Technology and Innovation
Ashoka Tech Blog A blog about women, social entreprenourship and technology (especially in the developing world). Includes such gems as the Peepoo bag.
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CSI: The truth isn’t nearly as entertaining.
CSI Myths: The Shaky Science Behind Forensics Forensic science was not developed by scientists. It was mostly created by cops, who were guided by little more than common sense. And as hundreds of criminal cases begin to unravel, many established forensic practices are coming under fire.
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Number Five is Alive!
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone. From the NYT: Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man.
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A shapely galaxy
There are many galaxies. The Sombrero Galaxy. The Whirlpool Galaxy. Lenticular galaxies. The occasional irregular galaxy. What types of galaxies do we find in the universe?
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Bikes as art as bikes as art as etc.
The bike racing world has a tradition of attention-getting designs, but some spectators at this year’s Tours of California or France might have done double-takes at some of the art on Lance Armstrong’s rides. As it turns out, Trek and Nike have commissioned custom designs promoting Livestrong, and as I write this Lance is cycling into Paris on a bike covered with butterfly wings, courtesy of Damien Hirst.
Along with the Hirst piece, TdF fans have been able to see Armstrong riding art by Shepard Fairey, Yoshitomo Nara, and Mark Newson.
If you happen to be in Paris, you can attend the Stages (warning: Autoplay Flash video/audio) exhibition, which opened on the 17th and features some of the bikes and commissioned art by Ed Ruscha, Raymond Pettibon, Andreas Gursky, and more. After the show’s over, the bikes will be auctioned off with proceeds benefiting the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
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10 Pranks To Play At Wal-Mart
1. Say Something On The Intercom
Intercoms can be found throughout most Walmarts. When you find one, walk by it a few times to figure out which button to press. Say whatever you want. Have a look out.
2. Hide A Friend On The Shelves
Clear off a shelf. Stick someone on it and wait for someone to check out the goods.
3. Fart
Farts are always funny. Walk around the store and fart. See how people react. Film it. Note: This video is at Target, but this prank will work well at Walmart too.
4. Use The CD Players
Record yourself saying inappropriate things on a blank CD. Use the CD players in the electronics department to play it. For a bigger reaction look for small children and old people. Mother’s too.
5. Get An Employee To Say Something Over The Intercom
Go to customer service and pretend like your friend is missing. Give them a funny name, like Mike Hunt. Laugh later.
6. Set Off The Alarms
Use the magnetic bar code found on most merchandise and put it under shopping carts/stick it to your friend. Watch this video to learn how. It’s easy.
7. Collapse
Pretend to be hurt for a short period of time. Fall down and have someone help you up. Try to get something for free.
8. Dance
Do a funny dance. The “Stanky Leg” is funny. Watch and learn.
9. Return Something You Didn’t Buy There
This one’s really easy. Try to return something you know they won’t accept back. It’d probably be wisest to go an older employee for this one.
10. Drop Your Food
Find something filled with liquid. Walk around the store and slip. Drop it and watch it explode.
Note: I don’t recommend this unless you actually purchase the product. I also don’t believe in wasting food. And if you’ve made it this far into the list, I don’t actually recommend any of these pranks (except the intercom ones – I love those). I also feel it necessary to point out that both #7 and #9 may constitute fraud, and therefore may be illegal in your state/province
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Alice in Wonderland Trailer
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Real Hot Bitches set world synchronised dance record
Nationally famous (in New Zealand) dance troupe the Real Hot Bitches set the world record for synchronized dance.
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Harassing women for fun and prizes
Electronic Arts, the video game publisher that is no stranger to either controversy, is sponsoring a contest for its upcoming release of Dante’s Inferno. The contest, taking place at this weekend’s Comic-Con, requires entrants to “commit acts of lust” and take a photo of said act with an EA (or other company’s) booth babes, post the photos on Twitter or Facebook, and repeat the process as many times as possible for additional chances to win. The prize is listed in part as “Dinner and a sinful night with two hot girls”.
Many are understandably outraged at the blatant sexism and the encouragement of sexual harassment. This incident comes on the heels of last month’s IGN contest for a Comic-Con prize package that was originally open to males only.
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Remember: New Glasses Before New Passport
Detained in Kenya for not looking enough like her passport photo, Canadian Citizen Suaad Haji Mohamud has been trapped in Kenya for 2 months while trying to return home to her adopted country.
She’s been declared a fraud by the Canadian government and may be deported back to war-torn Somalia, where she was born. She suggested she be fingerprinted, but after a couple of weeks, the government couldn’t come up with anything to match the new prints to. So now, she’s waiting on results of a DNA test that’s expected to take more than another week.
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…and the Gunslinger followed.
The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway. Coaches and buckas had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied.
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The Man in Black fled across the desert…
“The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions.”
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The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
For those of you who don’t know, Lost Executive Producer J.J. Abrams bought the rights to The Dark Tower Series for a incredible 19 dollars (presumably in keeping with the recurring number in the books). Abrams is quoted as saying this in regard to the upcoming project’s status:
“Damon Lindelof and I talked to Mr. King. We got the rights for ‘ The Dark Tower’ as a film. Damon is obviously still on ‘Lost’, and we’ve been working on ‘Star Trek’ together. As soon as ‘Lost’ is done, hopefully we’ll begin tackling that.”
The plan is to make seven films out of the seven books in the series, a la Harry Potter.
Lindelof had this to say about the series’ potential:
“The Dark Tower is to me every bit as daunting an adaptation as the Lord of the Rings trilogy must have been for Peter Jackson, except we’ve got seven books we’re looking at. And the idea of doing that at the same time Carlton and I are bringing Lost to a close is simply not viable. There are always Dark Tower conversations, but the figuring out of what this will look like as a movie has not begun. If The Dark Tower were in the right hands, I would love to see seven movies executed just right. But you have to get people to see the first one to get them to come and see the second one.”
I think that with J.J. Abrams, The Dark Tower is in pretty good hands. Even if your not a fan of everything he has done, you cannot deny that he takes pride in all his projects and strives to make the best possible movie or TV show that he can.
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I’m an Ass Clown.
I'm an Ass Clown
I’m an ass clown. I forgot to wake up Jenn. She was 6 min late for work.
In my defense, I can’t remember shit. 😦
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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.
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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
- Memristor Minds, the Future of Artificial Intelligence
- New Memristor Makes Low-Cost, High-Density Memory
- Spintronic Memristors
- The Mysterious Memristor
- Understanding Memristors – “in which the memristor would be used as an analog device“*
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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.
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Uh… transgender stormtrooper?… I’d hit it.
Here she is - the girl who has heard the worst pickup lines ever.
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Greatest Shirt Ever? Three Keyboard Cat + Moon
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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).
Nice Wiener.
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Cigarrettes, whisky and wild, wild women.
Henry Allingham, the world’s oldest man, has died aged 113.
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.
RobDurdle.com 
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