As subtle as a flying brick.

Archive for July 18, 2009

Attractive Corpse (dot) com

Service available to the seriously suicidal.

Attractive Corpse offers the following services to its client:

* Method consultation
* Fashion and makeup (if appropriate) consultation
* Location scouting
* Location preparation (including music, lighting, etc., if desired)
* Suicide note editing and workshopping
* Scheduling assistance
* Complete dress rehearsal
* Post-discovery photography

Referrals are available to financial planners, psychological services, and religious representatives.


A pink sliver of rat brain sat in a beaker.

The simulated brain – “The scientists behind Blue Brain hope to have a virtual human brain functioning in ten years… Dr. Markram began by collecting detailed information about the rat’s NCC, down to the level of genes, proteins, molecules and the electrical signals that connect one neuron to another. These complex relationships were then turned into millions of equations, written in software. He then recorded real-world data — the strength and path of each electrical signal — directly from rat brains to test the accuracy of the software.” Is it possible to digitally simulate a brain accurately? Can it only be analog? And are there quantum effects to be considered?

+ Some other AI/brain robot projects:

Blue Brain is controversial, and its success is far from assured. Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology, a scientist who studies consciousness, says the Swiss project provides vital data about how part of the brain works. But he says that Dr. Markram’s approach is still missing algorithms, the biological programming that yields higher-level functions…

Despite the challenges, the push to understand, replicate and even re-enact higher behaviors in the brain has become one of the hottest areas of neuroscience. With the help of a $4.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, IBM is working on a separate project with five U.S. universities to build a tiny, low-power microchip that simulates the behavior of one million neurons and ten billion synapses. The goal, says IBM, is to develop brainy computers that can better predict the behavior of complex systems, such as weather or the financial markets.

The Chinese government has provided about $1.5 million to a team at Xiamen University to create artificial-brain robots with microcircuits that evolve, learn and adapt to real-world situations. Similarly, Jeff Krichmar and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, Calif., have built an artificial-brain robot that learns to sharpen its visual perception when moving around in a lab environment, another form of emergent behavior, a form of spontaneous self-organization. And researchers at Sensopac, a project backed by a grant of €6.7 million ($9.3 million) from the European Union, have built part of an artificial mouse brain.

BONUS MEMRISTORS


Walter Cronkite, RIP.

Walter Cronkite, the broadcast news legend who spoke the words “And now we have two Americans on the moon” 40 years ago this week died in New York today at age 92. Here is astronaut Neil Armstrong’s statement on Cronkite’s passing.

If you needed another reason to feel sad about the passing of the iconic television journalist Walter Cronkite today, this video is it. John Perry Barlow tweets, “True fact: Walter Cronkite was a hot drummer. Once saw him play with Mickey Hart, Mike Gordon, & Mutatator. Kept the one.” This video is proof. Cronkite appears around 1:55 in.


Uh… transgender stormtrooper?… I’d hit it.

Here she is - the girl who has heard the worst pickup lines ever.

Here she is - the girl who has heard the worst pickup lines ever.


Greatest Shirt Ever? Three Keyboard Cat + Moon

Thought the three-wolf moon tee from Amazon was just ok? You’ve really been waiting for the three keyboard cats playing at the moon.
Awesome.

The Best Phallic Image You Will See in the News Today

A week ago, when Oscar F. Mayer, retired chairman of the Oscar Mayer meats company and grandson of the Original Oscar, passed away at 95, he left instructions that the Wienermobile NOT appear at his funeral because “it would be too much of a spectacle.” Well, today, there was a bit of a spectacle as one of the iconic vehicles crashed into the side of a house in Racine, Wisconsin. There is a Wienermobile Blog written by the team of drivers but they have no statement there on this incident (yet).

An Oscar Mayer Wienermobile crashed into the home and outdoor deck of Nick Krupp, 1200 Kenilworth Ave., around 11 a.m. Friday, July 17, 2009. According to a witness, the vehicle was parked in the driveway. The driver lurched the vehicle forward instead of backing out of the driveway, hitting Krupp's deck and cracking the foundation of his house.

Nice Wiener.


We are all sinners.

Masturbation in the animal kingdom.


Cigarrettes, whisky and wild, wild women.

Henry Allingham, the world’s oldest man, has died aged 113.

Henry Allingham, 1916

Henry Allingham, 1916

Born in 1896, Mr. Allingham became a teenager for the second time last month. He was a veteran of the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

A poignant memory from WWI: “The scenes he witnessed of soldiers waiting to go over the top at Ypres have stayed with him ever since. “They would just stand there in 2ft of water in mud-filled trenches, waiting to go forward,” he said. “They knew what was coming. It was pathetic to see those men like that. I don’t think they have ever got the admiration and respect they deserved.”

His face is a living memorial to the First World War, his solemnity a warning that the sacrifice of the fallen should never be forgotten.

His face is a living memorial to the First World War, his solemnity a warning that the sacrifice of the fallen should never be forgotten.