MIT BioSuit is pretty hot
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My personality swatches
MIT MediaLab shows you who the Internet thinks you are in full color. Reappropriated from Jay Wolff's posterous, nice find.
dichotomies. this, mind/body
The article below [link] speaks of the fMRI as a technology that visualizes the mind. And not only, but the process as well. I am a little surprised that as late as 2004, MIT allowed for the perpetuation of the mind/body binary, even if it is just a starter question to which they subsequently try to dismantle. However, they speak of the "brain-mind connection" further down the article, implying the mind and brain are still separated to a degree. Descartes lives on! Is it just semantics? It is a curious way to proceed with language in finding an emergent phenomenon. Someone out there skilled in this area, I'd like to know. Hit me up.
http://www.wi.mit.edu/news/archives/2004/cpa_0609.html
There are many researchers out there trying to tackle the physicality of consciousness; books, articles, and on, as mentioned in the article. All are looking at the brain. It is all fascinating, compelling and ever informative and revealing an incredible amount of information about the resilience of... human. Yet receptors of the brain are found throughout the rest of the body, as within the digestive tract. They respond to the same neurotransmitters as the brain. Mental function, behavior, emotion, intelligence, intellectual burn-out, intuition, stress, IBS, heartbreak, nausea, happiness, what have you, are all full-body experiences.
I am sure I have mentioned this before. A good read on this is Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert, Phd. http://books.google.com/books?id=gPDRP9DV8twC&dq=molecules+of+emotion&source=gbs_navlinks_s It is interwoven with her own personal story of being a woman in the sciences (an incredible one at that), has some technical language, and has been criticized for being new wave b.s. But all are relevant to the development of science and medicine and finding the physical mind.
Seems one for complimentarity. Or maybe that is what integrative physiological science is for. As is the usual, they should talk to each other more often. Or try fMRI'ing brain + the rest of the body.
Coding Kids
Photo by Flickr/specialkrb
Today I listened to an episode of IT Conversations... I know it sounds slightly more geeky than my usual generalist taste, but this particular episode (and a few others) will appeal to all, geeks and non-geeks alike.
So the podcast in question is called 'Spawning the Next Generation of Open Source Hackers' and in the words of the speaker, Nathan Torkington; 'This talk is not about geeks having sex'. It is however about if, why and how children can learn programming and generally become more tech savvy. Nathan puts forward a convincing argument, and through his own examples of teaching children delivers a talk which is both humorous yet tackles the subject seriously.
I for one wish I had the opportunity of learning some programming when I was in school, rather than painfully spending years repeating the times table like a parrot! Have a listen to Nathan Torkington's 20 minute piece, and see if you agree.
Link to Podcast:
IT Conversations: Spawning the Next Generation...
Related Links:
Electronic Popables by Jie Qi
via youtube.com
Absolutely gorgeous electronic pop-up book design. This came out of the MIT High-Low Tech Group which is run by Leah Buechley. I was fortunate to see her presentation at a CO-LAB event last year when she was still out here in Colorado. She's doing some of the most interesting work anywhere on the intersections of gender, technology, geekdom, and play.
Personas | Metropath(ologies) | How does the Internet see you
Check out this website I found at personas.media.mit.edu
Demo of Computer Aided Design CAD software 40 years ago.
via youtube.com
Awesome 40 year old video on CAD. The Sketchpad developed by
Ivan Sutherland at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory on a TX-2 computer.
The computer was very advanced for its time it had:
320kb main memory
8Mb magnetic tape storage device
7 inch 1024x1024 monitor
light pen and a button box
As with most computers of that era, programs were written in macro-assembler, punched onto paper tape and fed into the computer's paper tape reader. The computer occupied about 1,000 square feet (~93 square meters) and the 320kb memory core alone was ~1 cubic yard (~0.76 cubic meters).
What's interesting is the Wikipedia entry for CAD had the following animation that displayed the same principles (for 2D) 
