Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Plastic Demoscene Group: Catzilla
Catzilla is our latest project to date. It's a real time PC benchmark that will get all the juices from your PC.
Finally we had some time to make a proper demo. It was made with a nice collaboration with Platige Image. We did the code, they did the art. The music was made exclusively by Bent 'subsquare' Stamnes.
Thanks for watching!
APOTD: A Star Making Waves
VIA: NASA/JPL:
"The giant star Zeta Ophiuchi is having a "shocking" effect on the surrounding dust clouds in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Stellar winds flowing out from this fast-moving star are making ripples in the dust as it approaches, creating a bow shock seen as glowing gossamer threads, which, for this star, are only seen in infrared light.
Zeta Ophiuchi is a young, large and hot star located around 370 light-years away. It dwarfs our own sun in many ways -- it is about six times hotter, eight times wider, 20 times more massive, and about 80,000 times as bright. Even at its great distance, it would be one of the brightest stars in the sky were it not largely obscured by foreground dust clouds.
This massive star is travelling at a snappy pace of about 54,000 mph (24 kilometers per second), fast enough to break the sound barrier in the surrounding interstellar material. Because of this motion, it creates a spectacular bow shock ahead of its direction of travel (to the left). The structure is analogous to the ripples that precede the bow of a ship as it moves through the water, or the sonic boom of an airplane hitting supersonic speeds.
The fine filaments of dust surrounding the star glow primarily at shorter infrared wavelengths, rendered here in green. The area of the shock pops out dramatically at longer infrared wavelengths, creating the red highlights.
A bright bow shock like this would normally be seen in visible light as well, but because it is hidden behind a curtain of dust, only the longer infrared wavelengths of light seen by Spitzer can reach us.
Bow shocks are commonly seen when two different regions of gas and dust slam into one another. Zeta Ophiuchi, like other massive stars, generates a strong wind of hot gas particles flowing out from its surface. This expanding wind collides with the tenuous clouds of interstellar gas and dust about half a light-year away from the star, which is almost 800 times the distance from the sun to Pluto. The speed of the winds added to the star's supersonic motion result in the spectacular collision seen here.
Our own sun has significantly weaker solar winds and is passing much more slowly through our galactic neighborhood so it may not have a bow shock at all. NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft are headed away from the solar system and are currently about three times farther out than Pluto. They will likely pass beyond the influence of the sun into interstellar space in the next few years, though this is a much gentler transition than that seen around Zeta Ophiuchi.
For this Spitzer image, infrared light at wavelengths of 3.6 and 4.5 microns is rendered in blue, 8.0 microns in green, and 24 microns in red.
JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech."
For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer.
Gangnam Style, Call Me Maybe, The Third Eagle of The Apocalypse, and Fun With Numbers
Posted by YouTube user: thirdeaglebooks
Every once in a while the Internets gives us something we just can't help but be thankful for. Sometimes, it's a brief video of one of your favorite astrophysicists dancing to a Michael Jackson song. Other times, it's something so seemingly surreal, you just can't help but ponder how it came to be. The subject of today's entry, most definitely falls into the later category.
In his video "Antichrist Numerology In Gangnam Style", as well as countless other acts of crazy on his YouTube channel (including several more on both songs in question), former furniture engineer (cause apparently, that's a thing you can be) turned self-proclaimed "Co Prophet of The End Times" and "Third Eagle of the Apocalypse" AKA William Tapley, uses the age old pseudoscience of numerology to decipher the deep philosophical meaning behind the videos for "Gangnam Style" and Carly Rae Jepsen's, "Call Me Maybe". Both of which it turns out, are littered with secrete messages from the Antichrist. Which I don't completely disagree with. Well, I do. But I would like to think that the creators of such things are actually THE devil.
Using the convoluted, Sudoku-like number game, that is numerology, numerologists like Tapely (who's also a Catholic, BTW. Which seems conflicting, but, whatever) are able to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and otherwise BS their way into discovering triple fives and sixes or whatever else they might like, wherever they may go looking for them. From there, it's just a simple matter of applying the correct (and always predictable) theological/supernatural associations, with a little bit of confirmation bias, and serving of personal agendas in order to make your case.
In his video breakdown, The Co-prophet wastes little time before offering irrefutable proof of his claims; beginning his dissertation by decoding the scene to the left. A scene which he believes, is obviously meant to be a depiction of the four horseman of the apocalypse, as well as the lesser known two scantily clad dancing girls of the rapture.In fairness, I added the bit about the dancing girls. But, really? THOSE are the four horseman? How disappointing would THAT be?
From there, we move on to the first "REAL" bit of numerology in the video, when Tapley clearly establishes that PSY is meant to rep his man the dark lord, based on the appearance of the number 18 on a column in this next scene. Which, as he clearly explains, can be decoded as: " 8 + 1 = 9, Or, of course, as the Antichrist's number, 6+6+6."
Yes, of course it could. It's like when your math teacher taught you that 11 + 2 = 13. Unless of course it doesn't. In which case, the answer is 4. No? ... Never happened? DAMN YOU PUBLIC SCHOOLING!
There's also another long winded and convoluted bit about the number of numbers a woman in the video has on her shirt, and who/what she's supposed to be. But otherwise, things pretty much deteriorate completely from that point into personal interpretations about god being depicted as cowardly (since his guy wears yellow) and weak (since his guy looses) and a few other pretty standard Antichrist/rapture related apocalypse nonsense about multiculturalism, ETC. but there's nothing particularly entertaining about them. And my absolute favorite of Tapley's mental leaps in this video, actually comes in his much less thorough decoding (in this video anyway) of Carly Rae Jepsen's, Call me maybe. Which, again, he concludes to be a nuanced allegory for the war between god and the antichrist. In this case, with Carly representing Satan/sin, and the gay man in the video representing god, based on the iron-clad logic that his fake phone number begins with the prefix 555. But that's not even the best part.
" I [The Antichrist] just met you, and this is crazy [This, being the tribulation] so here's my number [gives you the mark of the beast] so call me maybe [my name is Mabus]". Yes, THAT, Mabus.
Mabus, if you don't know, being one of MANY interpretations of the name given to the Antichrist by Nostradamus. That's right, he actually managed to find a way to force a Nostradamus reference into all of this. Amazing.
It could probably go without saying that this is all ultimately very silly, if for no other reason, then because this man has clearly put more thought and consideration into the content of these two songs and videos in nine minutes, than anyone involved in creating them did in the entire production process. But the real, and ultimately unanswerable question you have to ask when you discover people like William Tapley is; is he for real? And the truth is, Poe's law is a thing for a reason. And with something this seemingly overtly insane, you can never really know for sure. Although I am inclined to think he means it. Because if this IS a character, and not a genuine statement of belief. He has both, persistence (given he's been at this since at least 2008) as well as one dry-ass sense of humor.
And I haven't even mentioned his music yet...
-CAINE-
Yes, that's right kids. The Third Eagle of the apocalypse apparently even managed to make it onto CNN earlier this year, after writing a BEAUTIFUL song for Mitt Romney. Which, sadly, did not become the theme for Mitten's campaign, as Tapley had hoped. But I've chosen a different selection from his catalog, an anti-abortion ditty called, "Love Of Life (Let Our Father Plan Your Family)". Enjoy!
Posted by YouTube user: thirdeaglebooks
*EDIT: After looking around a bit more, it seems Tapley may actually have made it on CNN first, for his video about phallic symbols at the Denver airport; which is God damn hilarious, BTW. But does it really matter?*
And Now, Neil deGrasse Tyson Dances To Michael Jackson
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
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