Walker Library of the Human Imagination

Here's the actual video.

Links for Later

1. PZ Meyers comments on the Spiegel interview with Craig Venter, and ends with a snap.

2. High Frequency Trading ordering patterns.

3. Setting the price for a seed round.

4. Inception soundtrack based on time distorted Edith Piaf.

5. Glen O'Brien & Family at the Selby.

6. Medical crew chief on a very bad medivac flight.

7. Tour of the Webb Gallery in Texas. Outsider art, Masonic paraphenalia and curios. (via boingb oing.

8. Audwin P McGee, American Badass. More interesting than that Dos Equis guy.

Images of the Week

from the Good Blog, via boingboing

(via rcs)

Inception infographic by dehahs, via William Gibson

This is the Way It Is

And the Way It Is Going To Be in venture capital and entrepreneurship for a while, as explained by Dave McClure. Fast, flexible, and almost disposable companies with neat ideas. Not too much capital, or what I would call "vegetarian" companies. Startups from the Gospel of Paul Graham.

Who.

Matt Smith and Orbital play the Doctor Who theme at Glastonbury.

Sao Paolo

Perfect Layout

How to layout golden pages, using the techniques of early printers.

(via gk)

The Prehistory of Digital Media

Bob Stein "talks about work­ing for Alan Kay, start­ing the Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion and Voy­ager on laserdisc, Hyper­card e-books, and inter­ac­tive CD-ROMs — essen­tially, the whole pre­his­tory of where we are now with just about all dig­i­tal media."

Cool bits about the Criterion Collection and the idea of doing the commentary tracks on DVDs.

Links for Later

1. Norman Spinrad can't get published? It's unbelievable. Here's why.

2. Elizabeth von Thurn und Taxis on the Hotel du Cap Eden Roc & summer on the Cote d'Azur.

3. Video tour of brs favorite location, Jay Walker's Library of the Human Imagination. I get book envy from this. Also here.

4. Generalization Error Bounds for State Space Models, a thesis.

5. RIP John Calllahan. I feel like we should all make jokes about quadroplegics in his honor

6. Out of the mouth of Paul Graham.

What makes human minds unique?

A Replicated Typo does a nice summary of recent reasearch in this area. Kudos on the bibliography, too. As mentioned in the article, not all of these faculties are actually going to prove to be unique to humans, but it's still an interesting list:

1. "We-perspective"
2. Symbolic, representational reasoning
3. Theory of mind
4. Shared perceptual and mental worlds
5. Mental time travel
6. Mental building blocks and the ability to interface these together

More: Part 1 of the article.

Green Lantern

Why Ryan Reynolds is seven kinds of awesome, a short vignette from ComicCon:

"In brightest day...
In blackest night...
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil's might
Beware my power... Green Lantern's light."

With those simple lines, Ryan Reynolds charmed 6500 people in Hall H and made a lifelong fan of one little boy. Contrary to many reports, the boy didn't actually ask Reynolds to recite the famous Green Lantern Oath when he got his turn at the mic during the audience Q&A at the Warner Bros. panel. He actually asked the question, "What does it feel like when you do the Green Lantern Oath?" Which is infinitely more interesting and charming than "Will you do the Green Lantern Oath?"

And what made Reynolds so likable in the moment was the genuine way he responded to the question. If you see the footage, you see him react first, an emotional beat, and then a decision. And just watching him make a decision, watching him slip into the Hal Jordan he's playing right now, and then say the Oath... not for us as an audience, because that's not the moment. He said it to that little boy. And just to him. And the look on that kid's face when the Comic-Con cameras cut to him after Reynolds finished...

Life. Changed.

More: at time 1:34

Links for Later

Interview with Founders Capital team on SpaceX, Tesla, photographic DNA sequencing, and others.

Staff Sgt. George Zubaty's personal narrative.

Tashi Mannox's Tibetan calligraphy.

Green Lantern posters at ComicCon.

Signal transduction through the PPAR pathway.

Rehab for sex addiction may involve someone telling you you're brain damaged and forcing you to break up with your girlfriend via speakerphone.

Seven people hold keys to restart the Internet.

Tom Hardy sorta-kinda comes out sorta-kinda bi.

Best Magazine Articles Ever

A list by Kevin Kelly and friends.

(via kottke)

Links for Later

Science is like building a pier in the ocean. (via mr)

Lost Ansel Adams glass negatives, bought for $45 at a garage sale, worth $200M.

Why Elizabeth Warren will be confirmed.

Why is the administration waffling about Elizabeth Warren's confirmation? Don't they want Democrats to win in November?

Eric's big battlefield ramble.

James Franco, as "Franco" on General Hospital, displaying an installation of films of himself playing Franco in earlier episodes, while being filmed by his own film crew, filming for an installation about his role on General Hospital. Very meta.

Etched brain slices on Etsy. (via Street Anatomy)

Convenient Optimism

Mark Thoma on the Obama Administration's inappropriately positive attitude and lassitude.

More here.

Anatomy of a Thug

Street Anatomy: "Every time I see a guy dressed like this (which is A LOT living in Chicago), I can’t help but smile as I stare at their little legs! With each bow-legged step I cheer in my head, LITTLE LEGS! LITTLE LEGS! GO LITTLE LEGS! Until they turn around…"

Weird. I've said the same thing for years. Now I know why.

Links for Later

WikiLeaks document dump of Afghanistan material

Critique of Julian Assange. Does anything in this critique degrade the intel in the WikiLeaks dump? No.

Charlatan, Martyr, Hustler--the geometry

Visiting the Ghibli museum

To read: The Devil is a Gentleman

General McChrystal's farewell

Squee! Avengers cast, director Joss Wheedon.

James Franco

A deeply weird and highly laudatory profile of James Franco, who seems to be doing the polymorphous, hyperenergetic artist thing. Working on four (or possibly six) graduate programs, while simultaneously starring in films, modeling for Gucci, making a lot of performance art (and whatever other art is now called--opposite art?), and generally running around the clock.

The next time I see Franco is at the Tribeca Film Festival, at an after-party for Saturday Night. The party is sponsored by Polaroid, which is using the occasion to promote its new Polaroid 300 camera so aggressively it feels almost like a satire of publicity: Everyone is taking photos, or photos of photos, or video of photographers taking photos of photos. It’s like Andy Warhol has thrown a surprise party for a Don DeLillo novel.

"My Work is a Collage"

Interview & encounters with David Hockney by Karen Wright.

Holy Rollers

Ian Winstanley's photoessay of the stylish sadhus of Kathmandu.