How did Dutch artist Leon Keer create a 3D illusion on a street in chalk? The same way they created perspective in Renaissance Florence

"Computers enable artists to calculate such effects with new precision – just as they enable 3D film-makers to achieve similar illusions. But all these modern wonders go back to the Renaissance when the closest thing to a computer was a set-square. The science improves. The locations change from churches and palaces to cinema screens and street surfaces. Our capacity for wonder lives on." (BBC) - http://bit.ly/zwfkuz

These are becoming more popular these days - it seems - but this video gives a little insight into the creation of an anamorphic street image.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm3bUEePRMU&feature=player_embedded

Spiralling into a trajectory?

"An Australian biology professor is causing a rumble in the academic jungle by suggesting that his country should import elephants and other foreign species into its wild interior.

"Take so many big species out of an ecosystem, and there are bound to be changes all the way down to its bottom.

"'We have a very unbalanced ecology and it's all just spiralling into a trajectory', lamented Prof Bowman."

I would love someone to provide a diagram or equation that would represent this 'spiralling into a trajectory'.

Read more at the BBC: http://bbc.in/wLStPv

Finding the truth and beauty in data

Typically short and superficial but this video clip shows some of the latest uses of technology for visualising data.

Link to BBC Technology page with video

Trains and planes mapped in 'real' time...nice.

Source - BBC News - © 2011 BBC

Language and Olympic ticket maths

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics/13892584.stm

I cannot help but worry about the overall organisation of Olympics ticket sales when I read this:

A Locog statement read: "There has been unprecedented demand for cycling - every session and every price range was oversubscribed.

"Bradley and the team have made cycling one of the most popular sports at the London 2012 Games.

"We have developed an "athlete friends and family initiative" - a first - which enables all cyclists to buy two tickets to every event they compete in, so their friends and family can be there."

I don't quite see how having a 'pair' of tickets allows 'friends and family' to see Bradley Wiggins competing. A friend and a family member per event maybe but...

I still cannot persuade Locog to divulge the system used to allocate tickets in the initial ballot. A refusal of transparency smacks of something to hide to me.

Olympics tickets ballot

Does anyone know exactly how the ballot for tickets was operated - in detail?

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If the secretary of state says it's true, it's probably wrong

From the Guardian Diary:

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 June 2011 22.45 BST

"Gove's law of education. If the secretary of state says it's true, it's probably wrong

"We are going to raise school standards. It is a given. Michael Gove is taking care of it. But he's a broad sweep man. Not so hot on the details, by all accounts. And we see that quite clearly in his quest to push the sciences. "What [students] need is a rooting in the basic scientific principles, Newton's laws of thermodynamics and Boyle's law," he told the Times. Which would have been a revelation to Newton himself. For he was responsible for the law of motion, not thermodynamics. Still, the day will come when everyone knows the difference and then all credit will go to Gove."

Oh dear, oh dear...