I Want You To Want Me chronicles the world’s long-term relationship with romance, across all ages, genders, and sexualities, gathering new data from a variety of online dating sites every few hours. The system searches these sites for certain phrases, which it then collects and stores in a database. These phrases, taken out of context, provide partial glimpses into people’s private lives. Simultaneously, the system forms an evolving zeitgeist of dating, tracking the most popular first dates, turn-ons, desires, self-descriptions and interests.
The data is presented as an interactive installation, displayed on a 56” high-resolution touch screen, hung vertically on a wall in a dark room. On screen is an interactive sky, whose weather (sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, etc.) can be controlled by the viewer. Through the sky float hundreds of blue (male) and pink (female) balloons, each representing a single dating profile. The brighter balloons are younger people; the darker balloons older. Trapped inside each balloon is one of over 500 video silhouettes, showing a solitary person, engaged in any number of activities (yoga, jumping jacks, nose-picking, air guitar, etc.). The viewer can touch any balloon to select it, causing its photo to dangle from a string and its sentence to appear in a thought bubble overhead. Touching any balloon a second time pops it. The balloons move through the sky along different paths and at different speeds, bumping up against each other, sometimes traveling together for a time, but only ever getting so close, as each silhouette is ultimately confined to its own balloon.
I was watching this presentation on my way home in my iPod and telling to myself - I have to blog this as soon as I reach home. It’s a fascinating presentation. If you are interested in theories of human cognitive behavior pattern; if you like to know about ‘how brain works’ - you will love this. if you have nothing to do with all that - I can guarantee, still you will love this presentation by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor. This is one of the most beautiful presentation I have ever watched. While watching, I felt, it’s like a convergence point of philosophy, neuroscience and an enactment of Shakespearean tragedy!
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
Do you know about Ig Nobel Prizes? They are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October (around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced) for the ridiculous-most achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.”
Organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they are presented by a group that includes genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater.
How ridiculous the “achievements” are? Here goes the list of the Ig Nobel ‘winners’ of 2007.
Aviation: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, for discovering that hamsters recover from jetlag more quickly when given Viagra!!
Biology: Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk, for taking a census of all the mites and other life forms that live in people’s beds.
Chemistry: Mayu Yamamoto for extracting vanilla flavour from cow dung. Yak!! Vanilla milkshake anyone?
Economics: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, for patenting a device to catch bank robbers by ensnaring them in a net. Duh!
Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can’t distinguish between Japanese, played backward, and Dutch, played backward. (How did they came up with the idea in first place? )
Literature: Glenda Browne, for her study of the word “the”. Now, that’s what I call “THE” Research!
Medicine: Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe, for investigating the side-effects of swallowing swords.
Nutrition: Brian Wansink, for investigating people’s appetite for mindless eating by secretly feeding them a self-refilling bowl of soup. Eh?
Peace: The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for suggesting the research and development of a “gay bomb,” which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other. (Dropping that in India might solve the population problem)
Physics: L. Mahadevan and Enrique Cerda Villablanca for their theoretical study of how sheets become wrinkled.
So where the name (Ig Nobel) came from? The official pronunciation used during the ceremony is “ig no-BELL”.
In Swedish, IG is short for “icke godkänt”, a grade in school similar to F, or fail.
In Russian, the name is usually translated as “Шнобелевская премия” (Shnobel Prize). Shnobel is a slang term for a large nose, evoking an image of Pinocchio.
Literacy is key to education and jobs for poor children. It’s a route out of poverty. One of the The Sharing Foundation’s programs is its Khmer literacy school. It helps farm children learn their native alphabet and numbers well enough to attend elementary school. The Sharing Foundation’s English Language Program offers village students, ages 8-18, the opportunity to learn English, allowing them to obtain jobs in tourism and word processing. These students are so dedicated that some meet on their own to study on weekends. The literacy school runs three sessions a day for 130 children of Roteang village’s poorest families. Ten bilingual Cambodian college graduates teach English to 500 students in 19 sections offered daily after school hours at the village school.
Propagating Beth’s message :
We have a chance to win $50,000 - if we get the most number of unique
donors. Right now we’re in second place with 7 more days to go. I’m
reaching out to my network to ask if they will blog or twitter about
the campaign, ask their networks to contribute the minimum donation of
$10. The contest ends on January 31st.
Vanilla milkshake anyone? 
)
From Beth: 
