Link Latte #3

I know I said I was going to do these on Saturday, and it’s now Wednesday but in this, as with all else, I am an innovator, so you can stop your moaning etc.

1) Popup Lego Zen Buddhist Temple

2) Waving-Arms-Around-Interface actually doing something useful:

Cool. Maybe in the future someone will make one of these interfaces that allows you to see in real-time the damage that the interface itself is doing to your spinal column

3) More Winger Insanity

A game for people so disconnected with reality that they can no longer count the fingers they hold up in front of their own faces… fantasizing about defeating Obama in an imaginary coup.

Utterly unbelievable. I mean I know I keep going on about the reality-disconnect that goes hand in hand with weapons, but seriously… courtesy of the massive right-wing-propaganda-machine (this disease inspired by The Powell Memo), it’s looking very much to me like America is becoming too stupid to survive.

It has become impossible for rational public discourse… “Debate” doesn’t happen. What happens is Rationality permanently on the defensive against a well-funded, relentless barrage of well crafted sound-bites… which are more often than not, pathetically flimsy lies – but there’s so many of the fucking things that it seriously interferes with the possibility of a normal conversation happening.

It’s not freedom of speech, it’s conversational jerrymandering.

And it’s not the people – it’s the media (and some of the people)… witness the recent gay-pride rally in Washington, completely ignored by the media while a similar-sized right-wing nutter protest received blanket coverage. The corporate media are in love with this shit… well, I guess they would be. They help fund it.

I saw some video recently where Janeane Garofalo was going on about racism… and how the media are always nudging things towards violence (it was the one where she asked what would have happened if black people had turned up armed to a McCain rally)… tried to find the video again. Couldn’t… but have you seen the comments on Youtube whenever there’s a video of Janeane Garofalo? You people are fucked. Seriously. Get a divorce before you hurt someone.

This is the inevitable byproduct of the emotionally manipulative propaganda techniques that are being employed… using “values” and framing to bypass critical thinking and appeal straight to some sort of xenophobic sub-brain. This really, seriously needs to stop. It’s inciting violence… and over what? For what? Who’s benefiting?

Enough. I’m sick of it. We’re all sick of it.

4) Video of Nanosolar’s new European plant

You’ll need to click the image to go to the site with the video… because it’s indulging in that archetype of web-fuckwittery known as “autoplay” and danged if I can get it to stop

Cool. Mind you, I’ve worked in a lot of factories… and they always had people working in them – allowing said people to buy the things that the factory produced. If they wanted. I guess you could make your manufacturing process soooo efficient that people on unemployment benefit could afford to buy your stuff.

5) Cool DIY LED Fob watch

6) Cool collection of Stirling Engines

Only the owner of the videos appears to have deleted them… and put them back, but not updated his site.

This all came from the rather fab Steampunk collection on Wired

7) Myna – a new online Sound Editor from Aviary

Aviary being a bit of a power-house of creative online applications. One to watch I think… they’ve had some pretty good ideas in the past.

8 ) Treasure-hunting crow-trainer open-sourced

This turned up a while back on TED…and I probably went on about it before… but here it is again

This has got to be useful for something more useful than collecting lost change. How about getting plastic bags out of trees or finding your keys or something. Picking up the million-square miles of rubbish that is now floating in the Pacific Ocean.

9) Misc Robotery:

a) robot that feels
b) silent robot muscles
c) and two more robots that might be useful for “Search and Rescue”, which is what people say when they’ve made a cool toy but can’t think of anything to use it for… or don’t want to admit that the only thing it’s good for is helping the military suck money out of the economy, and taking it out into the desert and burning it by the bale.

Which isn’t to say it’s not a really cool toy, because it is.

But this obsession with search and rescue? What must the Martians think? “Oh yes, a technologically advanced civilisation… except that so much of their technology seems to be for finding themselves when they get lost. Yes they do have GPS. Whatever. Nice place to go on holiday, but I wouldn’t want to live there”.

10) A nice juxtaposition on how far we’ve evolved in terms of transport ideas

I don’t know what it with things where you sit inside the wheel itself. There seems to be a lot of them about, and I can’t think of any reason why they might be a good idea other than they look kindof cool. Kindof.