Category: Musings
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Memory Ln.
Is there such a place as Memory Lane Where you can meet old friends Loved-and-losts No-longer-with-us’s (Are we allowed anymore?) Does it bisect the part of town you grew up in And where you live now Is there a cafe you can sit at For the length of a sigh Is it a space, a…
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Tomorrow is my birthday.
In lieu of giving me gifts or attention, I’d love it if you would support these awesome things instead: 1. Your favorite public radio/TV station and/or show. There are plenty out there! Or you can also give to Public Radio Exchange, a public radio content distributor that strives to make public radio even more public.…
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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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Ohm, I Can’t Resist: My Secret Life as a Circuit Bender
An inventory of electronics projects — past, present and future. I’m not an engineer, nor am I a scientist (not by definition, at least). However, one thing is for sure: I can’t help myself when it comes to building things. I love it! Here are some projects I’ve built and am building. Mini-theremin My latest Tuesday…
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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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The Tale of Two Sine Waves
The most amazing person in the world made me this wonderfully nerdy Valentine, and I’m bragging about it, as I’m entitled to do. Illustrations, graphs, and poem by Joe Diaz. This is the tale of two sine waves One of Teal and one of Blue Both oscillating towards infinity As waves are ‘tend to do…
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Sensors, Uncensored
How open sensor data can help enrich storytelling + bolster the media’s potential role in galvanizing civic engagement with the sciences. By Lily Bui Listen up, journalists. Something interesting is happening, and you should be in the loop. Two words: “sensor journalism.” The term is not entirely new, as it has circulated the blogosphere again…
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The Mapparium
by Lily Bui / @dangerbui It’s 1935. Franklin D. Roosevelt is president. The U.S. population is approximately 127 million. A family’s annual income is about $1,500. Babe Ruth retires from baseball. And the Mapparium opens to the public. The Mapparium is a three-story map of the world housed in the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston and…
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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…