4.24.2010
Link Blogging
- Exoskeletons and Other Technology to Mitigate or Reverse the Frailty of the Elderly
The Toyama Lab in Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology has the Wearable Agri Robot It is an exoskeleton for aging japanese farmers that should be commercially available in Japan in 2012 for about one million yen (about $10,000). They hope to halve if the device is mass-produced.
- Somali radio stations comply with Islamists' music ban
Most radio stations in Somalia have stopped playing music, on the orders of Islamist Hizbul-Islam insurgents who say that songs are un-Islamic.
- Psychedelic Information Theory
'Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason' is an examination of the nonlinear dynamics of hallucination and altered states of consciousness.
- The future is Movie OS
Normal people ‘don’t understand’ computers. Of course, the position is more nuanced than that, and you can do everything from point to documents like Apple’s HIG (for both the OS X platform for Mac computers and the iPhone and iPad platforms), Microsoft’s Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines and Windows Phone 7 Series UI Design & Interaction Guide to the trainwreck that was the Read/Write Web Facebook Login Fiasco.
- Japanese spacecraft to land in Australian outback
An Japanese spacecraft which has journeyed to an asteroid is expected to return to Earth at a remote site in the Australian outback in June, the government said Wednesday.
4.22.2010
Link Blogging
- How Much Will You Pay for Online Comics?
Media sources have been seizing on the new hardware as a way to get people to once again buy media (although the ridiculous prices won’t help) instead of downloading stuff for free, since the iPad is a relatively closed system with a built-in store. While Marvel has been experimenting with digital comics for a while now — their subscription service launched in late 2008, but didn’t give readers what they wanted, since the comics could only be read while connected online — this app seems to be a major step forward (if you’re part of the limited audience able to drop big bucks on this new toy).
- And the best Video you're likely to see today is narrated by Neil Gaiman & Animated by Charles Vess! My that was a quick click!
Hey folks, Harry here with something that isn't set to be a film, at least not yet. Our buddy, Massawyrm sent this link to Neil Gaiman's Blog where he posted a promotional piece that is simply so much more beautiful than that. Imagine you're at your favorite supercool bookstore to hear a live reading from Neil Gaiman... a select piece he wrote for just such gatherings of enthusiasts. Now imagine that a friend gave you special magic cookies that once you ate them, you could envision what Gaiman was saying... but specifically as Charles Vess would illustrate and paint it. That is some special magic cookies - and this is just such a dream.
- THE SANDBOX EFFECT: Has Auteurism gone too far at DC and Marvel?
In the 1950’s, French film critics like Andre Bazin and Francois Truffaut came up with an idea called the “auteur theory” of film. Auteur theory basically says that film, an undeniably collaborative medium, should be evaluated and analyzed in terms of strong individual creators or “auteurs”. Anyone whose creative presence is so strong it dominates the making of a film can be an auteur. Auteur theory is important because it helped legitimize film criticism. At the same time, even the theory’s strongest proponents knew it was kind of a hustle. No movie is really the product of just one person, no matter how talented they are. Auteur Theory was a means to an end, an extremely helpful fallacy. The theory took hold and crossed over into mainstream criticism where it thrived because it indulged a very popular idea: The idea that nothing of artistic worth can ever be created by committee, and that only focused, singular visionaries can produce good art.
- The Grand Unified Theory of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence research has long harboured two basic (and opposed) approaches – the earlier method of trying to discover the “rules of thought”, and the more modern probabilistic approach to machine learning. Now some smart guy from MIT called Noah Goodman reckons he has reconciled the two approaches to artificial learning in his new model of thought [via SlashDot]:
- Sleeping Insects Covered in Dew
glistening in the early morning, these insects look like creatures from another planet as dew gathers on their sleeping bodies.
4.08.2010
Link Blogging
- Barack Obama Looking at Awesome Things
In response to NYMag.com's clearly doctored A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things slideshow, I've decided to reveal the truth, using next-gen image decoding software I call Photoshop. - NASA Launches Interactive Simulation
In an effort to excite young people about space and NASA's missions, the agency has launched the online Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) simulation, designed to entertain and educate. The interactive simulation offers a virtual 3-D experience to visualize how data travels along various space communications paths. - The Known Universe by AMNH
The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.
4.04.2010
Link Blogging
Travel the world with…cartoonists!
"Wim at the FP Int’l blog alerts us to a new series of French language Lone Planet travel guides with covers by cartoonists associated with the cities."
One wrestler finds life outside the ring extremely geeky
"Life outside the wrestling ring is often as harsh as life inside it. One has only to look at the long list of dead wrestlers to see that the occupation takes a brutal toll on its practitioners– not just drugs but injuries, car crashes, violence and the general wear and tear of a 300-days-a-year schedule of very real physical exertion."
"Wim at the FP Int’l blog alerts us to a new series of French language Lone Planet travel guides with covers by cartoonists associated with the cities."
One wrestler finds life outside the ring extremely geeky
"Life outside the wrestling ring is often as harsh as life inside it. One has only to look at the long list of dead wrestlers to see that the occupation takes a brutal toll on its practitioners– not just drugs but injuries, car crashes, violence and the general wear and tear of a 300-days-a-year schedule of very real physical exertion."