rigorousintuition.ca

• TED Talk, Edinburgh, Scotland, JUN2012
  
  YOUTUBE NOTES. David Binder is a major Broadway producer, but last summer he found himself in a small Australian neighborhood, watching locals dance and perform on their lawns—and loving it. He shows us the new face of arts festivals, which break the boundary between audience and performer and help cities express themselves.
  
  TED NOTES. David Binder produced the Tony-winning Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun, with Sean Combs, Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald, and the Broadway premiere of 33 Variations with Jane Fonda. However, he is equally well-known for his Off Broadway accomplishments, including producing the rowdy rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch and De la Guarda, a high-energy show with performers hanging from the venue ceiling and walls.
  
  Binder has also staged events and festivals around the globe, including The High Line Festival (which was curated by David Bowie),The New Island Festival (ten days of Dutch-specific theater, dance and music in New York City) and IBM's 100th Anniversary: Short Ride in a Fast Machine (held at Lincoln Center).

The Consul wrote:Matter is solid because probability patterns are difficult to compress?

• ^ Starry Night (interactive animation), Petros Vrellis
  VIMEO NOTES. I try to visualize the flow of the famous painting “Starry Night” of Vincent Van Gogh. The user can interact with the animation. Also, the sound responds to the flow. Made with openframeworks.
  
  [ UPDATE - feb 20, 2012 ]
  Thank you so much for your positive feedback!
  Due to large number of requests, I am currently working on porting this application to iPad and android.
  
  [ UPDATE - mar 28, 2012 ]
  The iPad2 version is ready! You can watch it here
  Available on the app store

• Speaking of asteroid impacts… [image omitted]
  
  In September 2011, I gave a talk at TEDxBoulder about asteroid impacts, why they are such a big threat, and what we can do about them.
  
  I’m pleased to note the talk became very popular, and the video of it eventually made it to the main TED site; as I write this it has over 800,000 views! It’s gratifying to know so many people have heard this message that I think is critically important.
  
  In even better news, TED has partnered with the Huffington Post to highlight one talk every Friday in what they’re calling TEDWeekends, and they chose my presentation for this week! The video of the talk is available there, and they also posted a new article I wrote about the talk to update it with more current information about this threat from the skies.
  
  The talk is also on Youtube, and why not, here it is just to make it easy on you:

• I encourage you to go to the HuffPo site, though, so you can read my article as well.
  
  I must note that I made a couple of errors in the talk. Two are minor, and outlined in a blog post I wrote at the time. There is one other place I blew it, and it’s a bit embarrassing: I greatly overstated the explosion of the K/T impact, saying it was a million times the entire planet’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. It was actually more like 20,000 times as large (what I meant to say was that it's about a million times the largest bomb ever detonated), which is still a mind-numbing blast capable of global extinctions. As we know that one was.
  
  The good news is that people are beginning to take action about asteroid impacts, and I think that if we continue to take this threat seriously we’ll have a formidable defense against impacts set up in the next couple of decades. Given the statistics of impact frequency, that’s likely to be soon enough to prevent one from turning us into the dinosaurs.
  
  And as a note: If someone ever asks you what the value of space exploration is, just show them a picture of a dinosaur skeleton collecting dust in a museum somewhere. Then ask them how much they want to see our our own bones in such an exhibit.
  
  Space exploration can save the human race. Literally.

• Artists, environmentalists, and scientists explore relationships between technology and our environmental footprint. Transcript on youtube.

• The following excerpt from SpaceX Wiki contains information, some of which may not be current.
  
  Other Contracts | On 2 May 2005, SpaceX announced that it had been awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for Responsive Small Spacelift (RSS) launch services by the United States Air Force, which could allow the Air Force to purchase up to $100 million worth of launches from the company.[57] On 22 April 2008, NASA announced that it had awarded an IDIQ Launch Services contract to SpaceX for Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launches. The contract will be worth up to $1 billion, depending on the number of missions awarded. The contract covers launch services ordered by 30 June 2010, for launches through December 2012.[58] Musk stated in the same 2008 announcement that SpaceX has sold 14 contracts for flights on the various Falcon vehicles.[58]
  
  In December 2012, SpaceX announced its first two launch contracts with the United States Department of Defense. “The United States Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center awarded SpaceX two Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV)-class missions:” Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) and Space Test Program 2 (STP-2), to be launched in 2014 and 2015, respectively. DSCOVR will be launched on a Falcon 9 launch vehicle while STP-2 will be launched on a Falcon Heavy.[59]
  
  SpaceX announced on 15 March 2010 that it will launch SES-8, a medium-sized communications satellite for SES, on a Falcon 9 vehicle in 2013.[60] SES is SpaceX’s first contract for a geostationary communications satellite launch.[60] In June 2010, SpaceX was awarded the largest-ever commercial space launch contract, worth $492 million, to launch Iridium satellites using Falcon 9 rockets.[61]