Hofus the Stonecutter
Once upon a time in Japan, there was a poor stone-cutter, named Hofus, who used to go every day to the mountain-side to cut great blocks of stone. He lived near the mountain in a little stone hut, and worked hard and was happy.
One day he took a load of stone to the house of a rich man. There he saw so many beautiful things that when he went back to his mountain he could think of nothing else. Then he began to wish that he too might sleep in a bed as soft as down, with curtains of silk, and tassels of gold…
… Straightway a rock he became. Proudly he stood. The sun could not burn him and the rain could not move him.
“Now, at last,” he said, “no one is mightier than I.”
But one day he was waked from his dreams by a noise,—tap! tap! tap!—down at his feet. He looked and there was a stone-cutter driving his tool into the rock. Another blow and the great rock shivered; a block of stone broke away.
“That man is mightier than I!” cried Hofus, and he sighed:—
“Ah me! Ah me!
If Hofus only the man might be!”
And the voice answered:—
“Be thou thyself!”
In the chinese folklore; Hofus the Stonecutter, the greedy Hofus craves more and more power and goes through a loop of wants for power where he finally realizes that he wants to be himself.
A story about greed and moral, of course, but also a strange loop where Hofus starts out as a stonecutter and ends up like a stonecutter.
“ A strange loop arises when, by moving up or down through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started.”
DRAWING MACHINE
Two pendulums relative movement and rhythm plotted on a large sheet of paper. Pendulum are set in motion by hand and then decreases slowly and eventually stop altogether. Drawing Machine is built as a moving sculpture, and a tool with which a number of studies of time, force and motion can be made. See video link at the top of the page.
pica
n. [abbr. picayune] the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.
(via ninakix)
“ We have to continually be jumping off cliffs”
and developing our wings on the way down.
Vladimir Lukyanov's marvelous water computer
Vladimir Lukyanov’s water computer, 1936. Image courtesy of the Polytechnic Museum, Moscow.
Built in 1936, this machine was “the world’s first computer for solving [partial] differential equations,” which “for half a century has been the only means of calculations of a wide range of problems in mathematical physics.” Absolutely its most amazing aspect is that solving such complex mathematical equations meant playing around with a series of interconnected, water-filled glass tubes. You “calculated” with plumbing.
Interesting read about water based computers on Pruned, GARDENS AS CRYPTO-WATER-COMPUTERS.
Physibles - Downloadable Items on The Pirate Bay
We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical.
It’s not that surprising, 3D printers are starting to pop up in the homes of consumers and hobbyists and the price and functionalities of the 3D printers are getting better and better. There are also other networks and sites, like Thingiverse, dedicated to sharing of 3D printable objects. So it’s not like The Pirate Bay are breaking any ground here. But the size and power of The Pirate Bay makes this into a interesting move. The Pirate Bay got a thriving community that relentlessly shares anything that is shareable. And that makes this, the Physibles, extremely interesting. The Pirate Bay is a site which can make the 3D printing revolution into an actually revolution. Now we just need some consumer friendly 3D printers.
We believe that the future of sharing is about physible data. We’re thinking of temporarily renaming ourselves to The Product Bay - but we had no graphical artist around to make a logo. In the future, we’ll download one.
Mathematica code:
Animate[
Graphics[
Rotate[
Table[
{Thickness[.0134],
Circle[{23*Cos[i*Pi/2], 23*Sin[i*Pi/2]},
t + (44 - n) (1 + Sign[44 - n])/2]}, {n, 0, 100, 1},
{i, 0, 3, 1}],
Pi/4],
PlotRange -> 16.5, ImageSize -> 500],
{t, 0, 1}]
(via wolframalpha)
“ Every 3D printer should seamlessly integrate a 3D scanner, even if it makes the device cost much more. The reason is simple: If you set the expectation that every device can both input and output 3D objects, you provide the necessary fundamentals for network effects to take off amongst creators.”
