jrtom

via /.: Randy Pausch is a VR researcher who's done all sorts of cool stuff, and is now dying of pancreatic cancer at age 46.

This is a video of his last lecture: http://cmu.edu/uls/journeys/

in which he talks about his childhood dreams (including experiencing zero gravity and working as a Disney Imagineer), how he's achieved them (and what he got out of them), and what it's been like to help his students achieve theirs.

It's about 2 hours long, and I haven't watched the whole thing yet. But it's worth watching even if you don't give a rat's ass about VR: he's a good speaker, it's not at all a technical talk, and seeing someone with a terminal illness that can still be this cheerful is, well, inspiring and thought-provoking.

Here's a YouTube version of the above talk, cut into 10-minute segments: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2271329759182712042&q=Randy+Pausch&total=19&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

and here's a news article that talks about the lecture, if you don't have 2 hours to spare:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07262/818671-85.stm

Randy's home page: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

Update: OK, I've watched the whole thing now. Seriously, go watch it. I was truly moved.

Experiment Gives Illusion of That Shrinking Feeling

Basically, by stimulating certain nerves, you can make people think that their body is moving when it's not, and thus foster such illusions as that your nose is getting longer, or that you're getting thinner.

An interesting step towards immersive virtual reality.