However, possibly even more interesting was Wikipedia’s page (linked in the article) on HeLa cells. According to Wikipedia, this is an “immortal cell line (it does not age) used in medical research and a proposed new single cell species [...] derived from cervical cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks, who died from her cancer in 1951.”

HeLa are considered “immortal”: they do not die of old age and can divide an unlimited number of times as long as basic cell survival conditions are met (i.e. being maintained and sustained in a suitable environment). There are many strains of HeLa cells as they continue to evolve by being grown in cell cultures, but all HeLa cells are derived from the same tumour cells removed from Lacks. It has been estimated that the total mass of HeLa cells today far exceeds that of the rest of Henrietta Lacks’ body.

I find simply the ideas and implications of such a biological occurrance really startling. How would you like to be survived by the cancer cells that killed you? This is really food for thought, and while I don’t have much opinion about it at the moment, I’m sure many people could have a field day with all the idealogical, moral, and political ideas involved. Perhaps they already have. Yet, for now, I will simply share something new I learned about today.

Schrodinger’s Comic

I haven’t laughed this hard in quite a while.

Take this app and find your home on Earth, from the completely zoomed out position, using only the imagery as your guide. Can you find it? Try to think of landmarks, find your city, and follow the streets. Pretend you’ve been abducted by aliens and are now trying to show them where to drop you off. Because heavens, you never know when such a skill could come in handy.

Now zoom out again and find the Empire State Building. The Great Pyramids of Egypt. The Eiffel Tower. Your old school.

Isn’t is amazing how we live on a world so big, yet at other times it seems so small? To me it is strangely gratifying to be able to say “This is where I am.” while knowing that I found it for myself. It is a puzzle and a philosophical experiement. In all of human history, this capacity and freedom is unprecedented. We are able to experience and enjoy how big our world is on such a practical level. Even though modern mapping systems make it so easy to locate a point of interest, to me it is profound and so gratifying to zoom in and find myself. Can you?

What piqued my interest was the fact that it was based on the Quake 3 engine, GPL’d, and would run on Linux. After downloading it and
giving it a spin, I must say I was shocked I had never heard of it before. It is possible that this is because the standalone 1.1.0 version was released less than 4 months ago, though with the quality and polish of this game, I would have expected to be seeing and hearing about it all over. The game looks and feels fantastic, and all of the graphics and user interfaces are very professionally designed. I really love the concepts of the buildings and units as well as the creativity shown in the popular maps, with tons of interesting and well-themed nooks and crannies. Tremulous also has a unique fast-paced mixture of Real Time Strategy and First-Person Shooter gameplay, which makes it fun but also strategically interesting.

What more can I say? I am really enjoying this game. Be careful though… try it out, and you too will soon be addicted!

But by far most intriguing to me is Replica, a scarcely explained collection of full articles pertaining to art, design, computers, machine learning, consciousness, philosophy — the good stuff. And boy, is it good. I am amazed by “On artificial creativity”, where computer-generated art, words, artificial intelligence, and the internet meet. This is very interesting stuff, both artistically and conceptually. To me this seems to be the closest thing I’ve seen to a synthesis of modern philosophy, technology, art, and psychology. I am so impressed and inspired.

Oh, why are there such incredible people here on the internet?

http://www.turnofftheinternet.com/

I just love how each post tells a story. How each image is just large enough for me to get sucked in. How the site design is simple and clean enough to drive the experience forward. How instead of keeping a schedule, the artist posts when he has something real to share. How it makes me want to go to NYC…

This guy must truly take his camera everywhere. Beautiful, and very inspiring.

This is incredible. Not only is Elephants Dream a high quality Creative Commons licensed short film (in HD 1920 and Surround Sound!), but it was made completely using Blender and other open source tools. And from the images, and their progress reports over the past year, it looks absolutely gorgeous.

My understanding is that the goal of the Orange Project was not simply to create an “Open Movie,” but to embody a symbiotic relationship between Blender development and real animation project. This has been a huge boon for the open source art community. Over the past year, they have created and documented some amazing new features and improvements to the Blender project, ones that will last far beyond the scope of their production. Which is not to say that their artistic creation won’t last for a long time to come.

However, the only thing that will last right now for is the time it will take to download their 815mb top quality version. I am still very much in the dark about the story, and the message of the movie, but anticipate it with very high regard. Ooh, I can’t wait! Downloads for the movie (in various sizes and formats) are available here.

Respect.