Hasta La Gadget!

Ever wondered why the Pope won’t be your friend on Facebook? Turns out it’s not all that complicated, after all. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI just really isn’t a big fan of the Internet.

The religious leader addressed a crowd of 100,000 followers over the weekend. Asked by a young woman, “How can we learn to love truly?” the Pope used the opportunity to voice his concerns about the Web, stating, “Much love is proposed by the media and Internet, but this isn’t love but selfishness.”

“This isn’t freedom,” the Pope added. “You cannot and should not get used to love that’s reduced to merchandise for barter, to consume without respect for oneself and for others, incapable of chastity and purity.”

I guess Popemobile Foursquare is completely out of the question, huh?

If you happen to be in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park (right next to the historic Flatiron Building) at night, you might catch a glimpse of artist, MIT grad, and self-described “nerd” Jim Campbell’s latest public art project “Scattered Light.”

The work is a three-dimensional, 80ft x 16 x 16 array of 1,600 hanging light bulbs. Up close, the project presents itself as a swarm of shimmying lights. But when taken in
from afar, the viewer is able to make out shadowy figures walking across the
project (the actual video used in the piece consists of footage of people
walking through NYC’s Grand Central Station).

Every bulb in the project is fitted with an LED which is hooked into a central computer and syncs the whole project together. Each bulb acts as a pixel in, what is essentially, a huge television screen that has exploded into three-dimensional space.

The work appears with two other
multimedia works by Campell in the park: “Broken Window,” which is a
large wall of glass tubes that also plays with the concept of
low-resolution images, and “Voices in the Subway Station” which embeds
20 glass panels in the park lawn that light up in synch with audio
recorded inside a New York City subway station.

The works will be
on display through February 2011.

Video after the jump.

via
switched

A Notre Dame junior died yesterday afternoon, while filming a practice for the school’s football team. Twenty-year-old Declan Sullivan was standing atop a portable lift, 50 feet above the field.

Sullivan was clearly concerned by the precariousness of the situation–something he expressed on his Twitter account. The lift collapsed, due to strong gusts. Experts don’t recommend using the device with winds higher than 25 mph–the wind that day was 60 mph. CBS affiliate WSBT called Sullivan’s final tweets “prophetic.”

At 3:22 PM, he tweeted, “”Gusts of wind up to 60 mph. Well today will be fun at work. I guess I’ve lived long enough.”

At 4:06 PM, “”Holy s***. Holy s***. This is terrifying.”

Forty-five minutes later, the lift came crashing to the ground. Sullivan was rushed to the hospital , where he later died. Sullivan’s Twitter account is now locked down.

If you’re already tired of the flood of TRON: Legacy themed gadgets and products showing up on the market, you have a long way to go until the movie arrives in theaters in December. We’ve seen TRON: Legacy mice, TRON: Legacy motorcycle suits, and now Oakley is in the game with these Oakley special edition TRON: Legacy 3D glasses that you can actually wear into the theater to watch the film when you go, presumably on opening night.

The glasses are part of Oakley’s new 3D line of glasses and feature lightly tinted polarized lenses, suitable for indoor and outdoor wear. Oakley promises they’ve produced the first “optically correct 3D eyewear on Earth” with the new glasses, and notes that the secret – in addition to the proprietary technology that’s gone into engineering the lenses – is the curvature of the lenses that provide a wide field of view while minimizing visual distortion. The new TRON limited edition glasses will be available next month at Oakley retailers nationwide for $150 retail.