What if America lost its knack for making things?
Manufacturing is the root that all other projects sprout from … even the arts, says famed author David Brin.
His TINKERERS graphic novel, set in the year 2024, combines art with history and tech, exploring where we went wrong, and how to win back the knack.
(Hardcopies will be on sale in January.)… read more
Source: Brian Malow blog & Time — March 15, 2011 | Brian Malow
Time | The Adjustment Bureau is just the latest film to be based on a short story or novel by Philip K. Dick. Science Comedian Brian Malow is a Dick aficionado.
Brian Malow | My newest video for Time is about Philip K. Dick and all the movie adaptations of his books and stories, the latest of which is The Adjustment Bureau, based on the story “Adjustment Team” written in 1953. … read more
Source: The New York Times — January 14, 2010 | Susan Pinker
In The Hidden Brain, writer Shankar Vedantam explores the unconscious mind, focusing on covert influences on human behavior. Invisible forces that control our behavior have inspired our best storytellers, from Euripides to Steven Spielberg. Whether we’re yanked around by jealous gods, Oedipal urges or poltergeists, the idea that we feel powerless to direct our own actions has… read more
If you’re in Los Angeles Friday night, the happening place to be is at the SENS Foundation event at Giant Studios, where the fantastic Na’vi characters in Avatar were brought to life, along with Gollum in Lord of the Rings and thousands of other creatures, using advanced motion-capture tech.
Legendary Cambridge University scientist Dr. Aubrey de Grey, who pioneered SENS (Strategies… read more
Source: James O'Neill — August 1, 2007
Borg Pig credited to artist James Kelsey in this blog post by James O’Neill as part of the City of Seattle’s “Pigs on Parade” public art show. Here’s a video interview with the artist.
Source: New York Times — Oct 23, 2005
In a new book, Warped Passages, Lisa Randall gives an engaging and remarkably clear account of how the existence of dimensions beyond the familiar three may resolve a host of cosmic quandaries.
Randall argues that without any experimental feedback, string theorists may never reach their goal. She prefers a different strategy, called model building. Rather than seeking to create an all-encompassing theory, she develops models — mini-theories that… read more
Source: New Scientist Space — February 7, 2010
The Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe (WMAP) team points out that if something as unlikely as Hawking’s initials can be found in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) data, the chances of finding other apparently improbable patterns may also be quite high, and asks readers to mark the shapes they find in the CMB image.
“If you think you can see your initials, the face of Jesus or a unicorn,… read more
Source: Tom and Nita Horn — August 26, 2010
This week’s Health Tips column brings you ideas for finding happiness, tips for living to a ripe old age, parenting advice, and new ways to help you lose weight, lower blood pressure, and prevent chronic diseases.
HAPPINESS IS…
A social life. One reason why religious people tend to be happy and satisfied with their lives is not because of their beliefs, but belonging… read more
PopTech | Designer Orlagh O’Brien asks, “What if we try to visually represent the emotions that are running through our body?” She gave a simple emotion-specific quiz to a group of 250 people. Asking respondents to describe five emotions — anger, joy, fear, sadness, and love — in drawings, colors, and words, O’Brien ended up with a set of media she used to create Emotionally}Vague, an online graphic interpretation
Related:
PopTech | Orlagh O'Brien
PopTech | Orlagh O’Brien helps us get in touch with our emotions
Emotionally}Vague
Source: Know Your Meme — June 11, 2010
Know Your Meme | Internet Scientist Elspeth Jane of The Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies explores the viral sensation that was Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles,” aka “F***ing Magnets: How Do They Work?”
Dr. Steel’s track “The Singularity,” from his 2002 album People of Earth, below.
Wikipedia | Doctor Steel is an American musician located in Southern California, popular in the Steampunk, Goth, and Rivethead scenes. He has performed on rare occasions with a “backup band”, claiming that a fictitious robot band had malfunctioned. Shows have incorporated puppetry, multimedia and performances by his street… read more
Source: Post-Gazette — October 30, 2005
A guidebook for battling a robot takeover of Earth subtly educates about robots and technology while coming across as humor.
The book was written by roboticist Daniel H. Wilson, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. Paramount has bought movie rights.
What makes the book cool — and unlike some other survival books — is that Wilson is an actual roboticist, who got his Ph.D. from… read more
