think or thwim

2003 documentary by Robert Kane Pappas

Asking whether America has entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth, Pappas explores what the media doesn’t like to talk about: itself.

:: All Things Cool

The reclusive Neil Armstrong is notably absent, but the rest of the Apollo astronauts talk about their time on the moon.

Wherever we went, people, instead of saying, “Well, you Americans did it,” everywhere they said, ‘”We did it”—we humankind, we the human race, we people did it. I’d never heard of people in different countries use this word we we we as emphatically as we were hearing from Europeans, Asians, Africans. Wherever we went it was, “We finally did it.”

I thought that was a wonderful thing. Ephemeral, but wonderful.

– Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot

An amusing and informative summary of the geopolitics of the last century.

From robnewman.com:

Filmed in the Hoxton Music Hall, the stand-up part of ‘History Of Oil’ was a chance to implement another carbon-neutral strategy. Some of the stage-lighting was powered by two cyclists in the style of Rinky Dink’s famous pedal-powered sound systems.

When the cyclists tired, members of the audience took over. For the audience, this meant a sense of involvement in the show. For me, watching them work up a sweat assuaged my resentment that they had all got in for free. I even took a turn myself.

The drawback was that the whirring sound of the fixed-wheel against the dynamo powering the micro-generator was quite loud. Next time, with the simple expedient of a longer cable, however, the cyclists could be in the next room and the noise won’t be a problem. ( I’m the pioneer, I’m Johnny Appleseed. Learn from me, follow me.)

:: Communist Robot

Todd Snider is a great story teller. Here’s how he became the lead singer of his first band, KK Rider.

If you can find The Story of the Ballad of the Devil’s Backbone Tavern, you should listen to that too.

“It’s easy to underestimate how difficult it is to become curious.”
– Seth Godin

In this talk at the Long Now Foundation, Wright and Eno discuss their uses generative systems, and Wright gives a great demo of his next game, Spore.

Stewart Brand:

Back in the 1970s both speakers got hooked by cellular automata such as Conway’s “Game of Life,” where just a few simple rules could unleash profoundly unpredictable and infinitely varied dynamic patterns. Cellular automata were the secret ingredient of Wright’s genre-busting computer game “SimCity” in 1989. Eno was additionally inspired by Steve Reich’s “It’s Gonna Rain,” in which two identical 1.8 second tape loops beat against each other out of phase for a riveting 20 minutes. That idea led to Eno’s “Music for Airports” (1978), and the genre he named “ambient music” was born….

It’s interesting that just one verb is used both for music and for games: “play.”

Kaufmann Residence - Falling Water

Of course, you could just watch a video of the real thing.

It’s also modeled Sketchup so you can view it in Google Earth. Download the model.

:: East Coast Architecture Review

There is a box on the coffee counter in the Psychology Department at the University of Newcastle. On the wall above it, a note shows the prices for coffee and tea, and explains that payment should be left in the box. That’s been the system for years.

However, for 10 weeks in 2006, Melissa Bateson and her colleagues placed an image above the note. Every week they changed the picture, alternating between images of eyes and flowers. They tracked the amount of money received versus the amount of liquids consumed each week and plotted the results in this graph. Nearly 3 times as much money was collected on weeks when the eyes were watching.

The report is here: Melissa Bateson, Daniel Nettle and Gilbert Roberts | Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting

:: Natural Rationality

Chain Factor is a great game.

Drop circles into the grid to try to clear it. When the number shown in a circle matches the total number of circles in it’s row or column that circle will disappear.

:: Miscellany