(via Jesse)
MonthDecember 2008
Thought I call attention to the fact that TiamatsVision has started an LJ.
(I can be seen fighting a few times in the above video, first about :50 into the video. I’m the guy in the black tank top)
An ad-hoc cousin of the popular and successful EsoZone, Isozone 2009 takes place in Vancouver, BC, Canada, in Late January – Early February (TBA) 2009.
Proposals for activities and ideas are now being accepted. As an experiment in chaotic self-organizing events, there are no fees to attend Isozone, nor is there any official venue. Microvenues may be arranged depending on events and participants.
Dates and Locations will be announced in the near future.
Please note is this is not an official Esozone event.
I will be there leading an activity in infictive living.
“The inventor of a car slightly wider than a strand of DNA took the top prize in nanotechnologies this week. James Tour, a professor of chemistry at Rice University, won the Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for experimental nanotechnology for his nanocar, which is four nanometers across and includes a chassis with an engine, a pivoting suspension and rotating axles attached to rolling buckyball wheels, each made of 60 carbon atoms.
Tour and his team of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers not only built a car, but also constructed a nanotruck capable of carrying a payload. Asked why he did it, Tour’s answer was simple: so that we can someday construct buildings and other large objects with molecular-size vehicles.
It took Tour and his team eight years to build the car. One of the significant challenges was attaching the wheels because the buckyballs had the adverse affect of shutting down the binding property — the palladium reaction — used to form the rest of the vehicle. Over the next 30 years, Tour’s nanotechnology could produce quantum-dot memory, which involves stringing together metal atoms in patterns that could then store data. Each quantum dot would consist of 50 metal atoms, he said. Of course, that’s a long way off, Tour acknowledged. He hasn’t even patented the technology because by the time it could be used to make money, the patents would be expired. And we’re not talking about a few nanotrucks carrying metal atoms to construct skyscrapers but 1023 or more vehicles, all carrying nanoparticles in orchestration, he said.”
(via ComputerWorld via Sue Lange’s blog “Singularity Watch”)
I asked Naveh why Deleuze and Guattari were so popular with the Israeli military. He replied that ‘several of the concepts in A Thousand Plateaux became instrumental for us […] allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have otherwise. It problematized our own paradigms. Most important was the distinction they have pointed out between the concepts of “smooth” and “striated” space [which accordingly reflect] the organizational concepts of the “war machine” and the “state apparatus”. In the IDF we now often use the term “to smooth out space” when we want to refer to operation in a space as if it had no borders. […] Palestinian areas could indeed be thought of as “striated” in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls, ditches, roads blocks and so on.’5 When I asked him if moving through walls was part of it, he explained that, ‘In Nablus the IDF understood urban fighting as a spatial problem. […] Travelling through walls is a simple mechanical solution that connects theory and practice.’6
(via Blustr)
Give this man a raise!
“Robert Holding was the sort of milkman who always liked to help his customers – particularly the elderly ones. So if they left him a little note asking for something extra, he tried to get it for them. But some of their requests went beyond the usual dozen eggs or bottle of orange juice. Holding, 72, has admitted supplying cannabis to some of his older customers.
He was caught placing small bars of cannabis resin into empty egg cartons, and leaving them on doorsteps. When he was confronted by police, Holding told officers he would only ever supply pensioners with the drug to help them with their ‘aches and pains’. Cannabis has been shown in studies to help ease pain in arthritis and other conditions.
But a judge told the elderly milkman his special delivery service would inevitably lead to a spell behind bars. Burnley Crown Court has heard that Holding only delivered to pensioners on his delivery round who had found out about his extra service by word of mouth. The grandfather had 17 drug customers who would regularly ask for cannabis.”
(via The Daily Mail)
“Todd Carmichael has officially set a new solo and unsupported world speed record to the South Pole. His time of 39 days, 7 hours, and 33 minutes bested former world record holder Hannah McKeand’s time of 39 days, 9 hours, and 33 minutes set back in 2006. This is an official time coming from Todd’s tracking equipment and being reported by ExplorersWeb. How close was it? The difference between Todd and Hannah is 1 hour and 44 minutes – or less than 0.2% of the time on the ice. If the same difference was applied to a 100 meter dash, it would equal less than 0.02 seconds – just barely measurable with modern time keeping.
Along with gaining the new official solo and unsupported world speed record, Todd Carmichael has also become the first American to go solo and unsupported to the South Pole. It is still undecided if Todd will gain the record for going the longest distance on foot. When I first interviewed Todd before this journey, becoming the first American to go solo and unsupported was his biggest priority. A week before he set foot on the ice, I got an email that nonchalently stated “I might as well go for the world speed record while I’m at it. What do you think?” Todd felt that his conditioning and preparation for this journey were miles ahead of where he was with his unsuccessful South Pole expedition last year. Obviously, we can now see how far ahead Todd was.”
(via The Adventurist)
I asked Naveh why Deleuze and Guattari were so popular with the Israeli military. He replied that ‘several of the concepts in A Thousand Plateaux became instrumental for us […] allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have otherwise. It problematized our own paradigms. Most important was the distinction they have pointed out between the concepts of “smooth” and “striated” space [which accordingly reflect] the organizational concepts of the “war machine” and the “state apparatus”. In the IDF we now often use the term “to smooth out space” when we want to refer to operation in a space as if it had no borders. […] Palestinian areas could indeed be thought of as “striated” in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls, ditches, roads blocks and so on.’5 When I asked him if moving through walls was part of it, he explained that, ‘In Nablus the IDF understood urban fighting as a spatial problem. […] Travelling through walls is a simple mechanical solution that connects theory and practice.’6
(via Blustr)
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