Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Unequally Yoked

Home
Catholic
7 Quick Takes (12/13/13)

7 Quick Takes (12/13/13)

Last updated on: December 13, 2013 at 1:18 am by Leah Libresco

7 Quick Takes (12/13/13) 2013-12-13T01:18:21-05:00 Leah Libresco

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

— 1 —

The first time I ran into Google Hangout’s facial recognition feature, I had a lot of fun trying to find the limits of what it would recognize as a face. I grabbed photos, drawings, etc and held them up while ducking below my webcam’s sightline and then trying to compete with the faux-face to try to suss out how the algorithm decided. But Neil Yager has coded up a prototype that wouldn’t be fooled.

He built a camera/infrared sensor that recognizes faces and then double checks whether those faces have a realistic heat signature. His detector successfully notices photographs and people wearing silicon masks as faux faces. He walks through the how and you can skim or dig into the code yourself.

— 2 —

About two weeks ago, people surrounded the Flatiron building in New York City for a live demonstration of the Pythagorean Theorem. The event, hosted by the Museum of Math, had volunteers line up on the sidewalk, measuring the perimeter of the building at street level and checking that the squares of the two legs really did equal the square of the hypotenuse.

I wonder what good math events I could organize at home. Of course, the in situ math I love best would still be walking the bridges of Königsberg. Though, due to the bombing of the city in WWII, there now exists an Eulerian path for the city.

— 3 —

And if I were travelling through Europe on a science/math safari, I would have to stop by the Alnwick Poison Garden (h/t Leigh Bardugo). This English garden has deadly plants, some so dangerous that they’re behind screens, to prevent passerby from touching them and succumbing.

Plus, this is what the gates look like:

— 4 —

You’d hate to see any of the plants from that garden at the dinner table, but that’s not the only kind of dining treachery to fear. There’s an awesome game theory dinner, also occurring in England.

“The Betrayers’ Banquet is an experimental dining experience from London, where guests play the iterated prisoner’s dilemma to win a better or worse meal. Each of the 48 participants is served eight different courses over two hours; two starters, four mains and two desserts. While all dishes are edible, their allure differs considerably between the top and the bottom of the table; those at the top will enjoy a fine dining experience to match any in London, while those at the bottom will grapple with pickled walnuts, chicken’s feet soup, lumpy gruel, and worse.”

At regular intervals during the dinner, guests are invited to play the prisoner’s dilemma with their opposites. If they both cooperate, they move up the table by six places. If they both betray, they move down the table by six places. If one cooperates and the other betrays, the betrayer moves up ten places, and the other down ten.

— 5 —

When I read The Girl with a Pearl Earring, I loved all the descriptions of the how of Vermeer’s painting. I liked seeing what minerals were ground for what colors and how the colors were layered in the composition. And I quite enjoyed the cameo by Leeuwenhoek with his camera obscura.

That last is a little controversial. Art historians still debate whether Vermeer used the instrument to help him achieve his realistic painting. But Tim Jenison has applied a little empiricism. He used a camera obscura to try to replicate Vermeer’s hypothetical technique and to see how it fell short or matched some of the quirks of the master’s style. Penn and Teller ended up chronicling his work for a documentary (trailer below):

But the data I found most charming was this excerpt from a Vanity Fair feature on the project:

For his experimental purposes—using a device that Vermeer himself could have made—Jenison decided that modern lenses are too fine. So he learned how to make lenses himself, to melt and polish glass using 17th-century techniques. Jenison painted only with pigments available in the late 1600s and learned to mix them himself, including grinding lapis lazuli stones (“they’re kind of poisonous,” he points out) to make ultramarine blue.

Vermeer painted The Music Lesson in a first-floor room in his mother-in-law’s house. “We know, historically, everything about that room in Delft. And this building”—Jenison was now referring to his little one-story warehouse in Texas—“has the same north-northwest angle to the sun.” Because the buildings across the Oude Langendijk canal would have blocked some of the light, Jenison erected false Dutch façades outside on the San Antonio pavement. Inside, piece by piece, he constructed a life-size reproduction of Vermeer’s room—wooden beams, checkerboard floor, plastered walls. He had the porcelain platter made, and the pitcher on it, by a potter in Delft. He made the chair himself, copying one in a Delft museum. He also built the prop harpsichord. “I started off going as authentic as possible,” Jenison says. “I realized I could commission or learn to make stained glass. But I decided I didn’t need another major hobby at that point in time. I cheated on the glass.” The stained-glass windows are in fact stained Plexiglas. All the physical preparations took about eight months.

— 6 —

Also from the annals of Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery, the students at Harvard Med have brilliantly pastiched “What Does the Fox Say?” with “What Does the Spleen Do?”

(You can tell you’re too excited about malaria if you keep involuntarily hissing “It filters blood! Hence hyperspleenia in malaria patients!” during the video).

— 7 —

And finally, if you’re looking for a nerdy philosophy shirt for a friend (or yourself) during the holidays, I just want to remind you about the existence of the Trolleyology and Allegory of the Cave my friends and I designed and sell on Spreadshirt.

And, this week, we added a new shirt to the lineup, when a friend asked for a shirt that would indicate that he cooperated on Prisoner’s Dilemmas and I made him this:

And speaking of cooperating, you’d be doing me a big favor if, when you’re buying gifts on Amazon, you get to Amazon by clicking any of the book links on last week’s Quick Takes. Your prices remain the same, but I get a small percentage of Amazon’s take for referring you. And I’ll probably use it buying more books to review.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

I’m on (a belated) day nine of a novena to St. Isidore, my saint for the month, and readers are welcome to join me.

7 Quick Takes

Previous Post

December 12, 2013

Design a new Ideological Turing Test for a much improved instrument

Next Post

December 14, 2013 Hold Your Slippery Slope Toboggans!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 7 Quick Takes Apologetics Atheism Book Conversion Debate Tactics Debates Epistemology/Philosophy Housekeeping Ideological Turing Test Marriage Morality in Practice Parsing Catholicism Possibly Heretical Radio Reviews/Recommendations Sequence Index Spiritual Practice Uncategorized

Select a Month April 2017 March 2017 January 2017 December 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which parable illustrates God's joy over one sinner who repents?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The Ten Virgins The Lost Sheep The Sower The Two Sons