ideas

Friday, October 18, 2002

Great Movies: The first 100
"yet most adults will not go to a movie from Iran, Japan, France or Brazil. They will, however, go to any movie that has been plugged with a $30 million ad campaign and sanctified as a "box-office winner." Yes, some of these big hits are good, and a few of them are great. But what happens between the time we are 8 and the time we are 20 that robs us of our curiosity? What turns movie lovers into consumers? What does it say about you if you only want to see what everybody else is seeing?"

4:53:08 PM

Wired 10.11: Why 6-Legged Bots Rule
Rather than slavishly aping nature, Full contends it's far better to extract her best elements and, where possible, blend them together. Think of a robot with the sprawled posture of a crab, the quick-moving legs of a cockroach, the complex coordination of a millipede, and a scorpion's ability to move in all directions, over rough terrain. As far as Full is concerned, there's no reason why we can't improve upon nature. All we need to do is look at nature with a discerning eye — and then think sideways. "Biomimicry is a really, really bad idea," he says. "Evolution isn't a perfecting principle; it works on the principle of 'just good enough.' If you really want to design something for a task, you have to look at the diversity of organisms out there and then get inspired by principles."

2:41:04 PM