Special relativity is the girl you meet at the dorm party while you’re dating electrodynamics. You make out. It’s not really cheating because it’s not like you call her back. But you have a sneaking suspicion she knows electrodynamics and told her everything.
via Kottke
Musical Relativity at the ArXiv blog
From the paper:
It is known that certain triads sound “happy”, while others sound “sad”.
Why this is so has been a question on minds of many musicologists, composers, musicians and
music lovers for a very long time and theories have been put forward. References to some works in
this area can be found in the recent book by Loy. But the question of “Why?” is beyond the scope
of this work. In this paper, we simply show that under specific physical conditions, a chord sounds
happy or sad depending not only on the observer’s subjective interpretation, but also on his frame
of reference. In other words, the musical “mood” depends on the observer’s state of motion.
In other words, “that note sounds flat!” becomes “you’re moving at the wrong speed!”
Via Faraday’s Cage, a link to a claim (noted as likely incorrect or confused) that Americans have read only six of the top 100 books on the NEA’s Big Read list.
The rules
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you have started but haven’t finished.
3) Place an asterisk by those you intend to read/finish someday.
Several cool ones, along with some standard ones.
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