A couple of articles that have caught my eye here in the gloaming of a Friday afternoon:

• A brief piece at Wired about DTS Digital Images (formerly Lowry Digital Images), the preeminent movie restoration house in Hollywood. If you’ve ever wondered who makes those 50-year-old classics look so good on DVD, it’s these guys.
  

  Essentially, technicians scan the original film stock onto the server, then proprietary algorithms figure out what shouldn’t be onscreen — scratches, discolorations, dirt, mold — and digitally remove it, frame by frame. Think of it as an automatic, high-speed Photoshop retoucher.

  Interesting trivia note mentioned in the article: the company’s founder, John Lowry, got his start with image enhancement when he orked on moon footage from Apollos 16 and 17 back in the early ’70s.

• Then there’s the 65-year-old Canadian man who has no pulse or measurable blood pressure after being fitted with a new type of artificial heart. The device creates a continuous flow of blood instead of the start-and-stop surging of a natural heart. I find this notion both profoundly cool — this guy could have up to ten years of life he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and I’d imagine the continuous flow is more efficient than the surging — and also somehow disturbing. The idea that a pulse and a heartbeat are the fundamental signs of life is so deeply ingrained into the human experience that the idea of not having those things and yet continuing to live… well, it strikes me as a little creepy. An irrational reaction, yes, but there you have it. Interesting article, in any event.