The Camera Obscura and a neat optical illusion

Posted on March 6, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I thought I’d muscle in on Swans on Tea’s turf for a post and discuss an interesting optical illusion that is based just as much on optics as on the idiosyncrasies of the eye itself. While stumbling through StumbleUpon.com, I found an interesting collection of images at 2Loop.com showing ‘3D Painted Rooms’. An example of this is shown below the fold, from 2Loop…

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Posted in Optics | 9 Comments

Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman: Domestic Darkness

Posted on March 5, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Our next horror master is Mary Eleanor Wilkins-Freeman (1852-1930). I think it is fair to call her a ‘minor’ horror master, simply because horror was not her primary fiction focus. An early feminist writer, she penned numerous novels and short story collections, and was the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Her goal in writing ghost stories seems less motivated to scare than to highlight or illustrate the lives of contemporary women, but she still manages to produce a number of stories of significant power.

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Posted in Horror, Horror Masters | 2 Comments

Slugbuggery takes a new twist…

Posted on March 5, 2008 by skullsinthestars

This post is mainly for my girlfriend: today’s xkcd comic:

Posted in Silliness | 6 Comments

Point Break: Mars!

Posted on March 5, 2008 by skullsinthestars

My mind works in rather silly ways sometimes. Posting about skydiving soon after posting about avalanches on Mars, I got to thinking about how cool it would be to skydive off of a Martian cliff. Then I started to wonder: could you? What would be a skydiver’s terminal velocity in freefall on Mars? Well, with a little prior knowledge and some physics, we can actually make a rough estimate of this!

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Posted in Physics | 6 Comments

Gary Gygax has died

Posted on March 4, 2008 by skullsinthestars

It’s official: Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died.  (My friend PD alerted me to the rumor earlier.)

I credit D&D for much of my current science aptitude and creativity.  I was still in grade school when I took my first foray into the game, adventuring through (like so many others) The Keep on the Borderlands and In Search of the Unknown.  Playing D&D and later role-playing games taught me several important skills: I gained an aptitude in basic math and probability from the rules of the games (what are the odds I’ll be able to hit that AC -8 will o’ wisp?), and the development of adventures for my friends gave my creativity a workout.

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Posted in Fantasy fiction, role-playing games | 4 Comments

A major falling-out with some of my friends…

Posted on March 3, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Alas, I fear I must report that I recently had a major falling-out with some of my friends. We have these sort of events all the time, but this time I managed to catch it on video, which is after the fold…

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Posted in Sports | Tagged | 2 Comments

Mars has avalanches!

Posted on March 3, 2008 by skullsinthestars

For those who don’t read the Bad Astronomy blog, I feel duty bound to share an image taken by the HiRISE camera currently orbiting Mars.  They caught a picture of several avalanches on steep cliffs on Mars:

It’s also worth looking at the full set of pictures, which shows the wide-angle shots and the zoomed-in shots of two avalanches, giving a better sense of how far the orbiter was when the pictures were taken.   Modern technology is quite amazing, isn’t it?  (I may have found my newest desktop background.)

Posted in Science news | 6 Comments

The role of cognitive bias in the existence of crackpottery and quackery

Posted on March 3, 2008 by skullsinthestars

A few recent articles got me thinking about the prevalence of crackpot science and medical quackery in modern society, and I thought I’d just write a post with some general thoughts and observations on the subject.

The articles that got me thinking again: McCain jumps into autism controversy, rejects science and evidence, via The Carpetbagger Report, the ‘return’ of the Lizard Man in Lee County, South Carolina, and Bad Statistical Reasoning about Weather and Climate, via Good Math/Bad Math.

Let me summarize each of these reports briefly after the fold, and then speculate what they (and other unscientific arguments) have in common.

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Posted in ... the Hell?, General science, Science news | 2 Comments

The return of the Lizard Man!!! Or a bear.

Posted on March 2, 2008 by skullsinthestars

CNN has a video reporting that Lee County, SC may be suffering the return of its not-particularly-famous Lizard Man. First sighted in June 1988, a local teen was changing a tire on his car near Scape Ore Swamp when he was evidently attacked by a bipedal green lizard! Via Weird U.S.,

“I looked back and saw something running across the field towards me. It was about 25 yards away and I saw red eyes glowing. I ran into the car and as I locked it, the thing grabbed the door handle. I could see him from the neck down – the three big fingers, long black nails and green rough skin. It was strong and angry. I looked in my mirror and saw a blur of green running. I could see his toes and then he jumped on the roof of my car. I thought I heard a grunt and then I could see his fingers through the front windshield, where they curled around on the roof. I sped up and swerved to shake the creature off.”

The car roof was severely scratched up, and the rear-view mirror damaged, but otherwise no physical evidence was present. A number of other people reported seeing the lizard man, but by August ’88 the sightings had died off. Well, he’s back!

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Posted in ... the Hell?, Animals | 1 Comment

Ramsey Campbell’s The Grin of the Dark

Posted on March 1, 2008 by skullsinthestars

First, a little boasting that will probably impress nobody: I received my limited edition autographed copy of Ramsey Campbell’s 2007 novel The Grin of the Dark! Ramsey Campbell is my favorite horror author and a big inspiration for many of my own horror ventures. I finished the novel last night, and I thought I’d give a few of my thoughts on it.

Quite simply put, Ramsey Campbell disturbs the #@&% out of me! And I mean that as the highest compliment. More below the fold…

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Posted in Horror | 4 Comments