This demo — from Pattie Maes’ lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry — was the buzz of TED. It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine “Minority Report” and then some.Read More
Why are babies cute? Why is cake sweet? Philosopher Dan Dennett has answers you wouldn’t expect, as he shares evolution’s counterintuitive reasoning on cute, sweet and sexy things. For a topping, try his introduction to a new theory by Matthew Hurley on why jokes are funny. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best Read MoreRead More
Movie studios spend millions trying to make films that will attract huge audiences and big box office profits, but new research in brain imaging may provide insight into why certain movies set off more brain activity than others. NBC’s Robert Bazell reports. (Nightly News)Read More
The Future Has Always Been Crazier Than We Thought with Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses his book, The Black Swan in relation to predicting the future, learning from the consequences of the unknown, and the power of randomness.Read More
In this award winning documentary for the BBC Adam Curtis’ examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty. I’m not sure how much of this I agree with, but it is interesting nonetheless. “This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control Read MoreRead More
What would a music video look like if it were directed by the music, purely as an expression of a great song, rather than driven by a filmmaker’s concept? Designer Jakob Trollback shares the results of his experiment in the form.Read More
With a short post to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University, on September 19, 1982 at 11:44 AM, Scott Fahlman became the acknowledged originator of the ASCII-based emoticon. …1982: At precisely 11:44 a.m., Scott Fahlman posts the following electronic message to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University: 19-Sep-82 11:44 Read MoreRead More
Wired has posted a pretty interesting article, “Scientists Create First Memristor: Missing Fourth Electronic Circuit Element.” I can’t even imagine the possibilities this technology would bring to digital video and digital editing. …Researchers at HP Labs have built the first working prototypes of an important new electronic component that may lead to instant-on PCs as Read MoreRead More
Konstan, a professor at the University of Minnesota, is just one of dozens of academic researchers trying to solve the problem of understanding your likes and dislikes. …If pressed, Joe Konstan will admit that he watches “fewer than two movies a year.” Yet Konstan has spent more than a decade creating software that attempts to Read MoreRead More
Seed Magazine has a fascinating article by Dmitri Tymoczko on “The Shape of Music”. The idea that there is a relationship between music and math dates back to Ancient Greece, but contemporary mathematics is able to expound on this idea. …Roughly 2,500 years ago, Pythagoras observed that objects, such as the anvils he purportedly studied, Read MoreRead More
If those giant B-Movie Monsters weren’t unrealistic enough, Michael C. LaBarbera a professor in Organismal Biology & Anatomy, at the College of the University of Chicago, throws more cool water on the “science” of those oversized Hollywood creations. …Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially those from my favorite Read MoreRead More
