Josh Conviser- Writer

I'm the author of ECHELON, andEMPYRE (Random House) and am hard at work on my third book. I also write for Hollywood when they let me (HBO's ROME). Check out what I'm researching (translation: cool stuff I find when I should be writing) and whatever else strikes me.

[josh-conviser]

Great vid on the magic of reading from Anne Lamott. This is what I’m showing my friends who don’t read...

[josh-conviser]

I choose anger (by federico.bebber)

[josh-conviser]

Teak from an old ship.

[benmaurodesign]

Hacking.

[jeffsimpsonkh]

photoshop + acrylic http://cghub.com/images/view/197687/

[jeffsimpsonkh]

People often ask to see my process and this is why I don’t show it.  It’s a fucking mess.

[futurescope]

Untethered Miniature Origami Robot Self-folds, Walks, Swims, and Degrades

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This little origami-bot can self-fold from a piece of paper, drive around on water or land driven by a magnetic field and dissolve in acetone. The researchers goal in the mid-term future is an autonomous origami bot with self-folding sensors, operating inside your body.

IEEE has the story:

At ICRA 2015 in Seattle yesterday, researchers from MIT demonstrated an untethered miniature origami robot that self-folds, walks, swims, and degrades. That’s the title of their paper, in fact, and they delivered on all of those promises: from a flat sheet with a magnet on it, their robot folds itself up in just a few seconds, is immediately ready to zip around on land or water driven by magnetic fields, and then when you’ve run out of things to do with it, drive it into a tank of acetone and it’ll dissolve. This is the first time that a robot has been able to demonstrate a complete life cycle like this, and eventually, it’ll be doing it inside your body.

[read more]

[josh-conviser]

A project towards a universal library. By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters.

[sixpenceee]

Lake Sorvagsvatn located in Faroe Islands, between Norway and Iceland. It is 30 meters above the Ocean.

[josh-conviser]

Santa Ynez

[josh-conviser]

Fantastic essay from a great friend!

[josh-conviser]

[dlinezz-blog]

Every morning brings us news of the globe, and yet we are poor in noteworthy stories. This is because no event comes to us without being already shot through with explanation. In other words, by now almost nothing that happens benefits storytelling; almost everything benefits information. Actually, it is half the art of storytelling to keep a story free from explanation as one reproduces it… . The most extraordinary things, marvelous things, are related with the greatest accuracy, but the psychological connection of the event is not forced on the reader. It is left up to him to interpret things the way he understands them, and thus the narrative achieves an amplitude that information lacks. ~Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

(via lucreciasline)

[josh-conviser]

Great vid of the CIA's museum, which I got to visit a while back...

Osama bin Laden’s assault rifle. A singed al-Qaeda training manual. A desiccated rat corpse designed to pass secret messages. A letter from an American operative on a sheet of Adolf Hitler’s personal stationery. A painting of the real story behind “Argo.” And a remote-controlled robotic dragonfly that may be the ancestor of today’s drones.

[treedance]

Thirteen-Year-Old Girl Showing Who’s Boss While Hunting With Eagle on Mongolian Mountain Top

Via BBC.

[josh-conviser]

"Schools as a whole may be going forwards, but nevertheless they are being outrun. In the race between education and catastrophe, catastrophe is winning." H.G. Wells

[josh-conviser]

(via Stunning photos of colossal lightning in massive volcano eruption)