Sunday, January 04, 2004

Kuleshov effect: meaning is too contextual for metadata. Danah Boyd has posted an interesting rumination on the "Kuleshov Effect," wherein a still image is freighted with opposite emotions by adding different soundtracks to it. The most interesting question this raises for me is: how can we expect "accurate" tagging of the subjective content of an artistic work ("Happy boy," "Pretty dog") when there are such fundamental conditionals dependent on context? Lev Kuleshov was a Russian filmmaker. Because of the political climate of Russia, he was left without access to actual film. Instead, he constructed films by splicing film and telling his story in a collage-esque manner. In addition to his style of film, he's known for something called the Kuleshov Experiment. In this experiment, an image of a man's face is shown juxtapositioned with various other images immediately following. Viewers thought that the man's emotion changed even though it is exactly the same shot. Link [Boing Boing Blog]

Build Your Own Scanning Tunneling Microscope [Slashdot]

Tom's Hardware Guide Tom's Networking

Explore Mars with Maestro [Slashdot]

Pluto: Linux-based Do-everything System [Slashdot]

Geek history: world's first pocket calculator. Boingboing reader fRiT0 says: The Curta mechanical calculator and its story are featured in the January 2004 issue of Scientific American and a Google search turned up this excellent website with information and pictures regarding this truly incredible device. The Curta is a mechanical calculator that was designed by Curt Herzstark while he was imprisioned in a Nazi concentration camp. It is a facinating instrument and a Curta in good condition is worth $1000+ on ebay. Link (Thanks Mark Quin, and thanks fRiT0!) [Boing Boing Blog]

Art: Kozyndan. The artwork of LA-based illustrator duo Kozyndan has been blogged here on BoingBoing before, but a quick wander through their online gallery reveals some delightful recent additions. Playful, tongue-in-cheek geek fantasies of robots, rabbits, the beauty of messy desks, and tributes to hip stores. At left, a detail view of a rabbit-filled homage to Hokusai (the print is super-cool, and is hanging on my living room wall as I type this blog post). Check out some of the panoramas, too. We've blogged their SARS Art Project contribution before -- The Yum-cha Militia (My Mother thought she had SARS, but it turned out to be PMS)-- but there are many others (some viewable as QTVR panos). Link to Kozyndan home page, link to online gallery. Most of what you see is available for online purchase; many prints priced at a wallet-friendly $25 or under. [Boing Boing Blog]

How to snog in D&D. Ever since Wizards of the Coast relicensed Advanced Dungeons and Dragons under the terms of the Open Game license, third parties have been able to add their own rulebooks to the game-universe. Now there's a book of ules for integrating sex into your RPGs. The first chapter discusses handling sex in a mature way, and provides an overview of various facets of sex such as humor, sexual orientation, fetishes, prostitution, pornography, commitment and infidelity, chastity, pregnancy and childbirth, and taboos. This is a fairly basic section, but more thought-provoking than you might expect -- at least as it pertains to a roleplaying game. There’s a look at how the alignments relate to sex, as well as how each player character race typically views it. Other fantasy races are also mentioned, including centaurs, doppelgangers, dryads, giants, goblinoids, lizardfolk, merfolk, nymphs, and sprites. There are even considerations on other creature types: aberrations, constructs, dragons, elementals, outsiders, and more. The new (and optional) rules for sex -- skills, feats, etc. -- are found in the second chapter. The Appearance ability score is brought into play, which is used for certain skill checks. Some of the new uses for existing skills include Appraising a potential partner, Bluffing to connect with someone, Knowledge about various topics, Perform (sexual techniques), several Professions (such as Courtesan, Masseuse, Midwife, or Tattoo Artist), and Sense Motive. New feats include such entries as Animal Magnetism, Chaste Life, Disarming Looks, Limber, Seductive, Sexual Training, Sterile, and more. Issues such as sexually transmitted diseases and their physical and social consequences are covered, along with birth control, conception, and pregnancy. Link (via Fark) [Boing Boing Blog]