“This may sound incredible, but in recent years, research on using signals from the brain to operate machines has taken great strides. Scientists have developed brain-machine interfaces that allow paralyzed humans to move a computer cursor or even use a robotic arm to pick up a piece of chocolate or touch a loved one for the first time in years. Nicolelis has set his sights even higher: He wants to get paralyzed people up and walking around. If he succeeds it could be a tremendous advance. Right now he’s still developing this technology in monkeys. There’s a long way to go.
But Nicolelis was brimming with confidence in January when I visited his lab at Duke University to see how his work is progressing. “We’re getting close to making wheelchairs obsolete,” he said.“
- I’m going to be working on music all day today. In fact, I’ll probably hop to it after writing this. I’m staring at three pages from my creativity book — one ripped out — trying to discover the natural succession of songs as they should unfold in relation to what the album is about. What it means to me. This is easily my most personal album I’ve ever done, as it vaguely (it doesn’t beat you over the head or anything) tells the story of the hardest years of my life. So far. But in a meta-way, this time… this experience, is kind of what birthed the idea and the sounds that would become my current musical persona to begin with. It likely wouldn’t exist in this way without this experience. So it’s all a little bizarre. About halfway through I’m remixing the very first track I did officially under the pseudo-name, in an effort to recreate the frustration of what was happening boiling over and me finally going down to the basement and making this droning, Electronic beat. So… I’m excited.
That’s Doldrums new album, “Lesser Evil”, released yesterday on Arbutus Records. Canadian (Toronto) -based Electronic music that isn’t trying to make you dance (though you probably could), but that doesn’t get weird for the sake of it. There’s a hint of that new wave of Canadian electronics in here, the sounds we heard from Purity Ring and Grimes in 2012; those textures are supplemented with the more analog sounds of a group like, say, Black Moth Super Rainbow. The vocals are surprisingly un-effected out (generally speaking), and there are nods of good old-fashioned storytelling inside some of these songs; but it is not afraid to use a voice as a pure and simple instrument in and of itself as well. On top of that you’ve got these rhythmic, hypnotic back-beats that have clearly been recorded live, with a kit, in a large room with padded walls. Definitely worth checking out.
- I really hope Warren Ellis will be getting some amount of dough from Iron Man 3, if the movie is directly lifting his nanotechnology, biological modification, Extremis from his run on the character.
Speaking of Uncle Warren, he’s apparently been inspired by newspaper comic strips, and has been releasing single panel comics on his website of late… as part of a world he calls “Scatterlands”. Here’s the latest:
- Hurricane Sandy as the Fibonacci Spiral/Sequence:
- I wonder how close this is to the character from 2001…? Someone has decided to make a HAL9000 robot for purchase and — I’m assuming — mounting on your wall somewhere? You can preorder it for $500 right now. LINK.
- Then we got some what looks to be hockey jersey’s that are really fucking nerdy and awesome at GeekJerseys.com. This Link jersey is really, really fucking awesome:
DNA sequencing of 36 complete Y chromosomes has uncovered a previously unknown period when the human population expanded rapidly. This population explosion occurred 40 to 50 thousand years ago, between the first expansion of modern humans out of Africa 60 to 70 thousand years ago and the Neolithic expansions of people in several parts of the world starting 10 thousand years ago.
- Warren Ellis FAQ featuring some interesting writing questions. Such as:
I was wondering if you had any advice regarding making ideas more important. I have pages of different events + characters that I can only develop so far because, after a time, all I can add to them are “WHO CARES?” and “WHY DOES THIS MATTER?” (I’m talking about events characters will go through. “Statues come to life all around Greece” is immediately followed by “WHO GIVES A FUCK?”) Does this ever happen to you? Thank you very much for your time, and sorry if you’ve answered a similar question!Ungh. This is a really tough one. There are two ways, maybe, to attack this.
1) One way of doing it, and this works okay for standard dramatic storytelling, is this: what do your characters WANT? The secondary questions are, what stops them from getting what they want, and how far are they prepared to go to get what they want? But start with the simple first question. What your character wants defines how we perceive and feel about them in the story. Find one thing they want, and see how that feels to you.
2) From a certain view, stories are two things. There’s what the story’s about, and what the story’s REALLY about. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS is about a Martian invasion of Earth. But it’s REALLY about something else entirely. There’s a subtext: there’s the thing Wells wrote the story toactually talk about. What you may be encountering is having a story that’s all surface, or a story with a subtext that isn’t working out for you. Find out what you really want to say with your fiction. If it matters to YOU, it’ll matter to other people.
This may not be “Exhibit A” of why DC’s rebranding strategy blows, though it is certainly C or D. I’m not begrudging them for what they’re trying to do with all this “New 52 Issue Zero” stuff, and I honestly think it will lead to their intended goal: attracting and keeping new readers. But in the words of many o’ Conservatives, the strategy will and does have a slew of “unintended consequences”. One is bothering people like me, who read very few mainstream DC books (umm… ONE); whether it crossed their minds or not, they’re risking the loyalty of their current readership to fish for new readership. Does the risk outweigh the consequences? But forget about numbers and market shares and all that shit and think about comics artistically for a minute. Is it good for a comic artistically to disrupt the flow of a story arc by shoving in an introductory single issue into the mix? What does it do for the comic? What does it take away? With a Grant Morrison book (especially this one), this takes away more than it gives. To be honest, it gives very little. What we see here are tropes, scenes, and iconic imagery from the entirety of Grant Morrison’s Batman opus: the Island of Doctor Mayhew, the bell and the open window, the funding from Wayne Enterprises, the recruiting. None of this is necessary. Part of the fun of getting into a Morrison comic is the wanting… the craving, to go back and re-read older issues. When you do this on your own, it’s rewarding. When someone points out all this stuff to you to get people to read what you’ve been reading for some 7, 8 years, it’s insulting. Granted, Morrison and the art team of Burnham/Irving do an admirable job with the task given. But no new revelations plus a hand-holding journey through the past just equals tediousness in the end, I’m afraid. Skip this, return with #4 (which really is #12 considering they already started into “#1″ earlier this year and not counting this #0 which isn’t really part of the run and…. see how confusing this shit is?) which promises to plow the story forward.
- Manhattan Projects #6
The title of this issue — “Star City” — refers to a sprawling metropolis of the former Soviet Union, the scientific and ideas mecca of the State. We have yet to cover any sort of Soviet ground beyond a vague propagandist notion of who they are and what they want via the Manhattan Projects leering eyes. Misunderstood by the Americans, perhaps… but they are not the good guys. This is made clear (though I find it interesting that they implore the Aldo Raine style of permanent Nazi branding; instead of a knife they opt for a cattle prod). The irony of Communist nations of the past is on full display here: even the greatest mind(s) of the State are subject to Big Brother compensation. Such is the case with Helmutt Grottrup. Grottrup, like many of the physicists and inventors in the book, was a real person. German, he worked for the Nazi’s during The War, developing the V-2 alongside Wernher von Braun (also a character in the book). After the War ended, he opted to work for the Soviets. He thought, mistakenly, that he would be his own master in The Union. That he would not be anyone’s underling, a less than desirable experience under von Braun. But things didn’t change. In the Soviet Union he worked under a man named Sergei Korolev, not so far a character. Korolev in the book might be replaced with a certain Dmitiry Ustinov. Ustinov was the Union’s Minister of Defense for years during the Cold War. Except in the book he’s represented as a brain in a jar with a large robotic body. Anyways, most of this issue involves Ustinov and Braun shoving Grottrup in corners to work and question nothing. Then there’s quite a twist at the end. I love how this book is simultaneously batshit crazy yet steeped in reality, and real people and projects.
- The Massive #4
At some point this comic will dip in quality. The interest it extracts from the reader will level off. And it will still be good, but not this good. Luckily, this peak still feels very far off on the horizon. That is because this world that Brian Wood has crafted with THE MASSIVE is so vibrant and alive the nooks and crannies to explore are next to endless. We’re still learning about “The Crash”; the series of cataclysmic natural disasters which led to a series of cataclysmic sociopolitical disasters. But forget all that for a moment. We also don’t know much about The Kapital or The Massive… the two ships of the (supposedly) pacifist conservatory non-profit Ninth Wave, or their crews. Not to mention Ninth Wave itself. Wood throws in a little taste this issue of the history of the organization and that of the main character, Callum Israel. Ninth Wave had apparently gotten itself on the shitlist of many governments when they used The Massive (the larger of their ships) to blockade oil tankers from exporting out of the Middle East. When 9/11 happened, their name was brought up vaguely, but not outright named. Ninth Wave went off grid. The organization stayed largely silent during a large chunk of the first decade of Century 21. All charges were dropped and their reputation was cleared though. So they resurfaced prior to The Crash. And now, in a post-Crash world their conservationist mission continues; as they see it as important as ever before. A post-Crash World where, as is shown in this issue, the rules and ethics of society have been swept aside. Callum knows this, and admirably (even with a gun pointed in his face in this issue) he sticks to his vow of non-violence. But he wasn’t always that way. We also get a good helping of Callum’s life pre-Crash. Very, very interesting. We learn of his history with a private military contractor (something all too familiar since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan). A glimpse at his former partner then and now reminds us that even with post/pre Crash Worlds, very different Worlds, some people never change. They only amplify. The biggest part of this issue that moves the story along is Cal getting supplies from a shady character, to say the least. The rest is backstory. But the backstory is so damn interesting, I’ll take issues like this all day long. This has got to be one of the best books on the stands right now.
- Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes. Christopher Waltz just signed up to star in the upcoming Terry Gilliam flick, Zero Theorem. Course, in Gilliam time “upcoming” could mean years upon years. But supposedly, the film we be going into production soonish… with Waltz fresh off his stint on Tarentino’s set. Reason I’m so excited — besides loving said star/director combination — is because SlashFilm is calling the script “a Philip K. Dick story on steroids”. It revisits the Orwellian world and themes of Gilliam’s Brazil. BleedingCool has a synopsis, if you like. The story involves virtual sex, a Big Brother-esque organization called “Management”, therapists as computer applications, and suits that allow users to explore their souls (falsely?). Not to mention the theorem (titular) Waltz’s character is working on, which will once and for all prove that life does or does not have a purpose. Wheew.
Living in an Orwellian corporate world where “mancams” serve as the eyes of a shadowy figure known only as Management, Leth (Waltz) works on a solution to the strange theorem while living as a virtual cloistered monk in his home—the shattered interior of a fire-damaged chapel.
His isolation and work are interrupted now and then by surprise visits from Bainsley, a flamboyantly lusty love interest who tempts him with “tantric biotelemetric interfacing” (virtual sex) and Bob.
Latter is the rebellious whiz-kid teenage son of Management who, with a combination of insult-comedy and an evolving true friendship, spurs on Qohen’s efforts at solving the theorem. But these visits turn out to be intentional diversions orchestrated by Management to keep control of Qohen’s progress.
Bob creates a virtual reality “inner-space” suit that will carry Qohen on an inward voyage, a close encounter with the hidden dimensions and truth of his own soul, wherein lie the answers both he and Management are seeking. The suit and supporting computer technology will perform an inventory of Qohen’s soul, either proving or disproving the Zero Theorem.
Such an event occurred in March 2011, when scientists using NASA’s Swift telescope detected a sudden flare of X-rays from a source located nearly 4 billion light-years away in the constellation Draco. The flare, called Swift J1644+57, showed the likely location of a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy, a black hole that had until then remained hidden until a star ventured too close and became an easy meal.
The resulting particle jet, created by material from the star that got caught up in the black hole’s intense magnetic field lines and was blown out into space in our direction (at 80-90% the speed of light!) is what initially attracted astronomers’ attention. But further research on Swift J1644+57 with other telescopes has revealed new information about the black hole and what happens when a star meets its end.
- Wired.uk has an article reporting on new research about the microbe marine life levels in the Gulf of Mexico 2ish years after the now mostly forgotten BP oil spill. And it has been mostly forgotten; unless you live down there, and your economy is so closely tied to the ocean. Characters at my work have said that “it really isn’t as bad as it seems”, or that the whole thing was overblown by the “liberal media”. But, and this is from a strictly non-political viewpoint, I just don’t see how 210 million gallons of crude oil could be dumped into a gulf (we’re not talking the middle of the Pacific here) and it not affect the marine life. I was right. PLoSONE research group studied the shoreline and found “predatory fungal communities that can survive in harsher conditions appear to have replaced the previously diverse range of microscopic marine life that once populated the shoreline, including metazoan phyla, protists, algae and fungi.”
- From IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies), Patrick Lin of The Atlantic asks “Is It Possible To Wage A Just Cyberwar?”. Lin discusses 6 issues that relate to the righteousness of an act of war, as pertaining to cyberwarfare: 1) Aggression, 2) Discrimination, 3) Proportionality, 4) Attribution, 5) Treacherous Deceit, and 6) A Lasting Peace. Very interesting:
This digital evolution means that it is now less clear what kind of events should reasonably trigger a war, as well as how and when new technologies may be used. With cyberweapons, a war theoretically could be waged without casualties or political risk, so their attractiveness is great — maybe so irresistible that nations are tempted to use them before such aggression is justified. This essay identifies some important ethical issues that have been upturned by these emerging digital weapons, which in turn help explain why national cyberdefense is such a difficult policy area.
- Finally, On The Natural History of Surveillance likens science fiction tropes to the tech we have now. Well… “likens” might be the wrong word considering lots of the shit from 60′s science fiction (particularly PKD books) IS HAPPENING NOW tick for tock.
Upon hearing the phrase, we may not know exactly what a “cephalic sniffer” is, nor whether it is a real piece of technology. However, as to what such a nefarious device might be able to do, we could surely begin to imagine from the name alone. And as for whether it is technological reality (it is not, being invented by Philip K. Dick in his story Clans of the Alphane Moon), from its “sci-fi” sounding alliteration we might guess correctly that it is purely fantasy.
At least it was fantasy when PKD invented it in 1964. Today, advances in biometric identification mean that while a device that can search out an individual by his or her brainwaves is not yet on the market (at least publicly), searching out a person by face or speech pattern is decidedly real. Furthermore, brain-computer interface devices (BCI) have been commercially available since at least 1999.
So for the past few months something odd has been happening to me. At first I thought it was a coincidence; then it repeated itself. Over, and over, and over, and over again. It has to do with clocks. Pretty frequently, when I make a conscious decision to check the time, I’ll see all the same numbers. So, 4:44, 1:11, 3:33, etc. But I believe in coincidence. I don’t really believe in determinism. I tend to think a large part of existence as we know it is basically made up of odd, charming coincidences. So imagine my surprise when this repeated numeral clock phenomenon starting happening to me. So today — my day off — I’m finally reading up on it and trying to make some sense of it.
The skepticism is out there, to be expected. This guy thinks that there could be several rather simple explanations for the phenomenon, working in conjunction to actually make one’s chances of seeing these things fairly high. The first thing he mentions is that a digital clock readout with some sort of unique pattern is obviously far more memorable than a non-pattern. Our brains don’t remember 8:51 but do remember 11:11. He also proposes that clocks have a far more likely chance of having patterns in them then we’d imagine because of the simple fact that clocks have very few numbers to work with. Especially on a non-24 hour clock: hours only go to 12 and minutes go to 59. In most reported cases, the digits are small — 11:11, 3:33, 1:11, etc — which means that if most of the time the clock is showing smaller numbers, the likeliness of the pattern will increase.
But with all these reasonable explanations and my moderate personal skepticism, I still can’t help but feel something when it happens. It amazes me. Even with all the evidence the above article presents to say, “not a big deal, it’s just coincidental”, I still can’t help but think how unlikely it is. Now I’m running the numbers in my head: 1440 minutes per day… divided by 2 for a non-24 hour clock is 720 minutes (or, 12 times 60). Now in my case I’m only noticing repeated numerals, all the same. Which means there is only 6 options, right? There’s 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, 5:55, and 11:11. 720 possible combinations divided by 6 options equals 120. Now divide 1 by 120 and you’re left with a .0083 (repeating)… A .83% percent chance of seeing a repeated numeral time on a digital clock. That isn’t much. You have a better chance of dying in a car accident, which hovers around 1%.
So I keep coming back to the question of, “if something so unlikely keeps repeatedly happening to me, what does it mean?”. And that I cannot say. I’ve got a few numerology pages up on my tabs right now that I’ve been digging through. Believe it or not, a whole slew of people have experienced this phenomenon though. It happens all the time to people. Particularly with 11:11 (which is the time that I first started seeing repeat itself; then it evolved to include the other 5 of the 6). This page has hundreds of reports and testimonials from people, collected from 1996 to 2006. Surprisingly, the Wikipedia page on the 11:11 phenomenon has given me quite a bit of insight. It’s related to Synchronicity: a concept developed by Carl Jung which states that “just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by meaning”.
It’s also odd that I’m experiencing this now because we’ve just passed November 11th, 2011… 11/11/11. Which the Huffington Post dubbed the “Greatest Binary Day of All“. In fact, in the past two years we’ve seen a number of binary days (dates consisting of only 1′s and 0′s). The next binary day is January 1st, 2100.
Of course, I could be succumbing to some amount of confirmation-bias and/or post-hoc analysis. Either way I find it to be incredibly interesting. Now that I’ve thought about it consciously for some amount of time I wonder if it will keep happening. The key is to think about it though… to not look at clocks just for purpose of seeing if there’s a repeated numeral time.
“I’m not a protestor. I’m not political. I take my freedom from technological solutions to creative modes of expression. Occupy Wall Street if you want, I’ll be making beats in my bedroom.“
Today, Ed Brubaker posted a gem on Facebook (I’d suggest following him, if only for his amazing insights into the opinions of a comics creator; obviously you have to be a comics fan first and foremost):
“Y’know, some days it feels like the world is falling apart. On those days, my advice is go buy a good comic and lose yourself in it.”
Then there’s the obligatory scientist’s quote from a national news source that sums up our hopes and dreams. Ha. Except, this one from Geoffrey Marcey — an astronomer working on the Keplar Telescope mission (didn’t we cancel that?), which recently discovered more than 50 extra terrestrial planets which might contain water — is a little more simple than one might imagine:
I’m going to go-ahead and throw PhysOrg‘sRSS feed into my browser and at the bottom of this site. There really isn’t — to my knowledge — a better science and research news site out there. It isn’t clunky like other science sites: just a boatload of article headlines floating about, divided into categories in the form of labeled tabs.
“The mother ship is finished… The rocket tests are going extremely well, and so I think that we’re now on track for a launch within 12 months of today,” he told CNN’s Piers Morgan late Wednesday. “This could be the beginning of a whole new era of space travel, which will be commercial space travel.” His company, Virgin Galactic, hopes to one day send people into space and launch satellites for a fraction of the cost of government-run programs, as well as eventually offering high-speed intercontinental flights. “About an hour between Los Angeles and London is not completely out of the question,” Branson said, adding that it will likely take many years before the company can offer such a service. In the meantime, Virgin has sold some 430 tickets for space travel — at $200,000 a pop — for an estimated $86 million.
I’ve been hearing this a lot lately. That the commercial space industry will take off soon… who needs NASA anyways?? There are a few problems with commercial space travel. The first is that Virgin is a company first and foremost. And like any other company, they need income to continue and thrive. Read the rest of this entry »
“In research detailed in the latest edition of the journal Science, researchers Dr Sonja Franke-Arnold, Dr Graham Gibson and Prof Padgett, in collaboration with their colleague Professor Robert Boyd at the Universities of Ottowa and Rochester, took a different approach and set up an experiment: shining a primitive image made up of the elliptical profile of a green laser through a ruby rod spinning on its axis at up to 3,000 rpm.
Once the light enters the ruby, its speed is slowed down to around the speed of sound (approximately 741mph) and the spinning motion of the rod drags the light with it, resulting in the image being rotated by almost five degrees: large enough to see with the naked eye.”
I’m not sure what the applications are for something like this. Then again, I’m not an engineer.
- Mike Shea posted this on the monthly Whitechapel Artists’ Thread:
There are few cooler things a famous person can do (…”famous”) than pimp out less famous people’s work. To me, a peer has less to do with success or status than content and style. In this sense, “peers” are somewhat of an apparition, ghosts that drift through the windows of time attracted to likewise individuals. Alan Moore, quite obviously, has some unearthly connection with H.P. Lovecraft; why can’t that go both ways? Liu Xiaobo and Dr. King? Hell, Robin Hood and Catwoman?? The promotion of likewise ideas and arts clearly moves upwards as well. How many websites out there dedicate themselves to promoting their favorite films, albums, artists, writers? Why, this very page almost defines this: a like-minded and dead alter-ego of an anonymous self talking about the very famous and the not so famous artisans of the world.
Few people have embraced this, and its natural relation to the Global Net, more than Warren Ellis. He used to run what he called “The 4 A.M.” frequently. It was a podcast of bands and musicians from all-over the world that caught his ear, the catch was he would ask for submissions from anyone to an e-mail account. The result was a mixture of artists with wildly different levels of “success”: a kid in his basement experimenting with synths, an ambient band who’s poised to takeover South By Southwest. His personal website is essentially a catalog for other artists he enjoys and/or would like to see become more successful. (From what I hear Slug’s Twitter feed is one big radio station for promoting other bands he likes.) Three things (out of thousands) I have Warren to thank for sharing with me:
PHYSORG.com – A wonderful website. One of the “leading web-based science, research and technology news service which covers a full range of topics. These include physics, earth science, medicine, nanotechnology, electronics, space, biology, chemistry, computer sciences, engineering, mathematics and other sciences and technologies.“
Katelan Foisy – Artist, writer, photographer, journalist, thinker, entrepreneur, blogger, gardener. Her paintings evoke textured and surreal characterization of herself, her friends, her neighbors, YOU… they dig deep into the human experience as seen through the kaleidoscope of popular culture and fantastical underbelly that lies underneath life as we know it. Her writing does a bit of the same, a throwback to the stream-of-consciousness writers and poets of the 50′s and 60′s. Make no mistake, she is good at everything she does.
More recently, Sara Gries’ FLICKR – Sara takes pretty pictures. Photos of puppets/dolls, books, time-pieces, artwork, herself, with an eye for the way things work. She is very interested in the physical: metal and fabrication and depth; one of those photographers you want to reach inside their work and prod what lies in wait, make it go. Go and touch some of her pictures.
