26 June 2006

AM I EVERYWHERE?

By davidng

Last year, I had a decidedly Jungian experience, which is odd for me as a rational scientific sort. This synchronicity event happened at a local bookstore where I was searching for an issue of a Canadian magazine called Maisonneuve, a publication nice enough to print an essay of mine. As I was looking over the rack, my eyes wandered and noticed an issue of The Believer, where lo and behold, I saw my name on the front cover - a very observable and clear “by DAVID NG”, written with agreeable font, and even flanked by two pretty star icons. I hurriedly flipped through the magazine to see if I could find any information on this author, confused that my life had perhaps become so busy that I was submitting articles without even knowing it.

Article

11 June 2006

Professor, scientist, art collector, crook: jail for conman with millionaire lifestyle

· Fraudster caught in £1m Christie's art scam
· Five years for man who created string of identities

Paul Lewis
Saturday January 21, 2006
The Guardian

In his time Robert Hyams has posed as one of the world's top microbiologists, claiming breakthroughs in the field of Aids and cancer. He has tricked banks, property agents and car companies out of fortunes. But it was his pretence to be a millionaire art buyer that finally led to jail for the conman when he attempted to swindle the auctioneers Christie's out of more than £1m worth of French masterpieces.

Article

08 June 2006

Clones' Debut Is a Test of Genetics, and Bettors' Wits

Thanks to Laurie for this:

Anyone trying to select a winner at the mule races this weekend in Winnemucca, Nev., will no doubt have a hard time choosing between Idaho Gem and Idaho Star. They may have different names, but they are not necessarily different mules.

Idaho Gem and Idaho Star are clones.

By BILL FINLEY
Published in New York Times: June 3, 2006

Article

01 June 2006

Second Life

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by over 200,000 people from around the globe.

Second Life.

Apple's take on MMORPGs

By Brad Cook
A little while after breakfast, you enter the Wailing Caverns to retrieve the four gems possessed by the leaders of the Druids of the Fang. You defeat each of them in turn and carry the precious stones to Nara Wildmane, a Tauren who dwells in Thunder Bluff. She expresses her deep gratitude.

During lunch, you help the Allies take the town of Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. Your emerge as one of the few who survive an intense firefight with Axis soldiers. The victory is not only key to the war effort, but it also earns you officer status, granting you the ability to direct future missions and lead troops into battle.

In the afternoon, you fly across a landscape studded with odd-shaped buildings and fantastic-looking characters. You land among a colorful group playing Tringo and join the action before taking to the air once more. You’re on your way to Atlantis, where you’ll tour the sights in a submarine.

Article.

A RAPE IN CYBERSPACE

by Julian Dibbell
Published in: Village Voice, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 51, December 21, 1993

They say he raped them that night. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired. they say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to their own bodies. And though I wasn't there that night, I think I can assure you that what they say is true, because it all happened right in the living room - right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofas and the fireplace - of a house I've come to think of as my second home.

Call me Dr. Bombay. Some months ago - let's say about halfway between the first time you heard the words _information superhighway_ and the first time you wished you never had - I found myself tripping with compulsive regularity down the well-traveled information lane that leads to LambdaMOO, a very large and very busy rustic chateau built entirely of words. Nightly, I typed the commands that called those words onto my computer screen, dropping me with what seemed a warm electric thud inside the mansion's darkened coat closet, where I checked my quotidian identity, stepped into the persona and
appearance of a minor character from a long-gone television sit-com, and stepped out into the glaring chatter of the crowded living room. Sometimes, when the mood struck me, I emerged as a dolphin instead.

Article.

Glass Artists Face Off in Court

By TIMOTHY EGAN, New York Times
Published: June 1, 2006

SEATTLE, May 31 — As an ever-moving maestro in the world where fine art and commerce converge, Dale Chihuly is perhaps the world's most successful glass artist.

His clients include Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, and his elaborate installations of sea gardens and flower clusters show that mere sand transformed by fire can elevate a casino ceiling to the level of gallery spectacle.

But now Mr. Chihuly is in the midst of a hard-edged legal fight in federal court here over the distinctiveness of his creations and, more fundamentally, who owns artistic expression in the glass art world.

Article.