PeaceLove

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• Commented on Spectacular slow card-flourishes from Dimitri Arleri
  Actually, card flourishes are sort of a separate but related art to magic. I think what Aleri and others do is more akin to juggling than magic, and as such it can be dramatic, eye popping, or beautiful. You are...
• Commented on Photographs of residents in their tiny flats in Hong Kong's oldest public housing estate
  Interesting to see all the comments about how we can make do with less than we think, etc. I don't think the people in those photographs live in those one-room dorm cells by choice. Anyone who has very little money...
• Commented on Video: Lady Gaga before she became famous
  Really, she came in third? I kind of wonder that there were two other acts better than that. If nothing else, the early video shows Gaga has an unusual heaping of raw talent. I agree the song's kind of a...
• Commented on A programmer's lament on the Apple App Store
  Cough cough...ANDROID...deep breaths of fresh air......
• Commented on Hurting Google
  How many people nowadays even care if they find a result from a big dinosaur media company like News Corp or Time Warner, or even from the NYT? I believe Google will win this fight easily. If Murdoch jumps exclusively...
• Commented on Happy birthday, LSD
  LSD and other psychedelics are state-specific; you can't show or describe the effects, since they are outside of normal consciousness. Movies like this are fun, but they are only candy. On psychedelics, the normal world is simply different. If you...
• Commented on Eye exercise may boost creativity
  I wonder if this is semi confirmation of an intuition I had about myself with regards Nobuyuki Kayahara's famous Silhouette Illusion (http://www.procreo.jp/labo/silhouette.swf). I had a lot of trouble getting her to switch directions so I spent the better part of...
• Commented on EFF lawyers grin like holy fools, surrounded by a fan of formerly secret government documents
  Schwiiiing! Now everyone send them some love: http://bit.ly/41PSVs...
• Commented on What MP3 player should I buy?
  Cory -- I recommend you write a short post explaining again to all your readers what DRM is. Many of the commenters here seem to think DRM ends where media itself ends. Hence, all the comments like, "I don't have...
• Commented on The Magicians: a fantasy novel of wonder without sentimentality
  Just finished the book, which I quite enjoyed overall. I think the first half is much stronger than the second half, with some very sharp insights into the dangers of having too much, too soon. When the crew gets to...
• Commented on Newspaper circulation over last 20 years: the great swandive
  Good riddance. Newspapers were a reasonably good model for the Nineteenth Century, still decent into the mid-Twentieth Century, but an appalling waste of resources in 2009. Can we see another chart showing the reduction in deforestation as we stop chopping...
• Commented on Magic dots
  Completed. Sad to say, no special image, no other reward. Just the thrill of finally finishing this thing. Report and image at http://peacelovesmusings.blogspot.com/2009/10/ocd-comes-alive.html...
• Commented on The Cove director on watching his film with the dolphin hunters
  I have been a strict vegetarian for fifteen years, and I am daily blessed to know I hold no personal responsibility for any of the extraordinary suffering bestowed on animals around the world in the name of feeding humans. My...
• Commented on Science of Scams: Derren Brown and Kat the Scientist debunk the paranormal industry
  PaulR said: It's not up to the skeptics to prove religion, ESP, or Cold/FX doesn't work, it's up to the people who push these lies to prove them. I agree that extreme skepticism is warranted, especially for those making specific...
• Commented on Science of Scams: Derren Brown and Kat the Scientist debunk the paranormal industry
  Note to Cory: As a huge fan of both you and Derren Brown, I have to add my opinion that your marriage clearly does kick ass -- for both you and your wife!...
• Commented on Science of Scams: Derren Brown and Kat the Scientist debunk the paranormal industry
  Evidence for psi produced in multiple labs over many years is in fact quite robust. I would recommend Dean Radin's book, The Conscious Universe, as a good place to start, but I am aware that most "skeptics" are in fact...
• Commented on Love Cake, a baking song by Rocky and Balls
  They are obviously Lovebots created to make the world more sunshiney....
• Commented on Boing Boing: The World's Greatest Neurozine!
  Off the bat, not happy with the redesign. 1. Too busy and cluttered. All the stuff to the right is too big and visually distracting. I can probably adjust to this new style, though. 2. Bigger issue: I'm a BB...
• Commented on Thoughts for Polanski apologists, by another woman raped at 13.
  I spent a while in Hollywood in the 80's, and Polanski's story was still an occasional topic of discussion. The main theme of the discussion was that the story was far less black and white than the media made it...
• Commented on Business Reply Mail pamphlet encourages office workers to revolt
  The artist is the great culture jammer Packard Jennings....
• Commented on Mont Blanc's $23,000 pen to commemorate Gandhi's birth
  They can use it to sign the checks at the Mohandas K. Gandhi Nuclear Testing Facility....
• Commented on The awfulness of Windows vs. the creepiness of Mac
  This article is moronic and reactionary. "Windows sucks, but I'll keep using it simply because some proportion of people using the most popular alternative are so passionate about its superiority they go out of their way to tell people about...
• Commented on Inside Antiques Roadshow
  I applied for tickets but didn't get them, sadly. I was going to bring in my long-lost Picassos and Pollacks... The John Seymour card table mentioned above was appraised at $200-225K or more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYJNlHEpIjE It sold at Sothebys for $541,000:...
• Commented on Jerry Andrus' optical illusion video
  Jerry was a beautiful man, a die hard atheist and skeptic who nevertheless had a moral compass that would put most of us to shame. I once visited his house (the Castle of Chaos) and he read me a poem...
• Commented on Blu is back with COMBO
  MUTO had the advantage of novelty and surprise. I like the meta quality of this one, seeing some of the huge amount of creative labor that goes into making these. But this seems to me more like a rough sketch...
• Commented on Not-Rubik's Dodecahedron
  #3 Nope, Alexander's Star is a totally different design: http://www.jaapsch.net/puzzles/alexandr.htm I have one. The mechanism is very sticky and it never moved smoothly, so it was no pleasure to work with. Unlike the Rubik's Cube, possibly history's greatest puzzle masterpiece...
• Commented on Chimp enjoys magic show
  What a fun clip! I read the hugs as the chimp expressing love and appreciation for the magic he was seeing. He didn't seem at all scared or unsettled, except with the sword through neck (and even that one was...
• Commented on Delete this book
  BB's Mark F. points out that Orwell is out of copyright in Australia and his major works are thus freely available to download (but only if you're Aussie, natch) here: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/...
• Commented on Richard Metzger's Tell It Like It Is Review of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"
  I agree with the commenters above who flagged the third film, Prisoner of Azkaban, as by far the best of the series. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon spotted that one early, so I'm inclined to trust her glowing review of this...
• Commented on Genome wager between Lewis Wolpert and Rupert Sheldrake
  #17 Anonymous: Why will any of this matter? As a post singularity intelligence I cannot see wasting any cycles with the ingredients of a meat bag or their silly bets. Wow. Nice....