Technically, the shelf-life for the video I'm about to post is incredibly short (at least the registering-to-vote part of it is) but it's still worth a watch. Google apparently corralled a bunch of high-wattage star types to put this PSA together urging people to vote. It's good enough, I guess. I'm probably not the target audience here seeing as I, like, vote and stuff. It also walks right up to the preaching-in-your-face line, and then takes one step across it.

This doesn't look like it feels too good: people getting punched in the face in ultra-slow motion. Yeowch. I guess in slow motion that would be yyyeeeeooowwwwwwwwcccchhhhhhh!

Stuart Ramson/HTC-AP

... this phone was not primarily designed to solve a problem that you, the consumer, are having. Rather it was designed to solve a problem that Google has—namely, the need to keep feeding more and more people into the maw of Google's online advertising machine ...

In other words, the phone is a Trojan horse. You get a cool phone for not much money—$179 with a contract from T-Mobile—but then you're caught in Google's Web. Another way to see this is that a quasi-monopolist (Google rules the online advertising business) is attempting to protect and extend its quasi-monopoly by giving away at no cost something for which others charge money. Sound familiar? It's what Microsoft did to Netscape in the 1990s, giving away a free browser to undermine Netscape Navigator.

Oh, snap! I haven't played with the device yet, but it does look fairly nifty (for an elaborate advertising platform, especially). Indeed, elsewhere on the Internets BoingBoing guest contributor Douglas Rushkoff seems to be enjoying his new toy:

I played with Android yesterday. I don't gush over products. At least not in years. But this one makes me feel a bit like I did when I got my Kaypro. It's a solid device that hints at the beginning of a "golden age" of solid and reliable smart phone technology ...

I've played with a lot of phones, but this is the first true "smart phone" that is as easy to use as an iPhone, Sidekick, or Helio Ocean. Unlike the iPhone, it has a real keyboard that slips out from the bottom (and a bit more effortlessly than the one on my Ocean). Real keys, too, that feel good and click. Oh, did I forget to mention it? Copy and paste.

Of course, Rushkoff flicks at the advertising concern, but in the end is just pleased as punch with his relatively open source toy. Here's a video demo of Android that's been making the rounds for, oh, a year (we're nothing if not timely).




In conclusion: I wish Newsweek's top editors would make big announcements wearing Rollerblades.

Today the good people at TED posted a video of Philip Zimbardo's talk--brimming with humanity and good will--from the conference earlier this year. Zimbardo is, of course, the psychologist who designed the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971. More recently, he was called upon to be an expert witness at Abu Ghraib trials, an experience that led him to write "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil."

You can buy his book, or better yet, watch the video. (And then buy his book.)

Zimbardo's central theory won't be too surprising to anyone even remotely familiar with his work: Many people who do horrible things are not necessarily born "evil." Determining why good people turn evil, or do evil things, has been his life's work. A lot of it, it turns out, has to do with circumstance. Evil, as Zimbardo sees it, is when power is abused in such a way that it hurts people physically, psychically or emotionally. And "if you give people power without oversight, it's a prescription for abuse," he says.

To illustrate his point he uses the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to examine how ordinary soldiers--who would be called "bad apples" by the government that asked them to oversee prisoners with inadequate training and oversight--did things that were extraordinary for their brutality. (In a somewhat related note, this week the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2006 ruling by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordering the release of the Abu Ghraib pictures to the ACLU.)

With the caveat that "understanding is not excusing" evil, Zimbardo ends on a positive note: sure, the power to commit evil resides dormant in us all. But so does the potential for great heroism.

Context is key. Just ask Wesley Autrey, the New York City subway hero.

Whoa. And here I thought the facial animation work the folks at Pendulum are doing is interesting. The team at Image Metrics--which produced the animation for Grand Theft Auto--analyzes facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video (as opposed to putting dots on a face and recording the way the dots move). The result? "Emily." She's so real, it's unreal.

Meet Joe Francis. (As if you haven't already, you cheeky late night TV monkey!) Joe's totally sticking up for YOUR first amendment rights!!!  OMG! So rad! He even has a flag draped behind him, so you know he's for reals.

Anyway, he's certainly NOT sticking up for his his right to not go back to jail for alleged tax fraud. Allegedly. No. That would be something a less classy guy would do.

T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google's Android software, according to people briefed on the company’s plans. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October. ...

The HTC phone, which many gadget sites are calling the “dream,” will have a touch screen, like the iPhone. But the screen also slides out to expose a full five-row keyboard.

And here's a little peek of what it'll look like:

There are plenty of people playing music on YouTube -- there's excellent archival live footage of your favorite musicians; there are kids shredding through the theme to Super Mario Bros. on two guitars at once; there are people giving helpful tips to beginner clawhammer banjo players. But here's an excellent use of YouTube that I haven't seen before -- a note-for-note rendering, on paper, of John Coltrane's groundbreaking "Giant Steps" in real time. If that doesn't make sense, just watch this video -- and be prepared to be blown away all over again by Trane's towering mastery of his instrument. (And this was, arguably, still a few years before he reached his full potential as a soloist). You'll be exhausted by the end.



Now. Watch it again and pay special attention to pianist Tommy Flanagan's solo. No slouch himself, the dude can't even come close to keeping up with Coltrane's crazy chord changes. He gets completely lost in the weeds. Wow.

Supercollider hip hop! This is, like, nerdcore times a squillion.

"Antimatter is sort of like matter's evil twin,
because except for charge and handedness of spin,
they're the same for the particle and its anti-self.
But you can't store an anti-particle on any shelf,
'cuz when it meets its normal twin they both annihilate:
matter turns to energy and then it dissipates."

Thanks, CERN peoples, that explains everything. Literally.

Now. Must ... own ... MP3 ...

(props to BoingBoing -- and a million other people)