You Shal Not Password

 

 

Tidy Meal

Genius.

Sharpening Skills

How To Sharpen Pencils by David Rees.

Yes it's a real book....

 

 

See.

 

Battle Umbrella

The Unbreakable® Umbrella made by real Self-Defence, is the secret agent tool you've been waiting to for.  Just as strong as a steel pipe but only weighing between 590g & 822 g (depending on the model).  With has no unusual parts, no more metal than an average umbrella, it does not arouse suspicion, can be carried legally everywhere, unlike a walking stick or cane it does not cause strange looks if carried by an able-bodied person, and it even protects against rain! Sadly it won't stop bullets, nor does it spray concussion gas at the twist of the handle.

 

 

Available in three models: telescopic, standard, and premium.  The main difference between the models is in the frame of the umbrella, which is the structure that holds the fabric open, but they share the same “proprietary composite” core shaft.  In other words, all models are equally strong in the whacking department.  Apparently it has become standard issue for the Presidential Security Group of the Philippines. 

 

 

I like the telescopic one the most.  Here's the website link: http://real-self-defense.com/
 

Sim Matrix

Ever played the sims?  Mathematical knowledge is unlike any other knowledge, its truths are objective not subjective and independent of human bias. Maths appears to be an underlying level to the universe that determines it's rules and laws. But how and why are we able to access this immaterial level to reality?

 

One possibility is that we live in a computer simulation based on the laws of mathematics not actually in what we perceive to be the real world.  According to this theory, some highly advanced computer programmer has devised this simulation, and we are unknowingly part of it. Thus when we discover a mathematical truth, we simply discover aspects of the code being used.

 

As strange as it may sound, we may in fact be more likely to be in such a simulation than not. If such complex simulations are possible, then eventually people will create them and presumably many of them. If this is so, in time there will be many more simulated worlds than non-simulated ones, so statistically we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one.

 

Are we ready to take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

 

 

In a recent paper, Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation, the physicists Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J. Savage outline a possible method for detecting if our world is actually a computer simulation. Physicists have been creating their own computer simulations for years, on a tiny scale. They use a three-dimensional grid to model a minute chunk of the universe, then they run the program to see what happens. This way, they have been able to simulate the motion and collisions of elementary atomic particles.

 

But these computer simulations generate slight but distinctive anomalies. Could we be able to detect these same distinctive anomalies in the actual universe? In their paper, they suggest that a closer look at cosmic rays, those high-energy particles coming to Earth's atmosphere from outside the solar system, may reveal similar asymmetries.  If so, this would indicate that we may ourselves be in someone else's computer simulation.  But whose?

Do you think that's oxygen you're breathing?

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.

 



Arthur Satirical Clarke

Electromagnetic Immorality

Some time ago I posted about how magnets on your left temporal lobe can make you more artistic, but that opens up the question: what happens if you put the super magnet on the right temporal lobe?  Well you disrupt the brains moral compass that's what.

 

Want to make somebody lose her belief that harming somebody else is wrong? All you have to do is stick super magnets in the right side of their hat.  Using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), in which magnets are used to disrupt neural activity in specific parts of the brain, scientists managed to "turn off" people's moral centres. 

 

Researcher Liane Young and colleagues applied transcranial magnetic stimulation  to disrupt neural activity in an area of the brain known to process information about beliefs and then asked twenty subjects to rate actions on a scale from one (morally forbidden) to seven (morally permissible). The researchers report that study participants judged actions in which a person believes he or she will cause harm to another person-but fails to do so-were more morally permissible during TMS application to the brain region responsible for processing beliefs, compared to when TMS was not applied, or applied to other brain regions.

 

Now we can see why most supervillan minions have elaborate headgear as part of their uniform.  In addition to making a bold fashion statement, having a switch to turn both creativity and moral reasoning on or off on a whim, built in to your employees uniforms has its distinct possibilities.  In other words, if you need an army of minions willing to kill for you without hesitation, you're going to need a lot of magnets. 

Lasssie-Bot

The Russians have been developing cold war, border collie battle cyborgs since the 1950's.  The project was shut down because the Lassie-Bots chase and retrieve when you throw a grenade.

 

Robot Band



The worlds heaviest metal band, Compressorhead, performing AC/DCs TNT at a concert in Frankfurt.



 

This three piece band of real robots named Fingers, Bones and Stickboy is here to replace all you meatbag musicians.

 

Here's their official website: compressorheadband.com

 

 

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.

 

 

Sentient Concrete

Concrete is the most widely used structural material used on the planet today, but it has an annoying habit of breaking down over time, leading to cracks and pit holes that require repair or replacement.  Until now.  Now we have bio-concrete.  Bio-concrete is a living, breathing, stone capable of self repair.  Born out of an unholy collaboration between microbiologist Henk Jonkers and concrete technologist Eric Schlangen, this self-healing bio-concrete is a living mixture of concrete, bacterial spores, and microbe-sustaining nourishment in the form of calcium lactate.

 

One of the many things known to contribute to the degradation of concrete is exposure to water. However, when bio-concrete is exposed to water the bacteria impregnated in it set to work converting calcium lactate into calcite, which fills in any cracks and holes.  The bacteria is capable of repairing cracks in the concrete up to half a millimetre wide.  This new concrete abomination is now out of the lab undergoing real-world testing and could be on the commercial market in 2-3 years.

 

From The Sarah Jane Adventures, episodes 1 & 2, The nightmare man (a two part story):
At some point in the early 21st century, a sentient concrete disguised itself as a flyover in Chiswick, attempting to control the minds of the populace, before being defeated by Sarah Jane Smith.  In 2010, Sarah Jane used K9 and a piece of the concrete to contact Luke Smith while he was trapped in the Nightmare Man's realm.

 

Now think about how much concrete is in your city, then consider the consequences of all that being alive.  The question is, how long before it attains enough critical mass for the bacteria to form sentience?  Do you think it will appreciate thousands of people walking all over it every day? Your foot path could be plotting revenge against you!  Not to mention the statues in the park.  What's to stop them creeping up behind you in the blink of an eye?  Our downfall won't be by terminator robots it will be insidious masonry blocks.  Mark my words.

 

Jawa Cockroach

These South American cockroaches by the name of Lucihormetica luckae glow under a fluorescent light.  The glowing is a result of a bioluminescent bacteria populating pits in the roaches shell, but what's more scientifically important is that they look exactly like Jawas, even right down to the little bandoliers.

 

 

Bioluminescence is thought to be rarer on land than in the sea and land-dwelling luminous creatures emerged on the planet more recently, with in the last 65 million years. But these cockroaches are different, they travelled here a long time ago from a galaxy far, far away.  An analysis of the roaches bioluminescence shows that they, and their cousin species, glow at the same wavelengths as a toxin-producing beetle that lives in their area to avoid getting picked off by predators.  So they have evolved to mimic a deadly neighbour, just like Mr Funny-shoes.

 

 

Unfortunately the only known specimen of the insect was collected in 1939 on the slopes of Ecuador’s Tungurahua volcano, and the site was damaged when the peak erupted in December 2010.  Although the fact that no specimens have been found in ages may be because they decided to return to Tattooine.

 

Dodging Bullets

In theory any moving object can be avoided given the right time frame.  Now assuming we don't have super speed, what's the minimum distance needed to successfully dodge a bullet?  We're also going to assume we move the right way not the wrong way on reflex.

 

Here's the maths:

Average human reaction time is 0.19 of a second, for visual stimulus.  So yeah, with this theory you have to actually see the gun fire.

Activation of muscle fibre averages at 0.008333 of a second for humans, so the total reflex time is of 0.198333 of a second.  Let's round that up to a tidy 0.2 of a second.
The bullet speed of a 9mm pistol is 340m/s.  .2 of 340m gives a 68m minimum distance to dodge a 9mm pistol bullet.

 

Alternatively, given that distance and pistol accuracy, you may be better of just standing sideways, sucking in your gut and hoping for the best.

 

 

Now, here's the distances of some other firearms to try not to get shot with:

.22 pistol/rifle fires at 290m/s giving a 58m minimum dodge distance.
Magnum fires at 460m/s giving a 92m minimum dodge distance.
The average assault rifle fires at 920m/s giving a 184m minimum dodge distance.

 

Well there's the mathematics for the theory, good luck trying that out in the field.

 

 

Carl Sagan Doomsday Quote

Yep, this Friday is Doomsday.  The Deathstar Mimas has been hanging out around Saturn waiting for December 21, 2012 to charge up it's superweapon. 

Superpowered Perception

If you want to supervillan level perceptual skils and mental reflexes, video games are the way to do it. But just clicking away at simcity isn't going to cut it, you needs to be playing fast paced action first person shooters for measurable results.  Several studies in recent years have shown that action-heavy video games can dramatically improve a skill known as visual attention, the ability to pick and choose relevant visual information from a chaotic environment.  Proof that some of my misspent youth was not as misspent as it would first appear.

 

Research published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science March/April 2011 showed that those who habitually play video games have been documented to outperform novices in a variety of visual attentional capabilities, including attention in space, in time, and to objects. Training studies have established similar improvements in groups of nongamers who trained using games improved their visual attention scores, leading researchers to believe that games of this sort could be used for education, workplace training, and in accident rehabilitation.  So ask your manager to make that next training workshop an inter-office Halo match.

 

A previous studey at Leiden University in 2010 showed that playing first-person shooter video games is also associated with superior mental flexibility. Compared to non-players, players of such games were found to require a significantly shorter reaction time while switching between complex tasks, possibly because they are required to develop a more responsive mindset to rapidly react to fast-moving visual and auditory stimuli, and to shift back and forth between different sub-duties.

 

 

Yep, the research is in, supercharge your visual perception skills and speed up your mental reaction time between tasks by playing the latest Doom.  Go boost your workplace skills, get on the phone to HR and tell them they should buy you a copy.

 

Demonic Phone Exorcism

You may not realise this but mobile phones contain demons.  Makes sense when you stop and think about it.  I have to curse my phone to get the touch screen to recognise that I'm trying to press a button.   You can exorcise the demon from your phone by sticking it in a microwave on high.

Here's some footage:

Despite the dramatic results of microwaving the phone, the video is not enhanced with special effects at all.  From the video, we can see that the microwave heats the phone to the extent where the demon thinks it's back in the hell-dimension and comes out!  You can see it scream and get extra cranky when it realises it's been tricked.

Hacking Your Brain

Can't solve that difficult engineering problem? Wish you could draw better? Need to think outside the box? Evil plans not planned so well? Or still haven't learnt to ride without training wheels?

Imagine that with the simple press of a button you could control the operation of your brain to increase the speed, capacity for problem solving or even creativity its self. Imagine if you could achieve this without surgically implanting circuit boards and optical fibre into your skull.

Well you can with magnets!

Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (or TMS), Australian researcher Dr. Allan Snyder tested his hypothesis that some savant and creativity abilities occur because the left hemisphere suppresses and confines the raw impressions of the right hemisphere. Using TMS to suppress the left anterior temporal lobe, Snyder found that subjects become better at drawing, better at estimating the number of dots on a screen, and better at recognising word duplications in proofreading.  Basically he uses magnets to create temporary brain damage and makes people better for it.

Allan Snyder, aside from having a bad sense of fashion, is the director of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, Australia. You can find out more about his research at: The Centre for The Mind dot com.

Further studies, at the University of Gottingen in Germany, have shown participants given transcranial magnetic stimulation indicate an improvement of around ten percent in learning of motor skills and were three times more likely to solve a difficult, unfamiliar problem than those in a control group. Also some not so top secret investigations into transcranial magnetic stimulation funded by the US military, have lead to plans of flight helmets with a built in devices for the improving of pilot performance with the flick of a switch.

Now you can't just go sticking fridge magnets on your head. You'll look like an idiot and they don't have the magnetic field strength to mess up your brain. What you're going to need is an 70mm electromagnetic butter?y coil with opposing currents in each coil loop, creating a focal magnetic field below the intersection of both coils. The magnetic field intensity should be approximately 2 tesla on the coil surface which will roughly translate to around 0.5 tesla in the brain.  Stimulation is applied for approximately 15 minutes at 1 pulse per second and focused the left anterior temporal lobe area of the brain. If that sounds hard to make, try masquerading as a neurosurgeon, you can just go buy a pre-made one. It's a MagPro magnetic stimulator by Medtronic.

Once you've got your super magnet, you're ready to give yourself the creativity upgrade you’ve been waiting for. Just strap that baby on your head and plug in those kilowatts.

Archimedes Lever

Archimedes was a hack.

He's fameous for saying: "Give me a place to stand on, and I can move the earth." Turns out no one would notice.

For a male adult to move the earth the fulcrum would need to be placed one kilometer from where it makes contact with the earth (at the south pole). The lever it's self would be six and a half billion light years long. Based on average male height, Archimedes would move his end approximately one point six meters (1.6m) which would translate to the earth being moved a distance less than the diameter of a proton.  What he didn't specify is that he also needs an equally immovable fulcrum and a lever of unbreakable material that has absoloutely no flex aross it's six hundred billion lightyear length.

I would wager that I could get a better result bastardising Newtons third law by moving every person on earth to the same landmass and having them to all jump at once.  While it would be a logistical nightmare, it's actually much more plausable than the fantastical notions of manufacturing an intergalactic sized phallic device of Archimedes.

Someone has actualy already figured out all the maths regarding this possibility. Lets see if I win my bet: Aproximatly 7 billion people with average weight of 50 kg (counting kids, midgets, hobbits etc); Jumping about one foot high.  You get the result from the push off part of the jump rather than the landing (which makes sense if you stop to think about what's happening) and the Earth would move about a hundredth of the radius of a hydrogen atom.

The hydrogen atom is aproximately 100,000 times larger than the proton. That means that the jumping method moves the earth around 1000 times more than the intergalactic lever.  So I win the bet!

Fire Demons!

After much research (well ok just a little bit) I have come to the conclusion that fire is alive!

It consumes (and requires) a fuel source to exist and leaves behind waste, it grows, it needs oxygen to breathe, it moves from one place to another, it can make baby fires, and dies. It could be argued that fire is just a bunch of chemical reactions, but I argue back that so are you. At the most basic level, living things like plants and animals are just self-sustaining chemical reactions, same as fire.

There is actually no unilateral agreed upon definition of life, but Generally there are considered to be seven traits something has to have to be considered to be alive. I'd like to point out that certain organisms, already accepted as being alive, don't have all seven of these traits.

The Seven Traits for Life:
1. Reactivity to the environment. Fires reacts more distinctly to differing environments than many microbes.
2. Ingestion of substance for energy to function. Yep.
3. Reproduction. Like asexual microbes fire can create offspring from its self.
4. Respiration. Fire requires oxygen, without oxygen it dies just like other forms of respiration. Some microbes don't actually respire anyway.
5. Emission of wastes. Yes, waste is produced from the consumption of fuels.
6. Internal Movement. Yes lots.
7. Cellular Structure. No, but neither do viruses which are generally considered to be some form of life.

See, fire is life Jim but not as we know it.  Fire is not so much extraterrestiral and alien life as it is primordial, and elemental.  It's dawn of time ancient. What sort of life is that?  A demon that's what! A fire demon!

In conclusion: Fire demons are real.