Source: The New York Times — December 24, 2009 | William Saletan
“The Body Electric” | Two years ago, in his book Rocketeers, Michael Belfiore celebrated the pioneers of the budding private space industry. Now he has returned to explore a frontier closer to home. The heroes of his new book, The Department of Mad Scientists, work for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, a secretive arm of… read more
Source: The Imaginary Foundation — April 21, 2011 | Micah Daigle
The Imaginary Foundation | A tour of the cosmos in bytes and atoms: the mysterious think tank and art apparel collective known as The Imaginary Foundation recently created an installation entitled The Undivided Mind, which merged the seemingly opposing worlds of art and science.
The San Francisco gallery, covered wall to ceiling in scribbled chalkboard scientific diagrams and mathematical equations attracted hundreds of curious “imaginarians” on the opening night in late… read more
“I am attempting to recreate my eye with the help of a miniature camera implant in my prosthetic artificial eye. The intraocular installation of an eye-cam will substitute for the field of vision of my left eye that I lost in 2005 from a car accident.”
So says Tanya Marie Vlach, who lost her left eye in a car accident. After she received “hundreds of international engineering proposals, support from my … read more
Rob Prior | A short 3D film I made last year. I am currently putting together my second short film which will be named ‘Chiyo.’ Here you can follow the film’s progress from original thoughts, to sketchbook drawings all the way through to the final outcome… your opinions and comments during this process my well influence some of the directions I decided to take.
Video Source: Rob Prior
Related:
Chiyo: 3D Short Film Blog
Portfolio Website
Life on a Leash Website
“It’s not every day that you start a new job and immediately become responsible for over a thousand lives,” says Max More, who took over the reins as CEO of Alcor on January 1. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, Alcor has 102 patients in cryopreservation (freezing with minimal tissue damage in liquid nitrogen) in hopes of revival by future scientists; the rest are members signed up for the process.
A… read more
I’m giving ‘er all she’s got, Captain! — Scotty, as the Enterprise is being sucked into a black hole (the Singularity)
All she’s got is not good enough! — Kirk
If you must have this t-shirt then click here.
Source: Wired News — May 3, 2005
James Auger in his controversial new book, Augmented Animals, envisions animals, birds, reptiles and even fish using specially engineered gadgets to help them overcome their evolutionary shortcomings.
He imagines rodents zooming around with night-vision survival goggles, squirrels hoarding nuts using GPS locators and fish armed with metal detectors to avoid the angler’s hook.
Bob Moog changed musical history 37 years ago with the invention of the first electronic music synthesizer. On February 26, 2002, he received the prestigious Technical GRAMMY Award for his achievements. Here, he looks at the next 37 years.… read more
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found levels in filters in 12 of their radiation-monitoring stations “slightly higher” than those found by EPA monitors last week and a Department of Energy monitor the week before. But they are “still far below levels of public health concern,” the agency states.
EPA’s samples were captured by monitors in Alaska, Alabama, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada,
Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands and… read more
Author: William Halal
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-10: 0230019544
ISBN-13: 9780230019546
Format: Hardcover, 256 pages
Technology’s Promise: Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and Societybrilliantly deals with the co-evolution of technology, business and society. It is a concise but complete “history of the future,” covering most scientific and technological fields, with specific scenarios until 2050 and with general ideas for the future of humanity.… read more
Source: Know Your Meme — February 28, 2011
Know Your Meme | The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies examines the phenomenon of Auto-Tune with help from special guest Professor “Weird Al” Yankovic.
Related:
Know Your Meme
Antares Audio Technology
More hilarious examples of Auto-Tuned music
Time | Auto-Tune: Why pop music sounds perfect
Biologists at Indiana University have discovered why it takes two to tango. (Insert obligatory geeks-who-can’t-get-a-date joke here.)
The biologists claim their research shows that sex allows parents to produce offspring that are more resistant to co-evolving parasites, while self-fertilization dooms populations to extinction at the hands of their biological enemies.
It’s the Red Queen hypothesis, a reference to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: “It takes all… read more
Wikipedia | Spiritual Machines is the fourth studio album by Canadian alternative rock band Our Lady Peace, initially released by Columbia Records in December 2000. The album was a conceptual interpretation of Raymond Kurzweil’s 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines and featured spoken dialog from Kurzweil himself.
Album history
While touring in mid-2000, Mike Turner came across the book The Age of Spiritual Machines by… read more
Source: BookReporter — May 2005 | Curtis Edmonds
Joel Garreau’s provocative new book, Radical Evolution, is divided into different scenarios. One that he calls “Heaven” is largely the vision of Ray Kurzweil, one of the founders of modern assistive technology.
Kurzweil imagines a future where the positive aspects of the new technology are available freely to everyone, allowing each of us to customize our own selves to the point where immortality — or complete spiritual freedom… read more
