The opening chord to "A Hard Day’s Night" is also famous because, for 40 years, no one quite knew exactly what chord Harrison was playing.

Four years ago, inspired by reading news coverage about the song’s 40th anniversary, Jason Brown of Dalhousie’s Department of Mathematics decided to try and see if he could apply a mathematical calculation known as Fourier transform to solve the Beatles’ riddle. The process allowed him to decompose the sound into its original frequencies using computer software and parse out which notes were on the record.

It worked, to a point: the frequencies he found didn’t match the known instrumentation on the song. “George played a 12-string Rickenbacker, Lennon had his six string, Paul had his bass…none of them quite fit what I found,” he explains. “Then the solution hit me: it wasn’t just those instruments. There was a piano in there as well, and that accounted for the problematic frequencies.”

“Music and math are not really that far apart,” he says. “They’ve found that children that listen to music do better at math, because math and music both use the brain in similar ways. The best music is analytical and pattern-filled and mathematics has a lot of aesthetics to it. They complement each other well.”

More on the Mystery Beatles Chord

Futuristic Atlantis Hotel In Dubai

Looks a lot like the one here in the Bahamas. Look forward to visiting both. ;-)

More Atlantis

3D Printers Now as Cheap As Laser Printers Were

We do go on about the possibilities of downloadable designs, where you can pick the best from around the world and get it printed up at some form of 3D Kinko that might some day be in every neighbourhood.

Perhaps that vision isn't wild enough; the Ponoko blog notes that the desktop publishing revolution was born when the Apple LaserWriter was released in 1985 for $6995. Now Desktop Factory is launching a 3D printer that isn't much bigger than that laser printer, and at $5,000 in 2008 dollars a whole lot cheaper.
More about 3d printers.

NSIG

NISG: Not Something I'd Google

For example:
- Britney Spears New Single: NSIG
- Pequena Sarah Palin: NSIG
- 2G1C/ Goatse/ Lemon Party: NSIG

Any other examples?

Face Music

Daito Manabe:Direction,programming and composer.

Yeti (Bigfoot) Footprints Found in Nepal by Japanese Explorers

Footprints from the legendary Yeti have been found in the snow-covered slopes of the Himalayas, a Japanese team of explorers claimed today.

The adventurers could hardly contain their excitement as they told of finding the 8in-long footprints which bore a close resemblance to those of humans.

But, said team leader Yoshiteru Takahashi, they were not human - neither were they the footprints of wolves, deer or snow leopards.

Stories of the Yeti - also known as the Abominable Snowman - have been passed down through generations of Nepalese families whose ancestors have told of a half-man, half ape, living in the Himalayas, where the world's tallest mountain, Mt Everest, is located.

The yeti can be considered a Himalayan parallel to the Bigfoot legend of North America.

In 1954, the Daily Mail reported the discovery of hair specimens from what was said to be the scalp of a Yeti. Professor Frederick Woods Jones, an expert in human and comparative anatomy, failed to reach a conclusion, but said the dark brown hair was not from a bear or an anthropoid (manlike) ape.

More Yeti at the DailyMail

Transformers Economics

From sinfest.

The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are 'da' and 'ja', in some order. You do not know which word means which.

Details here (don't cheat!)

Real Transformer: The F-35B

Via Gizmodo, more details there.

The one depicted is the X-35 [the prototype that won the contract for the Joint Strike Fighter and became the F-35]. I don’t know who posted it on YouTube, but the level of NDA’s was substantial where we were not even allowed to showcase it on our demo reel.

The above looks like CGI though (not real footage), unlike the one below:



According to a friend, the problem with the vertical takeoff is exhaust. The engine tends to stall since there's no oxygen to draw in, so they need special absorbing landing pads.

Black Silicon Discovery: Digital Photography, Night Vision, Solar Cells, etc. Improved

With the accidental discovery of "black silicon," Harvard physicists may have very well changed the digital photography, solar power and night vision industries forever. What is black silicon, you say? Well, it's just as it sounds. Black silicon. It's what this revolutionary new material does that's important, starting with light sensitivity. Early indications show black silicon is 100 to 500 times more sensitive to light than a traditional silicon wafer.

To create the special silicon, Harvard physicist Eric Mazur shined a super powerful laser onto a silicon wafer. The laser's output briefly matches all the energy produced by the sun falling onto the Earth's entire surface at a given moment in time. To spice the experiment up, he also had researchers apply sulfur hexafluoride, which the semiconductor industry uses to make etchings in silicon for circuitry. Seriously, he did this just for kicks and to secure more funding for an old project.

“I got tired of metals and was worrying that my Army funding would dry up,” he said. “I wrote the new direction into a research proposal without thinking much about it — I just wrote it in; I don’t know why," he said.

The new experiment made the silicon black to the naked eye. Under an electron microscope, however, the dark sheen was revealed to be thousands, if not millions, of tiny spikes. As we said above, those spikes had an amazing effect on the light sensitivity of the wafer. Mazur said the material also absorbs about twice as much visible light as traditional silicon, and can detect infrared light that is invisible to today's silicon detectors.

Black Silicon at Gizmodo

More Mind Blowing Sun Photos & More

Click for More Sun Images.

How the markets really work (from 2007)

How did these comedians see it coming when financial reporters did not?
From here.

Beautifful Sun Spot Picture

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0211/sunspot_swedish_c1.jpg

McCain Refuses to Shake Hands With Obama

I guess this makes sense in a world where you "refuse to sit down and face your enemies without preconditions"? Well... here is a "sit down" with rules and I'd say some pre-conditions as well... Then McCain acts like a child without manners? Shameful.

September Madness: Sports and the Economy

Click for the big version.

Lil' Bill O'Reilly

Funny! The Kid's pretty good...