Once you’re wondering about physical human abilities, you’ll be pleased to know that not only are our opposable thumbs the key to important weapon grips, but we actually have the most accurate throw in the animal kingdom (elephants are actually pretty decent with their trunks, too). Of course, an advantage of range works fine against animals, but against other humans, you can suffer the same death-from-a-distance fate.

Below is an infographic to give you a sense of the distances some of humanity’s most famous ranged weapons could reach, and below that, a bit of a tour of what they do and what they’ve done. I’ve left out a lot of very cool ranged weapons like the shuriken, the dart, the throwing axe, guns, cannons, and others, but I think the ones I chose cover a nice range of… range.

Javelin/Spear

Although a projectile classic, the javelin is the only weapon on the list that doesn’t need to go airborne to be useful. It is indeed a nicely-ranged melee weapon, but with a good throw a javelin can pierce an enemy 30m away. We know the javelin more familiarly as an Olympic event, as part of a decathlon. Of course, the overwhelming majority of -athlon events are derived from their respective military histories.

English Longbow

The bow and arrow has been a go-to ranged weapon for thousands of years, touching hunting and warfare all over the world. But when you think of the bow and of range, nothing is more iconic than the British longbow. Made most famous at the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years War, it was most effective with a mass of longbowmen raining arrows over an advancing (in this case French) army. It was decently accurate at shorter ranges, but accuracy was and could be sacrificed when thousands of arrows were involved.

It’s hard to know exactly how far they could shoot, since none survived from the Hundred Years War until today. Indeed, despite taking up to four years to make, they weren’t designed to last, and were rather disposable, intended to be replaced. While archers are often seen as the pussies of the medieval battleground, firing a longbow wasn’t easy, and typically an archer would shoot a maximum of four arrows per minute, and you’d have to be in good shape to be effective.

Trebuchet

If you’re ever looking to launch 350 lbs in style, look no further than the trebuchet. Probably the classiest of the catapult family, the launcher works by the dropping of a counterweight that whips the launching arm forward. Catapults do come in many shapes and sizes and with different ranges, but the trebuchet is one of the most famous due to its mechanisms that allow greater range, and its ability to launch objects as huge as used trucks.

Not as much designed to land on people (wouldn’t that suck), the trebuchet was mainly a siege weapon, designed to launch over stone walls as opposed to onagers that would try to knock down the walls. Other uses involve launching corpses over the wall to spread plague, and, presumably, creep the crap out of enemies.

Here’s a video of some rich English jackass wasting pianos by setting them on fire and launghing them with a trebuchet:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sling

The sling is probably the most underrated projectile weapon in the list. While it can’t keep the size or shape of projectile of some of the others, it gets fantastic range. Essentially, the sling acts as an extended arm, so when you think of it launching, imagine a massive dude with arms as long as a normal person’s arms plus the length of the sling. Get your technique down, and you can coast with your old-school rock launcher. It’s also pretty low budget and doesn’t take a genius to fashion.

Here’s a pretty cool video of a sling in action, though not nearly at the max range:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ballista

While longbows replaced the piercing target aspect of the ballista, and trebuchets and other catapult-like weapons replaced it on the siege front, the ballista remains a rather hardcore piece of ranged weapon history. Ancient Greeks were the first to make good use of them, and use continued through the Roman Empire, fading as the empire faded.

Paris Gun

The Paris gun was used by Germans (in Germany) during World War I to shell Paris. Based on naval guns, the range was so unexpected that the French were convinced they had been bombed by a zeppelin or something, even though the skies were empty.

The gun was dismantled before allies could capture it, so don’t expect to see plans for how to build one yourself. After the Paris Gun’s era, longe range warfare switch from big guns to rockets.

Surface-to-Surface Missiles

The first surface-to-surface missile was the German Fieseler Fi 103, or V1, used in the Second World War, although rocket technology did exist as early as the 13th century. Since then, they have evolved to the globe-spanning monsters of projectile mayhem that they are today. It’s one thing to dominate a battlefield with range, but the word “intercontinental” in the name of a weapon brings up a whole new kind of fear.

Of course missiles come in air-to-air, surface-to-air, and other place-to-place combination forms, but to keep on an even playing field with the other weapons for range’s sake, I’ve limited the scope to surface-to-surface alone.
Some surface-to-surface destruction:

Click here to view the embedded video.

There you have it. So the next time you hear of psychoboy Kim Jong-Il testing out a new missile, shudder as normal, but do remember how far we’ve come, and how far we’ve launched.

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The speed-dating formula is familiar: women sit at tables around a room, and men move from table to table for a short interaction with each woman. Afterwards, everyone either checks “yes” or “no” to indicate their interest in a second date. Studies of speed-dating align with the fundamental principles of evolutionary psychology: women are much more selective than men when it comes to mate choice since women pay greater reproductive costs by making the wrong choice. Men check “yes” for a larger number of women than women do for men.

However, Eli J. Finkel and Paul Eastwick of Northwestern University decided to quite literally turn the tables in the speed-dating scenario. When the arrangement was changed to “men sit, women rotate” – men became significantly more selective and women became less selective. The cautious or choosy female and sexually aggressive male paradigm is consistent through every human society studied, as well as in most other mammals. Should this study make us question the long-held model?

Alternative explanations:

1. When the women are forced to walk toward and away from the seated men, the men are able to see their whole bodies and gauge shape and approximate weight. While women are generally less picky about men’s bodies, U.S. males show a preference for thin, firm women when choosing dates.
2. Women’s evolved mate selection goes something like: wait to be approached by a man unless I see an exceptionally desirable man, in which case, approach him. Finkel and Eastwick’s experiment thus tricked the women’s brains into thinking the men they were approaching were of exceptionally high quality.

Conclusion: Getting a woman to approach you means half the battle is won. Actually achieving this is somewhat more difficult – maybe starting your own speed-dating club under the alternative model would be a start, or you could simply ask for the switch in an existing speed-dating scenario.

Love At First Sight Lasts

Earl Naumann’s book, Love at First Sight: The Stories and Science Behind Instant Attraction, is based on quantifiable research, including 1,500 in-depth interviews with revealing results:

• Love at first sight (defined as “within one hour of meeting someone, feeling strange and powerful feelings of love for him or her”) only happens to people who believe in it.
• Nearly two-thirds of the US population believes in love at first sight.
• More than half of those who believe have experienced it.
• 55% of people who experienced love at first sight married the person.
• 75% of those who married as a result of love at first sight have stayed married – a massive improvement over average divorce rates.

Conclusion: If it happens, go for it. Lucky bastard.

Women Who Think Men Are Pigs Win Out

Glenn Geher, an associate professor of psychology at SUNY at New Paltz, finds that women who are automatically skeptical of a man’s intentions are almost always better off than women who spend time analyzing and debating over a first date.

Geher’s findings show that if a woman cannot accurately judge a man’s romantic intentions at least 90% of the time, mathematically she’s better off being biased and de facto skeptical. “Women using a ‘men are always pigs’ decision-making rule may be more likely to actually end up with honest, committed, and long-term-seeking males,” Geher concludes.

Conclusion: A woman’s rejection of you is based on a sound mathematical model and thus quite rational. Small comfort when you’re rejected, but know you’re in the top 10% for those who do say yes.

Women Benefit from Polygyny, Men Lose

The finding that humans are naturally polygamous does not qualify as surprising. However, the fact that polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is more beneficial to women than to men seems somewhat counterintuitive at the microlevel. It seems as though the guy has all the fun in this one, even though he’d go bankrupt on wedding rings alone, while women are forced to share. Taking the larger picture into account, though, polygyny allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The situation creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates as there is a much greater gap between the winners and losers in this reproductive game, which makes the cream of the crop even more desirable. Under polygyny, women can share a wealthy man, while under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man. Or, as George Bernard Shaw puts it, “The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one.”

While men in monogamous societies often express desire for a polygynous setup, monogamy in fact guarantees every man can find a wife. Polygyny means no wife at all for men who are not extremely desirable.

The losers in polygyny? Extremely desirable women, who can monopolize an extremely desirable man under monogamy but are forced to share in a polygynous model.

Conclusion: If you’re not incredibly wealthy, impossibly handsome and indescribably awesome, be happy with monogamy. If you are all of the above…become a Mormon or move to Senegal.

Taking the Pill Could Mean Picking the Wrong Mate

After a pleasant disposition, scent is the second most important criterion for women in choosing a man, according to Rachel Herz of Brown University. Women care more about scent than muscle tone, appearance or voice.

The source of each person’s scent is actually their immune system. The segment of DNA called MHC (major histocompatibilty complex) both produces our individual odor and controls proteins involved in immunity. Because we are best protected by the broadest possible array of disease resistance, our bodies want to mate with a partner whose MHC profile differs from our own.

Claus Wedekind of the University of Bern in Switzerland conducted experiments asking women to sniff and choose clothes worn by various men. Unsurprisingly, women favored the aroma of men whose MHC profiles differ from theirs, while similar MHC profiles remind them of their fathers or brothers. However, women who take oral contraceptives get it all backwards: they found the father and brother smells most attractive. This is because the pill tricks the woman’s body into acting as if she’s pregnant – and thus she feels safer around her family in this “vulnerable” state.

Herz suggests that the widespread use of the pill while couples are dating may factor into the high divorce rates. One of the top complaints to marriage counselors reinforces this hypothesis: “Marriage counselors say that a complaint from women who want to end a relationship is, ‘I can’t stand his smell.’”
Just to make sure, Herz advises women to stop using the pill for a few months before deciding to marry.

Conclusions: Stop using too much cologne, and consider alternative forms of contraception before taking the plunge.

Men Who Sexually Harass Women Aren’t Being Sexist

Kingsely R. Browne recasts sexual harassment in terms of sex differences in mating strategies. Women reporting sexual harassment complain they have been subjected to degrading, intimidating and abusive treatment by male coworkers.

However, Browne points out that before women entered the workforce, men subjected each other to similar degrading, intimidating and abusive treatment. These are simply part of the tactics men employ in competitive situations. Thus, by subjecting women to this kind of treatment, men are not treating women differently from men (which is the legal definition of discrimination under which sexual harassment falls) – but treating them the same. Men harass women because they are not discriminating between men and women.

Conclusion: Be an equal-opportunity a-hole?

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The Image Mill

The joy of the building-sized projection is the massiveness of it all, and nothing’s more massive than Robert Lepage’s image mill, showing this summer in Quebec City. Commemorating and portraying Quebec’s 400 year history, the video occupies a surface about 100 ft X 2 000 ft, roughly equivalent to 25 IMAX screens.

Lepage is a well known artist with a great sense for how to incorporate technology into his projects, and he’s managed to produce a masterpiece of sight and sound with the collaboration of Ex Machina over two years of production at a cost of about $4 million.

If you can’t make it up to Quebec City this summer, the video can be watched in the comforts of your own home, using 6 screens to both maintain the spirit of grandeur and to maintain the video’s otherwise disproportionately wide shape. Simple instructions for how to set up your own mill can be found here. It’s super easy, so give it a try (if you happen to have 6 computers equipped with bid management software handy…)

555 KubiK

Creative Applications created this funky visual experience by meshing the projection images with the building’s existing physical architecture. The video was made in 3D Studio Max, giving an impression of transforming the building itself by presenting very much 3D-oriented visuals.

555 KUBIK_ extended version from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

Pinwall

This is my favorite creation by the geniuses over at UrbanScreen.com. While it may not be as visually impressive as the Image Mill or 555 KubiK (not that it’s not visually impressive), the real hotness of this projection is the interactivity. Bystanders during Viertelfest Bremen in 2007 were able to affect the giant game as seen below. It may not be as fun as building-sized Tetris, but it’s got more style.

Pinwall | interactive facade pinball | urban screening from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

AntiVJ

VJ Crustea is a French dude living in the UK who specializes in fusing electronic music with synchronized visuals. The following is a modest but still very cool building projection from 2006, picking up on the wall’s existing architectural elements as with KubiK, but more piece-by-piece.

He later put his skills into a project called Lightup Bristol started in 2007, creating a much bigger presentation, not competing with the Image Mill in size, but definitely fun for many of the same reasons.

Luminous

Check out the projection realized by The Electric Canvas on the Sydney Opera House in May and June of this year. This building projection’s claim to fame is the 21 days of non-repeating artwork alongside a fantastic festival.

It was the visual backdrop for a spectacle of light and music curated by none other than the legendary Brian Eno, ambient music pioneer and producer for bands like U2 and Coldplay. The audio-visual display is called 77 Million Paintings, and a time-lapse version can be seen here.

Tetragram for Enlargement

Italian visual art contingent Apparati Effimeri put together this castle mapping for the Itinerario Festival this past June. Watch them mess with and melt the Rocca Malatestiana. Impressive.

APPARATI EFFIMERI Tetragram for Enlargment from Apparati Effimeri on Vimeo.

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