Regruntled.com

From the same people who built the Piano stairs.

Arthur Ganson’s sculpture, moving at one end, fixed at the other:

This machine was inspired by dreaming about gear ratios and considering the unexpected implications of exponential powers.

Each worm/worm gear pair reduces the speed of the motor by 1/50th. Since there are 12 pairs of gears, the final speed reduction is calculated by (1/50)12. The implications are quite large. With the motor turning around 200 revolutions per minute, it will take well over two trillion years before the final gear makes but one turn. Given the truth of this situation, it is possible to do anything at all with the final gear, even embed it in concrete.

Which one of these is not like all the others?  See Tanya Khovanova’s blog for the answer.

Narcissism: when one grows too old to believe in one’s uniqueness, one falls in love with one’s complexity (John Fowles)

I’m reading The Ego Boom, by Steve Maich and Lianne George.  Has it really been 30 years since Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism?  Maich and George bring the narcissism theme up to date.

Information technology makes possible mass customization, which enables an illusory sort of narcissism.  Everyone is special, so everyone deserves a customized coffee or a customized burger.  We passively select from a menu of choices designed by someone else, and gain the illusion of having done something creative.

Another experiment.