And in mint condition… still, even at more than 2 millions of dollars, I am not sure this is worth being called « the most valuable comic of all time ». A ONE PAGE original drawing of Tintin recently achieved 2,519 millions of euros. The difference may be in the greater artistic value of Tintin, and in the more subtle way it’s a cultural milestone – more than a commercial one.
Still this is an entire album, and not an original drawing. I wonder what would be the value of an original drawing of Auction Comics #1 ?
An amateur seems to be challenging scientists with a little bit of visual imagination. He produced a computer animation showing the motion of the planets around the Sun as the Sun orbits around the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s beautiful and it renders the travel of the Sun and its planets as if they were some sort of vortex through the galaxy.
Many astronomers have step up to debunk his claims, as seems to be based on of the claim is that the planets aren’t orbiting the Sun heliocentrically, but are instead a vortex going around the galaxy.
One of them even explains that « Normally I wouldn’t bother debunking stuff like this; wacky claims are made all the time and usually disappear on their own. But in this case I’m getting a lot of people telling me about it, so clearly it’s popular—probably because it seems superficially right, and it has very nice graphics. »
I was first impressed by the videos, convinced by the explanations of its critics, but this kind of arrogant reaction made me feel that something else was at stake. All these brilliant scientists contradicted by some wacky with nice graphics… by an amateur?
The scientific base of the video is wrong, but how come nobody else cared about trying to show something like that in such a clear way – or how about nobody succeeded?
The comparison might be unfair, but there are some arrogants scientists who should remember that Watson and Crick beat their colleagues who were trying to discover the structure of the DNA through X-Ray diffraction mainly because they were using very simple wooden balls and metal sticks to try to recreate the model by hand.
I wouldn’t call them amateurs – even if…, but what’s wrong with being able to do nice graphics and to think in terms of design?
Experts are still divided in this Pew release, but the prospects look bleak.
The positive side is rather contradictory and not-convincing. It goes like this:
Advances in Technology have historically be a net creator of jobs.
Ok, maybe it’s different this time, but we will invent new jobs.
Ok, maybe there won’t be any new job that cannot be automated, but we will redefine our relation with work and won’t need jobs anymore.
Meh ?!?
On the negative side:
Everybody will be impacted, blue-collard jobs as well as white-collar jobs.
The disparition of their jobs won’t offer better opportunities to people, but push downwards.
We have no idea how to control this evolution.
What are they describing there? A new digital displacement that will only benefit the rich and the powerful? Just have a look at the report, it’s a nice must-read.
Anonymous seems to have released the name of the Officer who shot Brown in Ferguson, as well as a lot of related information like the 911 audio recordings of that day.
But Anonymous also released details about city workers and posted photos of Jon Belmar, the chief of the St. Louis County police who is conducting the investigation into the shooting, as well as those of his wife, son and daughter. It also posted Chief Belmar’s home address and telephone number. The group threatened to bring down city, county and federal networks if the police overreacted to rallies and protests.
This is a dangerous line. Being outraged by police conduct is one thing. But why threaten his family? Why threaten to destroy a public service?
On one side, the Ferguson Police Force is overreacting by militarizing itself, threatening journalists and being irrationally protective of the information it holds – especially when you know that hackers or journalists can access it eventually?
There is a lack of effective ways to put this kind of behavior into question. The democratic feedback seems too slow for the age of information. People don’t feel like they’re in control anymore, and they can resort to irrationality and personal initiatives to restore that control. But what’s next? A revenge raid against the family of the chief of the Police?
… it’s also what you observe when you look at the increasing deployment of surveillance, especially through the NSA and its international copycats. The legitimacy of that evolution has been built through the prioritization of the fight against terrorism, which needs coordinated action at home and abroad.
The question is to know whether using military tactics, equipment and technology at home is actually a good idea given its track record abroad? If the US military could not bring peace to Iraq, how would US militarized policemen bring peace to their cities? And it questions the legitimacy to use military grade technology and protocols to investigate and control a normal population.
I don’t know if it will last, but I am glad that French policemen and military are still clearly wearing different uniform, equipment and methods.
The history of UI/UX is always a fascinating read. Even as I speak japanese, I had never thought that « x » and « o » were batsu (cancel) and maru (validate) – and that the « x » metaphor was also shown on Playstation controllers.
The search for the origins of the « x » go back to Atari TOS, but I think the author should have been looking for text-based graphical interfaces that were being used in DOS and other non-graphical OS at the time.
Awesome little piece anyway.
Update: apparently, the « X » sign in Windows was not used to close the window, but to open a menu…
@soufron L’auteur se trompe à propos de Windows : le bouton de gauche ne fermait pas mais ouvrait un menu. On double-cliquait pour fermer.
Re-update: There is more to the batsu/maru story. In Japan, O is yes, and X is no. But it was reverted in occident to take into account the idea that western people cross checkboxes when they validate something.
bloc note 