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This is one of those things that sounds more like a discarded Dharma Initiative plot line from Lost than reality, yet it's real. The Burlington (VT) Free Press recently profiled the Teresem Movement Foundation, based in Bristol, VT, which calls itself a "a transreligion for technological times".

They are working on promoting "exponential life" - essentially getting to the point where we can download our consciousnesses into robotic bodies. The idea has been explored recently in shows such as Dollhouse and Caprica and does seem to be the ultimate target of a lot of scientific research.

Teresem has two journals: The Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology and The Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness.

The NYTimes profiled one of the automatons, Bina48, which, along with tripping the "uncanny valley" alarm, is a good demonstration of how AI hasn't changed much since the days of the Alice chatbot

Heady stuff. Cool and unnerving.

Scientific American often has articles/slideshows related to visual illusions. In October 2009 they had one specifically about faces.

The illusion below struck me most. To me, and apparently to most others, the face on the left appears female and the one on the right appears male. In fact, the face is the same in both pictures, although the one on the left has higher contrast between the eyes and mouth and the rest of the face. This could be just a novelty, or could be taken as proof that lipstick and eye makeup are literally making a face appear more feminine.

I had not heard of the movie Mary & Max until recently, although it won many awards after it was released in 2009. It's enormously charming and touching and I recommend it to anyone, particularly anyone who enjoys stop-motion/"claymation" (or is interested in stories dealing with Asperger's Syndrome, since one of the characters has that condition).

The website is also very well done - perhaps the best movie-promo site I've seen.

The problem is you have to look away from the screen in order to do anything.

DJ Earworm http://www.youtube.com/user/djearworm creates musical mashups that make other mashups look like kindergarteners made them (although some are pretty awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfadLhw14l8&feature=related)

The best are in the "United State of Pop" series, in which the top 25 pop songs (based on Billboard rankings) are combined into a new mix.
I like pop music but I'm not as aware of what's new as I was when I was younger, and I had never heard some of the songs used in the mixes (while other songs, such as "Single Ladies", I've probably heard, literally, a thousand times) - yet, I found myelf listening to these mashups several times each.

They are a marvelous technical achievement and are also a singularly cogent distillation of the American music zeitgeist.

When I was a kid, MTV was criticized for exacerbating the general societal attention-deficit disorder, but that was nothing compared to these mixes.
Back then the videos had only one song with rapid cutting of the visuals. These have 25 songs mixed together, usually with 3 or 4 going simultaneously.
This seems like it hits the limit to human perception. I'm curious what music videos and mashups will look like in 2020.

It's also interesting to see the racial breakdown of the singers in the videos. Of the 75 songs featured in the videos for 2007, 2008, & 2009 black men, black women, and blond white women seem to have roughly equal representation. White men and brunette women are under-represented. And Asians and hispanics are not represented.

2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ESZEUXyyb4
2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls7yJmxAF9Y

Yards Brewing Company, based in Philadelphia, has an "Ales of the Revolution" series with beer recipes based on those used by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.

I tried the "Thomas Jefferson Tavern Ale" which was good, Belgian-y but with a light body.

I'm curious to try the "Poor Richard's Tavern Spruce Ale" which uses molasses in place of barley malt and spruce in place of hops.

This is a song that my brother, mother, and I used to love listening to on the Dr. Demento show a few decades ago.

I don't know why I was thinking of this - just one of those memories that popped up uninvited. I asked whether the Internet had a copy, and the answer was "yes".

The song is by Mark Johnathan Davis A.K.A. Richard Cheese, who now makes a living (with his band, "Lounge Against the Machine") "swankifying" popular songs (imagine Dean Martin covering Nirvana)

His voice is uncannily similar to the guy from Barenaked Ladies

http://www.richardcheese.com/

The Word Garden is a new collaboration at St. Michael's College in Colchester Vermont, as part of their Teaching Gardens

- Similar to magnetic poetry, but with stones outside

- A good example of staff and faculty from different departments working together.

- A set of 350 words from the stone artist, Chris Cleary (On the Rocks Stonecarving Studio).

http://www.youtube.com/SaintMichaels

This was made in 2003

This is something that conveys a history in a way that text and photos simply cannot: The Cold War as a dialogue that turns into a shouting match, with peaks at times of tension and lulls after treaties are signed, with newcomers popping up regularly.

It's a shame the data is only through 1998, although the madness waned quickly in the early 90s and there isn't as much to see.

1958 must have been a scary year.

sixfoottallrabbit made an implementation of Conway's Game of Life in HTML 5. (more)

Related is this First replicating creature spawned in life simulator