The gaming industry was served when Chair Entertainment launched Infinity Blade as the first iOS game built around the Unreal Engine. A number of iOS games utilizing the engine are now being developed, including Dream:scape that TouchArcade spotted today. The game puts you in the shoes of “a coma patient unlocking his past by exploring the dreamscape of Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : 9 to 5 Mac Discovery Date : 11/04/2011 16:12 Number of articles : 3
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Ok, so “Superbus” is probably the worst name for this vehicle. Awesome, sports-car-looking-limo-thing is more appropriate. Still, “Superbus” is what they’re calling it. It was developed in the Netherlands by that country’s first astronaut, Wubbo Ockels, who’s also a professor of aerospace sustainable engineering and technology, and can reach speeds of up to 155 mph. It’s also electric, according to… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Business Insider Discovery Date : 13/12/2010 13:23 Number of articles : 4
Continue reading …I don’t know about you, but I needed a laugh this weekend after all that’s happened last week so I give you Jon Stewart’s reaction to the news that Glenn Beck is leaving his 5PM show. Here’s Part II. Beck, the Birthers and the Mayans. And here’s a little more: SNL spoofed FOX & Friends . It wasn’t rip roaring, but it did have a few moments. Hating on Michele Obama’s obesity program, fear the Mexicans and ‘anchor babies.’
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Books and articles that emphasize the “non-cognitive” determinants of genius and elite performance are all the rage these days. (I put “non-cognitive” in quotes, because the line between “cognitive” and “non-cognitive” traits is much more blurred than popular journalists make out. I’ll write more on that in later posts.) A recent book on the topic (which has just been released in paperback) is David Shenk’s book “The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ.” To be fair, the book hits the mark in so many ways. Shenk does a great job reviewing some of the cutting-edge research on epigenetics, and he does a service emphasizing the importance of nature/nurture interactions. Like Jonah Lehrer (see his latest Wall Street Journal article “Measurements that Mislead”) and other journalists writing on this topic, Shenk discusses the important role of deliberate practice, grit and character. I also love the idea that because we don’t know at any point in time the full range of a person’s potential, we should help everyone maximize their potential. This is all great stuff, and it’s backed by solid data. There is no doubt: a person’s environment matters quite a lot, and skills and dispositions other than those those that standardized tests measure contribute to greatness. Unfortunately, the book also misses the mark in important ways. Granted, greatness is a difficult topic to scientifically study. Only very few people reach genius level, and no two paths are exactly the same. Also, there is a “restricted range” issue often at play when studying the best of the best: those without the requisite abilities have already been weeded out of the competition, so those skills will no longer be as predictive of performance. Finally, it’s important to distinguish between expertise and greatness: what distinguishes elite performance from great performance? While deliberate practice is necessary to make you an expert, can it carry you all the way to greatness? At what point does creativity and non-conformity come into play, where you end up inventing a whole new path of deliberate practice for others to follow? And anyway, while deliberate practice is necessary for acquiring expertise in any domain, is it reasonable to suppose that in any domain it is also sufficient (although, intriguingly, prodigious savants appear to display expertise that they never formally learned or practiced)? These are thorny issues that must be dealt with when studying greatness. Shenk does discuss some of these complexities, but I think large parts of the story weren’t told in full or at least as critically as I would have liked, particularly when Shenk discusses the predictive value of IQ, creativity and numerous talents, interests and personality traits. All of these traits contribute to greatness, in differing degrees and combinations depending on the domain. Athletic greatness surely draws on a different set of skills, dispositions and cognitive abilities than academic or scientific greatness. And both forms of greatness differ from what is required for artistic and performance- or entertainment-related greatness. Even within domains, there are different skills and dispositions required. (Think about the difference between poets and science writers; both are writers, but they seem to come from different species sometimes!) Of course, none of these traits are completely deterministic, but then again no one claims they are. Scientists will be the first to admit that no trait comes fully formed at birth and that there is plenty of variation unaccounted for to leave room for late bloomers and prodigies that burn out fast. Also, many so-called “non-cognitive” traits such as persistence, perseverance and even self-belief have a heritable basis. This simply means that many interacting genes contribute to the trait (perhaps by facilitating the rate of learning in a domain), not that the genes predetermine the trait (they don’t), or that the trait is immutable (it’s not) or even that the many genes that contribute to the trait don’t depend on the environment for nurturance (they do, very much so). I also don’t think Shenk covered the full range of life experiences and early developmental experiences — many of which are quite harsh and traumatic — that shape drive and passion. In my opinion, these parts are even more fascinating, as they demonstrate the wide variation that we have in our species. I think such a fuller understanding can help us appreciate the richness of individual differences. Nonetheless, Shenk’s book raises a lot of important issues that we should be thinking about as a society. I would love to get your thoughts. This is a topic that fascinates me, and I find much enjoyment looking at all sides and possibilities. Read here for my full review written in collaboration with John Protzko at NYU and published in the peer-reviewed journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. If you are interested in reading more on the debate about innate talent, I highly recommend reading K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues’ target article in the journal High Ability Studies, as well as commentary by me and my colleagues, and their response to the commentaries. I also highly recommend Dean Keith Simonton’s delightfully comprehensive and timeless book “Greatness: Who Makes History and Why” as well as his more up-to-date recent book “Genius 101″.
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Appearing on Monday's NBC Today to discuss the debate over reducing the nation's debt, CNBC host Erin Burnett declared to co-host Matt Lauer: “The problem is our revenue, what the government takes in, in taxes. What you pay every month out of your paycheck is way smaller, in fact, it's only somewhere around $2 trillion a year.” After Lauer asked about the relationship between government spending and the debt, Burnett acknowledged: “They are related, but really, to tackle this issue, we do have to tackle entitlements. When you look at Medicare and Social Security, it's 40% of our budget.” However, she quickly denounced Republican attempts to use a raise in the debt ceiling to cut such spending: “Those are the questions we have to answer, but not through playing chicken on the debt ceiling.” Near the end of the segment, Burnett remarked that the United States is “…a very wealthy country. If you look at our assets, we could pay down the debt tomorrow. We choose to borrow because we can borrow at incredibly low interest rates.” By “assets,” Burnett seemed to be referring to the income of all Americans (unless she plans to auction off the Statue of Liberty to pay our bills). Here is a full transcript of the April 11 Today segment: 7:13AM ET MATT LAUER: Let's try to explain it more. Exactly what is the debt ceiling and why does it matter to you? Here to explain, CNBC's Jim Cramer and Erin Burnett. Good morning to both of you. JIM CRAMER: Good morning. ERIN BURNETT: Good morning. [ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Dealing With the Debt Ceiling; How Does Government Borrowing Affect the Economy?] LAUER: Who wants to take the shot at this? What is the national debt ceiling? JIM CRAMER: This is how we – our nation pays its bills, but we borrow money to pay our bills. It's not like you and the mortgage, we're you can continue to borrow, you get one shot at it and if we don't raise the debt ceiling, then we're going to default. You just have to look at what Greece is doing, these countries – Portugal. These are countries that are all on the verge of default. And they can't borrow, then high rates.
Continue reading …The Vatican is known more for illuminated manuscripts and orthodoxy than LED screens and Web wizardry, but now a Vatican-approved publication is expressing support for computer hackers. The Vatican’s definition of a hacker, however, is an old-school one that distinguishes hackers from “crackers,” who use computers to wreak havoc in…
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A theatre critic has caused controversy by snoring through Terence Rattigan’s Cause Célèbre. But surely there are worse things than a mid-show snooze. Aren’t there? Poor Paul Taylor. There the Independent’s theatre critic was, settling into his nice comfortable seat at London’s Old Vic for the opening night of Terence Rattigan’s Cause Célèbre , getting out his notebook and pen; feeling the lights dim, hearing the soft hush of anticipation, and then …. Zzzzzz. He’s out for the count. And afterwards, to make matters worse, he suffers the indignity of a confrontation in the foyer with James McAvoy – who has, by a nasty quirk of fate, been sitting in the same row and taken exception to Taylor’s, er, lack of focus on the performance of his wife, Anne-Marie Duff . Or so, at least, we understand from a diary item in the Daily Telegraph today , in which an unnamed theatregoer also at the show’s first night claims that Taylor’s snoring was distinctly audible. “The noise was deafening,” says the mole (who should try listening to my dad). “He was clearly in a very deep sleep indeed and, to be fair to the play, he had nodded off before it had even begun.” Of Taylor’s encounter with McAvoy , he or she adds: “There was a right rumpus. McAvoy was absolutely furious.” McAvoy’s alleged fury is understandable – falling asleep during his partner’s big moment is surely on roughly the same level of rudeness as dropping off over dinner while your mate’s boyfriend is showing you their fascinating snaps. But the key fact here, of course, is that Taylor is a critic, and was meant to be sitting in judgment on Duff and the rest of the cast – to pay due attention to the play is surely the minimum expected. According to a spokesman for the Independent, Taylor will not now be reviewing the production. But he offered a good excuse: “Mr Taylor,” he says, “who has a medical condition, is under the care of a doctor and is currently on medication, was ill during the performance.” If this is the case, Taylor surely deserves understanding rather than opprobrium. So what about the rest of us – the non-critics? Is falling asleep in the theatre really as rude as all that? I’ve never actually fallen asleep during a show, though I’ve sometimes felt like it (especially during The Pitmen Painters at the National, which I found interminable, and the excruciating opera Le Grand Macabre at the Coliseum: in both cases, it was more the noise and lights that kept me awake than any interest in the onstage action). I can imagine that, for actors, looking down on a sea of sleeping faces could be more than a little disconcerting – but I’d argue that the very act of falling asleep could be a useful critical barometer. Theatre should entertain, and ideally keep audiences on the edge of their seats. The playwright Alan Ayckbourn knows more about this than most, and summed up this point brilliantly an interview last year. “You’re asking people quite often to sit in the same seat for two hours plus, with just a brief interval for drinks,” he told me. “You’ve got to give them a feeling that if they leave the auditorium at any second they’re not going to be happy, because they want to know what happens next.” If a show is regularly inducing snores in a significant section of the audience, the director should surely take the hint. There are, anyway, much worse things you could do to show your lack of appreciation. You could throw rotten vegetables at the stage (luckily for actors this tradition is almost nonexistent these days; in Shakespeare’s time it was de rigueur). You could laugh loudly at moments that aren’t meant to be funny: the appearance of two actors dressed as a polar bear during Greenland at the National was apparently quite often greeted with giggles, though it was meant to be a poignant moment. You could talk all the way through, or take a call on your mobile, though you risk angering the actors: Kevin Spacey, Richard Griffiths, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig have all harangued audience members for precisely this crime. Or, of course, you could just get up and leave. Doing this in the middle of a performance is the height of rudeness – other members of the audience might be enjoying it, after all, and however much you hate the show its yawn-inducing dullness may well not be the actors’ fault. The alternative is to leave during the interval – something I have, I admit, done twice. On both occasions I felt bad about it, but the shows were really so awful that I decided my time was better spent elsewhere. So let’s get this into context. I suspect that falling asleep during a show is rather less rude than getting up and leaving. But surely it’s less dispiriting for a cast to perform to an auditorium full of people, asleep or otherwise, than to come back after the interval to find that half the seats have mysteriously been vacated? Theatre James McAvoy Laura Barnett guardian.co.uk
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A theatre critic has caused controversy by snoring through Terence Rattigan’s Cause Célèbre. But surely there are worse things than a mid-show snooze. Aren’t there? Poor Paul Taylor. There the Independent’s theatre critic was, settling into his nice comfortable seat at London’s Old Vic for the opening night of Terence Rattigan’s Cause Célèbre , getting out his notebook and pen; feeling the lights dim, hearing the soft hush of anticipation, and then …. Zzzzzz. He’s out for the count. And afterwards, to make matters worse, he suffers the indignity of a confrontation in the foyer with James McAvoy – who has, by a nasty quirk of fate, been sitting in the same row and taken exception to Taylor’s, er, lack of focus on the performance of his wife, Anne-Marie Duff . Or so, at least, we understand from a diary item in the Daily Telegraph today , in which an unnamed theatregoer also at the show’s first night claims that Taylor’s snoring was distinctly audible. “The noise was deafening,” says the mole (who should try listening to my dad). “He was clearly in a very deep sleep indeed and, to be fair to the play, he had nodded off before it had even begun.” Of Taylor’s encounter with McAvoy , he or she adds: “There was a right rumpus. McAvoy was absolutely furious.” McAvoy’s alleged fury is understandable – falling asleep during his partner’s big moment is surely on roughly the same level of rudeness as dropping off over dinner while your mate’s boyfriend is showing you their fascinating snaps. But the key fact here, of course, is that Taylor is a critic, and was meant to be sitting in judgment on Duff and the rest of the cast – to pay due attention to the play is surely the minimum expected. According to a spokesman for the Independent, Taylor will not now be reviewing the production. But he offered a good excuse: “Mr Taylor,” he says, “who has a medical condition, is under the care of a doctor and is currently on medication, was ill during the performance.” If this is the case, Taylor surely deserves understanding rather than opprobrium. So what about the rest of us – the non-critics? Is falling asleep in the theatre really as rude as all that? I’ve never actually fallen asleep during a show, though I’ve sometimes felt like it (especially during The Pitmen Painters at the National, which I found interminable, and the excruciating opera Le Grand Macabre at the Coliseum: in both cases, it was more the noise and lights that kept me awake than any interest in the onstage action). I can imagine that, for actors, looking down on a sea of sleeping faces could be more than a little disconcerting – but I’d argue that the very act of falling asleep could be a useful critical barometer. Theatre should entertain, and ideally keep audiences on the edge of their seats. The playwright Alan Ayckbourn knows more about this than most, and summed up this point brilliantly an interview last year. “You’re asking people quite often to sit in the same seat for two hours plus, with just a brief interval for drinks,” he told me. “You’ve got to give them a feeling that if they leave the auditorium at any second they’re not going to be happy, because they want to know what happens next.” If a show is regularly inducing snores in a significant section of the audience, the director should surely take the hint. There are, anyway, much worse things you could do to show your lack of appreciation. You could throw rotten vegetables at the stage (luckily for actors this tradition is almost nonexistent these days; in Shakespeare’s time it was de rigueur). You could laugh loudly at moments that aren’t meant to be funny: the appearance of two actors dressed as a polar bear during Greenland at the National was apparently quite often greeted with giggles, though it was meant to be a poignant moment. You could talk all the way through, or take a call on your mobile, though you risk angering the actors: Kevin Spacey, Richard Griffiths, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig have all harangued audience members for precisely this crime. Or, of course, you could just get up and leave. Doing this in the middle of a performance is the height of rudeness – other members of the audience might be enjoying it, after all, and however much you hate the show its yawn-inducing dullness may well not be the actors’ fault. The alternative is to leave during the interval – something I have, I admit, done twice. On both occasions I felt bad about it, but the shows were really so awful that I decided my time was better spent elsewhere. So let’s get this into context. I suspect that falling asleep during a show is rather less rude than getting up and leaving. But surely it’s less dispiriting for a cast to perform to an auditorium full of people, asleep or otherwise, than to come back after the interval to find that half the seats have mysteriously been vacated? Theatre James McAvoy Laura Barnett guardian.co.uk
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John Dillinger: Bank Robber or Robin Hood? — Little Bohemia … Public Enemies (2009) – Full Movie – Part 1 of 10 Highway 51 “I’ll stick with the old stuff” John Dillinger Movies Foxs NewsMy Daily Buzz | My Daily Buzz John Dillinger Movies toddpinger Eva Longoria Has Wardrobe Malfunction on ‘David Letterman’ What was the movie where Eddie Murphy played all these old guys in a barbershop? What player in baseball history best resembles Albert. … John Dillinger |www.5E8.net john dillinger . John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. ( June 22, 1903 July 22, 1934) was an American gangster and bank-robber in the Depression-era United States.. In 1933-34, among criminals like Lester Gillis (Baby Face Nelson), … John DillingerMy Daily Buzz | My Daily Buzz john dillinger . John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. ( June 22, 1903 July 22, 1934) was an American gangster and bank-robber in the Depression-era United States.. In 1933-34, among criminals like Lester Gillis (Baby Face Nelson), … John Dillinger Movies » Foxs News – Where Everything's News John Dillinger Movies · toddpinger – Eva Longoria Has Wardrobe Malfunction on ‘David Letterman’ · What was the movie where Eddie Murphy played all these old guys in a barbershop? What player in baseball history best resembles Albert … Historical Fiction about John Dillinger , Third Reich, et cetera … Blackhawks move closer to playoffs with 4-3 OT win · Historical Fiction about John Dillinger , Third Reich, et cetera / and others? Khloe Kardashian Worries About Lamar Odom’s Dad In Sneak Peek of ‘Khloe & Lamar’ Premiere [VIDEO] … SunanIsmy says: Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Ceasar, Michelangelo, John Dillinger , Obama, Jay-Z, Nate Dogg are all lefties. Our brain is wired differently
Continue reading …Panasonic’s AG-3DA1 camera will shoot 3D video, Robonaut vlogs on the International Space Station
April 11, 2011 No Comment
NASA’s Robonaut 2 is something of a celebrity around these parts, owing to his dashing good looks and insatiable appetite for publicity, which can now be put to good use with a new toy the landlubbers are sending his way: a professional 3D camera. The human-aiding robot that presently calls the International Space Station home will soon be joined by Panasonic’s AG-3DA1 , a full 1080p 3D video recorder with twin lenses and dual 2 megapixel 3MOS sensors. Panasonic is also loading up the next Space Shuttle Atlantis flight to the ISS (scheduled for June 28th) with 25.5-inch 3D LCD monitors and rugged Toughbook laptops to help with documenting proceedings aboard the research vessel. The new shooter costs a whopping $21,000, and though it’s not clear whether NASA paid for it or Panasonic just decided to be charitable, the space agency should have the cash to splash after deciding to shelve the James Cameron-approved project to slap a zoom-equipped 3D imager on its next Mars rover . We’re just wondering if the human world is quite ready for 3D video blogs from its favorite robotic astronaut. Continue reading Panasonic’s AG-3DA1 camera will shoot 3D video, Robonaut vlogs on the International Space Station Panasonic’s AG-3DA1 camera will shoot 3D video, Robonaut vlogs on the International Space Station originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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