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Saturday, December 31, 2005

December 31st, 2005 

jest for pun (December’05)

Posted in Humor

December’05 BlogThoughts

Every calendar’s days are numbered.

  • The murals in restaurants are on par with the food in museums. - Peter De Vries
  • The saying “Getting there is half the fun” became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines. - Henry J. Tillman
  • At the end of the game, both the king and the pawn go back into the same box.
  • Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. - Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973) “Science and Scientism”
  • President Bush appeared with Arnold Schwarzenegger at a huge campaign event. Only in California can a governor who speaks German and a president who can barely speak English try to make themselves clear to an audience that’s primarily Spanish. - Jay Leno
  • The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.- Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
  • Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home. - Bill Cosby
  • December 30th, 2005

    Liquid Sculpture

    Posted in Art

    Martin screenshotWaugh loves drops and splashes, and he has dedicated his site to displaying their elegance through the wonders of high-speed photography. With a small amount of specialized equipment, in just a few thousandths of a second, Martin captures still images of magnificent drips, splatters, and liquids. The galleries here showcase the variety of his “liquid sculptures,” whether they be plain water, milk and cream, or something a little more risqué. If you look closely, you might even spot the photographer himself, and you’ll probably wonder how on earth did the world get in there? Some say that to find beauty, you’ve got to look in all the right places, but why not just start with your morning coffee?

    December 30th, 2005

    Adult Brain Cells Do Keep Growing

    Posted in Tech/Science

    The apocryphal tale that you can’t grow new brain cells just isn’t true. Neurons continue to grow and change beyond the first years of development and well into adulthood, according to a new study.

    The finding challenges the traditional belief that adult brain cells, or neurons, are largely static and unable to change their structures in response to new experiences.

    Continue reading …

    December 30th, 2005

    Funniest commercials of 2005

    Posted in Fun, Humor

    Funniest Commercials of the Year - CareerBuilder.com “Monkeys”

    Check the others too…

    December 30th, 2005

    Nobel Prize Games

    Posted in Tech/Science

    Games and Simulations at the Noble Prize website.See the right sidebar for a complete list of what’s available.

    December 29th, 2005

    The IVR Cheat Sheet by Paul English

    Posted in Info

    screenshotThe IVR (”Interactive Voice Response”) Cheat Sheet, a simple list of the keypad numbers you have to press in order to reach an actual human being when you call the customer service line of different companies and government agencies. For the main list, click 1. If you would like further information about the cheat sheet, click 2. To submit an update to the cheat sheet, click 3. For a FAQ, click 4. To view companies with great customer service, click 5.

    December 29th, 2005

    Collapse of civilization

    Posted in Info

    Collapse of civilization: Not necessarily a bad thing Many will no doubt find the foregoing discussion of collapse depressing or pessimistic. In “How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse”, John Michael Greer hints at why this is, writing, “Even within the social sciences, the process by which complex societies give way to smaller and simpler ones has often been presented in language drawn from literary tragedy, as though the loss of sociocultural complexity necessarily warranted a negative value judgment. This is understandable, since the collapse of civilizations often involves catastrophic human mortality and the loss of priceless cultural treasures, but like any value judgment it can obscure important features of the matter at hand.” Greer goes on to characterize collapse in terms of ecological succession. …Collapse happens precisely because it improves our lives—and it happens when the alternative is no longer tolerable.

    December 28th, 2005

    message to space competition

    Posted in Tech/Science, Humor

    Sam Dinkin has won the contest held by “The Space Show” for the first message to space. The message could have a maximum length of one page, taking no more than 5 minute to read. His winning entry:

    “We taste terrible.”

    December 28th, 2005

    2005 Foot In Mouth Awards

    Posted in History, Reality

    “Wired is running a story on the 2005 Foot In Mouth Awards.” From the article: “Tech execs say the darndest things. And so do shuffling presidents, and disgraced scientists, and Wikipedia fakers. It’s time to relive 2005’s biggest spoken gaffes.”

    December 28th, 2005

    holy cow!

    Posted in Info, Tech/Science, Reality

    Study: Cows Excel At Selecting Leaders
    Recent studies on leadership in cows and other grazing herbivores suggest that intelligence, inquisitiveness, confidence, experience and good social skills help to determine which animals will become leaders within herds.

    The findings suggest that, at least among these animals, individuals are not necessarily “born leaders,” and that bullying, selfishness, size and strength are not recognized as suitable leadership qualities.

    “The fact that in groups of animals of different age, leaders are amongst the oldest animals suggests that it’s not innate, but the result of previous experience,” said Bertrand Dumont, lead author of a recent Applied Animal Behavior Science paper on leadership in a group of grazing heifers.

    Dumont is a researcher at INRA, the national institute of agricultural research in Saint-Genès-Champanelle, France.

    Continue reading …

    December 27th, 2005

    The mathematics of Sudoku, a puzzle that boasts “No math required!”

    Posted in Info, Games

    Unwed Numbers
    The mathematics of Sudoku, a puzzle that boasts “No math required!”

    A few years ago, if you had noticed someone filling in a crossword puzzle with numbers instead of letters, you might well have looked askance. Today you would know that the puzzle is not a crossword but a Sudoku. The craze has circled the globe. It’s in the newspaper, the bookstore, the supermarket checkout line; Web sites offer puzzles on demand; you can even play it on your cell phone.

    Continue reading …

    December 26th, 2005

    the theory of six degrees of separation

    Posted in Info

    The theory that everyone in the world is separated by at most five acquaintances was first proposed in a 1929 short story by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy. The story was called “Chains,” and while the six degrees theory was a purely fictional conceit, the idea proved popular.

    In 1967, psychologist Stanley Milgram tried to test the theory by sending several letters to random people in the Midwest. The letter featured the name, address, and occupation of a single person on the East Coast; participants were asked to forward the letters to the people who they thought were most likely to know the person. It took an average of five intermediaries to reach the target.

    The experiment came into some scrutiny afterwards, but the results were published in Psychology Today and gave birth to the phrase “six degrees of separation.” Playwright John Guare popularized the term with his play, which later became a film starring a then up-and-coming Will Smith.

    But get this — the original 1967 experiment was repeated in 2001 with email, and the same results came back! Then there’s that whole Kevin Bacon business….

    December 25th, 2005

    Best holiday greetings to all Brilliant Friends.

    Posted in Fun

    December 25th, 2005

    Who was Granny Smith?

    Posted in Info

    Who was the mysterious matron of the green apple? Cathy’s Apple Page states Granny Smith was an Australian woman who stumbled on her famous variety after throwing out a bunch of apples in the mid-19th century.

    As the story goes, from this pile of bad apples a young tree sprung, bearing a light green fruit that was tart but not excessively sour. The new strain of apple could also withstand lengthy bouts of storage and shipping.

    The story is true, mostly. The city of Ryde in New South Wales, Australia, hosts her official biography. Born in 1799 in Sussex, England, Maria Ann Sherwood emigrated with her husband Thomas Smith to Australia in 1838 to plant orchards in the new Australian colony.

    Granny Smith developed her famous fruit late in life. Her distinctive green apple came from a seedling tree that had grown from the remains of “some French crab apples grown in Tasmania.” She never lived to see its success. In 1870, just two years before folks began cultivating her new seedling tree, she passed away. Granny Smith apples won first prize in a local agricultural fair in 1891, and five years later they were being shipped around the world.

    December 24th, 2005

    World Art Treasures

    Posted in History, Art

    World Art Treasures : “What is essential in my approach consists of not “letting the others profit,” as is too often thought, but to PROFIT ALONG WITH OTHERS from the dual experience of my studies and travel, sharing the emotions of my discoveries and encounters, to maintain faith in this miracle that is life. ” -
    J-E Berger

    December 23rd, 2005

    Australia’s Earliest Footprints Found

    Posted in Info, History

    The shifting sands of time have revealed Australia’s earliest human footprints, giving a glimpse of life at the height of the last ice age.

    At tens of thousands of years old, the find is the largest group of human footprints from the Pleistocene era ever found.

    Archaeologist Matthew Cupper of the University of Melbourne and colleagues reported their findings from the New South Wales Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area online ahead of print publication in the Journal of Human Evolution.

    “It’s a little snapshot in time,” said Cupper. “The possibilities are endless in terms of getting a window into past Aboriginal society.”

    Continue reading…

    December 22nd, 2005

    Andy Borowitz: domestic spying shocker

    Posted in Uncategorized

    BUSH URGES AMERICANS TO SPY ON EACH OTHER THIS HOLIDAY SEASON Andy Borowitz

    Calls Invasion of Privacy ‘The Gift That Keeps On Giving’

    In a special pre-holiday address to the American people, President George W. Bush today said that the upcoming holiday season affords all Americans a unique opportunity to spy on their neighbors, and urged his fellow citizens to do so.

    “My fellow Americans, over the holidays many of you will be receiving new camcorders as gifts,” President Bush told his national television audience. “Instead of making boring home movies of your children, point the camera at the house next door and see what your neighbors are up to.”

    Saying that the people next door “might be evildoers,” Mr. Bush said that by spying on one’s neighbors, “You’re going to find out who’s naughty or nice.”

    Coming just days after he defended his own practice of wiretapping phone conversations without a court warrant, Mr. Bush’s exhortation to the American people to snoop on one another over the holidays was the latest indication that he intends to ramp up domestic spying in the new year.

    “Invasion of privacy is the gift that keeps on giving,” the president said.

    Perhaps in an attempt to preempt criticism of his domestic spying program, Mr. Bush added that he was “more than willing” to let the government spy on him.

    “Go ahead, get a list of every library book I’ve taken out in the last five years,” he said. “You won’t find anything.”

    Elsewhere, a new report shows that China now has the fourth largest economy in the world, after the United States, Japan, and Vice President Dick Cheney.

    December 21st, 2005

    Ancient Maya Mural Unveiled

    Posted in History, Art

    U.S. archaeologists have discovered the “Sistine Chapel” of the Maya civilization — a finely painted, well preserved mural depicting the Maya creation myth and the crowning of a king.

    Unearthed inside a ruined pyramid in the Guatemalan jungle near the ancient Maya city of San Bartolo, the 100 B.C painting is the oldest intact mural ever found in Meso-America.

    The 30- by three-foot painting stood on the western wall of a room attached to the pyramid, said archaeologist William Saturno, of the University of New Hampshire and the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

    Saturno made ” the discovery of a lifetime” in 2001 by chance. To seek refuge from the tropical heat, he ducked into a looters’ trench cut into a jungle-covered pyramid.

    As he shone his flashlight on the walls, he was astonished.

    Continue reading …

    December 21st, 2005

    Nearby Star Smaller than Earth, Massive as Sun

    Posted in Tech/Science

    The brightest star in our sky has a companion that’s smaller than Earth yet 98 percent as massive as the Sun, a new study reveals.

    Astronomers already knew the brilliant blue-white Sirius had a stellar companion. But they didn’t know the object’s mass. The new measurement, announced today, was done by an international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

    Sirius is one of the closest known stars at 8.6 light-years away. It is twice as massive as the Sun and has a surface temperature of 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit (10,000 degrees C).

    Continue reading …

    December 20th, 2005

    Horny and sensitive!

    Posted in Info, Tech/Science

    nullThe narwhal, often termed “The Unicorn of the Sea,” has a really odd tusk. It’s long, spiraled, and there’s only one of ‘em per animal. Its purpose has been disputed for ages, but at long last, it seems that the answer has been found. And it’s pretty damn cool.

    December 20th, 2005

    Bumblebees Recognize People

    Posted in Info, Tech/Science

    Don’t be too proud of never forgetting a face: It turns out even a humble bumblebee can distinguish and recall different human faces, say researchers who have conducted experiments on the surprisingly canny insects.

    Researchers in the UK have found that bumblebees show a remarkable ability to spot the same human face even days after training.

    “The more we study these creatures, the more we find they have abilities like ours,” observed insect vision researcher Mandyam Srinivasan of Australian National University in Canberra.

    From bees to wasps, spiders and even sheep, other animals have proven they can not only recognize our faces, but they navigate mazes, match objects and shapes and even associate smells with previous experiences.

    “Sometimes I wonder what we are doing with two-kilogram brains,” mused Srinivasan.

    Bumblebees, for their part, have brains weighing less than a tenth of a gram — that’s about 20,000 times less massive than the human brain.

    The larger implications of such a small number of neurons doing such complex tasks are intriguing, but not obvious, says Dyer. There is the possibility, for instance, that someday humans who have experienced brain damage could borrow the bumblebee trick — whatever the trick is — to relearn facial recognition and other lost abilities, he says.


    Continue reading …

    December 19th, 2005

    Warped geometry speeds airline boarding

    Posted in Info, Reality

    What’s the most efficient way to get passengers on an airplane - boarding from front-to-back or a “free for all”? The answer may surprise you. (Here’s the full paper in PDF format.)

    December 19th, 2005

    Neural network sorts the blockbusters from the flops

    Posted in Info, Tech/Science

    Will the 3-hour special-effects-loaded remake of King Kong be a box office smash or a complete turkey? For movie producers, getting such questions right can be worth millions, and now they have a computer system to help them work it out before a film is even made.

    The idea comes from Ramesh Sharda, an information scientist at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, who has trained an artificial neural network to recognise what makes a successful movie (Expert Systems with Applications, vol 30, p 243).

    Continue reading …

    May be someday Neural network can sort - relationships….

    December 18th, 2005

    Why Do Computer Games Claim Lives?

    Posted in Reality, Games

    An article from Chosun, a Korean newspaper, asking the question why do videogames claim lives? The article is in response to some recent high profile gamer deaths. From the article: “Apparently rare overseas, such cases make frequent headlines in Korea. Why? Experts point to the poor environment of the ‘PC bang’ or Internet cafes that have mushroomed nationwide. Generally dark and poorly ventilated, they cater to gamers who tend to smoke heavily. The bad air and light can increase the danger of sudden death, experts warn.”

    December 18th, 2005

    Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked

    Posted in Info, Games, Web/Tech

    Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked - Henry Jenkins points out errors in the myths we hear about videogames and those who play them. It’s nice to hear intelligent commentary that doesn’t run along the lines of the usual messages.

    December 17th, 2005

    A to Z: The Year in Medicine 2005

    Posted in Info, Tech/Science

    This year, as every year, the struggle against disease was a grab bag of good and bad–vision and shortsightedness, courage and obtuseness, scientific masterstrokes and experiments that came to naught. It’s medicine’s historical dance, with every two steps forward matched by at least one step back. In a very good year, you might push that ratio to 3 to 1. TIME’s 2005 A-to-Z guide to the year in medicine tracks the highlights of the 12 months soon ending–and suggests that this year may have been one of the good ones.

    By any measure, 2005’s biggest medical news came out of Hwang’s lab–despite the subsequent scandal. The earliest bulletin was the announcement that Hwang and his 45-person team had become the first to using cloning techniques to create stem cells from human patients suffering from diseases such as diabetes and spinal-cord injury. Tissue derived from those cells could, in theory, be implanted in the pancreas or spine with little chance that the body would rejected it. If such experiments work, the same approach could be applied to other parts of the body, such as the brain or heart.

    Continue reading …

    – L –
    LAUGHTER Remember the last time you laughed so hard you couldn’t stop? Good. Do it again. Laughter increases blood flow by causing the inner lining of blood vessels (the endothelium) to expand, according to a small study of healthy moviegoers who were shown both funny and distressing clips from films and then tested for the physical effects of each. With laughter, blood flow increased 22%; under stress, it decreased 35%.

    December 17th, 2005

    Chameleon scarf coordinates with your outfit

    Posted in Info, Tech/Science

    People lacking any sense of fashion no longer need worry about their scarf clashing with their clothes this winter - researchers have created one that automatically changes colour to suit an outfit.

    The colour-shifting garment, dubbed a chameleon shawl, was developed by Akira Wakita and colleagues at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan.

    Interwoven into the scarf material are pixels containing red, blue and green light-emitting diodes (LEDs), so adjusting the brightness of each type of diode turns the scarf a different overall shade.

    A small sensor embedded in the garment also enables it to identify the colour of the nearest item of clothing. A microcomputer then selects a suitable colour for the scarf itself to adopt.
    Tasteful shade

    “In the default setting, the microcomputer in the shawl is programmed to change to the coordinative colour of the input data,” Wakita told New Scientist.

    This means that if its owner is wearing dark blue, for example, the scarf will instinctively turn a tasteful shade of light blue to match. “A kind of colour coordination will be established automatically,” Wakita says.

    If, however, the wearer fancies making a more daring fashion statement, the scarf’s computer can be configured to match more unusual colours together. “Theoretically, about 4000 colours can be generated,” Wakita says. “However, the difference may not be perceivable for human eyes.”

    The scarf was demonstrated at the International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC2005) in Osaka, Japan, in October 2005.

    December 16th, 2005

    Plain English Campaign

    Posted in Info, Fun

    The Plain English Campaign Awards have been published again. No Rumsfeldian “known unknowns” this time, just this from Rhodri Morgan:

    The only thing which isn’t up for grabs is no change and I think it’s fair to say it’s all to play for, except for no change.”

    The complete shortlist (word doc) and BBC report.

    2003 awards previously

    December 16th, 2005

    Merriam-Webster Open Dictionary

    Posted in Info, Fun, Books

    Merriam-Webster Open Dictionary: “Have you spotted a new word or a new sense for an old word that hasn’t made it into the dictionary yet? Well, here’s your chance to add your discovery (and its definition) to Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary”. Some examples:

    Snotcicle (verb) : a pendent mass of ice formed by the freezing of dripping snot

    phonecrastinate (verb) : to put off answering the phone until caller ID displays the incoming name and number

    scrax (noun) : the waxy coating that must be scratched off an instant lottery ticket

    photostroller (noun) : Person who walks with camera ready to take photos.

    e-nail (verb) : to expose yourself unwittingly, or to be exposed by another, by the forwarding of an e-mail containing personal comments to the person referred to in the message. One e-nails oneself most often by adding cc recipients to a long exchange, forgetting that the person added is referred to earlier in the exchange.

    “Max e-nailed me when he cc’ed Sally on my message about her screw-up.”

    (Via GeekPress.)

    December 16th, 2005

    Mona Lisa ‘happy’, computer finds

    Posted in Art, Web/Tech

    A computer has been used to decipher the enigmatic smile of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, concluding that she was mainly happy.

    The painting was analysed by a University of Amsterdam computer using “emotion recognition” software.

    It concluded that the subject was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry, journal New Scientist was told.

    December 15th, 2005

    The Year’s 10 Worst Predictions

    Posted in World News, Reality

    Prognosticating is hardly a science — and these whoppers for 2005 show why

    A great sage once said, “It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” That was more true than usual in 2005, which defied predictability. As the year of Katrina, Google, and $70 oil draws to a quiet (we hope) close, let’s stop to reflect on — and chuckle at — the worst of the forecasting mistakes.

    December 15th, 2005

    Alternative Cover Sheets for Classified Info

    Posted in Reality

    Stupid

    From today’s Secrecy News:

    ALTERNATIVE COVER SHEETS FOR CLASSIFIED INFO

    While underlying questions of secrecy and disclosure carry a potent primeval charge, the actual implementation of government secrecy policy is about as boring as it could be.

    In a rare attempt to leaven the subject with humor, some unidentified person has produced spoofs of the colored cover sheets that are often used on classified documents (Standard Forms 703, 704, and 705 for Top Secret, Secret and Confidential, respectively).

    Three previously published bogus cover sheets (for Futile, Stupid and B*ll**** Information) have been augmented by three new ones.

    The collection was circulated this week at the Pentagon.

    See the set here:

    http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/coversheets.pdf

    No word on which cover sheet was used for the parasite microsatellite or the Liying Zhan intelligence.

    December 14th, 2005

    Children Learn by Monkey See, Monkey Do. Chimps Don’t.

    Posted in Tech/Science, Reality

    It’s official, humans are dumber than chimps. These guys show (at the NY Times level) that human kids will over-imitate every ritualized nuance modeled for them, whereas chimp kids just wanna get the damn cookie out of the box. Their website also describes more of their studies.

    December 14th, 2005

    Learning from mistakes

    Posted in Web/Tech

    (via Anil Dash)

    Best post I’ve seen today: Ari Paparo talks about the differences between del.icio.us and Blink. Blink was Ari’s startup during the bubble, which raised $13 million (!) to build an online bookmarking service, but didn’t take off with users.

    The only way any of us gets to be a successful entrepreneur is by learning from others’ mistakes, yet a lot of business culture focuses around never admitting that errors are ever made. So kudos to Ari, not just for being brave enough to be self-critical, but for helping a lot of new aspiring entrepreneurs to succeed.

    The only quibble I’d have is that Ari presents del.icio.us as having succeeded already. Josh and his team at del.icio.us have built a great app, but for as popular as they are with geeks, the hard work is to bring the concept of social bookmarking (or, if you prefer, a shared recollection tool) to a larger audience.

    The best history of del.icio.us I’ve seen is David’s post about its evolution. I’m only pointing to it so I get the old-school cred of saying “I liked it back when it was muxway.”

    December 13th, 2005

    “park and walk” versus “cruise the lot.”

    Posted in Info, Reality

    Parking Space Roulette

    It’s the holiday season, and the parking lot at the mall is busy. You’re looking for a parking space. What’s the best strategy for selecting a “good” spot quickly?

    If the lot is really jammed, you take the first spot that you can find—no matter where it is or how inconvenient it might be.

    At other times, you might seek a spot that keeps the distance you have to walk to the mall entrance to a minimum or cuts down the amount of driving that you have to do to find a spot (or a combination of the two, represented by the total time it takes you to reach the mall’s front door).

    In one approach, you enter the parking lot, select a row near the lot’s fringe where you entered, and take the first open space.

    Alternatively, you could gamble by driving to the row nearest to the mall entrance to look for the closest open space. If there isn’t an open space in the first row, you “cycle” to the next adjacent row and take an open space, if one is available. Otherwise, you return to the first row and again look for the closest open spot.

    Several years ago, C. Richard Cassady of Mississippi State University and John E. Kobza, then at Virginia Tech, compared the two strategies: “park and walk” versus “cruise the lot.” Their study appeared in the journal Transportation Science.

    December 12th, 2005

    Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese

    Posted in Games, Web/Tech

    nullThe New York Times: One of China’s newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse. Posters of World of Warcraft and Magic Land hang above a corps of young people glued to their computer screens, pounding away at their keyboards in the latest hustle for money.

    The people working at this clandestine locale are “gold farmers.” Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they “play” computer games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash.

    That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them.

    By some estimates, there are well over 100,000 young people working in China as full-time gamers. Click here to read the whole story.

    December 7th, 2005

    Enlightened Technology: Prophet of the Electric Age

    Posted in Info, Reality, Columnists

    Thomas Easley

    Enlightened Technology
    Prophet of the Electric Age
    By
    Thomas M. Easley © Copyright 2005
    (with author’s permission)

    Why is it so difficult for mankind to produce just and meaningful leadership? Why do small minded people, believing that acquisition of power increases intelligence, so often amass authority over the maintenance of societal well-being?

    Are we certain, without doubt, that mankind is evolving?

    Is there a link between technology and the concept of belief?

    The human species is a self-organizing system wherein we, its comprising ingredients, exist as individual parts contributing to the species’ self-organization. This is much like an individual human body self-organizing its many parts. The immune and lymph systems, coordination, balance, soul, brain and heart functions, cellular and nerve functions, conscience, the senses, etc. all initiate and develop in conjunction with the mutual goal of shared authority over the life of the human body. As such the presence of leadership in the body of mankind represents a troubling deficiency, a failure in and of the organism to protect itself, to link all its parts, to understand itself, to actualize potential, to evolve.

    Leadership by this account is a fraud, a millenniums old assault on the species well-being and the dissemination of supplementary scales of vision to its various organs and parts.

    But how, you ask, can we survive without our Kings, Queens and Presidents, our Dictators, Tyrants, Popes, Princes, Teachers and Saints? How does one man survive from morning to night, day to day, year to year? He relies on the combined intelligence of all his parts to direct his way.

    Presently, because of mankind’s addiction to leadership, survival without leadership would be difficult, even impossible. Yet … an ant of change is on the march. Year by year more people come to abhor our diminutive and abridged perspective on reality. More people flee the confines of our linear one-dimensional perspective and begin to reason multi-dimensionally, to increase scale of vision. We as a people are beginning to understand that those, or that, which we deservedly follow do not lead. They learn, and we learn from them that true leadership amasses no disciples.

    Today’s average, the “common” man, has begun to gather and process observations with the initial gradient of species scale-of-vision: the freedom to communicate on all levels of interest both mundane and otherwise without the burden of physical proximity and the predatory assessment of an overriding authority granting them the privilege of doing so.

    In these uninitiated saints, the anonymous masses, the electric age is being born. In them the gestating seeds of enlightened technology are taking hold and growing. Our species is self-organizing us.

    For thousands of year’s one man’s ability to communicate with another was local. But for a long walk, distant ride on a horse or ship, a new idea in North America would not reach Asia. Even then when new ideas did travel they were filtered through established powers engineered to maintain leadership rule. Men were not free to exchange ideas as individuals. Today this has changed. Technological advances, an escalating Internet, media broadcasts and a wide range of telephone services have begun the process of interconnecting separate and diverse parts, expanding the reach of species-self-organization.

    This is so because technology is not merely an array of intriguing and helpful devices. Technology is a being-state within the species, a quality of mind, or “brane;” capable of implementing the next level of species evolution. It may even represent the manufacture of our experience of human soul, our ambitious visions of eternal life and our contentious apprehensions of God.

    Rather than using technology, perhaps it is we who are being used, used by our own species directing the growth of technological prowess to its purpose; that which we deservedly follow.

    Further, taking the Bible as a historic rather than a religious text, we find this intriguing phrase, “Christ will return to Earth after the word of God (or is it Species Dictation), has reached all four corners of the Earth.”

    Apart from being a man of profound worth in the role he plays in Christian belief systems, Jesus Christ duplicates as light or energy … electricity. Scanning the globe via satellite we note with some significance that electricity; technologies food source, has, in fact, reached all four corners of the earth.

    The return of “The Son of God” is upon us yet not in the form or manner predicted. Indeed, but for whom has “The Light” returned, for whom or what?

    Here we link belief with technology as man’s successful adaptation to Enlightened Technology requires belief, but not a belief in the absence or presence of any and all forms of God or God-ness.

    Belief is a bioelectric impulse made active in all men as a means of fusing individuals to laws and processes (both known and unknown) governing the whole of mankind. That we believe, and not that we believe in, is the force of law within the species that connects the electricity in one man to that of all men. The common bioelectric of belief accounts for our eager and capable adaptation to any and all things electric, our hurry to turn on the light once it was invented.

    Belief is our pathway to the stars held down by possessive interpretations of leadership. Where leadership prospers it divides and we are made weak as a whole. This deficit will be corrected as all structures requiring leadership, religious, political, economic, etc., meld into our absorption of electricity through technology, Enlightened Technology: prophet of the electric age.

    December 6th, 2005

    Does God Play Dice?

    Posted in Tech/Science

    Einstein was one of the founders of quantum mechanics, yet he disliked the randomness that lies at the heart of the theory. God does not, he famously said, play dice. However, quantum theory has survived a century of experimental tests, although it has yet to be reconciled with another of Einstein’s great discoveries - the general theory of relativity. Four theorists - Gerard ‘t Hooft, Edward Witten, Fay Dowker and Paul Davies- outline their views on the current status of quantum theory and the way forward

    December 5th, 2005

    Whistling: a lost art?

    Posted in Fun

    Whistling: a lost art? Once upon a time, siffleurs like Brother Bones, Fred Lowery and Marcel ‘Muzzy’ Marcellino warbled from the stage, and trilled across the airwaves. While our generation almost certainly whistles less than our grandparents’, and while we may never again see a whistler attain the modest fame of Ronnie Ronalde, let alone the celebrity of la belle siffleuse Alice Shaw, nor witness any meaningful revival of the kunstpfeifen tradition, there are yet several contemporary whistlers who would revive the art: ‘Whistlin’ Tom,’ Sean Lomax, Robert Stemmons (‘the whistler of Coeur d’Alene’), Hylton ‘The Whistler’ Brown, Chris Ullman (‘the symphonic whistler’) and Milt Briggs (‘a maverick among whistlers’), etc., or any number of the other enthusiasts who attend the International Whistlers Convention held every year at Loiusburg, North Carolina, ‘the world’s whistling capital.’

    December 3rd, 2005

    The 100 Best Products of 2005

    Posted in Tech/Science

    When you’re buying hardware, software, and services, you want the top combination of power, features, reliability, and value. That’s what you’ll find in these World Class Award winners–starting with the Product of the Year.

    December 2nd, 2005

    Nature at its Best

    Posted in Photography

    National Geographic Best Photo Collection.

    National Geographic


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