Category: Madness
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When Life Gives You Lemons, Make a Crude Electrochemical Battery
Not quite the saying that we’re all familiar with, but it does add some flavor to it. Here’s another Tuesday night project that I wound up immersed in: the lemon battery. I’ve seen this project posted in a multitude of places (along with the notorious potato battery), but I wasn’t quite sure how it worked.…
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Science, Sound, Tattoos
First tattoo, my design. Here’s the story behind it. Tycho Brahe’s Universe The main part of the design is the Tycho Brahe model of the universe, a compromise between the geocentric (Copernican) and heliocentric (Ptolemaic) models. Brahe believed the Earth was at the center of the universe and that the sun and moon orbited the earth,…
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Pop Art: How Popcorn Works
I had never seen popcorn pop, so I decided to take the kernels outside of the bag and heat them over a stove. It’s a little creepy to watch them start expanding and then rupturing, but it quickly becomes amusing and subsequently delicious. popart from Lilian Bui on Vimeo. If you’re wondering how popcorn “works,”…
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Unique New York
I’ve been to New York City before. But just because you’ve gone once, twice, or even twenty times, it doesn’t mean you’ve been to New York City. Every single trip I’ve taken has been entirely different from the last, and that’s because this urban jungle lends itself to everything from serendipitous encounters to the inexplicably bizarre–the kind of…
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Desert Deviation
“Madness plants mirrors in the desert.” ― Floriano Martins Quiet. That’s what I miss the most about the desert. There’s no Boston banter, no city litany, no traffic tumult. Just open space and skies deeper than your eyes can reach. Desert protagonists and antiheroes alike will tell you that once you spend enough time there, eventually,…
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Dome Diving on Cape Cod
There’s nothing like breaking and entering. Before you cast any judgment, hear me out. Imagine discovering a place seemingly untouched by other human beings for an indeterminate length of time. You spot it from the road, overgrown by the trees around it. An allure lingers despite its abandon. Normal people might see it and think,…
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Creative Ebb, Creative Flow
A few years ago, a good friend of mine gifted me my first Moleskine notebook on New Year’s Eve. Since then, I’ve always kept one close at hand, no matter where I go. As someone who constantly consumes information, my brain is oftentimes an unreliable palette on which to store information. These tiny notebooks have…
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CARMA: What Goes Around Comes Around (In Space)
A radio story for the new Lily Bee Music Podcast Music and sound clips from this episode: Hoagy Carmichael – “Stardust” Bill Nye the Science Guy (PBS) – Outer Space ACME School – radio waves Helpful links: How Radio Astronomy Works Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) and CARMA Official Site “Star Sailor” – original song…
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Southwest tour wrap-up, April east coast tour, and other announcements
Traveling becomes something entirely different when you make people — as opposed to places — your destinations. Before this tour, I’d never driven down the desolate, desert road leading into and out of Phoenix, AZ, or walked through downtown Austin’s motley portrait of nightlife on a Thursday evening. I never could have imagined the modest…