Meet Big Dog, designed by Boston Dynamics for DARPA. One blogger called it “amazing”, I call it creepy. When I was young I used to fantasize about a future flourishing with robots in all shapes and sizes, but during these wartime years here in America I feel less comfortable with our military’s effort to sanitize [...]

In December 2001, Dean Kamen unveiled his latest invention, The Segway, a two wheeled battery powered scooter that can take people -umm- around the block and back? Not much more efficient than the other two wheeled invention called the bicycle. Many people still see them on the street or on TV and are befuddled by [...]

Cambodia, 1974, photo by Dith Pran. Dith Pran/New York Times.

If you haven’t see the film “The Killing Fields” since it came out in the eighties, perhaps now would be an appropriate time. Dith Pran, the photojournalist and war prisoner who’s story is told by the film has passed away March 31st from cancer just as [...]

Laguna de San Gabriel, Los Angeles, California, May 16, 1965 opening day, by Eloy Zarate and Benjamin Dominguez family as appeared in this NPR article.
After reading and listening to a few accounts of new Hamas-made hole-in-the-wall that separates Gaza and Egypt, I couldn’t help but notice the many flexible uses of concrete in the [...]

Waiting for Godot in New Orleans photo by Donn Young and Frank Aymami, more photos here.
A couple of nights ago we bumped into artist Paul Chan at a mini film festival of Apichatpong Weerasethakul at Anthology Film Archives.* I remember having read that he had just completed a production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for [...]

A rather odd video report on New York Times today highlighting the AK-47 machine gun as it turns 60 today. In the video, at what appears to be a celebratory conference honoring the AK-47, the Defence Attache to Zimbabwe and Vietnam are giving speeches that pay tribute to the gun in which they “see Freedom.” [...]

Episode 1 of The Black Scorpion of Baghdad, a 7 part documentary that follows a heavy metal band Acrassicauda (l. black scorpion) in Baghdad after the US invasion with footage of concerts in and around war torn Baghdad.
It amazes me how simple it was for Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti to enter Iraq without embassy [...]