Office by Alex Penny
A semi-official, semi-regular, semi-serious blog for a semi-official, semi-regular, semi-serious high school club. We meet on Thursdays after school and talk about everything except wolves. This blog should be much of the same.
—
Osho (via lazyyogi)
TED Remixed
The High-Tech Crap You Might Find at the Corner Store of Tomorrow
The Near Future Laboratory’s Corner Convenience is a thought experiment, newspaper [pdf], and series of three short films that explore the trivial and mundane objects coming soon to a store near you. These items are fictional but just barely — lotto tickets that win Twitter followers and porn magazines that you watch through virtual reality glasses. The director of the project, Julian Bleecker, discusses design fiction, the near future, and panda jerky in an interview with the Atlantic Video channel.
(via theatlantic)
Most of us would agree that King Tut and the other mummified ancient Egyptians are dead, and that you and I are alive. Somewhere in between these two states lies the moment of death. But where is that? The old standby — and not such a bad standard — is the stopping of the heart. But the stopping of a heart is anything but irreversible. We’ve seen hearts start up again on their own inside the body, outside the body, even in someone else’s body. Christian Barnard was the first to show us that a heart could stop in one body and be fired up in another. Due to the mountain of evidence to the contrary, it is comical to consider that “brain death” marks the moment of legal death in all fifty states. The search for the moment of death continues, though hampered by the considerable legal apparatus that insists that it has already been found.
(via the-feature)
Duke University engineers believe that continued advances in creating ever-more exotic and sophisticated human-made materials will greatly improve their ability to control light at will.
tetw:
A Tetw reading list
The Blind Man Who Learned To See by Michael Finkel - A fascinating profile of a man who is helping other blind people to see using echolocation.
Mixed Feelings by Sunny Bains - How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain to hack our 5 senses, and build new ones.
Sense and Sensitivity by Andrea Bartz - Is it possible that some people are wired to take in more sensory information than others, and that are our attitudes towards sensitivity are misguided?
Double Vision by Lawrence Weschler - A classic article about a pair of twins whose art unlocks the secrets of perception.
The Sniff of Legend by Karen Wright - “Human pheromones? Chemical sex attractants? And a sixth sense organ in the nose? What are we, animals?”
The Taste Makers by Raffi Khatchadourian - This trip to the heart of the flavour industry is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how modern food gets its taste.
You’ve Got Smell by Charles Platt - DigiScent is here. Will it take off, and if it does, will it be a fad or a technological revolution?
Seeing by Annie Dillard - An excellent essayist takes a personal, often abstract look inside the world of vision.
Master of Illusion by Ed Yong - How a neuroscientist from Stockholm can use mannequins, rubber arms and virtual reality to transport you outside your own body.
The Smelliest Block in New York by Molly Young - Deep in the Lower East Side, a terrible odor lurks. Where is it coming from?
Great selection.
“I am very cold”
“The parchment is very hairy.”
“Oh, my hand.”
—Notes from medieval monks and scribes in the margins of their work
Our latest issue “Means of Communication” is now online. Take a break from the scriptorium to check it out!
This is awesome.
(via nickturse)
Subjects in study draw anger as a creepy, spindly stick-person. Then they were all too scared to be ever mad again.
(via cracked)
