Being "always on" is being always off, to something.
The boy who sees without eyes
Topic: Society
5:58 am EDT, Oct 25, 2007
This is a documentary about a boy (Ben Underwood) who has taught himself to use echo location to navigate around the world. Ben Underwood is blind, but has managed to do some truly extraordinary feats.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is growing more authoritarian at home and increasingly aggressive abroad. China’s global clout seems to expand by the day. And in the Middle East, a possible conflict with Iran looms on the horizon. For insights on this dangerous new world, FP turned to Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security advisor, author, and all-around foreign-policy guru.
Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine.
The wearer hides behind the sheet, printed with an actual-size photo of a vending machine. Ms. Tsukioka’s clothing is still in development, but she already has several versions, including one that unfolds from a kimono and a deluxe model with four sides for more complete camouflaging.
These elaborate defenses are coming at a time when crime rates are actually declining in Japan. But the Japanese, sensitive to the slightest signs of social fraying, say they feel growing anxiety about safety, fanned by sensationalist news media. Instead of pepper spray, though, they are devising a variety of novel solutions, some high-tech, others quirky, but all reflecting a peculiarly Japanese sensibility.
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While Americans want to protect themselves from criminals, or even strike back, the creators say many Japanese favor camouflage and deception, reflecting a culture that abhors self-assertion, even in self-defense.
“It is just easier for Japanese to hide,” Ms. Tsukioka said. “Making a scene would be too embarrassing.”
Let us know if you spot any suspicious vending machines ...
Would you like to sequence your genome in your garage? To grow your stem cells in the kitchen-lab? To hunt for point mutations just for your own sake? Welcome to the coming world of personal biotech.
Games of Strategy: Theory and Applications, originally published by Prentice Hall in 1961, was written by Melvin Dresher, a RAND research mathematician, during the heyday of Game Theory at RAND. This book introduced readers to the basic concepts of game theory and its applications for military, economic, and political problems, as well as its usefulness in decisionmaking in business, operations research, and behavioral science. More than forty years after its first publication as a RAND research study, and to celebrate RAND’s 60th Anniversary, RAND is proud to bring this classic work back into print in paperback and digital formats.
Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind
Topic: Technology
6:56 am EDT, Oct 24, 2007
Contemporary artificial intelligence researchers (as well as neurologists and Karl Jung) are taken to task in this talk by one of the world’s preeminent scholars of artificial intelligence.
