This may seriously be the coolest thing I’ve seen this year. The possibilities for a functional platform build around this technology are seemingly endless.
Most of what I could say is covered in the video, so I’m just gonna let you look for yourself and go pick my jaw up off of the floor.
Here comes Russia, with a rather surprisingly honest admission that they’re trying to build missiles they can bomb us with:
MOSCOW (AP) – Russia’s military is planning to upgrade its missiles to allow them to evade American weapons in space and penetrate any prospective missile shield, a Russian general said Monday.
In comments to the Interfax news agency, Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces chief, Col.-Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, as saying that Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles will be modernized to protect them from space-based components of the U.S. missile defense system.
As Bill points out, such races don’t historically end well for the Ruskies.
OTTAWA – The Carleton University Students’ Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued the disease is not “inclusive” enough.
The basis of this idiotic suggestion is the claim that CF “has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men.” Because we white men don’t deserve to live, in the minds of these enlightened, educated scholars. The suggestion alone is absurd – should AIDS research be abandoned because it affects mainly black people? Native Americans suffer disproportionately from heart disease – should we stop researching treatements for that too? Of course not. Even if we lived in a bizzaro world where this insane idea of “racial medicine” somehow made sense, it’s pretty clear that this is yet another case of the educated youth backlashing against the Evil White Man™. But, in an entirely unexpected twist of events, it turns out that CF doesn’t just affect white people! And this one actually comes from a real, live scientist!
CF is diagnosed just as often among girls as boys, although the health of girls deteriorates more rapidly, she said. It is commonly considered an illness that affects Caucasians, but that includes people from the Middle East, South America, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
“‘Caucasian’ as we understand it isn’t just white people,” said Morrison. “It includes people with a whole rainbow of skins.”
Behold, the result of modern education! Sure, this isn’t public policy, this is just a university fundraiser – but it’s a million bucks, and a million bucks can do a lot of good. Plus, the fact that there are enough of these people to make these kind of decisions does not speak well for the future.
From a more personal standpoint, I know a couple of people who are afflicted by cystic fibrosis. It’s not a pleasant condition to have, and it almost always causes the sufferer an early death – I’m not talking 60s here, I’m taking 20s or 30s. Maybe 40s. That’s a good 40 years hacked off your life because of a nasty, currently uncurable genetic disease, and these arrogant children have decided to play god with the lives of those afflicted, thanks to this insane racist attitude toward white people. I am not at all happy about the idea of having to attend my friend’s funeral simply because society deemed him an unworthy white.
h/t: Ace
Been braindead with a nasty cold all weekend so I didn’t post anything. But I picked up Wrath of the Lich King on Thursday night, got it installed and let it patch, and rolled my Death Knight on Thursday night. I haven’t had so much fun playing that game since vanilla WoW and Molten Core. The class is fun and versatile, but keeps you thinking while playing. I hit 70 quickly and went to Northrend and started looking around and I must say I’m very impressed with what Blizzard’s given us so far. The architecture is different than what we’ve seen so far, the environments seem more lifelike and interactive, and the feeling of a war being fought around you is strong – NPC characters are engaged in combat everywhere you go. Even the usual “hack-n-slash” quests I’ve seen so far are improved by integration with other quests and good explanations – instead of the typical “go to a cave and kill 12 ogre warriors and 10 ogre mages” it becomes “raze the vrykul fortress and burn their barracks.” I’m really looking forward to trying out the new instances as well.
Also discovered this weekend the music of Zoe Keating, an avant cellist, and her One Cello x 16 project. It’s really quite interesting from a technology standpoint what she’s done with the real-time recording and layering when she plays live, but from a musical standpoint it’s simply beautiful music. I’ve found it to be very relaxing the last couple of days, and the absense of vocals keeps it from being a distraction if I have other things to do. If you’re not familiar with her work, I’d suggest checking out “Tetrishead” as a good representation (at least of what I have heard so far). She has several videos up on Youtube as well.
Also, my comment moderation system is having some issues right now, not sure what’s going on but hopefully they’ll be corrected soon. If your comment gets stuck in moderation land and you don’t see it appearing on the page after a few hours, blame WordPress and/or Akismet.
I need to take a moment here to pimp one of my favorite websites: Good Old Games. The guys here are simply genius: they’ve taken their passion for classic games and put it to good use by creating a site that allows you to find some of your favorite old games, fully updated for use in XP/Vista, and download them DRM-free for $6-$10. What “favorite old games,” you might ask? Well how about:
And more… with any luck they’ll bring back the old Wing Commander games, Alpha Centauri, and maybe some of the old Sim games… and then I will never have to buy a new game again. Although I’m not entirely confident about Wing Commander, seeing as EA bought out Origin back in the 90s and they’re not exactly a bastion of software freedom.