Day: June 25, 2006

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

Chris 5 Comments

From Damn Interesting:

You may have heard about Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon before. In fact, you probably learned about it for the first time very recently. If not, then you just might hear about it again very soon. Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information– often an unfamiliar word or name– and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. Anytime the phrase “That’s so weird, I just heard about that the other day” would be appropriate, the utterer is hip-deep in Baader-Meinhof.

The McGurk Effect

Chris 2 Comments

Click here for a short video demonstrating the McGurk Effect. Here is the wikipedia entry for it:

The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon which demonstrates an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception. It suggests that speech perception is multimodal, that is, that it involves information from more than one sensory modality. The McGurk effect is sometimes called the McGurk-MacDonald effect. It was first described in a paper by McGurk and McDonald (1976).

Best City Council Meeting Ever

Chris 9 Comments
Local lunatic David Thompson complains to Charlotte, NC city council during a community access forum, which is conveniently captured on tape and broadcast live on the local community access channel. There aren’t enough tags to cover his rant against ice in the arena, rogue helicopter pilots, and “terrorist pussies”.

(Thanks to everyone who sent this in)

Battle of the Somme Film

Chris 2 Comments

The Independent on The Battle of Somme footage. The clip above is a compilation of a few scenes from that film.

All film of the carnage was thought to have been faked, but now some of it has finally been authenticated. And it reveals the heroics of Captain ‘Pongo’ Dawson. By Jonathan Thompson

Sheltering in a sunken road near the French village of Beaumont Hamel on 1 July 1916, Captain Edmond McNaghten “Pongo” Dawson believed the first British thrust during the Battle of the Somme would be swift and decisive.

The German lines had been subjected to heavy bombardment for an entire week, and the Allies had the advantage of vastly superior numbers.

As the order came just after dawn to send the troops over the top, Captain Dawson was captured on film ushering his men, of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers, along the trench. As commander of the company, he was one of the first on to the parapet. A few seconds later, he was also one of the first to be cut down by German machine-gun fire.

For decades, historians have argued over the veracity of the film shot that morning, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Certainly, some scenes were re-enacted and filmed for propaganda purposes. But now, using a series of new scientific techniques, analysts have proved for the first time that most of the images are genuine, enabling them to identify many of the combatants and trace their surviving relatives.

(via Robot Wisdom)

The Whoniverse

Chris

Whoniverse.jpg

The Whoniverse is intended to be (or at least become) the ultimate guide to the universe of Doctor Who – the world’s longest running Science Fiction TV series. Doctor Who originally ran from 1963 to 1989, with a one-off TV Movie in 1996, and a whole new TV series which started on the 26th of March 2005. In the interim, Doctor Who has been kept alive by several ranges of books and audios, which are considered part of the Doctor Who Universe by a large portion of fandom.