Wired magazine’s Nicholas Carr has written a fascinating article detailing how the internet is rewiring our brains and altering our brain activity.

‘The penalty is amplified by what brain scientists call switching costs. Every time we shift our attention, the brain has to reorient itself, further taxing our mental resources. Many studies have shown that switching between just two tasks can add substantially to our cognitive load, impeding our thinking and increasing the likelihood that we’ll overlook or misinterpret important information. On the Internet, where we generally juggle several tasks, the switching costs pile ever higher.’

Quirky and reverential, dark and droll by turn, it follows the faceless baby Levi’s journeys in to and out of the world. They are escapes, but as some sage once observed, only a jailer would consider the term ‘pejorative’.

My nik-nakian urges will never be quashed or sated until these little fellas reside upon thy shelf.

Britain is unusually warm for its latitude because of the Gulf stream. This week, however, the gulfstream is absent in Greenland. This is what Britain currently looks like without the Gulf stream.

Elegant motion detection from the Natal development team. This is clearly a controlled – or pre-rolling – promotional piece, but judging by the responses from E3 crowds – as crowds watch live demonstrations of the basic motion capture function – this project is moving closer to a full implementation. I’m really not evangalising about the big-evil-Microsoft, contrary to the recent amount of related posts…

Back in the 1960s, there was no better way for a larval engineer or scientist to stand out from those pursuing more mushy majors than swaggering around with a fancy slide rule in a spiffy leather holster dangling from their belt.

Twenty three is the magic number. The number of moves necessary to solve an arbitrary Rubik’s cube configuration has been cut down to 23 moves, according to an update on Tomas Rokicki’s homepage. This is in agreement with informal group-theoretic arguments suggesting the necessary and sufficient number of moves should be in the low 20’s.  This theory is known as the God Algorithm.

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The Multiverse installation by artist Leo Villareal in a 200-foot-long tunnel in the National Gallery of Art in Washingtong DC. The entire installation features 41,000 LEDs that animate and move independently, and randomly, to ensure that no one will see the same configurations twice. Multiverse will be on display throughout 2009.

Villareal “Multiverse” National Gallery of Art, Washington DC from Walter Patrick Smith on Vimeo.

A pivotal point in Phil Dick’s career and his first taste of national publicity, this 6-page article speculates on the 1971 break-in of Philip K. Dick’s apartment, among other things.

Written by his friend Paul Williams, this story is a snapshot of the period’s cultural landscape as well as an in-depth investigation into Phil Dick’s personal and professional life.

Download the .PDF article (from www.phillipkdickfans.com) here.