Criminal Justice Omelettes

This months book cover: The D.A. Breaks An Egg by Erle Stanley Gardner.

"In the Criminal Justice System the omelettes are prepared by two separate, yet equally important groups. The police who raise the chickens and the District Attorneys who scramble the eggs. These are their stories."

 

 

Hard Life

Buddha by Christmas

This year not a Christmas book but a book titled Buddhism by , oddly, a man called Christmas Humphreys.

 

 

Christmas Humphreys was a British barrister who prosecuted several controversial cases in the 1940s and 1950s, and later became a judge at the Central Criminal Court, more commonly known as "the Old Bailey".  He wrote a numerous works on Buddhism and founded what became the London Buddhist Society in 1924. His former home in St John's Wood, London, is now a Buddhist temple.  Humphreys was also president of the Shakespeare Fellowship, a position to which he was elected in 1955. The Fellowship advanced the theory that the plays generally attributed to Shakespeare were in fact the work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.

 

"Christmas Humphreys was on the bench. Nice fellow, you must know him – a little bloke, wears a wig, you can see the join if you look closely." - Tony Hancock.

Two Infinities

Genuine Buddy

 



10000 Kicks

Jakes Leg

Too soon?

What Matters Most In Life

 

 



It's Easter Again

 

 

Madonnas Baby

Michael Jackson Quote

That's deep.

All You Need

Released in July 1967 All You Need Is Love was written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney.

 

The song is notable for its asymmetric time signature and complex changes. The prominent cello line draws attention to this departure from pop-single normality, although it was not the first time that the Beatles had experimented with varied meter within a single song. Throughout this song McCartney's bass implies many additional chords over those played by the other instruments.

 

The song starts with the intro to the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, and contains elements from Glenn Miller's 1939 hit In The Mood, as well as elements from Wayne Shanklin's 1958 hit Chanson D'Amour.  During the long fade-out to the end of the song, elements of various other songs can be heard, including Greensleeves, Invention No. 8 in F major (BWV 779) by J.S. Bach, Glenn Miller's In the Mood (yes again), and the Beatles' own 1963 hit, She Loves You.  Friends and studio people made hand claps and sang background vocals, including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Keith Moon, Graham Nash and numerous others (although Yoda was not present for the original recording).

A Red Right Hand

The Red Right Hand a mystery by Joel Twensley Rogers and not Nick Cave.

 

One of Nick Caves signature songs Red Right Hand, was written in 1994 depicting a mysterious character appearing on the edge of town. In the song Song of Joy from his Murder Ballads album Cave reveals the phrase is from a line in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost that refers to the vengeful hand of God. Nick Sings:

"It seems he has done many, many more,
  quotes John Milton on the walls in the victim's blood.
  The police are investigating at tremendous cost.
  In my house he wrote 'his red right hand'.
  That, I'm told, is from Paradise Lost."

The appearance in Paradise Lost (Book II, 170-174) is:

"What if the breath that kindled those grim fires,
  Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage,
  And plunge us in the flames; or from above
  Should intermitted vengeance arm again
  His red right hand to plague us?"

 

The original term itself appears to be Milton's translation of the term "rubente dextra" in Horace's Ode i.2,2

 

So it would appear that the mystery contained in this book is a story of bloody vengeance, and not excessive masturbation after all.

Red Shirts

 

Building Daleks

We're building daleks!

 

Researcher Kevin Warwick, a former cyborg, from the University of Reading, has been working on creating organic neural networks that can control machines.  He and his team have taken cultured brain cells from rats and used them as the guidance control circuit for simple wheeled robots.
 

 

Electrical impulses from the robot (or travel machine) part of the rat-dalek enter the cluster of neurons, and responses from the brain cells are turned into commands for the device.  The intelligence of these daleks are very basic, the brain cluster control primarily helps the robot to avoid walls.  Where it gets really interesting is that the cells can form new connections and this obstacle avoidance often shows clear improvement over time, demonstrating true learning ability on the part of the dalek.


 

 

Current cultures of neurons have about 100,000 cells, but only a small fraction are actually involved in controlling the robot circuits at any given time. Research teams continually find new ways to increase the size and response of these cultures, as well as how long they can survive. Eventually, we’ll have a dalek brain that will be able to accomplish much, much more.  Perhaps we are just a shrill voice synthesis and a death ray away from a true tantrum throwing salt and pepper shaker seeing our extermination.

 

 

 

"Primitive but undeniably a dalek" - Tom Baker as Dr Who, Genesis of the Daleks.

 



Shakespeares Star Wars

And before you ask, yes it's a real script.

Arthur Satirical Clarke

Sith Handshake

Frankenburgers

"Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium."

- Winston Churchill (in 1936)

In vitro meat, also known as cultured meat, cruelty-free meat, test tube meat, tubesteak, or shmeat, is an animal flesh product that has never been part of a complete, living animal. Alternative names include hydroponic meat, vat-grown meat, victimless meat, vitro meat and Frankenmeat. Though it should not be confused with imitation meat, which is a vegetarian food product produced from vegetable proteins like as soy or gluten.

 

 

As early as 2000, researchers from the Tissue Culture & Art Project located at the University of Western Australia in Perth began research into in vitro meat. NASA has been conducting experiments since 2001, producing in vitro meat from turkey cells. In 2005, NASA conducted cultured meat research for space food. The first edible form was produced by the NSR/Touro Applied BioScience Research Consortium in 2002: goldfish cells grown to resemble fish fillets.  As early as 2008, some scientists claimed that the technology was ready for commercial use and simply needed corporate backing.  In November 2009, scientists from the Netherlands announced they had managed to grow meat in the laboratory using the cells from a live pig.  In February 2012, scientists at Maastricht University announced plans to produce sausage by March.

 

Over 30 laboratories across the world are working on cruelty-free meat, although none has yet been produced for public consumption.  The technology is simultaneously being developed along with human medical uses and an identical process is being researched to develope cultured leather products.  Most meat is animal muscle. The process of developing vitro meat involves taking muscle cells and applying a protein that helps the cells to grow into large portions of meat.  In the process, a matrix of collagen is seeded with muscle cells, which are then bathed in a nutritious solution and induced to divide.  Once the initial cells have been obtained, additional animals would not be needed, much like yogurt cultures.  Assuming that the proper materials are used and conditions remain ideal, two months of vat-grown meat production could deliver up to 50,000 tons of meat from ten pork muscle cells. Theoretically, one animal could provide more than a billion pounds of in vitro meat to feed the world's population for several hundred years.

 

Because this Frankenmeat has yet to be placed on the market, the health risks have not yet been fully investigated.  The aim is to produce healthier meat than conventional meat, most notably by reducing its fat content and controlling nutrients. Researchers have suggested that omega-3 fatty acids could be added, and as a bonus there will be no choking on chicken bones. Hydroponic meat does not necessarily involve genetic engineering, in fact, the cells involved are natural cells which would grow in the normal method.  An issue of Time magazine has suggested that the in vitro process may also decrease exposure of the meat to bacteria and disease. 

 

 

Due to the strictly controlled and predictable environments of shmeat farming, it is predicted that there will be reduced exposure to dangerous chemicals like pesticides and fungicides, severe injuries, and wildlife.  A study by researchers at Oxford and the University of Amsterdam found that in vitro meat was "potentially ... much more efficient and environmentally-friendly", generating only 4% greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the energy needs of meat generation by up to 45%, and requiring only 2% of the land that the global meat/livestock industry does.

 

Tube meat will initially invade the market in Spam cans, sausages, and frozen burgers.  Presently it's a little expensive for the average consumer, in May 2013 one burger patty was produced for around $325,000, but it is anticipated that the cost will reduce to compete with conventional meat as technologies and it's mass production evolves.  Vat-grown meat can be fashioned from any creature, not just farm animals, even endangered animals like the leather-back sea turtle, or the Sumatran rhinoceros. The future holds that no creature will be off the menu, no matter how rare or exotic.  In fact some scientists believe we will be able to create test tube meat using the DNA of extinct beasts and dine on Jurassic burgers.

 

 

Wookiee Wisdom