Aehso’s Output

It’s a relative thing really, expense: The Telegraph is reporting

Four flats overlooking Hyde Park are on sale for a rumoured £84 million each, the highest price ever asked for a British flat
…..
The complex will also have a spa, squash court and private wine-tasting facility.

The wine-tasting facility is probably the clincher for any prospective purchaser really. That and the prospect of having an arms dealer living next door…

(via BldBlog)

The electric sheep screen saver (for Win, OS X & Linux) is one of those strange concepts that begs the question: ‘who creates this stuff???’ It is amazingly cool:

…the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”. The result is a collective “android dream”, an homage to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

The generated visuals are usually spectacular and it is minimally interactive to allow us meatspace inhabitants to judge the output:

If you see a sheep you like, hit the “up arrow” key on your keyboard. A smiley face will temporarily appear. Conversely, if you see one you dislike, press the “down arrow”. You have voted for that sheep and contributed to its genetic destiny. Popular sheep will live
longer and procreate.

Of course, your machine could also run one of many more noble distributed computing screen savers…

(The one question that they don’t answer well in the FAQ is what the typical daily bandwidth usage is…hmmm)

I like it when theses new terms appear out of nowhere.  “Meatspace” is a recent favourite:

Meatspace is synonymous with the physical world and conceived as the opposite of cyberspace or virtual reality….The term may be used in a derogatory manner as a conscious rejection of the connotations of the term “real life” and the implication that interactions in cyberspace are less real or important than physical interactions.

[above from Wikipedia,  read this Wired article on Second Life for some real world context]

It is always only a matter of time before perspectives started getting inverted and new terminology is required.  Remember the arrival of “snail-mail” back in the 90’s? Now it’s part of common speech.  I wonder how long it will take for ‘meatspace’ to enter the general vocabulary?

It’s a pretty simple proposition, pose the question “What is your dangerous idea?” to some of the greatest minds on the planet and their responses should be interesting and thought-provoking, right? 
They are, or at least the responses I can understand are…

So the Kansas school board have decided they need to redefine science in order to change their science curriculum to encompass intelligent design.

Needless to say, Scientific American are unimpressed:

[...] the Board of Education went as far as to redefine what science is: it’s no longer just a search for natural explanations for natural phenomena. Now it’s a search for… well, that’s a bit hard to say. Any sort of explanation, apparently. Pixies, ghosts, telekinesis, auras, ancient astronauts, excesses of choleric humor, they all seem to be fair game in the interest of “academic freedom.” Oh, and God, of course.

Apparently one Washington Post columnist imagined God saying to the Kansas board members: “Man, I gave you a brain. Use it, okay?”

Of course, this being the Internet, one clever soul (or body?) has written to the board reminding them that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design and that the alternative theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should also be on the new curriculum.:

But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.

Some of the responses from the board members are worth reading. I think I’ll have to buy something from their store, parody as good as this doesn’t come along too often…

This bizarre short cartoon, using characters from Nintendo’s Zeldagames is strangly compelling - I found it impossible to stop watching it mainly because I wanted to see what the (surely drug induced) creator would stick into it next. Strange.

Game engine based cartoons can be very well done though. I’m a big fan of Red vs Blue(though I admit I have 20 episodes to catch up on. I’m not as big a fan of The Strangerhood though - I’m not sure why, maybe because I’ve never played The Sims.

(Via Kuro5hin). The policy of making ex-members Fair Game is an interesting exit restriction.

The Age has a syndicated article about some researchers who’ve managed to get rat brain cells in a petri dish to fly a flight simulator.

They hope their research into neural computation will help them develop sophisticated hybrid computers, with a thinking biological component…It is also hoped that the research will provide the basis for developing new drugs to treat brain diseases such as epilepsy.

Of course, the military isn’t too far away from this one - wedged between the above two sentances describing notable goals
for humanity is the following:

One target is to install living computers in unmanned aircraft so they can be deployed on missions too dangerous for humans.

It’s not laser beams in space - Rat Wars possibly? Disturbing to think they are even trying…