NewScientist discusses 5 interesting auditory illusions that can help us better understand how the brain works. Each of the five illusions comes with a description of how/why we hear this illusion along with one or more samples.
A couple of these are cool, however several I just don’t get like the ‘Phantom melodies’.
Here’s a cool DIY from Videojug on how to install your own invisible shelf. All you geeks now have a legit use for those 20 year old Fortran and COBOL programming books 
w00t!
More intelligent life has a quick read on how you can tell if you’re being followed.
Snippet:
If you must check for surveillance, don’t keep glancing over your shoulder. Appearing to suspect you’re being followed suggests you’re doing something to merit it. Anyway, if you’re being tailed by a serious outfit they won’t only be behind you, but ahead and to the side as well; there won’t just be one or two people on your case, but a whole team, with others in reserve. Maybe the whole street is following you. And your followers will keep changing their appearances in ways you won’t notice–women particularly can use a scarf, a shopping bag or a coat to alter themselves in seconds.
[via kottke]
The Vanguard 1 satellite has been in orbit now for 50 years as of Monday. It was powered by solar panels and continued to operate just fine from 1958 until 1964 when it’s dinky little transmitter finally pooped out.
However, the little guys has remained in a fairly stable orbit for half a century now, racking up 197,000 orbits around Earth totaling 10 billion km (or 6 billion mi).
That’s not even the cool part. The really cool part is that there’s talk of bringing this pig home and putting it into a museum!
What do Powerball, the planet Mars and sexual innuendos have in common?
Fortune cookies of course!
Filmmaker Derek Shimoda invites us to take a closer look at a little something taken for granted at the end of nearly every Chinese restaurant meal. Who started it all? Was it a Japanese landscape designer, a Japanese confectioner or a Chinese noodle maker? Was its birthplace in San Francisco or Los Angeles? And who writes those fortunes anyway?
The Killing of a Chinese Cookie is a documentary that examines the heated debate over the true origin of the cookie. Here’s the movie’s official site, it has a trailer.
Found via the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival.
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