IBM builds online version of China's famed Forbidden City

Future to the back; "3D" interactive virtual version of the Forbidden City now open, download it and "walk" around in it. "IBM on Friday opened online doors to a virtual version of the famed Forbidden City in China that served for centuries as an exclusive realm for the...

3D Virtual Reality Environment Developed at UC San Diego Helps Scientists Inn...

Coming soon to your living room; full immersion "virtual reality" extreme sports, action, romance, horror, scifi and shopping"The StarCAVE is a five-sided virtual reality (VR) room where scientific models and animations are projected in stereo on 360-degree screens...

Virtual Reality is As Old As Man

The life of every man has been real and virtual. Virtual reality has been the day to day experience of man maybe not taking full cognizance of this dual experience. There is nothing new under the sun. It is only man ’s ability to actualize this in many different ways that...

"To outlast time..."

Eve Tushnet is going to be reading Hans Urs von Balthasar, of blessed memory, I hope.  His Moment of Christian Witness and Heart of the World are theological and spiritual treasures: and whatever may be the final judgment of history and the Church on the theologian's...

"This persistent, unconstructive, biased approach"

Dr Anne Bayefsky at Eye on the UN comments on Friday's U.N. resolution condemning Israel and U.S. ambassador John Bolton:On November 17, 2006 the UN General Assembly "reconvened" its "Tenth" Emergency Session to condemn Israel. The Tenth Session began in 1997and has now been...

What would we do without the local television news?

This is mildly amusing: "human remains" and John Paul the Great's "Zucchetto" at the Cathedral Basilica of St Anthony in Texas "where every celebration is biggeer than life, even bigger than death".  And it's "recognised" by the Vatican, too.  The reporter is good...

Cannes gets religion?

One doesn't discount reported apparitions of Our Lord or the Blessed Virgin out of hand; on the other hand, some 'events' are more immediately creditable than others.  This nonsense at Cannes, reported in the Evening Standard/Daily Mail, seems pretty much to fall into...

Muslim cab drivers who won't pick up fares with guide dogs

Tim Blair and commenters notice several cases in which Muslim cab drivers have refused to accept passengers who are accompanied by guide dogs.  Dogs are haram, evidently: but fortunately haram is not a concept that is enacted into law in the West, I think: viciously...

Wonders and more wonders

I missed the snail telegraphy at the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society.  And the 1588 rotary reading desk (but I do remember watching Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers--i.e. Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, Michael York et al.--although not the rotary desk in...