I heard you like group-minds, so I got you this simulation:

via sqrmelon

Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.

– Frank Zappa

Forgive this video it’s poor English subtitles, it’s rare that someone on a television program truly tries to capture the complexity of current affairs instead of reducing their argument to a series of emotive, simplistic appeals.

via @darkoptimism

They’re the first version of the next stage of human evolution, peope with a “neurological difference that confers some exceptional advantage.” They fight crime.

Alphas is SyFy’s new ‘superhuman’ crime drama - basically a grounded, more constrained version of the X-Men, complete with it’s own Brotherhood of Mutants, Red Flag. It’s far from perfect (it’s certainly no Misfits), but it has potential and is immediately far surperior to Heroes.

Via core77.com.

From CrunchGear:

Designed and manufactured by Polymer Vision, the screen can be rolled and unrolled 25,000 times. The question, obviously, is why would you need a rollable display? Well, as ereaders become ubiquitous the need for them to be almost indestructible. I could see a day when kids get their own ereaders for the nursery a la the Diamond Age. Interestingly, Polymer Vision isn’t the company of note when you think of e-ink displays so either they will license this technology or they could start taking more and more market shares from leaders like Eink.

Today’s worthy Kickstarter project:

Defrag is an iPad magazine that features creative writing, music, visual art, multimedia and music videos from around the world, introducing you to the vibrant, multifaceted cultural life of your planet. No political soundbites, no celebrity profiles and no corporate propaganda.

In the first issue you’ll discover an indie rock scene in China, fine artists from India and a Heavy metal band from Iran. You’ll read poetry from Egypt, participatory fiction from California and see what club VJ’s are doing in Sweden. You’ll also hear experimental music from the UK, psychedelic blues from NYC, and experience multimedia hip-hop from the West Bank. Not the sort of content you’re likely to find on Fox News or in People Magazine.

It’s Cyberpunk Future Present, and full of There Is No They. And Phase 3 is to move it to Android tablets & PC. I like this a lot.

Photographs and written words, The Italian Machine Project is Salgood Sams’ homage to his father, Lionel Douglas.

Back in 1979 Lionel Douglas crashed a motorcycle he was testing. Unlike many others he trashed he didn’t walk away that time.

In his short life, aside from being my father he also did his best to live up to his name and sign [leo]. There’s been past efforts to publish his work, but they remain obscure. Always felt it was down to me to do it now. I’ve had his papers for some time, and a trunk full of negatives. Been meaning to do something with them – it’s taken time, opportunity, and ultimately my own brushes with mortality to get my ass in gear.

The site is called THE ITALIAN MACHINE PROJECT. The why of the name explained here.

On the site you’ll find his words as well, but at this stage it’s dominated by his photos. Here’s a few highlights. The shots link through to sets of photos they come from. I’m going through them more or less in chronological order, so these are all taken around 1969

New pictures will be uploaded, so check back to the Italian Machine Project often.

Reader Leet Ninja Pirate writes “An interview with Jane McGonigal on the Colbert Report. Subjects include a wider gaming audience, Urgent Evoke, and the phrase “epic win.” McGonigal addresses just about all of the major issues brought up by Colbert about gaming as a worthwhile pursuit.”

Gamification of life is a very interesting strategy, and I’m very much loooking forward to reading Reality Is Broken. For more details, try Cory’s review on BoingBoing.

via the sceptical futuryst

From from artist Mauritius Seeger, via Make:

I use modul8 with a midi controller and have kind of given up on video scratching because it’s so bad in software when i last tried it ( with modul8) and have been generally frustrated with the type of control i have over video playback in vj software.

The reason i was interested in using kinect for this is because i can imagine a much more intuitive, natural and fun way to control visuals than sliders or a mouse. i was going to add clip transition controlled with a swipe movement, since scratching and clip changing would go a long way in having something usable already, and that would just be the beginning.

Video Via Engadget.

From io9:

Residents of Polk County, Florida are getting their own book “red box.” With the mere swipe of a library card, the vending machine will expel the book of their choice.

Violet Blue reports its “it’s worth a look if you have the glasses“.

We’re seriously entering into “chop my weak flesh off and give me that” territory here.

From IEEE Spectrum:

German researchers have built an anthropomorphic robot hand that can endure collisions with hard objects and even strikes from a hammer without breaking into pieces. [Video]

In designing the new hand system, researchers at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), focused on robustness. They may have just built the toughest robot hand yet.

The DLR hand has the shape and size of a human hand, with five articulated fingers powered by a web of 38 tendons, each connected to an individual motor on the forearm.

The main capability that makes the DLR hand different from other robot hands is that it can control its stiffness. The motors can tension the tendons, allowing the hand to absorb violent shocks. In one test, the researchers hit the hand with a baseball bat—a 66 G impact. The hand survived.

The hand has a total of 19 degrees of freedom, or only one less than the real thing, and it can move the fingers independently to grasp varied objects. The fingers can exert a force of up to 30 newtons at the fingertips, which makes this hand also one of the strongest ever built.

Another key element in the DLR design is a spring mechanism connected to each tendon. These springs give the tendons, which are made from a super strong synthetic fiber called Dyneema, more elasticity, allowing the fingers to absorb and release energy, like our own hands do. This capability is key for achieving robustness and for mimicking the kinematic, dynamic, and force properties of the human hand.

During normal operation, the finger joints can turn at about 500 degrees per second. By tensioning the springs, and then releasing their energy to produce extra torque, the joint speed can reach 2000 degrees per second. This means that this robot hand can do something few others, if any, can: snap its fingers.

Keep reading..

UPDATE:

For the two people that hadn’t already seen this, I may as well wedge it in here.  How quickly we go from joke to near-future fact:

It’s funny, ’cause it’s true:

Via core77:

Whether you use QR codes or not, its undeniable that mobile tagging has become an integrated part of the marketing landscape. Popping up in print advertising and corporate-sponsored event/experiences, there still seems to be a lot of confusion about the application and usage of mobile tagging in delivering a more comprehensive marketing and retail message. PSFK just released a great “Future Of” report exploring some key trends in the field and interviews with experts an innovators in the field.

From Gizmodo:

At 1:10PM PST, the this Delta IV, the largest spacecraft in the world, took off from Vandenberg Air Force base in Lompoc, California. It was the most powerful anything to ever be launched from the West Coast—unless you count Tupac. (West side!) According to ABC, you could hear the rumble of the engines from 50 miles away.

This shows an early incarnation of the Sporenspiel, a glockenspiel which is automatically played based on the amount of spores falling from a mushroom in real time.

From makezine.com.