MAYA

Two good books this week…
If you’ve never read Jess Walters, now would be a good time to start. His new book, The Financial Lives of the Poets is a compact little story about one man’s descent into hell during the financial meltdown. It is funny, sad and hopeful.

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem is another loopy lyrical lounging lay-about classic by Mr. Lethem. It is laced with lunacy (or at least out of this world orbits) and lost loves. It has all the typical things you’d expect in a novel about a slightly alternate world New York City, like a roaming tiger, a run amok tunneling machine, a grown up blank slate but lovable or at least affable child actor with a girlfriend astronaut trapped in a decaying orbit in the sky, and a lazy eyed rock critic-conspiracy theorist named Perkus Tooth who is pretty certain that Marlon Brando is still alive waiting on another island to be called forth to save the city from the cynical billionaire mayor. NOTE: You have to like Lethem or not mind books that don’t really go anywhere but in loops to like this one, methinks.

Ok on to the top five…
——————Top Five——————-
1. Um, Petman is a bit spooky. Makes we think we’d better get those three laws of robotics vetted soon (as I’m sure most Asimov fans know the three laws are constantly causing unintended consequences and delightful but sometimes devastating hijinks). You may remember his brother Big Dog (which many people thought was really not a robot at all but two people in a costume).

2. Flowcharting the Beatles…

3. Robot architecture.

4. How big is a cell? Or for that matter an HIV virus or a carbon atom? I love the scale legend in the upper left corner.

5. Failing to learn.

—————The Rest—————

This was one of the more emotionally wrenching talks (given by an attendee during TED University) that I saw whilst in Oxford. Powerful.

Ever wonder what parts of the solar system we’ve explored over the last 50 years?

AR to see around corners.

Nothings gonna bring me down… Um, except sorta pissed off backup singers and dancers.

Russian boy genius with accordion (really seems fake when you start watching it but, no)…

Xerox is one step closer to printable electronics…

A world in which a dancer who does the robot is infected by the dance moves of Honda’s Asimo…

This seems very wrong. But I’m also kicking myself for not thinking of it first.

VW launches exclusively as iPhone app. Um, somehow I doubt this but it is curious.

The quality of light equals the quality of air.

Sound sculptures (I really like the first one, seems like it would be a nice wall treatment).

Weaving a car.

Kraken rum, wonderful packaging.

Nice reuse of some old buildings.