They sure didn’t walk very far…

Last weekend, I watched In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary put together by Ron Howard about the Apollo missions to the Moon. Like a lot of us, I’ve always been extremely curious about all of these things and in my searching for more and more details, I found the pic below [click on…

2008 : A Viral Year

Cheers to the ones who threw some of these together. Things will get interesting this year, indeed, on many sides of the pictures. Here’s a glimpse into some of the *viral* culture that, for better or worse, shaped our world last year: “The take-home lesson here is…” = c

Sing

Brian Eno said in an article on NPR that: “A capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings — to stop being me for a little while, and to become us.” i surely quickly got into his latest work with David Byrne: = c

Timeline : Cereal

Who doesn’t have a favorite cereal? A cornerstone of so many childhood breakfasts, cereal has had quite a history: = c

YARTGROYTV

Have you ever wondered why they call it television “programming”? Wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that it INFLUENCES people how to behave would it? Wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that it TEACHES people to adopt an identity that isn’t their own would it? Wouldn’t have anything to do with…

In the Beginning was the Command Line

My pal Steve turned me on to this essay, written in 1999 by Neil Stephenson. Highly recommended. Here’s an excerpt : If I can risk a broad generalization, most of the people who go to Disney World have zero interest in absorbing new ideas from books. Which sounds snide, but listen: they have no qualms…

Farewell, Mr. Carlin – Thanks for the Balance

Surely, there are many people who strongly disagreed with his views. More conservative folks especially would rather he hadn’t reached the levels of success he did. He made a career out of stirring the pot and providing balance to the hard right and its overwhelming amount of political correctness and closed-mindedness about the world. Known…

Zach Falcon writes amazing stories. For kids, too.

Zach Falcon is a great storyteller because his whimsical muscles are completely intact and functioning optimally. Most of us stop using these muscles somewhere between the ages of 8 and 10. We start conforming to our risk-averse culture, playing it safe as we say, leaving the inspirations of youth behind and stop listening to voices…

Farewell, Doctor

Albert Hofmann, the father of the mind-altering drug LSD whose medical discovery inspired millions and caused controversy in others in the 1960s, has died. The good doctor died Tuesday at his home in Burg im Leimental in the village near Basel where he moved following his retirement in 1971. For decades after LSD was banned…

Coming off a bender

Clay Shirky presented this at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week : I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin. The transformation from rural…

Needs vs. Desires

Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) is considered one of the fathers of the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to…

Houston, We Have a Coredump

Naturally, the astronauts aboard the ISS kept logs of all their activities while up there. We can read the logs thanks to The Laboratorium, brought to us since 2000 by James Grimmelmann. Thanks, Jim! The kinds of computer problems they experienced in space are interesting to read about if only because they are no different…

Spain : games

As some of you may know, i’m nearing completion on a documentary about the game of Tag. Safe to say I have a rather compulsive interest in games of all kinds. My good friend Bergey made this vid earlier in the year about games they play in Espain : = c

Machinima

Some of you may remember this rather unorthodox, though, significant event in online history : Machinima (pronounced /məˈʃiːnÉ™mÉ™/ or /məˈʃɪnÉ™mÉ™/), a portmanteau of machine cinema, is a collection of associated production techniques whereby computer-generated imagery (CGI) is rendered using real-time, interactive 3-D engines, such as those of games, instead of professional 3D animation software. Engines…

The De-Evolution of Culture

Larry Lessig says what no one else has the cojones to in this clip. Larry gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of three stories and an argument. The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative…

A Flag for the Internet

Countries all have flags. What would a flag for the Web look like? You can share ideas here. = c

don’t forget : spore is coming soon

From the mind of Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, comes SPOREâ„¢, an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space. Tide Pool Phase Fight with other creatures and consume them…