The new book, Masters of Deception, features the work of several illusionists, including the sculptor Shigeo Fukuda. Fukuda's mastery is in creating physical forms that take on a second identity when the viewing angle changes or a light is introduced. In the Lunch with a Helmet On (above), the shadow of a motorcycle is built entirely out of welded forks, knives and spoons. Movies of this piece, and several others, are available here.

---

Posted in: Art

transmediale is the biggest and most significant festival for art and the creative usage of digital media. Once a year the festival presents new and outstanding projects in the field of digital culture and provides reflexions on the role of digital techno

Thirty years ago France legalized abortion (translation)November 30Le Monde - Thirty years ago, after debates characterized by extreme rhetoric, a historic law decriminalizing the 'voluntary interruption of pregnancy', a right strongly demanded at the time by femiists and which has expanded over the years. On Nov. 19 1974, in the middle of the night, the National Assembly approved the bill proposed by Ms. Veil, then Health Minister. Two thirds of the (right wing) ruling majority voted against and the law was only passed with the votes of the left.

i'm telling you, man, the french just have it all figured out.... -- AP

loconet writes "The BBC reports that a report by Demos says that the all-consuming passions of geeks and nerds may actually be beneficial for society. The UK think tank's report published today, underlines the importance of 'Pro-Ams' -- amateurs who pursue a hobby or pastime, in many cases an all-consuming passion, to a professional standard. The report says Pro-Am astronomers have made 'significant contributions' to the knowledge of the universe, while Pro-Am computer programmers are providing the only serious challenge to Microsoft's dominance of personal computing."

YES!! our powers are now recognized -- AP

tiltowait writes "As reported on LISNews.com, the Internet Archive has lost a copyright lawsuit which challenged the Congressional lengthening of copyright terms and conditions. The ruling has implications for abandonware and other copyright-eligible materials that have no active owner. Brewster Kahle plans to appeal the decision." The decision is available. As we noted in an earlier story, the Eldred case challenged the length of copyright expansion, this one challenged the breadth, and so far, this one is going about as well as the Eldred case did. Stanford has an overview of the case.

Not that we ve ever actually been able to bring ourselves to throw out or recycle any of our old useless gadgets, which are piling up around the house (it s so hard to part with them, anyone else have this problem?), but we might not feel so bad about it in the future. Researchers at the University of Warwick in Britain have been working with PVACC Research & Development on biodegradable cellphone casings that disintegrate when composted. They also embed a little surprise into each casing a seed that won t germinate until you recycle the phone. Damn hippies.

[Via textually.org]

Swedish ecologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak has developed Promessa, a method for recycling human corpses into fertilizer.

While cremation burns fossil fuels and releases pollutants, burials require that the corpse be filled with embalming fluids which can pollute the groundwater as the body decays.

Wiigh-Masak's solution has bodies immersed in liquid nitrogen to remove water, causing them to crumble into fine organic dust. This is then placed in a container that biodegrades within six months.

Having tested the method with pig and cow carcasses, she planted roses above the containers with excellent results.

Elsewhere in Europe, Arteus sells eco-friendly coffins made of cellulose fibre. It usually takes a whole tree to make a traditional coffin, but a hundred of Arteus products can be manufactured out of the equivalent of a recycled tree.

A bit more on the artistic side, but very thought-provoking: Biopresence, by London-based Shiho Fukuhara and Georg Tremmel, uses a specially developed coding method to encode human DNA underneath the DNA of a plant cell, without affecting the resulting tree in any way. So, the person's DNA will live on as an integral part of the tree. These new kind of trees can be seen as "Memorials for Life" or as "Transgenic Tombstones" and could offer an alternative to traditional graves and headstones.

(Posted by Regine Debatty in Plausibly Surreal Scenarios and Anticipations at 12:48 PM)

Brilliant and beautiful Japanese website on touring Thailand.

warning - big and take-time-to-load flash site, but it is well worth it, if you have that kind of attention span -- AP

Mark Frauenfelder: Matt Vine sez: Since yesterday, the rest of the world has been buzzing with news of the World Health Organization's warnings of a impending flu pandemic that could kill up to 100 million. These warnings are suspiciously missing from American news sites - we get things like "Godzilla honored with 'Walk of Fame' star" from CNN's front page." Link

At the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, neurobiologist Kenji Doya is using "cyber rodents" to probe how rewarding individuals when they achieve simple goals can give rise to intelligent group behaviors. Two of the critters circle each other in a mating dance. Others forage for fresh batteries on the floor. Another one just sits there. "That one is lazy," says the scientist. "It doesn t expend energy to get a reward."

Doya's work could help designers build machines that collaborate to carry out complex tasks, paving the way for self-sufficient swarms of robots that explore hostile environments, gather surveillance data, and repair equipment remotely.

The key is teaching the robots to do the right thing. Each rodent is equipped with a processor chip, a camera, sensors, wheels, and infrared data ports that allow it to communicate with others. If a robot approaches a battery pack or orients itself to mate, it receives a digital "reward" a snippet of software code that reinforces that behaviour in the future. Over time, the robots compete for power and may even develop territories and alliances.

Via Technology Review.

Xeni Jardin: BoingBoing reader Garth Johnson says,

"This is a lovely pamphlet that artist Packard Jennings distributed at his local mall. Packard is the human who brought us the 'fallen rapper' pez dispensers."

Link to art-pamphlet, and Link to other past work from Jennings.

happy holidays! -- AP

Aided by satellite maps he downloads from the Internet, inexpensive 3-D home design software, old prints and drawings of city plans, and architects' blueprints of idealized structures never built, he uses his computer to create and render models

Remember the iDuck, that little duck-shaped USB flash memory drive? Well this is just like that. Except, uh, only without the flash memory drive part or anything else potentially. No, this time around the iDuck has dropped all pretense of utility and is back as pure ornamentation. For bonus fun, find someone who actually has an iDuck drive and swap theirs with one of these storage-less ones.

yes!!! totally useless light things, i want one, i want one!! -- AP

David Pescovitz: This fax-by-telegraph machine was in operation at the New York Herald in 1900. From a Pearson's Magazine article published at the time:

"The equipment consists of two machines, almost identical in construction, the first being called the " transmitter," the second the " receiver." Each is provided with an eight-inch cylinder, which may be made to revolve by a delicate system of clockwork so finely regulated that both instruments work together to a nicety.

Above each cylinder rests a fine platinum needle, or stylus, not unlike the point in a telegraph key. A sheet of tin-foil, six inches by eight inches, ready to wrap round the transmitter's cylinder, and a sheet of ordinary carbon manifold-copying paper of the same dimensions, which, when placed between two sheets of blank paper, is to be wrapped round the receiver's cylinder--these complete the chief requirements."

Link (via MetaFilter)

David Pescovitz: The Mus e d'Orsay has an exhibition of the mind-blowing photographs by physician and physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey, whose research in the 19th century led directly to the invention of the movie camera. The image at left is a 1901 shot of a smoke machine.

"Marey became interested in movement at an early stage of his career: the movement of blood as it circulated, the movements which controlled the beating of the heart, then those of the muscles and nerves. To improve his studies, he developed more and more precise recording instruments. Once had explained the internal movements of the body, Marey extended his investigations to the motion of the body as a whole: a walking human being, a flying dragonfly, a swimming ray, a falling cat..."

For those outside of Paris, "Movement In Light" is a stunning online exhibit of Marey's work from which the text above was taken. Link (via AEIOU: Excuse my French!)

oh me god. it's like reblog for mp3s.

a few of ya ll sent this in, and it s handy enough that it deserves a post!

portable firefox is a fully functional package of firefox optimized for use on a usb key drive. it has some specially-selected optimizations to make it perform faster and extend the life of your usb key as well as a specialized launcher that will allow most of your favorite extensions to work as you switch computers.

If cities evolve, what will shape their evolution over the next few decades?

Salon has an interesting article today about the use of wireless technologies as the drivers for urban change. "Urban Renewal, the Wireless Way" (subscription or brief advertisement required) looks at the realization that embedding networked technologies in urban spaces isn't dehumanizing, doesn't "eliminate geography," but can be enriching both socially and economically. Cities have long been home to dense social and information networks -- in the ethnic and artistic subcultures, in the patterns of business and commerce, in the every day communication of millions of people -- and digital tools make these networks both more accessible and more powerful.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are quietly developing new search tools for digital video, foreshadowing a high-stakes technology arms race in the battle for control of consumers' living rooms.

Google's effort, until now secret, is arguably the most ambitious of the three. According to sources familiar with the plan, the search giant is courting broadcasters and cable networks with a new technology that would do for television what it has already done for the Internet: sort through and reveal needles of video clips from within the haystack archives of major network TV shows.

The Japan Science and Technology Agency have invented a clear, flexible transistor that can be used to make clear, flexible electronic gadgets. Has anyone seen my cell phone?

then & now photos comparing 1930s to present day [via] 

Mark Frauenfelder:

When the roots of these GMO flowers hit nitrogen dioxide (which leaches into the soil from buried land mines), the plant changes color. Link

Perversely Interactive System, by Lynn Hughes and Simon Laroche, puts the spectator into relation with a virtual other whose image (s)he controls through a biofeedback device.

The system is made of a large scale video projection and a wireless biofeedback handset that monitors galvanic skin resistance (variation in sweat gland activity that measures the level of stress).

The video projection begins with the image of a woman with her back turned. As the participant learns to reduce his or her stress / sweat level, the woman on the screen gradually turns around, and advances towards the participant.

So in this piece, excitation or effort hinders, rather than promotes, successful interaction. If the participant s tension level rises (often due to the excitement of success) then the woman stops.

Till December 12 at the FILE festival in Sao Paulo.

Rebel Prince posted a photo:

28 Nov 2004: "Capitalism is so gay." I found this spray-painted stenciled message on the sidewalk in the MIssion district, somewhere between Guerrero and Dolores, San Francisco.

ha ha ha ha ha...... -- AP

Semiconductor chips that can manage a good bit of their own upkeep are moving closer to reality. "...At I.B.M., researchers have designed chips with built-in fuses that can do some self-repair jobs. The chip circuits are dotted with thousands of tiny, inexpensive electrical fuses. If trouble occurs, the chips can blow some of these fuses and reroute operations to another location on the chip."

Dirak writes "Over 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci conceptualized a self-powered flying machine that would achieve both lift and thrust with flapping wings alone and named it the “ornithopter”. Hot on the heels of the 100th Anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight, and the recent X prize, a team of scientists from University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace have taken on this challenge to make Leonardo’s dream a reality."

Julian Lwin is a product designer who decided to do something with all those refuse bottles found curbside on recycling day. His lighting pieces creatively repurpose laundry bottles making both a social and an aesthetic impact.

---

Posted in: Art

For months on end, these seven independent photographers and filmmakers have worked exclusively in Iraq documenting US troops and Iraqi civilians, resistance fighters and child laborers, imprisoned women and incarcerated youths. Using varied media and narrative styles ranging from photojournalism to first person narratives, cinema verite and found photography, Iraq Uncensored photographers present insights and subtleties beyond what daily news reporting can provide.

I
Today I hacked Eyebeam's reBlog. It was very easy. Without any passwords or technical expertise, I gained, and by the time of this post, continue to maintain control of their content.

read more at her post, i am glad to have played a crucial part in this mini project/political statement. :-) -- AP

CC French project lead Melanie Dulong de Rosnay and Daniele Bourcier have just published 'International Commons at the Digital Age - la creation en partage', a book with some valuable chapters on our first experiences with the internationalized CC licenses.

The book was written as a contribution to a day-long event in Paris on November 19th to celebrate the launch of the French CC licenses.

For this occasion (photographs and some abstracts to follow in these pages) Melanie had organized several panels at the French National Assembly debating the merits of the CC approach from a variety of different perspectives (academia, the publishing industry, politics, science, the arts). The celebration continued into the wee hours at the Maison de Metallo in downtown Paris with live music acts, poetry readings, website presentations and fair trade drinks.

Many thanks to Melanie for all her enthusiasm and her splendid organization of this event.

the french just really have their stuff figured out, don't they? -- AP

Ostensibly a true story, "Densha Otoko" -- literally, "Train Man" -- began as a series of postings on Japan's most popular Internet bulletin board after the protagonist, a young Japanese man, rescued a woman from a pushy drunk on the train.

One of the legions of Japanese geeks enamoured of high tech and pop culture but losers at real-life relations, the anonymous hero sought advice on how to pursue the girl of his dreams.

The story unfolded in the three months through May as "Train Man", encouraged by equally anonymous bulletin-board mates, plucked up the courage to phone, date and declare his love for "Miss Hermes", so dubbed for the brand-name of the teacups she gave him as a thank-you gift.

Compiled into book format last month, "Train Man" leapt onto bestseller lists, a reflection, experts say, of how deeply the Internet is seeping into the everyday lives of Japanese youth. (REUTERS)

The perception that "email is an old and formal communication means" is rapidly spreading among them. "I use email when I send messages to elders, said a college student by the name of Park. For 22-year-old office worker Kim

wow, i never thought this day would come -- AP

Sound Barrier, by Maia Urstad, is a sound installation of some 130 CD-and cassette radios assembled as a wall. They remind us of historical remains of buildings --except that the stones are made of electronics-- and reflect issues related to the technical development and our culture of consumption.

The CD players in the wall are playback units for a composition of electronically treated sounds borrowed from radio waves, Morse code, FM- and satellite radio etc. Sound signals that also will be obsolete and forgotten sooner than we might expect.

The sound barrier installation can be seen from Nov. 27 till Jan 23. 2005 at the Electrohype Biennial in Sweden.

rdwald writes "An international team of scientists led by Caltech have set a new Internet2 speed record of 101 gigabits per second. They even helpfully converted this into one LoC/15 minutes. Lots of technical details in this press release; in addition to the obviously better network infrastructure, new TCP protocols were used."

Advocates for open government are creating search engines and websites to let citizens peek into the inner workings of official agencies. Now more than ever, they say, openness is essential to self-government. By Ryan Singel.

NASA engineers are developing a technology that picks up and translates throat signals into words before they're even spoken.

According to neuroengineer Chuck Jorgensen , when you're reading, sometimes you find that your tongue or your lips are moving but you're not making an audible sound. An electronic signal is being sent to produce that speech but you're intercepting it so it doesn't really say it out loud. That's subvocal speech.

Electrodes cling below Jorgensen's chin picking up electronic signals that the body sends to vocal chords. He amplifies the signals and uses neural network software to decipher word patterns.

Those sounds create waves that electrodes pick up and funnel into a neural net which recognizes the pattern and the label or word that Jorgensen assigns to that pattern. Over time, word repetition and processing enable the introduction of new patterns or words.

During a demo before a wide screen, Jorgensen can direct a simulated Mars rover over Martian terrain. It dips, falls, climbs over craters and turns abruptly to the left and right, all at Jorgensen's prompting, all without him uttering a sound.

Of course, conversational speech is very different from uttering a word and it's unclear how well the system would recognize subvocal speech during conversation.

Still, the expectation that subvocal speech devices might retool communication is high. Applications could include communication in covert operations with military troops, situations where you can't speak normally, underwater or in fire gear, or possibly where there's high noise or you have a respirator. One day, scientists might even develop a silent cell phone.

And, best of all, the technology could improve the life of people suffering from speech ailments.

Via ScienCentral News.
Credit photo: NASA Ames Research Center, Dominic Hart.

Xeni Jardin: Chryde says,

I founded a collective french music weblog with a mp3blog page. We made a compilation of musics we discovered on the web, by ourselves or via other mp3blogs. It's called Point D'ecoute (French for Listening post, a reference to a Mark Hansen Installation: Link

. All the tracks are taken from the bands' sites so it's 100% legal, like a mini Wired CD. 23 tracks, a lot from the US, but also Netherlands, France, Belgium, Austria, Sweden... You can download it here: Link We made it free to download, with a cover and all. At an event in Paris celebrating musical webzines, we burned it on demand: Link

There’s probably no better way to indoctrinate your kids into the ways of RFID than with the MagiCook Kitchen from Little Tikes, a toy kitchen where all the fake food comes embedded with RIFD tags. Swipe a plastic waffle over the built-in sensor in the fake stovetop and you’ll hear a variety food and cooking-related phrases. See, RFID really is for more than just the government spying on you!

You knew it would happen. The Nintendo DS has so many features, it’s a hackers dream come true. Sure, Nintendo is notorious for dodging hacks but when they added Wi-Fi to their repertoire, they were just asking for that special attention. The beginning of the process starts here. It’s nothing too sexy; just a method to capture Pictochat sessions. But it will lead to bigger things. Sexy things. The kinds of things that will have you plunking down 200 bucks so you can join the DS frenzy.

Soundmesh: Design and OSX version: Mara Helmuth; RTmix Collaboration: Brad Garton; Linux version: Ivica Ico Bukvic. Soundmesh plays uncompressed audio data to remote host ips. It handles 44.1KHz au/sun/next or aiff files. It is a RTcmix-3.1.0 based application. You do not need to install cmix as all binaries are included. Because high bandwidth is required, you must be at an Internet2 site to participate.

SoundWIRE: This project is fundamentally concerned with two areas of research: streaming professional-quality audio to remote destinations using next-generation Internet, and developing practical, intuitive methods for assessment of network reliability. Currently, digital audio streaming across the internet is compromised by restricted bandwidth and buffering of audio data to safeguard against network irregularities. The results are signal compression and potentially long delay times.

Global Visual Music Project: Goals are to: a) develop software for the creation, mediation, and dissemination of real-time multimedia content, including high resolution two and three dimensional graphics, digital audio and video; b) develop a networking capability for this software, so that multimedia data could be shared between users in many locations; c) organize a high profile event to unveil these resources by staging a networked multiple site public performance with accomplished artists in established artistic and technological venues; d) create a web site to disseminate information about our research; e) freely distribute the software we create; and f) develop and publish a communication protocol for networked distribution of high quality real-time multi-media data.

The art scene is booming like never before. A guide to understanding the madness, bracing for the backlash and enjoying it while it lasts.

direct quote from the article: "The Chelseafication of the art world has created a consensus of mediocrity and frivolousness." hm, u think? -- AP

Finally, an organized. + neat online chelsea gallery guide complete with "top picks" from Barry of blgogy.com

We wrote about Fab Labs a few months ago -- the combination of 3D scanners, Linux computers, laser cutters, 3D milling equipment, etc., assembled by the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT for use in the developing world. It's one of the coolest and potentially one the most revolutionary projects going, as it could be the jumping-off point for the biggest developing world leapfrog ever. Now Bruce Sterling (a name mentioned on WorldChanging once or twice) writes about Fab Labs for the latest issue of Wired, doing what he does best: seeing the possibilities.

Now imagine a vast, rising tide of bastardized things, shoddier than the cheapest postwar products of Japan, coming from Congo, Myanmar, Fallujah - a global outbreak of Napster-fabbed mayhem. Fabbing would be the ultimate industry for the perennially unindustrialized; the consumer cornucopia for the antideveloping world; a mushroom patch of recycled decay that pops up whenever the World Trade Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, or US Patent and Trademark Office turns its back.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 01:05 PM)

Dear Online Family,

It is with great pleasure and a heart thumping with pride, that Sparky and I announce the launch of ModernPooch.com, where the dog obsessed can get their daily fix of cute pics, funny stories and useful tips.

So everyday when you feel that familiar ache for the pooch...you now know where to look - ModernPooch.com!

Sincerely,

Sparky & Andrea Harner

P.S. This site will keep on truckin' with everything but dogs.

This is why.

hm, so i'm not actually sure what this is, but my first reaction was to reblog this. it actually looks almost like one of my illustrator sketch while trying to design the reblog logo, sans the b/w background. -- AP.

"Opsound is an experimental record label and open sound pool of copyleft music, organized through the website opsound.org. It is a laboratory for looking at how artists can release music in a manner synergistic with the internet's capacity to encourage communication and sharing. Opsound explores the possibilities of developing a gift economy among musicians, borrowing from the model of the free and open source software communities."

Thursday, December 2, CBGB Lounge 8pm - midnight and beyond.
313 Bowery, NYC- between 1st and 2nd streets - F train to Second Ave, or 6 train to Bleecker

New systems deliver broadband Internet connections through fixed antennas without digging up streets to install cables.

Thanks Beth for rocking the reBlog, even over the slow thanksgiving weekend. Starting tonite is Ann Poochareon of miserychick.net.

Ann goes way back with Eyebeam -- she was a member of the Contagious Media Group where Fundrace was born (she did the initial design) and she did the reBlog logo and Eyebeam reBlog page. She's currently working on SeeArtMakeArt, as well as a redesign of this reBlog and some of the content on Eyebeam's home page.

Take it away, Ann.

It's been an intense two weeks of reblogging. I've got to say I really have a new admiration and respect for the daily bloggers of the world. You guys and gals really rock!! I want to say thanks to the following blogsites which I felt were perfect for Eyebeam's Reblog..among them Tom Moody, Tim Shey, Agenda, Engadget, NewScientist, NPR and many others. If you noticed, over the past two weeks I tried not to blog anything related to politics, Bush, reviews of new games or street photos. I did this because I felt that our culture is saturated with the above and also, I didn't want the Reblog to serve as free advertising for major game corporations and their new releases. As I reblogged daily I found myself constantly asking the question..Why is this important? This is a tough question and ultimately I don't have the answer just yet. However, I was excited to hear the tail-end of the local news yesterday which featured a closing 5 second item about a room made completely of chocolate and marzipan. At which time I screamed out to my mate--I blogged that two days ago! AHH, the power of being first, in the know, or just spending too much time online. Goodbye Reblog..until we meet again.

The Home Office now classifies harassment by text or e-mail as a violent crime.

With year end office parties coming up, many tone deaf singers dread the inevitable Karaoke part of the evening.

According to David Sifry, Technorati 's chief executive, the current number of blogs is now over 8 times bigger than the 500,000 blogs it measured in June, 2003.

The company tracked 3 million blogs as of the first week of July, and has added over 1 million blogs to its stable since then. Meanwhile, Pew Internet & American Life reports a new weblog is created every 5.8 seconds. That roughly translates into 15,000 new blogs every day.

Blog traffic - Weblog Posts / Day

go to ClickZ for a full report

The Challenge of Haptics

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the technology behind haptics, derived from the Greek word meaning "to touch"...A group of science museums in the US is showing off one form of the technology. The system, dubbed the Internet Arm Wrestling Challenge, uses aluminum arms and hands connected by a series of rods and gears to computer servers linked to the Internet.

Visitors looking for a test of strength sit in front of a touch-screen monitor and ask the computer to look for a potential opponent at another museum. If one is available, his or her picture appears on the screen via streaming Internet video, the two wrestlers grip the metal hands and the computer starts the contest." [via]

We reported on an earlier form of arm wrestling in our post about the two Canadian artists Doug Back and Norman White who in 1986 used motorized force-transmitting systems interconnected by a telephone data link and did some telephonic arm wrestling of their own. "You could almost feel the pulse of the other person," White said, "... it was uncannily human-like--the sensation of sinews and muscle--not at all like feeling a machine."

Whatever happened to toys? Real toys, like dolls and model airplanes? A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that half of all 4- to 6-year-olds have played video games, a quarter of them regularly. Game makers are aggressively marketing to children as young as 3, while researchers report what parents already know: that children as young as 8 and 9 are asking for adult toys, like cell phones and iPods, rather than stuffed animals or toy trucks.

The trend has squeezed both makers and sellers of traditional toys, from the electric train company Lionel to retailers like Toys R Us and F.A.O. Schwarz. "I have seen 1-year-olds wanting to play with their parents' cell phones," said Irma Zandl of the Zandl Group, a youth-marketing research company. And they know the difference, she said, between a real one and a fake one.

Which raises a question: As toys change, has play itself fundamentally changed? For that matter, does the early attachment to grown-up toys in some way shorten in the imaginative world of childhood, with its pretend tea parties and make-believe cops and robbers? (NEW YORK TIMES)

Science in an Age of SuperstitionDejah Thoris | November 29 | The Agonist How Charlatans Use Science To Make Money Apparently we live in an age where there's a "need to believe" in something, no matter what it is. Of course this willing suspension of skeptical thought isn't exclusive to this time and place on the globe, but for some reason it seems more egregious today. Now, I'm not speaking of creation science, which is in the news these days as the extreme right-wing in the U.S. and other places seeks to impose their faith-based views of everything on everything from schools to laws. That's a subject for whole separate column, someday. But, somewhere deep in the human psyche is the need to believe the fabulous, which is why we have fairy tales and ghost stories. Another in a series of articles written exclusively for the Agonist

Teenagers are widely seen as the toughest sell for marketers. Anyone who has ever been a teenager can probably guess one big reason: Adults have no idea what teenagers want, and their attempts to crack the code are often embarrassing.

But marketers are not going to leave teenagers alone, because as a segment they are irresistible. Think, for example, about cellphones and other wireless technologies. Even the most clueless grown-up probably has some idea that cellphones are integral to current youth culture. Yet it does not necessarily follow that teenagers have the same wants and needs as other mobile-phone users.

At least that's the premise of Virgin Mobile, which has explicitly designed its products and its brand to attract teenagers and young adults and has so far signed up more than two million customers in the United States. Along with the usual risks of chasing youth, the cellphone business adds another: Many teenagers who have phones are simply added on to one of the ''family plans'' offered by the biggest wireless carriers, meaning they have whatever their parents have decided they can have.

The company has invited about 2,000 of its young customers to serve as ''Virgin Insiders,'' who were asked for their take during the development of the latest round of Virgin phones, particularly the Flasher V7. (NEW YORK TIMES)

With the federal government considering its first-ever warning that soft drinks can cause unhealthy weight gain, soda companies - longtime icons of the US food industry - are finding themselves increasingly on the defensive, lobbying federal officials against the warning and publicly arguing with the growing number of nutrition specialists who say the fizzy, sugary beverages play a major role in America's obesity problem.

A draft of federal dietary guidelines, now under review and expected in final form by February, says there is ''positive association between the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain."

Scientists and nutrition specialists, citing increasing obesity rates, also have begun pushing to reduce soda's high profile in American youth culture, advocating a ban on soft-drink advertising during children's television shows and eliminating the beverages from schools, a child-focused approach reminiscent of efforts successfully used against tobacco makers.

In response, soft-drink companies are lobbying against school bans and are urging federal health officials to remove the proposed health warning from the dietary guidelines. Already they have succeeded in fending off tougher language against soda consumption that many scientists wanted included in the guidelines. (BOSTON GLOBE)

So I've been wondering what happens to humanism in a post-human (c.f. Hayles) world. And, geek that I am, I immediately go to the dictionary to make sure I know what things mean.

First of all, I recognise that there are many kinds of humanism, and I'm specifically referring to one kind of posthumanism (and one that definitely shouldn't be confused with transhumanism). Now that gets dodgy, so I try to clarify.

When I think of humanism, I think of the philosophies that hold that "reason and science are the soundest means for investigating claims of truth; that all ideas, values, myths, and social systems are based on human experience; and that free thought thrives best in free, democratic societies." These ways of thinking are historically bound to particular types of scholarship that are the foundations of both the Renaissance and a liberal arts education like my own.

Two elements of humanism interest me the most: the focus on rationality and the focus on individualism. From what I understand, the Greek philosopher Epicurus taught, amongst other things, that pleasure makes humans happy. While certainly suggesting that "people only act according to what they find pleasurable and in their self-interest", Epicureans were referring to the sort of pleasure that comes from avoiding everyday passions and delights in favour of the more lasting aspects of a virtuous life. But this focus on self-interest is what's most interesting to me because it provided the foundation for Western civilisation's belief in free will, individual rights, democracy and capitalism. Futhermore, the scientific revolution was greatly influenced by the combination - and exaltation - of the principles of individualism and rationality.

Now I find myself stuck. Personally, I do not hold individualism and rationality amongst the most important aspects - let alone defining characteristics - of being human. In fact, anthropological fieldwork in aboriginal communities taught me that there are places and ways of living where these concepts are almost entirely meaningless except in, for example, their ability to explain why I was there studying those people instead of the other way around. Because of these experiences I find it very easy to imagine a posthuman world where our assumptions about individualism and rationality are challenged.

Hayles discusses why we may fear the posthuman - at best it suggests redefining what it means to be human and, at worst, it suggests that humans will be replaced by something else (intelligent machines, for instance). Either way, it changes how we understand what it means to be human. In the former case, Hayles suggests that our understandings of humanity may have only ever been true for the privileged few who had the power, wealth and leisure time to conceptualise themselves as autonomous beings. Hayles continues to argue that we might be able to mitigate the fear of becoming enslaved or obsolete by understanding that there is a limit to how seamlessly humans can be articulated with machines because our embodied experiences are fundamentally different.

The redefinition of the human does not scare or worry me. In fact, I might be inclined to extend Latour and say we have never been human. Neither does losing the belief in the supremacy of individualism or rationality bother me. Actually, I find it somehow comforting. So why do I keep thinking about this?

Is it my fear that there are as many kinds of posthumanism as there are humanism? Some of these ideas - and none more so than the ones that proclaim to be humane - enrage and frighten me to the point that I find myself wanting to defend a humanity I don't even believe exists! In the end, I think what I really want to hold on to - whether or not we are entering a posthuman world - is a sense of humanitarianism. I am, first and last and always, concerned about the welfare of people, all kinds of people.

And that leaves me with a new question: what happens to humanitarianism in a posthuman world?

more popular than movies

Toy shopping is a a pleasure which I was denied for a few years. But now that Black Friday is upon us, commenting on toys, well, it seems like the right thing to do before I retake Rome and play Warhammer 40K.

You can find dangerous toys at www.toysafety.net. But that's mostly for the toddler set.

However, with older kids, those over eight, too many parents let vital decisions about appropriate entertainment be made by these same kids. The same kids who can't decide whether to eat ham and cheese or pb&j can bring in highly violent games to their homes because parents buy blind or on their recommendation with no research.

There is a very simple thing you can do to find out if a video game is age and content appropriate:

Rent them.

Blockbuster has video games to rents as well as consoles to play them on. So if you have a question about the appropriateness of a game, play it yourself. Ratings, are, at best, a weak guide to what game is acceptable. But you can play the game before you buy it. Don't take someone's word for it, or a review. Now some games, like GTA: San Andreas may be hard to get, but rentals are a great way to prevent purchases of subjects you don't want in your home.

It also will shut the kids up. Because you know the games.

First, games are more complex morally and technically than anything we played in our youth. Yet, many parents leave technical decisions in the hands of kids. Not just with games, but in all aspects of technology. Computers, mp3 players, kids buy them and parents cluelessly permit this.

Too many parents remain shockingly uninvolved in their child's tecbnological decisions. You only get busybodies trying to make their decisions on what you can see when you don't do the work to control your own home.

Some things are clearly not for kids, and it is your moral responsibility to control what comes into your home, not Lou Shelton, not the government and not Toys 'R Us. You.

Second, some games are just too complex for kids to play. Sure, eight year olds want Tony Hawk 2, but can your kid use the controls?

Third, once you open a game and play it, most stores will NOT take it back. They will exchange title for title, but you buy it, you own it. So if you think GTA:AS is vile, well, you better hop on ebay to sell it. That's why this is foreknowledge is so critical. You need to know what comes in your home before it does, because it's not a coat, a return is usually not possible.

It's simple, rent the games your kids want, send them away for the weekend or go to a friend's house on a weekend, play the games for an hour or so and then make your decisions. If you need to, rent the console as well.

Why? Because I'm tired of ignorant parents running to everyone screetching about how bad these games are. Play the fucking things before you buy them and you won't have anyone to blame. Squeeze that hour or so to make sure your kid is exposed to the values you want in your home.

And gaming systems are different.

Nintendo Game Cube appeals best to the 5-12 set. You don't have to worry about too many M rated games for Game Cube. My nephew had a PS 2, and was sav