Lifestyle & Culture
| Newer Entries »Beyond the Uncanny Valley of the Robo-Dolls
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 26, 2008 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture, Technology
Thursday, June 26th, 2008Welcome to the Uncanny Valley, where things are getting creepier every day.
Welcome to your creepy robot future. The ACM-R5 Amphibious Robot Snake pictured here is not a CG effect created for the next Alien
Everybody Has A Stupid Brother
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 26, 2008 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, June 26th, 2008Who would have guessed that the Dalai Lama has a plain-talking brother?
Jimmy Carter had a stupid brother. Bill Clinton had a stupid brother. George Bush probably IS the stupid brother (in that photo at left, the Dalai Lama is showing him where normal people’s moral standards are). But who’d have guessed that the Dalai Lama has one? Okay. I don’t know if he’s stupid, but things that he says are definitely a little “un-Dalai-Lama-like”.
Example:
Interviewer: At a young age, you, too, were recognized as a reincarnate of an important man, right? Tendzin Choegyal: Oh, that’s bullshit. I don’t believe it.
The interview is worth reading just to hear his take on Steven Seagal. By the way, don’t tell my brothers you read this; I’ll have some explaining to do…
The Meme Generation
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 18, 2008 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture, Popular Media
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008Memes and Internet Memes 101: From the Smiley Face to Rickrolling
Have you ever heard of a LOL cat? Rickrolling? All Your Base Are Belong To Us? Goatse? (I’m not going to link that one, it’s really disgusting) The Star Wars Kid ? Chocolate Rain? Little Superstar? Numa Numa? The Flying Spaghetti Monster ? YTMND? Demotivators? You haven’t? O RLY? Then you really haven’t seen the web in all its glory. Web phenomena like these are called Internet Memes, and become a pervasive part of heavy Internet users’ lingo and thinking. It’s hard to track just how a meme originates sometimes, but they often come from discussion board threads or people just naiively expressing themselves. In any case, I think I just witnessed one being born. On a fairly obscure discussion thread the other day, this dialog occurred. Within 24 hours, we already we have these interpretations, quickly repurposing other memes. Before you know it, someone will create a t-shirt on Cafe Press, and: voila! An Internet Meme is born. A piece of advice if you ever find yourself in the midst of a meme-birth: Trademark it! Don’t be like Harvey R. Ball, creator of the Smiley Face Icon, who only collected his original $45 fee…
Dumpster Diving: It’s What’s For Breakfast
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 16, 2008 by admin in Clean & Green, Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, June 16th, 2008Living on the edible waste materials of our throw-away consumer society.
The next time it’s 4:30 pm and you’re eyeing the clock at your 9-5 job, wondering how you’re going to fill the tank, buy the groceries, pay the VISA bill, and still have some fun money left over, ponder this: Maybe you don’t have to work at all. No, I’m not about to pitch some multi-level marketing scheme. On the contrary, if you have some anti-capitalist sentiments, it would make becoming a Freegan that much more palatable. Imagine if all your food, your transportation, maybe even your housing, were free. Imagine if, when your friends and family asked why you were unemployed, you could say: “I’m not unemployed, I’m voluntarily jobless. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Kind of like when the military calls human beings “soft targets”.
For the procurement of food, all you need to do is get over that little issue you have with digging through garbage bins for dinner. Once you’ve gotten over your waste-disposal snobbery, there is, contrary to popular wisdom, indeed a free lunch. As well as dinner, breakfast, and maybe even high tea, too. All the while, you’re making a powerful statement by not supporting a society in which “…retailers plan high-volume product disposal as part of their economic model”, as so eloquently stated at Freegan.info, your one-stop (no) shopping destination and guide to Freegan living.
Transportation? No problem. Freegans utilize trainhopping, hitchhiking, walking, skating, and biking as their basic modes of transport. That means you’ll be late for that meeting across town because you skateboarded, but it won’t matter. Remember? You don’t have a job!
Housing’s a cinch too. Just squat! Occupying abandoned property isn’t very different from what you did all day in your cubicle job, except instead of an annoying boss poking their head into your space at Read the rest of this entry »
Space Toilets & Goat Love
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 14, 2008 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture, Technology
Saturday, June 14th, 2008Today’s hot topics: Saudi Goat Beauty Contests; Space Toilets
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Only the Internet will provide the opportunity for a headline like that. And only on the Internet will you find a story about a Saudi Goat Beauty Contest via a Chinese news site.
Another hot topic on the MetaBlogs this morning: you may have heard about the space station’s broken toilet. Well, the station inhabitants are relieved (heh) to have it fixed. If you’ve never given much thought to zero-g elimination, be sure to check out astronaut Chris Hadfield‘s informative & humorous overview of space toilets (streaming video link). He seems flushed with excitement as he bowls the audience over. No, really. He’s a straight shooter. A number one expert.