Slate has an interesting summary/review of Milton Rokeach’s book, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti
Rokeach’s book is one of the more fascinating works of psychology I’ve read. I’d put it up there with When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of A Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World
Basically, Rokeach found three men in an asylum, each of whom believed he was Jesus Christ…and then put them together to see what happened.
The NYT, of all places, has taken notice of one of my favorite projects: the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK).
CHDK is basically alternative firmware for the Canon PowerShot cameras that allows you to expand the camera’s capabilities. For example, you can store images in RAW format rather than JPEG, set the camera up to do time lapse photos, or do motion detection…or even write your own software in the CHDK development language.
Even better, CHDK isn’t a permanent modification; if you want to put the camera back the way it was, all you have to do is take the CHDK firmware off the SD card, or swap in a different SD card.
The CHDK Wiki is here. I’m hoping to spend some more time working with CHDK now that school’s out. I’d be interested in hearing from folks who are already working with CHDK.