July 31, 2012
Kinect is a motion sensing input device released by Microsoft in 2010 for the Xbox 360 game console, and in 2012 for Windows PC. Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral, it enables users to control and interact with software without the need to touch a game controller (through a natural user interface using gestures and spoken commands).
The project is aimed at broadening the Xbox 360’s audience beyond its typical gamer base. Kinect competes with the Wii Remote Plus and PlayStation Move with PlayStation Eye motion controllers for the Wii and PlayStation 3 home consoles, respectively. After selling a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days, the Kinect holds the Guinness World Record of being the ‘fastest selling consumer electronics device.’
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July 31, 2012
The Dreameye is a digital camera released for the Dreamcast in 2000 in Japan only. It was designed to be used as a webcam and a digital still camera, and there were plans for games to involve the Dreameye. The Dreameye was only released in Japan, and Dreameye functionality was absent in non-Japanese versions of the games it could be used with. It came with the Divers 2000 Dreamcast (a rare all-in-one console unit developed by Fuji, intended as a video communications and gaming device for the consumer and hospitality markets) but was also sold separately. The DreamEye can be seen as the first use of a digital camera on a video games console.
The Dreameye came with a microphone headset, a stand, batteries, software, a cable to connect it to the Dreamcast, and a Dreameye microphone plug card. The Dreameye takes pictures at approximately 0.3 megapixels (640×480 pixels), but in order to send them via e-mail the pictures in question had to be first saved to a Dreamcast memory card. Upon transferring the pictures off of the card they resized to a resolution of 320px by 240px.
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July 31, 2012
The Game Boy Camera is an official Nintendo accessory for the handheld Game Boy and Super Game Boy gaming consoles and was released in 1998. It is also compatible with all of the Game Boy platforms (with the exception of Game Boy Micro). The camera can take 256×224 (down scaled to half resolution on the unit with anti-aliasing), black & white digital images using the 4-color palette of the Game Boy system.
It interfaced with the Game Boy Printer, which utilized thermal paper to print any saved images, making a hard copy. Both the camera and the printer were marketed by Nintendo as light-hearted entertainment devices aimed mainly at children. The Game Boy Camera was used to take the photographs for the album cover of Neil Young’s album ‘Silver & Gold.’
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July 31, 2012
A SuperBall or bouncy ball is a toy, invented in 1964 by chemist Norman Stingley by compressing a synthetic rubber material under high pressure. It is an extremely elastic ball made of Zectron, which contains the synthetic rubber polymer polybutadiene, as well as hydrated silica, zinc oxide, stearic acid, and other ingredients, vulcanized with sulfur at a temperature of 165 degrees Celsius and at a pressure of 3,500psi.
The Super Ball has an amazingly high coefficient of restitution. Dropped from shoulder level, balls snap nearly all the way back; thrown down by an average adult, it can leap over a three-story building. Toys similar to SuperBalls are more generally known as bouncy balls, a term which covers other more or less similar balls by different manufacturers with different formulations.
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July 30, 2012
Tough Mudder is an adventure sports company that hosts 10-12 mile endurance event obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces to test all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie that are billed as ‘probably the toughest event on the planet’ and regularly attract 15-20,000 participants over a two day weekend.
Tough Mudder events are a new type of team endurance challenge. According to ‘The New York Times,’ the events are ‘more convivial than marathons and triathlons, but more grueling than shorter runs or novelty events (for example, ‘Warrior Dash’ courses are 3-4 miles). Contestants are not timed and organizers encourage ‘mudders’ to demonstrate teamwork by helping fellow participants over difficult obstacles to complete the course. The prize for completing a Tough Mudder challenge is an official orange sweatband and a free beer. It is estimated that 15-20% of participants do not finish. Each event is designed to be unique and incorporates challenges and obstacles that utilize the local terrain.
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July 30, 2012
Big Kahuna Burger is a fictional chain of Hawaiian-themed fast food restaurants that appears in the movies of Quentin Tarantino including ‘Death Proof,’ ‘Four Rooms,’ ‘From Dusk Till Dawn,’ ‘Pulp Fiction,’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs.’
The packaging was created by Tarantino’s old friend Jerry Martinez. The Big Kahuna Burger is also seen in ‘The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D,’ directed by Robert Rodriguez.
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July 30, 2012
Monosodium [mon-uh-soh-dee-uhm] glutamate [gloo-tuh-meyt] (MSG) is a seasoning salt and one of the most abundant naturally occurring non-essential amino acids. The glutamate of MSG confers the same umami (savory) taste of glutamate from other foods (e.g. meats, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy products, and kombu seaweed), being chemically identical.
Industrial food manufacturers market and use MSG as a flavor enhancer because it balances, blends and rounds the total perception of other tastes. Professor Kikunae Ikeda from the Tokyo Imperial University isolated glutamic acid as a new taste substance in 1908 from kombu, and named its taste ‘umami.’
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July 30, 2012
Victor Moscoso (b. 1936) is an artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters/advertisements and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Spain, Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists of the 1960s era with formal academic training and experience. After studying art at Cooper Union in New York City and at Yale University, he moved to San Francisco in 1959. There, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he eventually became an instructor. Moscoso’s use of vibrating colors was influenced by painter Josef Albers, one of his teachers at Yale. He was the first of the rock poster artists to use photographic collage in many of his posters.
Professional lightning struck in the form of the psychedelic rock and roll poster for San Francisco’s dance halls and clubs. Moscoso’s posters for the Family Dog dance-concerts at the Avalon Ballroom and his Neon Rose posters for the Matrix resulted in international attention during the 1967 Summer of Love. Within a year, lightning struck again in the form of the underground comix. As one of the ‘Zap Comix’ artists, Moscoso’s work once again received international attention. Moscoso’s comix and poster work has continued up to the present and includes album covers for musicians such as Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Herbie Hancock, Jed Davis, and David Grisman.
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July 30, 2012
The Avalon Ballroom is a music venue, in the Polk Gulch neighborhood of San Francisco. The space operated from 1966 to 1968 and reopened in 2003. Large events include ‘Pagan Fest USA,’ that is held in May. The building that housed the Avalon Ballroom was built in 1911 and was originally called the Colin Traver Academy of Dance. The Avalon was founded by Robert E. Cohen, impresario Chet Helms and his music production company, Family Dog Productions, which had offices on Van Ness. Extraordinary posters advertising each event were produced by psychedelic artists, including Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelly, and Victor Moscoso.
Many local bands, such as Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Steve Miller Band, served as backup bands, as did the early Moby Grape and headliners such as the The Doors, 13th Floor Elevators, The Butterfield Blues Band, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, which Helms organized around singer and performer Janis Joplin in spring 1966. The Grateful Dead recorded two live albums, entitled ‘Vintage Dead’ and ‘Historic Dead,’ here in the autumn of 1966. In 1967, it hosted the ‘Mantra-Rock Dance’ musical event, organized by the local Hare Krishna temple, which featured Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, along with Allen Ginsberg, The Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin.
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July 30, 2012
Bruce Conner (1933 – 2008) was an American artist renowned for his work in assemblage (artistic compositions made by putting together found objects) and film, among other disciplines. He attended Wichita University (now Wichita State), and received his B.F.A in Art at Nebraska University in 1956.
He then attended the University of Colorado on scholarship; also there was Jean Sandstedt, whom he had met at Nebraska and who would become his wife. In 1957 the two married and immediately flew to San Francisco. There, Conner quickly assimilated into the city’s famous Beat community and founded the Rat Bastard Protective Association, an underground, arts organization. His first solo shows in San Francisco, in 1958 and 1959, featured paintings, drawings, prints, collages, assemblages, and sculpture.
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July 30, 2012
Si vis pacem, para bellum is a Latin adage translated as, ‘If you wish for peace, prepare for war’ (usually interpreted as meaning peace through strength—a strong society being less likely to be attacked by enemies). The adage was adapted from a statement in ‘De Re Militari’ (‘Concerning Military Matters’) by Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, although the idea it conveys is also present in earlier works, such as Plato’s ‘Nomoi’ (‘Laws’).
With reference to the foreign policy of Napoleon Bonaparte, the historian, de Bourrienne, said: ‘Everyone knows the adage… Had Bonaparte been a Latin scholar he would probably have reversed it and said, ‘Si vis bellum para pacem.” Meaning that if you are planning a war, you should put other nations off guard by cultivating peace. Conversely, another interpretation could be that preparing for peace may lead another party to wage war on you.
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July 30, 2012
‘Peace through strength‘ is a conservative slogan supporting military strength for the purpose of creating peaceful international relations. For supporters of the MX missile in the 1970s, the missile symbolized ‘peace through strength.’ The phrase was popular in political rallies during 1988.
The idea is a major justification cited for large militaries, and also served as the primary motivation behind the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The logic here is that a strong military deters aggression and coercion (blackmail), and that no potential aggressor in his right mind would dare to attack or blackmail someone stronger than he is, because he knows he would be swiftly defeated if he tried to. Conservatives and neoconservatives argue that if an aggressor is irrational and cannot be deterred, he can be swiftly defeated by a large and strong standing military.
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