http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/35832604158595072
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/35740629187309568
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/35434017083883520
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/35383537557307392
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/35097246974480384
Have you heard about the new Roman Catholic confessional iPhone application? It’s creating quite a stir.
From switched.com:
The app, which markets itself to “those who frequent the sacrament and those who wish to return,” offers a guide to the confession, and keeps a password-protected log of users’ sins.
Now, while I’m no longer a practicing Roman Catholic, I’ve long felt that confession was useful as a sort of proto-psychiatrist’s couch – although the confessor may not be getting sound psychological advice, often just the act of talking to someone about the things we keep hidden can be helpful in relieving a burdened mind.
That said, my first response when I heard about this application was to flip into Collective Detective mode.
Let’s say you’re a good RC, and you’re tracking your confessions, saving up those sins for a rainy Sunday. You’re a stiff-collared fellow, but the flesh is weak – you’ve occasionally relieved the supply shelf at work of excess sticky pads, and, in an effort to avoid using contraceptives, you often conduct a little five-finger shuffle after the lady of the house has retired.
It’s not like you’ve ever murdered anyone, but you like to keep an honest chronicle of your minor-misdeeds, and you track your habits meticulously.
What you don’t know, however, is that each time you update your log of immorality, your confession goes straight from your fingers to AngryCoder69’s database. One day you get an email: “I know about the stapler you stole. Buy my new game, Mr Muncher’s Mixed Up Mulberries, or I’ll be in touch with your office.”
Sure, that may sound far fetched, but what if we tighten the noose a little? What if it’s “pay $200 to this anonymous paypal account, or I’ll inform your boss about what a fun time you had last Tuesday, while visiting with Ms. Schmackelheimer in the server closet?”
I was aware of gris-gris as a concept related to Voodoo, but some recent research turned up a bit of surprising info.
Gris-gris, also spelled grigri, is a voodoo amulet originating in Africa which supposedly protects the wearer from evil or brings luck – wikipedia
Which sounds superstitious, but somewhat reasonable when dealing with a world where certain nations continue to believe in items like The Evil Eye, etc.
The next bit from the wiki-article is a little misleading, however.
Originally the gris-gris was adorned with Islamic scripture and was used to ward off evil spirits (djinn) or bad luck. Historians of the time noted that they were frequently worn by non-believers and believers alike, and were also found attached to buildings. – wikipedia
You might get the impression from this blurb that the amulets were an archaic tradition that fell out of fashion hundreds of years ago – not so.
Can you guess what ranked in Senegal’s top three contraceptive methods for 1982? I’ll give you a hint: the other two were herbs and abstinence.
According to a 1982 survey, gris-gris were one of the top three methods of contraception known to women in Senegal. […] Over 60% of women reported having knowledge of such methods; modern and “effective means of contraception” were not well known, with the pill the best-known of those, a little over 40% of women reporting knowledge of it. – wikipedia
There’s always a lot of nostalgia floating around regarding “the way things were”, and not always undeservedly so, but there are things we’ve had a hand in that leave me blinking at the possibilities for awe and disaster.
In the 1950s, nuclear power was all the rage – so much so that the American Government undertook to develop a nuclear-powered bomber aircraft that it could use to to deploy atomic weaponry from high altitudes, and at high velocity.
Not only would a nuclear-plane be able to maintain supersonic speeds, it could do so nearly indefinitely.
Imagine a sky full of planes that only need to land when their wings start to peel off.
Of course, reality came down heavy on the designers, and the radioactive aspects of the engine were pulled out of the contract.
This beast was the first proposal for an alternate. As the wikipedia notes, “the “floating panels” are large fuel tanks the size of a B-47″ – and they were intended to peel off once empty.
Like the atomic aspect, the extra tanks were also eventually left in the design-room’s trash, and two prototypes were built, with a third canceled mid-production. Technology had simply outpaced their need.
What happened to the orphaned birds that once dreamed of being nuclear?
On 8 June 1966, XB-70A #2 was in close formation with four other aircraft (an F-4, F-5, T-38, and F-104) for a photoshoot […] the F-104 drifted into contact with the XB-70’s right wing, flipped over, and rolling inverted, passed over the top of the Valkyrie, struck the vertical stabilizers and left wing and exploded, destroying the Valkyrie’s rudders and damaging its left wing […] the Valkyrie entered an uncontrollable spin and crashed into the ground north of Barstow, California. – wikipedia
A simple accident that could have happened in any, or to any, aircraft; nothing mechanical, just pilot error – still, in an alternate history of ever-flying planes, it would have been anything but a simple clean up.
The remaining prototype is in a museum, where it probably belongs.
A quick thought from my twitter stream.
Phone cord: just another artifact of the near-past our children will only be vaguely aware of.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zFdTrpjRjs]
Did you catch this video over at BoingBoing? Realistic masks are no longer the stuff of Mission Impossible, now you too can be an old man starting at the low, low, price of $700.
This is the same mask, I believe, recently featured in one man’s flight from Chinese oppression:
On October 29, a young Chinese man who was wearing a latex mask, cap and a cardigan sweater which disguised him as an old Caucasian man was able to board an international flight after passing Hong Kong airport security and make it on a flight to Vancouver, Canada. he took off the disguise and showed his true self sometime mid-flight. – Thaindian News
– and is from the same line of masks as the selection used by a recent bank bandit:
According to police reports, Conrad Zdzierak, 30, is alleged to have used the £450 silicon mask in an audacious string of six bank robberies in Ohio. – The Telegraph
I’ve often wondered what effect the internet has had on the perception of race and sexuality – it’s my theory that the uncertainty of the identity at the far end of the connection generates a greater need for tolerance – but we seem to be living in a world where even the likelihood of being able to believe your own lying-eyes is rapidly dropping.
What would happen if you were in the park with your ornery grandfather, listening to him complain regarding the personal affection a male couple were showing each other, only to have one of the apparent lovebirds pull back a layer of rubber to reveal a woman underneath?
Better yet, what would have happened if, eighty years ago, a black man in the American south had discovered one of these masks and realized it could be the key to a much better paying job?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8h_v_our_Q]
I assume you’ve seen an ad from one of the recent bumper crop of money-for-gold companies?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrNipeP4HvQ]
I have a business proposal for you.
We rig up a computer to a modified high-heat oven, and put it up against a mail slot.
When the mail gets delivered, it drops onto a small sorting unit which separates things out into individual letters. The letters are scanned, then the ends are cut off. The gold (which we’ve released a marketing campaign offering to purchase at not-quite-gouging prices) is dumped from the torn envelope and into a smelting unit, which heats to exactly gold’s melting point, and mechanically separates anything else that might survive (diamonds).
The gold is set into blocks, which are then weighed, and a feeder unit dispenses the proper amount of money (as well as any of the other odds and ends that survived the smelting process) into an envelope, which has the address pre-printed with the location originally scanned from the letter-face.
Once a week you take some of the money we’re now rolling in, insert it into the pay-out hopper, check the envelope & ink supply, grab the outgoing mail, then walk off to a fancy party with your pockets full of gold blocks.
Not long ago, while poking around the internet on the trail of research, I encountered an instrument that I’d never heard of – an instrument which has a body of work behind it that includes compositions by Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven.
The device is essentially a rolling post that spins glass rings, so the sound is similar to that of rubbing a wet finger about the rim of a bit of stemware.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQemvyyJ–g]
Its popularity didn’t last beyond the 18th century, apparently, and there seems to be some split in opinion as to why.
My personal guess is that the device was just too inconsistent, and too fragile, to garner a lot of players – but I like the romantic ideals of this suggestion made by wikipedia:
Some claim this was due to strange rumors that using the instrument caused both musicians and their listeners to go mad. […] One example of fear from playing the glass harmonica was noted by a German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung:
“The harmonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation. If you are suffering from any nervous disorder, you should not play it; if you are not yet ill you should not play it; if you are feeling melancholy you should not play it.”
I’m still recovering from yesterday’s stomach bug, and the majority of my energy is being dedicated to tonight’s Flash Pulp, but I wanted to pop in and share two fantastic research-resources I’ve encountered.
Hungry Monster’s listing of restaurant diner lingo provides some of the best industry-patter I’ve run across.
A sampling:
Gentleman will take a chance: Hash
Radio: A tuna-fish-salad sandwich on toast punning on “tuna down,” which sounds like “turn it down,” as one would the radio knob.
Zeppelins in a fog: Sausages in mashed potatoes.
What could possibly be more amusing? How about Wikipedia’s list of slang terms for police officers.
Asfalt Kovboyu (Asphalt Cowboy): Turkish, slang, relates the modern police officers to cowboys. Police officers are called cowboys in Turkey, due to their lawless acts
Cinder Dick: An old term for railroad police detective, derived from the detective having to walk on the railroad ballast rock, also known as “cinders”
Krawężnik: Polish, from “curb”, designating an officer patrolling the neighbourhood on foot.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL0aiQAm4RU]
This is a bot out of the University of Pennsylvania, although they apparently received some insight from my favourite of the rock-star roboticist firms, Boston Dynamics.
It doesn’t look like it would last long if placed in a fighting arena against some of the Battlebots of yore, but you’ve got to keep in mind that, in the real world, combat doesn’t take place on a custom built, perfectly level, playing field.
Most of the comments I’ve seen related to this little beast have suggested that it would be useful as some sort of spying device – that wasn’t what popped into my mind at first viewing, however.
Remember that post I wrote regarding the use of trained dogs to attack tanks? This seems like a much simpler delivery system, and one that won’t be scared away by gunfire.
I have a theory that, once lasers reach a certain level of power and can be effectively used to keep our skies clean of aircraft, and once robot drones can be used to automagically take out heavily fortified vehicles, we’ll be back to the bad old days of World War I, cowering in ditches and hoping for trench-foot.
– or, maybe we’ll end up with giant snakes formed of Indian terminators that utilize AK-47s as a tongue:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svOlz2ei4Yk]
(Hat tip to Warren Ellis for the clip.)