Archive for 2009
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[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 23, 2009 by admin in Technology
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Doomsday Machines and Autonomous Man Killing Robots
I’m convinced that when mankind finally meets its end at the mercy of machines, it won’t be in an apocalyptic “supercomputer decides human race is dangerous and must be destroyed” manner as in films like Terminator Salvation
, The Matrix
, or Colossus – The Forbin Project
. No, you and I know that when machines finally destroy mankind it will more likely be the result of a programming glitch or faulty equipment containing cheap electronic parts made by slave labor in China. Like maybe a programming glitch in the Soviet Doomsday Machine that no-one, including top US government officials seems to know existed. Yes, it seems that as absurd as the film Dr. Strangelove
was in so many ways, even the line where Dr. Strangelove points out to the Russian ambassador that “Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is LOST, if you keep it a SECRET!” had a basis in reality. The Russians did have a Doomsday Machine, and they did keep it a secret. The Wired doomsday article just linked to is not breaking news, in fact Slate and Wired both covered the story in 2007, and the book The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy
also apparently chronicles the creation of the doomsday machine in 1984 at the height of cold war tension, when the Doomsday Clock was the closest it’s been to midnight since 1952. And if it isn’t the Doomsday Machine, there are plenty of other ways for us to meet our end at the hands of machines. Imagine if an army of autonomous battlefield devices (a nice way of saying “man killing robots”) that are being developed, like the Lockheed Martin Multiple Kill Vehicle (video clip below) the Robotex AH Battlefield Robot or the Boston Dynamics BIGDOG Robot downloaded the latest Windows Update and went on a mindless man killing rampage. Read the rest of this entry »
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 22, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
You think you’re reading this, but maybe you’re only DREAMING that you’re reading this. Lucid dreaming is a powerful tool. So powerful in fact, that I’m not sure I actually wrote this.
Don’t worry Lucy. It’s only
a dream. Take control of it! |
As someone who entered their teens at the dawn of the New Age era, I was exposed to lots of crazy things like EST, Carlos Castaneda
, and the sight of post-hippy nutjob entrepreneurs standing in bookstores’ newly-created self-help sections muttering “OM” to themselves. By the mid 80′s, although I had – for better or worse – integrated a lot of this stuff into my daily experience, I jokingly referred to myself as “Post New Age”. For a brief time I even opportunistically bought quartz crystals at about $5/lb and turned them over at a hefty $20 per crystal to people who believed they had magical powers. In spite of my original fascination with all these metaphysical meanderings, I ended up with a more cynical spirit for a long time, or at least a more pragmatic one. However, some of these crazy ideas ended up becoming scientifically documented, and amongst these was one of my favorites: Lucid Dreaming. I so completely integrated this concept into how I sleep, think and dream, that I forget that others have never even heard of it. Which is why I was surprised to run across the post Lucid Dreaming: A Beginner’s Guide on Tim Ferriss’ blog (he’s the guy that wrote The 4-Hour Workweek
) that passionately extols the virtues of Lucid Dreaming. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Ferriss is into it, I guess if you only work four hours a week, you have plenty of time to dream and sleep. In any case, his post sent me on a refresher course; I had no idea that one of the first scientists to seriously study lucid dreaming – Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. -went on to form the Lucidity Institute, and that the concept actually is a documented phenomena with such an extensive history. If you’re interested in learning more about LaBerge’s work with lucid dreams, check out his book Lucid Dreaming
, or check out the very thorough Lucidity Institute FAQ. Me? I’m going back to sleep. If I’m not already. Sweet dreams!
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 21, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Popular Media
Monday, September 21st, 2009
Today is the global premiere of The Age of Stupid, a dystopian eco-film that the New York Times is calling a sterner and more alarming polemic than An Inconvenient Truth. But is it based on solid science?
In spite of being almost foolishly utopian in nature (I genuinely like to believe humans will come to their senses, commingle, and create a beautiful single race blended from all of the current allegedly separate ones) I still loves me a good dystopian film now and then. Which is why I’m disappointed that I’ll probably miss the special global premiere of The Age of Stupid today. In spite of some complaints from the more level-headed members of the progressive scientific community that the film’s heavy-handed assertions about the end of the world as we know it are poorly supported by science, it looks like a thought-provoking film. It’s also getting decent reviews from sources like Wired and the NYT. The clip featured here, for instance, provides an amusing and brief history of war, which, as the clip points out, is always over resources. They move quickly through war for animals, war for water, war for “shiny things”, war for fertile land, war for “nutmeg slice and tea”, and finally diamonds, slaves and oil. The global premiere of the film – which takes place today and tomorrow – will feature a “green carpet” solar-powered cinema tent in New York, and will be linked by satellite to 442 cinemas across the USA (find a theater here) and to more than 200 cinemas abroad. Special guests include the likes of Kofi Annan and Thom Yorke of Radiohead. The film was put together by Franny Armstrong, director of McLibel
and founder of 10:10, a UK non-profit. It was crowd-funded by 220 people who donated between £500 and £35,000 each. Read the rest of this entry »
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on September 20, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
Why I wish I were having Chinese tonight.
I’m not generally prone to star-struck fanboy-ness, idol worship, and fantasizing about romance with movie stars, but Bai Ling has changed all of this. I had seen her name and random photos in the media on occasion, but wasn’t aware of her remarkable depth as an actress* until seeing her performance as a crack whore in the over-the-top but definitely-worth-a-watch Crank 2: High Voltage
. Maybe it’s just her archetypal Chinese beauty. She looks like an ancient stylized rendition of a royal warrior, partly because of her strangely-proportioned nose, which I could gleefully ski down, and partly because of the way her bangs frame the gaze of her disturbingly asymmetrical eyes. Or maybe it’s her musical talent. You haven’t really experienced the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” until you’ve seen Bai Ling performing it. Or maybe it’s her nipples, which she seems to be obsessed with herself. In this Mr. Skin interview (NSFW), she’s asked what the favorite part of her body is, and she replies: “Probably you already know. My nipples! Once in Asia they asked me ‘what are the windows to the soul?’, and the word ‘nipples’ almost came out of my mouth. But then I swallowed and said, ‘The eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul.’ And that’s true too. But sometimes after I get out of the shower I look at my nipples and think, ‘Wow, they’re provocatively something else.’ I feel like they do not belong to me. They’re supposed to be like an African woman’s nipples. They’re something sexy.” But really I think it’s because Read the rest of this entry »
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on September 19, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
It’s probably going to be a long time before Talk Like a Pirate Day and Rosh Hashanah coincide, so let’s talk for a moment about Jewish booty.
If I were an idiot savant, I’d tell you when Rosh Hashanah and Talk Like a Pirate Day will coincide again. But I’m not, so I won’t. But I will suggest that this rare event may be a good time to place your advance order for the book Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom–and Revenge
, due for release November 3. Yes, apparently there were Jewish pirates, including Jean Lafitte (aka The Buccaneer). For some reason this fact was overlooked in the 1958 film The Buccaneer
starring Yul Brenner. Other holidays remaining this month include the rest of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which continues through October 15. Strangely, in spite of the GOP’s apparent disdain for Hispanics themselves, they like the culture; the observance was initiated by Ronald Reagan, of all people. Also in September we have Native American Day, which we as we pointed out previously sort of supercedes “Citizenship Day” on the 17th somehow. And on September 27 we have Yom Kippur, on which all the Jewish pirates will presumably atone for their wrongs.
