Archive for August, 2010
Telenoid R1: Japan’s Most Disturbing Robot
CNET reports that famed Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro has just created the Telenoid R1, a “minimalistic human” robot designed to aid in long-distance communication:
Telenoid users can interact with people at a distance through a laptop. The control system tracks the user’s face and head motion and captures his or her voice. The motions and voice are relayed to Telenoid, which expresses them while interacting.
Hearing the voice of a loved one emerge from the “mouth” of the ageless, genderless, limbless robo-baby seems like a waking nightmare.
Who Owns You? 20% of the Genes in Your Body are Patented (Video)
Drew Halley writes on Singularity Hub:
Here’s a disconcerting thought: for the past thirty years, genes have been patentable. And we’re not just talking genetically modified corn — your genes, pretty much as they exist in your body, can and have been patented. The US government reports over three million gene patent applications have been filed so far; over 40,000 patents are held on sections of the human genome, covering roughly 20% of our genes.
Upset? You’re not alone. Critics argue that the patents stifle potential research into disease, keep new treatments off the market, and bring in serious money to Big Pharma — all by exercising property claims that shouldn’t exist. After all, genes aren’t inventions, which are patentable — they’re discoveries, which aren’t.
Singularity Hub recently interviewed Dr. David Koepsell … His book Who Owns You? is currently being adapted into a documentary film, including interviews with experts like James Watson and Tim Hubbard. Check out the preview:
Obama’s Secret War On Terrorism
Flag of Al-Qaeda in Iraq
The New York Times launches a new series of reports entitled “The Shadow War: Chasing The Enemy” with this report on the United States’ focus on Al-Qaeda in Yemen:
At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba.
But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.
The strike, though, was not the work of Mr. Saleh’s decrepit Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the United States military, according…
Let’s Get Lost With Dennis Hopper
Since the death of Dennis Hopper, I’ve been searching and scratching in the lesser known spots of his career trying to get a better feel for the man. YouTube is currently home to a couple of beautiful treasures that have had me reading and viewing for weeks now.I finally got around to creating a new Sleepless Film Festival to showcase this bizarre double-feature.
The Last Movie is Hopper’s follow-up to Easy Rider. It won him the Golden Lion in Venice and promptly ended his career as a director when he got back to America. The other film is a documentary called The American Dreamer. ‘Dreamer archives the strange days that Hopper lived through as he tried to edit The Last Movie in the midst of an ongoing, hedonistic orgy at his New Mexico ranch.
With this episode, we are looking back on the career of the late, great Dennis Hopper. While we can’t resist re-visiting highlights…
Alternative Energy: Turn Your Poo Into Fuel!
Photo: Wessex Water
Want an alternative use for the contents of your septic tank?
Mohammed Saddiq has the answer, the poop-mobile! Bristol streets have been the first test run of the methane-powered car which allows an alternative to petroleum fuel. BBC covers the story:
The BBC’s John Maguire is given a tour of the methane-powered car by developer Mohammed Saddiq
A “poo-powered” VW Beetle has taken to the streets of Bristol in an attempt to encourage sustainable motoring.
The Bio-Bug runs on processed methane gas generated as part of the raw sewage treatment process.
Engineers from Wessex Water estimate the waste from 70 homes would generate enough gas to run the car for 10,000 miles (16,100km).
Despite being powered by fuel created from sewage, the car does not smell unpleasant.
“It performs like a normal car – you wouldn’t know it was powered by biogas,” a company spokesman said.
To use biogas as vehicle fuel without affecting vehicle performance or reliability…
.The Power of Community
In September 2006, the world experienced a paradigm shift when a strong lobbying effort by grassroots organizations effectively derailed an initiative: A move that was tantamount to a declaration of war on Iran.
U.S.: Iran Resolution Shelved in Rare Defeat for Israel Lobby
In a significant and highly unusual defeat for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to shelve a long-pending, albeit non-binding, resolution that called for President George W. Bush to launch what critics called a blockade against Iran.
But an unexpectedly strong lobbying effort by a number of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups effectively derailed the initiative.
The decision by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, to shelve HR 362 marked an unusual defeat for AIPAC, according to its critics who charged that the resolution was designed to lay the groundwork for the Bush…
Every Possible Rubik’s Cube Solution Found With 20 Moves Or Less
Thirty-six years ago a new toy, a logic game, was invented by Erno Rubrik. All that time spent trying to get 26 cubes in the correct position seemed like a waste, until now. Discovery News reports:
An international team of researchers using computer time lent to them by Google has found every way the popular Rubik’s Cube puzzle can be solved, and showed it can always be solved in 20 moves or less.
The study is just the latest attempt by Rubik’s enthusiasts to figure out the secrets of the cube, which has proven to be altogether far more complicated that its jaunty colors might suggest.
At the crux of the quest has been a bid to determine the lowest number of moves required to get the cube from any given muddled configuration to the color-aligned solution.
“Every solver of the Cube uses an algorithm, which is a sequence of steps for solving the Cube,”…
21st Century Vampires
Jenka Gurfinkal on her blog social-creature:
A month before the premiere of True Blood’s third season earlier this summer I wrote a post about the first 21st century superhero. The new Iron Man, as reimagined by Jon Favreau and portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., had broken the mold constricting the superhero archetype since its inception back in the late 1930’s, and in its place offered a vibrantly modern model for the character, reflecting the unique culture, ethos, and mores of the 21st century. True Blood, I’m realizing, is now doing the same for that other undying superhuman trope: the vampire.
Of course, the vampire has been undead for a lot longer. The earliest recorded vampire myth dates back to Babylonia, about 4,000 years ago, and over the millennia it has appeared in almost every culture. But lets cut to the chase: 1922 was year vampires broke ground in film (though, technically, they’d…
President Obama Hosts Ramadan Dinner
What are you doing tonight? President Obama will be celebrating the Islamic faith. From The Hill:
President Obama will host an iftar — the special evening meal observed during Ramadan — on Friday night in the White House dining room.
Ramadan began on Wednesday and will end around Sept. 10.
Obama participated in a similar gathering last year.
Celebrations like iftar dinners “remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings,” Obama wrote in a statement Wednesday.
“Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality … a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.”
The dinner comes amid a growing controversy over the proposed construction of an Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan, near the site of the World Trade Center.…
My New Favorite Stickers: Journalism Warning Labels
The best stickers I’ve come across since Srini Kumar’s books of stickers (Sticker Nation Vol. 1 and Vol. 2). Tom Scott, these are genius, thank you!
It seems a bit strange to me that the media carefully warn about and label any content that involves sex, violence or strong language — but there’s no similar labelling system for, say, sloppy journalism and other questionable content.
I figured it was time to fix that, so I made some stickers. I’ve been putting them on copies of the free papers that I find on the London Underground. You might want to as well.
Look at them all at Tom Scott’s blog]
Tea Party Groups Out AGAINST Net Neutrality
From Huffington Post:
Following the release of Google and Verizon’s controversial proposal on managing Internet traffic, which comes less than a week after the FCC abandoned efforts at a hammering out a compromise, Tea Party groups have taken a strong stance on the issue of net neutrality.
Specifically, they’re against it. The head of one Tea Party organization says she is concerned that the policy would increase government regulation and power, calling net neutrality one of many “assaults on individual liberties.”
As The Hill reports, “[a] coalition that included 35 Tea Party groups sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Wednesday urging the agency not to boost its authority over broadband providers through a controversial process known as reclassification.”…
[continues at Huffington Post]
The Terrorism Quiz
Jeffrey Rudolph tests your knowledge at CounterCurrents:
Misconceptions about terrorism, regularly promoted by the mainstream media, have facilitated harmful US government actions—two wars, domestic legislation that curtailed civil liberties, excessive national security spending. That basic, factual information about terrorism is so rarely reported thus serves to reinforce the power of those who benefit from a fearful population.
It should be banal to read in the mainstream media that the US not only engages in terrorism but often aggravates it; that if the current crop of terrorists in, say, the Middle East were killed, new terrorists would simply arise if the underlying political and social conditions remained unchanged; and, that if a particular country is perceived as actively supporting dysfunctional political and social conditions in a part of the world, it will become the target of anger and, possibly, violence. Yet, instead of such obvious conclusions about terrorism, we are daily exposed to…
Countdown To Collapse: The Recovery Is Not Recovering
Financial journalist Charles Gasparino, whose career trajectory took him from Newsweek to CNBC to Fox News, was on with Bill O’ Reilly doing what the host of the factless Factor likes to do the most: promote Fox News. In the course of their self-promotional banter, Gasparino let slip an unverifiable story about a meeting of top CEOs speculating about whether President Obama really is a secret socialist.
Stories like this, invented or not, freak a White House ever eager to reassure the business world of their loyalties. That is no doubt why Robert Gibbs, the President’s Press Secretary, took a whack at the “professional left,” a statement he later said had been “inartful” but did not withdraw.
Writing on OpEd News, Kevin Gosztola was not surprised:
“While circumstantial, the best evidence for why Gibbs would feel like uttering the aforementioned remarks is the shift of money from Wall Street to Republicans ahead of…
Better Living Through Fast Food & Statins
Only some egghead scientists could think this was a good idea! As reported by AFP:
Fast food restaurants could hand out free cholesterol-busting statin drugs with their burgers and fries so customers can offset the heart disease risks caused by the food, researchers said.
Statins lower the amount of unhealthy “LDL” cholesterol in the blood, and a raft of data has shown they are highly effective in fighting the risk of a heart attack.
Scientists at Imperial College London said this week that taking a statin pill could offset the increased risk to the heart caused by the fat in a medium-sized cheeseburger and a small milkshake.
Dr Darrel Francis, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, said: “Statins don’t cut out all of the unhealthy effects of burgers and fries. It’s better to avoid fatty food altogether.”
“But we’ve worked out that in terms of your likelihood of having a…
Pea Found Growing In Man’s Lung
By Jill Blocker Eat, Drink & Blog:
The old wives’ tales about swallowed gum staying in the stomach for 10 years and swallowed watermelon seeds growing in bellies just got a little truth attached to them, after a pea seed was found growing inside a man’s lung.
Ron Sveden, from Massachusetts, thought his chronic coughing meant he had lung cancer, but after his lung collapsed, doctors found something very different…
Tonight: Cloudy With More Than A Chance Of Massive Meteor Showers
Hopefully it won’t be cloudy! If you don’t live in a totally light-saturated neighborhood (or the southern hemisphere) look at the skies tonight for a fantastic light show — the Perseids. You should be able to see as much as a meteor per minute, caused by the debris from multiple orbits around the sun of the comet Swift-Tuttle. The video below is illustrative, but believe me, it will look a whole lot better with the naked eye.
I’m Done With Celebrity Endorsements
Stephanie Soechtig, director of the disinformation documentary Tapped, writing at Huffington Post:
At the risk of career suicide I’m calling bullshit on the hypocrisy of Hollywood and its celebrity endorsements. From Reese Witherspoon endorsing Avon — a company that loads its products with phthalates and parabens (chemicals linked to breast cancer) — to Jennifer Aniston, a woman who says she cares about conserving water resources and then endorses bottled water.
You can’t turn around these days without seeing a Hollywood A-lister endorsing a product. Here’s my problem with the whole situation: often they are endorsing products that aren’t good for us and aren’t good for the environment.
Seriously people, WTF? Am I the only one who saw Spider-Man? You know, “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility?”
Take Reese Witherspoon and her colleagues Jessica Alba, Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymoore, Jessica Biel, et al — all these women endorse various brands of cosmetics that contain…
