The latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary boasts 22,000 pages of definitions. While that may seem far from succinct, new research suggests the reference manual is meticulously organized to be as concise as possible -- a format that mirrors the way our brains make sense of and categorize the countless words in our vast vocabulary.

The Final Jeopardy blog posts a video each day's Final Jeopardy question. (thx, daniel)

(link)

Thursday night at Town Hall, the Natural Resources Defense Council presented E.O. Wilson interviewed by the author and New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert. Father of biodiversity, "Darwin's Natural Heir", Pulitzer Prize winner, author of 25 books, ecologist, and humanist...

Lucas123 writes "The same Xerox lab that brought us Ethernet, the GUI and the mouse has demonstrated paper that can be reused after printed text automatically deletes itself from its surface in a day. Instead of trashing or recycling after one use, a single piece of paper can be reused up to 100 times. 'The paper contains specially coded molecules that create a print after being exposed to ultraviolet light emitted from a thin bar in a printer. The ultraviolet bar itself is very small, so it can be used in mobile printers. The technology could also be useful for network printing.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A while back we posted about the Texas-sized "island" of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean, and marveled that there weren't pictures of the monstrosity. Now we have them, thanks to the folks at Vice. They hired a boat and struck out for the North Pacific Gyre, the vortex of currents where the trash apparently accumulates. Check out the 12-part "Garbage Island" video series. In episode nine they enter the gyre. What they encounter is an "unfathomable bummer." The trash hasn't gathered in a huge, amalgamated mass (this rumor was always a little suspect). That would have been a big problem, but one with clear boundaries. Instead, limitless volumes of plastic scraps are dispersed throughout the ocean, hopelessly entangled with the natural environment. It's bad news, we know, but worth confronting. Via PSFK.

For his 30th birthday last month, New Yorker Scott Ballum embarked on the Consume®econnection Project, a year-long effort to meet the people who make the stuff he buys. For everything he consumes, Scott wants to establish a personal connection with someone along the production chain, be it a designer, a factory worker, or even a trucker. He's chronicling the experience online. Barely two months in, Scott has already encountered some obstacles, but a recent trip to the Maker's Mark distillery in Loretto, Kentucky was rewarding. We'll be following the project with interest. The Maker's Mark distillery in Loretto, Kentucky When we finally snuck away from the pimento cheese finger sandwiches and headed towards some buildings not on the tour, we found ourselves approaching a tall, burly fellow in a brown MM sweatshirt, work boots, and well-worn cowboy hat. A Godsend. Jude is a barrel-roller. He is one of about 18 guys who rolls empty barrels off trucks from the warehouse into the cistern, where they are filled with whiskey ready to become bourbon, and then rolls the full barrels back onto another truck to go back to the warehouse. 360 barrels a day, each one 150 pounds empty, 500+ pounds full. But as Jude put it, "It's not so bad, you let the whiskey do the work." Given that all of the Maker's Mark Bourbon in the world is distilled in Loretto, and that Jude is one of only eighteen people who move these barrels, there's a high likelihood that much of the Maker's I've consumed in bars or at home, and will continue to consume, was aged in barrels he's rolled. Vats of bourbon

In "The Tuymans Experiment," the acclaimed Belgian painter Luc Tuymans and some art-world collaborators punk the plebes. The painter—whose work sells for millions at auction and whose importance is, we're assured, beyond dispute—paints a mural on a busy Antwerp street. A hidden camera records whether passersby stop to appreciate the work of a master. It's a thought-provoking video. We're all for public art, and the modest Tuymans is a good sport. But, when only 4% of passersby stop, the narrator hopes that "these numbers will wake people up...[to] take more interest in art." We're a little uncomfortable with the suggestion that a busy student, or surgeon, or postal worker, is obligated to stop just because a Tuymans painting is there. After all, people routinely walk past entire museums full of art for perfectly good reasons. Just for fun, we'd be curious to try the opposite experiment: take a painter without critical credentials, put them in a respected gallery, and secretly tape the praise of the aesthetes. Thanks, Noella.

Artist unknown, via Cualquiera.com.

Actor John Cleese went to India to visit a doctor who has started a laughing club. The people meet each morning and do silly things to make each other laugh. Laughter has many health benefits, says the doctor. I believe it.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Laughter yoga
• Laughing yogi video

Scientists are set to begin dissecting New Zealand's rare, intact colossal squid specimen.

I previously admired this horizontal eco dishwasher concept by Marie-Christine Lacasse & Marie Claude Savard, seen at the University of Quebec in Montreal Design Grad Show, but only had the video.

I am particularly fascinated by it because I used to try and get clients to install two dishwashers, which would act as storage as the dishes just went from one to another. This would save cupboard space, the work emptying the dishwasher and energy, as you don't run it until all of the dishes are moved from one to the other and it is full. This wall-unit design is a much more elegant solution.

Mocoloco's Eric Demay p...

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was first used in the United Kingdom to measure their war-time production. Since the whole economy was geared up to wage war, it was a fair measure of how much the system was turning over.

While the second world war has finished, GDP is peculiarly still the measurement system of choice for economic performance, measuring crime, environmental destruction and catastrophes at the same value as activity that leads to genuine growth. Furthermore, countries of the world are "ranked" as "developed" or "developing" based on GDP - an additional system built on top of an inappropriate one.

But as they say, money can't buy happiness, at least once you're over the poverty line. Happiness is a much harder equation than GDP, and something that global systems don't spend a lot of time concerning themselves with fulfilling today.

So a number of systems have emerged over the years to quantify economic and social growth; alternative equations to GDP that account for more than just the value of traded goods. We've written a lot about this debate here on Worldchanging, from measuring inclusive wealth, green economics, ecological economics to different ways of valuing nature and understanding social production (what Yochai Benkler called the Wealth of Networks).

The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)

The GPI is an alternative accounting system that internalises what are normally considered externalised costs. The result is, ideally, a measurement system that accounts for the true and full values - positive and negative - of activity inside a given economic system.

Income Distribution
GDP can show how the total personal income of a nation grows - but not how the income is distributed. What's unwritten here is that a wide income distribution is favored by the measurement system - a good thing for the left but maybe not something everyone can agree on (yet).

Housework, Volunteering, and Higher Education
Since GDP only measures monetary trade, it ignores the value of un-paid work entirely - some of the most significant work to drive society like household work. With the emerging tools of Web 2.0 and increased online participation (most of it for no pecuniary gain), this sector of the economy will only become more valuable in the coming decades.

Crime
Violence that results in hospital bills is good for the economy, or at least, leads to a greater GDP. Proponents of GPI say that crime-related growth is not valuable, and don't count it as positive in GPI measurements.

Resource Depletion
If today’s economic activity depletes the physical resource base available for tomorrow, then it is not creating well-being; rather, it is borrowing it from future generations. The GDP counts such borrowing as current income. The GPI, by contrast, counts the depletion or degradation of wetlands, forests, farmland, and nonrenewable minerals (including oil) as a current cost.
Re-Defining Progress

Pollution
Pollution is one of the most common examples of the GDP system's failure, and in fact benefits twice from pollution. In the event of an oil spill, GDP systems appear to benefit first by having a tanker there in the first place, then secondly by spending money cleaning up the mess it leaves behind. Proponents of a GPI system say that cleaning up should be counted as a positive - but that its creation in the first place can only be negative.

Long-Term Environmental Damage
Coal mines are difficult to return to their previous (usually forested) state. GPI systems do not allow the creation of coal mines to add value, since they destroy pieces of the environment that may never be restored.

Changes in Leisure Time
Since leisure time has no economic value to GDP, it can go completely un-noticed. Under a GPI system, leisure time can be valued appropriately.

Defensive Expenditures
The GPI counts defensive expenditures as a cost rather than a benefit - a debatable presumption, but one that aims for a better world.

Lifespan of Consumer Durables & Public Infrastructure
One massive criticism of GDP is that it encourages products that break and get replaced (by more products that break). Instead, the GPI considers the lifetime of an appliance, tool or other such "durable" to be an indication of its quality, and values high quality infrastructure and goods favourably against those that would fail us.
Why would we want a system that encouraged poor stuff?

Dependence on Foreign Assets
I'm not sure what I think here - because I'm in to globalisation. The idea is that borrowing money from other countries is living beyond your means - but if these loans are paid back with interest... it might be one of the few cases of where our existing monetary infrastructure (at least systemically) works. (International loans are often made with unfair conditions, but that's another story)

None of these facets are simple to measure, even alone. The system could use some modification in all areas to be taken seriously by anyone other than idealists.

The outcome when successfully measured is that GPI presents a much more detailed picture of how a society is getting on in total, where it's rich and where it is poor.

But there's an even simpler system of quantifying well-being and progress...

Happiness

Enter Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the fourth king of Bhutan, famous for introducing the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH). GNH is intended to be a measure of overall well-being within a country, and is comprised of seven very sensible components.

1. Economic satisfaction (savings, debt and purchase power)
2. Environmental satisfaction: (pollution, noise and traffic)
3. Workplace satisfaction (job satisfaction, motivation, ethics, conflict, etc.)
4. Physical health (Severe illnesses, overweight,..)
5. Mental health (usage of antidepressants, self-esteem, positive outlook..)
6. Social satisfaction [including family and relationship satisfaction] (domestic disputes, communication, support, sex, discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates, etc.)
7. Political satisfaction (quality of local democracy, individual freedom, and foreign conflicts, etc.)

International Institute of Management

It's hard to disagree with this list, and imagining a world that prides itself on the seven factors is quite enticing. While there's only so much involvement you might want the state to have in your social satisfaction, it can't be a bad thing for your country to measure its total contribution to the world with a system that includes workplace satisfaction and environmental health.

GNH is measured by surveys, with a wide and representative sample of participants giving information about their satisfaction in each area.

It's true that any good governance concerns itself with more than just GDP. But use of GDP to determine success, even financial success, is short-sighted and often wasteful. Going backwards isn't valuable, so we shouldn't treat it as such.

Image: Cheers Flickr/jaja_1985!

Bonus link: Dr Ron Colman, GPI proponent, interview on Radio New Zealand.

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(Posted by Craig Neilson in Columns at 11:00 PM)

Spiegel Online published a series of pictures titled "Desertec: Strom aus der Wüste" (translation: Desertech: Electricity from the desert). It includes this image of how much land would be needed to power the world, Europe or Germany with solar-thermal power. The idea is similar to a post we did a year ago: How Much Land to Power The Whole World with Solar? The red square on the left is for the whole world, in the middle for Europe-25, and on the right for Germany. Below you can see pictures of the kind of technology they're talking about. It's a bit similar to

I'm not entirely sure how a folding balcony is superior to one that doesn't fold, considering you're not really saving interior space, and presumably there's sufficient space on the outside to expand out the balcony. Still, the award-winning Bloomframe by Hofman Dujardin Architects is rather cool. Apparently, the idea came about in response to the new-found popularity of balconies in Sweden. Bloomframe balconies can be added to existing buildings or made part of the design of new buildings, and are basically innovative window frames that can be pushed out to form an exterior balconies, expanding your interior space to the outdoors.

Via Smart Stuff.

Posted by lydia    Category: design | home
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After World War II, Edward Larabee Barnes, Henry Dreyfuss and Bucky Fuller all tried to use aircraft technology and ideas to build housing but it never took off, so to speak. Perhaps their mistake was modelling it after the wrong planes, going with metal, instead of looking at the Mosquito and building it out of plywood.

I am not certain if that is where the inspiration for the canühome came from, but the designers have used the latest CNC technology and a lot of other ideas that make it one of the more interesting test beds w...

The One Day Poem Pavilion uses the sun to display a poem one line at a time over the course of an entire day. (via stingy kids)

(link)

From the series “Items” by Thomas Mailaender.

Remember a year or two ago when President Bush really wanted to push through a plan to partially privatize social security so your retirement stash could flourish with the ever-effervescent stock market? Remember how he couldn't sell the initiative to the public and it got axed? As Robert Reich points out, we really dodged a bullet with that one.

The United Nations Foundation's Nothing But Nets is an organization you can count on in crunch time. It delivers much needed bed nets that protect people from Malaria mosquitoes. In honor of World Malaria Day (tomorrow), it's launched a campaign to increase the number of nets it distributes. All you have to do is play this awesome (and free) interactive game and a net will be delivered in your name. Simple. Effective. Fun. You can take a look at a slide show of real world distribution here and, should you feel so inclined, offer a traditional financial donation here.

In the current New Yorker, anthropologist Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, looks at the vengeance practices of tribal societies in New Guinea. While Diamond was conducting field work in the New Guinea Highlands, he was driven around by a young man named Daniel Wemp of the Handa clan. The two got to talking and Daniel recounted how he avenged the death of his uncle who had been killed by the neighboring Ombal clan. The tale is amazing, insightful, and gets you thinking about our own, er, taste for revenge. From the New Yorker article, titled "Vengeance Is Ours":

The war between the Handa clan and the Ombal clan began many years ago; how many, Daniel didn’t say, and perhaps didn’t know. It could easily have been several decades ago, or even in an earlier generation. Among Highland clans, each killing demands a revenge killing, so that a war goes on and on, unless political considerations cause it to be settled, or unless one clan is wiped out or flees. When I asked Daniel how the war that claimed his uncle’s life began, he answered, “The original cause of the wars between the Handa and Ombal clans was a pig that ruined a garden.” Surprisingly to outsiders, most Highland wars start ostensibly as a dispute over either pigs or women. Anthropologists debate whether the wars really arise from some deeperlying ultimate cause, such as land or population pressure, but the participants, when they are asked to name a cause, usually point to a woman or a pig. Any Westerner who knows the story of Helen and the Trojan War will not be surprised to hear women named as a casus belli, but the equal importance of pigs is less obvious. However, New Guinea Highlanders, whose main food staples are starchy root crops like sweet potato and taro, are chronically starved for protein, of which the island’s dark, bristly pigs traditionally furnished the only large source. As a result, pigs are prized symbols of prestige and wealth. Peaceful competition and ostentatious displays involve pigs, and they are also used as currency for buying women. Pigs are individually owned and named, and, as piglets, they are sometimes nursed at one breast by a woman nursing an infant at her other breast.

A typical Highland village is a cluster of huts housing between a few dozen and a few hundred people plus their pigs, traditionally surrounded by a fence, and situated a mile or a few miles from the next village. A village’s pigs are taken out to forage during the day, and are prone then to wander into people’s vegetable gardens, breaking down or digging under fences erected to keep them out. A single pig can root up and ruin an entire garden in a few hours. If the intrusion happens at night, or if the offending pig is not caught in the act, it is virtually impossible to prove which particular pig was responsible.

That was how the Handa-Ombal war began. An Ombal man found that his garden had been wrecked by a pig. He claimed that the offending pig belonged to a certain Handa man, who denied it. The Ombal man became angry, demanded compensation, and assaulted the Handa pig owner when he refused. Relatives of both parties then joined in the dispute, and soon the entire membership of both clans—between four and six thousand people—was dragged into a war that had now raged for longer than Daniel could remember. He told me that, in the four years of fighting leading up to Soll’s death, seventeen other men had been killed.

Link

EcoCabs has just arrived in Toronto, Canada. The 3-wheel vehicles are powered mostly by the driver's legs, but there's also an electric-motor assist to help them reach a cruising speed of up to 12 kph (7.5 mph) in city streets. Perfect for short distance trips, especially if you are a tourist (free rides will be offered during summer street festivals and special events), EcoCab claims to exceed the road safety standards that apply to it. "They will ride in the right-most lane and in bike lanes, where the average speed of traffic is 6 km per hour," says Will Kozma, president of GO Mobile Media, the company that sells advertising on the ad-supported cabs....

This makes so much sense, I don’t know why more people aren’t using these. Usually found in hospitals or industrial kitchens, foot pedal water facets are not only more hygienic, but also have the potential to reduce wasted water use by 50%.

At a sink, you control the flow of a faucet with a pedal much like the accelerator in a car. It’s easier to turn off the faucet when you are brushing your teeth, shaving, or doing the dishes. In a four-person household, the use of pedal controllers in the kitchen alone can save up to 7500 gallons of water annually, as well as conserve the energy needed to heat those gallons.

[via Metaefficient]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Arthur C. Clarke's ideas have had a tendency of becoming a reality in the past, and it looks like that's now happening yet again, in this case with a little help from the folks at DARPA. As New Scientist reports, the prolific agency is currently working on a new weapon system that bears a striking resembles to the Stiletto weapon in Clarke's 1955 novel Earthlight. That science fiction version was described as "a solid bar of light" that can pierce a spacecraft "as an entomologist pierces a butterfly with a pin." Or, more specifically, "a jet of molten metal, hurled through space at several hundred kilometers per second by the most powerful electro-magnets ever built." DARPA's MAHEM weapon (or Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition), on the other hand, is described by New Scientist as using magnetic fields to "propel either a narrow jet of molten metal or a chunk of molten metal that morphs into an aerodynamic slug during flight." There is a slight difference, however, in that MAHEM's electromagnetic field will be generated by an explosion, and not a giant electro-magnet. It's also not clear if MAHEM will be used to defend a fortress on the moon, although that's not exactly as far fetched as it once seemed either.

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Ancient humans split into separate groups for 100,000 years before coming together again, a study suggests.

Gelf Magazine has a great interview with notorious billboard artist and culture jammer Ron English. English creates subversive re-stylings of billboards to make viewers question the truth behind such obtrusive advertising (urban spam). He is also an accomplished painter, re appropriating elements of pop culture and classical art to create whole new narratives.

From the interview:

It’s great to be a criminal, right? You’re in pretty good company. It’s hard to explain to your kids, because they think that if you break the law you go to jail and you’re a criminal. But if you take out a history book, a lot of the people on the forefronts of social movements were considered criminals. We’re just ahead of the curve. Maybe the bad guy is the one who owns and puts up all the billboards all over the neighborhood, selling people malt liquor and cigarettes.

English, along with Alan Abel and Steve Lambert will be speaking at the latest Non Motivational Speaker Series. The event starts at 8pm, Thursday April 24th at The Happy Ending Lounge (302 Broome Street).

Gelf Magazine “The Anti-Warhol”

Marilyn Terrell says: "Lizards evolve 'overnight' on Croatian island.

Italian wall lizards introduced to a tiny island off the coast of Croatia are evolving in ways that would normally take millions of years to play out, new research shows.

In just a few decades the 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) lizards have developed a completely new gut structure, larger heads, and a harder bite, researchers say.

Link

Building off the success of the Lifestraw Personal water filtration device, Vestergaard Frandsen’s new Lifestraw Family system provides 15,000 liters of clean drinking water to one household. And now, you can fund the delivery of one Lifestraw Family system to a slum community in Mumbai for $25 through Project H Design, an organization founded by Emily Pilloton that promotes and delivers life improving product designs to global communities. Project H will deliver 100 systems this summer as the first step in a bigger examination of local water sanitation issues. With more than a billion people lacking access to safe drinking water and five million people dying of water-related disease every year, here’s an opportunity to make a small but very real difference.

Donate via Paypal at Project H here.

(more…)

“Abstract: This paper analyzes the relationships between creative design and the field of information visualization, with a focus on historical connotations and newest developments that show great potential. Empirical evidence shows how designers often employ information visualization as a creative concept capable of significantly determining the design outcome, and vice versa, how information visualization can be enhanced by exploring interdisciplinary concepts, such as design cognition, user engagement, aesthetics and art. Several symbiotic dependencies are explained and demonstrated, including the first conceptual cyberspace and information architecture definitions. This paper will argue that information visualization should be enriched with the principles of creative design and art, to develop valuable data representations that address the emotional experience and engagement of users, instead of solely focusing on task effectiveness metrics. Finally, several interdisciplinary movements are described that show great symbiotic potential in the near future, especially in the fields of ambient information displays, informative art and location-based information awareness.” — The Symbiosis between Design & Information Visualization by Andrew Vande Moere, NeMe.org.

A list of data visualization blogs you might not know about.

(link)

Pantone announced their Color of the Year for 2008: Iris Blue. While their annual choice has oscillated between tints of Red and Blue, Pantone Color of the Year for 2007 was a muted Tan. Of course, in fact the color of 2007 was Green. Green for environmentalism, green for sustainability, green for green marketers, green for money. Are color-ers tired of Green? Not yet. Chevy, today for example, was happy to use Green to sell their cars as a way of turning greenbacks into a green solution.

In his book Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy Stephen Duncombe argues for a dreampolitik. One of his analyses traces how right wing politicians and corporate advertisers use outlandish but effective associative logics to create meaning built on emotions. He gives a couple key examples: one is a McDonalds ad with a happy family at a park/zoo, which ends with a golden arches logo. He asks why the associative and emotional logic that connects McDonalds to a happy secure and easy family life, could not be associated otherwise: what if instead of a McDonalds logo, there was a sentence about how public space creates leisure and pleasure for families, or how unions help create the financial basis for secure families. But even here (as I rough his argument) I am getting to literal and logical. He wants it associative.

At first glance, it seems not that different from the AdBusters subvertisement model. That re-imagined McDonalds ad could have a happy home at the AdBusters. But there is a difference, I think. Adbusters' model (in one sentence) is to take an existing ad campaign, and ad new ironic content or context that points out the evilness of the brand, or the empty corruptness of consumerism. This has proven to be an effective model for ironic amusement, preaching to the choir (and regular churchgoers), and creating exercises for Digital Imaging classes in art school.

As I understand it, there are two differences in Duncombe's proposal. First, he wants to use the manipulation of associative logic to sell a dream; he is not interested in (reactionary) irony or cleverness. He is looking (it seems) to take on the tool full force to construct an associative narrative. Second, he is talking about its political use, as broadcast on national TV, not shown in a gallery or in a speciality magazine. He is talking about MoveOn.org buying national TV ads (which as I remember them, always seemed smart in a bitter (reactionary) way: not so dreamy).

So where does that leave the artist?

I'm still thinking about this one, and need to think some more before I write it down.

If all languages have a universal structure, we could understand the speech and mathematical ideas of extraterrestrial civilisations

In March 2008 seven artists were given unrestricted access to Dandenong's historic Grenda's bus depot in Australia prior to its demolition. You can see the full documentation here. The work above was created by Robbie Rowlands.

This remarkable set of photos was floating around the internet yesterday. Families from nine countries, from Germany to Chad, pose with a week's worth of food. It looks like the German family does, in fact, drink a lot of beer. Thanks Alberto

Today is Earth Day. Rejoice and plant trees! Following up with both Vanity Fair's and the New York Times Magazine less-than-green green issues, Time exchanged its iconic red border for a green border (the last time they changed border colors was on 9/11: That's how important this is!). On Drudge, the Matt-ster is crowing that a Canadian Earth Day celebration was snowed out. How could the world be warming if it is snowing in April, he gleefully implies. Well, Matt, that's because the climate isn't just getting warmer. It's just getting screwier. Duh. How are you planning to celebrate Earth Day? Any suggestions?

Last week saw the opening of the first hydrogen fuelling station in England. The station is based at Birmingham University, where experiments are being carried out to test the viability of hydrogen in transport applications, as part of Birmingham’s ‘Science City’ hydrogen energy project.

Researchers will compare five hydrogen-powered vehicles with the university’s own fleet of petrol, diesel, and electric vehicles to learn more about efficiency and performance. The main aim is to work out exactly how the vehicles might need to be adapted to enable the cost-effective use of hydrogen vehicles in the future.

The Series-100 station has been specially designed by Air-Products, a Pennsylvania-based hydrogen producer and supplier. The fueller is made up of an integrated compression, hydrogen storage, and dispensing system, optimised to fuel up to six vehicles per day. Crucially, the system is portable, making it a perfect choice for start-up stations.

Looking ahead, the research team hope that the results of the project will encourage greater government support, particularly of the financial kind, and help kick-start the wider application of a hydrogen-fuelling infrastructure across the UK.

Via Autoindustry

See BBC video footage of the opening here

Neuroscientists can see your brain going on "autopilot" up to 30 seconds before you actually make a mistake -- and long before you're even aware that your brain is switching into automatic.

At a lecture honouring NASA, the eminent physicist calls for a big investment in human spaceflight and ponders intelligent life in the universe

Jonathan Harris's & Sep Kamvar's most recent visualization project "I want you to want me", created for the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA has already previously been blogged. this recent movie, however, gives a better impression about the the aesthetic quality of its interactivity & dynamic animations, while including a verbal description of the creator himself.

one should note that the piece is specifically designed for a 56" high-resolution touch-screen, hanging vertically on the wall.

[link: iwantyoutowantme.org|thnkx thedlab]

see also:
. whale hunt,
. universe,
. love lines,
. we feel fine,
. ten by ten,
. Jonathan Harris TED talk.

Techdirt is reporting that Jon Dudas, head of the US Patent Office, is lamenting the continuing quality drop in patent submissions. Unfortunately, while this problem is finally getting the attention it deserves, the changes being implemented don't seem to be offering the correct solution. "When you set up a system that rewards people for not actually innovating in the market (but just speculating on paper), then of course, you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that rewards those people to massive levels, well out of proportion with their contribution to any product, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that gives people a full monopoly right that can be used to set up a toll booth on the natural path of innovation, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When the cost of getting a patent is so much smaller than the potential payoff of suing others with it, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. The fact that Dudas is just noticing this now, while still pushing for changes that will make the problem worse is a real problem. Patents were only supposed to be used in special cases. The fact that they've become the norm, rather than the exception is a problem, and it doesn't seem like anyone is seriously looking into fixing that."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Photo credit: cloverity Four of beauty company Aveda's most prominently used botanical ingredients have attained Cradle to Cradle certification (C2C): Its rose and lavender essential oils come from a sustainable organic farm in Bulgaria, while its wild Australian sandalwood is sourced from the Mardu people of Western Australia based on standards of an indigenous raw materials certification. Meanwhile, organic uruku, a pigment Aveda uses in lipsticks, is s...

Paying farmers to grow crops for use as biofuel means they grow fewer food crops, causing prices for staples to rise, the Asian Development Bank says.

The Weather Underground, a radical group prominent in the turbulent 1960s and '70s, has suddenly reappeared on the political scene. Attempts to tie both Democratic candidates to the group are creating buzz on the White House trail.

» E-Ma