Here’s a Game of Life app made in HTML5.
(via Kottke)
MonthJuly 2010
Metaverse One (creator of that awesome AR anatomy education app) gives us a preview of an upcoming issue of Retinex by 3Satva featuring an augmented reality reality app created by SpiralConcepts. Metaverse notes that there have been comic that have used AR before, this is the first use he’s seen that actually integrates AR into the story.
Metaverse One: RETINEX – an Augmented Reality Comic Book
You can view some preview pages of the comic here here and buy 3Satva’s previous comic Triad Sphere (no AR) here.
I’ve been aware that Moore doesn’t use the Internet for several years now (though he recently admitted in the page of Dodgem Logic that he’s now seen the Dodgem Logic web site but it’s the first and only site he’s ever seen), and I’ve always been curious as to why not. He explains:
I’m practically Amish when it comes down to it. I practically mistrust any technology that came after the buggy. What I tend to think is that the internet is fine for everyone else in the world. I can see that it may have some disadvantages. In fact, I can see a few problems arising from it, but, by and large… everybody in the entire world apart from me uses the internet and seems to get on quite well with it. For my part, I don’t want to be connected to that all-pervasive kind of cyber culture any more than I want to be connected to the physical world that is around me, more than I can help it [laughs]. I’m largely a solitary creature, just by nature and by my work. That said, I venture out into town, but I very seldom leave Northampton.
He also talks a little bit about hypersigils (but of course doesn’t use the term):
We look into the place, but it’s more an excavation of Steve’s peculiar life which crosses into all sorts of different areas and crosses over with my life to a certain degree. It was certainly an odd little story that was self-referential. I’ve often found that if you write self-referential stories that feedback into your actual life then all sorts of weird things start to happen, or at least appear to start happening.
And:
Working as a writer, one of the reasons I got into magic was because you start to notice this feedback between the writing and real life. It might be entirely in my head, but it seems significant. I mean, there was a conference last weekend in Northampton called Magus. It was academics coming from all over the world to talk about me and my work. So I went down with Melinda. They were nice people. One of the academics at this conference was saying that he was working on a book which was about Watchmen as a post-9/11 text. I can see what he means to a degree. One of my friends over there, Bob Morales, said he’d been talking to some people on Ground Zero on September 12, 2001 and he was asking them if they were alright and what it had been like. Two of them, independently of each other, said that they were just waiting for the authorities to find a giant alien sticking half way out of a wall.
The Quietus: Hipster Priest: A Quietus Interview With Alan Moore
(Thanks Josh)
A new collection Brion Gysin’s work is appearing in the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.
But Laura Hoptman, the museum’s senior curator and the organizer of the show, said the departure in Gysin’s case made perfect sense because his work remains largely unknown to the American public and his influence — the kind that eluded him during his lifetime — now seems to be everywhere in the contemporary art world.
“I knew about him, and then six or seven years ago it felt like I started hearing his name from everyone,” Ms. Hoptman said. “I kept trying to figure out all the ways they had arrived at Gysin.”
New York Times: The Unknown Loved by the Knowns
(via Re/Search)
Harvey Pekar, writer of the autobiographical comic series American Splendor, is dead.
Pekar, 70, was found dead shortly before 1 a.m. today by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their Cleveland Heights home, said Powell Caesar, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller. An autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death. Pekar and his wife, Joyce Brabner, wrote “Our Cancer Year,” a book-length comic, after Pekar was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1990 and underwent a grueling treatment.
Cleveland Plain Dealer: Cleveland comic-book legend Harvey Pekar dead at age 70
(Thanks Audrey)
Here’s Pekar’s famous appearance on Letterman:
Here’s an excellent piece Pekar wrote about the experience under a pseudonym.
Pekar’s most recent and perhaps last work was his online series The Pekar Project.
Unlike the tiny, mouse-sized leather jacket vat grown from mouse and human cells I posted about a few years ago, this jacket is grown from bacteria and green tea and can apparently fit a human.
Ecouterre: U.K. Designer “Grows” an Entire Wardrobe From Bacteria
(via Boing Boing)
Great stuff on value of creativity, its neuroscience, and how it can be taught:
Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.” […]
Overwhelmed by curriculum standards, American teachers warn there’s no room in the day for a creativity class. Kids are fortunate if they get an art class once or twice a week. But to scientists, this is a non sequitur, borne out of what University of Georgia’s Mark Runco calls “art bias.” The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded. When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.
Newsweek: The Creativity Crisis
See also:
According to the AP, Colton Harris-Moore has been arrested in the Bahamas, where he continued his crime spree after crashing a stolen plane near Great Abaco Island.
Colton’s mother retained the high profile lawyer John Henry Browne this morning. Browne says Colton faces 7-15 years in prison if he’s convicted on a package-deal for his various crimes. (Assuming they can hold on to the slippery kid!)
Browne said various members of the Harris-Moore family have contributed to Colton’s defense fund, but the attorny – perhaps best known for defending Ted Bundy – said he’s not too concerned about money.
(Thanks for the heads up Bill!)
Fascinating article on the history of AA and some research on why, even though it doesn’t usually work, it does occasionally work.
Here’s an interesting social-cybernetic insight:
To begin with, there is evidence that a big part of AA’s effectiveness may have nothing to do with the actual steps. It may derive from something more fundamental: the power of the group. Psychologists have long known that one of the best ways to change human behavior is to gather people with similar problems into groups, rather than treat them individually. The first to note this phenomenon was Joseph Pratt, a Boston physician who started organizing weekly meetings of tubercular patients in 1905. These groups were intended to teach members better health habits, but Pratt quickly realized they were also effective at lifting emotional spirits, by giving patients the chance to share their tales of hardship. (“In a common disease, they have a bond,” he would later observe.) More than 70 years later, after a review of nearly 200 articles on group therapy, a pair of Stanford University researchers pinpointed why the approach works so well: “Members find the group to be a compelling emotional experience; they develop close bonds with the other members and are deeply influenced by their acceptance and feedback.”
Wired: Secret Of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works
The article covers AA’s effectiveness briefly, and finds that studies of its effectiveness are inconclusive. I’ve posted before about one study that found 12-step programs no more or less effective than other treatment programs.
I have absolutely zero problem with people using religion or whatever else works to improve their lives and get over the devastating effects of addiction, court mandated 12 step programs are clearly a breach of the seperation of church and state. (And There’s evidence to suggest that mandating treatment doesn’t work anyway.)
See also John Shirley’s “The Forgotten Solution.”
Another thought: The EsoZone Protocol is similar to the structure of AA.
Update: Another reason that it’s so incredibly horrible: The vast majority of the Exxon Valdez cleaners are now dead, with an average life expectancy of 51 years. (Thanks to Wade for the reminder)
My wife Jililan explains why the BP oil spill is worse than we think:
1. THEY KNEW IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.
2. THEY ARE NOT “ONE BAD APPLE”
3. WE WILL CONTINUE TO HEAR EMPTY PROMISES OF GREENING UP OUR ENERGY PROBLEMS, AND YET WASHINGTON WILL CONTINUE TO DO NOTHING.
4. BOYCOTTING ONE GAS COMPANY DOESN’T DO A THING.
5. EVEN IF WE DRIVE LESS, OUR LIVES ARE INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO PETROLEUM.
6. BP IS DUMPING MORE TOXIC WASTE INTO THE GULF AS PART OF THEIR “CLEANUP”
7. THE GOVERNMENT HAS DONE EVERYTHING IT CAN TO MAKE SURE BP COMES OUT ON TOP OF ALL OF THIS.
8. SO… HOW MUCH OIL IS REALLY GUSHING INTO THE GULF OF MEXICO?
Each point is expanded upon, with references.
Prime Surrealestate: The BP Spill and Why It’s Worse Than We All Think
See also: Some Oil Spill Related Articles Worth Your Attention
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