Category: goo brain

Last Night

Philly DipsThis is just sort of an odd personal note, but:

As I’ve been using as an excuse for tardiness lately, we’ve recently moved and are still settling in to our new digs. In a quest for snack food, and to explore the town a bit, Opopanax and I took a walk. Stumbling upon a 24-hour chain convenience store, we pushed inside, and, after some browsing, Opop convinced me to pick up some chips and dip.

Now, I didn’t start off particularly excited about the idea, but a few hours later I was daydreaming about salt and dill, so I decided to crack open our loot.

I wasn’t the first however – the Philadelphia had already been opened. A single, deep-furrowed rut had been pulled from it: someone had preemptively dipped into our goods.

Maybe it was for the best, however, as we realized during transport to the garbage that it was a month past due anyhow.

Not a good omen for future use of the store, but now, even this morning, I’m left craving salty, creamy, pickle taste.

Whooping Cough

Whooping Crane Feeding OutfitI ran across this bit of news, and my imagination found it entertaining to no end:

NEW ORLEANS — The whooping crane — one of the world’s most endangered birds and one of the first animals on the U.S. endangered list — could be back in Louisiana’s wetlands as early as February under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal.

The long-legged birds with the distinctive call haven’t lived in the wild in Louisiana since 1950. – Washington Examiner

“So?” I can already hear you saying, but the best part comes next:

Under the plan, young birds would be released in a pen in Vermilion Parish, about 125 miles west of New Orleans in Louisiana’s bayou country, after they are raised by people wearing shapeless white “crane suits.” – Washington Examiner

Now, I understand the reality of this situation is captured by the image above, but, when I first read this, I couldn’t help but grow giddy at the idea that furries in poorly made mascot costumes were out roaming the bayous of Louisiana attempting to feed Whooping Cranes.Ruh Roh, Raggy
That said, I’m not sure I’d want to eat anything being offered by the fellow below – to me that suit looks more like the prime candidate for a low budget slasher flick.
Found on NewScientist.com

The Vengeance of CRANEHAND.

Bird Fight

Turkey VultureLast night, while doing some poking around the internets, I discovered something previously unknown to me:

The turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) of the Americas is one of the only bird species that has a sense of smell, which is utilized to find carrion – jrank.com

Seemed like sort of a neat fact, but little did I know I’d just stepped into a major avian controversy.

Some follow up research brought along this bit of info from Stanford:

There has been a long controversy over the degree to which vultures use odor to help them find food. Mostly the argument has been over whether sight or smell is more important, but it has also been suggested, by those with a flair for the absurd, that vultures listen for the noise of the chewing of carrion-feeding rodents or insects or even use an as yet undiscovered sense. Nonetheless, the sight-odor argument remains unsettled. While Turkey Vultures, for example, seem to have a good sense of smell, quite likely it is not good enough to detect the stench of decomposing food from their foraging altitudes. – Stanford

So is the idea that most birds can’t smell false as well?

There’s some confusion on the topic, and some interesting research:The sense of smell seems better developed in some avian groups than others. Kiwis, the flightless birds that are the national symbol of New Zealand, appear to sniff out their earthworm prey. […]

When they return at night from foraging in the Bay of Fundy, Leach’s Storm-Petrels appear to use odor to locate their burrows on forested Kent Island, New Brunswick. They first hover above the thick spruce-fir canopy before plummeting to the forest floor in the vicinity of their burrows. Then they walk upwind to them, often colliding with obstacles on the way- Stanford

Actually, all that plunging and colliding sounds a lot like my college days.

Corporate Warfare

From CNN

I wasn’t aware of this story until it jumped out at me from the CNN front page, so I apologize if I’m getting on the bandwagon late in the game, but –

It may seem silly to think a fellow like Jobs would be looking to acquire ninja stars, but I believe he’s the right age to have gone through that bleak period of North American history in which every “cool guy” bedroom had a set of shurikens, as ordered from the back of a magazine.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he spent no little time in his youth practicing with a homemade set of nunchucks while staring at a Farrah Fawcett poster.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHyEIbBnzYM]

 
Personally, I’ll stick with the classic ThinkGeek product, the Ninja Star Coat Hook.

If Everyone Knew Kung Fu

Books

I’m sure everyone remembers the scene in the original Matrix film in which Theodore Logan is injected with the knowledge of how to perform kung fu.

It wasn’t the first time science fiction has flashed information into someone’s brain – heck, it wasn’t even Keanu’s first time, as you may recall if you happened to be one of the ten people to see Johnny Mnemonic – and, given humanity’s tendency to seek out the laziest possible solution, I’m sure it won’t be the last.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmEPXXJ4sKw]

It may not happen in my lifetime, but I do actually believe we’ll one day master a method to upload knowledge directly, and it raises a number of odd social considerations.

What will school-age children do when summer vacation extends all year long? (Or maybe 10 minutes a morning, while they sync that day’s lessons?)

Will universities transition entirely to research & development for the public good?

What happens at the site of a flood/earthquake/tsunami/hurricane/war if the Red Cross or Crescent can inject the survivors with advanced medical and survival knowledge?

Do job positions that depend heavily on learned processes, like clerical work, become as disposable as McDonald’s employees if those processes can be implanted in a ten minute “training session”?

Brain Scan

Real Decepticon

Found on http://pentagoncity.netThe evil geniuses over at Georgia Tech have created something new to fear:

“We have developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and we have designed techniques that help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to reduce its chance of being discovered,” said Ronald Arkin, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing. – Physorg

Also, the robot will insist you look great in those pants, that it’ll be home right on time, and that it loves only you, baby.

It’s interesting that we’re slowly working on combat strategies – I wonder if we’ll see a home-version that can keep the kids busy playing hide and seek.

Like Clockwork

The TerminatorWill there ever come a day when we have enough robotic implants that we’ll be able to complete simple tasks while still asleep? Will my mechanical enhancements one day allow me to ensure the kids’ lunches are made, the dusting done, and the house tidied, all while I’m getting a decent night’s rest?

Will there come a time when I’m rocked to sleep by the gentle motion of my wandering titanium skeleton?

Executing Justice

Another bit of the CNN front page:

I admittedly don’t know much about the Iranian legal system, but it seems to me that any structure so crude as to depend on stoning as a method of justice probably has some issues. I find it hard to imagine that there is place in such a system for a Clarence Darrow, or even a Johnnie Cochran.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_DQUAuNUvw]

Anyhow, this reminded me of something I read the other day that I wanted to pass along. It may end up somehow incorporated into a Blackhall tale someday, but, in his book Whiskey and Wickedness, Larry D. Cotton writes:

“The last public execution in Perth occured in May 1851. A convicted murderer named Francis Beare was scheduled to be hung, but a serious problem arose – the authorities could not find a hangman!”

That’s an interesting problem for an area on the cusp of civilizing to have. In the end though, they found a, uh, creative solution.

“The Sheriff contacted the penitentiary in Kingston and made arrangements for a prisoner to be offered a pardon in return for carrying out the task.”

Which reminds me of a Monty Python quote, from the Zulu sketch in The Meaning Of Life: “I mean, at home if you kill someone they arrest ya, eh, but here they give you a gun and show you what to do. I mean, I killed 15 of those buggers, sir. At home they’d hang me; here they’ll give me a ****ing medal.”

So, as was the custom of the time, the day of the execution came and the populace crowded together to watch.

Mr. Cotton continues:

“When the hangman appeared, the crowd jeered at him and shouted threats. The noose was tightened, the trap door sprung and the condemned man hung from the second story of the Court House. The screams of the crowd echoed even louder for the head of the hangman, who “yelled back at them that he’d hang them all for a shilling a dozen.”“