Giant Woolly Mammoth Clones To Invade Tokyo Within Six Years
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 20, 2011 by admin in Technology
Professor Akira Iritani may very well succeed at cloning a Woolly Mammoth. Hasn’t this dude seen Jurassic Park or Godzilla?
 Delphine Chanéac as a toddler |
Could someone please send Professor Akira Iritani – the guy who’s all excited about cloning a Woolly Mammoth – a copy of The Lost World – Jurassic Park
Unlimited Oil Supply From A Bacterium?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 19, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
A biotech firm has patented a bacterium that essentially consumes carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight, and excretes fossil fuels. But is an unlimited supply of fossil fuels the way to a cleaner, more efficient future?
A friend once told me that he used to work in a warehouse, and one day all the guys he worked with were sitting around talking about what they would do if they won the lotto. They started making jabs at each other, joking about really expensive things they would do to mess up each others’ work day. Eventually, with no sense of irony or humor whatsoever, one of the guys said “Yeah? Well I’d buy my OWN damn hi-lo so I wouldn’t have to share it with you jerks anymore”. This story sprang to mind the other day when I read that a biotech firm called Joule Unlimited received a patent last fall for genetically modified E. coli bacteria that needs only sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to enable it to excrete ethanol or hydrocarbon fuel. You read that right. A germ that lives on CO2, water and sunlight, and craps gasoline. Of course, it’s not that simple; there’s still a need to refine the compounds it excretes into usable fuels, but the company claims that once production is established, it will be able to produce 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year, at a price that is competitive with conventional fossil fuels. To frame this in way that one can more easily visualize, they claim that they would be able to provide for all of the United States’ fuel needs annually in an area the size of the Texas panhandle. Okay. Who knows if this is actually true; we hear about some kind of miracle solution to the world’s energy problems about every year or so. But assuming it is true, WHY ON EARTH would you focus this kind of engineering genius and the resources required to create AN ENDLESS SUPPLY OF FOSSIL FUEL? To me it sounds a lot like that guy at the warehouse. The idea that using just sunlight, CO2 and water, we can create usable energy is kind of miraculous, isn’t it? I mean, except for the part where that energy eventually comes from petroleum again, which could create the pollution that blocks the sun that….oh, never mind. I’m no engineer, but it seems to me that the road to a cleaner, more efficient future wouldn’t be paved with a limitless supply of oil. Feel free to enlighten me if I’m spewing a geyser of ignorance here.
10 Songs That May Make People Cry
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 18, 2011 by admin in Music
Music is magical if only for the fact that it makes humans dance around with nothing more than subtle vibrations of air, but things get even more interesting when it makes their eyes leak salt water. Are there songs that make YOU cry?
 This is Anna Karina, after listening to my compilation. |
I’ve often said that one of the reasons I love music so much is that it’s virtually indistinguishable from magic. How else do you explain the fact that by sending subtle vibrations into the air, you can make humans gyrate uncontrollably, tap their toes and fingers, or even march to war. While these audio-induced rhythmic nervous system reactions seem easily explainable as a simple stimulus/response process, you can also use these subtle vibrations to cause less predictable responses, like the release of salt water from their eyes. To me, the latter is perhaps the most intriguing result of these subtle vibrations of air, because although humans usually reserve this release of fluid from the eyes for moments of sadness or physical pain, when a person cries in reaction to a piece of music (unless of course they’re just crying because it’s a really horrible Justin Bieber song) it can be nearly impossible to determine if they’re crying because they’re happy or sad, inspired, proud of their country, or some mixture of all of these feelings and more. I got the idea to compile this list more out of curiosity regarding what makes *other people cry, but once I got going, I got a little obsessed, and perhaps a little embarrassed. I had forgotten, for instance, that I had a playlist called “Music To Hang Yourself By”, or that a song by a band with a name like “Goo Goo Dolls” could make me cry. A lot of more obviously sad songs have little effect on me; frankly, the best way to ensure that I don’t cry when I hear a piece of music is if the tune starts off by saying something descriptively sad in the lyrics. I find it more effective when the singer first claims they’re doing just fine, and then rips it up, implying with plaintive wailing – but never admitting – that suicide will be their only salvation. Below are just a few tunes that are likely to jerk a tear from my eye. I included a few obvious ones like “Hallelujah” and “Crying”, and a few cheesy ones for sentimental reasons, but omitted many, many more, mostly because I’d like to know what makes YOU cry. So give it up. What makes you weepy? Read the rest of this entry »
Endhiran: Invasion of the BollySnatchers
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 17, 2011 by admin in Popular Media
What do you get when you fuse Bollywood, the entire robot science fiction lexicon, and rock opera spectacle? Endhiran. Probably the most entertaining three hour film ever to be filmed with Tamil dialogue.
I Don’t Hate Guns, I Just Feel Better When They’re Not Around
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 16, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
With Over 190 million guns in America, they’re not going away any time soon. Maybe if we called it “gun approval” legislation instead of “gun control” legislation, the typical gun owner would get less up in arms about registering their weapons.
 Do you really feel safe knowing guys like this have unrestricted access to guns? |
For most of my life I’ve held the belief that the world would be a better place without guns. I’m enough of a realist that I don’t have any hope of that being the case in my lifetime, but the topic is still of some concern to me, because while I have little interest in having one in my own hands, I have even less interest in having one around if it’s in someone else’s hands. Before I go on, I should point out that as a youngster growing up on a farm, I had the opportunity to handle a variety of guns, including rifles, shotguns, and even a couple of revolvers. I also had the chance to shoot an Uzi once, and can tell you from firsthand experience that it’s quite an amazing little machine. The opportunity to handle and shoot guns in a responsible fashion like this is in fact why I don’t believe we need them around. My use of the word “believe” is quite pertinent to the topic; I think it safe to say that the pro and anti gun debate will stew for quite some time, largely because the logic behind most arguments on either side is usually based on sentiment, not objective fact. I would feel a lot more comfortable with most gun advocates, for example, if they were just more honest about their motives for gun ownership. The most commonly cited reason for owning a gun is self-defense. Which is a bit ludicrous, in my view; self-defense against a gun would be wearing Kevlar Long Johns. Firing a gun in “self defense” is actually hostile retaliation if the attacker shoots first, and flat out hostility if they don’t. Just explore the Han Shot First debate if you don’t get what I mean. If gun owners could actually just come clean and say they enjoy the feeling of power a gun gives them, I’d feel a lot more comfortable, because at least then I’d know the person in control of this tool of violence and destruction was not self-deluded. A soldier, for instance, knows why he has a gun – if called to action, he’s going to use it to injure or kill someone, and he’s trained accordingly. And the hunting argument feels a little feeble to me too. The food supply we have via commercial animal slaughter provides more than enough meat for everyone, and shooting Bambi’s mom or dad from a few hundred yards away is hardly what I’d call “sportsmanship”. Sportsmanship would be stalking the prey and taking it down with a buck knife. On the other side of the debate, I think there’s a general failure of reason; with over 190 million guns in the United States and a highly profitable industry producing more than 4 million more annually, they’re not going away any time soon. And the fact that it’s a typical gun owner’s belief that it’s a God-given right to own one suggests that firearm restrictions and prohibitions would have effects similar to prohibitions of mind-altering substances; i.e.: the problems would persist and perhaps evolve into even more complex problems. And while I find myself a bit awkwardly aligning with many gun advocates regarding the logic behind our constitutional right to bear arms, I’d hasten to point out that if civil unrest reached a level where we were violently resisting our own government, the authority of the constitution itself would reasonably be in question, and I might be first in line at the armory to preserve our freedoms. But in my opinion, the main problem with gun ownership in America is that there are so many cultural problems underlying the gun problem that legislation will remain an emotional, divisive, highly politicized issue for some time to come. Having lots of guns around doesn’t intrinsically mean high crime rates; Switzerland is commonly held up as proof of this fact. However, Switzerland has neither the poor standard of living nor the complex cultural diversity we have in America. But the comparison is useful in one way; the politicized language of “gun control” instantly evokes a dissonant chord for a gun owner, because power and control are intrinsic to their desire to own a gun. Maybe if we called it “gun approval” legislation instead of “gun control” legislation, the idea of registering firearms would be more palatable to those who want to own them. I certainly don’t want to take your gun away; although it’s clear to me that a gun has no purpose other than death or destruction, it’s not guns that kill people, it’s people. The guns just make it a lot easier, as Eddie Izzard points out below. Read the rest of this entry »