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✖ Via Domic Davies: “Saddle of venison” from the Fat Duck Cookbook

Domic Davies is responsible for the photographies displayed in the famous Big Fat Cookbook:

In this enormous, beautiful book, we hear the full story of the meteoric rise of Heston Blumenthal and The Fat Duck, birthplace of snail porridge and bacon-and-egg ice cream, and encounter the passion, perfection and weird science behind the man and the restaurant.

Heston Blumenthal is widely acknowledged to be a genius, and The Fat Duck has twice been voted the Best Restaurant in the World by a peer group of top chefs. But he is entirely self-taught, and the story of his restaurant has broken every rule in the book. His success has been borne out of his pure obsession, endless invention and a childish curiosity into how things work – whether it’s how smell affects taste, what different flavours mean to us on a biological level, or how temperature is distributed in the centre of a soufflé. (from the editor’s website)

See more excerpt from the book over at Daily Icon. Visit The Fat Duck official website (before being a book, it’s a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the UK). Learn more about chef Heston Blumenthal on Wikipedia. If you can’t afford the full version of this book (it sells at around 150$ dollars on Amazon) don’t worry : there’s a lowered-price edition of it, selling at around 30$:

The cookbook hailed by the Los Angeles Times as a “showstopper” and by Jeffrey Steingarten of Vogue as “the most glorious spectacle of the season…like no other book I have seen in the past twenty years” is now available in a reduced-price edition. With a reduced trim size but an identical interior, this lavishly illustrated, stunningly designed, and gorgeously photographed masterpiece takes you inside the head of maverick restaurateur Heston Blumenthal. Separated into three sections (History; Recipes; Science), the book chronicles Blumenthal’s improbable rise to fame and, for the first time, offers a mouth-watering and eye-popping selection of recipes from his award-winning restaurant. He also explains the science behind his culinary masterpieces, the technology and implements that make his alchemical dishes come to life. Designed by acclaimed artist Dave McKean—and filled with photographs by Dominic Davies—this artfully rendered celebration of one of the world’s most innovative and renowned chefs is a foodie’s dream. (Amazon)

In any case, be sure to take a look at the Big Fat Undertaking blog: someone actually attempting to do more with this book than looking at the picture.


↳Share Sep 01  link  notes art  science  technology  book  photographer  photography  food  meat  recipes  chef  restaurant  Blumenthal 
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✖ Via Modernist Cuisine. The Art And Science of Cooking by Dr. Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, The Cooking Lab, 2010, 2400 pages (6 volumes) [click for hi-res]
In Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet—scientists, inventors, and accomplished cooks in their own right—have created a six-volume 2,400-page set that reveals science-inspired techniques for preparing food that ranges from the otherworldly to the sublime. The authors—and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab—have achieved astounding new flavors and textures by using tools such as water baths, homogenizers, centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes. It is a work destined to reinvent cooking. (About)

Download a 20 pages preview of the book (PDF). Learn more about the authors (Myhrvold was the first chief technology officer at Microsoft : check his wikipedia page). The 6 volumes are all sold together. They can be pre-ordered on Amazon for a meer 500$


↳Share Aug 28  link  notes art  cooking  food  book  design  technology  flavor  recipes  meat  BBQ  photography  anatomy  object  science 

The purpose of science is to get paid for doing fun stuff if you’re not a good enough programmer to write computer games for a living (Schulman et al. 1991). Nominally, science involves discovering something new about the universe, but this is not really necessary. What is really necessary is a grant. In order to obtain a grant, your application must state that the research will discover something incredibly fundamental. The grant agency must also believe that you are the best person to do this particular research, so you should cite yourself both early (Schulman 1994) and often (Schulman et al. 1993c).
✖ Via Annals of Improbable Research: “How To Write A Scientific Paper” by E. Robert Schulman, Vol. 2, Issue 5, Sep/Oct 1996

About Improbable Research:

>Improbable research is research that makes people laugh and then think. Improbable Research is the name of our organization. We collect (and sometimes conduct) improbable research. We publish a magazine called the Annals of Improbable Research, and we administer the Ig Nobel Prizes.

First spotted via Neatorama.



↳Share Aug 26  link  notes science  communication  research  academia  paper  publication  humor  how-to  knowledge  grant 
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✖ Via Modcult: “Thirty Five Images of Space Helmet Reflections” assembled from found images on the web by designer Eric Ulrich, August 10th, 2010

Check the original post over at Ulrich’s website 3 Ton Gallery. Eric Ulrich is an artist and designer living in San Francisco. (About)


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✖ Via

Metropolis: All New Restauration ― Behin The Scenes

Seldom has the rediscovery of a cache of lost footage ignited widespread curiosity as did the announcement, in July 2008, that an essentially complete copy of Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS had been found. (more)


↳Share Jul 28  link  notes art  technology  film  human  machine  politic  cinema  movie  film  filmmaker  Fritz Lang  BW  woman  girl  robot  social class  science fiction  science  future  retro  vintage 

We have only to speak of an object to think that we are being objective. But, because we chose it in the first place, the object reveals more about us than we do about it. What we consider to be our fundamental ideas concerning the world are often indications of the immaturity of our minds. Sometimes we stand in wonder before a chosen object; we build up hypotheses and reveries; in this way we form convictions which have all the appearance of true knowledge. But the initial source is impure: the first impression is not fundamental truth. In point of fact, scientific objectivity is possible only if one has broken first with the immediate object, if one has refused to yield to seduction of the initial choice, if one has checked and contradicted the thoughts which arise from one’s first observation.
✖ Via Psychanlyse of Fire by Gaston Bachelard, tr. A. C. Ross, Beacon Press, [1938]1987, p. 1

Here’s the original French text:

Il suffit que nous parlions d’un objet pour nous croire objectifs. Mais par notre premier choix, l’objet nous désigne plus que nous le désignons et ce que nous croyons nos pensées fondamentales sur le monde sont souvent des confidences sur la jeunesse de notre esprit. Parfois nous nous émerveillons devant un objet élu; nous accumulons les hypothèses et les rêveries; nous formons ainsi des convictions qui ont l’apparence du savoir. Mais la source initiale est l’impure: l’évidence première n’est pas une vérité fondamentale. En fait, l’objectivité scientifique n’est possible que si l’on a d’abord rompu avec l’objet immédiat, si l’on a refusé la séduction du premier choix, si l’on a arrêté et contredit les pensées qui naissent de la première observation. (éd. Gallimard, coll. Idées, Paris, [1938]1949, p. 9)

Gaston Bachelard was a French epistemologist. Learn more on Wikipedia.



↳Share Jul 26  link  notes communication  epistemology  objectivity  knowledge  separation  relation  perception  idea  world  reality  Bachelard  understand  stand  object  subject  impression  truth  science  philosophy  poetry  psychoanalysis  fire  Prometheus  mediation  media  immediate  observation  contradiction 

‘For me gravity doesn’t exist,’ said Dr. Verlinde, who was recently in the United States to explain himself. Not that he can’t fall down, but Dr. Verlinde is among a number of physicists who say that science has been looking at gravity the wrong way and that there is something more basic, from which gravity “emerges,” the way stock markets emerge from the collective behavior of individual investors or that elasticity emerges from the mechanics of atoms.
✖ Via The New York Times: “A Scientist Takes On Gravity” by Dennis Overbye, July 12th, 2010

In his paper, Dr. Verlinde never wrote “gravity doesn’t exist”. Instead, he wrote:

Note, however, that from our point of view the existence of gravity or closed strings is not assumed microscopically: they are emergent as an effective description. (“On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton” PDF)

To say gravity doesn’t exist is one thing. To say it’s not real is something else. To say it’s an emergent phenomenon is yet another thing. In his New York Times essay, Dennis Overbye observes:

Dr. Verlinde is not an obvious candidate to go off the deep end. He and his brother Herman, a Princeton professor, are celebrated twins known more for their mastery of the mathematics of hard-core string theory than for philosophic flights.


↳Share Jul 15  link  notes technology  science  gravity  existence  reality  constructivism  philosophy  string theory  physic  thermodynamic  relativity  emergence 
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✖ Via Steven Smith: “A Brae New World 2”

About Steven Smith;

“Hatched in the distant galaxy, Long Island, Steve used to bullseye womp rats in his T-16. Steve traveled to Central New York where he studied illustration. After receiving his Associates degree from MVCC, Steve departed to the island of Manhattan where he is now being trained under the high council of the School of Visual Arts. Awaiting battle Steve has sharpened his knowledge in the force and can finish the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, and grows stronger by the day. That’s no moon. That’s Steven Smith.”

↳Share Jun 27  link  notes art  artist  illustration  baby  network  wire  connexion  distopia  utopia  science  science fiction 

Told you so, everyone who has tried to convince me that our elevators’ door-close buttons did anything
✖ Via Marco Arment’s reaction to Nick Paumgarten’s recent piece he wrote for The New Yorker about elevators.

Arment, as do so many others, really wants to believe that the door-close button does nothing in an elevator. There are stories going around about this: door-close buttons aren’t really working in elevators, they are just there so you can feel like you’re in control. For his article, Paumgarten may have got some information about this from Otis representative:

In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. (more)

But there’s no specific references in his article : who did confirm this to him? Is it true about all elevators? All brands? Everywhere? Can an elevator be configured one way while another elevator, identical in brand and model, be configured another way? There’s no hard fact about this in the article. Nothing to prove that all door-close buttons are fake. And nothing to disprove it.

And that’s why Arment reaction is so interesting. He doesn’t know for a fact if the door-close button work or not in a given elevator. But he wants to feel in control : he doesn’t want to be controlled by an elevator’s fake button (eh, come on, nobody’s that stupid : we’re not monkeys, right?). So he will likely dismissed any piece of information telling him the very opposite of what he wants to believe. Just like those who believe in the door-close button will dismiss any delay in the closing of the door as being a sign that they did not controlled its action. Arment, though, will be very interested in information (Paumgarten’s article for example) that reinforce his belief. Just like the door-close button believers will consider any closing door as being an empirical proof of the control they can have on the elevator.

And thus, those who think the door-close button is just a fake are not smarter than those who think the door-close button works. It’s just two different ways to cope with a lack of adequate information, a certain degree of uncertainty : without hard facts about this issue, we’re all but believers trying to stay in control in front of an ambiguous situation.

[Update : July 17th, 2010] The same argument goes for Slavoj Zizek:

Zizek loves to correct viewpoints when precisely the opposite is considered correct. He calls this counterintuitive observation. His favorite thought form is the paradox. Using his psychoanalytical skills, he attempts to demonstrate how liberal democracy manipulates people. One of his famous everyday observations on this subject relates to the buttons used to close the door in elevators. He has discovered that they are placebos. The doors don’t close a second faster when one presses the button, but they don’t have to. It’s sufficient that the person pressing the button has the illusion that he is able to influence something. The political illusion machine that calls itself Western democracy functions in exactly the same way, says Zizek. (Spiegel Online: “Welcome to the Slavoj Zizek Show” by Philipp Oehmke, July 8th, 2010)


↳Share link   notes reblogged from Marco.org communication  technology  elevator  interface  machine  control  computer  intelligence  uncertainty  anxiety  order  ambiguity  information  beliefs  black box  science 

An anosognosic patient who is paralyzed simply does not know that he is paralyzed. If you put a pencil in front of them and ask them to pick up the pencil in front of their left hand they won’t do it. And you ask them why, and they’ll say, “Well, I’m tired,” or “I don’t need a pencil.” They literally aren’t alerted to their own paralysis. There is some monitoring system on the right side of the brain that has been damaged, as well as the damage that’s related to the paralysis on the left side. There is also something similar called “hemispatial neglect.” It has to do with a kind of brain damage where people literally cannot see or they can’t pay attention to one side of their environment. If they’re men, they literally only shave one half of their face. And they’re not aware about the other half. If you put food in front of them, they’ll eat half of what’s on the plate and then complain that there’s too little food. You could think of the Dunning-Kruger Effect as a psychological version of this physiological problem. If you have, for lack of a better term, damage to your expertise or imperfection in your knowledge or skill, you’re left literally not knowing that you have that damage. It was an analogy for us
✖ Via The New York Times: “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1), David Dunning interviewd by Errol Morris, June 20th, 2010

Errol Morris’ essay on the Dunning-Kruger effect.



↳Share Jun 22  link  notes Dunning-Kruger  anasognosia  anxiety  blind spot  cognitive bias  confusion  epistemology  ignorance  information  knowledge  science  unknown  Errol Morris 

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