Worth a browse, all in one place: Wired's collection of Artifacts from the Future

I've received an email invitation to Amazon Vine. Seems too good to be true, although it all seems legitimate. I get a monthly newsletter of new releases of books, dvds and music in areas that I've checked boxes in, I get to select some which Amazon send me for free, on the provisio that I write a review about it on their site.

Curious. Since it seems to be a legitimate Amazon programme, I'm going to give it a go.

Anyone else get an invite

Edit: I've just finished signing up, and the product selection page says that I have to write a review for 3 out of every 4 items I receive, before I can ask for more stuff. Software's included as well, even though no preferences were asked for (no games, though)

If only I had panoramic eyes. 28" monitor, £235 ex vat. Mind you, while it'd be nice for having many windows up, I'm not sure it'd be all that great for gaming, which is mostly what I use the computer for at home. There'd just be too much room, with no way to take it all in at once.

I wonder if there are monitors are are ovaloid, to make better use of the eye's high acuity field of vision.

ewx has probably seen this already, but here are some classics with ducks added

I'm watching Farscape for the first time, to see what all the fuss is about. Seems like a decent show so far (I'm about 3/4 of the way through the first season), although I'm writing off a few of the more random events to first-season-syndrome, and the odd status of the relationships between the characters as down to the episodes being out of order on the DVDs.

However, something's struck me about the Farscape universe, and that's a consequence of the translator microbe macguffin. Now, it's really handy to have something that will translate all the alien languages for you, and doesn't get switched off during those "technology breaks" episodes, so as a plot device it's perfectly decent.

However, I think three elements lead to an odd consequence: The microbes only need to be in the listener, as the crew understood Crichton before he has them. They also understand him even though the microbes have never heard his language before, meaning that they can interpret things on the fly with no prior knowledge. They also, as a throwaway remark tells us, get injected at birth.

So... are there actually no formal spoken languages in the Farscape universe? Every infant will be able to understand any adult, regardless of what they're speaking. Any adult will understand what the infant is trying to say, no matter what actual sounds (cf proto-language) it makes. So what's stopping each new child developing its own series of sounds and meanings? None of the other microbe-equipped organisms will know the difference. As long as the child manages to map written language onto its own development, do the specifics of its utterings actually matter? Will the child learn to imitate the rough sounds before it learns any linguistic meaning, and if so, will that mean that there are classes of sounds based on social groups, with no formally describable shared language?

This collection of newspaper cutouts had me in stitches, so I'm sharing.

GENIUS, I tell you.

You've Been Left Behind

It's a subscription service for people who believe they're going to get raptured. It lets them leave messages for those who they think will be left behind. Subscription fees paid yearly... until the rapture happens. Nice little earner. If it were just that, it would be cunning, but there's more!

There's an encrypted (honest, guv'nor) section of the storage, so that you can tell your left-behind loved ones all your passwords and bank details. Yes! For only $40 a year you too can put all your personal information on a remote site! Give them all your passwords! Let them clear out your bank account!

If I didn't have morals, I'd more seriously wish that I'd thought of this first.

Well, there's only one question. I check another site, for the joy of seeing numpties answer questions. One of the questions asked has polarised the people responding. Now, I know what I think the answer is, and why, but I would like a straw poll of people here.

What is the answer to the following sum: 25 x 3 - 5 + 1000,000 x 0

There's one thing I keep hearing repeated, in various martial arts classes and forums. It's this, "It takes five pounds of pressure to break (some body part)". Often the same person will claim that it's five pounds of pressure to damage lots of bits, such as knees, sternum, collarbone, or wrist.

My questions are these: How many others have heard this repeated? Do these people mean "pound force per square inch", or are they just ignorant of what pressure is? How on earth can the amount of force be either measured experimentally? How can the same amount of force be required for numerous body parts, when the pressure is important, the rate of application, the angle of attack, current state of the target area and compressibility of the weapon are all factors as well? Is it, in fact, just utter nonsense that gets repeated so that the instructor sounds knowledgeable?

Answers from non-martial artists are also welcome, of course.

Seriously. Just how sick can people get? How much can parents seriously fuck up their children? How about leaving their dead grandmother on the loo for two months, and telling the kids she'd come back to life if only they prayed hard enough?

Utterly gobsmacked.

Let's say Bob has a time machine, which he calls TM. Bob travels to a particular point in time and space, leaves the machine and wanders around for a bit. Bob then finds his time machine in a different place to where he left it, assumes someone moved it, gets in it and move along. However, that machine wasn't the one Bob just left. A later incarnation of Bob visited the same place, parked TM in a different location, and walked off. That Bob remembers that he, earlier, took the wrong machine, and goes to take the first TM to carry on his journey.

Now, does this actually work, or is it a paradox? We have:

(1) Bob1 and TM1 arrive
(2) Bob2 and TM2 arrive
(3) Bob1 leaves in TM2
(4) Bob2 leaves in TM1

But: who arrives in (2)? Since Bob2 occurs after Bob1 in terms of a personal sequence of events, it must be Bob1/TM2 who leave in (3) and arrive at (2). He takes TM2 off for a little trip, and then returns to collect TM1 in (4).

I think it works out intact, but I'm not actually sure.

Before it disappears from the BBC iPlayer, go and watch "Have I Got A Bit More News For You", the 45 minute version. I've watched it three times now. For the sole reason, that Brian Blessed is the host, and he's utterly fantastic.

Engage hypothetical drive!

There was a question on another site, asking what people would do to defend themselves if their home was under attack by zombies. I was a bit puzzled by the responses, as a lot of the posters were boasting about their martial arts weapon collection, or weapons collected for decoration, and saying that they would fend off zombies with their katana or two-handed axe. This seems very odd to me. This question, coupled with the idiocy you normally see in zombie movies, has got me thinking.

( Cut for the people who think talking about this sort of thing is stupid )

What would you do, knowing that zombies were outside?

I think this is my new favourite picture, ever. From this guy's flickr set (caution, some pictures NSFW), here's a panda ( under the cut )


Edit: Ok, this one's a close call: ( Purr purr )

The BBC's front page has a 'most read' box, which currently has a very unfortunate #4 and #5.

Looking at the new coin designs to be introduced later this year, an idea occurred to me. Among the common objects to survive from older societies, that are found in archaeological digs, are coins. What we should do is encode basic information about our society, about what we know of the world, and our own history, onto our coins. Just one fact every few years, a different one on each size of coin. These are going to survive for a long, long time, and future historians will no doubt find the information useful.

It would also serve as a reminder for us to consider the effect we have on the future.

What would you put on the coins?

Can you imagine a room full of people wearing these?

From the B3ta newsletter, certainly, but worth sharing.

Went to see [REC] this weekend, which ended up being an ok-ish zombie movie. I wasn't too impressed at the time, but at least part of that was feeling queasy - there is a lot of shaky hand-camera work there. A hell of a lot of it, in fact, for a supposedly professional TV cameraman (in character, that is). The plot's feeble in a few places, but it's still quite nicely done. It's being remade as Quarantine for the US market, and the trailer for Quarantine really puts things into perspective. The acting in [REC] is a much higher standard. At least part of that has to be the way [REC] was made. Wondering why the Cameraman's name was Pablo, and the credits had his real name as Pablo, I discovered that they didn't actually give the actors a proper script. There were just rough guidelines for each scene and no notes on what was to happen afterwards. The cameraman had to use his real name because the TV presenter would probably say it in surprise when things happened she wasn't expecting. The reactions of the people in the Quarantine trailer just look poor by comparison - the timing is off, the style of reaction isn't right.

If you don't get motion sickness, it's probably worth seeing. Especially if you've been taking Spanish classes and want to practice.