http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article807136.ece A stonishing animals show up everywhere these days. Cooperative apes, grief-stricken elephants, empathetic cats and dogs crowd our bookshop shelves. It’s all the rage to plumb the cognitive and emotional depths of the animal world, rejecting sceptics’ sneers of “anthropomorphism” to insist that we’re finally coming to see animals for who they really are: not so different from us. Pushing against this tide of animal awe is a competing cultural trope, the relentless seeking of human superiority. It’s from this second camp that Michael C. Corballis, a professor emeritus of psychology from New Zealand, has written The Recursive Mind: The… ]]> Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:32:53 -0700 http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article807136.ece http://www.npr.org/2011/04/08/135241869/connecting-science-and-art?sc=emaf Science and art often seem to develop in separate silos, but many thinkers are inspired by both. Novelist Cormac McCarthy, filmmaker Werner Herzog and physicist Lawrence Krauss discuss science as inspiration for art and Herzog's new film on the earliest known cave paintings. ]]> Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:31:07 -0700 http://www.npr.org/2011/04/08/135241869/connecting-science-and-art?sc=emaf http://www.flickr.com/photos/24140210@N05/sets/72157607329841191/with/4295713286/ The pairs of images in this "Similarities" set are similar visually in one way or another. They are presented without judgement as to the motives of their creators. The viewers of the pieces can form their own opinion(s) about what they see.

Some are "accidents": The creator of the similar piece had no knowledge of the original. Examples would be the 1982 Rafal Olbinski / New Pornographers posters and the Idea magazine cover / Okkervil River poster.

Some are "re-contextualized": Obscure imagery from long forgotten sources was used from vintage printed ephemera like 1940s… ]]> Wed, 02 Mar 2011 07:28:57 -0700 http://www.flickr.com/photos/24140210@N05/sets/72157607329841191/with/4295713286/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/reclaiming-the-imagination/ Imagine being a slave in ancient Rome. Now remember being one. The second task, unlike the first, is crazy. If, as I’m guessing, you never were a slave in ancient Rome, it follows that you can’t remember being one — but you can still let your imagination rip. With a bit of effort one can even imagine the impossible, such as discovering that Dick Cheney and Madonna are really the same person. It sounds like a platitude that fiction is the realm of imagination, fact the realm of knowledge.

Why did humans evolve the capacity to imagine… ]]> Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:12:00 -0700 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/reclaiming-the-imagination/ http://www.geekosystem.com/power-grid/The+10+Most+Disgusting+Alien+Civilizations/ We've dedicated this Power Grid to the most disgusting alien civilizations to ever grace the page, screen, or hard drive.

Why is biology used as technology the easiest way to make aliens seem alien? Why are the bad guys’ ships always covered in strange fluids and dubious orifices?

And for another thing! Why are the ships in Star Trek and Galaxy Quest so damp? ]]> Tue, 10 Aug 2010 06:56:00 -0700 http://www.geekosystem.com/power-grid/The+10+Most+Disgusting+Alien+Civilizations/ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/books/review/Galchen-t.html Little is quite as dull as literary worship; this essay on Borges is thus happily doomed. One finds oneself tempted toward learned-sounding inadequacies like: His work combines the elegance of mathematical proof with the emotionally profound wit of Dostoyevsky. Or: He courts paradox so primrosely, describing his Dupin-like detective character as having “reckless perspicacity” and the light in his infinite Library of Babel as being “insufficient, and unceasing.” But see, such worship is pale.

And problematic as well. More than any other 20th-century figure, Borges is the one designated — and often dismissed as — the Platonic… ]]> Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:17:00 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/books/review/Galchen-t.html http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pleasures-of-Imagination/65678 How do Americans spend their leisure time? The answer might surprise you. The most common voluntary activity is not eating, drinking alcohol, or taking drugs. It is not socializing with friends, participating in sports, or relaxing with the family. While people sometimes describe sex as their most pleasurable act, time-management studies find that the average American adult devotes just four minutes per day to sex.

Our main leisure activity is, by a long shot, participating in experiences that we know are not real. When we are free to do whatever we want, we retreat to the imagination—to… ]]> Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:54:00 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pleasures-of-Imagination/65678 http://www.physorg.com/news192883115.html A recent study provides intriguing information about the neural dynamics underlying behavioral changes associated with the development of new problem solving strategies. The research... supports the idea of "a-ha" moments in the brain that are associated with sudden insight.

Our daily lives are filled with changes that force us to abandon old behavioral strategies that are no longer advantageous and develop new, more appropriate responses. While it is clear that new rules are often deduced through trial-and-error learning, the neural dynamics that underlie the change from a familiar to a novel rule are not well understood.
… ]]> Fri, 14 May 2010 02:28:00 -0700 http://www.physorg.com/news192883115.html http://blog.ihobo.com/2010/05/game-design-as-makebelieve-4-fictional-worlds.html When one plays most videogames there is a tacit understanding that one is entering into a fictional world – the term virtual world, is often deployed to mean exactly this. It is self-evident that this also happens when one plays a tabletop role-playing game, the play of which is precisely concerned with conceiving of a fictional world and taking actions within it. The same is true of boardgames: players of a game of Cluedo enter into a fictional world in which they are attempting to solve a mystery. It is even true of the more abstract games – players of… ]]> Wed, 12 May 2010 15:28:00 -0700 http://blog.ihobo.com/2010/05/game-design-as-makebelieve-4-fictional-worlds.html http://chronicle.com/article/Monstersthe-Moral/48886/ Monsters are on the rise. People can't seem to get enough of vampires lately, and zombies have a new lease on life. This year and next we have the release of the usual horror films like Saw VI and Halloween II; the campy mayhem of Zombieland; more-pensive forays like 9 (produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov), The Wolfman, and The Twilight Saga: New Moon; and, more playfully, Where the Wild Things Are (a Dave Eggers rewrite of the Maurice Sendak classic). The reasons for this increased monster culture are hard to pin down. Maybe it's social anxiety in the… ]]> Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:01:00 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/Monstersthe-Moral/48886/