links for 2010-01-18

Since I’m in the plan­ning stages of a research project where some of the main col­lab­o­ra­tors (and client) are sci­en­tists, the book that Nico­las dis­cuss­es here sound very interesting.

Even though I don’t speak a word of Japan­ese, this video is irre­sistible. Otam­a­tone is a musi­cal toy designed by May­wa Den­ki which clear­ly has some care­ful­ly con­sid­ered phys­i­cal prop­er­ties. Watch to the end for a rock­ing finale. Via Tom at BERG.