Monthly Archives: February 2005

Name That Movie #28

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Ordinarily I wait for James to post a Name That Movie before I post my own, but this week is so crazy with work that I figure I better post this now while I have a chance.  Hope you enjoy it.  Good luck…

Below is an image from a movie.  If you can guess the movie via that one image, do so, if not, there will be links to further images.  The second image should be more obvious, and the third image even moreso, and so on.  When you are ready to make a guess, make sure you indicate how many images it took before you got it.  Please try not to read the comments before you guess!

That said, here's the first image…

 

GOOD LUCK!!!

 

EDIT: By the way, you can recap all the Name-That-Movie posts on Unbecoming Levity, by use of this neat little page. Remember, if you don't want to wait for me to post the answer, you can always click the “I Give Up” button on the recap page.

Numa Numa — Gary Brolsma

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I know I'm behind the curve on this stuff typically so you all probably already know about Gary Brolsma the “Numa Numa Guy”.  But if not, read on.

I'm sure we all remember the “Star Wars Kid”, a pudgy kid shoots some video of himself pretending to be a jedi fighting with a double-bladed light sabre.  A rather unkind person manages to get ahold of the video and upload it to the internet and suddenly the youngster's private off-kilter antics are being laughed at the world over.  Then came the parody videos where people added subtitles, music, and animated lightsaber blades to the action.  Fortunately, in the case of Gary Brolsma, the story is a lot happier…

Gary is a teenager who lives with his folks in New Jersey.  One night he decides to have some fun with his new computer/camera and shoots some video of himself lipsynching and half-dancing (he never leaves his chair) to a pop song performed by a band from Romania the Republic of Moldova.  He edits in a few pictures of his friends making silly expressions and some crude messages and makes the video available to some friends over the internet.

And of course, they pass it on to other friends, and ultimately people upload it to various servers and within a few days, Gary's funky dance moves are playing on computer monitors the world over.  Gary is invited to appear on television.  There is apparently some discussion of the band that recorded the song shooting a video with Gary.  Blogs everywhere discuss the Numa Numa phenomenon.

Gary's home movie gets mentions and in some cases airtime on The Today Show, MTV, VH-1, CNN and other mainstream TV venues.  He has his own fan club.  Congratulations Gary, enjoy your moment in the sun, you earned it.

Apparently Mr. Brolsma received hundreds of e-mails asking him to edit the video to include only himself dancing!  As a result the site I linked to above (here it is again) offers three versions of the video: the original, the new version with subtitles, and the new version without.  The latter two are safe for your kids to enjoy, while the first one contains some crude humor.

I laughed out loud when I watched Gary dancing, and contrary to what people might think, it isn't because I thought he was a terrible dancer.  What gave it so much appeal for me was that it was very genuine.  I mean sure, it is silly.  Here's a guy enjoying this music and goofing off uninhibitedly as one might do when alone, or when trying to make one's friends laugh.  That goodhearted silliness is infectious, and it's hard not to laugh.

Gary looks like the sort of person that you would want to hang out with–it's hard not to like him… at least based on this performance alone.

The music by the way is “Dragostea Din Tei” by O-Zone.  In English it translates to “Love in the Linden Trees” (lyrics).  The chorus repeats the phrase “nu ma, nu ma iei” which is why it is referred to as the “Numa Numa” song.

NumaClass — A class full of students attempts to do the Numa Dance.

Still Collecting My Wits

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My Collections is an amazing page by a Londoner named Tony.  Tony is a serious collector.  I'm blown away by the variety and sheer volume of things he collects.  Further Tony includes a dozen or so pictures of his collections, which he has placed on display around his home.  If you consider yourself a collector, in all likelihood you'll think your own collection paltry compared to this!  Check it out.

[EDIT:  Link was found via Boing Boing.]

Frozen Martian Sea Discovered and Other Science News

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The European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter has identified a region of the Martian surface near the equator which appears to be a frozen sea covered with dust. Ice is rarely seen on Mars, typically only appearing at the poles. This sea appears to have been protected by the layer of dust atop it…

…The water that formed the sea appears to have originated beneath the surface of Mars, and to have come out through a series of fractures known as the Cerberus Fossae, from where it flowed in a catastrophic flood.

It collected in a vast area about 800 kilometres long and 900 kilometres wide with a depth of about 45 metres. As the water started to freeze, floating pack ice broke up into rafts. These became later covered in ash and dust from volcanic eruptions in the region…

Is that cool or what? Now because you can't actually SEE the ice, there is some question as to whether it is still there, or whether these are simply surface features left behind by the ice. But ESA scientists have a couple reasons to believe that the ice field is intact under the dust. One is the flatness of the region (they feel that the region would have more variation in height if the ice had sublimated away), and secondily the impact craters look “too shallow”.

I gotta believe that if another probe lands on Mars this would be a prime spot. Can you imagine what it would mean for manned exploration of Mars if it turns out that there is a great field of ice near the equator under a few feet of dust? A team going to Mars would only need enough water for the trip. During their stay water could be mined and purified from this ice field.

Reuters, via Yahoo News also carried this story.

Here's some other science-related news stories that caught my eye today:

  • Frozen Bacterium Has Implications for Mars
    (Reuters via Yahoo News) A scientist digs a core sample from permafrost in Alaska. He takes a piece of the ice and when he looks at it under the microscope he sees frozen prehistoric bacteria of a type that he does not recognize. While he studies them under the microscope, the ice melts from the microscope lamp and the bacteria begin swimming around. It turns out that not only is this a new variety of bacteria never discovered before, these particular organisms had been frozen for approximately 30,000 years. That a bacterium can remain alive after being frozen for 30,000 years definitely lends weight to the idea that there could be bacterial life on Mars, frozen in ice fields like the one described above, and reappearing fleetingly during rare instances of melting, or perhaps in certain areas under the Martian surface where ice melts for any of a number of reasons (pressure, heat transfer, or volcanic activity.)

    The organism — a bacterium dubbed Carnobacterium pleistocenium — probably flourished in the Pleistocene Age, along with woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, said Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

    …”When they cut into the … tunnel, they actually cut through Pleistocene ice wedges, which are similar to structures that we see on Mars,” Hoover said in a telephone interview…

  • Orphan Planets: It's a Hard Knock Life
    (Space.com) Not really news, but an interesting read. This article speculates that “rogue” planets, (planets ejected from their solar systems during formation by close encounters with other newborn planets), may be quite common, and comments on whether life of any sort could evolve on such worlds.

    …Suddenly, and by chance, a not-so-improbable encounter takes place. The trajectory of another object, a litter mate, crosses nearby. For several days, the second planet sails large across the sky: silent and dangerous.

    There is no actual collision; no cataclysmic shattering of nascent worlds. But gravitational interaction during this brief encounter changes the motion of both objects; speeding up one, and slowing the other. And now a dispiriting event unfolds… ejected by chance from the solar system of its birth, the planet sideslips into deep space. Every hour, the sun that had promised to warm its surface for billions of years recedes by another fifty thousand miles. In a mere decade, the home star shrinks to a point of light, eventually indistinguishable from other stars of the sky. The planet’s surface cools, its atmosphere condenses, falls, and piles up in frozen drifts. This is an orphan world, wandering without destination in the numbing, frigid desert of deep space…

  • Retreat of Antarctic Ice Shelves Not New
    (Associated Press via Yahoo News) Apparently those who are still trying to claim that global warming isn't even happening have been arguing that the recent breakup of large ice shelves in the Antarctic was a natural event that happens when the shelves get too big. Now the British Antarctic Survey reports its findings that the ice shelves have retreated in the past but only in response to rising ocean and air temperatures.

    …”What this tells us is that ice shelves don't just break up because they get too big — as the global warning skeptics argue,” said Dominic Hodgson, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey and one of the leading investigators.

    He said previous periods of warming — about 9,500 years ago and some 2,000 years to 4,000 years ago — were caused by natural causes, including the ending of ice ages, rather than man's emissions and the ice shelves had been able to reform.

    “This time, the problem is man-made and if we don't take steps, the damage will be worse,” he said. “There is no room for complacency” …

  • Panelists Decry Bush Science Policies
    (Associated Press via Yahoo News) Here's something else that is not new, but we reelected the douchebag so I guess we're gonna reap what we sow. Once again many scientists are expressing deep concern that the Bush Administration is stifling and ignoring scientists when it comes to policy decisions. This is a serious departure from the way previous administrations treated scientific intelligence.

    …Speakers at the national meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science expressed concern Sunday that some scientists in key federal agencies are being ignored or even pressured to change study conclusions that don't support policy positions…

    …Rosina Bierbaum, dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, said the Bush administration has cut scientists out of some of the policy-making processes, particularly on environmental issues.

    …Issues on global warming, for instance, that achieved a firm scientific consensus in earlier years are now being questioned by Bush policy makers. Proven, widely accepted research is being ignored or disputed, she said…

    Under Bush, said Bierbaum, the questioning of the proven science has become more important than finding ways to cope with climate change.

    One result of such actions, said Neal Lane of Rice University, a former director of the National Science Foundation, is that “we don't really have a policy right now to deal with what everybody agrees is a serious problem.”…

  • Tsunami Uncovers Ancient City in India
    (Associated Press via Yahoo News) Anthropology and Archaeology are sciences I don't comment on much, because I am woefully ignorant in this area, but I am definitely intrigued by ancient cultures. That horrible tsunami that killed so many innocent people around the Indian Ocean also appears to have uncovered an ancient city and temple off the coast of the Indian town of Mahabalipuram. Archaeologists have begun to perform underwater excavations of this new discovery.

    …Three rocky structures with elaborate carvings of animals have emerged near the coastal town of Mahabalipuram…

    As the waves receded, the force of the water removed sand deposits that had covered the structures, which appear to belong to a port city built in the seventh century, said T. Satyamurthy, a senior archaeologist with the Archaeological Survey of India.

    …”The tsunami has exposed a bas relief which appears to be part of a temple wall or a portion of the ancient port city. Our excavations will throw more light on these,” Satyamurthy told The Associated Press by telephone from Madras, the capital of Tamil Nadu state…

OU2

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So the other day I wrote an article about OU–in my opinion English's most persnickety vowel pair. Following that article I wrote a quick survey and sent it around to the people in my office who are a fair mix of different cultures, to get their take. The survey had only one question…

I had a (friendly) difference of opinion with a pal of mine about pronunciation (specifically how many pronunciations there are for the vowel pair OU in the English language). And I'd like your help to settle it. No cheating by looking in a dictionary!

Here's the question:

Which sounds most like TOUR?

  1. TAW – ER
  2. TOE – ER
  3. TOO – ER

Thanks for your interest!

– Chuck

PS: It's probably a silly disagreement because dialect plays so heavily into questions like these.

I wasn't expecting too many responses, but within 10 minutes or so 20 people responded and productivity took a measurable dip at my place of work! Here are the results:

  1. (2) TAW – ER
  2. (0) TOE – ER
  3. (16) TOO – ER
  4. (2) none of the above

A lot of us are northeasteners, but we've got a smattering of folks from other areas. One of the folks who chose #1 said it was because of her “New York Accent.” Some of the responses were pretty amusing, as in:

#1 If you are from Brooklyn.
#2 If you are British
#3 If you pronunciate English well.

I assume that was a vote for #3! Here was another of my fave's:

I vote for 3, and as a native of the Midwest, I pride myself on lack of accent. Unless you consult with a certain [omitted] executive, however, who insists that the entire Aerospace division does not pronounce the 'g' in 'ing', but that's a discussion for another day.

Those who picked “none of the above” (which wasn't a choice on the list, which goes to show you what a pain in the ass engineers can be) had interesting responses too. One went on at length about how he either pronounced it TOAR or TWO-ER (except that two-er wasn't exactly right either) and then finally concluded in frustration:

Oddly, (it seems), the more I try to figure this out the less certain I am of how I ever pronounced the damn word!

The other none of the above guy was a British friend of mine who said that pronouncing TOUR with a dipthong was “terribly Scottish” and altogether inappropriate. He said the correct way was to simply pronounce it TUR with a long U sound. It sounded very much like TER to me, when he said it. And then it occurred to me that when I say “TOURNAMENT” I say the TOUR part just like he does. But when I say TOUR all by itself I say TOOER.

Nobody laid claim to #2 but some people identified “other people” who say it that way. One guy said that British people did, and another guy said it was said that way in some “urban and southern regions”. In my mind I can hear a Texan voice saying TOE-ER… I'd have to hear it for real just to be sure.

Later in an AIM conversation with my buddy James we checked answers.com to see what they think the pronunciation of TOUR is. The audio playback is clearly TOO-ER, but their pronunciation guide doesn't show any sort of dipthong–it likens TOUR to TOOK. Not sure about that, but they definitely distinguish it as a separate sound from OO, OE, and AW.

Then I pointed out that strangely their pronunciation guide indicates that caught doesn't rhyme with pot, and James informed me “they don't rhyme.” Which led to a round of questioning to try and figure out what we each thought those words sounded like. For me pot, hot, caught, knot, and naught all rhyme. They all end in AWT. Not so James. For him caught and naught end it AWT, but the others end in AHT. Pot = “PAHT”.

I tried saying it that way and I felt like I was trying to fake a Bostonian accent. I mentioned to James that talking like that made me want to say “aht” instead of “art”. He felt that “Pot nominally rhymes with art.” (No he's not from Boston, before you ask.)

I wracked my brains to think of a word in which I end with the AHT but I couldn't think of any until just now. GOT. But here's the weird thing, if I say “I've got my wallet” then I say GAHT, but if I say “I got to play” (as in, I was allowed to play), then I say GAWT.

Weird.

BTW I found this funny poem by George Benard Shaw which rhapsodizes the vagaries of English pronunciation. It's overly long though.

Dark Galaxy — Not Sci/Fi Horror

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Scientific American reports that astronomers at Cardiff University have discovered a galaxy with no stars–that emits no visible light of its own.  Cosmological science has long predicted these dark galaxies, and indeed the current theories of galaxy formation require that there be quite a few of them, but up until recently none had been found precisely because, well, they're dang hard to see…

Dark Matter

Scientists have been observing galactic motion (including rotation), and have had a teensy problem.  Based on the mass they can actually see (illuminated stars), galaxies don't have enough mass to move the way they do.  And yet the motion of galaxies must be in response to some sort of mass, so what could it be? And where?

So the concept of Dark Matter arrived on the scene, and despite what you've seen on the X-Files and various silly sci/fi shows, it is simply matter that isn't radiating significantly at any wavelength (no light, no heat, no uv, xrays…).  [EDIT: That chair your butt is parked on is dark matter.  Planets, gas, asteroids, meteors... all of it is dark matter.]  It is now widely accepted that most of the matter in the universe (about 90%) is of the dark variety.

It makes sense when you think of it, we've just come to assume when we look up at those bright lights in the sky that we are seeing the universe in all of it's grandeur.  But imagine being in a plane high over New York City at night and looking down, you would see thousands of lights, some moving rapidly, some stationary.  But are you seeing all of the city?  Or are you largely, well… in the dark?  You probably could get a feel for the city, where the roads are, where the major landmarks are, but much of it would simply be a sea of lights.  It's very real, but you can't see it.

In the mundane world, dark matter is easy to understand.  If you are standing on a dark highway at night, and you see two lights at equal height about 5 feet apart approaching you with great swiftness, do you stand there to let them pass on either side of you?  No, you can tell from their motion that they are attached together by a mass you cannot see, and so you get out of the way.

Here's an article on Dark Matter over at Space.com if you want to read more.

Dark Galaxies

Cosmologists have predicted that there should be many galaxy sized masses of dark matter in the universe, and some scientists have been trying to find them ever since.  Several candidates have been found, but all of them were shown to contain stars upon further observation.  The latest, dubbed “VIRGOHI21″, is currently being studied by other astronomers now.  So far none have reported finding any stars in the object.

The object was first spotted as a rotating cloud of hydrogen through the use of radio telescopes in 2000.  The speed of its rotation was intriguing.

…”From the speed it is spinning, we realized that VIRGOHI21 was a thousand times more massive than could be accounted for by the observed hydrogen atoms alone,” comments co-discoverer Robert Minchin of Cardiff University … “If it were an ordinary galaxy, then it should be quite bright and would be visible with a good amateur telescope”…

Not everyone is in agreement yet that VIRGOHI21 is a dark galaxy.  Dark galaxies are envisioned as dwarf protogalaxies that have not yet formed any stars, but which eventually will.  VIRGOHI21 doesn't quite match up with that theory.  It's far too massive to be a dwarf and in an article on the find in New Scientist Magazine, at least one scientist expresses doubts about VIRGOHI21:

When [Cardiff University researcher Robert] Minchin's team measured the speed of rotation of the hydrogen gas in VIRGOHI21, they found that it would have to contain about one-tenth of the dark matter of the Milky Way. But if that is so, it should also have a hundred times as much hydrogen gas as they actually detected…

[Michael] Merrifield [at the University of Nottingham, UK] says that the shortfall in the observed amount of hydrogen may mean that what Minchin and his team have seen is not a dark galaxy after all. “Their story doesn't quite hang together, and I would speculate that they have been fooled by two passing hydrogen clouds.” The difference in speed as one passes the other would give the illusion of rotation, he says.

But Minchin is sticking to his guns. “There are so few known hydrogen clouds that to find two together would be extremely unlikely.” He thinks they may have underestimated the mass of hydrogen in the dark galaxy. If ultraviolet light from distant quasars were ionising a large proportion of the hydrogen atoms, the gas would be rendered invisible to radio telescopes.

Clearly more information is needed, so stay tuned!

Oh You!

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Or more precisely “OU“.  In all of English, this is the letter combination that my daughter finds the hardest.  I don't blame her… I think it's the worst.  Consider the sentence: “Though he may have difficulty, enough thought should  get him through the tournament in four hours.”  To my ear each of those ou's makes a different sound…

  1. though –> OH
  2. enough –> UH
  3. thought –> AW
  4. should –> oouh
  5. through –> OO
  6. tournament –> eh
  7. four –> ooah
  8. hours –> OW

I'm sure I'd probably get some argument from people about the sounds I gave in lowercase, but I stand by them.

Some folks would say that OU in SHOULD makes the OO sound.  It doesn't as far as I'm concerned.  Yes it rhymes with stood, and good, and wood, but none of those make the OO sound either.  If SHOULD made the OO sound, it would rhyme with SHOED, and it doesn't.  As far as I'm concerned that makes it a different sound.

Some folks would say that OU in FOUR makes the OO sound, but it doesn't, because of the “R-interaction”.  The letter R, placed after vowels, often alters the vowel sound.  In my opinion YOU makes the OO sound, and YOUR does not.  BTW, the R-interaction doesn't *always* do this, which is why I included HOUR up there (and don't forget OUR, and SOUR).

Finally there's oddballs like TOURNAMENT, where OUR sounds like ER.  It's another R-interaction, to be honest I don't like to call it the “eh” sound because I don't believe the vowel sound in TEN and TERN is the same.  It's close to the “uh” sound too, but BUN and BURN sound too different to me.  If anything it's a tiny “uh” sound with a tiny “eh” sound afterward.  I think the transition from one vowel to another is called a dipthong, but I'm not sure this qualifies.

So I made a survey of words with OU in them (not exhaustive, that would take forever, just common words.) And my advice to my daughter on the pronounciation of OU, based on that survey is this:

  1. If it is a short word (5 letters or less) it is most likely OW.  If not OW then it is probably OO, but there are exceptions.
     
  2. In longer words the same holds true, except that the UH sound becomes very common for words that end in -OUS.

For the record, here's the list of words I based this on:

OH OO OW UH AW ooah oouh eh
though, mould, moult, shoulder, dough, thorough, burrough through, you, ouzo, coup, soup, bayou, bijou, croup, ghoul, group, raoul, stoup, troup, coupe, loupe, couth, gouda, rouge, route, wound, youth, ouphe tout, our, out, ouch, oust, thou, bout, dour, foul, gout, hour, loud, lout, noun, pout, rout, about, afoul, aloud, cloud, grout, proud, scour, scout, shout, snout, spout, stout, trout, bough, bound, couch, count, doubt, douse, found, fount, gouge, hound, house, joust, lousy, mound, mount, mouse, mouth, pouch, pound, round, roust, sough, sound, sour, vouch, wound, drought, pronounce tough, doug, pious, rough, young, -ous, couple, enough, slough, double, trouble thought, fount, lough, cough, ought, bought, fought, wrought, tour, your, four, pour, amour, court, gourd, mourn, fourth, tour could, would, should tournament, bourbon

Are there other exceptions?  Probably, especially in words that come to English from other languages.  Memorization is probably the only answer for those.  That or a ouija board.  Hah!

Name That Movie #27

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No Name-That-Movie this week over at Aces Full… poor James is sick this week.  Feel better soon, James!  In the meantime you can “get your guess on” here.  Good luck…

Below is an image from a movie.  If you can guess the movie via that one image, do so, if not, there will be links to further images.  The second image should be more obvious, and the third image even moreso, and so on.  When you are ready to make a guess, make sure you indicate how many images it took before you got it.  Please try not to read the comments before you guess!

That said, here's the first image…

 

GOOD LUCK!!!

 

EDIT: By the way, you can recap all the Name-That-Movie posts on Unbecoming Levity, by use of this neat little page. Remember, if you don't want to wait for me to post the answer, you can always click the “I Give Up” button on the recap page.