As we near completion of the current Year of the Rat, it feels appropriate to tell a story about how rat appreciation started, how the ratitor came to be, and how the organic unfolding of rat haus reality awareness manifested, first in the building of the balsa wood house itself (preceded by the rat cabin and
ancestral rat hans), then in its image scribing, next as a gift-in-photo series, and now as this virtual gathering place for consciousness to further explore, expand, and extend itself.
posted by deanklear
on Jan 20, 2012 -
6 comments
"
24 Hours of Reality will focus the world’s attention on the full truth, scope, scale and impact of the climate crisis. To remove the doubt. Reveal the deniers. And catalyze urgency around an issue that affects every one of us.” — Al Gore on the worldwide event to broadcast the reality of the climate crisis. The Climate Reality Project will live stream starting at 7pm CT on September 14.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Sep 13, 2011 -
47 comments
The Animal Architecture Awards have just announced the winners of their 2011 contest. Taking first place is Simone Ferracina’s Theriomorphous Cyborg, a (speculative) augmented reality game inspired by Jacob von Uexküll’s notion of the animal umwelt. Not truly architectural, Theriomorphous Cyborg instead shifts how a human participant relates to space and the landscape. Each level in the free-form game takes the player through different modes that relate to the sensory capacities of various animals. (
via)
[more inside]
posted by infini
on Sep 1, 2011 -
3 comments
Swimming around in a mixture of language and matter, humans occupy a particular evolutionary niche mediated by something we call 'consciousness'. To Professor Nicholas Humphrey we're made up of "
soul dust": "a kind of theatre... an entertainment which we put on for ourselves inside our own heads." But just as that theatre is directed by the relationship between language and matter,
it is also undermined by it. It all depends how you think it.
posted by 0bvious
on Feb 4, 2011 -
17 comments
Got an iPhone? Always wanted to fly a helicopter?
AR Drones allow you to fly a quadricopter with mounted video cameras through your iPhone.
[more inside]
posted by Biru
on Sep 6, 2010 -
35 comments
A French, state-run TV channel appears to be stirring controversy by airing a documentary about a fake game show in which contestants torture eachother, called
"Game of Death." Based on the well-known
Stanley Milgram experiments of the 1960's that, in the wake of Nazi Germany, sought out to measure man's willingness to obey orders.
[more inside]
posted by phaedon
on Mar 17, 2010 -
33 comments
Vogue Italia relaunched their website last week
(in Italian and English / pictures on the site may be NSFW,) with three new subsites catering to specific fashion industry demographics: Vogue
Curvy (focusing on plus-sized models, actresses and celebrities,) Vogue
Black (men and women of color,) and Vogue
Talents (veteran and up-and-coming designers. "Talents" also encourages hopeful designers to submit their work for review.) "Curvy" and "Black" in particular have received some
positive and
negative attention and some
wonder whether
separating those two fashion categories
is truly inclusive. Vogue
responds.
posted by zarq
on Mar 1, 2010 -
31 comments
Augmented Reality, You, Your Kitchen, and the Excellent Products You Will Buy Today. An architecture student films a Gibsonesque, banal-yet-vivid-and-colorful vision of the AR future; his half-dozen videos extend into different realms.
posted by darth_tedious
on Feb 11, 2010 -
49 comments
MTV's
Jersey Shore, a
Real World-style reality program centered around eight young Italian-Americans living together in a beach house, is garnering charges of
racism following their use of the allegedly pejorative terms
guido and the feminine counterpart
guidette in advertisements. But what exactly
is a guido?
[more inside]
posted by joechip
on Jan 3, 2010 -
232 comments
Jaron Lanier's new book,
You Are Not a Gadget -- a
cri de coeur on the commercialized, despoiled, fallen Eden of the modern Web-- is reviewed
here . MetaFilter name-checked by reviewer, though with the aid of a shoehorn. The
Mondo 2000-era dreadster explains himself
here. Lanier,
previously discussed on MeFi.
posted by darth_tedious
on Jan 3, 2010 -
43 comments
Ctrl is an NBC webseries starring Tony Hale (
Arrested Development's Buster,
Chuck's Emmett Milbarge) as an office drone who suddenly finds that, thus far, CTRL-Z lets him undo recent events in his own life, and CTRL-B em
boldens him to stand up to his boss and confess his love to the source of his crush. It was based on a short film,
Ctrl-Z, starring Hale's
Chuck co-star Zachary Levi as the boss. Not exactly a
new concept, but nonetheless well-executed by a fairly good comic team ...
[more inside]
posted by WCityMike
on Jul 18, 2009 -
38 comments
The Hamster Ball for Gamers The
VirtuSphere is a fully immersive virtual reality sphere that enables free movement in any direction for military and first-responder training (gaming), tourism (gaming), education (gaming), real estate walk-throughs (gaming), the possibilities are only limited by your imagination (gaming). You can run, jump, walk or otherwise locomote (i.e. roll a wheelchair) through an endless virtual world. And look like a
total dork doing it but who cares? The
videos make it look totally badass and fun and great exercise too! Though I do wonder what happens if/when you trip and biff.
posted by fenriq
on Feb 19, 2007 -
15 comments
' "
Predictive programming works by means of the propagation of the illusion of an infallibly accurate vision of how the world is going to look in the future". Through the circulation of science "fiction" literature, the ignorant masses are provided with semiotic intimations of coming events. Within such literary works are narrative paradigms that are politically and socially expedient to the power elite. Thus, when the future unfolds as planned, it assumes the paradigmatic character of the "fiction" that foretold it...........'
The Illuminati: an all encompassing conspiracy
stranger than any fiction
posted by 0bvious
on Dec 11, 2005 -
17 comments
