MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – NASA released a newly restored 42-year-old image of Earth on Thursday. The Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft took the iconic photograph of Earth rising above the lunar surface in 1966. Using refurbished machinery and modern digital technology, NASA produced the image at a much higher resolution than was possible when it was originally taken. The data may help the next generation of explorers as NASA prepares to return to the moon. [Lire la suite]

» Voir aussi «The Moon View», New York Times, editorial, 18 novembre 2008.
» Earth rise, 1966

That it is so is a matter of experiential fact. But whether it is so or not is not a question to be settled by producing a microscope or telescope or any recondite observations of any kind. Its evidence stares us all in the face every hour of our lives. Nor is any ingenious reasoning needed to make it plain. If one does not see it, it is for the same reason that some men have not a sense of sin; and there is nothing for it but to be born again and become as a little child. If you do not see it, you have to look upon the world with new eyes. (CP 1.219, 1902)
The writer of a book can do nothing but set down the items of his thought. For the living thought, itself, in its entirety, the reader has to dig into his own soul. I think I have done my part, as well as I can. I am sorry to have left the reader an irksome chore before him. But he will find it worth the doing. (CP 1.221, 1902)

—Peirce, Charles Sanders (1931-1935). Collected Papers Of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vol. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Vols. 1–6 eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss; vols. 7–8 ed. Arthur Burks.

liweiart.com

Martijn Hendriks: Give Us Today Our Daily Terror, 2008 – ongoing. Exact copy of Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds from which all birds have been removed. 2 min 14 sec excerpt from a single channel video, color, 119 minutes

At about 16,000-17,000 feet we came across a whole series of footprints in the snow, on the lower part of the glacier. There seemed to be two groups, one rather indistinct in outline leading on to the surrounding snowfields. The others were much more distinct with, in places, a markedly individual imprint etched in the 2- to 4-inch covering of snow. We had no means of measuring so after examining them [Eric] Shipton took four photographs: two of the indistinct prints with myself, my footprints, and rucksack beside them for comparison; the other two photographs were of one of the most detailed and distinct group of prints, with my ice ax for scale, and a second one with my booted foot. […] Read more…

Par Frédéric Vitoux — L’écrivain espagnol raconte, dans Le Vent de la lune, la vie d’un paisible village à l’heure de la conquête spatiale.

Une phrase suffirait pour définir le dernier roman d’Antonio Munoz Molina. La voici. En juillet 1969, au cours de la mission Apollo 11 où Armstrong et Aldrin marchèrent pour la première fois sur la Lune, un adolescent, le fils d’un maraîcher dans un petit village d’Andalousie que le progrès effleurait à peine, s’exaltait seul à cette prodigieuse aventure… C’est du reste toujours comme ça avec les grandes œuvres de la littérature: elles reposent sur une idée de départ, ou un «pitch», comme on dit dans l’audiovisuel, qui s’exprime en quelques mots. Une jolie fille, par exemple, est enlevée à son mari par un étranger, et chacun se met en branle […] lire la suite…

The Great Moonbuggy Race course winds around rockets and other space vehicles including a Saturn Moon Rocket, an engineering test unit of the Space Shuttle with its external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters and a model of the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module). The total length of the course is about 7/10 of one mile and is strewn with miscellaneous lunar-like obstacles distributed randomly over the course. One of the interesting terrains on the course is a lunar crater area in which the life-size replica of the LEM is located.

Attention: Moonbuggy registration for 2008 is now closed! 

She missed those nights with friends when you talk about everything. She hadn’t stayed in close touch and felt no guilt or need. There were hours of talk and laugher, bottles uncorked. She missed the comical midlife monologues of the clinically self-absorbed. The food ran out, the wine did not, and who was the little man in the red cravat who did sound effects from old submarine movies. She went out rarely now, went alone, did not stay late. She missed the autumn weekends at somebody’s country house, leaf-fall and touch football, kids tumbling down grassy slopes, leaders and followers, all watched by a pair of tall slender dogs poised on their haunches like figures in myth.

– DeLILLO, Don (2007). Falling Man, New York: Scribner, p. 190.  

It’s just another psycho nightmare
So don’t you forget
You’ve always been the teacher’s pet

It’s a tired and slow song baby
Don’t be upset
Just remember the future has not happened yet
Every shiny thing of good luck
Could be made true
Every single thing you dream up could happen to you

It’s just another worldwide broadcast
You better think fast
It’s always the good times girl that really last
The lonely looney one inside of us all

You don’t have to sit up to stand tall

Every little thing you joke of
Will be made brand new
Every living thing you speak of could become true
It’s just another psycho nightmare

– JOHNSTON, Daniel (1994). «Psycho Nightmare», album Fun.

I just feel like there is something outside of normal life… outside of teachers, breakups, girlfriends… like… right up there… like outside… there’s like different levels… of stuff. And there’s something that happened to me. 

– VAN SANT, Gus (2007). Paranoid Park, États-Unis, 00:26:44:00 

She walked beneath a flophouse marquee. It read: TRANSIENTS. Something about that word confused her. It took on an abstract tone, as words has done before in her experience (although rarely), subsisting in her mind as language units that had mysteriously evaded the responsabilities of content. Tran-zhents. What it conveyed could not itself be put into words. The functional value had slipped out of its bark somehow and vanished. Pammy stopped walking, turned her body completely and look once more at the sign. Seconds passed before she grasped its meaning.

 – DeLILLO, Don (1977). Players, New-York: Vintage Books, p. 207. 

Then he spread the sheet of plastic on the ground and got the coats and blankets from the cart and he took off their damp and muddy shoes and they sat there in silence with their hands outheld to the flames. He tried to think of something  to say but he could not. He’d had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things in oblivion. Colors. The name of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever. 

– McCARTHY, Cormac (2006). The Road, New York : Vintage, p. 88. 

De toute mon existence, je ne me rappelle pas que mes rapports avec les autres aient donné un résultat autre que destructeur. J’entends par là que mon existence a non seulement affecté mes relations avec les autres, mais aussi que j’ai été anéanti par eux ou que j’ai contribué à les anéantir. J’ai été affecté de diverses façons jusqu’à ne plus croire en rien et surtout pas dans l’être humain. J’ai affecté leur existence – en supprimant leur espoir, leur vision du monde, leur sentiment, tout ce en quoi (monde des croyances et des valeurs) ils croyaient – au point qu’il n’est rien resté de ces relations. Pour dire le moins, j’ai été pour eux décevant. Mon existence n’a rien laissé – attendu qu’elle devait ou qu’elle aurait dû à tout le moins avoir quelques résultats, fussent-ils négatifs. Je ne crois pas l’avoir fait volontairement, avoir eu l’intention de détruire, mais le résultat a toujours été celui-là. Je ne crois pas non plus que les autres aient eu cette intention de me détruire. Il n’est pourtant rien resté. Ce rien, dont il est question ici, ne renvoie ni à la souffrance ni à l’absence ou à la fin de la relation. Ce rien, est-ce le résultat de relations entre personnes incompatibles, de malentendus entre elles? Est-ce le constat d’une existence particulièrement troublée? Je ne le crois pas. C’est une explication facile et habile que de renvoyer à une détresse, à une angoisse ou même à une névrose la difficulté, l’impossibilité de vivre avec les autres. Mais ce rapport à soi troublé, à quoi tient-il?

– OLIVIER, Lawrence (2008), Détruire : la logique de l’existence, éd. Liber, Montréal, pp. 11-12. 

The fast pace of life and the increasing speed of mouvement across vast American spaces, well before the beginning of the twintieth century, had begun to put a premium on quickly impressive, attractive images. They were creating a new Iconography of Speed. Competition for attention put a premium on attention-getting. The word “billboard”, which was invented in America, had first come in use about 1851, in the early days of the Graphic Revolution. The rise of the automobile, the improvement of highways in the 1920’s and ’30’s, and the consequent vast spread of billboards were now incentives to produce images that could catch the eye in a flash and remain indelibly imprinted on the memory.

– BOORSTIN, Daniel J. ([1961]1992). The Image. A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America, New York : Vintage Books, p. 199.

J’ai esquissé les grandes lignes de Teenage Pussy pendant l’été et ça avait pas mal avancé en dépit des heures passées à jouer au Tetris sur mon Gateway et à contrôler mes e-mails et à ranger sans fin les étagères des éditions étrangères qui s’alignaient sur les murs de mon bureau. Interférence du jour : il me fallait trouver pour la promo d’un livre banal et inoffensif, écrit par une connaissance à New York, encore un roman médiocre et poli (La Plainte du mille-pattes) qui allait obtenir quelques critiques respectueuses et puis être oublié à jamais. La phrase que j’ai fini par concevoir était désinvolte et évasive, une suite de mot si vague qu’elle aurait pu s’appliquer à n’importe quoi : «Je ne pense pas être tombé sur une oeuvre aussi résolument tournée vers elle-même depuis des années.» Et puis je me suis mis à lire une nouvelle d’un de mes étudiants de l’atelier d’écriture et je l’ai rapidement terminée. Dans les marges j’ai inscrit des points d’interrogation, j’ai encerclé des mots, j’ai souligné des phrases, j’ai corrigé la grammaire. J’ai eu le sentiment d’avoir émis des jugements mesurés.

– EASTON ELLIS, Bret (2005). Lunar Park, éd. Robert Laffont, tr. P. Guglielmina, Paris, p. 91.

LunaGaia comes from combining the word for moon (luna) and the word for the earth as a goddess (Gaia). LunaGaia is a philosophy intended to help women get back in touch with their natural cycles that are mirrored and reflected in the cycles of the moon and mother nature. We can use the moon and the earth as guides to reconnect with our natural strength and beauty. By paying careful attention to what we let into our bodies in terms of food, drink, images, thoughts, etc. we can feel healthier, stronger and more in balance.  By accepting ourselves as we are today we can embrace our soft femininity and find power within ourselves. Yoga and life coaching are wonderful ways to start this process. Helping us become present in the moment and accept our body, mind, spirit and emotion today… Read more

» Sorry Entertainer (Yip/Jump Music, 1983)

Where the wind blows
That’s where I go
Where the moon is
That’s where I am
And when I just
Have a problem
Always hoping the wind will blow me away again
I’m a loner
I’m a sorry entertainer [...]

The theory proposed in this paper represents a comprehensive unification program, describing all fields of the standard model and gravity as parts of a uniquely beautiful mathematical structure. The principal bundle connection and its curvature describe how the E8 manifold twists and turns over spacetime, reproducing all known fields and dynamics through pure geometry. Some aspects of this theory are not yet completely understood, and until they are it should be treated with appropriate skepticism. However, the current match to the standard model and gravity is very good. Future work will either strengthen the correlation to known physics and produce successful predictions for the LHC, or the theory will encounter a fatal contradiction with nature. The lack of extraneous structures and free parameters ensures testable predictions, so it will either succeed or fail spectacularly. If E8 theory is fully successful as a theory of everything, our universe is an exceptionally beautiful shape. […] Read more…

—A. Garrett Lisi, “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything”, submitted on 6 Nov 2007, arXiv.org.

See also:

• “Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything”,� By Roger Highfield, Science Editor, Telegraph.co.uk, 2007-11-14.
• «Une ‹théorie du tout› jette le trouble chez les physiciens», par Stéphane Foucart, LeMonde.fr, 2007-11-19.

It seems natural to assume that the more closely robots come to resemble people, the more likely they are to elicit the kinds of responses people direct toward each other. However, subtle flaws in appearance and mouvement only seem eerie in the very humanlike robots. This uncanny phenomenon may be symptomatic of entities that elicit a model of a human other but do not measure up to it.

– MacDORMAN, Karl F. (2005). «Androids as experimental apparatus: Why is there an uncanny valley and can we exploit it?» CogSci-2005 Workshop: Toward Social Mechanisms of Android Science. July 25 – 26, Stresa, Italy. [PDF - draft]

» Le phénomène de «uncanny valley» (Wikipédia anglais) ;
» HORNYAK, Tim (2006). «Meet The Remote-Controled Self», Wired, 20 juillet 2006. [À propos du clone du professeur Hiroshi Ishiguro, apparaissant dans la vidéo présentée ci-haut];
» Voir également le compte-rendu de la rencontre d’un psychologue américain avec la jolie androïde Repliee-Q2 intitulé «My Date With A Robot» et publié dans le Scientific American Mind (June/July 2006). Enregistrement vidéo de la rencontre ICI.

60 Leading Consumer and Internet Brands Announce Participation in New Ad System
NEW YORK — Facebook Social Advertising Event, Nov. 6, 2007 — Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg™ today introduced Facebook Ads, an ad system for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want. Through Facebook Ads, these users can now learn about new businesses, brands and products through the trusted referrals of their friends. […]
Today, Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.
[…] Read more

—Source: Facebook.com

À lire également, l’article du monde.fr.

– «DNA sequences hold the instructions for building organisms.  In this online activity, you can explore a sequence by designing and sending short DNA “probes” through part of the human genome.» Probe the sequence (from Marian Koshland Science Museum).

» DNA tag : voir également ce qu’est une «expressed sequence tag» (wikipédia)

» Some other space (more or less friendly)
» No more friends : stop myspacing

Quand Myspace joue les faux amis: Un philosophe s’est découvert une page à son nom… et les ennuis qui vont avec.
par Judith Revel

C’est l’histoire d’un ami. Un dimanche matin paisible, après le café et la lecture des journaux, il fallait répondre à quelques mails. Dans l’un d’entre eux, une connaissance le félicitait de son blog sur MySpace, se montrait ébahie et admirative du soin avec lequel il répondait à chacun des « visiteurs », et disait sa très grande fascination pour le nombre conséquent des « amis » virtuels dont il pouvait se vanter. Mon ami tombe des nues : avec une coquetterie un peu affectée – mais à laquelle il tient beaucoup -, il refuse depuis des années de se servir seul d’Internet, et utilise au contraire toute une série d’intermédiaires (secrétaires, collègues, et – le dimanche matin – sa propre compagne) afin de conserver ce qu’il considère comme une sorte de « distance de sécurité » face à l’outil informatique. Il est donc hors de question qu’il ait pu créer puis gérer, sa propre page sur MySpace. […] Lire la suite

—Source: Écrans.fr