Daily Bytes

I found this article while browsing comments on Joi Ito's article about Letter Ordering. The article talks about a interesting trick our minds plays on us when we are looking at images and expect some kind of continuation to occur and it doesn't.

Minguzzi G. F. (1986). Anomalous figures and the tendency to continuation. This happens when it is "evident" in some way that the region which may be thought of as performing the function of covering the underlying continuation of inducing figure has the quality of a solid surface

For instance check how the left image makes you think there is a circle between the thicker lines while the right image doesn't:

I specially like this one. You can clearly imagine the triangle on this one (you can't even imagine it without the triangle) although there is just a few information to support its existence:

Porto's Casa da Música (House of Music) is one of the most polemic buildings to be made in this city. Part of the 2001 European Capital of Culture program it is yet to be concluded.
The concrete structure is finally ready and to reconciliate Porto's population with the building , free visits are being held at night. Yesterday I was passing near it and decided to take a look.
And I must say I am completely surrendered to the beauty of the building. The exterior is somewhat awkward, but I like it, and the interior is just mind blowing.
The main concert hall has 2 enormous windows (really huge ones), one of them is placed just behind the stage and you can see the Rotunda da Boavista garden from there.
Really worth the visit ...

Jeff's dictionary word of the day missed me by one letter :-)

restive RES-tiv, adjective:
1. Impatient under restriction, delay, coercion, or opposition; resisting control.
2. Unwilling to go on; obstinate in refusing to move forward; stubborn.

From radio.weblogs.com.

Insightfull :-)

Here's what they know. Most men at the party are just too intimated to go talk to the super model babe, assuming she will shoot them down. They self-select themselves OUT of the top drawer pussy. It happens all the time. Ask beautiful women -- NO ONE TALKS TO THEM. Except Alpha Males who know this fundemental truth, so they know ironically that they have an open field and a very HIGH likelihood of scoring.

From halleyscomment.blogspot.com.

It's not that hard after all, or is it? Meg Hourihan gives a few obvious (well it seems not for everyone) tips about it. By the way, nice blog, she made it into my blogroll.

From www.megnut.com.

How to trim an article into a more desirable size. This might come in handy when I start righting some papers for my MsC.

“Brevity is achieved by selection rather than compression.” -- Donald M. Murray

From www.poynter.org.

Sometimes the effect of the web global community still suprises me. Imagine playing a duet with someone you don't know and that doesn't even know you are playing a duet with her.

Shannon Campbell, guitar and vocals. Yours truly on drum, bass and harmony vocals. Pretty cool to do a duet with someone I've never met in person.

From www.scottandrew.com.

Kuro5hin brings us a deep and interesting article about the existence of god. From the article:

There is a brief discussion of epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge), a review of the classical arguments for the existence of God, then a section on the so-called "problem of evil", the question of why God would permit suffering caused by either human nature or natural events.

Also from the article:

...when I was twelve the Catholic school I attended made the mistake of teaching me apologetics. Up to this time, the religious arrangements of the universe had been taken for granted, like gravity or water. Now we were told that you could prove God's existence in four (count 'em) ways.

It took no time at all for me to realise that if you could prove God's existence it was a matter for disputation, not a fact... I struggled out of my bonds, leapt to the window, and with one bound I was free.

This sentece is my favourite:

Kant's refutation is widely, but not universally accepted. The refutation of the refutation of his refutation is left as an exercise for the reader, because things are getting silly by this point and I don't totally understand it myself.

From www.kuro5hin.org.