Here’s a very interesting article about the effect of fonts on readers. A college student noticed that he started getting better grades when he switched from using Times New Roman and Trebuchet to Georgia in his school essays and term papers. The comments on the article are well worth a read, too. Typographers have long been saying that presentation affects comprehension and assimilation of ideas and concepts. This article, although by no means a scientific study, lends a little more credence to the thought that professors might be grading higher (unconsciously) when the papers look more “academic, polished and publish-worthy.”

Conclusion? Use serif fonts like Georgia, Book Antiqua, Palatino Linotype, Perpetua and Garamond in your paperwork if you want to be taken “seriously,” and stay away from sans-serif fonts like Arial and Verdana and Trebuchet. However, if you’re coding websites and want text to look good and be easily readable on the screen (as opposed to in print) san-serif fonts are the way to go. LINK→

Another funky clock. This one slides along from right to left. Just look at the yellow line down the center to read the current time and date. LINK→

Curious about rainbows? How about Moonbows? Or Cloudbows? How about Sunsets, Earthshadow, Ice Haloes, Glories and Coronas? Visit the Atmospheric Optics website for tons of fascinating information about these beautiful phenomena, as well as a gallery of stunning photographs. There’s even a free program you can download from this site that lets you create/model your own ice haloes. A really excellent and informative website! LINK→

The Powers of 10 page at the Molecular Expressions website has a fascinating way to view the very large and the very small with a Java interactive slideshow. It starts at 10 million light years away from the Milky Way galaxy and zooms in by powers of 10 (1 million light years, 100,000 light years, 10,000 light years, 1,000 light years, etc.) down to a tree outside the library of the laboratory that put this tutorial together, and then zooming into a single leaf, and even further down to the subatomic level.

From light years to kilometers to meters to micrometers to nanometers to femtometers, the interactive tutorial runs automatically once it has loaded but you can switch to “manual” mode and control it by clicking arrow buttons. It is neat to run it backwards and “zoom out,” moving away from the small to the large, similar to the opening five minutes of the film Contact. Neat stuff!

P.S. The website has lots of other tutorials as well. A very interesting place to visit. LINK→

“It’s not the thing you fling, it’s the fling itself.” —Chris In The Morning, Northern Exposure LINK→

If you’ve ever wondered about those Chinese phrases the characters utter now and again during the Firefly series or the film Serenity, here’s where you can find out what they’re saying. LINK→

A slideshow from ABC News that shows before and after pictures of major U.S. cities if sea level were to rise 1.5 meters. The pictures and data are courtesy of Architecture 2030 and the maps of the cities are courtesy of Google Maps. LINK→

A nicely done site that displays a large image of the Voyager probe’s golden record—the one that contains the sights and sounds of Earth. Click on the left side of the image to invoke a player that lets you listen to all the sounds contained on the record. Click on the right side to open a slideshow to view all the images. Quite fascinating. LINK→

Related Posts:

• Dark Was The Night
• Voyager Probes Mark 30th Anniversary

“Ten years ago, music was warmer; it was rich and thick, with more tones and more ‘real power.’ But newer records are more brittle and bright. They have what I call ‘implied power.’ It’s all done with delays and reverbs and compression to fool your brain.” LINK→

Everything you ever wanted to know about…nothing. LINK→