Where we're heading

The Economist has a long article about In Vetro Babies, where they can legally be grown and where not. Let's just say that it is a mad patchwork of overlapping, mutually exclusive laws, where all the different countries with all their different rules make certain that everything is possible somewhere, but you're just going to have to collect a lot of air miles if you want to get everything done.

That's going to continue to happen, I suspect. At the rate that science is now advancing it seems that law will always be two steps behind. That's if we're (un)lucky. Science is moving ever faster and a great deal of the advancement isn't happening in the West anymore. That means Western law, supposedly the most advanced and humane (very arguable, I admit), might not even be aware of some of the latest advances in the latest fields.

I could argue that we need some sort of international law coordination agency that helps different countries bring their laws into line, but that aint going to happen. Look how much respect the UN is given, and that agency only suggests policy, it doesn't try to make law. No, we are all to convinced that our own countrymen are so much wiser than those from over the border, let alone those over the horizon and of course we're right, every last one of us.

Saddam is dead and we all get to watch

So this is the time we live in, where nothing is taboo and everything can be seen. First there was them cutting off some bloke's head, now there's the hanging of a dictator. Should we be seeing this, or is this where freedom of expression starts to interfere with human decency? How far is too far? And if we can watch this, then why is porn still illegal?

The Secret Lives of Robots

Funny, yes?

Virtual Shock

So, yesterday's problems with the internet were felt by a larger portion of the world population than just little old me. It seems an earthquake has done the virtual damage (though little actual physical damage, it seems).

This worries me. Apparently we're living on the brink of a drop and we're not even aware of it. It took just a couple of cables being knocked out for many markets to suffer and many people to not be able to work at optimum efficiency. What happens if three cables are knocked out? Or if some group decides that this is perfect opportunity to do some mischief?

And it isn't just in the virtual world that we're looking at these types of problems. Also in the physical world capacity and use are coming far too close together, for instance in raw material transport (with transport often serving as warehouses). The reason is obvious. The closer your use is to your capacity, the less excess capacity is wasted, which in turn is perfectly logical if you're trying to operate with the lowest costs possible. Of course, that only works there isn't a sudden drop in capacity.

This will shake the telecom companies awake, but will it do the same in other fields? I doubt it and it isn't really in the telecom areas that we need to worry most. Again, I ask, where is the redundancy?

Where is the redundancy?

I'm getting a little worried. On two separate occasions in the last two weeks I've now been stuck without a piece of software that I've grown rather dependent on. The first time it was dictionary.com, while today there was suddenly a problem with gmail. I tried to overcome the first site's down time by finding another site, but soon discovered that the only other reliable and worthwhile dictionary site out there (which also has a thesaurus, though no encyclopedia) wanted me to suddenly pay for the words I was trying to access!

Today's down time with Gmail made me even more worried, for there is no real alternative for me to my gmail. This made me realise that I've become very dependent upon software that I have absolutely no control over. This stuff is free and they can take it away as they please, when they please.

Wasn't the internet supposed to introduce redundancy? Wasn't everybody shouting about how it would be fantastic, because if one place crashed others would come up to take over? How does that work when you're dependent on that part that has just crashed?

I know, I've got to somehow set up some kind of backup system. Because, even though I pray that one day it won't matter where we are in terms of what we want to do, I also know that that day isn't here yet.

Transformers, robots poke your eye

Okay, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they shouldn't be making this, but has anybody else noticed that Hollywood seems to be having trouble coming up with anything original? They're basically just nicking stuff from other countries (like how they turned Infernal Affairs into the Departed), recycling old movies (like War of the Worlds) or taking something that has some kind of cult following and turning into a movie (like X-men and yes, Transformers). What gives?

I'll tell you what. Movies have now become such big budget affairs that nobody is willing to risk good money on good ideas. Good ideas don't have good statistics to back them up. When the money becomes as big as it has at this stage, people's first priority is guaranteeing that they at least get their money back. That's why we get decently mediocre films which repackage old ideas (and thereby make certain at least some people come to watch it), rather than awesomely original movies that risk bombing at the box office.

Hollywood is a victim of its own success. Each year the movies must get that bit prettier, so the money must be that bit more, so the movies must get that bit safer and therefore the audiences end up just that bit less interested. I wonder where it will go? Is YouTube the answer, or is that just another red herring?

Print a book

It seems that the boundaries between the virtual and the visual have blurred a little more. A new machine will be deployed in 2007 that can print a book, with glossy cover, in seven minutes. So when you walk into a book store and they don't have the book you want, no more, 'it will arrive in two to three weeks' no, none of that, instead 'it will be ready in seven to eight minutes'.

As this technology advances we will enter a stage of development where book shipping will no longer be necessary! Instead books will be printed on location, on demand. Publishers will be sidelined, with there only really being a need for an author and advertising.

While we're at it, why not just have these machines migrate into the homes? Sound far fetched? People thought computers would never make it into every home only twenty years ago. First these machines will set up in the big book stores and libraries, from there they will move to your local corner bookshops (which will only need to carry a stock of one of each book, just for browsing purposes) and from there into the corner of your study.

Transportations costs will drop, as the raw materials needed for book printing can generally be got locally, and we become just that little bit more environmentally friendly, as each book travels a great deal less in its lifetime.

Gmail as a virtual drive

If you've managed to not completely fill up your gmail yet, this might be the program for you. With it you can use your gmail as if it is an actual drive on your computer, neat if you don't have too much space or you want your material to be easily accessible. So far Gmail has rarely let me down, but it seems like a good idea to back everything up somewhere else. Heck, this might even be your backup drive!

Slowly we're getting to a stage where what we use is no longer linked to where we are. Eventually which computer you use will be no more important than which individual metro train you take, or which newspaper you pick up. They will simply be tools. Near common good items that can be shared, used or left behind as you will.

Soon even processing will be done at a central location, away from where you are. All your PC will do is catch a data stream and display it on your screen. This will mean that you will only need a data input and data output device. Eventually even those will become virtual and then we will no longer need to carry around anything bigger than a pin head, which will connect us with the World Wide Web.

Free Will

One of those big sticklers in philosophy has always been free will. Free will is the idea that we are in control of our own actions, but quite a few philosophers have been arguing, for a while now at least, that free will is actually an illusion.

An article in this week's economist argues that they may well be right. Though free will has certainly not disappeared yet, it has been shrinking as it has become clearer and clearer that chemical effects have an impact on the brain.

Without free will we suddenly have a problem. Free will is an essential part of justice, in that we feel we can't hold a person responsible for their actions if they cannot be held responsible for them, as well as in everything from democracy to economics. The debates is already on in a few fields, such as sexuality (which is most probably genetic and therefore not in the realm of free will, meaning it can't be held against the individual)

But what will it mean for our species if we realise that paedophilia is a chemical imbalance? Can we then still blame the paedophile? Or what if we have a genetic disposition for religiosity? Then the religious can't blame the doubters, nor the doubters the religious.


When there is no free will, how can anybody be held responsible for their actions?

The History of LSD

The full on history of a full on drug.

Warning, it's a one hour video

Sex and the Socket

I'm pretty sure till now you were convinced that an ad about light bulbs could not be funny in any way or form. I forgive you for that. It's a pretty understandable assumption, but it is wrong. The Vancouver Film school has students of a caliber where the impossible become only slightly improbable, so enjoy.

Jules Verne's Cannon Part Duex

It's interesting how old ideas area always recycled. One of the first people to talk about shooting into space was Jules Verne. His idea was to load a person in a cannon and just blast them into orbit. Now that idea has come back in non-explosive form. Rockets be damned, we've got a cannon on our hands!

So where does my ego fit in?

In the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy they've got this machine called 'The Ultimate Perspective Machine', which in my mind is a little bit like this video right here.

Alternative Energy

It's all the hype right now, isn't it? Everybody's suddenly talking about alternative energy when it might actually already be too late by a decade or two. I guess it will be another round of Human ingenuity versus Human Consumption, where if the first wins we get a couple more decades before the next emergency comes along and if the second wins it will mean the end of life as we know it.

Down Time

I apologise for not posting recently. I was preoccupied with other things, but I will start up again real soon (possibly today). I am also planning to change the way things go around here. More of me and less of other people's stuff.

Cyber Censor

Apparently governments really don't trust their people to make the right decisions. I still find it quite shocking that governments are so convinced that they know better than the normal people that they themselves have been drawn from. It's as if they believe that just because they've managed to get themselves into positions of power they suddenly understand more and better than everybody else, when instead it just shows they've been more ambitious and probably more ruthless.

Well, at least there is hope

Lasse Gjertsen

I didn't know him till about 20 mins ago, but I like his stuff. He's done quite some videos, including one about Beatboxing, one about LSD, one about an accident, one about chasing your own shadow and finally one with two Lasses!.

All of them are very creative and considerably different. Definitely a guy worth watching out for, it seems. (Note, there are probably a great deal more videos out there, but I just couldn't be bothered looking for them).

Visual Depiction of a Chat Room

Whoa. Uhrm... uhh.... yeah.

The Inner Daemon

Uhm... I don't get it. Something about what's really on the inside, or something? Or is it an ad that is trying to encourage pedophilia? What ever it is, it's pretty spacy.

Death Note

The movie Death Notes is available in two parts on Daily Motion (part one and part two). The text below is in French, but don't worry the movie itself is in Japanese and has English subbies (and the site I got it from, flabber.nl was in Dutch, just to add a final layer of possible confusion).

Visualising Data

As there is ever more data out there, there is an ever greater need for us to find ways to make it easy to understand. This blog tracks such attempts, specifically in the form of visualised data. After all, an image is instinctively easier to understand and more provocative then a series of numbers.

And a couple of planets for dessert

Scientists have actually seen a black hole eat a star and now you can too. This, while a few decades ago we could only theorise about their existence.

Iraq: a ground eye view

The Vancouver Film School did an interview of a few soldiers about life in Iraq. And people wonder why the American army has such trouble winning the hearts and minds of the people in Iraq. Having the army acting like the police is a bit like having software engineers doing a company's PR.

Paper Art

A cool demonstration of empty and filled spaces. You could probably say something really profound about yin and yang, as well as how things are often greater than their parts, but it's really a bit too early for that, so just go and watch it.

The first day of the rest of your life

An interesting video set to music. These are all the rage around the internet right now. Well done, though and this guy's got some more stuff spread around, here's another one. I'll let you find the rest in your own good time (got to leave some fun in there for you, right?)

Now computures are joining in on the spraypainting fun

If isn't so much what they've made in this video that's interesting (it isn't really, you can buy it in any tourists art shop) but rather how they made it. It's a bit like laser printing, only then on a wall, with some strings and a spray paint can.

Drawing the Devil's Tuning Fork

Drawings are only ever two dimensional representations of three dimensional space. We forget that sometimes and that's why we fall for such apparent paradoxes as the devil's tuning fork.

Cactuses

No I didn't mispell that, its how they've spelled it. They being the the youth of the arc2 project, who made a movie. I haven't watched it fully yet, but it was plugged by one of them on this site, so I can't help but take advantage of that, can I?

The Technology of Money

What is money? Have you ever actually sat down and thought about it? It's a damned hard question to answer, you know. This article might help you along the way. It's interesting that we all work for it and that so many people are obsessed with it, but so few people can actually explain what 'it' is.

In the future people will look at paper money in the same way we now look at bartering.