Here’s a list of videos show what they call Augmented Reality. The first film, I believe, is student film illustrating the consequences of augmented reality. “Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it,” as noted on the Vimeo host page. Other videos show darn cool phone apps for navigation and identification. This is wild. (via Jeff Jarvis)
(Photo by The Lightworks/Flickr)
And now for something completely different: a Western music video.
At Evangelical Outpost, Rachel Motte reviews West Overesea.
It was some time ago that Bill Bennett, on his morning talk show, asked, “Who is Sigrid Undset?” I tried to call in and help him out, but there wasn’t time.
The fact that Bennett, an extremely erudite Roman Catholic, knew nothing of Sigrid Undset, saddened me. (I’m not a Catholic myself, but no man is an island, and all that).
Gone are the days when a popular writer like Ogden Nash could say, in the midst of a light poem:
“Or you stand with her on a hilltop and gaze on a winter sunset,
And everything is as starkly beautiful as a page from Sigrid Undset….”
…and everybody would know what you were talking about.
That’s a tragedy. Not just for Catholics (like Bennett) or Norwegian buffs (like me), but for all lovers of great Christian prose. Continue reading Sigrid Undset
I’ve been tweeting on a BwB profile here, saying things like this:
Blogger and scholar Stuart Buck has a book on American education coming out this month. Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation
Rod Dreher of BeliefNet has a three part interview with Stuart starting here, continuing here, and concluding here (these links will help when the navigation on BeliefNet is challenging). I will review Acting White for BwB later this month.
I caught a few minutes of a BBC dramatization of one of the Kurt Wallander mysteries this season, but I was distracted and don’t even remember which story it was (it might even have been this one, the first novel of the series). Still, I’ve decided I need to acquaint myself with the booming Scandinavian mystery scene, and so I picked up Faceless Killers
The hero is Detective Kurt Wallander, a policeman in the rural town of Ystad (pronounced EE-stad), Sweden. Wallander is no McGarrett, no supercop. He’s barely keeping it together, in his personal life and his profession. His wife recently left him, which spun him into depression and heavy drinking. His adult daughter simply disappeared from his life, though she makes occasional contact. His artist father is sliding into dementia. Meanwhile at work, it’s his bad luck to be the senior detective on the squad (his superior is on holiday) when an elderly farm couple is brutally murdered in their home. A whispered statement by the female victim suggests a “foreigner” was responsible. Somehow the word gets out, and there are reprisals against local refugee camps.
Wallander manages to do his job creditably, but sometimes it’s touch and go, thanks in particular to exhaustion and imprudent drinking. Leads are followed until they play out, and Wallander manages to get himself pretty severely beaten up more than once. There’s even an almost-comic car chase, in which Wallander follows a suspect driving a stolen car, in a commandeered horse van.
The story lost some steam toward the end, though I had no trouble sticking with it. As a conservative American, I had mixed responses to the ethos of the story. Wallander is surprisingly conservative (it seems to me) for a Swedish cop. Although heartily anti-racist, he has serious doubts about Sweden’s open borders policy, a sentiment which sat pretty well with me. On the other hand, as a typical Swedish civil servant, the idea of a right to bear arms is entirely foreign to his universe. I had a hard time, puritanical American that I am, swallowing his guilt-free pursuit of another man’s wife.
Still, it was an interesting story, and not quite what I expected. I may read more Henning Mankell.
A note on the translation—it could have been a lot better. The translator opted too often for literalism over idiom, and the story suffered for it. I need to get into the translation business. It would appear they need me.
Responding to a new Gallup poll, 45% said moral values in the U.S. are poor. Democrats are a little more optimistic than Republicans or independents. The results are the most negative Gallup has gotten for this question in several years.
“Reformed Theology? There’s an App for That.”
This is only slightly less awesome than the potato warmer app I designed.
I am not familiar with this term: Morton’s Fork
“A situation involving choice between two equally undesirable outcomes
“ETYMOLOGY: After John Morton (c. 1420-1500), archbishop of Canterbury, who was tax collector for the English King Henry VII. To him is attributed Morton’s fork, a neat argument for collecting taxes from everyone: those living in luxury obviously had money to spare and those living frugally must have accumulated savings to be able to pay.” (via Wordsmith.org)