On Saturday night SymbioticA will be talking about some of their past projects, such as growing humane leather from individual skin cells and using a rotating micro-gravity bioreactor to create an actual human ear.

In your own home!

Grow your own skin class this Sunday in LA - Boing Boing

The scene was as spectacular as it was anachronistic: flames, sweat and liquid iron mixing in the smoke like something from the Middle Ages. That’s what attracted the interest of a photographer who often works for The New York Times — images that practically radiate heat and illustrate where New York’s manhole covers are born.

This is amazing.

New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India - New York Times

Although Joe Klein dutifully published the talking points he was being tendered by Republican strategists -- that the House Democratic version of the legislation "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court" and "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans" -- that was manifestly not the case, as Klein could have learned in a few minutes had be bothered to read the bill, or to contact folks on the outside who had bothered to do so.

This was in Time Magazine.

Balkinization: What this Joe Klien drama is all about.

Pretty neat video of mountain-wingsuit diving. They look like flying squirrels.

Biertijd.com // Media � Mountain Wingsuit

Heh. :)

XKCD: Virus aquarium

Dagmar wrote:
So, I'm already looking into transferring a significant amount of my assets into gold. Anyone got any suggestions/pointers?

I think this is both too paranoid and not paranoid enough.

Its too paranoid because I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that as an investment vehicle. In fact, stocks may perform well once the contraction in growth is priced in (which hasn't fully happened yet). The prudent thing to do is to work with a professional money manager, but of course you have to have a lot of money in order to get help like that.

Its not paranoid enough because the real reason to hold gold is because you are worried about total economic collapse of the sort experienced in Germany during the great depression. In such a case, a record in a computer indicating that you own gold is worth less than the magnetic disk it's printed on. You have to physically possess the gold. This creates a security and logistics problem...

I met an old German man on a plane a couple months ago who collects gold coins... Not because he is interested in them, but because he sees it as an insurance mechanism in the event of a cataclysm. I told him that I hope things like that don't happen anymore. When I got home I googled US gold coins. You'd be amazed what a single gold coin marked $5 goes for new.

Anyone else got any investment advice for Dagmar?

RE: Wake up to the dangers of a deepening crisis

This lo-res 8.5MB (6min 45sec) video looks through the HUD (Heads Up Display) on the flight deck. You hear the flight deck audio of the three astronauts interacting.

The video starts at about FL830 (83,000 ft),

260 Kts, Mach 2.5 velocity and 1.1 Gs.

You'll hear the term HAC (Heading Alignment Cylinder) used a lot.

It is the shuttle's version of a traffic pattern to line up with the runway
centerline. It is a circular instead of rectangular pattern.

Shuttle Landing from the HUD (WMV)

Well, last night the plethora of technical problems I've been experiencing with my Mac since paying more than half its original purchase price to have it repaired has reached a crescendo. It has eaten a DVD. Because Apple was wise and removed the pinhole that forces the CD drive to manually eject a jammed disk, I have to send the computer to their technical support people. This will be my second week this year without a computer. Hopefully they'll mail me the dvd back, as its a movie rental and I have to return it.

Perhaps I'll get the computer and the DVD back and they'll have fixed all of the new problems that it has and we'll all live happily ever after. I'm not getting my hopes up. During the pre-shipment interview their tech support guy asked me whether I had Apple or third party RAM. I honestly don't recall, as I bought the computer over a year ago. The RAM is one thing that has never given me any trouble. The support guy says "our repair technicians don't like 3rd party RAM and have a nasty habit of pulling it out and throwing it into the trash, so be sure and check before you mail your computer to us."

I don't know whether this was a threat or a warning, but either way, a company that is so NIH that they are willing to destroy their own customer's property simply because it wasn't purchased from them is extremely dysfunctional to say the least. Can't they put the RAM in a baggie and mail it back with the computer? Couldn't they have done that with my perfectly functional hard drive the last time they decided to rip IT out and throw it into the trash?

On the bright side, a coworked picked today to ask me whether or not he should buy a Mac.

Dark days ahead. Stock up.

Here's Harvard's Lawrence Summers, whose assets are clearly in derivatives based on shorting the market:

Three months ago it was reasonable to expect that the subprime credit crisis would be a financially significant event but not one that would threaten the overall pattern of economic growth. This is still a possible outcome but no longer the preponderant probability.

Even if necessary changes in policy are implemented, the odds now favour a US recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis. Without stronger policy responses than have been observed to date, moreover, there is the risk that the adverse impacts will be felt for the rest of this decade and beyond.

Wake up to the dangers of a deepening crisis

"One World, One Dream" is China's slogan for its 2008 Olympics. But there is one nightmare that China shouldn't be allowed to sweep under the rug. That nightmare is Darfur, where more than 400,000 people have been killed and more than two-and-a-half million driven from flaming villages by the Chinese-backed government of Sudan.

This essay and its meme apparently motivated China to do something about Darfur. However, they are still kind of dicking around.

MiaFarrow.org: 'The 'Genocide Olympics''