Archive for January, 2010

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

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In an earlier randform post, the distribution of surplusses was discussed, among others it was proposed to simulate a different way of distributing surplusses in a game-like environment. There were some comments to this:
Sabrina Says:” why don’t you make a business model out of that game prototype?”
Victor Says:
“if you have these dangerous ideas to abolish banks or let them go bankrupt, this is communism!
And
“did you fit in all your parameters?!”

Here a reply to the comment by Victor “if you have these dangerous ideas to abolish banks or let them go bankrupt, this is communism !” :

(more…)

Impossible figures

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

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“End of Liberty”, artist: Endengelman John Glonnriff”

Vlad Alexeev had created a website called Impossible World which collects “impossible figures”, from Vlad Alexeev’s website:

Since some time I became interested in such artworks and figures that look usual at a first sight, but there is something wrong with them if you look at them more attentively. For me, the most interesting such figures are “impossible figures” which make an impression that they cannot exist in a real world.

I wanted to know more and tried to find some information about these figures in the Internet. I found numerous sites containing three or four different impossible figures, but there was no site devoted exclusively to the study of impossible figures. During this pursuit I made the acquaintance of impossible figures of Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd and images of Dutch artist M.C. Escher.

icy and cold

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

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It has been icy and cold the last days in Berlin with a lot of snow (see above image from today). In an earlier randform post I indicated that there is quite a lot to tell about badly built US houses. Like, when living in New England, it happened one cold day that the dishwasher didnt work. It took us quite a while to find the reason. The reason was that a pipe, which was INSIDE the house, however too close to the outer wall, froze. Yes you understood correctly – the insulation of the house was so sparsely that this pipe froze inside the house!

But back to the image – if you ever wondered what these strange signs on lamp posts and trees in Germany may mean (like the blue sign in the image above which you see if you follow the arrow). These signs are giving a detailled description of hydrants and facilities for water, natural gas, district heat and electricity use. So the above sign in the image should indicate a water gate (SCHIEBER in german). This sign methodology makes it considerably easy to detect frozen and/or broken pipes in the soil. Hopefully there will be a change in the US regarding the saving of energy, otherwise one should may be think about developping a sign methodology for frozen pipes inside US houses…