The playground of the future may feature “‘play workers’ to help guide fantasy play”Äìcuz kids need help with that sort of thing, apparently. Back in my day, we had to make it all up by ourselves (uphill, in the snow, etc). [via andrea harner]
Category: life
This is great. Area man loses weight by playing the Nintendo Wii.
What I Did On Martin Luther King Day
Last night I got to check out the opening of the Martin Luther King Papers exhibit at the Atlanta History Center. The places was pretty much packed, which was great to see. We arrived at around 1:30 in the afternoon, and our time-ticket wasn’t until 5:15!
Anyway, we came back after lunch. On display they had hundreds and hundreds of original documents from his life as well as some great photos by Flip Schulke and others. What really struck me, and what I really liked about the exhibit, was the focus on his intellectual biography.
Martin Luther King is occasionally reduced to a nice little rhetorical soundbite or posterboy for a specific political movement. That’s not inaccurate, per se, but incomplete. The exhibit showed a pretty impressive history of introspection and inquiry. There were original copies from dozens of his sermons, notes from his many speeches, books from his personal library with marginal annotations, his huge files of index cards for future reference. It makes you remember that he was not just a politico, but a thinker who wrestled with Big Ideas and tried to live them as well. There’s really too much to take in on one visit. At least bring some comfortable shoes to stand and read and read and read. So go check it out. It’s here in Atlanta until May, and a collection of this size probably won’t ever happen again.
Photos of discarded Christmas trees. Ah, the symbolism.
This website features extensive speculation on Batman’s religion, who is most likely a lapsed Catholic or Episcopalian. There are also features on other comics characters.
This is not a eulogy: Leslie Harpold remembered.
I hadn’t thought of this, but it’s really cool. The signing deaf are making use of YouTube. “Many of them arenÄôt comfortably fluent in written language. For many more, sign is and always will be their first language. YouTube gives them an easy, expressive, unmediated channel for many-to-many communication.”
“People all over the world are making a list of 365 people they’ve met during the course of their lives–people who left an impression and whose name they remember–then they’re randomly writing a set number of words about someone on their list. They’re doing this once a day–for a year.” [via rule, brittaniea]
A couple additions to my growing series of links about understanding large-scale concepts. Here’s a timeline of evolution from the beginning of Life up to Now. The image of the timeline is 135 feet long, and homo sapiens showed up right at around last pixel. And via infosthetics, a video comparing the planets, the Sun, and a number of other stars.
The first five links in my scalar collection were about the scale of the atom, the Earth’s population, the stars in the sky, showing 570 million years in 1 hour, and visualizing enormous numbers. Oh, as a bonus there’s also the one I linked a while back where you can learn about existing in 10 dimensions.
“It’s not cowardly to leave a place you love because you have a family now.” Barbara Rushkoff ponders leaving Brooklyn after her husband Douglas Rushkoff is mugged. Friend and Brooklynite Steven Johnson weighs in. There are tough decisions to make. Like Anil Dash, regardless of the final outcome, I think it’s really cool that these kinds of things can be shared and fleshed out in the blog community.
“God blessed me above all I could imagine.” Before his death in Iraq, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King left behind a 200-page journal for his newborn son.
Dave Conrey talks about his circle of name-sharing friends:
We all went by nicknames because there are 2 guys named Chris, 2 guys named Sean and 2 guys named Dave.
IÄôm sure you can imagine what conversations were likeĶ
ÄúHey Sean.Äù
Äúyeah?Äù
ÄúNo, the other Sean.Äù
ÄúOh, yeah?Äù
ÄúWhereÄôs Chris?Äù
ÄúI thought he was outside.Äù
ÄúNo, the other Chris.Äù
ÄúHeÄôs hanging out with Dave.Äù
Äúwhich one?Äù
Äúhe didnÄôt say.Äù
This year, Edge’s World Question Center asks, “What are you optimistic about? Why?” Hundreds of answers from folks like Ray Kurzweil, Brian Eno, Steven Pinker, Jared Diamond, Brian Greene, Cory Doctorow, and many more.
The Nonist mulls the next step in blogging and more importantly, in art:
Much of what IÄôve learned about blogging, from the standpoint of a creative pursuit, reinforces my perception that the form, which includes as a subset all preconceptions and consumer habits, may be an artistic dead-end.
New York Times on the science of free will.
The Bubble Project puts comics-style bubbles on street ads for passers-by to fill in.
Rebecca Blood points to a massive New Year’s resolution-keeping experiment and a news article about the whole thing. The idea is that you sign up, tell them the resolution, then the psychologists/automated mailing system will pester you via e-mail to see how you’re coming along. All the data-gathering will help scholars figure out how humanity can follow through better in the future. I’d join, but I haven’t yet resolved anything.
I never was that interested in skateboarding, but damn, freebording looks cool–check out the videos. Justin Blanton talks about his first experience on a freebord.
Mark Larson 
