DI traffic

I founded Dangerous Intersection back in March, 2006.  That was 4,500 posts and 21,000 comments ago.  Now that we've reached the end of another year, I decided to check DI's traffic.  We're not a huge site but we're not small either.  I thought readers might find it interesting to see the same stats that I periodically check. Here they are (this is a clickable image): As you can see, we receive almost 6,000 daily visitors these days, which is gratifying and a great honor to each of us who write at this site.  [Note: We changed servers in mid-August, so you will not see the full year's stats in this image]. Thanks to all of you have visited DI or commented at DI over the past year.  Our plan is to keep improving and keep growing.  For those who have not commented before, please do consider leaving a comment, especially if you disagree with us. And happy new year to everyone.

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Comparing sizes of large objects and areas of land

Visualizing the size of large objects and areas of land has never been easier. Next time you're wondering how big something is, check out the BBC's website called Dimensions. I put the moon on top of Australia. Then I put the World Trade Center on top of my house. Then I superimposed the Mars rovers over my neighborhood. Then I placed the area affected by the 2010 Gulf Oil spill over New York City. For my finale, I compared the ancient walled city of Babylon with modern day Vatican City. This is a really nice use of Google Maps.

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Impressive math in his head

In December, 2007, Mathemagian Arthur Benjamin put on quite a show at TED. I was looking for a microphone in his ear, but didn't see it, and there frankly wasn't enough time for him to cheat. As the show went on, he look more and more legit and increasingly impressive. At the 11:20 mark, he talked out the process going through his head as his did his on-the-fly calculations, and he revealed that he uses a word/number system to do his magic. It was a phenomenal wrap-up to his show. Arthur Benjamin is a math professor during the day (at Harvey Mudd College). He has written and lectured extensively on math agility and mental math.

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Zooming in on the beach

Earlier, I posted on Powers of Ten. I've long been fascinated by the way numerous relatively similar things can aggregate into macro patterns such as the crisscross that you can see in the photo to the right. Naturally occurring pattern like this abound on the beach.

How is it that sand dunes can naturally form out of random sand grains and random wind? Just because it's difficult to explain doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, of course.

The warm-up act of this post consists of three photos I recently took on a beach. First you see the "sand," then you focus in to see the individual grains of sand. Every one of those grains is different, even though they each look the same from a distance. They are a lot like people in that regard.

The above photos are mere warm up act for this wonderful, mind-stretching display of smallness and largeness. I realize that I featured this display in an earlier post, but it is that well done.

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