[From PC World’s Game On blog]

3D Nintendo DS Rumble, Motion Control Specs Emerge

Matt Peckham
Mar 23, 2010 6:30 pm

Nintendo says it’ll release a 3D version of its DS handheld gaming portable. We learned that much from Nintendo’s official press teaser this morning. But according to Japanese newshound Adriansang, several mainstream Japanese sources are weighing in with claims of tantalizing supplemental specs.… read more. “Nintendo announces 3D DS with rumble, moton control”

[From NextGov (“Technology And The Business Of Government”)]

Defense readies system to treat PTSD, brain injuries remotely

By Bob Brewin 03/22/2010

Thousands of miles and a lack of facilities have kept the Army from providing treatment to soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. But the Defense Department plans to deploy a solution soon that relies on a transportable telehealth system that will virtually bring doctors to patients.… read more. “U.S. Defense readies system to treat PTSD, brain injuries remotely”

[From New Scientist; a :30 video is here]

HDTV reveals brainy octopus has no personality

12 March 2010 by Shanta Barley

Octopuses make for discerning TV viewers: it seems they prefer high-definition to traditional cathode ray images (CRT). What’s more, the first study using video to trick octopuses, finds that they may be the Jekyll and Hydes of the oceans: aggressive one day, shrinking violets the next.

“People have been trying for over a decade to get proper behavioural responses from octopuses and other cephalopods using videos,” says Roger Hanlon, an octopus researcher at the Marine Resources Center, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study. “But this is the first time anyone has managed it.”

Gloomy octopuses (Octopus tetricus) reacted to films shown on liquid crystal high definition television (HDTV) as if they were seeing the real thing, according to a new study by Renata Pronk at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues.… read more. “Octopuses experience presence with HDTV”

[From Gizmag]

Power Gig game uses real guitar controller

By Paul Ridden
March 11, 2010

There’s a Battle of the Bands scenario brewing now that a new contender has arrived on the “play along to your favorite tunes with a game controller instrument” scene. Seven45 Studios has just released details of its new gaming system called PowerGig where the buttoned and plunger interface of the familiar Guitar Hero and Rock Band gaming interface has been tossed out in favor of a real six-string guitar.

Seven45 Studios has taken a more hands-on approach to its game and interface development than most other gaming companies in that it will develop and publish the software and manufacture the hardware. The game is to be called “Power Gig: Rise of the SixString” and will “transport players to an entirely new universe, with its own mythology, politics, settings, heroes and villains, where music rules all”.… read more. “Power Gig game uses real guitar controller”

[From The New York Review of Books]

Volume 57, Number 5 · March 25, 2010

The Wizard

By Daniel Mendelsohn

Avatar
a film directed by James Cameron

[snip]

What’s striking is that so many critiques of Avatar ‘s political shortcomings often go out of their way to elide or belittle the movie’s overwhelming successes as a work of cinema—its enormous visual power, the thrilling imaginative originality, the excitingly effective use of the 3-D technology that seems bound to change permanently the nature of cinematic experience henceforth—as if to acknowledge how dazzling it is would be an admission of critical weakness.[2]

An extreme example of this is to be found in a searching critique posted by the critic Caleb Crain on his blog:

Of course you don’t really believe it. You know objectively that you’re watching a series of highly skilled, highly labor-intensive computer simulations.… read more. “Presence, reality and Avatar”