Aug 312009

Sam Easterson used to work at the Walker. Here’s what he’s doing now:

The Museum of Animal Perspectives (MAP) collects and displays wildlife
imagery that has been captured using remote sensing cameras. Through the presentation and interpretation of this imagery, the MAP endeavors to expand the public’s capacity to empathize with animals and plants.

Now, imagine you’re a wolf:


turned onto this by kottke.org

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Aug 302009

thinfilms Frau im Mond Frau im MondPollee and I somehow landed on the topic of “t-minus” yesterday morning and so began a search for the beginnings of the phrase.

The hunt led us to discovering Frau im Mond.

From Wikipedia:

Though the special effects used in the movie were novel, the movie was not a financial success. The failure can be partly attributed to the public’s decreasing interest in silent films by 1929.

This film is often cited as the first movie containing a rocket-launching sequence: the “countdown to zero”. The launch crew counts down the seconds from ten to zero and the rocket ship then blasts off into space.

Since rocket scientist Hermann Oberth worked as an advisor on this movie (he had originally intended to build a working rocket for use in the film; time and technology kept this from happening), it was popular among the rocket scientists in Wernher von Braun’s circle at the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR). The first successfully launched V-2 rocket at the rocket development facility in Peenemünde had the Frau im Mond logo painted on its base. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, which deals with the V2 rockets, refers to this along with several other classic German silent films.

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Aug 292009

cheers to @drwave for turning me onto this:

Aug 292009

was turned onto this today via @edtechleader:

surely most of you have seen this before but i still watch it from time-to-time:

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you. Here’s one of mine but you can click on it to make it bigger and easier to read: Picture 43

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Aug 272009

thinfilms salt word m SaltFrom Wikipedia: Chloride and sodium ions, the two major components of salt, are necessary for the survival of all known living creatures, including humans. Salt is involved in regulating the water content (fluid balance) of the body.

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