Tom Elwood -best of the internet.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

How Iceland Saved Its Teenagers

https://youtu.be/cDbD_JSCrNo

Under age drinking prevalence in 15-16 year-olds went from 42% to 5%.

-10 pm curfew

- curfew enforced and patrolled by parents

- parents sign agreement upon rules like no drinking, and spending more family time together

- keep kids active: voucher for kids to spend on sports

- get politicians involved

Balloon-stiffened hernia mesh rises into place when inflated

Watch at 2:34 where the balloon is infalted and suddenly the mesh rises into place where it is easily affixed to the anterior abdominal wall.

Monday, February 26, 2018

Two funny words

I encountered two unrelated words about artistic endeavors this week that each paint a visual picture, yet have little to do with that picture.

Potboiler - a book, painting, or recording produced merely to make the writer or artist a living by catering to popular taste [something one writes merely to put food on the table, pandering to current tastes]

Tentpole - a movie that is expected to be very successful and therefore able to fund a range of related products or movies, and hence "prop up" earnings, analogous to the function of a tent pole.

-Tom

Sunday, February 25, 2018

The World’s Fastest Electric Car (1-MegaWatt of Power)

https://youtu.be/Kl55IpJxqq0

Super fast

Painting in 3 dimensions

https://youtu.be/TckqNdrdbgk

I think this would be a lot of fun to play around with. One artist produces pretty crude, wide swaths. The other one, a costume designer, seems to have better control of the technique and produces something more recognizable.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Demo of how a traffic jam starts

https://youtu.be/Rryu85BtALM

This was really enlightening to me. If you have people doing nothing other than driving around in a circle, with nothing else to concentrate on, they still manage to get bunched up and have a perstaltic movement, with the "bunching up section" traveling retrograde at about 20 km/h they say.

Here's another:

The Furniture Farmer

I thought you'd like this idea. Growing furniture produces interesting and probably very sturdy furniture, but it does take several years to make a chair!

https://youtu.be/Hy-Zg8QaITc

How ingenious! Instead of cutting up trees and nailing pieces together, he grows the tree in the shape of the desired object.

This video shows a few of his chairs.

https://youtu.be/D0AIqyNuY_M

Here's another brief documentary on the process:

https://youtu.be/q4GAUOW1_LQ

Friday, February 23, 2018

Stinky tofu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxf5hmDhPLE&sns=em

Have you ever heard of this dish before? The contrast between what people think of the smell, versus the taste, is incredible to me.

Here's the same dish as served in China, which looks a lot more appetizing.

https://youtu.be/cH1ipgNN -48

Thursday, February 22, 2018

The art of medicine

"some elements in the quality of care are easy to define and measure, but there are also profundities that still elude us. We must not allow anyone to belittle ignore them; they are the secret and the glory of our art."

-A. Donabedian, 1988.

Beatboxing to rap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JYPrrXtjZ0&sns=em

-this talented guy finally puts his talent to some music. He's incredibly fast.

I also think the following beatboxing makes the dramatic music more relatable, more human. I wonder of they'll ever use it in movies?

Skydio R1 Autonomous Drone

https://youtu.be/scpcG5Re0 -M

An expert and well-illustrated interview with the co-founder - intelligent and probing questions about its design and capabilities. The design goal was to make a drone that can be flown by a novice, who can actually concentrate on the activity they're doing instead of having to fly the drone.

This $2500 drone has 13 cameras, and autonomously avoids tight obstacles.

It's a long video (22') so here are where you can find the highlights.

At 7:13, he describes that the onboard computer is predicting a full 4 seconds ahead of your current position, to plan its route to follow you. It can also lead ahead of you, looking backwards, and still avoid objects and predict where you're going to go. This is best illustrated at 4:40, with a switchback on a running trail, and a large tree obstructing its path, yet it expertly, autonomously navigates and keeps the runner in frame.

Avoidance: He mentions at 9:34 that they experimented with many types of sensors like laser and sonar, but found that black and white cameras were the cheapest and most useful (light, cheap, and information-rich at 10:19.) The processing of 13 separate images in real time is nicely illustrated at 5:41 and again at 5:57.

The ability of portable devices to recognize objects has come become a thousand times faster in the last decade. This video illustrates that capability:

https://youtu.be/_zZe27JYi8Y

The image quality is a little grainy in this interview video, but it's better illustrated in the company video at 2:26 :

https://youtu.be/Vtlr3Q9JKUo

Here's a good demo of how skilfully the drone follows a skier down a canyon and avoids obstacles. Notice at 2:18 where it avoids an obstacle by going under it.
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