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| compos mentis. Concision. Media. Clarity. Memes. Context. Melange. Confluence. Mishmash. Conflation. Mellifluous. Conviviality. Miscellany. Confelicity. Milieu. Cogent. Minty. Concoction. |
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| Topic: Science |
1:17 pm EDT, Jul 14, 2002 |
The impossible isn't what it used to be. Lately, news flashes from the front lines of science suggest a bewildering telepathic collision between fact and fantasy -- quantum teleportation, spider/goat milk/silk, a tooth phone, a cloned cat. Neil Gershenfeld, MIT Media Lab: "Science fact is rapidly outstripping science fiction." See the article for comments from Paul Saffo, Bruce Sterling, William Shatner, Stewart Brand, and others. This article falsely awards the concept of a fax machine to Philip K. Dick. In fact, the fax machine was invented and demonstrated in 1843. Blinded by Science |
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Blast From the Past | Baseball, Radio, and TV |
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| Topic: Technology |
1:03 pm EDT, Jul 14, 2002 |
This new radio craze is already crimping attendance. ... And next we will have the whole works shot to pieces because instead of mere sound, the radio will be producing in every home that has a [set] the picture of the play. ... Then what will become of baseball? Nobody will actually see Ruth and Sisler in action except the bored operators of the wireless picture-producing machine. ... The magnates won't have to worry about taking care of their crowds, their concrete grand stands will be torn down and the business of baseball will be collecting a fee for supplying the action that is reproduced on the parlor wall instead of counting the gate. -- The Sporting News, April 27, 1922 In another era, technology and entertainment collide in a public display of creative destruction. Could the music industry learn a thing or two from the history of baseball? Blast From the Past | Baseball, Radio, and TV |
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'Tuxedo Park': Basement Science Project |
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| Topic: Non-Fiction |
12:34 pm EDT, Jul 14, 2002 |
By the time you are finished [reading 'Tuxedo Park'], you are prepared to bestow on Alfred Lee Loomis the title of Most Interesting Man I Never Knew Anything About. ... In 1917, Loomis joined the Army and, as an ordnance researcher, fell into his life's calling -- becoming a world-class tinkerer, inventor, collator and promoter of new ideas. In 1940, with the Battle of Britain hanging in the balance, Winston Churchill's top scientists came to America bearing a gift, and a plea. Loomis immediately convened an emergency meeting of the Establishment: his cousin Henry Stimson, the secretary of war; and Stimson's aides John McCloy, Robert Patterson and Robert Lovett. All Yale men, all Harvard Law, all Wall Streeters, all Republicans and all instrumental in starting MIT's wondrous Radiation Laboratory, the Rad Lab. "It sounds like fiction. It's incredible to me now, looking back, that it really happened." But it did. 'Tuxedo Park': Basement Science Project |
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Regulation Pushes Telecom Funds Further Into Storm |
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| Topic: Telecom Industry |
12:17 pm EDT, Jul 14, 2002 |
Telecom stocks are so battered that mutual funds set up to invest in them might want to flee the sector to cut their losses. Instead, new rules are making them wander deeper into the quagmire. Fund manager: "It's not fun." Another manager: "You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, because baskets can get broken -- and this basket is broken." The sharp downturn likely will mean the death knell for more telecom players. Sucks to be a fund manager tied to a sector in collapse ... Regulation Pushes Telecom Funds Further Into Storm |
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Toumai, the face of the deep | Focus on human origins | _Nature_ |
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| Topic: Science |
12:06 pm EDT, Jul 14, 2002 |
Nature is providing free, unrestricted access to an important new paper about 'Toumai', an ancient human skull found in Africa. From NYT Week In Review: The known history of human origins took a vaulting leap back in time: French scientists announced that a seven-million-year-old skull found in the central African country of Chad is the oldest member of the human family yet discovered, by as much as a million years. Paleontologists think this is the most important fossil find in decades. The skull comes from a region beyond the usual track of fossil hunters and affords a glimpse into the little-known period when human precursors and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor. One surprise is the skull's mosaic of apelike and advanced characteristics, suggesting a pattern of evolution more tangled than the usual linear family trees. From Nature: At between 6 and 7 million years old, this skull is the earliest known record of the human family. Discovered in Chad in Central Africa, the new find, nicknamed 'Toumaï', comes from the crucial yet little-known interval when the human lineage was becoming distinct from that of chimpanzees. Because of this, the new find will galvanize the field of human origins like no other in living memory -- perhaps not since 1925, when Raymond Dart described the first 'ape-man', Australopithecus africanus, transforming our ideas about human origins forever. A lifetime later, Toumaï raises the stakes once again and the consequences cannot yet be guessed. Dart's classic paper was published in Nature, as have most of the milestones in human origins and evolution. To celebrate the new find, we are proud to offer a selection of ten of the very best from Nature's archives, including Dart's classic paper. Toumai, the face of the deep | Focus on human origins | _Nature_ |
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A Restored German Classic of Futuristic Angst |
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| Topic: Movies |
11:40 am EDT, Jul 14, 2002 |
On January 10, 1927, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," a wildly ambitious, hugely expensive science fiction allegory of filial revolt, romantic love, alienated labor and dehumanizing technology opened in Berlin, but the movie as Lang made it has never really been seen. ... Thanks to four years of painstaking work, there is now, at long last, a "Metropolis" with a legitimate claim to being definitive. Far from a historical curio, "Metropolis" arrives, three-quarters of a century late, like an artifact from the future. At last we have the movie every would-be cinematic visionary has been trying to make since 1927. I hope this is shown outside New York and becomes available on DVD. A Restored German Classic of Futuristic Angst |
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| Topic: Movie Genres |
11:34 am EDT, Jul 14, 2002 |
The drive to grab a camera and immerse yourself in the world around you, and to produce not documentary but poetry, has become as fundamental as the urge to tell stories. Neorealism, broadly understood, has migrated from Italy to India, from China to Iran, and even touched down, now and again, in the United States. It continually discovers new stories -- and new ways of telling them, rooted in Persian classical literature, in Peking Opera, in Inuit storytelling -- and then filters them through a medium that is not so much global as universal and radically individual: the human eye. This is the sort of multimedia content that needs Internet distribution ... but how to discover it? (Pssst. Reputation-based recommender systems!) Reel Change |
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A Hell for Fathers and Sons | NYT Reviews 'Road to Perdition' |
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| Topic: Drama |
3:32 pm EDT, Jul 13, 2002 |
"Road to Perdition," a period gangster film that achieves the grandeur of a classic Hollywood western, is the second feature film directed by Sam Mendes, the British theatrical maestro who landed at the top of Hollywood's A-list with his cinematic debut, "American Beauty." The new movie re-teams him with Conrad L. Hall, the brilliant cinematographer responsible for that film's surreal classicist shimmer. With "Road to Perdition" they have created a truly majestic visual tone poem, one that is so much more stylized than its forerunner that it inspires a continuing and deeply satisfying awareness of the best movies as monumental "picture shows." "Road to Perdition" ponders some of the same questions as "The Sopranos," a comparably great work of popular art, whose protagonist is also a gangster and a devoted family man. The look of the film maintains a scrupulous balance between the pop illustration of a graphic novel and Depression-era paintings ... There's a lot of Oscar buzz around this film ... A Hell for Fathers and Sons | NYT Reviews 'Road to Perdition' |
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Sommer sales: VoiceStream likely candidate |
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| Topic: Telecom Industry |
2:20 pm EDT, Jul 13, 2002 |
Ron Sommer wants to keep his job as chief executive officer of Deutsche Telekom so badly that he is willing to abandon his American dream and consider merging or even possibly selling DT's US subsidiary, VoiceStream. A deal involving VoiceStream is certain to trigger consolidation in the crowded US wireless market. ... Experts agree that the US wireless industry is ripe for mergers and acquisitions as it grapples with slowing growth, a price war and an abundance of national and regional players. Another vision of the perfect transatlantic enterprise is about to go up in smoke; once again, the CEO will pay with his job, and shareholders will pay with their pensions. Sommer sales: VoiceStream likely candidate |
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