The Uncanny Sound Illusion That Creates Suspense in Christopher Nolan's Movies. Ever notice how Christopher Nolan’s movies (Interstellar, Inception, The Prestige) feel like an anxiety attack? Well, maybe that’s overstating things a bit. But the director does have a knack for creating an unnerving degree of tension. Turns out he’s using a little bit of musical magic to do it. The magic is actually a science- based audio illusion called a Shepard tone.

Named after psychologist Roger Shepard, a pioneer in our understanding of spatial relation, the effect sounds like an infinitely ascending or descending scale. The tones are constantly moving upwards or downwards, but they never seem to reach a pinnacle or nadir. This is accomplished by stacking scales on top of each other—typically one treble scale, one midrange, and one bass—with an octave in between, then playing them in a continuous loop. A Shepard tone is sometimes referred to as the barber pole of sound. You can even see the similarity, when you hear it and look at the spectrum view of a Shepard tone. Don’t listen to this too long, or you might lose your mind: Anyways, Christopher Nolan just loves this. With longtime collaborator Hans Zimmer, the acclaimed director has used a Shepard tone in almost every one of his films in the last decade.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which coordinates federal climate reports, also had no staff in its science division left as of July 1. Search metadata Search full text of books Search TV captions Search archived web sites Advanced Search. A Shepard tone is sometimes referred to as the barber pole of sound. You can even see the similarity, when you hear it and look at the spectrum view of a Shepard tone.

Let’s all say it together: Ugh, Uber, ugh! We’re like five minutes into the company’s “180 Days of Change” apology tour and more awful Uber news is already.

He even writes his scripts to match the effect. In a recent interview, Nolan explained how he used Shepard tones in his newest film, Dunkirk: The screenplay had been written according to musical principals. There’s an audio illusion, if you will, in music called a “Shepard tone” and with my composer David Julyan on “The Prestige” we explored that and based a lot of the score around that. And it’s an illusion where there’s a continuing ascension of tone. It’s a corkscrew effect. It’s always going up and up and up but it never goes outside of its range. And I wrote the script according to that principle.

I interwove the three timelines in such a way that there’s a continual feeling of intensity. Increasing intensity.

So I wanted to build the music on similar mathematical principals. Knowing this, you gain a deeper understanding of films like Interstellar, Inception, and The Prestige. It also explains why these films seem somehow inconclusive.

A Shepard’s tone creates a conflict that can’t be resolved, just like Nolan’s plots.

Uber Rented Hundreds of Faulty Vehicles to Drivers and at Least One Blew Up. Let’s all say it together: Ugh, Uber, ugh! We’re like five minutes into the company’s “1. Days of Change” apology tour and more awful Uber news is already coming out. North Carolina Occupational Therapy License. The Wall Street Journal reports that the multi- billion dollar startup rented dangerously faulty cars to hundreds of drivers in Singapore, after the model had been recalled. According to internal messages obtained by the paper, Uber knew about the recall, too.

The brazen behavior really fits well with the “move fast, break things” mantra. Essentially, Uber made Singapore the first Asian city where its service would be available, but the company had trouble finding drivers, because owning a car in Singapore is prohibitively expensive. As a slapdash solution, Uber then reportedly set up a separate company that bought cars in bulk from shady importers who operate in a grey area of the law.

The cars were cheaper this way. We haven’t even gotten to the bad stuff yet. Last year, Uber apparently bought over 1,1. Pc Navigator 8 Dvd Iso.

Honda Vezels from one of these gray- market companies, even though the model had been recalled for a faulty electronic component that could overheat and cause a fire. You can guess what happened next. The Journal describes an incident in January 2. Uber driver Koh Seng Tian had just dropped off a passenger in a residential neighborhood in Singapore when he smelled smoke in his Honda Vezel sport- utility vehicle.

Flames burst from the dashboard, melting the interior and cracking a football- sized hole in his windshield. Thankfully, the driver wasn’t injured, but Uber quickly heard about the incident.

Did they pull all of the faulty vehicles off the road? Nah, that would be too expensive. Instead, the company allegedly told drivers with Honda Vezels to take their vehicle in for service without specifying the problem.

In February, when Uber threw a party celebrating the conclusion of the PR and safety nightmare, the Journal reports that “6. Vezels still hadn’t had the faulty parts replaced.” Uber says all of them are fixed now. But man, what a mess. This isn’t your typical Uber- is- a- shitty- company story, either. If these claims are true, it seems Uber actually put people’s lives at risk in order to save money. The company reportedly gambled with minivans that could spontaneously combust, because it would be a big pain to fix them, and well, the drivers and passengers would probably be fine. Then it had a party while these explode- y cars were still driving people around!

Here’s how.)We’ve reached out to Uber to see if it cares to comment on the Journal’s story and will update this post if we hear back. Update 4: 5. 5pm - Uber sent us the following statement: As soon as we learned of a Honda Vezel from the Lion City Rental fleet catching fire, we took swift action to fix the problem, in close coordination with Singapore’s Land Transport Authority as well as technical experts. But we acknowledge we could have done more—and we have done so. We’ve introduced robust protocols and hired three dedicated experts in- house at LCR whose sole job is to ensure we are fully responsive to safety recalls. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve proactively responded to six vehicle recalls and will continue to do so to protect the safety of everyone who uses Uber.