contested by a number of rival epistemologies of science, known collectively as forms of scientific antirealism. This article explains what scientific realism is, outlines its main variants, considers the most common arguments for and against the position, and contrasts it with its most important antirealist counterparts.”

Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/

(Thanks, Benedikt)

swarm robotics

E. — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:16:52 +0000

I love the future. As dystopic as things might get, politically, economically, ethically – there will always be things to keep me going.
Like swarm robotics.

“Swarm robotics is a new approach to the coordination of multirobot systems which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment. This approach emerged on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the biological studies of insects, ants and other fields in nature, where swarm behaviour occurs”.

When I grow up, I want to become a swarm roboticist.