i don't like this.

Telenoid R1 minimalist humanoid robot

Researchers from Osaka University have teamed up with the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) to develop a minimalist humanoid robot that recreates the physical presence of a remote user.
Named “Telenoid R1,” the teleoperated communication robot measures 80 centimeters (31 in) tall and weighs 5 kilograms (11 lbs). The portable machine features a soft silicone body that is pleasant to the touch, and it uses 9 actuators to move its eyes, mouth, head and rudimentary limbs.
Data is transmitted between the user and robot via Internet connection
The Telenoid R1 robot is designed to add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of the remote user. The robot’s actions mirror those of the remote user, whose movements are monitored by real-time face tracking software on the user’s computer. Users can also transmit their voice through the robot’s embedded speakers.

Telenoid R1 with Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University)
The Telenoid R1 is endowed with only the most basic human features — just enough to recreate the physical presence of the remote user, according to robot’s creators. The robot’s androgynous and ageless look makes it suitable for a wide range of users, whether they are male, female, young or old.

I find this strangley attractive.

Food company Morinaga has a new product on the market: a canned milkshake drink that tastes like their famous pancakes! Yum.

Just because I want to post it...

I'll let you know...

DIY Kitty Crack: ultra-potent catnip extract

Mark Frauenfelder at 4:20 PM Thu

In this Instructable, talbotron22 shows how to make "Kitty Crack," an ultra-potent catnip extract containing nepetalactone, catnip's active ingredient. One pound of catnip yielded 143mg of nepetalactone.
A note about safety. Yes, it is safe to use this extract on cats. I have looked into it, and there are a number of studies (very interesting in their own right) using pure nepetalactone on cats in experiments trying to figure out why it causes them to go bonkers. The upshot is that it's pretty safe. In the last of the references below, the LD50 of nepetalactone was determined to be 1550 mg/kg (about the same as aspirin), meaning you would have to force feed your average 5 kg cat ~8 grams in order to cause it any harm. So as long as you are reasonable

Rule Britannia

Transvestite had sex with dog in English castle moat
From Britain's Daily Telegraph:

The cross-dressing man was caught with the animal in the dry moat of King Henry VIII's Pendennis Castle overlooking Falmouth Bay in Cornwall. ... As the two ladies spotted the cross dresser he ran away. Later one of [their] dogs chased after the man; by the time the women had caught up, the man was having sex with the pet. Castle staff then restrained the man while police were called.

Some s**t you should know about the "Reagan miracle"

In fact, much the opposite. In 1982, Reagan agreed to restore a third of the previous year’s massive cut. It was the largest tax increase in U.S. history. In 1983, he raised the gasoline tax by five cents a gallon and instituted a payroll-tax hike that helped fund Medicare and Social Security. In 1984, he eliminated loopholes worth $50 billion over three years. And in 1986, he supported the progressive Tax Reform Act, which hit businesses with a record-breaking $420 billion in new fees. When it came to taxation, there were two Reagans: the pre-1982 version, who did more than any other president to lighten America’s tax burden, and his post-1982 doppelgänger, who was willing (if not always happy) to compensate for gaps in the government’s revenue stream by raising rates. Today, a truly Reaganesque leader would recognize (like Reagan) that the heavy lifting was finished long ago; last year, for instance, taxes fell to their lowest level as a percentage of personal income since 1950. And he would dial back the antitax dogma as a result.

 In doing so, a 21st-century Reagan would free himself up to finish a bit of business that his predecessor never got around to: reducing the federal deficit. In the 1980 campaign, Reagan pledged to do three things if elected: lower taxes, win the Cold War, and curb government spending. But in his haste to achieve the first two goals, he abandoned the third. On his watch, federal employment grew by more than 60,000 (in contrast, government payrolls shrank by 373,000 during Clinton’s presidency). The gap between the amount of money the federal government took in and the amount it spent nearly tripled. The national debt soared from $700 billion to $3 trillion. And the United States was transformed from the world’s largest international creditor to its largest debtor.

Hiyaaaaa!!!

Muggers chase victim into crowd of ass-kicking ninjas




Cory Doctorow at 7:18 AM Sat

Three street-muggers in Sydney, Aus chased a visiting med student down an alley and took his iPod and phone. Unfortunately for them, the alley they chased him down was next to the local ninja martial arts school, and a student ninja was lurking in the shadows. He got his teacher, and five ninjas stole out into the night and kicked ninjed the muggers' asses.
Kaylan Soto, a sensei with 30 years' Ninjutsu training, and three of his students raced out of the dojo towards the startled attackers. All five crusaders were clad in the ninja's traditional, all black uniform.
''We would have been just a silhouette,'' one of the ninjas, Steve Ashley, said. ''It was probably the worst place in Sydney where they could have taken him.''
Mr Soto said it took the three assailants a few moments to realise what was going on. When they did, they shot off. ''You should have seen their faces when they saw us in ninja gear coming towards them,'' he said.

Perfect for Congress

Robot eats sewage for energy... and craps too

David Pescovitz at 11:19 AM Fri
Researchers are developing a synthetic stomach for a robot so that it can eat food for power. Developed by the Bristol Robotics Lab, the Ecobot III is not the first robot that employs a microbial fuel cell that uses bacteria to "digest" food as a fuel source. But it is the first that has a system to crap out the waste. Apparently, its current diet is processed sewage containing "minerals, salts, yeast extracts and other nutrients." Eventually, they hope to feed it flies. From New Scientist:
"Diarrhoea-bot would be more appropriate," Melhuish admits. "It's not exactly knocking out rabbit pellets." Even so, he says, it marks the first demonstration of a biomass-powered robot that can operate unaided for some time.
The key to getting this gut to work, says Ieropoulos, is a recycling system that relies on a gravity-fed peristaltic pump which, like the human colon, applies waves of pressure to squeeze unwanted matter out of a tube.

can you dig it?

Skydiver to jump from edge of space

David Pescovitz at 10:25 AM Tue

In 1960, Colonel Joseph Kittinger jumped out of a helium balloon at 102,800 feet in the name of science, setting the world record for the highest and fastest parachute jump. Later this year, an Austrian daredevil named Felix Baumgartner hopes to beat that record by more than 3 miles, also by stepping out of a balloon. From Space.com:
"Right now, the space shuttle escape system is certified to 100,000 feet," said the mission's medical director Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon. "Why is that? Because Joe Kittinger went there. You've got a lot of companies that are vying for the role of being the commercial space transport provider for tourism, for upper atmospheric science, and so on. These systems, particularly during the test and development phase, need a potential escape system, which we may be able to help them provide with the knowledge we gain."
A team of aeronautics experts recently led Baumgartner through a week of testing meant to illuminate any possible weaknesses in his equipment and to familiarize him with the skills needed to navigate the conditions expected to assail him as soon as he opens his vessel door.

Only a few feet above ground in a capsule dangling from a crane on Sage Cheshire Aerospace test grounds in California, Baumgartner practiced exiting and stepping off his hot-air balloon. Even a slight stumble during this step could cause dangerous alterations in his in-flight position only moments later, as well as reduce his chances of actually breaking the sound barrier

I'mmm baaack....

Spent a couple days in nyc walking a manuscript around. People treat you walkin around with a manuscript like you are walkin around with a dead cat. Curious at first. Get a little closer and the won't make eye contact. It's healthy, helps keep things in perspective.

Robot lifeguard. How neat it this!!!!

EMILY the Robot Lifeguard is a motor-powered flotation device that uses sonar to locate drowning persons. Human lifeguards control the device remotely from shore, but it could be independent as soon as 2011. Lifeguards can also communicate with the victim via EMILY's on-board camera and speakers. Although EMILY currently patrols only Malibu's Zuma Beach, famous for its excellent surfing conditions and occasional rip currents, 24 more beaches will soon employ the device, according

Sometimes I feel, I mean literally, not figuratively, that my head will explode.

According to new Internal Revenue Service data announced last week, income inequality in the U.S. is at its worst since the 1920s (before the Great Depression). The top percentile of wealthy Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, up from 19% in 2004, while the bottom 50% of wage earners earned 12.8% that year, down from 13.4% a year earlier.


More interesting are what the views are from within investment banking circles on why the economy acts differently than it used to as wealth is concentrated in a level seen in the States similar to only the 1920s. Below is at least part of the report; a quite fascinating read - I've also attached at the bottom of this post an entry in the Wall Street Journal Blog section from January 2007 - which does a quick summary of the report's findings/opinion. I vaguely remember reading about this at the time, but now in retrospect - after what has happened in the financial system - it is interesting from a totally different prism.
[sidenote: 1 bit of humor - Citigroup listed "financial crisis" as one of the threats to the plutonomy status quo. Oh, irony.]

Now that it has become clear that unlike the 1930s where this historic concentration of wealth was reversed for a good 4 decades post crisis, that this time around a financial crisis is actually serving to concentrate wealth even further, it might be helpful to readers to see how the entrenched money thinks on how to benefit from it. Basically the same way you'd invest in feudal Europe in the 1400s - avoid the peasants, stick with the lords. I don't see this changing anytime soon - as I said in 2007, in time you will not want to have anything to do with the bottom 80% of the country; it won't be a fun place to be. [Dec 8, 2007: Do the Bottom 80% of Americans Stand a Chance?] I think in the nearly 2 years since written, the fissures I spoke about have already begun to widen considerably.

I smell fix...

Hot dog eating ex-champ Kobayashi arrested in Coney Island


Some unexpected news from Takeru Kobayashi, the ex-Nathan's hot dog eating contest champ, this 4th of July weekend: instead of partaking in the competition, Kobayashi showed up as a spectator but stormed the stage in rage after his nemesis Joey Chestnut took the championship again. He was charged with resisting arrest, trespassing, and obstructing governmental administration. He's won the contest six times in the past, but didn't take part this year because of some snafu with the contest organizers — apparently they wanted him to sign an exclusivity clause that would prevent him from doing other competitive eating contests without their permission, which sounds kind of shitty to me.

Just cool

NASA: Robonauts on Moon By 2013




Xeni Jardin at 12:15 PM Thu









This week, NASA announced plans to "land an operational humanoid robot on the moon in 1,000 days." The contractor of choice? Armadillo Aerospace, founded by gaming godfather John D. Carmack (Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, etc.).

Feeling clever?

According to an article about Thomas Edison in the current U.S. News & World Report (October 11, 2004), he had an encyclopedic memory and expected job applicants to have a similar knowledge. The test he administered to every job job seeker had 150 questions; each test was tailored for a specific job. Some of the things college graduates were expected to know:




1.What city in the United States is noted for its laundry-machine making?

2.Who was Leonidas?

3.Who invented logarithms?

4.Where is Magdalena Bay?

5.What is the first line in the Aeneid?

6.What is the weight of air in a room 10 by 20 by 30 feet?

7.Who composed Il Trovatore?

8.What voltage is used on streetcars?



Cabinetmakers had to know:

9.Which countries supply the most mahogany?

10.Who was the Roman emperor when Jesus Christ was born?



Masons were asked:

11.How many cubic yards of concrete in a wall 12 by 20 by 2 feet?

12.Who assassinated President Lincoln?



Edison did not demand perfect scores-merely 90%, which has been likened to having an IQ of 180. Out of 718 college men Edison tested for jobs, only 10% got a "fair" or passing grade. Edison said, "Only 2% of the people think, as I gather from my questionnaire." Magazines, which loved running stories on Edison's employment test, gave Edison pop quizzes with similar questions on a variety of subjects. He average 95

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

But A 1.5 trillion unfunded high end tax cut is fine

RALSTON: How would you have voted on that bill to extend unemployment benefits?




ANGLE: I would have voted no, because the truth about it is that they keep extending these unemployment benefits to the point where people are afraid to go out and get a job because the job doesn't pay as much as the unemployment benefit does. And what we really need to do is put people back to work. So if you want to ease people back into work, what we need is an unemployment benefit that pays part. You know, you go to work, you have something of a safety net, in unemployment. But just to give them full unemployment benefits and then extend those for two years or more gets them not only out of the working class but it also depreciates their skills, so they're not actually able to go out and compete in that workforce, so what we really want, is we want something that stimulates a group of people to go back into what we know as that free market

knock me over with a feather

Fox News advocates shutting down public libraries

Cory Doctorow at 10:44 PM Wed
When I give talks to library groups, I always finish by reminding librarians that they're powerful advocates for fair use and privacy, because "you look like a total jerk when you criticize librarians."
Case in point: this Fox Chicago piece proposing that Illinois shut down its library system:
But keeping libraries running costs big money. In Chicago, the city pumps $120 million a year into them. In fact, a full 2.5 percent of our yearly property taxes go to fund them.
That's money that could go elsewhere - like for schools, the CTA, police or pensions
One of the nation's biggest and busiest libraries is the $144-million Harold Washington Library in the Loop. It boasts a staggering 5,000

The Lord made Texas so everyone else could be smug about something..

 What’s the matter with Texas?

Congressman Joe Barton’s bizarre apology to BP last week is only the beginning. Ditto the newly released Republican Texas State Party Platform ably solidifying its worst stereotypes—calling for the re-criminalization of sodomy and making gay marriage a felony. Since the election of President Obama, the GOP’s Lone Star State delegation has developed a singular record of wingnuttery.
“Stepping off into secession,” said one statewide candidate, “may in fact be a bloody war.”
It’s almost like the conservative contingent from the great state of Texas is trying to embarrass their fellow citizens while providing Democrats with a one-stop-shop oppo file, in terms of nationalizing the campaign. In the last year alone, we’ve seen six members of the Texas Republican delegation—John Carter, John Culberson, Louis Gohmert, Kenny Marchant, Randy Neugebauer and Ted Poe—decide to sign-on as co-sponsors of the ‘Birther Bill’ snaking its way through the Congressional fringe, making them half of the bill’s total support.
We’ve heard Rep. Randy Neugebauer scream “baby killer” at Congressman Bart Stupak after he voted for health-care reform.
We’ve seen Rep. Louis Gohmert take to the House floor to denounce hate crimes legislation by bringing bestiality and necrophilia into the debate: “If you’re oriented toward animals, bestiality, then that’s not something that could be held against you ... which means that you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality. If you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children. You know, there are all kinds of perversions, what most of us would call perversions, some would say it sounds like fun, but most of us would say were perversions and there have been laws against them and this bill says that whatever you're oriented toward sexually that cannot be a source of bias against someone.”
And Texas Rep. Lamar Smith told a group of college students that “the greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack…The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias.” That quote will sound great if we’re attacked again.
Texas Governor Rick Perry rode to victory over the Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson despite—or because—he invoked specter of secession at Tea Party rally, saying: “There’s a lot of different scenarios,” he said. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that? Texas is a very unique place… When we came to the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.” His Tea Party backed challenger Debra Medina went even further, making nullification a core campaign plank (“stepping off into secession may in fact be a bloody war") before imploding over 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Even the Texas Board of Education has been getting into the fun—last month they voted to reconfigure the state social studies curriculum with a conservative ideological agenda, complete with favorable mentions of Joe McCarthy and Phyllis Schlafly. Board member Cynthia Dunbar got the meeting off on the right foot by offering a pre-vote prayer for “a Christian land governed by Christian principles.” Not coincidentally, Creationism has also been making a comeback.
To be fair, it’s not just the Republicans who are getting a bit loopy from the Texas summer heat. The Democrats have a full-fledged Lyndon LaRouche-ite named Kesha Rogers nominated for Congress in Tom DeLay’s old district, running on a platform summed up by the sign she holds up at a busy inter-section: “Save NASA. Impeach Obama.”
America needs Texas sane, or at least not completely deranged. It’s is the second largest state in the nation, a place of beauty, pride and barbeque, the home of icons of independence like Sam Houston, Lyle Lovett and Molly Ivins. It was Ivins who described Texas politics as “the finest form of free entertainment ever invented” and “better than the circus,” but this year the fun under that particular big top is looking more and more like a freakshow, and the clowns are starting to scare the kids.
John Avlon's new book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America is available now by Beast Books both on the Web and in paperback. He is also the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.

WTF

White House guts bill that would rein in CEO salaries; you can stop them


Aaron Swartz has the news of how the White House is trying to gut a piece of legislation (passed by the House and the Senate) that would be key to reining in CEO compensation in large corporations: The current financial regulation bill -- in a provision passed by both the House and Senate -- would change that by allowing shareholders with 5% of the stock to come together and propose additional names for the ballot. But the White House is trying to gut this proposal at the last minute, and they've done it in an incredibly sneaky way -- they removed the letter s from the end of the word shareholders.

Now instead of shareholders whose stock adds up to 3% coming together, you have to be a single shareholder with 5% of the stock all by yourself. And for most big companies, there just isn't anyone like that. Take GE, for example -- its biggest shareholder only owns about 3.4% of the company.
So by removing a single letter, they managed to make this provision completely

Right on, Krugman

Economic reality versus ideology: spending cuts and recovery

Cory Doctorow at 9:59 PM Sun

In this week's New York Times column, Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman debunks the idea of heavy government cuts as a way to economic recovery:
The key point is that while the advocates of austerity pose as hardheaded realists, doing what has to be done, they can't and won't justify their stance with actual numbers -- because the numbers do not, in fact, support their position. Nor can they claim that markets are demanding austerity. On the contrary, the German government remains able to borrow at rock-bottom interest rates.

So the real motivations for their obsession with austerity lie somewhere else.
In America, many self-described deficit hawks are hypocrites, pure and simple: They're eager to slash benefits for those in need, but their concerns about red ink vanish when it comes to tax breaks for the wealthy. Thus, Senator Ben Nelson, who sanctimoniously declared that we can't afford $77 billion in aid to the unemployed, was instrumental in passing the first Bush tax cut, which cost a cool $1.3 trillion.

more reasons to be off the grid

Share Comments 683 Earlier this month, NASA warned that as the Sun wakes up from its "deep slumber," a massive solar storm could wreak havoc on our electronics, from satellites to the electrical grid, causing damages up to 20 times the cost of Hurricane Katrina.

But the Sun isn't the only threat to our electronic lifeline. National Geographic explorers the risk and consequences of the "electronic Armageddon" that could be caused by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) bomb.

An EMP bomb, National Geographic explains, is "a bomb that's designed to go above the atmosphere and release huge amounts of energy," some of which in the form of gamma rays. Such a weapon would cripple electronics, but not kill people.

"In less than a billionth of a second, the electrical intensity on Earth's surface would become so hot that microchips would fry, power lines would overload and the electric grid would collapse," says National Geographic, describing . "Everything with microelectronics in it would stop: your car, your computer, the subway. There would be no electricity."



Learn more about what would happen if an EMP bomb were ever detonated in the video below, then find out more about

This for a odd reason makes me hopeful.

The seed vault, built to protect the world's food supply in the event of a global crisis, is located on a remote Norwegian island in the Arctic Svalbard archipelago. It was built high enough to avoid rising sea levels, and deep enough into the mountain to be able to withstand a nuclear explosion. The vault is kept at a constant temperature of zero degrees.

knock me over with a feather

Ms. Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show "So You Think You Can Dance?", was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone, according to the records. The campaign categorized Ms. Strozzi's payment as "PERSONNEL SVC/EQUIPMENT."

The payment on Oct. 10 made Ms. Strozzi the single highest-paid individual in the campaign for that two-week period. (There were more than two dozen companies that got larger payments than Ms. Strozzi). She easily beat out Mr. Scheunemann, who received $12,500 in the first half of October, and Ms. Wallace, who got $12,000

way to go.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann won the Best Writing award for his tribute to his mother Marie. "A Baseball Fan Named Marie" aired two days after his mother's death.

wonderful....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- BP took measures to cut costs in the weeks before the catastrophic blowout in the Gulf of Mexico as it dealt with one problem after another, prompting a BP engineer to describe the doomed rig as a "nightmare well," according to internal documents released Monday.

The comment by BP engineer Brian Morel came in an e-mail April 14, six days before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 people and has sent tens of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf in the nation's worst environmental disaster

This could save you life! (really it could.)

HOWTO remove a stripped screw with a rubber band

Cory Doctorow at 11:08 AM Sun

In theory, this looks like a pretty good way to cope with a stripped screw: use a bigger screwdriver and insert a rubber band between the tip of it and the screw-head to give you some traction. Never tried it, but it looks sound

In response to a posting on 'Everything in the medicine cabinet has expired."

Two famous quotes attributed to Lady Astor as said to Winston Churchill.

Winston once asked what he should come as to a masquerade party?
    "Sober." Lady Astor replied.
Once at a state function Lady Astor remarked.
    "Winston, If you were my husband I would put poison in your cup."
Winston replied. " I would drink it."

I always suspected....

The error: Abraham Lincoln was not a Republican when he won the 1864 election.



By changing the name of his party to “National Union Party”, Lincoln was able to court Copperhead (War Democrat) voters who would never vote Republican. More than just a name change, he selected the only southern Democrat senator not to resign his seat , Andrew Johnson, to run as vice-president. Despite a convention to raise support for mid-term elections, the Republicans in the party joined the ranks of the radicals. By March of 1867, Johnson was the only Unionist in office that had not defected and it became a splinter group of the Democratic Party although ironically the Republicans kept the name of National Union Republicans for a while and consider it part of their lineage.

Well worth the viewing.

Who would have thought that gangster rap would make the perfect soundtrack to presuppositional apologetics? This teaser showcases the documentary, Collision, to be released on DVD next month. Directed by Darren Doane, the film follows the debate tour of New Atheist author Christopher Hitchens and pastor Douglas Wilson. Both are sharp commentators. Both wield their humour with acerbic edge (say what you will about Hitchen’s bluster and lack of philosophical roots, he is still a witty and often entertaining writer). So an exchange between them is likely to be a fascinating subject for a documentary.



Debates are already a spectacle in and of themselves, with enormous drama and emotional investment (some may even argue that that is all they are). But this kind of film has the ability to take us even further into the drama. With slick cuts and its unique visual style, the film brings a whole new dimension to the event and to the argument that was the focus for the tour (“Is religion good for the world?”). Our culture has a clear obsession with the visual over the abstract and it will be interesting to see whether the film can successfully communicate some of the ideas that inspired the exchange in the first place, or whether the medium will swallow the message and engulf those ideas in the foreground of personalities.



The DVD comes out on the 27th (you can preorder now on amazon). You can also pick up the book there that Wilson and Hitchens both co-authored on the same topic. Also worth reading is their email exchange at Christianity Today.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The more I know. The more I don't want to know.

Deepwater Horizon survivors: "Are you fckng happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen!"

Xeni Jardin at 9:58 AM Tue

Mother Jones continues its excellent coverage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and its aftermath with a piece by Josh Harkinson about eyewitness accounts from workers who were there when the rig blew up:
A prominent Houston attorney with a long record of winning settlements from oil companies says he has new evidence suggesting that the Deepwater Horizon's top managers knew of problems with the rig before it exploded last month, causing the worst oil spill in US history. Tony Buzbee, a lawyer representing 15 rig workers and dozens of shrimpers, seafood restaurants, and dock workers, says he has obtained a three-page signed statement from a crew member on the boat that rescued the burning rig's workers. The sailor, who Buzbee refuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship's bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone. Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, "Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen."
Whoever was on the other end of the line was apparently trying to calm Harrell down. "I am fucking calm," he went on, according to Buzbee. "You realize the rig is burning?"
At that point, the boat's captain asked Harrell to leave the bridge. It wasn't clear whether Harrell had been talking to Transocean, BP, or someone else

Great....

BP's spill plan: they knew where it would go, that ecology would never recover, "No toxicity studies" on dispersants

Karen Dalton Beninato at neworleans.com writes,

I have obtained a copy of the almost-600-page BP Regional Oil Spill Response Plan for the Gulf of Mexico as of June, 2009, thanks to an insider. Some material has been redacted, but these are the three main takeaways from an initial read. The name of the well has been redacted, but if it's not Deepwater Horizon, then there's another rig still out there pumping oil and aimed at Plaquemines Parish.The three big takeaways, excerpted from Beninato's blog post: 1) In the worst case discharge scenario (on chart below), an oil leak was expected to come ashore with highest probability in Plaquemines Parish within 30 days

2) Spokespersons were advised never to assure the public that an ecosystem would be back to normal after the worst case scenario, which we are now living through.

3) Corexit oil dispersant toxicity has not been tested on ecosystems, according to the Oil Spill Response Plan. "Ecotoxilogical effects: No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product."

This is why I want to sell everything, buy kruggerrands and flee north.

It now costs two cents to make a penny, and nine cents to make a nickel. The administration suggested making the coins out of cheaper metals but was blocked buy the coin operated vending machine lobby who did not want to update their machines.

understated genius

The beautiful rubber band-powered artificial butterfly is helping researchers understand the flight of swallowtails. Hiroto Tanaka of Harvard University and Isao Shimoyama of the University of Tokyo built the balsa-wood machine, which boasts thin polymer film wings with "veins" made with a silicon-etching technique. The artificial butterfly enables them to control the flight mechanisms in ways they couldn't do with live butterflies. From Science News:

“We can't ask insects, like ‘Hey, please just flap your wings at 10 hertz,’” Tanaka says... To mimic the way the butterflies might use their front and rear wings together, the researchers created one big wing for each side of the body...

With high-speed cameras, the researchers got enough images of the model’s few seconds of flight for motion analysis. They conclude that by simply flapping its wings straight up and down, the machine recreated the bobbing flight of real butterflies. And by comparing fully veined with veinless wings, the researchers found that veins stiffened the wings and helped them achieve greater lift. The bobbing motion of the body also increased lift to help keep the flier aloft

Evil...

Below is video of Ardi Rizal, 2, who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day.

The Sumatran toddler was first given a cigarette when he was just 18 months old.

I'm not worried about his health, he looks healthy,' shrugged the boy's father Mohammad Rizal.
'He cries and throws tantrums when we don't let him smoke. He's addicted

Amazing

The Curta was conceived of by Curt Herzstark (1902-1988) in the 1930s in Vienna. By 1938, he had filed a key patent, covering his complemented stepped drum, Deutsches Reichspatent (German Empire Patent) No. 747073. This single drum replaced the multiple drums, typically around 10 or so, of contemporary calculators, and it enabled not only addition, but subtraction through nines' complement math, essentially subtracting by adding. The nines' complement math breakthrough eliminated the significant mechanical complexity created when "borrowing" during subtraction. This drum would prove to be the key to the small, hand-held mechanical calculator the Curta would become.


His work on the pocket calculator stopped in 1938 when the Nazis forced him and his company to concentrate on manufacturing measuring instruments and distance gauges for the German army.

Herzstark, the son of a Catholic mother but Jewish father, was taken into custody in 1943, eventually finding himself at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Ironically, it was in the concentration camp that he was encouraged to continue his earlier research: "While I was imprisoned inside [Buchenwald] I had, after a few days, told the [people] in the work production scheduling department of my ideas. The head of the department, Mr. Munich said, 'See, Herzstark, I understand you've been working on a new thing, a small calculating machine. Do you know, I can give you a tip. We will allow you to make and draw everything. If it is really worth something, then we will give it to the Führer as a present after we win the war. Then, surely, you will be made an Aryan.' For me, that was the first time I thought to myself, my God, if you do this, you can extend your life. And then and there I started to draw the CURTA, the way I had imagined it

A is for Away Team, where you should never wear red (mild mannered photographer)


B is for Binary, 1s and 0s in your head (jpstanley)

C is for Cosplay, making cons an awesome place

D is for Doctor, who keeps changing face (great beyond)

E is for Emoticons, that tell you what we’re feeling (neal gillis)

F is for Flickr, whose photos we are “stealing” (tricky)

G is for Gadgets, the way to our heart (slipstreamjc)

H is for Hardware, I took it apart! (jurvetson)

I is for iEverything, love it or hate it (dan dickinson)

J is for Japan, we’re glad Nintendo invaded (oscar mota)

K is for Keyboard, we love every letter (andrew*)

L is for Leias, the more the better! (koadmunkee)

M is for MMORPGs, it’s a magical place (i eated a cookie)

N is for NASA, and the beauty of space (nasa1fan)

O is for Occipital Lobe, we love using our brains (illuminaut)

P is for Programming, ((though lisp is a pain)) (phil_jackson)

Q is for Quilting, and other geeky crafts (athenamat)

R is for Reading, no matter what the path (timonoko)

S is for Science, though the cake is a lie (don solo)

T is for Tabletop, and a 20-sided die (nengard)

U is for Uncertainty, you just never know (neil crosby)

V is for Voltage, oh the places we’ll go! (oskay)

W is for the World Wide Web, it’s more than just porn (shimown)

X is for Xerox, where so much geekiness was born (marc smith)

Y is for Youth, since kids are geeks too (benmcleod)

Z is for Zork, watch out for the grue! (the_tml)

From Chop Shop comes this fantastic "Gundam Calling" t-shirt playing on the Clash's London Calling album cover which itself was a tribute to the design of Elvis's self-titled first album. Available in men's and women's sizes from the Boing Boing Bazaar! "robotRock (or Gundam Calling) Tshirt"

After nearly a month of failed efforts to stop the oil gushing into the Gulf, BP needs to get serious about destroying its well. Nuclear policy scholar Christopher Brownfield on the benefits of a nuclear explosion.

On Day 1 of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, my gut instinct was to nuke the well shut. This was not simply an aggressive urge to brandish the most beastly of weapons in our mighty American arsenal, but a serious way to snuff out an enormous problem that grows worse by the day.
For more than 100 years, explosives have been used to break the necks of runaway oil wells, snapping the long, narrow columns and sealing them shut with tons and tons of rock. Over the last several days, our 24-hour news cycle has pumped us full of excruciating details about the failed efforts to siphon, cap off, and ultimately recover the oil that is gushing into the Gulf. The latest nonsense and false hope, a mile-long pipe designed to divert some of the oil flow, is like putting a 4-inch straw into a 22-inch-diameter fire hose. It's a sordid attempt by BP at drinking its own milkshake. But the problem with this disaster response is that the ideas BP has brought to the table all seem to ignore the simplest solution: permanently destroying the well.

Ahh...yeah

Last week, Noah's Ark Ministries, including evangelical explorers and filmmakers, announced that they had found the remnants of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey. (Read all about the claim in National Geographic.) Of course, this isn't the first group that's "found" Noah's Ark. No, it's at least the sixth in the last 50 years. Over at Discovery News, the Skeptical Inquirer's Benjamin Radford provides "A Short History of Noah's Ark Discoveries." From Discovery:

Interest in the Ark spiked in the 1970s after a man named Georgie Hagopian said he located and climbed on the remains of the Ark at least twice--though he claimed it occurred some 60 years earlier (in the early 1900s) and could offer no evidence to back it up. One of the first people to claim to have found the Ark on Mt. Ararat was a woman named Violet Cummings, who in the early 1970s wrote a book titled Noah's Ark: Fable or Fact? Despite its intriguing title, the claim turned out to be fable, not fact. A few years later, in 1976, yet another man claimed to have discovered the Ark on Ararat, and offered ambiguous photos as proof but nothing more came of it.
Interest waned until the 1990s, when CBS television aired a primetime special titled The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark, which finally offered seemingly definitive proof in the form of an eyewitness who owned a piece of wood he claimed was from the ark. The whole thing turned out to be a huge hoax; CBS and its viewers had been duped

Natali explains how he'll adapt NEUROMANCER and HIGH RISE
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Posted on Monday, May 10th, 2010 20:35:28 GMT by: io9

Posted under: movie news cyberpunk interview scifi horror
Splice director Natali has two huge movie adaptations in the pipeline: William Gibson's Neuromancer, and J.G. Ballard's High Rise. In an exclusive interview, Natali explains to us how he updated and changed High Rise, and his hopes for Neuromancer.
While explaining to us the ideas behind Splice's graphic horror, Natali took some time to update us on how he's transforming High Rise, Ballard's story of class warfare in an isolated building the size of a city, into a movie. And he explained what he hopes audience will experience in his recently announced adaptation of Neuromancer

In 1901, Massachusetts surgeon Dr. Duncan MacDougall attempted to prove the existence of the soul by weighing a person before, and right after, death. He hacked an industrial beam scale so that it could be attached to a hospital bed. Then, he began to seek out a subject in the terminally ill patients at the hospital. First up was a man dying of tuberculosis. According to MacDougall, “The instant life ceased, the opposite scale pan fell with a suddenness that was astonishing – as if something had been lifted from the body.” Apparently, 21 grams was missing from his body. MacDougall reproduced the experiment several more times. The physician's work has become a classic tale that, of course, is still widely cited by philosophers, skeptics, and "believers." And yes, it's MacDougall's experiments that inspired the film 21 Grams too. Fortean Times weighs the truths, half-truths, and unknowns of "the strange deathbed experiment of Dr. MacDougall." From FT:




Deducing exactly what went on in MacDougall’s laboratory after more than a century has passed is no easy task, but a possible insight comes from some written correspondence between MacDougall and Richard Hodgson. These letters (which were later published by the American Society of Psychical Research) start in November 1901, after MacDougall’s first experiment, and continue until May 1902, when the entire project was halted. They contain a full description of MacDougall’s methods, results and the circumstances of all six patients which, when compared with his American Medicine paper, offer some clues to the solution of this mystery.

MacDougall’s letters make it plain that, with the exception of the first patient, all the experiments were beset with problems that may be broadly divided into one of two categories. The first problem was in ascert­aining the exact time of death, an issue that appears to affect patients two, three and six. MacDougall acknowledged this with the second patient, where the period of uncertainty lasted for 15 minutes, but with patient three it is only in his letters that we learn of “a jarring of the scales” made while trying to determine “whether or not the heart had ceased to beat”. Patient six was excluded for other reasons (see below), but in his letters MacDougall remarks that “I am inclined to believe that he passed away while I was adjusting the beam”, which again suggests uncertainty as to the exact moment of death.



The second issue was a problem relating to the measuring equipment itself, which MacDougall himself cited as a reason for voiding the results of patients four and six. However, with the fifth patient the measured drop in weight at death was later followed by an evident malfunction, as the scales could not afterwards be made to re-balance themselves correctly. In any object­ive experiment this uncertainty would have voided the result, but at no point does MacDougall question the reliability of his set-up. Thus, of the six patients, just one (the first) appears to have been measured without mishap, but repeated troubles with the equipment and with determining the moment of death perhaps casts doubt on even these results. Thus, rather than trying to find a physical cause for the loss of weight at death, it is conceivable that there was no loss of weight at all, or that it might not have coincided with the moment of death. Only a complete retrial with human patients will answer these questions, and that has so far not been forthcoming

Space cowboy

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal independently confirmed that they heard Reagan  tell a moving story about having filmed the death camps. Even though he never left the United States during wartime. According to Reagan aide Michael Deaver, just because Reagan may have viewed "footage shipped home by the Signal Corps" and "saw the nightmare on film not in person," that "did not mean he saw it less." Yikes

Have you ever noticed how incompetent people are often incredibly confident? Meanwhile, highly-skilled folks underestimate their ability to perform. That's called the Dunning-Kruger Effect named for Justin Kruger and David Dunning of Cornell University who published their study of the cognitive bias in a 1999 scientific paper. ABC Radio National's The Science Show recently explored the Dunning-Kruger Effect. According to the scientists, "Overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it." ABC Radio National's The Science Show recently explored the Dunning-Kruger Effect:



Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1995. A local man, McArthur Wheeler, walks into two banks in the middle of the day and robs them both at gunpoint. Making away with the cash, he is arrested later that evening. Back at the station police sit him down and show him footage from the banks' security cameras. Wheeler can't believe it, the cameras had somehow seen through his disguise. He was seen mumbling to himself, 'But I wore the juice.' His was no ordinary disguise; no balaclava, mask or elaborate makeup, just lemon juice, liberally applied to the face. He was certain that the squirt of citrus would render him invisible to security cameras.

Charles Darwin once said, 'Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge,' and Dunning and Kruger seem to have proven this point. In light of this, it suddenly becomes clear why public debate can be so excruciating. Debates on climate change, the age of the Earth or intelligent design are perfect real-life examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It beautifully explains the utter confidence of those who, with no expertise, remain stubborn in their views regardless of overwhelming evidence. It makes you want to shake them by the collar and scream about how stupid they are. But evidence shows that's not the best strategy.

got to have one

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order..."


Here at ThinkGeek World Domination Headquarters, there is only one pizza delivery place we ever call. CosaNostra Pizza. The order always shows up in less than 30 minutes. The pie's still warm, in pristine condition, protected by its corrugated-plastic carapace. Best of all, our local deliverator shows up in his massive car wearing a ninja-black activated charcoal uniform. None of those crappy polo shirts and baseball caps with the corporate logo or the VW Rabbit with the neon sign perched precariously on the roof.



If you don't know what we're talking about by now, this shirt is probably not for you. But if you're curious, read on. The first chapter of one of second generation cyberpunk's seminal works, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, follows Hiro Protagonist on a run as a pizza delivery guy for the mafia. The chapter is visceral, gritty, and perfectly paints the picture of the novel's future world which feels simultaneously absurd and feasible. We thought it only fitting to make a t-shirt in honor of the CosaNostra Pizza chain, Stephenson's fictional creation which served as the baptism into cyberpunk for so many of us.



Zoom to be sure not to miss the shirt's details. The basics? Black, 100% cotton t-shirt. Text reads, "CosaNostra Pizza" with "#3569, proudly serving the Valley burbclaves" printed underneath

about time

Fan updating David Lynch's "Dune" with modern FX

Craig Engler at 2:15 PM Saturday

Craig Engler is general manager and senior vice president of Syfy digital. He twitters from @Syfy.

Sasha Burrow is working on a "fan-edit" of David Lynch's Dune to recreate some of the film's more outdated special effects. The picture above is what his version of a 2nd Stage Guild Navigator could look like.
The project started out simply but has steadily grown in scope, and now Sasha is looking for help from other contributors:
The project initially began as an endeavor to build a "proper" ornithopter - one with flapping wings, that neither the movie or the mini-series managed to achieve. However, with the advent of the "fan-edit" the scope of the project has expanded with the goal of updating the effects in all those places in the movie where I feel things could be significantly "improved."
Although I am currently working on this by Myself, it's a large undertaking and if there is anyone interested in helping this project along, feel free to contact

surprise

Hearing prayer shuts off believers' brain activity


David Pescovitz at 9:22 AM Monday

When some religiously devout people hear a charismatic healer speak the word of god , the regions of their brains involved in skeptical thinking and vigilance appear to shut down. Uffe Schjødt of Aarhus University in Denmark and his colleagues scanned the brains of Pentecostalists while they listened to recorded prayers from non-Christians, "ordinary" Christians, and a healer. The brain activity changed only in response to prayers they were told came from the healer. According to Schjødt, the same deactivation may occur in response to the words of physicians, parents, politicians, and other charismatic leaders. The researchers published their results in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. From New Scientist:
Parts of the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, which play key roles in vigilance and scepticism when judging the truth and importance of what people say, were deactivated when the subjects listened to a supposed healer. Activity diminished to a lesser extent when the speaker was supposedly a normal Christian.
Schjødt says that this explains why certain individuals can gain influence over others, and concludes that their ability to do so depends heavily on preconceived notions of their authority and trustworthiness.

Pee Wee's Playhouse meets the apocalypse, complete with zombies in ROSE 3-D

Posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 21:30:59 GMT by: quietearth
Posted under: zombie movie apocalyptic news horror comedy
I think I just had a wet dream. John Skipp is planning a 3d horror comedy which is described as "Pee Wee's Playhouse meets Night of the Living Dead". Do I really need to say more? Wait, read the synopsis:
48 hours into the undead apocalypse, one woman has managed to stay on the air. She's a hot ex-mental patient with a message of hope, a baseball bat, and her puppet friends.
Welcome to "Rose's Place": where the songs, skits, and rescue stations run all night long or at least until the zombies get in.
F*** YES! They've raised about a third of the money they need, so go to their homepage and help out!
Someone take money from all those bull**** Hollywood remakes and get this one done, NOW!

Horrifying

The Deepwater Horizon disaster Maggie Koerth-Baker at 6:55 PM Monday Americablog has a breathtaking series of photos, taken by a DOE contractor, that show the final hours of the Deepwater Horizon.
Also worth taking a look at: The Times-Picayune's animation of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which shows the blob growing and shifting on the waves.