The Reality™ Institute

Reality™ Blog

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  The Future of Stuff: Vending Machine That Prints in 3-D
  By Tim Maly, wired.com

  No mat­ter how fast postal deliv­ery gets, noth­ing beats the imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion of push­ing a but­ton on a vend­ing machine and hav­ing your pur­chase tum­ble down into the deliv­ery box. The Chi­nese live crab dis­penser and Art-O-Mat…

  05/22/12

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  Gesture Controls Get a Huge Boost with New ‘Leap’ Interaction System
  By Roberto Baldwin, wired.com

  Tech­nol­o­gy is always chas­ing after sci­ence fic­tion. Star Trek com­mu­ni­ca­tors became the cell phones in our pock­ets, and the wire­less in-ear head­set Uhura wore even­tu­al­ly became the Blue­tooth head­set. And now the futur­is­ti…

  05/22/12

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  Murder for fun and “morale”: Shocking video of lethal Israeli attack on sleeping Palestinian prisoners
  Shahd Abusalama, electronicintifada.net

  The cam­era fol­lows heav­i­ly armed Israeli secu­ri­ty per­son­nel raid­ing a prison dor­mi­to­ry, shout­ing at the pris­on­ers to get out of bed, and that they would be shot if they didn’t obey orders.

  The pris­on­ers can be heard scream­ing i…

  These are scenes from a video that was shown in April 2011 by the investigative program Ouvda on Israel’s Channel 2 television station. The violent attack it records against the Palestinian prisoners on 22 October 2007 was real, but it was carried out as a “training exercise” for Israeli security personnel at Ketziot Prison to boost their “morale” and “motivation.”

  05/21/12

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  Chicago terrorism charges part of NATO ‘climate of fear’
  cbc.ca

  Defence lawyers say Chica­go police have vast­ly trumped up charges against three men arrest­ed ear­li­er this week, as part of a cam­paign to fright­en peace­ful pro­test­ers away from a NATO sum­mit.

  But defence lawyers shot back that Chicago police had trumped up the charges to frighten peaceful protesters away, telling a judge it was undercover officers known by the activists as “Mo” and “Gloves” who brought the firebombs to a South Side apartment where the men were arrested. “This is just propaganda to create a climate of fear,” Michael Deutsch said. “My clients came to peacefully protest.” On the eve of the summit, the dramatic allegations were reminiscent of previous police actions ahead of major political events, when authorities moved quickly to prevent suspected plots but sometimes quietly dropped the charges, or lost the cases in court, later. Toronto computer expert Byron Sonne’s ordeal stemming from the G20 summit there two years ago is just the latest example; Sonne spent 11 months in jail on bomb-plot accusations before being cleared of all charges this week by a judge who found he had no ill intent whatsoever.

  05/21/12

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  NATO protests in Chicago: Police van drives into protesters, web video reporters detained, held at gunpoint (photos+video)
  Xeni Jardin, boingboing.net

  “Occu­py” move­ment par­tic­i­pants and an array of protest groups are among those gath­er­ing in Chica­go this wekeend to demon­strate out­side the NATO sum­mit. Sun­day, pro­test­ers are ramp­ing up for the largest demon­stra­tion of the week­en…

  05/21/12