Brilliant 8-years later political comedy and reenactment of a popular Budwieser commercial that ran in 2000. Here’s the story of how the show was produced in 9 days for about $6500 and became a viral hit.

Here’s the original:

citizen media, Obama, politics, viral video

As the MC indicates, this clearly represents the decline of Western civilization as we know it. Which means it’s totally awesome on a stick.

[Via BoingBoing, thx Galen!]

lolcats, Video

At first glance one might file this in the “is this really necessary” department, but Mr. Green Genes (… ok awesome) is more a “proof of concept” of the ability to introduce new genes in a way that’s harmless to the organism. Researchers added the fluorescene gene lovingly named “enhanced green fluorescence protein” to the cat’s DNA as a marker that would easily demonstrate the success of the therapy — under UV light the animal glows a spooky green that indicates the new gene is being expressed without having any adverse effect on the cat’s health.

This particular gene therapy is a precursor to successful development of “knockout gene” therapy that could combat genetic diseases in humans by effectively turning the bad, mutant genes off and replacing them with genes that work normally. It’s also Mr. Green Genes’ ticket to being the most sought after Halloween cat on the planet.

[Via Kurzweilai.net]

design, progress, user-centric

All of which makes total sense. I like to file this general trend under the heading “people like to do stuff.” Broadcast media had its day because it was technologically easier than providing a platform for interactivity — not because passive reception is something inherent in human nature. Human nature is inherently interactive, not passive. Thus as we give people more tools to collect, create and share things they care about online — they’re naturally going to use them.

I am looking forward to seeing the “creators” group continue to grow especially. I am totally with Will Wright on the idea that people like to make stuff. I take inspiration from the experience recounted with the launch of the Spore Creature Creator, where Maxis and EA expected to reach 100,000 creatures created in total between the time the Creature Creator launched in June and the full Spore game was released September 7 — instead they hit that figure within a couple of hours and within 18 days had reached 1,589,000 user-created species prompting Wright’s memorable quip that Spore users are 38% God. Humans are creative by nature. After years of media largely tightly controlled by a small number of vested interests, it’s totally amazing to be living in this time of tools and tinkering.

creativity

yes, you can has.

And lo unto them a meme was born: CyLOLns. All credit goes to Akela on this one.

BSG, cylons, lolcats, Teh funny

Old blog was old. Old blog was so old I didn’t have the patience to deal with the pain of updating it, its various sub-blogs, cleaning up all the spam and the hacks from the old security holes… so I figure it’s about time for a clean slate.

I’m going to lock down comments and pretty much anything remotely writable so it will be a read-only archive, but if you happen to have an urge to dive into The Past you can see the archives of the old me at the WWW subdomain.

No tags