Ambient devices like the Beacon to the left deliver information in a soft, subtle way. Think about a wall clock or speedometer – you don’t concentrate on it, but merely glance at it occasionally. Ambient Orbs do the same thing: relay information from your periphereal vision. They were originally designed to follow your stock portfolio (red = bad, green = good), but as Clive Thompson points out in Wired, they can be programmed to follow the weather, pollen count, sailing conditions in your area, or more interestingly, monitor your energy consumption.

Or you could just rock out to the Eagles:

Accidents can happen just about anywhere. Have you broken your arm at the arcade? Or maybe chipped your jawbone when controlling your iPod? Not to worry: Tokyo scientists can now make bones with a souped-up inkjet printer.

Cory Doctorow, of the badass Boing Boing team, will be in Japan at WorldCon, a Sci-fi convention held this year in Yokohama. Some of the events sound pretty cool. Just look at the very first one on the program guide: Exomusicology - The Study of Alien Music.

Science fiction has been creating alien cultures for decades, but we rarely think about alien music. Where are there descriptions of alien music in the genre? What might truly alien music sound like? Would we like it? Would we even recognize it?

And would it have a good beat? Could you dance to it?

Cory has posted his schedule on his personal blog

I can’t say enough about the amazingly fun and interesting Radiolab podcast. Imagine the best Discovery Channel-type show you’ve ever seen and then convert it to a radio program that you can stop and start at your leisure (or rewind a bit when a train arrival drowns it out). The latest installment is about emergence, which is basically the theory of how large, complex systems happen almost by accident via thousands or millions of unwitting players. For example, ants: individually, they are incompetent scavengers, but collectively, they are responsible for incredible feats of engineering.

The same ideas can be applied to weather systems, thought processes, google searches and the shape of cities, which made me think of Tokyo: How did it get it’s shape? Why did it spread where and when it did? Most of it was not planned,really, but formed through a series of happy accidents. For example, one guy opens a pizza parlor. It becomes popular, so some other guys opens a shop nearby to get into the action, then another and another and then TA DA! Roppongi is born. No one planned it – it just happened.

Really interesting authors like Steven Johnson (this book is great) and James Surowieki (I’ve mentioned him before) add fascinating examples about how a million small unplanned things can add up to massively amazing accomplishments.

I know Hyungkoo Lee’s Bugs Bunny bones and other cartoon skeletons have already made a lap or two around the net, but after seeing the Kazuo Oga exhibit, it made me wonder about what some of Miyazaki’s characters would look like. I mean, Totoro is a fat bastard, right? What’s holding up all that girth?

What will the world be like if the world looked more like a retirement community? Japan will probably find out first.

The latest episode of the incredibly great Radiolab podcast was about mortality, so naturally there was a segment on Japan – the fastest aging country in the world. They touched on ways Japan is trying to care for legions of senior citizens and keep them happy. My favorite idea is combining a daycare with a retirement community, but one of the most popular options is Paro, the robotic seal. Until kids run on batteries, I’m guessing Paro will retain his number-one spot.