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Friday, October 31
"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." -William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II 
Caught On Camera: Attorney Shot Outside Courthouse The dramatic shooting was captured by television crews who were gathered outside the courthouse to film actor Robert Blake as he emerged from a hearing in his murder case. 
Sotheby's Auctions Vampire-Killing Kit For $12,000 The kit, a walnut box that also contained a crucifix, a pistol, a rosary and vessels for garlic powder and various serums, was bought by an anonymous phone bidder. According to Sotheby's, some experts believe that such kits were commonly available to travelers in Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, while others think the kits were made in the early 20th century, possibly to cash in on interest in vampires sparked by the 1897 publication of Bram Stoker's "Dracula." (Y'know...Christmas is coming up...) Wednesday, October 29
My Halloween contribution. Please, critique. The Tree I first saw the tree from the car window when I was six. We were on vacation, heading up north to go camping. It was on the far bend of a winding road, the tree, so as soon as I saw it, it was gone. I’ve never forgotten a single detail of that twisted shape. The way it knotted and bunched like a Giant twisted in an ash gray cloak, suffocating and powerless. It had a mass of sharp branches that cluttered up to the sky and held brown sickly leaves that shivered in the breeze. I barely noticed the man hanged dead from one of the thicker branches, twisting slowly against the trunk. We rounded the curve so quickly that my brain was only able to process the vision until we were well away from the bend. I can still remember the details; his hand curved and relaxed only just touching the dark, dark denim of his jeans. I couldn’t see his face, not with my eyes anyway, but he had dark curly hair. I didn’t say anything to my family. I had already been in enough trouble for making up stories. I knew they wouldn’t believe me on this one. I don’t need to tell you that I didn’t sleep a wink on that week of deep woods camping. We took a different road to get back home, so I was even denied the closure of seeing if the tree had been cut down, or if there was at least some crime scene tape fluttering in the wind like an obscene party streamer. No closure, and no validation. Once we got home I kept an eye on the newspapers and some of the TV news, but I never heard anything about what I had seen. In effect the thing existed only in my mind. I never forgot the sight, however, even if it wasn’t foremost in my thoughts at all times. Sometimes I would go for weeks without thinking about it, and then, in the dark of the night, I would remember those curled hands, and imagined face complete with bulging eyes and centimeter of tongue peeking out from bloated lips. Other times I’d be driving and slowly I’d realize that I’m scanning the sides of the road. Watching the trees fly by wondering what's going on just beyond my vision. I’ve never had any lasting relationships, and I’m not blaming it on that tree, but my nighttime habits seem to be a major factor in this regard. My constant awakening in the middle of the night, often with no clear reason why. Although in my head I can see the reason all too vividly. I had a good friend once, a wood carver by trade, who said that the secret to creating life-like carvings is the ability to see the shapes the wood has within it. That each and every block of wood is hiding its true shape, and it is up to the carver to coax it out. I think about that a lot. Even now it comforts me, as I stand before the tree for the first time in over 20 years. The ease with which I found it was surprising, but I suppose it would have to be. Every second felt like a millennium as I hid my car in the brush and finally laid eyes on the monstrosity, and it was every bit as terrifying as I expected. Usually when we see things as children they seem huge, but once we see them as adults they become considerably smaller. Not so the tree. It was massive, and I could barely move, barely breathe in the nighttime air as I stood before it. I saw no evidence of the violence that had defiled it so many years ago. Its swaying branches creaked mockingly at me and I barely noticed the ache in my hands as I clenched my fists shut as hard as I could. I probably would have stood there longer had the weakened, muffled kick from my trunk not broken my reverie. The boy in the trunk looked hazily up at me when I opened it. He was half dead already, broken and battered, the rope would only finish him off. This ones hair was the right type of curly, only a bit matted from the sweat. His build was a bit thinner, and the denim of his jeans wasn’t as dark, but I assume that things are allowed to change after time. My wood carver friend would always tell me that the hardest thing to do was to reproduce ones vision perfectly, but that trying was half the fun. Tuesday, October 28
Shockingly Extreme Thong Volleyball! had all the guys going, "Whoa, dude! I can't wait to masturbate to this!" In this mature title from the people who brought you Full Tilt Naked Billiards and Awesomely Awesome Topless Monopoly, you control a scantily clad beach volleyball player who has access to several different weapons that pop up throughout the game. What are they for? Good question! Grab one, though, and you lose a piece of clothing! (What was the question?) Make it to the end and you get to watch a full-on naked knife fight with rocket-propelled grenades and sabers. Nudity! And knifing! Thursday, October 23
Tuesday, October 21
Britney waxwork goes pole-dancing 
Madame Tussauds in London unveiled a new waxwork of a pole-dancing Britney Spears - punters will be encouraged to join the pop princess in a few moves of their own. Uhmm...can you say Bukkake? Thursday, October 16
I  Ray Kurzweil
As I mentioned, electronics is already 100 million times faster than our electrochemical circuits; we have no quick downloading ports on our biological neurotransmitter levels, and so on. We could bioengineer smarter humans, but this approach will not begin to keep pace with the exponential pace of computers, particularly when brain reverse engineering is complete (within thirty years from now). The human genome is 800 million bytes, but if we eliminate the redundancies (e.g., the sequence called "ALU" is repeated hundreds of thousands of times), we are left with only about 23 million bytes, less than Microsoft Word. The limited amount of information in the genome specifies stochastic wiring processes that enable the brain to be millions of times more complex than the genome which specifies it. The brain then uses self-organizing paradigms so that the greater complexity represented by the brain ends up representing meaningful information. However, the architecture of a DNA-specified brain is relatively fixed and involves cumbersome electrochemical processes. Although there are design improvements that could be made, there are profound limitations to the basic architecture that no amount of tinkering will address... I recommend establishing the connection with noninvasive nanobots that communicate wirelessly with our neurons. As I discuss in the précis, the feasibility of communication between the electronic world and that of biological neurons has already been demonstrated. There are a number of advantages to extending human intelligence through the nanobot approach. They can be introduced noninvasively (i.e., without surgery). The connections will not be limited to one or a small number of positions in the brain. Rather, the nanobots can communicate with neurons (and with each other) in a highly distributed manner. They would be programmable, would all be on a wireless local area network, and would be on the web. Weapons of mass....irony? US world leader in arms sales The United States sells more arms than any other country, and Saudi Arabia leads the world for buying arms among developing countries, a report from the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) said Wednesday. The United States holds a 40.3 percent market share in arms sales, raking in 10.241 billion dollars (8.8 billion euros) from sales in 2002, according to the IISS annual report "The Military Balance 2003-2004", on arms around the world. Wednesday, October 15
Tuesday, October 14
Conspiracy researcher's wet dream becoming a reality?? Citizens strike back in intelligence war With the recent demise of the Bush administration's controversial Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) programme to monitor everyone in the US, citizens now have a chance to get their own back. A website to be launched later in 2003 will allow people to post information about the activities of government organisations, officials and the judiciary. The two MIT researchers behind the project face one serious problem: how to protect themselves against legal action should any of the postings prove false. The answer, they say, is to borrow a technique from the underground music-swapping community. Instead of storing the data in one place, they plan to distribute it around the internet in a similar way to the notorious Napster software that got music file-sharing under way. Just like TIA, the new website, called Government Information Awareness (GIA), is designed to collect snippets of information to build a database that can later be searched to reveal patterns of suspicious behaviour. Tuesday, October 7
Apparently the Japanese aren't satisfied with CD read/write drives, they had to go one step farther and create a Brain read/write machine. Tsk...showoffs. 
Found via Warren Ellis' blog, Die Puny Humans! Wednesday, October 1
Pope Blasts "Hater's" At General Audience 
VATICAN CITY -- A frail but determined Pope John Paul II led his general audience Wednesday and, brushing aside any suggestions that he is cutting back on his schedule due to his health, announced, "I ain't goin' out like that!" In remarks published Tuesday, a close papal adviser said the pope was in "bad" shape, prompting concern throughout the world for the 83-year-old pontiff. The aging pontiff cast out the "sucka's" saying that they were attempting to "play him." Throughout his traditional general audience, Pope John Paul II repeatedly motioned to German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and muttered, "You best step back, kid, you aint ready fo' this." After reciting the "Our Father" John Paul attempted to stand while shouting, "I am th' Pope! King Kong aint got nothin' on me!" Upon receiving the communion wine, the Pope poured a sip on the ground, and thumped his chest twice as he remarked, "For Holy-J." The leader of the Roman Catholic Church also asked to be called "P-Murda'" from now on, and announced that, "God willing," he will travel next week to a shrine in Pompeii. Chuck D. dropping the science. "Chuck D, leader of Public Enemy, vehemently opposes what the industry is trying to do. "Technology giveth and it taketh away, and the industry knows this," Chuck D said. "The horseshoe makers probably got upset at the train manufacturers because (the new industry) took away their transport dominance, just as the train manufacturers probably got mad at the airline industry." "I think this expands artistry and it's about adjustment," he said. "As an artist representing an 80-year period of black musicianship, I never felt that my copyrights were protected anyway," Chuck D said. "I've been spending most of my career ducking lawyers, accountants and business executives who have basically been more blasphemous than file sharers and P2P. I trust the consumer more than I trust the people who have been at the helm of these companies. "The record industry is hypocritical and the domination has to be shared. P2P to me means 'power to the people,'" Chuck D said. "And let's get this to a balance, and that's what we're talking about." " Wired News |
