What are you gonna do, play with your prick for another 30 years? ... George Carlin
ABC News: Legal Advice: 'Life's Short. Get a Divorce'
Topic: Society
1:44 pm EDT, Jul 3, 2007
The ad is the brainchild of Corri Fetman, who told ABC News' Law & Justice Unit, "Law firm advertising is boring…Everything's always the same. It's lawyers in libraries with a suit on and the law books behind them. They don't say anything. What, I should hire you because you have a law degree? C'mon. So we wanted to try something different."
I wonder how many people will be convinced to get a divorce because of this billboard.
Abstract : From time to time the popular literature has described cases where human subjects were reported to have responded without vision to stimulus objects. This effect--found only in women to date--has been called 'dermo-optical perception,' 'cheek vision,' and 'finger sight.' Whether these responses are to visible light or to some other band of the energy spectrum, and whether they are tactually mediated is not yet clear. The number of such cases is rare and the unusual sensory abilities described suggest that these phenomena merit scientific attention. Early in 1965, it was learned that an American female was reported to have abilities such as those mentioned above. After a number of demonstrations by this subject (A), studies were performed to determine whether A's non-visual discriminations of the visual properties of stimulus objects differed from chance and from the performance level of control subjects. Results of these studies indicated that the subject performed reliably above chance and above the level of the controls as a group in discriminating colors of plastic discs; light projected through two colors of Wratten filters; and in discriminating the suit and number of playing cards. Results also showed that the control subjects tended in some cases to perform reliably above chance, but to a lesser degree than A. Questions as to the nature of this ability were discussed. (Author)
The Robotarium X at Jardim Central, Alverca (Vila Franca de Xira), Portugal, is the first of its kind in the world.
Conceived for a public garden it is constituted by a large glass structure containing 45 robots, most powered by photovoltaic energy and a few plugged to the ceiling or to the ground.
The robots are all original, created specifically for the project, representing 14 species classified by distinct behavior strategies and body morphologies. Obstacle avoidance, movement or sunlight detection and interaction with the public are some of the robots skills.
Robotarium X, the first zoo for artificial life, approaches robots very much in the way as we are used to look at natural life. We, humans, enjoy watching and studying other life forms behavior and, sadly, also to capture them. However, in this case, although the robots are confined to a cage it can be said that, not like animals, they enjoy it. In fact the Robotarium is their ideal environment with plenty of sun, smoothness, tranquility and attention. There are no fights or aggression and the only competition is to assure a place under the sunlight.
Robotarium X is also an art work of a new kind of art that realizes a critical questioning of knowledge and culture. Notions like nature, life, the artificial, machine, art, culture and science, are challenged by this display.
Stalker remotely controls family cellphones, even when they're off - Engadget
Topic: Technology
10:42 am EDT, Jun 26, 2007
To use a TV news cliche, it's like a horror movie come true: three families from Fircrest in Washington State are being harassed by a unknown individual, who somehow has the power to turn cellphones on, send messages, and change ringtones. Over the last few months, the families have had calls that threaten death and violence against them, calls that tell the people what they're doing at that time, and calls that originate from the cellphones of other members of the family. In one case, the stalker changed the ringtone of a phone to say "answer your phone." According to one James M. Atkinson, an apparent expert in these matters who used to provide the CIA with advice in counterintelligence, the technical profficiency to pull off this level of stalking isn't that high: if the FBI can do it, why not some anti-social kid, right?
Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale | The Register
Topic: Games
10:40 am EDT, Jun 26, 2007
Perhaps your real life is so rich you don't have time for another.
Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.
The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual "nodes" to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.
Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project.
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.
The earth is, in fact, way overdue for an ice age... So perhaps we should actually increase greenhouse gas emmisions, killing the ozone layer, and thus trapping heat during the long, long solar winter that approaches.
Fuck all that. Start digging and build underground.
I've been saying New Orleans should start doing exactly this. It's the fastest way toward having the worlds first undersea city.
'This Is Not Right' | KOMO-TV - Seattle, Washington | News Archive
Topic: War on Terrorism
10:35 am EDT, Jun 22, 2007
During the stay she made sandwiches for the kids and was careful to pack the knives she used to prepare those sandwiches in her checked luggage. She says she even alerted security screeners that the knives were in her checked bags and they told her that was OK.
But Beaman says she couldn't find a third knife. It was a 5 1/2 inch bread knife with a rounded tip and a serrated edge. She thought she might have lost or misplaced it during the trip.
On the trip home, screeners with the Transportation Security Administration at Los Angeles International Airport found it deep in the outside pocket of a carry-on cooler. Beaman apologized and told them it was a mistake.
"You've committed a felony," Beaman says a security screener announced. "And you're considered a terrorist."
Beaman says she was told her name would go on a terrorist watch-list and that she would have to pay a $500 fine.
"I'm a 57-year-old woman who is taking care of 37 kids," she told them. "I'm not gonna commit a terrorist act."
Who ever said that the Airport security was arbitrary and useless? This just proves the effectiveness of security measures by removing dangers like this from our society. Aren't you glad these people are paid as much as they are?
