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Adobe Photoshop CS4 Release Date Announced

I’m happy to hear that Adobe will be releasing their newest version of Photoshop in just a couple of weeks. The entire Creative Suite 4 (CS4), is targeting a release date for October 15, 2008.

Here’s a quick video demonstrating one of Photoshop CS4’s amazing new abilities (which was foreshadowed here) to scale intelligently based on the content of an image.

It opens up a whole new can of worms in the ethics of editing photos department, but at the same time, it looks REALLY fun to use.

Hit play or watch Content Aware Scaling on YouTube.

(via)

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Five must see open course video lectures

Since the introduction of open lectures by progressive thinking educational institutions like M.I.T., Stanford, Duke, Yale, and others, many exceptional presentations have bubbled to the top and should be watched.

Here are five must see open course video lectures as recommended by Virginia Heffernan of the NYTimes.

  1. Walter H. G. Lewin, Powers of 10, M.I.T. (At about 2:40 watch Power of Ten video that is cut from the lecture)
  2. Randy Pausch, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, Carnegie Mellon
  3. Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational, Duke and M.I.T. (the rest of his short clips)
  4. Langdon Hammer, Modern Poetry, Yale
  5. Christine Hayes, Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), Yale

I also recommend Mark Schlissel, Introduction – The Cell Theory, Bacteria, Animal Cells, Evolution (Viruses and Midochondria). (The good stuff starts at about 13:00).

I listened to about a quarter of all the lectures from this course—most of which were over my head, but the first and second (mp3) classes are fascinating and make me wish I studied biology at school.

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Obama / McCain Wordle

I downloaded the transcripts of all of Obama and McCain’s speeches from their respective official websites from March 25th, 2008 to the present and then put them each into Wordle.

Obama / McCain Wordle

Wordle gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

I used 51 speeches by McCain and 61 by Obama.

McCain’s site only had transcripts from March 25th to the present and I figured that was plenty of data for my purposes.

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Sarah Palin Hockey Mom

Matt Damon condemns John McCain’s choice of hockey-mom Sarah Palin for Vice President. He compares the situation to a “really bad Disney movie” and says it’s crazy that this woman could become President.

Hit play or watch Damon Condemns Palin at YouTube.

It’s one of those situations that is funny because it’s true (albeit also frightening). The geniuses at CollegeHumor have taken the idea and run with it. Here is the fictional trailer to her, unbelievable, real life story:

[Sarah Palin Disney Trailer on YouTube]

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Naomi Klien on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher

I went to the Naomi Klien speech at the U of L last Monday and was entertained and enraged (both at the same time) as she talked about the situations and events unfolding in the world right now and the influence that free market ideology has on the world at large. She also emphasized that new policy applied after a crisis has often been waiting for the opportunity, for people too shocked by the event to stand up against bad laws.

Here she is on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher (September 19):

[Naomi Klien on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher – YouTube]

She wrote an article for the Guardian last week which contained many of the points she made in her speech.

Continue reading “Naomi Klien on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher”

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MagLev Toy Train

A crash course on the amazing properties of super-conductors, the following video demonstrates what may be the future of transportation.

[MagLev Toy Train – Liveleak]

Popular Science published an article five years ago on the possibility of a trans-Atlantic maglev train that would travel in an airless underwater tunnel at 4,000 MPH and make the trip from New York to London in an hour.

A 4,000-mph magnetically levitated train could allow you to have lunch in Manhattan and still get to London in time for the theater, despite the 5-hour time difference. It’s not impossible: Norway has studied neutrally buoyant tunnels (concluding that they’re feasible, though expensive), and Shanghai is running maglev trains to its airport. But supersonic speeds require another critical step: eliminating the air — and therefore air friction — from the train’s path. A vacuum would also save the tunnel from the destructive effects of a sonic boom, which, unchecked, could potentially rip the tunnel apart.

(Via Waxy)