An excerpt from the 1958 "Disneyland" TV Show episode entitled "Magic Highway USA". In this last part of the show, an exploration into possible future Transportation technologies is made. It's hard to believe how little we've accomplished on this front since 1958, and how limited the scope for imagining such future technologies has become. Witness an artifact from a time where the future was greeted with optimism. Note the striking animation style here, achieved with fairly limited animation and spectacular layouts.
I like how suburban sprawl is anticipated with such glee!
From a technology standpoint, it spans a wide range; some ideas are pure vision, with no sense of reality (cantilevered, fully air-conditioned sky-ways through beautifully desolate mountain ranges?), while others are quaintly myopic (punch cards as storage media for your navigational unit?). Still, a lot of fun.
[Fascinating! I also noted the "vast urban radius" comment... well, we've made it to at least one of the things they predicted. No atomic cars though ;)
The company that turned DVDs into a subscription service for millions of consumers said Monday that it no longer will put a cap on the number of hours its customers can view movies and TV shows over the Internet.
Unless, as it happens, you're a mac user, in which case the number of hours of viewing you're permitted is FUCKING ZERO, despite my subscription fee subsidizing those unlimited hours for all the PC users out there.
I understand the market share arguments for why Macs get left out of stuff like this, but it's galling to pay the same price for less product. "Oh," they say, "but it's a free bonus, so you're not getting anything less!" Which is a load of shite. Extremely lame... they've had time to figure something out.
CinematicTitanic is Joel Hodgson's latest project, and it kicks ass. Hodgson is the creator of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 -- one of the greatest TV shows in history, in which Hodgson and friends screened insanely bad old movies while making hundreds and hundreds of snarky, convulsively funny jokes (someone once clocked it at 200 jokes an hour).
Chertoff on final Real ID rules: "Reconfiguring our society"
Topic: Miscellaneous
10:52 am EST, Jan 14, 2008
Secretary Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security, announced a set of final revisions to the controversial Real ID Act in a press conference this morning. It's not clear at this point how extensive those revisions truly are, but it is clear that DHS feels that the rules are now in their final form and that the period for discussion, revision, and dispute is now over.
A pretty biased article, but one I have trouble disagreeing with...
david foster wallace: untitled excerpt from something longer that isn’t even close to halfway finished yet
Topic: Fiction
10:28 am EST, Jan 13, 2008
My audit group’s Group Manager and his wife have an infant I can describe only as fierce. ... Its features seemed suggestions only. It had roughly as much face as a whale does. I did not like it at all.
Enormous quantities of data go unused or underused today, simply because people can't visualize the quantities and relationships in it. Using a downloadable programming environment developed by the author, Visualizing Data demonstrates methods for representing data accurately on the Web and elsewhere, complete with user interaction, animation, and more. ... Visualizing Data teaches you how to answer questions, not simply display information.
Looks like a damn cool book...
I've played around with the Processing language and tools a bit and found them really cool. I've been particularly impressed with Jared Tabell's work on generative art using Processing...
Don't forget about the IEM Political Markets, y'all...
I had some fun with this last time, and plan to play with it a bit again.
Worth a small investment for the fun of it.
The traders are fickle though... after the Iowa results the other day, the Dem. Nomination market did a complete inversion... could've doubled your money last week!
