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Posted Teaching Shakespeare to a toddler to Boing Boing
Video link. Actor Brian Cox attempts to teach Shakespeare's most famous soliloquy to Theo, age 2 1/2. (Thanks, Lisa Mumbach!)...
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Posted Wireless power through magnetism, lasers, or RF to Boing Boing
New Scientist surveys the latest in wireless power, from highly directional lasers to magnetic induction. Paging Nikola Tesla -- your meme is ready! From New Scientist: The idea of wireless power transfer is almost as old as electricity generation itself. At the beginning of the 20th century, Nikola Tesla proposed using huge coils to transmit electricity through the troposphere to power homes. He even started building Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island, New York, an enormous telecommunications tower that would also test his idea for wireless power transmission. The story goes that his backers pulled the funding when they realised there would be no feasible way to ensure people paid for the electricity they were using, and the wired power grid sprang up instead. Wireless transmission emerged again in the 1960s, with a demonstration of a miniature helicopter powered using microwaves beamed from the ground. Some have even suggested that one day we might power spaceships by beaming power to them with lasers. As well as this, much theoretical work has gone into exploring the possibility of beaming power down to Earth from satellites that harvest solar energy (New Scientist. Long-distance ground-to-ground wireless power transmission would require expensive infrastructure, however, and with concerns over the safety of transmitting it via high-power microwaves, the idea has been met with trepidation. "Unplugged: Goodbye cables, hello energy beams" Previously:Boing Boing: Wireless power explained in Science News Plastic electronic sheet for wireless power - Boing Boing Boing Boing: MIT students demonstrate wireless power transfer Boing Boing: Wireless chargers?...
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Posted Our mood affects our facial expressions, but also vice versa to Boing Boing
Often when we frown, it means that we're sad or grumpy. But how much does the frown also exacerbate the bad mood? To study this, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology PhD candidate David Havas tested individuals who had received Botox treatments to stop brow-wrinkling. The subjects were asked before and after Botox treatments to read statements that were angry, sad, or happy. The Botox seemed to slow down the time it took the subjects to read and understand the angry and sad statements but not the happy ones. This supports the theory that facial expressions do affect the brain's ability to process some emotions, a concept Mark looked at in 2008 in a guest essay on Good. From the University of Wisconsin-Madison: "There is a long-standing idea in psychology called the facial feedback hypothesis," says Havas. "Essentially, it says, when you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you. It's an old song, but it's right. Actually, this study suggests the opposite: When you're not frowning, the world seems less angry and less sad."The Havas study broke new ground by linking the expression of emotion to the ability to understand language, says Havas' adviser, UW-Madison professor emeritus of psychology Arthur Glenberg. "Normally, the brain would be sending signals to the periphery to frown, and the extent of the frown would be sent back to the brain. But here, that loop is disrupted, and the intensity of the emotion and of our ability to understand it when embodied in language is disrupted." Practically, the study "may have profound implications for the cosmetic-surgery," says Glenberg. "Even though it's a small effect, in conversation, people respond to fast, subtle cues about each other's understanding, intention and empathy. If you are slightly slower reacting as I tell you about something made me really angry, that could signal to me that you did not pick up my message." Such an effect could snowball, Havas says, but the outcome could also be positive: "Maybe if I am not picking up sad, angry cues in the environment, that will make me happier." In theoretical terms, the finding supports a psychological hypothesis called "embodied cognition," says Glenberg, now a professor of psychology at Arizona State University. "The idea of embodied cognition is that all our cognitive processes, even those that have been thought of as very abstract, are actually rooted in basic bodily processes of perception, action and emotion." "Can blocking a frown keep bad feelings at bay?" (Univ of Wisconsin-Madison)...
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Posted UFOs: a wealth of possible explanations to Boing Boing
Are UFOs nuts-and-bolts spacecraft flown by extraterrestrials who traveled a long way (very long) across space to observe us? Repeatedly? For millennia? Er, maybe. But probably not. (For more on that, see BB contributor and heretical UFO researcher Jacques Vallée's 1990 paper "Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects," available as a PDF here.) Fortean Times does a quick survey of more than two dozen other theories of the origin of UFOs, some quite far out and others that even a die-hard skeptic could love. Here are a few: AWAKENINGS At a point close to sleep, visual and auditory hallucinations are common, according to psychological studies. False awakenings, where a dream that includes a UFO encounter is misperceived as a waking memory, are also known. Some cases involving alien contact and bright lights seen outside bedroom windows have been successfully proven to fit these vivid experiences to which everybody is prone. IFOs After investigation, analysts agree that between 90 and 95 per cent of all UFO sightings prove to be Identified Flying Objects. Over 300 different things have been misperceived as UFOs - including a bin bag, a shaggy dog and a telegraph pole. The Null Hypotheses proposes that all of the remaining unsolved cases would become IFOs given enough study and sufficient evidence. However, statistical analysis (like that conducted by the Battelle Institute and French aerospace researchers GEPAN) has indicated differences between solved and unsolved cases that challenge this proposal. KOOKS After eliminating other options, a die-hard sceptic might offer the premise that 'kooks' see UFOs because of an innate desire to promote the mystical within their lives. They do so by introducing magic to mundane events so as to elevate their status amongst peers. No significant evidence has been published that more than a few witnesses are so motivated and most psychological profiles of UFO witnesses suggest they are stable individuals who sincerely believe that they have seen something odd. LENTICULAR CLOUDS Unusual cloud formations have been proven to create some UFO sightings. Lenticular clouds with their disc or cigar structure can be especially impressive, and though rare in Britain they can form anywhere - one encounter occurred in Rochdale. Rarer cloud types such as noctilucent (which reflect the sun from below the horizon when the local area is in darkness) have also provided plenty of reports. MULTIVERSE Physicists have attempted to explain some of the latest problems of cosmology by developing a theory of multiple interlocking universes. This proposes a series of universes that can be linked via subspace but where our limited perception restricts awareness of all but our own. Some universes could be closely aligned to ours and others would have evolved very differently. Rather than aliens coming to Earth from another planet, more advanced humans from a parallel universe might have found a way to cross the divide, with their transient presence in our own universe causing UFOs. "An A to Z of UFO Theories"...
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Posted Star Wars galaxy posters to Boing Boing
Justin Van Genderen designed a sharp series of minimalist posters representing various locations in the Star Wars galaxy. Terrific work! (via Laughing Squid)...
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Posted The Prisoner viewable online to Boing Boing
I didn't watch AMC's remake of The Prisoner when it aired last November, but I was delighted to see that all 17 episodes of the original 1967-1968 British series are still viewable in full for free on the AMC site. If JG Ballard wrote a TV series, I'd imagine it would have been something like The Prisoner. For those who aren't hip to it yet, the show is a trippy psychological drama about a former spy held captive in a mysterious resort-like prison. The Prisoner video player (AMC, apologies if non-US viewers are shut out)...
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Posted Case Sunstein: Feds should "cognitively infiltrate" online conspiracy groups to Boing Boing
Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, recently suggested that the feds should "cognitively infiltrate" conspiracy theorist hang-outs and anti-government groups online. Over at Huffington Post, former BB guestblogger Arthur Goldwag, author of the fantastic book Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies, lays out why the government "shouldn't resort to secret agents and bought-and-paid-for claques and shills and ringers to promote its ideas." From HuffPo: Sunstein's proposal was not issued under the auspices of the government, but in an academic paper. Co-authored with Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule and published in The Journal of Political Philosophy in 2008 (it can be downloaded as a PDF file here), "Conspiracy Theory" surveys the existing scholarship on the origins and characteristics of conspiracy theories and contemplates whether or not governments should try to neutralize them. In general, it takes a social sciences approach, arguing that conspiracy theories are neither legitimate political ideas nor symptoms of a psychological disorder, but are rather the inevitable distortions of closed-off, self-reinforcing belief systems. Using government agents to inject "cognitive diversity" into those communities, it suggests, just might provide the body politic with an antidote to the thought contagions they inspire. "Cass Sunstein's Thought Police"...
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Posted Brain scans enable communication with vegetative people to Boing Boing
Researchers have used brain scans to communicate with individuals in total vegetative states. Scientists at the University of Cambridge asked "yes" or "no" questions of the patients which they answered by imaging one of two different activities: playing tennis, or just moving around their house. Depending on what they were thinking, different regions of their brains lit up. From New Scientist: "I think we can be pretty confident that he is entirely conscious," says Owen. "He has to understand instructions, comprehend speech, remember what tennis is and how you do it. So many of his cognitive faculties have to have been intact."That someone can be capable of all this while appearing completely unaware confounds existing medical definitions of consciousness, Laureys says. "We don't know what to call this; he just doesn't fit a definition." Doctors traditionally base these diagnoses on how someone behaves: if for example, whether or not they can glance in different directions in response to questions. The new results show that you don't need behavioural indications to identify awareness and even a degree of cognitive proficiency. All you need to do is tap into brain activity directly. The work "changes everything", says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who is carrying out similar work on patients with consciousness disorders. "Knowing that someone could persist in a state like this and not show evidence of the fact that they can answer yes/no questions should be extremely disturbing to our clinical practice." One of the most difficult questions you might want to ask someone is whether they want to carry on living. But as Owen and Laureys point out, the scientific, legal and ethical challenges for doctors asking such questions are formidable. "In purely practical terms, yes, it is possible," says Owen. "But it is a bigger step than one might immediately think." "Giving the 'unconscious' a voice" Previously:Conscious "coma man"'s words seemingly delivered via discredited ... Man thought to be in 23-year vegetative state was actually ......
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Posted Marina Gorbis: crowdsourcing abundance to Boing Boing
(CC image: "Distributing surplus commodities, Johns, Ariz.," 1940, Library of Congress) Former BB guestblogger Marina Gorbis, exec director of Institute for the Future, considers how small groups/organizations can achieve scale and do good by sharing resources. Essentially every person (and every company) has a surplus of something that other people want/need: Not everyone has a large house to trade or a large sum of money to donate but look around you -- we have excess of stuff, talent, ideas, information--in our homes , in our communities, and in our organizations. We are over-producing and under-utilizing resources all over the place. Witness the recent example of clothing retailers like H&M deliberately mutilating and tossing unsold clothes in the trash. Many experts in retail concede that the practice is not uncommon--for some unfathomable "economic" reason it makes more sense to destroy clothes than to release them into a local community. The situation is even worse when it comes to food. We over-produce and waste a lot of it. According to the USDA, just over a quarter of America's food -- about 25.9 million tons -- gets thrown into the garbage can every year. University of Arizona estimates that the number is closer to 50 percent. The country's supermarkets, restaurants and convenience stores alone throw out 27 million tons between them every year (representing $30 billion of wasted food). This is why the U.N. World Food Program says the total food surplus of the U.S. alone could satisfy "every empty stomach" in Africa. How about empty stomachs in our own communities? The list goes on an on. We have surplus of space--many commercial buildings, schools, corporate and government spaces are underutilized, while many small organizations and individuals are struggling to find spaces for their work. We also have excess of talent--musicians, artists, designers, educated unemployed people, young and old--needing audiences, venues to work in, or contribute ideas to. Crowdsourcing Abundance or "Screw' em, Let's Do This Ourselves" Previously:Marina Gorbis on organizational change...
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Posted Hypermusician Tod Machover on music and the mind to Boing Boing
MIT Media Lab musician/inventor Tod Machover talks about the neuroscience of the musical experience, and using technology to close the loop between brain activity and what we're hearing in real time. In the near future, he says, you can imagine having the ability to "design a piece of music... that is exactly right for you, and only you at this particular moment." Tod Machover at Big Think...
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Posted Science of gun duels to Boing Boing
In the gun duels of Hollywood Westerns, the one who draws first (usually the bad guy) always tends to lose. Why? Decades ago, Nobel laureate Niels Bohr claimed that would likely be the case in a real duel too because the cowboy who draws second would have a reactive advantage -- the person reacting "without thinking" moves quicker than the person who consciously draws first. Indeed, new research on the matter by University of Birmingham psychologist Andrew Welchman suggests that the brain's wiring evolved such that reactive movements are faster than voluntary ones. However, Welchman says that this doesn't mean the Hollywood cliche is based in reality. In experiments he ran where players competed by hitting a series of buttons rather than firing on one another, the reaction time -- the delay between a stimulus and execution of a response -- negated the reactive advantage. From New Scientist: There was a "reaction time"... delay of 200 milliseconds before the players started to respond to their opponent's actions. So although they moved faster, they never won. The only way the last guy to draw could win is if the reactive part of the brain makes him move so fast that the time it takes him to draw, plus his reaction time, is less than the time it takes the first guy just to draw. "It would be hard to get fast enough to recover the time it takes to react to your opponent," says Welchman. He thinks fast reactions evolved for avoiding unexpected danger, or for confrontations in which animals are in a face-off, and the second to move needs speed. Indeed, Welchman's "reactive" players hit the buttons less accurately than the "intentional" players, another reason fast reactions may not win gunfights. "Draw! The neuroscience behind Hollywood shoot-outs" Previously:Puzzle: three-way pistol duel - Boing Boing...
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Posted Fiorina's latest political video featuring furries! to Boing Boing
Former HP big chief Carly Fiorina is running for the US Senate. The latest video released by Carly for California is really something. The insanity really gets rolling at 2:27. As my pal Sean Ness says, "I love seeing furries in ads!" (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)...
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Posted Cycling jerseys with great art to Boing Boing
I'm not a bike rider, but I think Retro's line of cycling jerseys are sharper than any others I've seen whizzing past my lazy ass. Their New Yorker jerseys are a brand new line. Retro Cycling Jerseys...
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Posted Dog shoots man to Boing Boing
Last weekend, a hunter in Los Banos, California was shot by his dog. He is recovering from the gunshot wound. I like to think the canine was attempting to avenge the death of innocent ducks. Apparently, the hunter set down his shotgun with the safety on and walked away to gather his gear. From CBS: The victim was about 15 yards away, retrieving his decoys, when his female black Labrador retriever stepped on the gun. Authorities said the dog disengaged the safety and hit the trigger at the same time, firing a shell with #2 shot. The man was struck in on the left side of his upper back. "Dog Shoots Hunter"...
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Posted Humanoid robot from GM and NASA to Boing Boing
This morning, NASA and General Motors unveiled Robonaut 2, aka R2, which is a weird name considering it looks nothing like the real R2. Robonaut 2 was designed to assist both astronauts and auto workers. It has no legs. More details and video after the jump....
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Posted Documentary about making a computer brain to Boing Boing
Last year, I posted about Blue Brain, a project launched to simulate the human brain using an IBM computer. The project's director, Henry Markram, has said that he thinks he can accomplish it in ten years. Filmmaker Noah Hutton has started a documentary film about Markram's efforts to reverse engineer the brain and then program one in silicon. He says the film will be completed when Markram succeeds. Above is a preview of the film-in-progress, titled "Bluebrain - Year One." (Thanks, Lisa Braun Dubbels!)...
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Posted Art show: antique anatomical print reproductions to Boing Boing
The fine art printmakers at Chicago's Transmission Atelier will exhibit their facsimile edition prints of antique anatomical and allegorical illustrations in a show opening Friday at L.A.'s La Luz De Jesus Gallery. The exhibit, titled "If the Shadows Could March" (Anatomical illustrations and religious allegory, 15th - 19th Century)" runs until February 28. The prints featured in the show are reasonably priced, from $250 to $450 framed. I have several pieces from Transmission Atelier and the quality is terrific. From the gallery: "If the Shadows Could March" will feature high end facsimile edition prints of antique anatomical and allegorical illustration from the 15th through 19th centuries. Each Framed edition size is printed on archival Bamboo rag paper. Each edition is limited to 150 copies, numbered and embossed with the Transmission Atelier Studio Stamp. Each edition print is made from the original source material. The engraving and printing techniques used by the artists on the original works is of astonishing craftsmanship and is all but a completely lost art form. In these high end facsimile edition prints, Transmission Atelier has retained all of the detail, color and even the flaws in the antique paper inherent in the original artifact. The overall quality of a digital edition print, from color accuracy to fine to microscopic detail, is dependent upon the digital capture methodology. In this area Transmission Atelier is equipped with the most advanced digital capture and imaging technology as well as 3 decades of color communication, scanning and print premedia experience. In the spirit of European Print Making studios of the 18th and 19th century, Transmission Atelier will cycle through as many as 10 rounds of proofing to ensure that each edition is identical to and indistinguishable from the original source material. From Human Medical Anomaly to Gothic Nightmares on paper La Luz De Jesus and Transmission Atelier are the premier sources for this astounding material. "If the Shadows Could March" (La Luz de Jesus) "Gothic Nightmares on paper" (Transmission Atelier) Previously:Reprints of antique medical illustrations - Boing Boing...
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Posted Rushkoff's Digital Nation documentary tonight on PBS to Boing Boing
BB pal Douglas Rushkoff's new Frontline documentary airs on PBS tonight. Titled "Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier," the program looks at how constant connectivity is changing the way we work, live, and think. Check local listings or watch the entire program online. From the show description: Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it? And is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we've gained? In Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, FRONTLINE presents an in-depth exploration of what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world.... "In the early days of the Internet, it was easy for me to reassure people about what it would mean to bring digital technology into their lives," says Rushkoff, who has authored 10 books on media, technology and culture. "Now I want to know whether or not we are tinkering with something more essential than we realize." Frontline: Digital Nation - Life on the Virtual Frontier...
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Posted Star Wars sneakers by Adidas to Boing Boing
Adidas released a line of Star Wars trainers. Some of them are inspired by various characters or spaceships, like a Stormtrooper, Tie Fighter, or X-Wing pilot (above). One style has several iconic scenes emblazoned right on the shoes. Each pair comes in a blister pack, inspired I guess by the old action figures. I can't decide if I like the line or find it ultra-cheezy, or both, but one thing I'm certain of is that the ones priced at $200/pair are rather spendy. The adidas Originals Star Wars Collection for 2010...
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Posted Geek graffiti in bathroom to Boing Boing
I got a chuckle out of this geek graffiti in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant near UC Berkeley. I've seen this gag before in San Francisco, but larger on an outside wall. Previously:C graffiti - Boing Boing...
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Posted Esther Pearl Watson's paintings of UFOs "and such" to Boing Boing
Esther Pearl Watson's Unlovable is a terrific comic somewhat based on a 1980s teenage girl's diary Watson found in the bathroom of a Vegas gas station. I first read the strip in Bust magazine, and Fantagraphics published Unlovable (Vol. 1) as a hardcover in 2008. Unlovable (Vol. 2) is due out next month. Watson is also a fine art painter, and she has a show of new work opening on February 12 at the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, Texas. Several pieces from the show titled "Space is the Place: Paintings of UFOs and Such," are also viewable online. Above, "Garland, Texas Something New Near the Paintball Field" (20 x 30", acrylic on board). From the Webb Gallery: A strong narrative sense runs through the paintings in her new exhibition Space is the Place:Paintings of UFOs and Such by Esther Pearl Watson. Charming and funny, they chronicle her life growing up in a series of small Texas towns, with an eccentric father who was always trying to build spaceships in the yard, often with disastrous results. Part fantasy, part puzzle (find the family cat, Pooter), and part homage to the past, these works feature glittery spaceships hovering over tilted and flattened perspectives of rural landscapes--some idyllic, some trash-littered and neglected--with extended titles written in childlike printing. Executed in acrylics, graphite, silver leaf, glitter and spray paint, Watson's works combine a sophisticated use of mixed media with an assumed unschooled style in which Watson adopts the vernacular of Outsider Art. "Space is the Place: Paintings of UFOs and Such" by Esther Pearl Watson...
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Posted Video: Timothy Leary at Folsom Prison to Boing Boing
From the Internet archive, bOING bOING patron saint Timothy Leary interviewed in Folsom Prison. "My main message is 'Use your head!'" It was in prison that Tim wrote my favorite of his books, Terra 2: A Way Out and Neuropolitcs. Internet Archive: Timothy Leary Archive (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)...
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