Cosma came into being through an accident of confluence fifty years ago.
I happened to be working in a library, and I got deeply enamored with the power of using the Dewey Decimal System to navigate it.
Then I was also exposed to the spatial game Empire on the PLATO system.
Viola!
It struck me that it would be SO cool to make a game where “knowledge is a place” that you can navigate with addresses like you can in “planned cities” like Indianapolis where I grew up.
It would be a fictional city using Dewey Decimal for addresses so that everyone could navigate knowledge as naturally as they do planned cities.
Making knowledge a place would democratize it!
I’ve been working on making “knowledge a place” ever since. The concept has evolved a LOT over the years, but this was the original spark. Of course, I also found out along the way that I am not the only one with an idea like this — there’s a very, very long history of such things.
I noticed that the anniversary of my “big idea” was approaching while I was working on Cosma’s new Welcome Area that I dubbed Knowledge Lobby.
I got nostalgic and played around with what a “real life” exhibit about Cosma might look like. Then that thought experiment snowballed into an exercise in visualization.
Note that most objects are visual links to the Web!
This is the time of year when you see the words “Best of” quite a lot.
No matter what you care about, someone somewhere is going to publish something about the “best of 2019” or even the “best of the decade” for that thing.
For example, I pay a lot of attention to science, so this article caught my eye.
I assumed that it was going to be an excuse to revisit the *many* stories about slime mold inspired by an exhibit of ‘le blob’ at the Parc Zoologique de Paris earlier this year.
Here’s a video about that, err, dare I say, publicity stunt? Slime molds are certainly interesting creatures, in their own way, but not necessarily to watch in real time.
As it turns out, the article Best Blobs of 2019 didn’t even include anything about ‘le blob,’ but it did include a story about a jellyfish as big as a human that was spotted in Cornwall (UK). Here’s a video from Guardian News about that sighting.
Neat! I wanted to watch a 360° video of that, but I had no luck finding one.
On the other hand, I did find a 360° video from AirPano that was shot off the coast of Cuba. Heck, if you’re going to go swimming with giant jellyfish at this time of year, then water around Cuba is a whole lot more inviting than waters off England anyway. Wouldn’t you agree?
It’s a weird and wacky world out there, and Guinness World Records (GWR) loves to remind us of that fact from time to time.
Just last week they released their 66th Edition of extreme factoids and an accompanying media blitz to rain outrageous strangeness down upon the media landscape.
It all started with a silly little one minute video. Here’s a link to it.
They also have a YouTube Channel where they post separate videos about the Stars.
Finally, they distribute their press release, and voilà, there’s a media frenzy.
The next thing you know, news organizations starved for something to cover besides politics, the weather, the state of the roads and whatnot, latch on to it and print articles like this one.
There is a finer point to be made here, though. Guinness World Records is a business, so they tend to delve into a “records for hire” approach sometimes.
That is why I was able to find a 360° video with this description.
Watch the All-New F-PACE defy gravity in a Guinness World Record-breaking 360° loop. As we celebrate our 80th anniversary, our new performance SUV was driven with daring precision by Legendary Stunt Driver Terry Grant, showcasing its lightweight design, agility, sports car speed and performance.
Yes, indeed, for better or worse, profit motive or not, they do a great job of catering to all sorts of interests — they even had a cool 360° video for me to post about here!
Lest you think you’re safe from their hijinks, I highly recommend that you check out their Showcase organized by interests. Better yet, you may wish you’d stuck to cat videos, because the website has a category for animal lovers!
Oh nooo… there you gooo…
Happy Weekend!
Find out more about competitions and the rest of the World in general …
Still deciding what you want to be when you grow up?
Are you considering a second career?
Before you pick up the want ads or head out to the career center to look for your next career opportunity, how about considering something a little off of the beaten path?
For example, if you love dogs, what about a career in Doggy Daycare?
If Trapeze Artist is even a bit too down-to-Earth for you, what about becoming a professional Wingwalker? Here’s a 360° video with an inside look at what it entails.
Did you hear the one about the octopuses from space?
It sounds like the title of a cheesy sci-fi movie, doesn’t it?
But it isn’t, this time, or at least, yet. Instead, it’s actually an oddball theory that’s been put forth in a recently published “scientific” article that’s getting quite a lot of buzz in the media lately.
First, let’s start with the particular article about octopuses that is causing all of the fuss.
It appeared in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, and it was published with a list of an 33 co-authors.
One can’t help but wonder if there was a share the blame scenario going on. It’s not even the theory that is suspect. The problem is in the scientific aspects of the work. Even the sensationalist article in Newsweek politely described most responses from the scientific community as “critical.”
Personally, I checked to see if the article was published on April 1st — that would’ve been a bit o’ fun, but it wasn’t. Perhaps they submitted it on April 1st, though?
Anyway, all joking aside, the core of the article is based on an old and relatively well established theory about how life began on Earth. The theory is known as panspermia, and it really has been discussed by serious scientists.
Panspermia is a hypothesis proposing that microscopic life forms that can survive the effects of space, such as extremophiles, become trapped in debris ejected into space after collisions between planets and small Solar System bodies that harbor life. Some organisms may travel dormant for an extended amount of time before colliding randomly with other planets or intermingling with proto-planetary disks. Under certain ideal impact circumstances (into a body of water, for example), and ideal conditions on a new planet’s surfaces, it is possible that the surviving organisms could become active and begin to colonize their new environment. — Wikipedia
Here is a link to a video segment that covers the scientific basis of the panspermia theory relative to Mars, and an article from Scientific American that goes into more depth about various discussions about it among well known scientists.
Of course, the usual biological suspects mentioned are those cute little water bears, but this is not the first time octopuses have been included in the list of suspects.
Given the recent understanding of the necessary conditions for life existing on large ocean moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the theory that octopuses are from elsewhere in our solar system isn’t quite as crazy as it might sound.
If you listen to the whole story, you will hear that some scientists tend to believe that it is actually Jupiter’s moon Europa that is the older, and thus the more likely candidate to harbor ocean life beyond Earth. This has been reinforced by a study just published in Nature this month that shows reanalysis of old data gathered by NASA’s Galileo probe back in the 1990s provided unexpected evidence of salt water plumes on Europa.
Unfortunately, the scientific basis of the particular article in the news about a life form on Earth being from space, while not as nutty as it might sound, has serious flaws. Here are two articles that are far more elaborate about the criticisms being waged against the article.
Still, you can kind of see why they would think that octopuses, in particular, are alien. They are indisputably the weirdest, intelligent life form on Earth. That much is pretty much hard to deny. Here’s a link to a lovely video that goes into just some of the reasons that is the case.
Okay, this could go on and on. I’ve got videos of these creatures escaping from a jar, going through holes the size of a quarter, stealing crabs from fisherman, using shells to hide from prey, walking on land to hunt and a ton of other absurd things that they can do that you don’t exactly expect from a lump of flesh with some eyes and suckers. You can see them all on the octopus page if you like.
However, one of the most bizarre things about them turns out to be their DNA. Here are some videos and links that show how Ragsdale Lab at the University of Chicago found out some extremely surprising truths about octopus DNA that explains their amazing powers of camouflage, dexterity and deception.
So octopuses are impressively weird, and they are wicked smart too. That doesn’t make them “aliens,” right?
Well, hold on to your brains, because that isn’t even the strangest thing about them. New research has shown that they can even edit their own RNA! Here’s a link to a video about this along with some supporting sources.
In the end, octopuses really are relatively alien, whether or not they’re from space. The thing is, even if they are from Earth, which honestly, they probably are, then that means some core things emerge, independently, in entirely different biological milieus.
That’s kind of awesome news, when you think about it!
Who knows? Maybe water bears really are from Mars and octopuses are from Jupiter, or well, Europa specifically. There is also that pesky little problem of that unexplained methane on Mars, so who knows?
We could by now, but we don’t.
Specific theories about octopuses and water bears aside, there are serious scientists that do believe that life on Earth may have come from space in general, and that said life might still be out there elsewhere in our solar system right now. We also have the technology that we need to find out what is, or is not, lurking about on other planets and moons. The real question is whether or not it will happen, soon, perhaps in some of our lifetimes, or at all, in the future history of humanity.
One of the more entertaining stories to hit the net recently was a tale of some hearty Kiwis who successfully got away from a local alcohol ban by building their own island in nearby international waters.
Fun stuff, but these guys were certainly not the first to cook up a politically motivated scheme to get away from it all at sea. The concept has a long, albeit somewhat dubious, history. Pirates and the whole Water World fiasco aside, way back in 1960s there was a relatively well publicized, but ill-fated experiment dubbed Operation Atlantis.
More recently, there’s the Seasteaders. They periodically provide updates about how their vision of a floating utopia is just around the corner.
Further afield, here’s a TED talk that presents a take on reasons to take to the seas. It does include a few obligatory libertarian cultural allusions to things like Burning Man, but it also covers environmentally responsible reasons for the movement like safety, sustainability as well as much needed new additions for cities and slums.
If you watch the talk all the way through, you will see that it also covers a few more exotic topics like private floating islands (i.e. really, really huge yachts). If you’ve never come across that concept before, there are hundreds of videos about floating private islands on Youtube.
Now, if you truly love the idea of getting away from it all for libertarian leaning reasons, you could always join the Asgaurdians. Asgardia is Igor Ashurbeyli’s plan for taking the idea of sovereign nation to space. The Asgardians did launch a satellite, but no one is suggesting that if you want to move in with them, you won’t have a long, long wait.
Finally, if you are in a position where headlines like this are not terribly relevant, you may be wishing for a good old fashioned, non-politically motivated island escape. If so, then here’s a nice 360° video from Down Under for you.
Upon further investigation, it turns out that some of the story behind the new wave of publicity is local. Here’s a video about Porter Square Books, one of my local bookstores, and it includes an interview with Harvard Business School faculty Ryan Raffaelli. He is responsible for some well publicized research about the recent resurgence of independent bookstores, and he explains how they are examples of how industries facing shifting business models can adapt by focusing on the “3 C’s” of community, curation, and convening.
Here’s a link to an older article about Raffaelli’s research on independent bookstores and how they serve as excellent examples of “Technology Re-Emergence.”
There are also many stories on YouTube about how other specific independent bookstores are doing well. For example, here’s one about The Last Bookstore in LA.
During my (de)tour into independent bookstores, I tripped over this 360° video of Livaria Lello in Portugal. It was frequented by J.K. Rowling when she taught English in Porto and is rumored to be the inspiration for the Flourish and Blotts bookstore in Harry Potter.
