Archives for December 2008
мысли вслух
22 December 2008 | Science | No Comments
между прочим, японские ученые приоткрыли двери восприятия — прочитали в мозгу человека зрительные образы:
A team of Japanese scientists at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, led by researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani, have successfully processed and displayed reconstructed images directly from the ever-hackable human brain. In the experiments, the team first showed participants 400 different still images in order to suss out their visual thought patterns. They then showed them the letters that make up the word “neuron,” and successfully reconstructed them via brain activity onto a screen. <...> Dr. F. Krueger at ATR says that they think the tech could someday be used to hack into people’s dreams.
как говорится, мучают ли вас эротические сны? broadcast ’em all! впрочем, есть и другие варианты развития:
Utopic and dystopic scenarios: leasing parts of your brain space to a big corporation for a side income; building a problem solving computer based on low level brain growing farm; big brother supervising thoughts to crack down on dissidents; drawing tools; advanced lie detectors; brain exporting and importing of movies, smells, feelings…
вот уж, конечно:
Mental discipline will ever more become a survival tool for the future.
я знаю три слова
21 December 2008 | Music, Music instruments, Religion | No Comments
а самый лучший способ музыкоизвлечения — это, конечно, buddha machine, тем более, что недавно появилась и обновленная версия.
agathis просто обязан использовать ее в своих поездках. а мой брат носит в кармане варган.
превенция
20 December 2008 | Crime, Politics | No Comments
сервис YouTube опасен для здоровья:
An Egyptian engineering student was sentenced in the United States on Thursday to 15 years imprisonment after pleading guilty to uploading a 12-minute video to YouTube that demonstrated how to convert a remote-control toy car into a bomb detonator.
вот тебе и amateur pornography.
огни будущего
20 December 2008 | Economics, Hardware, Lifeform | No Comments
подлинная независимость всегда начинается с экономики. так, Дин Кеймен, знаменитый изобретатель и владелец острова Северная Клецка после формального учреждения незвисимого государства с собственными флагом, гимном, конституцией, валютой и даже военно-морскими силами, наконец-то избавился и от энергетичской зависимости:
The father of the Segway and ‘Luke’ cyborg arm has taken North Dumpling Island—his private Bond villain hideaway off the Connecticut coast—entirely off the grid with a complete (and badass) LED lighting overhaul.
By letting his friends at Philips Color Kinetics take the reigns ol’ North Dumpling is now fitted with energy sipping LED lighting inside and out. This resulted in in-house energy consumption dropping by 70%, and ensures his on-site replica of stonehenge gets the dramatic splash of nighttime green and purple it so clearly deserves (total energy reduction was to 50% when all of the new colored outside lighting is factored in). Still, it was enough to take the island entirely off the grid; Kamen produces all of his own juice with wind and solar power.
его же примеру собирается последовать и город Нью-Йорк. а остальное население Земли с помощью светодиодов продолжает в тихой безопастности греть свои уши — каждому по возможностям, ну да.
детская площадка
19 December 2008 | Games, Politics, Sex | 1 Comment
периодически радуюсь игрушкам “под Lego” — то карманные террористы, то, пожалуйста, настольный концетрационный лагерь. лучше только хентай-статуэтки у 
Миши, мне кажется.
кунсткамера
18 December 2008 | Literature | No Comments
мимоходом прочитал роман Грегори Норминтона “Чудеса и диковины”, что начинался, как завораживающая игра словом, а оборвался, как грубое moralité. впечаталений практически никаких, разве что на фоне мелькает Рудольф II (я часто хожу в паб с таким названием, где в самом деле висит репродукция знаменитого портрета кисти Арчимбольдо) да Тридцатилетняя война, а так же творческое бессилие, преполняющее как главного героя, так и самого автора — вот уж, право, унылое лицедейство.
домостроение
17 December 2008 | Architecture | 3 Comments
снова цитирую:
The people who designed these places, maybe eighty, a hundred years ago, they had the idea they’d make ’em as self-sufficient as possible. Make ’em grow food Make ’em heat themselves, generate power, whatever. Now this one, you drill far enough down, is sitting on top of a lot of geothermal water. <...> Then they pump that into shrimp tanks, and grow a lot of shrimp. Shrimp grow real fast in warm water. Then they pump it through pipes in the concrete, up here, to keep this place warm. That’s what this level was for, to grow ‘ponic amaranth, lettuce, things like that. Then they pump it out into the catfish tanks, and algae eat the shrimp shit. Catfish eat the algae, and it all goes around again. Or anyway, that was the idea. Chances are they didn’t figure anybody’d go up on the roof and kick those Darrieus rotors over to make room for a mosque, and they didn’t figure a lot of other changes either. So we wound up with this space. But you can still get you some damned good shrimp in the Projects… Catfish, too.
будущее уже наступило, ага. дальше будем жить именно так.
близнецы
17 December 2008 | Design | No Comments
отличный рисунок для футболки:
via.
ловить мгновение
17 December 2008 | Photo | No Comments
фото-книга Анри Картье-Брессона “The Decisive Moment” доступна в сети:
Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.
via.
персонализация
16 December 2008 | Science | No Comments
известная дискуссия у flying_bear о текущем положении в науке получила естесственное продолжение:
Major breakthroughs in science have historically been the province of individuals, not institutes. Galileo and Copernicus, Edison and Einstein, toiling away in lonely labs or pondering the cosmos in private studies.
But in recent decades — especially since the Soviet success in launching the Sputnik satellite in 1957 — the trend has been to create massive institutions that foster more collaboration and garner big chunks of funding.
And it is harder now to achieve scientific greatness. A study of Nobel Prize winners in 2005 found that the accumulation of knowledge over time has forced great minds to toil longer before they can make breakthroughs. The age at which thinkers produce significant innovations increased about six years during the 20th century.
via.