Amongst my blogged topics are such diverse elements as the meaning of life, worldwide happenings, information and real-life security, good music, photography, and pink'n'fluffy things.
Who wouldn't want a perfect partner with looks that could be envied by Maxim cover gils, mental stability of a rock, and house-keeping skills that could put your grandma to shame? And the best thing... she never ever nags. Meet Aiko, the first step on the way.
She would read you newsfeeds every morning after she fixed you a breakfast, she could read a map and navigate, and her daddy, Mr. Le Trung, even believes that she can even be “tweaked” to turn into a sexual partner, and one that's blatantly easy to turn on, for that matter. ;-) Le gleefully explains that “her software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm.”
Seriously now, I do hope she's open source. :-D Here's a toast to bright future, and stable relationships. At least now I know I won't be sad and lonely when I'm sixty-four. ;-)
Slashdot reports: "An editor for the Telegraph, Roger Highfield, recently volunteered to allow a UK researcher to shut off the speech center of his brain with a high-powered magnetic pulse. Regular speech is controlled by a section of the brain called Broca's area. Once the precise location is determined in the subject, a magnetic pulse can temporarily disrupt speech without impairing other cognitive functions. The link contains a video in which you can watch Highfield stutter and twitch while attempting to recite a nursery rhyme. A later test shows that he's able to sing the rhyme without difficulty, since singing is controlled in a different part of the brain (as you may remember from Scott Adams' speech disorder)."
Cool. I wonder who will be the first to commercialize this technology and advertise: Now it costs only $79.99 to save your marriage! ;-)
Slashdot reports that "OCZ Technology is putting their neural impulse actuator (NIA) into mass production for shipping next week. The device, aimed at gamers, works by reading bioptentials. 'These include activities of the brain, the autonomous nervous system and muscles — all of which are captured using embrace sensors located on the NIA's headband, amplified and sent to the PC via USB 2.0.' Users of the NIA will be able to control their in-game movements using only the power of mind. The device is priced at around $600USD." (Overclock3D reports a price of $300.)
Wicked! I can't wait to try this baby out. :-) Also, the number and coolness factor of applications I see of this technology as it matures, is uncanny... And wait till teh_pwnerer gets his hands on this! "liek i can pwn n00bz with me brain now lol!!!11 gg kthx"
Slashdot presented me with a real treat tonight. Obviously, scientists are able to read MRI of religious people's God proximity encounters, and then replicate them for a different person altogether.
"Scientific American is reporting on scientific work done to map the euphoric religious feelings within the brain. As a result, it's now quite possible to experience 'proximity to God' via a special helmet: 'In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence — a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is — or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language — terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe."
Well, scientists are able to create a deep spiritual experience at a press of a button. I wonder how that makes God feel. Does the machine make him come close to the person personally, or just replicate the effect without involving any actual deities?
Now I definitely need to get one of these godhelmets of my own. If for no other reason, then to find out how spiritual junkies feel. Then I could finally have a god of my own, one who would actually come to me at times.
Mister Persinger doesn't hold back, though, and keeps effing the ineffable. From the article:
"Persinger thus argues that religious experience and belief in God are merely the results of electrical anomalies in the human brain. He opines that the religious bents of even the most exalted figures—for instance, Saint Paul, Moses, Muhammad and Buddha—stem from such neural quirks. The popular notion that such experiences are good, argues Persinger in his book Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (Praeger Publishers, 1987), is an outgrowth of psychological conditioning in which religious rituals are paired with enjoyable experiences. Praying before a meal, for example, links prayer with the pleasures of eating. God, he claims, is nothing more mystical than that."
LOL. Makes me think it would be cool to amplify effects of the godmachine, so that it has an area effect. Then, you could just proclaim yourself to be god, and all the poor confused people would believe you, because they would feel it. Awesome. My life finally has a meaning again! :-D
After last month's resumption of regular patrols of strategic bombers, which were suspended after the 1991 Soviet Union breakup, Red Army* flexes its muscles yet again, this time by testing of Father Of All Bombs, an air delivered fuel-air bomb, yielding the equivalent of 44 tons of TNT. That makes it approximately four times as powerful as US Army's MOAB. (Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or Mother Of All Bombs.) It's not the bomb I want to talk about, though, it's the propaganda and attitude of Russian officials that caught me breathless. "The tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability,"' says Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces. Gotta love that guy. This statement is misleading at the very least, because most nuclear bombs have way more power than that. For example, Fat Man, one of the first atomic bombs ever used, that was dropped on Nagasaki, had a yield of cca. 21 kilotons of TNT. That gives the mighty FOAB credit to merely 0.2 % of Fat Man's destructive power, which, while comparable, is nowhere close.
See the Russian report video for yourself:
But Alex is just awesome, he doesn't stop there. Sharing his wisdom, (estimated to be at least 23, ;-)) with the world, he claims, that the bomb is "environmentally friendly". Excuse me? Okay, maybe it does not have nuclear fallout with long half-life, but calling a bomb worth of 44 tons of TNT, that leaves "lunar landscape" in its wake, "environmentally friendly" is just outright funny.
Tu-160, the bomber that dropped daddy of all bombs earlier this week.
However, funny turns to insanely idiotic. As bloomberg.com reports: The new weapon disperses a cloud of explosive material that is set off by a charge and produces "an ultrasonic shockwave and an incredibly high temperature," Perviy Kanal said on its Web site. After the blast, "the soil looks like a lunar landscape," according to the report.
The new bomb carries fewer explosives than the U.S. device, while the temperature at the center of its blast is twice as high and the area of damage much greater, Perviy Kanal said.
"This has made it possible to reduce the accuracy requirements and made it cheaper, which is necessary in the current situation," Yuri Balyko, head of the Defense Ministry's 30th Central Research Institute, told the channel.
The new weapon will allow Russia "to ensure the nation's security and at the same time battle international terrorism in any situation and in any region," Rukshin said.
Oh my. I feel dumber just for having read this exhibition of pure wisdom. So we have a weapon that turns an enormous area to lunar landscape, which, in turn, allows us to reduce the accuracy requirements, and, therefore, we can use it to battle international terrorism in any situation and in any region! Holy zombie Jesus, Russian military brains are just precious! :-D Now, if I were a Chechnyan partisan, that would be all I needed to hear to capture a building in the middle of Moscow, and wait for the brave Red Army to level their capital city with one of these babies.
__ * I know it's not called Red Army anymore. But hey, it seems that not many things have changed apart from the name...
Whee, that looks interesting, MacGyver would be proud. It probably is not one of the most convenient and inconspicuous surveillance methods, but hey, not everyone is 007. :-) I just have hard time believing that the signal from the photo-cell can get strong enough without being amplified somehow. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=YVas2_bt6xc)
Who wouldn't want a perfect partner with looks that could be envied by Maxim cover gils, mental stability of a rock, and house-keeping skills that could put your grandma to shame? And the best thing... she never ever nags. Meet Aiko, the first step on the way.
