Thanks to Scott for this one. = c
Langer wins Millennium Award
MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer has won the Millennium Technology Prize, the world’s largest award for technology innovation. Langer was chosen “for his inventions and development of innovative biomaterials for controlled drug release and tissue regeneration that have saved and improved the lives of millions of people,” according to Technology Academy Finland, which gives the…
Radiohead better than Radiohead
Big Ideas (don’t get any) from James Houston on Vimeo. = c
Packaging Nirvana
For those of you who have strong opinions about creationism and evolution, put them aside for just a moment and think about this clip in the context of how far we still have to go in the application, design and production of planet-friendly packaging : = c
Hips Don’t Lie
In addition to Black Blondie, co-composing an all original repertoire, Tasha Baron and Liz Draper draw elements from their combined eclectic musical backgrounds and power Hips Don’t Lie. This music draws elements from the electronically produced precision of a drum machine, to the sounds of quirky lopsided carnival rides and is composed for the timeless…
WuChess.com
RZA is a huge chess fan and plays not just for kicks but also in formal competition. For those of us who dig the game and the music, we have a new place to play online. WuChess.com is RZA’s latest project, bringing the cultures of hip-hop and chess together under one URL. = c
Why Neurosurgeons Use Bluetooth
What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t? Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,†said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to…
Back on!
Power is flowing from the Snettisham hydro dam once again! Returning to the renewable energy source means Juneau folks no longer face the temporary increased cost of living [53 cents per kilowatt hour versus 11]. Since the avalanche in mid-April, Alaska Electric Light & Power has been supplying the entire city with electricity from diesel…
GOOSH
If your workspace revolves around the cli like mine does, you will prolly dig goosh as much. Ahhhh, how we love to get more done with less effort. = c
Galactic!
Our fave pizza place in MPLS is making quite a splash all over. Good thing, too, because they serve delicious pies made with fresh, organically grown ingredients all produced within 30 miles of here. Go Galactic!!! = c
Charter should rename itself Cheater
Charter Communications is sending letters to its customers informing them of an “enhanced online experience” that involves Charter monitoring its users’ searches and the websites they visit, and inserting targeted third-party ads based on their web activity. Charter, which serves nearly six million customers, is requiring users who want to keep their activity private to…
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…
this one’s on trent
Nine Inch Nails released The Slip for free this week. Trent says, (thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years – this one’s on me) The CD and vinyl are due out later on. Anyone beginning to see a trend? ; ) = c
Powderhorn Empty Bowls
Our pal, Jennie the Potter, works with a group of other folks on Powderhorn Empty Bowls, a community-based, volunteer-driven organization who’s goal is to eliminate hunger from the neighborhood in and around Powderhorn Park in MPLS. They throw each and every bowl by hand. Then, for an in-kind donation they fill your bowl with homemade…
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…
Word to the Bird
This one comes to us via Fwwank – thanks for this one, man [and, yes, these fellas [der Fall Böse] ARE playing that song live in a van] : = c
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