Gizmodo compares the new MacBook Air with five other slim notebooks.
Day: January 16, 2008
Boltzmann brain
From Wikipedia:
A Boltzmann brain is a hypothesized self-aware entity which arises due to random fluctuations out of a state of chaos. The idea is named for physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who had advanced an idea that the known universe arose as a random fluctuation, similar to process through which Boltzmann brains might arise.
Boltzmann brains are often referred to in the context of the “Boltzmann brain paradox” or “problem”.
The concept arises from the need to explain why we observe such a large degree of organization in the universe. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy in the universe will always increase. We may think of the most likely state of the universe as one of high entropy, closer to uniform and without order. So why is the observed entropy so low?
Boltzmann proposed that we and our observed low-entropy world are a random fluctuation in a higher-entropy universe. Even in a near-equilibrium state, there will be stochastic fluctuations in the level of entropy. The most common fluctuations will be relatively small, resulting in only small amounts of organization, while larger fluctuations and their resulting greater levels of organization will be comparatively more rare. Large fluctuations would be almost inconceivably rare, but this can be explained by the enormous size of the universe and by the idea that if we are the results of a fluctuation, there is a “selection bias”: We observe this very unlikely universe because the unlikely conditions are necessary for us to be here.
Macbook Air Unveiled
Here is the unvealing for the new ultra slim MacBook Air by Apple, at Macworld 2008 with Steve Jobs Keynote. MacBook Air, Macbook Air.
Lasagna Cat
Filming Garfield comic strips. They even added a laugh track.
More vids at Lasagnacat.com.
Instruments Made Out of Vegetables
Real or not, these videos of this guy playing musical instruments out of vegetables are entertaining.
Daily Dose of Ingersoll
Through all the ages of superstition, each nation has insisted that it was the peculiar care of the true God, and that it alone had the true religion — that the gods of other nations were false and fraudulent, and that other religions were wicked, ignorant and absurd. In this way the seeds of hatred had been sown, and in this way have been kindled the flames of war. Men have had no sympathy with those of a different complexion, with those who knelt at other altars and expressed their thoughts in other words — and even a difference in garments placed them beyond the sympathy of others. Every peculiarity was the food of prejudice and the excuse for hatred.
Robert Green Ingersoll – “God in the Constitution”
Princess Raja – 1904
Princess Rajah performs an “Oriental” or belly dance, and a balancing chair act in her teeth like that often found in folk performances in various cultures from Northern Africa to Greece. Shot outdoors in a street scene at the St. Louis Exposition, the film captures her act in an extreme long shot.