via Coming Anarchy

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

The headline says it all, really..

Think your Guitar Hero performance is pretty awesome? Check this out:

And, another video, this time with the quad guitar, a device which takes guitar wank to new levels of awesome.

via George,

An amusing take on what entertainment might be like 50 years from now.

How plausible is full sensory experience and interface like this by the date offered in the video (2062)?

Right now, it might look like far future fiction, but I'm fairly sure that's not the case. Enabling technologies necessary for virtual reality of this level either exist already, are in development, or are at least theoretically possible.

The nanomachines necessary seem almost inevitable, particularly as the necessary components for these (antenna, propulsion, power) are in development, with experimental devices either complete or nearing completion. Similarly, the computing power necessary also seems easily achievable.

So, to me, the main remaining obstacle is complexity. That is, while we can create the necessary devices, and produce the necessary content, can we string these all together into the necessary engineered systems? We're pretty awful at this sort of thing when it comes to building large scale software solutions, largely because of the need for rapid change and adaptation. It seems that brain interfaces of this fidelity must adapt quite precisely to the neural topology of the individual, and it would seem that these must vary widely at the level of neurons, meaning that any engineered system interfacing with the brain must be heavily customizable to accomodate this.

This, by the way, is my general concern with some of the technology ideals before us - I trust our ability to invent and create devices, but I don't trust our ability to coordinate them.

Some of you might be interested in this video of one of the last thylacines, or tasmanian tigers. Check out the jaws when it yawns at the beginning.

Plundered from the inimitable Mr Gaiman

Afuganisu-tan - a short history of Afghanistan, told by the power of manga! Surprisingly informative if you're not already an expert.

vector: Exploring the Heart of Asia - a very new blog discussing Central Asian politics, culture and society, with a focus on Afghanistan.

While slowly uploading 3 years of email archives to gmail this afternoon, I spent a while poking about random video blogs following links from last week's Epic-FU. While the content is amusing, it's the fact that they even exist that really interests me - random people creating not only content, but regular shows, of quality at least the same as I'd expect from regional TV. It's been said for some time that the internet facilitates a massive democratization of culture, but you don't really get that as a gut feeling until you go out* and dig around.

It's really quite heartening. There's a real golden age going on - a huge diversity of people picking up tools, making some stuff, and change the world. There's a directness and apparent honesty to the content that's really appealing. Even though a lot of it's fairly low brow, that's OK - it's usually deliberate, and you don't get the feeling that you're being condescended to by a media conglomerate that's decided you (as part of the great unwashed) are insufficiently intelligent or attentive. And that's not to say that it's typically low brow - there's some really great, really thought provoking content out there, too..

Anyway, vector - Epic-Fu is a 5 minute weekly that covers pop internet culture. Episodes usually contain a mix of music, pop culture video links and notes about cool new web tools, as well as the occasional WTF? - one episode a couple of weeks back, for example, was interspersed with 'FUnetics', a Scientology spoof with a weird alternate reality web game attached to it.

One last thing - I stumbled across For Your Imagination somewhere this morning; it's a startup aiming to provide production services to people wanting to run video casts of their own. This, too, is pretty heartening, and it'll be interesting to see how this works - it seems to be focused on providing a service to creators rather than exploiting them as current media conglomerates do. Of course, what matters is how the service matures. Anyway, check out their demo reel on the site's front page. Make sure you give it time to load, though - if the video isn't fully downloaded, it just stops playing and goes back to the beginning.

* By 'go out', what I really mean is sit in front of your computer and click some of the buttons** you haven't clicked before.
** By 'click buttons', what I really mean is click the button on your mouse while holding it in a particular place on your desk, following a sequence of similar actions that have placed your your mouse cursor over a particular shape on your screen***.
*** As a complete aside, the layers of abstraction in the words we use to describe our behaviour on the internet are totally fascinating, don't you think? I wonder if you could judge depth of change by the average depth of indirections between the metaphors used to describe typical actions and the literal meaning of those words. Internet life is at least at depth three or four..

• UN Population Prospects - demographic database provided by the UN. Searchable and quite interesting to have a poke around.
• Battlespace - an exhibition of disturbing photos from Afghanistan and Iraq - you need to look at these. Follow the link, and click on 'Enter Exhibition'. This is not for the faint of heart, though.</a>

• Those of you with an interest in languages should check these out - two resources related to dead and dying languages. First, an interactive feature from National Geographic covering regions of the world in which large numbers of languages stand to go extinct. Secondly, a collection of data layers for Google Earth show an assortment of data related to dying languages; this one's particularly nifty.
• Impaired anal sphincter function in professional cyclists. "Permanent microtrauma through constant saddle vibration may lead to chronic inflammation and anal fissure resulting in anal pain and therefore high sphincter pressure. Muscle hypertrophy as a consequence may lead to defecation disorders." rhinocrow13 - this one's for you. Via A Good Poop
• The Japanese War Tuba An acoustic location system deployed by the Japanese in the 1930s. Looks somewhat like a series of brass players lined up for an artillery barrage. Via Coming Anarchy
• Excerpts from an interview with a FBI veteran interrogator on effective techniques for getting information from terror suspects and other fanatics. He describes methods that are a little surprising, and suggests that odious methods up to and including torture are generally unnecessary and often ineffective. At Foreign Policy
• Long duration material exposure testing in space. Interesting series of photos of a large scale experiment in which a several thousand samples of various materials were exposed to hard vacuum and cosmic radiation over the course of several years. At The Long Now
• Subcutaneous touchscreen display, powered by blood. Once again I assert that the future is here, and it's just going to get weirder. In five years or so, I can see technologies such as this becoming simply another fashion accessory. Via George Dvorsky

Prosthetic limbs are another harbinger of the future. They're becoming increasingly sophisticated, and it looks like IEEE Spectrum is going to run a special issue on them in February.

There's an interesting article up now about the 'Luke' arm, named for Luke Skywalker's prosthetic in Empire Strikes Back. Check it out in this video.

What's really cool is the range of control mechanisms available - gone are cumbersome mechanical arrangements, replaced by controls based on nerve signals, twitching related muscles, or even underused muscle groups such as toes. The video below shows an arm based entirely on neural feedback - the patient doesn't need to learn special commands - his prosthetic responds to messages from his brain similarly to a real one.

Another article discusses cosmeses - coverings for the arm mechanics designed to make them look real. Unfortunately, there's no pictures, though from the description of "silver-black carbon fiber, shimmering with a pattern of subtle scales" sounds pretty damned awesome.

So far, no one has replaced their body parts with prosthetics voluntarily, but given their progress and potential, I give it at most ten years.

I've always loved the name 'rail gun' - of all the various futuristic weapons concepts I've encountered, it's probably the most down to earth name. And, since it's based on an idea you can replicate at home with a bunch of wire and a battery, it's always seemed one of the most practical.

The US Navy's been interested in rail guns for use on their various capital ships - they're aiming for a 64 MJ version that will be able to lob projectiles up to 200 miles.

A recent article in the MIT Technology Review describes a 10 MJ gun which is nonetheless scarily impressive. Particularly because, at over 2 kilometres a second, a 3 kg slug is travelling fast enough to cause flakes of aluminium on it to spontaneously combust, leaving an impressive fiery tail.

Video

American politics are in some ways very similar to American sports - there's commentators galore, piles of statistics, and, most importantly, far too much money.

OK, so I don't give two hoots about sport in general, let alone American sports, but I think there's something in this - certainly, these factors make American politics a hell of a lot more interesting to watch, particularly because the rules are far more complex than any sport, the stakes are so much higher, and political commentary is a lot more meaningful than sports commentary, at least to me.

Anyway, with the primaries heating up, this promises to be an exciting political season - there's no nominated successor for the incumbent, the Republicans, having lost the House and Senate last time are champing at the bit to get it back, and almost all of the candidates are at least pretending to be interested in new ways of engaging with the electorate via the internet. The issues are hot, there's two, maybe three wars at stake, not to mention crazy mad oil prices, growing indicators of climate change and a weak US economy. Not to mention the ongoing spectre of electronic voting machines and other possible reasons for allegations of electoral fraud..

Mark my words - this should be an exciting match.

For those who aren't sick of the sports analogy, yet, I have one question - why don't the parties have cheerleaders? I'm sure that would increase voter turnout some..

Seriously though, US politics, by virtue of their global impact, convolution, and generally comic nature, are always fun to read about. Furthermore, since I'm hoping to be studying in the US as of later this year, I have a vested interest in how this turns out.

For the last three political cycles, I've relied heavily on the awesome interactive tools and political commentary provided by the New York Times. Even if I didn't care about politics, the way they use visualizations to present descriptive statistical data on this scale would be to keep me going back.