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The Psychology Of Anthropomorphism And Dehumanization
1 MarMedical News Today
People talk to their plants, pray to humanlike gods, name their cars, and even dress their pets up in clothing. We have a strong tendency to give nonhuman entities human characteristics (known as anthropomorphism), but why? In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Adam Waytz from Harvard University and Nicholas Epley and John T. Cacioppo from University of Chicago, examine the psychology of anthropomorphism... -
Zero Charges Forward: Electric motorcycle company hires top talent from Buell
5 MarAutoblog
Filed under: Hirings/Firings/Layoffs, Motorcycle, Electric
The Zero DS steps into the spotlight - Click above for high-res image gallery
You may have read our latest report regarding the future of recently canned Buell Motorcycles. Everyone's favorite American sportbike company hit the chopping block a few months back at the hand of industry giant Harley-Davidson, and its cropping of the division has led Erik Buell to forge ahead with his competitively obsessed Erik Buell Racing brand. However, a key player in the now defunct company may have sparked a bright future with another American motorcycle company.
Zero Motorcycles, the little electric motorcycle manufacturer that could, has announced the hiring of former Buell Vice President of Engineering Abe Askenazi. Coming off of a 14-year stretch with Buell, Askenazi will no doubt bring a level of experience and insight to Zero beyond its years. With funding at an all time high and the obvious future in electric vehicles, the transition from combustion to current should be rewarding for both Askenazi and Zero. Click past the break to view the complete press release.
[Source: Asphalt & Rubber]Continue reading Zero Charges Forward: Electric motorcycle company hires top talent from Buell
Zero Charges Forward: Electric motorcycle company hires top talent from Buell originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The 10 best…music memoirs
27 Febwww.guardian.co.uk
From the sex and drug-fuelled haze of Motley Crue to the teasing, ruminative Bob Dylan: Observer pop critic Kitty Empire picks the best rock autobiographies
Chronicles by Bob Dylan
(Simon & Schuster, 2004) What becomes an enigma best? Answer: appearing to shed light on a mythical career, while only slightly lifting the veil on his inner life. On his radio show Theme Time Radio Hour, Dylan transmits his knowledge and passion about American music with straight-talking eloquence. Chronicles transposes that ease to paper, making this ruminative semi-autobiography the tome by which others will be judged. But if you want to know about "Judas" going electric, or the supporting cast of wives, lovers and offspring, look elsewhere.
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Simon Napier-Bell
(Ebury Press, 1982) Music managers range from notorious hard-men with an eye on the bottom line (Led Zeppelin's Peter Grant springs to mind) to quixotic gadflys whose mercurial minds are always looking for the next happening. Napier-Bell is firmly in the latter camp, having looked after the likes of T Rex and Wham! His first book focuses on the 60s, when the pop world was young, but not innocent: brothel scenes with Keith Moon are just one of the many juicy indiscretions in this witty memoir.
Head-On/Repossessed by Julian Cope
(Element, 1994/1999) A rock star who is into standing stones, "arch-drude" Julian Cope hates organised religion as much as Philip Pullman. His other books span dazzling and erudite works on German 70s rock and ancient monoliths, but his two volumes of reminiscences focusing on the Liverpool scene that birthed his own Teardrop Explodes as well as Echo & The Bunnymen are just a scream – catty, lyrical and lysergically honest by turn. Unexpectedly, amid all the madness, Cope is revealed as a big softie.Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull and David Dalton
(Penguin, 1995) You can't help but sympathise. Marianne Faithfull has spent a lifetime living down some prurient guff about a Mars bar and, as a long-term junkie, had her son removed from her custody. And yet this co-written autobiography depicts a bonne vivante of considerable wit and good sense. Her seat at the table of their Satanic majesties tells the inside story of the sulphuric 60s with eyebrow arched. But it is the longer arc of her pop life that makes Faithfull's progress a riveting, cautionary tale.Beneath the Underdog by Charles Mingus
(Canongate, 1971) The spectre of an unreliable narrator flits around this book, which was famously edited down from the multiple thousands of words Mingus submitted to publishers. Starting with the jazz bassist and composer's childhood in Watts – the scene of riots in 1965 – Beneath The Underdog (subtitled, His World as Composed by Mingus) is less a polite chronicle than a kaleidoscopic screed taking in sexual economics, the complexities of racism, graphic bedroom scenes and not nearly quite as much jazz as the genre disciples would have liked.
Mötley Crüe: The Dirt by Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Nikki Sixx and Vince Neil, with contributions from Neil Strauss
(Harper Collins, 2002) Mötley Crüe were the kind of band that thought This Is Spinal Tap was a real documentary and that Hammer Of The Gods – Led Zeppelin's scurrilous, legendary biography – a thrown gauntlet. The debauchery of their 80s tenure is probably unparalleled, and their tale both tragic and hilarious. But perhaps the most insidious revelations concern the human beings behind the cartoon rock pigs: elder statesman Mick Mars's crippling disease and Tommy Lee's razor-sharp wit.
Kraftwerk: I Was A Robot by Wolfgang Flür
(Sanctuary, 2003) The "electronic Beatles" operate an infamously closed shop. After a band schism, drummer Wolfgang Flür broke ranks with core Man Machine duo Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter, who seemed, at that time, to be far more into cycling than music. They then tried to block publication. All of this bad blood lends I Was A Robot an embittered tang. But through Flür – who had a cold, distant father, then two cold and distant bosses in Schneider and Hütter — we discover the fallible creatures of flesh and bone lurking behind Kraftwerk's chrome exterior.
Diary of a Rock'n'Roll Star by Ian Hunter
(Independent Music Press, 1974) While the best rock memoirs usually surprise their audience with the unexpected insights of their addled authors, this almost naive account of Mott The Hoople's time on a US tour in 1972 provides quite different but no less fascinating fare. Hunter writes like he talks – dig?- and instead of detailing endless orgies, he sheds light on the wide-eyed innocence of young dudes far from home. In the entertainment industry, the waiting around is endless, and he documents the tedium and the endless guitar shopping with candour.45 by Bill Drummond
(Abacus, 2000) KLF plotter Drummond is one of British music's most elliptical mavericks, having done unforeseeable things with dead sheep, Tammy Wynette and a £1m bonfire. In his previous book, The Manual, he told how to put art in the charts, which Klaxons (among others) have followed. By contrast, this episodic memoir is far more personal, stitching together middle-aged preoccupations (tea, rambling) with tales of art prankery and unexpected encounters with Serbian agitators. He never quite explains why he burnt the money but you do get a warm glimpse of the cynical romantic behind the Situationist tomfoolery.I Need More by Iggy Pop
(2.13.61 Publications, 1997) Forget the gruesome insurance ads, and feel Iggy stab himself with a pencil. The Stooges are probably still a marginal band in rock's pantheon but they invented punk rock a full decade before time, and their lead singer has endured a trailer-park childhood, institutionalisation, self-mutilation, draft-dodging, a musical partnership with Bowie and quantities of drugs that have banjaxed lesser hangers-on, emerging as more ruminative than damaged. A biopic is still struggling to get off the ground but Pop's life is one lived with eyes agog.
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Alice in Wonderland is Tim Burton having his cake and eating it
25 Febwww.guardian.co.uk
This tale of 19-year-old Alice's return to Wonderland is a feast for the senses – so what if it's only as light and insubstantial as a meringue?
The films of Tim Burton are not so much released as laid on, staged and mounted like lavish masked balls. The interiors are opulent and the tables piled high with all manner of intoxicating delicacies to eat and drink. With Alice in Wonderland, the director may well have outdone himself.
Burton's latest pitches its heroine headfirst on a return trip down the rabbit-hole. At the bottom, Alice runs across murderers, madmen and dragons, but proceeds to treat them all with the same wry acceptance, reasoning this is her dream so she can therefore behave as she pleases. It is an attitude that Burton clearly approves of. The books of Lewis Carroll may have provided his underpinning and inspiration, but he sets about Wonderland with a giddy irreverence. It is his film and he can do what he likes.
Newcomer Mia Wasikowska (a dead ringer for the young Gwyneth Paltrow) plays our lissome Victorian heroine, now nudging 20, who returns to wrest Wonderland from the clutches of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and deliver it back to the White one (Anne Hathaway). Along the way, she meets her old forgotten friends, who initially fear they may have been landed with an impostor ("the Wrong Alice"). If the plot sounds like a rehash of Steven Spielberg's Hook (in which Robin Williams played a middle-aged Peter Pan), rest assured that the similarities are merely cosmetic. Alice in Wonderland is lighter and more playful, juggling its themes of fairytale good and evil until the colours blur.
If anything, Burton appears more enamoured of his turbulent supporting characters than the insipidly beautiful Alice. Johnny Depp gives a lively performance as the cracked and clownish Mad Hatter, while Bonham Carter's Red Queen proves a strident, capricious delight. Staring imperiously from an oversized, computer-generated head, the queen manages the unlikely feat of being at once utterly grotesque and alarmingly sexy.
Alice in Wonderland whisks 3D live action with animation, antique storybook illustrations with the aesthetics of an 80s goth video. Does it amount to anything more than a dizzy whirl? Well, possibly not. Here is a film in which the art direction eats the magic cake and swells to giant proportions, while the script drinks from the magic vial and shrinks away to insignificance. But no one ever looked to Burton for nuanced human drama and stately character development. Instead, we turn to him for flamboyance, spectacle and a benign whiff of madness. Alice in Wonderland provides all that in abundance. It is a glorious feast for the senses that fades away when the credits roll, leaving barely the trace of a hangover.
Rating: 4/5
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Fuel-Cell Powered BMW Bike Concept Revealed
26 FebFast Company
It's fuel cell madness! First Bloom Energy revealed its much-hyped fuel cell-powered Bloom Energy Server earlier this week, and now a group of design students from the ISD of Valenciennes in France have unveiled a slick concept BMW motorcycle powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The bike doesn't physically exist yet, but the students imagine that a lithium polymer battery will store electrical energy, while hydrogen can be stored in a 20 liter cryogenic tank where the engine would normally sit. A 100 kilowatt motor provides propulsion.
The bike may only be a concept, but fuel cell-powered vehicles are poised to explode in popularity. Fuel cell vehicle research is expected to be a $4 billion industry this year, and 670,000 fuel cell light vehicles will be sold each year by 2020. In the meantime, check out the BMW motorcycle video below.
(Via Autoblog)
