Here, Now

Easy to take this all for granted. Breathing. Walking. Seeing. Feeling. Any sense. Pick one. And it’s even easier to stroll through this whole thing blind to the possibility that this may just very well all be some dream. We know nothing about what any of us are doing here. In the meantime, we find…

Temple Grandin: The World Needs all kinds of Minds

Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works — sharing her ability to “think in pictures,” which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of…

The Irony of Beauty

This is an astounding metaphor for our culture and the gravity of our situation as lifeforms on a planet we know next-to-nothing about: enveloped by the inelegance of our current technology, with wires and all kinds of ugly schwack running up and down the walls surrounding and protecting him, Ed Lu is aboard the International…

Rules

Bruno Faidutti has written his thoughts about the merits of designing rules simply and with particular clarity: The essence of a game is in its rulebook – the rules of the game are autonomous, complete, finite and known by all players. This may even be what makes games different from most other human activities, whose…

Michael Pollan and The Botany of Desire

Author Michael Pollan says: The tulip, by gratifying our desire for a certain kind of beauty, has gotten us to take it from its origins in Central Asia and disperse it around the world. Marijuana, by gratifying our desire to change consciousness, has gotten people to risk their lives, their freedom, in order to grow…

Marshmallow test: pass or fail?

I’ve never been into marshmallows but still think I woulda failed on principle: Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

Humans Swimming

Are you a human? Do you like to swim? How about free-diving? How about static free diving?

satellite browser

NASA hopes we enjoy J-Track 3-D. Clicking on the thumbnail below or here or there will activate JTrack3D and it will appear in its own window and begin loading a database of over 900 satellites. What you will see (presuming the system you’re on supports Java) is a plot in 3-dimensions showing the position of…