Month: September 2007

Wonders of the World

Mary Beard is a Professor of Classics at Cambridge University. She also writes a blog called A Don’s Life, and she is the editor of an excellent new series of books, The Wonders of the World. The latter is “a small series of books that will focus on some of the world’s most famous sites or monuments.”

A few notable titles in that series include Mary Beard’s own book about The Parthenon; her collaboration with Keith Hopkins for The Colosseum; Cathy Gere’s extraordinary look at The Tomb of Agamemnon (previously discussed on BLDGBLOG here); and many others, including books about Westminster Abbey, The Temple of Jerusalem, and The Alhambra, with other titles ranging from the birth of Egyptology to the history of British railways and the First World War.

on books for the “intelligent ignorant”. the series sounds like a must-read

Domo

The goal of Domo is to contribute a novel approach to robot manipulation in unstructured environments. The approach is centered on integrating compliant and force sensitive manipulators into a behavior based architecture that accomplishes useful manipulation tasks in human environments.

this robot allegedly explores the uncanny valley even further than kismet

Wikicity

Rome’s Notte Bianca is all about the city, the people and the events. How are the people moving within their city in response to this exceptional pulse of activities and events happening? Below you see a project that has been projected live on screen during the night of September 8th in Rome. Overlaid on the map of Rome, you see different dynamic real time data as a fast forward view of that night.

anonymized cell phone records, etc, as art

Don’t trust Sat Nav

Britain’s first official road signs to warn drivers about the dangers of trusting their satellite navigation devices were introduced on Tuesday in a Welsh village. The signs could be brought in across the country if the trial is successful.

ha. that sign will do no good. you can’t just pull signage like that out of your behind and expect tired and hurried truckers to parse them correctly. still, how about getting the navteq data fixed?