Mostly Random Technology Bytes

There are many compelling animations on the web, and some have entered the realm of popular culture like Bush/Kerry singing movie from 2004. Anyway, here are a few of my other favorites, which for want of a better way of doing it, I’ve posted as a top 5 countdown.

5. Sungem GIF Animation

This site contains a set of beautifully animated GIFs in the style of Japanese anime. I don’t think that there is much point to them, but the are wonderful to look at, and they have a bewitching, almost slightly hypnotic quality.

4. Eating in Space Kills

A scene from the movie Stars Wars (I suppose that I’m supposed to say Stars Wars IV: A New Hope) "enhanced" with a few digital extras. Why didn’t George Lucas think of that?

3. Mario Communist Edition

This one’s been doing the rounds rather a lot recently, but there’s a wider (tongue-in-cheek) meme that perhaps the 80s video game Super Marios contained subtle communist propaganda.

For more on the meme check out:

• Super Mario Communist - a nice Flash animation explaining the theory
• Is Mario A Communist? - a whole web site dedicated to theory

2. Pointer Molestation

This is a small GIF animation, but you can’t take your eyes off it. Even when you know that it loops (and the loop is very short), some part of your brain will try to convince itself that it is going to change in a moment and that you should keep watching.

1. Blue Ball Machine

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this is the world’s greatest animated GIF. It’s accompanied by annoying, but strangely appropriate music. Be sure to maximize your browser to get the full effect.

By the way, here’s another variant on the same idea.

A few days ago, I wrote an article about the contaminated fuel problem in the UK, speculating that the cause might be silicon. Well, it was silicon and the story has faded from the TV news… but there’s still plenty to say about it: What happens to motorists whose cars were damaged? Who pays for the repairs? How come garages are putting the price of petrol up as a result of this problem^*? Rather than just forget about it, or let it take over my blog, I’ve thrown up a quick new site ContaminatedFuel.com, intended to follow the ongoing story. Hopefully it will be of some help, or failing that, at least some consolation, to those motorists whose cars suffered damage.

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^*Yes I know, laws of economics, supply and demand, blah, blah, blah-de-blah-blah, etc. But just because there is an economic explanation, doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.

One of the great mysteries of the modern world is the Fermi paradox (Well, "great" might be a slight exaggeration, I personally don’t stay up nights worrying about it - and I doubt too many people do). The short version of the Fermi paradox is basically "Where are they?", with the "they" referring to extraterrestrial civilizations.

To put it another way, there are 250 billion (2.5 X 10¹¹) stars in the Milky Way, and 70 sextillion (7X10²²) stars in the visible universe. 70 sextillion is an unimaginably huge number. And the point is that even if intelligent life is exceedingly rare, some of the stars ought to contain extraterrestrial civilizations. But no extraterrestrial civilizations have been detected.

There are lots of theories that attempt to explain the Fermi Paradox, and many of these are used in science-fiction stories. But here’s a short-film, hosted at YouTube, about a very different one, based on a Terry Bisson short-story.

For some more serious (but still lots of fun) science-fiction stories about the Fermi Paradox - as well as many other interesting ideas - I recommend Stephen Baxter’s Manifold books.