The Sympathetic String: 201106

2011-06-11

It's all how you look at it

With a few supplies and some careful cutting and pasting, you can build this gravity-defying structure that won the 2010 Best Illusion of the Year Contest. Created by Japanese mathematical engineer Kokichi Sugihara, the magnetlike slopes illusion is cleverly designed to make marbles roll "uphill." It's a trick of perspective.

“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggonit, people like me”

“Accentuate the positive,” the 1944 song by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen cheerfully implored us.

Plug “positive thinking” into Amazon.com, and you will find a never-ending supply of products designed to help us see life through rose-colored lenses.

In fact, however, positivity is not all it is cracked up to be. Although having an upbeat attitude undoubtedly has its benefits, gains such as better health and wealth from high spirits remain largely undemonstrated. What is more, research suggests that optimism can be detrimental under certain circumstances.

2011-06-09

Beyoncé Live at Billboard Music Awards 2011

Run The World (Girls)

Be sure to watch the performance after the testimonials about Beyoncé - at the 3:00 minute mark. It is an incredible combination of live performance and LED staging.

7 Ways to Cultivate Your Creativity - How to unlock your untapped ingenuity

People who are highly creative often have odd thoughts and behaviors—and vice versa.

Both creativity and eccentricity may be the result of genetic variations that increase cognitive disinhibition—the brain’s failure to filter out extraneous information.
When unfiltered information reaches conscious awareness in the brains of people who are highly intelligent and can process this information without being overwhelmed, it may lead to exceptional insights and sensations.

This slide show presents an interesting discussion of what it means to be creative.

3. Connect Brainset:

Here, you relax your focus so that you can see the connections between very different types of objects or concepts. This process of so-called divergent thinking helps you generate multiple solutions to a problem rather than just one. The more ideas you can come up with for a difficult conundrum, the more likely one of them will work. This brainset enables you to "think outside the box," and generate flashes of insight. Use it, for example, to solve the following problem: Connect all the dots in the array pictured above using four straight lines, and without lifting your pencil from the page.

2011-06-08

New relations between the US and UK

Ok, so this obviously isn't a real pic, but it is certainly well done, funny, and even a bit HOT!

The Other Side of Spock

Leonard Nimoy proves that alternate universes really do exist ... in this Bruno Mars video.

The Lazy Song [Official Alternate Version]

Learn where modern Gay Pride started

When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City on June 28, 1969, the street erupted into violent protests that lasted for the next six days. The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world.

This documentary on PBS' American Experience beautifully outlines the history and the context that changed attitudes in America and many other parts of the world.

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.