Sunday my monitor gave an emphatic death-rattle; at this point repair makes less sense than buying a new flat one – when I have the dosh available. Meanwhile I’m using the spare, which has about 4/7 as many pixels (1024×768 vs 1344×1008). It feels so cramped!
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Vladimir Bulatov makes and sells pretty things in metal, wood and stained glass. I haven’t bought any of them — yet!
Fritz Lang’s Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933) is one of the best early movies I’ve seen, considerably advanced in technique over his own previous picture, M (1931).
possibly not what was intended
Got a penispam today saying:
Yo yo yo bronto
get rid of that self-esteem once and for all.
I don’t think I’m seriously afflicted with self-esteem, but you never know.
Since Somalia’s state collapsed in 1991, life expectancy has increased by two years, vaccination rates have increased, deaths from measles have dropped by close to a third, telephones and radios have multiplied . . .
I wish I’d said that:
The golden apple in Somalia is the expectation that there will soon be a central government. As long as there is that expectation, the clans must fight over who will control it.
(Wait, I did say something like that, circa twenty years ago, about Lebanon.)
Most of the article (cited by Perry Metzger) is about the traditional system of law.
Friendly societies: ancient free-market social security
Meet the Mind Readers: brain implants to control prostheses.
In previous studies, Nicolelis’s team showed that when monkeys had their brains hooked up to robotic arms, they assimilated the arm, effectively making it their own. “Their brains actually incorporated the robotic arm by dedicating neuronal space to it. We want to see if the same thing happens in humans,” he adds.
Can’t imagine why it wouldn’t. What I wanna know is whether – and how readily – a brain can embrace an interface that has no familiar analogue.