NASA Planetary CollageAFP/NASA) No image of Pluto? I’m outraged! Disney’s copyright protection schemes have gone too far! Update: I found this image on the AP newswire feed. There was no link or credit, but Rosemary Frezza writes: http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-000454.html This is the closest thing I could find on a NASA site so far. I wonder who…
“The world in which clothing, paint, lighting, rugs, and curtains all change colors to match (or influence) our mood is coming, but it’s some time away — a lot of technology has to be made affordable and durable before then. In the meantime, IFM and other companies are working on ways to weave touch sensors…
“It’s not every day you see your teacher naked in the technology room or posing with a cello.” — Charlotte, British schoolgirl who helped organize teacher pinup calendar for charity. —Teachers Strip off for Calendar (BBC) Uh, I should hope not, Charlotte. The pictures really aren’t that revealing, but this is still just too weird. The…
“Today, students who come to a campus with Spider-Man on their minds may have trouble believing it, but they share the superhero with middle-aged professors. For, in our scholarly lives, many of us are not just harking back to distant memories of the Marvel comics of our childhoods, but creating a new scholarship on the…
“Today, United States district court judge, Florence-Marie Cooper, will hear the latest arguments in one of the most drawn out cases in show business legal history. On the result of the case hang billions of dollars in revenue for Walt Disney Co in what has become the case of the Mouse – Disney’s nickname in…
One of several paintings that were, according to a spam I received Sunday, stolen from a museum in Manchester, England. WARNING: Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin have been stolen in UKE-Mail) When I went online to check the validity of this spam I found a BBC story which reports “The paintings – Van Gogh’s The Fortification…
“I have painted with their on-line robot a few times and like to check the gallery to see what others have paining with it. I sent an email suggestion to possibly improve the interface and complimented them on their site. It is sad to think that folks who put so much time and effort into…
“It was Milton’s Satan and Dante’s Inferno that made them two of the most powerful Christian artists of all time. Because they understood evil and did not shrink from it, their depictions of goodness had power. In order to be redemptive, art has to convince us there is something real from which we need redeeming.…
“The great majority of the readers who adore the warm and relaxing bath of their accustomed New Yorker were very upset by the ‘shock treatment’ of my covers. Those readers will feel more at ease with the calm and submissive New Yorker of the tradition which, since the 1920s, mixed intelligence, sophistication, snobbery, and complaisance…
“Despite one website creator’s plea to stay away from his site, people just can’t stand not clicking on the Don’t Go There button. The site, programmed to go dark after 100 visitors, stayed live just shy of one hour.” Michelle Delio —Keep Out Sign Irresistible OnlineWired) Similar:Nested (procedurally generated game of expanding drop-down lists)A text…
An excellent collection of images by a futurist illustrator. The website itself is rather difficult to navigate. First, it uses frames. Second, nothing happens when I click on the images that are supposed to be “portals”. Third, there’s really no text anywhere that I could quote in order to introduce the content of the site.…
“Margaret Bourke-White hung out of bombers to take pictures, climbed out on a gargoyle high atop the Chrysler Building to take pictures, was the first Western photographer to go to the Soviet Union, covered the dangerous days of India’s partition….Margaret Bourke-White was in love with the shapes of industrial design — the mechanical muscle and…
“But however it may be in the art gallery, in moral issues we often cannot agree to differ. Agreeing to differ with Genghis is in effect agreeing to tolerate fox-hunting, and my whole stance was against that. Moral issues are frequently ones where we want to coordinate, and where we are finding what to forbid…
“Leonardo figured things out by looking at them, thinking about them and taking them apart. That compulsion to tinker has led many modern hackers to claim Leonardo retroactively as one of their own.” —Da Vinci: The Pith Behind the ManWired) Nice backgrounder for the Da Vinci exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Similar:The Harry…
“It might seem like a stretch to compare scientists to, say, African Americans and Latinos, who have historically been targets of often viciously stereotypical portrayals in film and on TV. But Weber thinks the media has a blind spot when it comes to scientists.” Jason Silverman —Film Scientists Not All Mad, BadWired) Similar:Here’s What Happens…
“To be the subject of a Hirschfeld drawing endowed one with a special cachet. To find the word ‘Nina,’ the name of his daughter, hidden several times in the lines of his caricatures, was a weekend pastime for millions of readers. Next to his signature he put the number of ‘Ninas’ in his drawings, creating…
“The public water system is somewhat unpleasant to think about. Basically, the stuff you flush down the toilet gets sent through a filtering system. That system ‘treats’ the sewage until what remains is sufficiently pure to send back to you as drinking water. As content intermediaries, publishers perform an analogous function. Individual software writers, authors,…
“Why is this a hobby horse of mine? Largely because I’ve been trying to promote the idea that games are an artform since I was a teenager, when I first started designing them professionally. Also because the rest of the world, both inside and outside the game industry, is starting to realize the validity of…
“Creating imaginary worlds while trying to do it in a personal style to at least be able to retain some originality in my work, was always an enjoyable challenge for me and my favorite thing while drawing Fantasy themes.” Luis Peres —Fantasy Illustration by Luis Peresworld4mysheep.com) Similar:How reading fiction can help improve our mental healthIn…
“Proposal. Develop a false website and organization concentrating on the newest national concern: videogame addiction and violence. This organization is called Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence (MAVAV, www.mavav.org). There is a great amount of stereotypes about people who play videogames (anti-social, depressed, unintelligent) and a lot of videogame violence bashing and blame (scapegoat) by…