VBS GIVES BIRTH TO MOTHERBOARD.tv

 
Remember way back in spring when we introduced you to Motherboard, VBS.tv's lustrous answer to the drab diaper that is the media's technology coverage? We promised to deliver you an entire brain's worth of intriguing personalities and developments in everything from robotics to video-gaming to the future of music and film-making, noting also that we would forever avoid stuff like steampunk, inane gadgets, and the assorted goings-on inside Silicon Valley boardrooms. On the heels of our success, we're pleased to announce we've taken the job one colossal step beyond: Motherboard, in cahoots with the ever-gracious humans at Dell, has graduated to its own internet web-place: Motherboard.tv!

LONDON - ICE CREAM RAIN

Cat Kramer and Zoe Papadopoulou are artists who know some scientists, and with that combined powerhouse of knowledge they say they've come up with a way to make clouds snow down ice cream amongst the people. Ice cream. Like, mint chocolate chip snowmen and Neapolitan snow angels. Impossible, right? The explanation on their website has a lot to do with cloud seeding, though not with orgone, had us imagining the launch of a delicious rocket and a weatherman forcasting flurries of Cherry Garcia. Even with our limited scientific background, that seemed a bit implausible. We called them to figure out if they were bullshitting.

MONTREAL - VAGINA STRING THEORY

I'm broke, my hours at my shitty receptionist job keep getting cut, and I can't get another one because I'm not Francophone enough. My friends are on luxury vacations, my boyfriend's across the world, and I've read all the books in my apartment. I'm going crazy with poverty and free time. Thank Christ I live in one of the most academic metropolises in North America, where psychology grad students grow on trees and have grants for clinical research studies. They pay $10 an hour to listen to beeps on headphones. Beer money does not get easier. I saw a study that paid a whopping $80 for 4 hours of "clinical visit" time. I called immediately, only to find out it was an orgasm study. 

NUNAVUT - WHAT YOUR PEE WILL BE LIKE ON MARS

Scientists of all types have descended upon Devon Island in Nunavut, up around 75 degrees latitude, because it’s the closest thing on earth that approximates Mars. Like, they even call it Mars on Earth. Elaine Walker spent her summer living up there for the Haughton-Mars project. She’s the Education and Public Outreach Officer for the Mars Institute, so lots of her work is about letting people know about this project and others like it. It basically houses scientists from all over the world who study various aspects of the land and determines how to prepare the human race for the inevitable colonization of Mars. This might just be a very rich fantasy shared by few, but they are very driven people.

BERLIN - CHEERS! GLOBAL WARMING

Here's another reason to feel terrible the morning after binge drinking: you were not only most certainly generating regrets you won't realize you have until later in the evening, you were gulping down the future of the children, not to mention drinking away the whole planet’s future. Beer is a climate killer. After a recent trip to Munich, where we spent a few days' pay on beer for two nights, we decided to figure out exactly what we'd done to the world.

MILAN – HOOKERS, GAYS, DRUGGIES, AND DEATH

Elizabeth Pisani is a smart lady: a journalist-turned-scientist with a PhD in epidemiology who's worked for the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and UNAIDS. She is also the author of the whistleblowing The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS, an international bestseller that outlines the myriad ways in which governments, NGOs, and the United Nations has wasted billions of dollars trying to fight HIV and AIDS because they like to ignore that the disease is largely spread by prostitutes, gay men, and drug injecting folk.

NEW YORK - THE TEACHINGS OF CARL

I first met Carl years ago—where else but on the Internet—through his website, a vast bazaar of world-transforming ideas inside a frames-enabled online church. His boldface insights and CAPS-LOCK "presentations" made me an instant devotee. Determined to share what I had seen with the world, I took on the futile task of sprucing up his creations for mass consumption. I made a pamphlet out of his plan to obtain free energy by putting a giant gyroscope on top of the Earth, and I had his theory about the compatibility of creationism and evolution published in my college literary journal. But it was never easy. Inevitably, our instincts clashed.

TECHNOLOGY ISSUE EXTRA - THE VIRTUSPHERE

Yesterday we told you about a depressed artist living as a hamster; today let’s introduce you to two brothers who got the anthropomorphized rodent concept right...
In eighth grade I wrote a science-fiction story about people living in giant hamsterballs with virtual-reality goggles strapped to their heads. I had just learned the word “dystopian.” Future VR iterations in Lawnmower Man, The Matrix, and Existenz left me cold, but I remained confident that as a society we were on the right track… but nothing came of it. And then these Latypov brothers dreamed up The Virtusphere. On a recent tour of the lab, I expected to stumble into a cybersex sweatshop with immigrants trying to claw their way out of these things, or else find a hyper-intelligent gerbil with VR goggles--the Patient Zero of their operation. Could the Virtusphere be the mass cyber-exodus we’ve all been dreaming about, or is it just another one of those shitty VR machines from the 90s that were a $200,000 cure for a settled stomach? Virtusphere inventor Ray Latypov has the answer.

TECHNOLOGY ISSUE EXTRA - FROM MUSIC VEST TO GRAVITY POWER

At the tender age of 16, Michael J. Waldron spent most of his spare time in Philly, buying up boxes of bootlegged eight-tracks. Once his van was full, he’d drive the them back home to Yardley, PA, where he'd sell them for a small profit at parking lot swap meets. When he wasn’t entrepreneuring, Waldron was teaching himself about electronics. He was obsessed with taking things apart, tinkering with their innards, and putting them back together again. It was only a matter of time before his two hobbies met and spawned one brilliant creation. In 1981, that creation was finally realized: the music vest. It was actually just a vest with a radio in the pocket and speakers in the shoulder, but at the time it was a pretty novel idea and its blueprint has since spawned shameless imitators like the Headphone Hat. Between '81 and '86 the Music Vest made a lot of noise, but it was silenced shortly thereafter due to a Cold War scandal. Seriously. We talked to him about that.

LONDON - FIRST CROP CIRCLE OF THE YEAR

My ma is something of a crop circle “enthusiast.” So with the first crop circle of the year, uh, cropping up in Wiltshire--and on Earth Day, how appropriate/unimaginative--I thought I’d ask her what they’re all about and check in on her level of excitement.