Video Learnings of Autistic Children for Make Glorious Recognition of Smiling Faces
Simon Baron-Cohen — Sacha’s uncle — has created a DVD to teach autistic kids about emotions.
About a decade ago, Baron-Cohen suggested that autism — which is much less likely to afflict girls — might be an extreme version of the typical male brain.
Autism, Baron-Cohen believes, is a condition where people perceive systems and patterns while remaining almost oblivious to other people and their feelings.
To help autistic children understand emotions, Baron-Cohen and his team use eight track-based vehicles in their DVD. The vehicles have human faces grafted onto them, making focusing on human features unavoidable.
“Autistic children are often puzzled by faces, so this video helps focus on them in a way that makes it very appealing and soothing,” said Uta Frith, an emeritus professor of cognitive development at University College London, who was not involved in developing the video.
The work of remaking America
It’s going to be a tough job.
Word Count
Number of times Obama said the word “terrorist” in his inaugural address: 0
Number of times Bush said the word “terrorist” in his 2008 State of the Union: 16.
Number of collective sighs: at least 1 …
Pavel Kohout | Katyně (The Hangwoman)
Christopher Walken’s post concerning A Short Introduction to the Fine Art of Execution! set me to thinking.
Set me to thinking about Pavel Kohout and his 1970 novel Katyně, a book I read in the early 1980s, translated to English by Kača Poláčková-Henley and published as The Hangwoman. The titular hangwoman, a fifteen-year-old girl, enrolls in the Central Academy for Hangmen and masters the fine art of execution. I think it’s time to reread Katyně.
For Andrew
via Jalopnik
A Short Introduction to the Fine Art of Execution!
A gem of a find today! First published in 1928, this being the definitive edition, published in 1954. I was particularly taken with the fact that it is apparently, All very proper to be read and kept in every family.
Dedicated respectfully to The Hangmen of England and to similar Constitutional Bulwarks everywhere.
flocculate
The Word of the Day for January 20, 2009 is:
flocculate • \FLAH-kyuh-layt\ • verb
: to aggregate or coalesce into small lumps or loose clusters
Example Sentence:
During fermentation, yeast cells flocculate and either rise to the top or sink to the bottom of the vat.
Did you know?
In the late 16th century, scientists noticed that the loose masses separated from a solution or suspension through precipitation often resembled tufts of wool, and they began to refer to them as “flocks,” using another word for “tufts.” (This “flock” is not related to the word “flock” that refers to a group of animals, which comes from Old English “flocc,” meaning “crowd” or “band.”) About two centuries later, the Late Latin term “flocculus” found its way into English and was also used with the meaning “a small loosely aggregated mass.” By the end of the 19th century, a whole word family had been formed, including the adjective “flocculent,” the noun “floccule,” and the verb “flocculate.”
(thanks, Jill)
Also
Fuck you, George.
dear clusterflock
clusterflock was created for this.
reading patterns
I can has legacy.
Bush Repeals English Language
Last Official Act as President
In what he hoped would be the capstone to his eight years as President, George W. Bush today signed an executive order repealing the English language.
Scrawling his name on the official document, Mr. Bush said that in abolishing English he had vanquished his “greaterest enemy.”
Unreleased Songs and Forgotten “B” Sides
“March of the Damned” — John Philip Sousa
“Razor Blades, Broken Glass, and Model Airplane Glue” — Alison Krauss
“That’s Not a Roll of Quarters in My Pocket, Darling” — Irving Berlin
chair, snow
This is my backyard in Pittsburgh today, summer’s furniture half-covered in snow, trees without leaves, and yet a landscape expectant: full of hope and possibility. The daylight hours are lengthening.
The View from Saturday
I’m doing my best, I’m trying to focus but it isn’t going so well. Two hours later, the fabric is washed, but I’m still working on a review for a movie, the kind that we’d have gone to see together, instead I didn’t see it at all.
“Is there a double standard at play in The Reader?
While it is shocking and
Perhaps there is less of a threat,
It seems the real exploitation is ”
Read aloud again and again, it has a falter in the middle, some small offering ignored. And all I can think about is seeing you on Saturday in those pants, we always called them The Amazing Banana Republic Pants, but we are not calling them anything anymore. Our eyes met over the bride walking down the aisle and I couldn’t decipher your look. It wasn’t regret, it wasn’t even an apology, it was just nothing at all.
Highway 71 Revisited at Lawndale Art Center
Ann and Mae Under Highway 71, Austin, TX, 9.29.2007
Lawndale Art Center | 4912 Main Street Houston Texas 77002 | 713.528.5858
I talk about the work at 6pm, Friday, January 23, Reception: 6:30-8:30pm
On View from January 23 until February 28
Includes a new sound piece, Field Recording 2: Highway 71 with Birds and Improvised Guitar, presented in the gallery on wireless headphones and downloadable here. This is best listened to on headphones.
Upped
Went to the liquor store down the block this evening, where big Ed told me, after the lady in front of me left: “That girl’s just strange. She came in here once in nothing but a negligee saying she was having a party in her van with some football players.” I said, “Well Ed, I don’t know what to say about that. I guess it’s good somebody is having a good time.” I walked home briskly with the vodka, scotch, and red wine, eager to tell Cindy what I had heard. But when I walked in, Cindy was singing Deron’s poop song to Mia, who can’t get enough of it.
Safety vs. Danger
By John Hendrix riffing off a Popular Mechanics article.
The Art of Eriq Chang
An article on art that reimagines classic video games:
While all of these graphical achievements no doubt involved impressive technological feats on behalf of programmers and designers over at Sierra On-Line, the technical triumphs were not what grounded the experiences for us. What made the world of Tamir live for us was its expressive qualities… dwarfs acted like dwarfs, the fisherman was as curmudgeonly in his walk as he was in his gruff speech, and the musical score cued in the haunted wood is frightening. Each scene was crafted to exploit a ‘feeling’ or ’sense’ through its careful attention to colour palette, visual depth, characterization, and score. None of these details I noticed as a child – but as an adult they stand out as clear examples of how to express a world rather than design one.
This is the kind of artistic magic that Eriq Chang captures in his illustrations – the truth of far off places and characters that resonate with our imaginations. His work demonstrates the ability to integrate three artistic practices that I believe are absolutely crucial in breathing new life into graphic adventures: painstaking attention to the little details that gave Sierra On-Line’s artwork its signature illustrative style, a long-standing commitment to his passion for the wonders of childhood, and a wild modern twist that brightly lifts out the essence of a scene.
What the heck does that all mean? It means that Eriq Chang has somehow managed to pull together an artistic style that revitalizes dead culture. His work is both a hearkening back to the lost days of youth, and a looking forward to new experiences and ways of seeing things. It is not mere nostalgia or fan-art.
Briefcases are the new suspenders
That is, nobody seriously uses them:
Mr Gringras says he retired his briefcase years ago when he realised all he did with it was ferry to work and back journals that he never read. So it would seem that even briefs do not use briefcases these days.
Kevin Pratt, marketing manager of Cheapflights, the flight comparison website, prefers a brown leather over-the-shoulder man-bag. “It keeps my hands free when I’m travelling. I’ve got an iPod and a mobile and it’s big enough to carry a laptop and papers.”
He says the briefcase is impractical: “A lot of other people in our office use rucksacks because they cycle to work. But I don’t think there are any briefcases. I’m 42 and I’ve never considered carrying one.”
There have been a number of drivers contributing to the demise of the briefcase – the fact that presentations are stored on USB keys, the rise of mobiles and the BlackBerry. But the final nail in the briefcase’s coffin has probably been the relaxation of dress codes that accompanied the dotcom boom.
Gosh, and I remember the days when my youthful affectation allowed me to have one.
I have a dream
The entire speech (17 minutes).
‘Marble Madness’ in 2:30
via CrunchGear
$5,000 paper house
This isn’t mere papercraft—the Universal World House is a $5,000, 390 square foot modular home, outfitted with plumbing and boarding facilities to support up to eight (eight!) residents each. The secret of its construction is its “paper” shell; the resin-soaked cellulose, made from recycled paper, is shaped into honeycomb walls, which provide structural integrity and insulation to the houses.
It has been designed so that a family can slaughter an animal on the veranda, wash it in the shower and hang it, along with fish, on an integrated washing line.
something, 25
The places I had been were on a map, the problem was each book labeled them differently. We left the boats at a particular place on the river. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was getting back without more boats. Julie had lost her leg.
the future, comic sans, 14
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