Hier die neue Folge der Pixel-Philosphen, diesmal mit 8-Bit-Nietzsche. ACHT BIT NIETZSCHE!

Youtube: Ep. 2: Does SCIENCE = TRUTH? (Nietzsche) — 8-Bit Philosophy

Vorher auf Nerdcore:
8-Bit Philosophy: What is Real? – Platos Allegory of the Cave

More Batman.

For the Surrealist digital artist Alex Andreyev, reality gives way to the nightmarish and imaginary; his grotesque urban landscapes are dominated by giant spiders, snakes, and eyeballs. Much like the world of The Wachowshi Brothers’ 1999 film The Matrix, Andreyev’s dreamscape is dystopian, seemingly operated by frightful machines that lurk in dark alleyways and within murky, polluted puddles. Like Neo before the rabbit hole, the artist sits at his computer, delving into his nightmares in search of psychological truths that transcend the laws of reality and escape the revelation of daylight.

By maintaining a graphic comic book aesthetic, Andreyev’s images compose a suspenseful, quick-paced narrative; clearly rendered with computer technology, his subjects appear like online avatars, their experiences symbolic of the human condition without directly mirroring it. Like the Surrealists Odilon Redon and Rene Magritte, the digital artist uses the image of the eye to subvert reality; as eyes wearing grotesquely tall top hats chase a helpless man down a dark, dank underground, we viewers are made to perceive our own eyes as villainous, to assume that what they record might not accurately reflect the world around us. Another sketch presents a man slicing his eyes open with a razor, the implication being that to truly see and to understand, we must endure pain and strife.

In this realm where the inner eye takes precedence over superficial vision, a wondrously dark and lonesome creative space begins to emerge. The spider, a symbol which harkens back to the work of Redon in particular, is used here perhaps to represent the isolation of introspection and of the endlessly complex imagination; as a man retreats into his computer, an arachnid nests in the darkness next door. Similarly, man and beast walk alone in the rain. Take a look. (via TrendHunter)

The post Nightmarish Illustrations By Alex Andreyev Are Straight Out Of The Matrix appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

Doctor Who's "Empty Child"
Going back to Doctor Who today - I wanted to capture this little guy from one of the creepiest Doctor Who episodes, it's the "Empty Child" kid.

What's your Pokemon type? For the feisty fire lovers - The House of Fire.

The Old Testament is full of examples of chiasmus, which is a figure of speech used in ancient times to emphasize balance. It lists a bunch of ideas or things and then repeats each of them in reverse order. It’s often not an identical repetition. It frequently uses the opposite of what came before or something similar to it.

Here’s a simple chiasmus I came up with to show you what it looks like:

A. The cat was heavy

 B. She ate too much food

  C. Something had to change

 B. I gave her less food to eat

A. Now she’s less heavy

The first and last lines are similar, the second and fourth lines are opposite but related, and the third line is the turning point that links the ideas contained in the chiasmus.

Why am I giving a grammar lesson? Because I’ve noticed this same pattern used in films – a Cinematic Chiasmus, if you will. That shouldn’t be too surprising. Good storytelling involves setting up ideas and then paying them off over the course of the story. But some films have second halves that so closely mirror their first halves that it makes them truly breathtaking to behold once you notice their chiasmus at work.

RoboCop (1987) is the first film I reviewed on this website, so it’s fitting that it should be the first that I talk about here. Get ready to see how RoboCop is an almost perfectly symmetrical film.

The Chiasmus

First of all, I’ll write out the chiasmus in the film’s sequence of events:

A. Main title

 B. Media Break 1

  C. Main character identifies himself as Murphy

   D. OCP Junior Executive Kenny is killed after holding a gun in a meeting

    E. Bob Morton goes over Dick Jones’ head to initiate the RoboCop Program

     F. Clarence Boddicker makes his debut

      G. Car chase with Boddicker and his cohorts

       H. Partners Alex Murphy and Anne Lewis separate to take on Boddicker’s gang

        I. RoboCop is born and he tests his abilities at a shooting range

         J. RoboCop causes property damage in the name of law and order

          K. Media Break 2

           L. Lewis reminds RoboCop who he really is

            M. RoboCop visits the home where he lived

             N. RoboCop hunts for Boddicker

              O. Boddicker reveals he’s working for Jones

               P. RoboCop gets shot at by a lot of drug dealers in a warehouse

                Q. RoboCop arrests Boddicker

                Q. RoboCop attempts to arrest Jones

               P. RoboCop gets shot at by a lot of cops in a parking garage

              O. Boddicker gets another assignment from Jones

             N. Boddicker gets a tracking device to hunt RoboCop down

            M. RoboCop hides at the steel mill where he died

           L. RoboCop sees his own face for the first time

          K. Media Break 3 (Note: This is the only thing that’s out of order. It actually takes place where O is)

         J. The bad guys cause property damage in the name of chaos

        I. RoboCop fixes his targeting system

       H. RoboCop and Lewis split up to take on Boddicker’s gang once again

      G. Car chase with Boddicker

     F. Boddicker is killed

    E. RoboCop plays a recording of Jones saying, “I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake”

   D. Jones is killed after holding the same gun Kenny held in a meeting

  C. Main character again identifies himself as Murphy

 B. Media Break 4 (Note: Deleted scene)

A. Main title

Now let’s go through each of these points to see their similarities in greater depth.

A. Main Title

This is pretty straightforward. The movie is bookended by its title. “RoboCop” is the first thing we see. No “A film by Paul Verhoeven” or “Orion Presents” preceding it. And “ROBOCOP” is the last thing we see before the end credits roll.

B. Media Break

In the first Media Break, we learn that a police officer is in critical condition after a gun battle with Clarence Boddicker. Plus, OCP Senior President Dick Jones says of the cops who are threatening to strike, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” In the final Media Break, which was deleted from the final cut of the film, Officer Anne Lewis is shown to be recovering after a gun battle with Boddicker. She repeats Jones’ line from her hospital bed.

C. Main Character’s Identity

When Alex Murphy arrives at his new precinct, he tells the Police Chief, “Hi. Murphy, transferring in from Metro South.” At the end of the film, when the Head of OCP asks for his name, he replies, “Murphy.” It’s a subtle thing, but it’s meaningful because it shows how RoboCop has regained his humanity by returning to his level of self-identity from the start of the film.

D. OCP Executive Killed During a Meeting

In the first demonstration of ED-209, a junior executive on the OCP Board points a gun at the giant robot and is promptly shot to pieces, landing on a scale model of the planned Delta City. In the final scene, a desperate Dick Jones uses that same gun to take the president of OCP hostage. However, RoboCop soon shoots Jones many times until he falls outside the building.

E. Bob Morton and Dick Jones

An ambitious junior executive named Bob Morton literally goes around Jones to pitch his idea for RoboCop to the Old Man after Jones’ ED-209 demonstration fails spectacularly. Jones gives Morton a murderous look as Morton walks off. Later, when RoboCop is asked for evidence that Jones is guilty of murder, he simply provides testimony from Jones himself saying, “I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake.” His mistake, of course, was making Jones look bad in front of the Old Man.

F. Clarence Boddicker’s Introduction and Farewell

The first time we see Clarence Boddicker, he’s angry at his cohort for frying the money they stole, and he gets violent. The last time we see him, he’s angry at Lewis for frying his last henchman, and he again gets violent.

G. Car Chase with Boddicker and His Cohorts

Murphy and his new partner Lewis engage in a high-speed pursuit of Boddicker and his henchmen. Boddicker kills a wounded member of his team by throwing him out of his van, bringing the chase to a sudden halt. Later, Lewis pursues Boddicker in another car chase. Boddicker accidentally kills one of his wounded team members, which leads to an unexpected end to the pursuit.

H. Partners Split Up

After finding Boddicker’s abandoned van, Murphy and Lewis go in different directions to try to find his gang members. Lewis is wounded and unable to help Murphy until it’s too late and he’s been killed. Later, Lewis drives a car while RoboCop draws the bad guys’ fire on foot. She gets shot by Boddicker and she’s unable to warn RoboCop in time to prevent him from getting crushed by falling metal beams.

I. RoboCop at the Shooting Range

One of the first things RoboCop does after being created is test his aiming ability at a police firing range. He hits dead center with every shot. After taking heavy damage, his targeting system is off by a few inches. Lewis helps him correct it so he’s perfectly accurate once more.

J. Causing Property Damage

His first night on the job, RoboCop causes a lot of property damage in the name of serving the public trust and protecting the innocent. On the night that the Detroit Police Force goes on strike, the city’s criminals cause a lot of property damage in the name of chaos and self-gratification.

K. More Media Break

The second Media Break focuses primarily on RoboCop and how he is on his way to eliminating crime in Old Detroit. The third Media Break focuses on the Detroit Police Force’s impending strike, which will cause crime to skyrocket in the city.

L. “Murphy, It’s You”

At her first opportunity, Lewis stops RoboCop and says, “Murphy, it’s you.” This reveals his real name, which he had forgotten. Later, RoboCop removes his helmet, revealing his face, which he hadn’t seen since his death. Lewis says, “It’s really good to see you again, Murphy.”

M. RoboCop Goes Back and Tries to Remember His Family

After learning of his own murder, RoboCop visits the old home and finds it abandoned. He has a few flashes of memories of his wife and son, but nothing substantial enough to rekindle his old self. After surviving another attempt on his life, RoboCop hides out at the abandoned factory where Murphy was killed. He laments to Lewis about his family, “I can feel them… but I can’t remember them.”

N. Predators Hunting Their Prey

RoboCop goes to a night club to find a member of Boddicker’s gang who can lead him to the crime lord’s hideout so he can kill Boddicker. Later, Jones gives Boddicker a tracking device to lead him to RoboCop’s hideout so Boddicker can kill him.

O. Boddicker Working with Jones

Boddicker shows up at Morton’s home and tells his girlfriends to leave. Then Boddicker plays a recorded message from Jones, showing that he works for Jones. Later, he goes to Jones’ office and hits on his receptionist, who not so subtly tells him to get lost. Then he gets another assignment from Jones to take out Morton’s creation, RoboCop.

P. RoboCop Survives a Firing Squad

When RoboCop finds Boddicker, he’s greeted by more than a dozen bad guys all firing bullets at him. He’s unharmed by their attack and kills almost all of them. Later, RoboCop is heavily damaged by ED-209’s guns and then he faces more than a dozen cops who mercilessly fire on him. He’s weaponless, so he can’t fire back and he barely survives the ordeal.

Q. RoboCop’s Arrests

The turning point of the movie is when RoboCop arrests Boddicker. Up ‘til then, he’s been indestructible and able to handle anything that comes his way. But after throwing Boddicker through several glass windows, RoboCop is about to crush his throat when he’s reminded that he’s a cop. His programming takes over and denies him the ability to kill Boddicker. He arrests the criminal instead. Then, when RoboCop confronts Jones, he’s prevented from arresting him by his programming. And RoboCop gets knocked through several glass doors/windows by ED-209.

Seeing Double

I have no idea if the makers of RoboCop intended for it to be so symmetrical. The fact that they accomplished this feat while still making a fast-paced action film that never feels like it’s repeating itself is simply amazing. It shows that it’s possible to make a work of art, even when making a movie with a silly title and in a genre that usually doesn’t call for much depth.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

All images are the copyright of their owners.

Filed under: Cinematic Chiasmus

l4nz:

ass-ume:

onlylolgifs:

Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance

oh my god they did it!

omg,

Bryan Walsh spotlights a study on the correlation between traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) and homelessness:

Jane Topolovec-Vranic, a researcher in trauma and neurosurgery at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, surveyed 111 homeless men recruited from a city shelter to see whether they had suffered a TBI sometime in their past. She found that 45% of them had experienced a traumatic brain injury at some point in their life. (Sadly, most of her subjects’ TBIs resulted from assault.)

“You could see how it would happen,” she says. “You have a concussion, and you can’t concentrate or focus. Their thinking abilities and personalities change. They can’t manage at work, and they may lose their job, and eventually lose their families. And then it’s a negative spiral” — a spiral that, for the men in Topolovec-Vranic’s study, ends up in a homeless shelter.

Charlotte Lytton adds:

The findings are important in demonstrating that homelessness can often be created by medical—as opposed to lifestyle—deviations. “Recognition that a TBI sustained in childhood or early teenage years could predispose someone to homelessness may challenge some assumptions that homelessness is a conscious choice made by these individuals, or just the result of their addictions or mental illness,” Dr. Topolovec-Vranic explains.

Last month, NASA asked people to vote for their favorite out of three possible designs for the outer shell of its Z-2 spacesuit. The winner has just been announced: 63 percent of voters felt very strongly about the aqua-blue enhanced "technology" design, which resembles the costumes in the classic sci-fi movie Tron.

Continue reading…

From Martin Gardner, via Michael Stueben: Obtain a slab of gold measuring 10″ x 11″ x 1″. Divide it diagonally and then cut a triangular notch in two corners as shown. Remove these notches as profit, and slide the remaining halves together to produce a new 10″ x 11″ x 1″ slab. The process can be repeated to yield any amount of money you like!

Andy Warhol’s mid-1980s art experiments with a Commodore Amiga home computer just surfaced:

It all started with a YouTube clip of Andy Warhol at the Amiga launch event, making a portrait of Debbie Harry. Artist Cory Arcangel saw the clip and embarked on trying to find the images. Working with curators from the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Warhol Museum’s chief archivist, they found Amiga floppy disks. Fortunately, Carnegie Mellon University Computer Club is known for its “collection of obsolete computer hardware” and was able to easily extract many doodles, photographs, and riffs on classic Warhol images like the banana, Marilyn Monroe, and … the Campbell’s soup can.

Archivist Matt Wrbican elaborates (pdf):

In the images, we see a mature artist who had spent about 50 years developing a specific hand-to-eye coordination now suddenly grappling with the bizarre new sensation of a mouse in his palm held several inches from the screen. No doubt he resisted the urge to physically touch the screen – it had to be enormously frustrating, but it also marked a huge transformation in our culture: the dawn of the era of affordable home computing. We can only wonder how he would explore and exploit the technologies that are so ubiquitous today.

Watch a video of Warhol painting an Amiga portrait of Debbie Harry in 1985. Check out the other released images here. Update from a reader:

Before Andy Warhol painted on the Amiga, Steve Jobs introduced him to the very first MacBook. At a party at Yoko Ono’s house in 1984. The entire narrative is fascinating – Warhol picks up the mouse and tries to wave it in the air like a paintbrush – only to exclaim emphatically after ‘mastering’ an early version of Paint “”I drew a circle!” A far cry from a iridescent Marilyn Monroe.

(Image: Andy Warhol, Campbell’s, 1985, © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visuals Arts, Inc., courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum)

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has removed encrypted email attachments from iOS 7. Apple said back in June 2010 in regards to iOS 4.0: 'Data protection is available for devices that offer hardware encryption, including iPhone 3GS and later, all iPad models, and iPod touch (3rd generation and later). Data protection enhances the built-in hardware encryption by protecting the hardware encryption keys with your passcode. This provides an additional layer of protection for your email messages attachments, and third-party applications.' Not anymore."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

zimmay:

Game of Seasons // Prints // Redbubble // Society6 // INPRNT

0ver-doze:

follow your dreams

LIX is the latest contender in the handheld 3D-printing field. Launched just a few hours ago on Kickstarter, the developers say the super compact design is smaller than any other pen on the market and it can even be powered by the electricity from a USB port. After turning it on the LIX takes less than a minute to heat up and you’re ready to start creating vertical illustrations. Via LIX:

LIX 3D printing pen has the similar function as 3D printers. It melts and cools coloured plastic, letting you create rigid and freestanding structures. Lix has a hot-end nozzle that is power supplied from USB 3.0 port. The plastic filament ABS/PLA is introduced in the upper extremity of Lix Pen. The filament goes through a patented mechanism while moving through the pen to finally reach the hot-end nozzle which melts and cools it down. An interesting fact about this light-weight, engineered pen is that these structures can be formed in any imaginable shape.

The LIX pen has a much sleeker form and a finer tip than similar devices we’ve seen like the 3Doodler, though it’s a bit more expensive. See more on their website. (via Mashable)

In his cookbook, Tartine Bread, Chad Robertson lays out, over 38 pages, the recipe for what might be the best bread in the world. The first time through, the recipe takes two weeks to make.

To Chad, bread is the foundation of a meal, the center of daily life, and each loaf tells the story of the baker who shaped it. He developed his unique bread over two decades of apprenticeship with the finest artisan bakers in France and the United States, as well as experimentation in his own ovens.

A streamlined version of the recipe is available from the NY Times. (via smithsonian)

Tags: books   Chad Robertson   food   Tartine Bread

Artist Samantha Keely Smith paints abstract oceanic landscapes that are at once menancing and serene, a clash of light and color that she refers to as “internal landscapes.” Using oil paint, enamel, and shellac, Smith uses an additive and subtractive process by partially destroying her progress several times before completion. This cyclical process, much like the timeless crash of ocean tides against the shore, adds an additional level of texture to her work. She shares in a 2013 interview with NeverLazy Magazine:

My images are not at all real places or even inspired by real places. They are emotional and psychological places. Internal landscapes, if you will. The tidal pull and power of the ocean makes sense to me in terms of expressing these things, and I think that is why some of the work has a feel of water about it. My work speaks of things that are timeless, and I think that for most of us the ocean represents something timeless.

Currently based in New York, Smith generally doesn’t work with galleries but instead interacts directly with collectors. You can see more recent work on Tumblr and Facebook. (via My Modern Met, Incomplete)

Billion-Story Building

My daughter—age 4.5—maintains she wants a billion-story building. It turns out not only is that hard to help her appreciate this size, I am not at all able to explain all of the other difficulties you'd have to overcome.

Keira, via Steve Brodovicz, Media, PA

Keira,

If you make a building too big, the top part is heavy and it squishes the bottom part.

Have you ever tried to make a tower of peanut butter? It's easy to make a little tiny one, like a blobby castle on a cracker. It will be strong enough to stay standing. But if you try to build a really big castle, the whole thing smushes flat like a pancake.

The same thing happens with buildings. The buildings we make are strong, but we couldn't make one that went all the way up to space, or the top part would squish the bottom part.

We can make buildings pretty tall. The tallest buildings are almost 1 kilometer tall, and we could probably make buildings 2 or even 3 kilometers tall if we wanted, and they would still be able to stand up under their own weight. Higher than that might be tricky.

But there would be other problems with a tall building besides weight.

One issue would be wind. The wind up high is very strong, and buildings have to be very strong to stand up against the wind.

Another big problem would be, surprisingly, elevators. Tall buildings need elevators, since no one wants to climb hundreds of flights of stairs. If your building has lots of floors, you need lots of different elevators, since there would be so many people trying to come and go the same time. If you make a building too tall, the whole thing gets taken up by elevators and there's no space for regular rooms.

Maybe you can think of a way to get people to their floors without having too many elevators. Maybe you could make a giant elevator that takes up 10 floors. Or you could make fast elevators that work like roller coasters. Or you could fly people up to their rooms with hot air balloons. Or you could launch them with catapults.

Elevators and wind are big problems, but the biggest problem would be money.

To make a building really tall, someone has to spend a lot of money, and no one wants a really tall building enough to pay for it. A building many miles tall would cost billions of dollars. A billion dollars is a lot of money! If you had a billion dollars, you could rent a giant spaceship, save all the world's endangered lemurs, give a dollar to everyone in the US, and still have some left over. Most people don't think giant towers a few miles tall are important enough to spend a lot of money on.

If you got really rich, so you could pay for a tower to space yourself, and solved all those engineering problems, you'd still have problems making a tower a billion stories tall. A billion stories is just too many.

A big skyscraper might have about 100 floors, which means it's as tall as 100 little houses.

If you stacked 100 skyscrapers on each other to make a mega-skyscraper, it would reach halfway to space:

This skyscraper would still only have 10,000 floors, which is way less than your billion floors! Each of those 100 skyscrapers would have 100 floors, so the whole mega-skyscraper would have 100 times 100 is 10,000 floors.

But you said you wanted a skyscraper with 1,000,000,000 floors. Let's stack 100 mega-skyscrapers to make a mega-mega-skyscraper:

The mega-mega-skyscraper would stick out so far from the Earth that spaceships would crash into it. If the space station were heading toward the tower, they could use its rockets to steer away from it.[1]They'd probably get pretty grumpy after having to dodge your tower repeatedly, so you might want to launch fuel and snacks out the window with a rail gun as they go by. The bad news is that space is full of broken spaceships and satellites and pieces of junk, all flying around at random. If you build a mega-mega-skyscraper, spaceship parts will eventually smash into it.

Anyway, a mega-mega-skyscraper is only 100 times 10,000 = 1,000,000 floors. That's still a lot smaller than the 1,000,000,000 that you want!

Let's make a new skyscraper by stacking up 100 mega-mega-skyscrapers, to make a mega-mega-MEGA-skyscraper:

The mega-mega-MEGA-skyscraper would be so tall that the top would just barely brush against the Moon.

But it would only be 100,000,000 floors! To get to 1,000,000,000 floors, we have to stack 10 mega-mega-MEGA-skyscrapers on top of each other, to make one Keira-skyscraper:

The Keira-skyscraper would be pretty close to impossible to build. You would have to keep it from crashing into the Moon, being pulled apart by the Earth's gravity, or falling over and smashing into the planet like the giant meteor that killed the dinosaurs.

But some engineers have an idea sort of like your tower—it's called a space elevator. It's not quite as tall as yours (the space elevator would only reach partway to the Moon), but it's close!

Some people think we can build a space elevator, but other people think it's a crazy idea. We can't build one yet because there are some problems we don't know how to solve, like how to make the tower strong enough and how to send power up it to run the elevators. If you really want to build a gigantic tower, you can find out more about some of the problems they're working on, and eventually become one of the people coming up with ideas to solve them. Maybe, someday, you could build a giant tower to space.

I'm pretty sure it won't be made of peanut butter, though.

Chernobyl is a scary, seemingly sinister place, where trees don't decay and plants glow. A newly published study, however, shows that not all living things are necessarily doomed in this radioactive wasteland. Some birds in the exclusion zone are actually adapting to the harsh environment.

Read more...

karlis:

enochliew:

Nación Rotonda 

A Spanish project comprises three civil engineers and two architects, who construct a visual catalog of urban growth of local municipalities in the last 15 years.

This is brilliant and disappointing.

by rockstarcode

Thanks to the geeks in the SMBC facebook group for convincing me to do this one.