Is It Blue or Green?
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
When I was studying psychology, one of my books gave a classic example of how a shade of gray appears lighter or darker based on the shade of surrounding colors. I had to fold the page over to convince myself that the gray blocks were indeed the same. The linked article is an example of this phenomenon using colors, and it’s pretty unbelievable at first glance. The blue and green spirals are actually the same color. Both cases are examples of the fact that our perceptions (how the brain interprets its inputs) can be radically different from reality.
Note: in the example with the shades of gray, I used an image editor to extract pieces of the two squares, and they are indeed the same exact color, even though one looks black and one looks white. I dragged a piece of the “black” square over to the shadowed area and it changed color before my eyes. Amazing.
The linked article has ten extreme locations in the United States. (Actually a couple of them are the exact opposite of “extreme,” but it’s still a neat list.)
Here’s an interesting concept. You know all the power that radio and TV stations use to broadcast signals over the airwaves—most of which just dissipates away? This prototype Nokia phone uses that energy to recharge its battery. The power isn’t very much and won’t necessarily keep the phone fully charged while being actively used, but it would at least make the battery last longer between “wired” recharges. Expect to see this technology go live sometime in the next 3-5 years.
Construction has started for 
Dealing with infinity is always an interesting proposition. For instance, if you have a line that extends to infinity in either direction, and you cut the line at an arbitrary location, then you have cut the line in half. And what is infinity divided by infinity? If I recall my college math classes correctly, it can be zero, infinity, or a real number, depending upon the relative size of the infinite values. And did you know there are different types of infinity? I never got very far into this, but mathematicians have defined at least two that I know of: 
In Indonesia, an active volcano emits vapors with high sulfur content. The 
Remember that election back in November 2008, the one where Barack Obama became President? Ancient history, right? Well there was also a 
