(thanks BoingBoing!)
And here’s a post how robots are now replacing actors on stage in Japan.
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Category: Bowl Of Noses
Sniffing out the stuff that kids really get best
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What is it, really? The Transistor
Transistors make up silicon chips. But what are they, really? This is one of those questions that had the stink of unknowing with it. The nose did not know. Luckily, we found this nifty Explain-It-All Chart on the BBC News site in article about the founder of Intel, the big chip manufacturer.Transistors are basic electronic switches found in silicon chips
- Each transistor can be switched on or off, representing a “1” or “0”, known as binary code
- All computation is done using different combinations of these two outputs to do calculations
- The number of transistors on a chip determine its speed
- Modern chips contain millions of transistors allowing them to execute millions of calculations per second
- The tiny devices consist of a source, drain and gate
- A voltage applied to the gate and drain turns the device on
- Removing the gate voltage switches it off again
Pretty simple, right? And they’ve been putting more and more of those transistors on chips at an incredible rate, making our computers go faster and faster.
Pretty neat, right? Well, we thought so. Maybe not as neat as a fast car, but neat nonetheless.
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Flea Circuses
Back before computers, before DVDs, even before television and the movies, when people wanted to kick back and be entertained they went places and saw things. Sometimes they were shows, sometimes clowns, and sometimes they were trained insects.
Flea circuses were small scale shows where actual fleas were fastened to tiny vehicles and forced to race. And other stuff like that. They date back to 1833 and were still operating in places as late as 1970.
If you care to look, check out this website. Or just watch here:
If your hunger for fleas is still running wild, oobject has ten flea circus contraptions for your review.
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Evolution Of Technology
True, true this is another commercial. We have a complicated relationship with commercials in The Bowl.
What else is given the budget to make something like this other than something they think can sell sell sell? And you need a big ‘ol budget to create robots like these. So we just grin and bear it, and think it is kind of swell that we get 48 seconds of robos for free. Plus we get a little foreign language lesson on top of it.
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Woody Is Mershed
We always hesitate when we want to put a “mersh” in The Bowl, but it is always a good place to source some animation. Here we get three great loves: Mr. Guthrie, 2D animation, and papercraft, so who are we to be purists?
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Muppet Dog On Skateboard
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Fatworld!
Fatworld is a free downloadable video game. It looks fun, and may teach something too (oh no!).
Their website explains:
FATWORLD is a video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S. The game’s goal is not to tell people what to eat or how to exercise, but to demonstrate the complex, interwoven relationships between nutrition and factors like budgets, the physical world, subsidies, and regulations.
It’s one thing to explain that daily exercise and nutrition are important, but people, young and old, have a very hard time wrapping their heads around outcomes five, 10, 50 years away.
You can choose starting weights and health conditions, including predispositions towards ailments like diabetes, heart disease, or food allergies. You’ll have to construct menus and recipes, decide what to eat and what to avoid, exercise (or not), and run a restaurant business to serve the members of your community.
FATWORLD comes with numerous foods, recipes, and meal plans, or players can create their own from the foods in their pantry or their imaginations.
