As requested:
Lego 2001: A Space Odyssey
Lego Steam Punk
Lego Futurama
Hope you all did well on your exams!
Friday, May 9, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Dwelling in Possibilities
I'm not sure how many people are in Professor Schulmann's HI365, but if you are you'll recognize this. Mark Edmundson's article "Dwelling in Possibilities" I think does a good job of highlighting some of the themes from this course in the context of how students of our generation (this article was posted on this site 14 March, 2008) interact with the changing technology. He talks about the computer sublime, consumerism, and the incessant need for information in the age of the Internet. Regardless, its a really interesting read from the point of view of a professor facing a college full of Crackberry-addicted internet jockeys.
Dwelling in Possibilities: Our students' spectacular hunger for life makes them radically vulnerable
Dwelling in Possibilities: Our students' spectacular hunger for life makes them radically vulnerable
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Soyuz Superteam
So, I'm a dork who just became ridiculously excited. I was wikipediaing ( if people can say googling) around and I found something pretty cool. "Soyuz" as in the Apollo-Soyuz project and as in the first C in CCCP (Soyuz means union in Russian) is actually the name of a group of Russian superheroes. Each character is based off of a figure from Russian mythology. These characters were first created by John Ostrander and, interestingly, were first introduced in the pages of the Firestorm comic, who was the creation of a nuclear accident and who had the ability to rearrange the atomic structure of matter.
Here's a link to the Soyuz wikipedia entry.
Here's a link to the Soyuz wikipedia entry.
Geek Flowchart
So as I was procrastinating in studying for my exams, I was surfing the 'internets and came across a link to a flowchart that describes the evolution of a geek. Basically it made me happy and I felt like some other people might enjoy similarly procrastinating. Good luck to everyone, by the way. Especially to those of us who excel in the art of not studying until the last minute.
Cape Wind
This is the website for the Cape Wind project going on. It's been coming for a long time, with a fight. Residents of the Cape don't want a wind farm off in their view. They even have bumper stickers protesting it...usually found on their enormous SUV's. They are definitely an example of technological sublime. There is a part of NY where wind turbines border a few miles of road and its hard not to be in awe of them.
Here's some video footage of a wind turbine. One of people's problems with them is that they believe the turbines will create a lot of noise. But as you can see....we make more noise than the turbines.
Here's some video footage of a wind turbine. One of people's problems with them is that they believe the turbines will create a lot of noise. But as you can see....we make more noise than the turbines.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Culture of Comic Books
I'm doing some research for another class on Popular Culture during the Great Depression by focusing on comic books, movies, and radio. It seemed like a lot of people were interested in the book Men of Tomorrow that was posted earlier in the semester. I found another book that deals with comic books and the rise of youth culture in America. It's called Comic Book Nation and if anyone is interested, you can find it here.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Here's an article I found from Time Magazine looking into the importance of Earth Hour. Starting at 8 pm on March 29th, lights were turned off across the world for just one hour. As the article argues, while such a movement does not have much immediate environmental impact, it's less about the numbers and more about the symbolism of doing whatever we can, no matter how small, to help the world around us.
Earth Hour
Earth Hour
Saturday, May 3, 2008
review terms & essay topics
Daedalus and Icarus Sir Anthony Van Dyck, c. 1620
On the final next week (5/9 at 9 a.m. in CAS 223) you will complete 12 ID questions (out of 12) and write two essays. The ID questions and the essay questions will be selected from the 50 terms & 4 topics below.
Only 12 of the ID terms will be presented, and you will have to answer all 12. The 4 essay topics will be grouped in pairs, and you will have to write on one topic from each pair.
ID NAMES & TERMS:
1 Howard Scott
2 Technocracy
3 Futurama
4 Leo Szilard
5 Trinity
6 Bikini
7 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
8 Robert Goddard
9 Werner von Braun
10 October, 1957
11 John Glenn
12 Valentina Tereshkova
13 Velcro
14 Tang
15 Apollo 8
16 Apollo-Soyuz
17 Challenger
18 La Mettrie
19 Charles Babbage
20 Alan Turing
21 IBM punch cards
22 "War Games"
23 "Solid State" electronics
24 "Pong"
25 MS-DOS
26 The "1984" ad
27 Moore's Law
28 Philo T. Farnsworth
29 Populuxe
30 Newton Minnow
31 Marshall McLuhan
32 "All You Need is Love"
33 DARPA
34 ARPANET
35 Tim Berners-Lee
36 LambdaMOO
37 Buckminster Fuller
38 eugenics
39 James Watson and Francis Crick
40 Asilomar Conference
41 "12 Monkeys"
42 Diamond v. Chakrabarty
43 Humulin (tm)
44 Human Genome Project
45 J. Craig Venter
46 John Muir and Gifford Pinchot
47 Rachel Carson
48 The Whole Earth Catalogue
49 Solar-Thermal
50 Singularity
ESSAY TOPICS:
w. Consider the changing relationship between human beings and nature as depicted in any three primary sources from the course reading. How does each author depict the impact of new technologies on the landscape, on living things, and on the human body itself? How does each of these works seem to evaluate the impact of human technology on the natural world---as positive, negative, or something else?
x. Consider the cultural and political impact of new technologies and new modes of production / consumption as explored in Paul Boyer's By the Bomb's Early Light and Lizabeth Cohen's A Consumers' Republic. Although both authors concentrate on the period following WWII, what different types of technological change does each view as most influential and why? How might a student of history integrate and expand upon their studies of U.S. culture and politics in the period of rapid technological and social change following WWII?
y. Imagine that you have been given to the opportunity to replace three secondary sources on the HI 351 syllabus with three very easy-to-watch popcorn movies. In order to seize this opportunity, however, you must first make a detailed and compelling case that each popcorn movie you propose to add to the syllabus explores all of the same major issues as each book you propose to subtract---and explores them more effectively.
z. The painting above depicts Daedalus advising his son Icarus on how to safely use the wings he has made for him. As we know from the story, (& from the vapid smile on the boy's face), this advice will not be heeded. In your estimation, is the human race, in its use of new technologies, more likely to follow the fate of Daedalus or Icarus? In you answer to this question, be sure to consider the arguments of those we have read and studied, among them Aldous Huxley and Freeman Dyson, who have taken a clear position on this question. Explain whose writings you find more persuasive, and why.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Yucca Mountain Repository
One problem facing nuclear power sites is the issue of storing and disposing of nuclear waste, whose radioactive half-life can last between thousands and millions of years (plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years). Large-scale repositories in remote areas seem the best solution, but there is a real danger in transporting nuclear waste, even in the concrete-lined drums they're stored in. Carrying nuclear waste on public roads, through the atmosphere, or even on railroads through areas with people is a risk many aren't willing to take. The Yucca Mountain Repository is the center of a currently halted Congressional debate. The site itself has been approved for dumping 77,0000 tons of material, but the facility has yet to be laid out.
Link: http://www.yuccamountain.org/archive/legal.htm
Link: http://www.yuccamountain.org/archive/legal.htm
Stewart Brand
Here is a clip from a recent lecture by Whole Earth Catalogue founder Stewart Brand in which he argues that the global trend toward urbanization will "defuse the population bomb" and lead to a more educated global population with, in the long run, a higher standard of living.
Buckminster Fuller clips
In the first video, geodesic dome inventor Buckminster Fuller explains his response to the anti-technology or "Luddite" point of view that had gained popularity in the sixties and seventies. The second clip describes the global power grid that Bucky was the first to propose.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Radioactive Waste Converted Into Inert Substance
http://www.ecofuss.com/radioactive-waste-converted-into-inert-substance/
A group of Russian researchers in collaboration with the Israeli’s Environmental Energy Resources (EER) have developed a reactor that converts radioactive waste into inert byproducts. Although there were many who thought that this is not possible, Itschak Shrem from the Shrem, Fudim and Keiner, an investment company, announced the breakthrough at a press conference in Tel Aviv.
A group of Russian researchers in collaboration with the Israeli’s Environmental Energy Resources (EER) have developed a reactor that converts radioactive waste into inert byproducts. Although there were many who thought that this is not possible, Itschak Shrem from the Shrem, Fudim and Keiner, an investment company, announced the breakthrough at a press conference in Tel Aviv.
Treescrapers?
I found this interesting website discussing the possible future use of treescrapers, essentially a skyscraper that works like a tree, makes oxygen, distills water, produces energy, and changes with the seasons. This is the link.
This website called Inhabitat has a ton of really cool green technologies on it. check it out.
JYL
This website called Inhabitat has a ton of really cool green technologies on it. check it out.
JYL
Green Consumerism?
Technological advances in the environmental field have trickled down from the realm of high science into the everyday world of the consumer. These environmental inventions and innovations, such as hybrid cars, biofuels, and energy saving appliances, have attained messianic status, saving Americans from environmental damnation. This article from the New York Times examines this notion and concludes more optimistically, by discovering that most consumers (in a survey) were aware that they could not solve the problem of pollution and climate change by buying things.
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