Spotify on your phone?

Perhaps one for Howard this, but if you haven't already joined the Spotify revolution then I highly recommend it. No longer is it necessary to have endless gigabytes of memory to store favourite songs & albums. All you need is an internet connection.

People like having access while they are on the go so now Google Android has developed something where you can listen to saved spotify playlists on your phone, while on the move:

Take a look:

Man-Machine

Well worth a watch from this bbc iplayer link.

As a child, James May dreamed of a world populated by humanoid robots. Robots which would tidy his room and do the washing up. In the second programme of his Big Ideas series, he sets off to discover how close his vision of a robot-world is to becoming a reality and in doing so enters an intriguing, mysterious and often rather strange world.

In Japan, James meets the closest thing to Robocop. It’s a woman who can double her strength thanks to an extraordinary electro-mechanical jumpsuit, but what will this bizarre mix of human intelligence and machine brawn be used for?

He also has a close encounter of the weird kind with the most disturbing robot he has ever seen – a robot designed to look and behave exactly like its creator.

Continuing his travels James heads to the US, to explore the possibilities of bionic implants and talks to the doctor who is making them a reality, and in doing so has created a real 2 million dollar bionic woman.

And finally, in the unlikeliest of laboratories he encounters the world’s most advanced walking robot: Asimo – it can tackle stairs and has even mastered running, however when faced with a closed door, the robot proves he isn’t all that smart. Cue Asimo’s twin brother, who has learnt to recognise everyday objects. But will he amaze James when asked to identify a Mini car? And is this all enough to restore James’s vision of a robot filled future world?

I thought the bionic eye and the learning robot was unbelievable.

Great Spot from Ollie - Where the Hell is Matt?

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

PostSecret Mini-Movie

By turns poignant, dark, funny, sad, compelling, PostSecret is one of the few non-work-related sites I visit on a regular basis. Updated every Sunday, the site is an ongoing art project where visitors mail in their secrets on postcards.

Boards of Canada on YouTube

Prince Philip, Island God?

Honestly, if this one didn't come from the BBC, I wouldn't believe it: "Britain's Duke of Edinburgh may be planning a quiet birthday celebration at home this weekend, but there will be feasting and flag-waving in an isolated jungle village in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where he is worshipped as a god..."

This reminds me of a phenomenon that has come to be known as Cargo Cults:

An isolated society's first contact with the outside world can be a shock — often the natives will first assume that the newcomers are spiritual beings of some kind who possess divine powers. With time, however, it will inevitably become apparent that the outsiders are mortal and that their power comes from their equipment (or cargo). Cargo cults tend to appear among people that covet this 'magical' equipment, but are unable to attain it easily through trade. Given their relative isolation, the cult participants generally have little knowledge of modern manufacturing and are liable to be skeptical of Western explanations. Instead, symbols they associate with Christianity and modern Western society tend to be incorporated into their rituals as magical artifacts. Across cultural differences and large geographic areas, there have been instances of the movements independently organizing.

Famous examples of cargo cult activity include the setting up of mock airstrips, airports, offices and the fetishization and attempted construction of western goods, such as radios made of coconuts and straw. Believers may stage "drills" and "marches" with twigs for rifles and military-style insignia and "USA" painted on their bodies to make them look like soldiers, treating the activities of western military personnel as rituals to be performed for the purpose of attracting cargo. The cult members built these items and 'facilities' in the belief that the structures would attract cargo. This perception has reportedly been reinforced by the occasional success of an 'airport' to attract military transport aircraft full of cargo[citation needed].

Today, many historians and anthropologists argue that the term "cargo cult" is a misnomer that describes a variety of phenomena[citation needed]. However, the idea has captured the imagination of many people in developed nations, and the term continues to be used today. For this reason, and possibly many others, the cults have been labelled millenarian, in the sense that they hold that a utopian future is imminent or will come about if they perform certain rituals.

Via Wikipedia.

It's actually somewhat unclear how many of these cults still exist, however the term was popularised in part by the remarkable physicist, Richard Feynman who used the expression "cargo cult science" in a speech he gave at Caltech and later as a chapter heading in his brilliantly readable autobiography, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

In the speech, Feynman pointed out that cargo cultists create all the appearance of an airport right down to headsets with bamboo "antennas", yet the airplanes don't come. Feynman argued that some scientists often produce studies with all the trappings of real science, but which are nonetheless pseudoscience and unworthy of either respect or support.

You can get a full copy of the speech in pdf form here.

Stephen Fry, on The Internet

VideoJug: The Internet