Room of responsive lights in Oslo....gotta get to Norway

The Joy of Scene Stealing - starts at 1:00 in

“My Way” Drummer Steals the Show:
Regrets… we’ve all had a few.

Watching this video until the drummer kicks in? Probably not gonna be one of them.


(via M. S. le Despencer)

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Post tags: Better than coffee, Geekdom, Music, Personal Style

The Invisible Bicycle Helmet

The Invisible Bicycle Helmet:

“If people say it’s impossible we have to prove them wrong.”

Design students Anna and Terese took on a giant challenge as an exam project. Something no one had done before. If they could swing it, it would for sure be revolutionary.

Delightful idea.

This is what being on Mars is like.

Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2 in New Mexico

Reggie Watts making fun of "big idea" presentations

Reggie Watts making fun of "big idea" presentations:

I got a kick out of Reggie Watts at PopTech 2011 taking the piss out of the cliches so frequently heard at conferences dedicated to big ideas, innovation, deep thinking, the future(s), the long view, sea changes, transformations, disruptions, etc. (Thanks, Jake Dunagan!)

New Nike ad features overweight 12-year-old boy

New Nike ad features overweight 12-year-old boy:

[Video Link]. Wieden+Kennedy's new ad for Nike is provocative stuff. Nike isn't sponsoring the Olympics this year, but the ad is timed accordingly. The star of this spot, Nathan, is 12 years old and lives in London, Ohio. He tells Business Insider he puked in a ditch while filming takes. I like this kid.

Pop Culture Installation Exhibit from Thank You Very Much! Artist Collective

Pop Culture Installation Exhibit from Thank You Very Much! Artist Collective:


Thank You Very Much, an artist collective out of Buenos Aires, looks like a really cool, ambitious group. Limiting access to different creative vehicles is never a good thing, and TYVM is definitely not trying to do so. Working with over 40 artists from around the world, they’ve got their hands in everything: production, exhibition, design/marketing, etc. Recently, co-director Luciano Podcaminsky staged in exhibition of five installation pieces at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in B.A. The show, which “mixes conceptual art with POP culture”, gives you a good idea of what the collective is interested in doing. Find more images and some words from Podcaminsky on the exhibit after the jump.

Luciano Podcamisnky:

My scope has been always to tell stories. Little stories that could help us to think about ourselves and the world surrounding us…As a film director, I feel this narrative necessity comes to be something completely natural. In 2008 I presented my first film, ¨The Third Pint¨ at Bafici and then at the Edimburg Festival in Scotland…My art approach has much in common with the cinematographic genre. It is made of five installations that, even if they have nothing to do with film or video from a technical point of view, they are closely related to a visual approach and also at a subject matter level.
“Cama mortal” (Sunbed) is an open coffin , but inside it is really a solar bed. “Píldora diaria” (Daily Pill), is a giant pill slightly open, showing the trash coming out. “Cena íntima” (Private Dinner) shows a traditional two-persons dinner. In the middle, the table is separated in two by a jail cell and the couple is separated by a window, being forced to communicate through mobiles.”Habitación disponible” (Room available) is a miniature motel room inside a Chrysler Town & Country pickup. Finally, “Recién casados” (Just married) is a tiny big dipper with a couple rising their arms inside an old convertible.
Each piece has a strong aesthetic development, a synthetic narrative and a bit of humor and irony. Our minds are able to build stories and daily moments starting from the work itself and finishing inside the observers’ imagination. The contents are modified and at the same time are the starting point of the observers’ travel inside themselves and their experiences.

History of Musically Wooing Women: Can't we ask for a bit more?

@StanleyPiano

@StanleyPiano:

@StanleyPiano, the world’s first interactive player piano, makes his worldwide debut at Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party. Stanley is a precocious instrument who takes song requests via Twitter. Stanley can play a lot of songs, but he loves indie music. Created by DIGITAL KITCHEN. More info about this one here

Your adventure ends here

Your adventure ends here:


My friend Jeff Simmermon points us to a Tumblr of the "death-pages" from Choose Your Own Adventure books, popular in the 1980s.
"I recognized some of the Interplanetary Spy ones from my own childhood, too," Jeff says.

SOPA IS BACK: Lamar Smith trying to quietly revive SOPA and cram it down the world's throats

SOPA IS BACK: Lamar Smith trying to quietly revive SOPA and cram it down the world's throats:
It's not just ACTA that is being snuck back into law through undemocratic means. Lamar Smith, the powerful committee chairman and corporatist archvillain who tried to ram through SOPA last year is now bent on reviving his slain monster and unleash it upon the earth.
The new bill, the Intellectual Property Attache Act, will create a class of political officers who will see to it that all US trade negotiations and discussions advance SOPA-like provisions in foreign law. And as we've seen with other trade deals, one way to get unpopular measures into US law is to impose them on other countries, then agree to "harmonize" at home.
True to form, Smith is trying to cram his law onto the books without any substantive debate or scrutiny, just as he tried with SOPA. When you're serving corporate masters instead of the public interest, the less debate, the better.

The specifics of the bill appear to go further than the version in SOPA. It is clear that the bill itself is framed from the maximalist perspective. There is nothing about the rights of the public, or of other countries to design their own IP regimes. It notes that the role of the attaches is:

to advance the intellectual property rights of United States persons and their licensees;
The bill also "elevates" the IP attaches out of the US Patent and Trademark Office, and sets them up as their own agency, including a new role: the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property. Yes, we'll get another IP Czar, this time focused in the Commerce Department.
When even the USTR is recognizing the importance of limitations and exceptions to copyright, to have Congress push a bill that basically ignores limitations and exceptions and only looks to expand Hollywood's special thugs within the diplomatic corp. seems like a huge problem.

Lamar Smith Looking To Sneak Through SOPA In Bits & Pieces, Starting With Expanding Hollywood's Global Police Force

NYT series on genetically-targeted cancer treatments

NYT series on genetically-targeted cancer treatments:

When you have been diagnosed with cancer, as I have, you quickly grow accustomed to "friendly cancer spam." Friends, relatives, and well-meaning acquaintances routinely forward you a gazillion identical links to whatever this week's hot cancer news headline may be.
So it was for me with this New York Times story on Lukas Wartman, a leukemia doctor and researcher at Washington University who developed leukemia. As he faced death last Fall, his cancer genome was sequenced by his colleagues.
What was revealed then led to a treatment plan that targeted the specifics of his genetic makeup. And so far, according to Gina Kolata's report, that experimental treatment plan has been an amazing success. Snip:

Dr. Ley’s team tried a type of analysis that they had never done before. They fully sequenced the genes of both his cancer cells and healthy cells for comparison, and at the same time analyzed his RNA, a close chemical cousin to DNA, for clues to what his genes were doing.
The researchers on the project put other work aside for weeks, running one of the university’s 26 sequencing machines and supercomputer around the clock. And they found a culprit — a normal gene that was in overdrive, churning out huge amounts of a protein that appeared to be spurring the cancer’s growth.
Even better, there was a promising new drug that might shut down the malfunctioning gene — a drug that had been tested and approved only for advanced kidney cancer. Dr. Wartman became the first person ever to take it for leukemia.
And now, against all odds, his cancer is in remission and has been since last fall. While no one can say that Dr. Wartman is cured, after facing certain death last fall, he is alive and doing well.

Suffice it to say that this stuff is relevant to my interests. It is routine for breast cancer patients like me to receive genetic screening for the BRCA mutation, and sometimes a few additional known genetic factors. But there is so much that we do not know, and a growing sense that this infinite array of genetic unknowns could lead to more saved lives, and better quality of life for those of us who have been diagnosed with the disease.

I know I'm not alone in feeling like the treatment I am receiving now will one day be perceived as blunt and barbaric, when genetically-targeted therapies like the ones outlined in these stories become the norm. Those of us undergoing the brutal routine of chemo, radiation, and surgery to keep cancer at bay long for the day when more precise technologies can stop the disease without so much collateral damage.

And then, there is the greater hope that maybe one day all of this will lead to the other "c-word."
A cure.


Read the full article: "In Treatment for Leukemia, Glimpses of the Future."

Part two in the series: "A New Treatment’s Tantalizing Promise Brings Heartbreaking Ups and Downs"
And part three: "A Game Changer in Revealing a Cancer’s Prognosis."

There is a related item in the Economist. Here is the referenced study in the journal Nature from researchers at Washington University.
(image: Shutterstock)

Flying robot makes 3D map of building's interior

Flying robot makes 3D map of building's interior:



[Video Link]The video is from 2010, but the flying robot that stars in it makes the same kind of 3D map of a building's interior that the drones in Prometheus make.

Talking comic book cover - Clever

Talking comic book cover:


[Video Link] Introducing Clutch Cargo-era technology to comic books.