When robots do our chores

My friend Joey Tombs forwarded me a link with this title:

Send robot lawn tractors to the Moon

Wow. The subtitle is almost as good:

Droid dump-truck Moonbase spaceport plan





I freely admit that I have a thing for robots . . . a strange dread and fascination to be more precise; and Joey and his wife Leah like to make fun of me because a couple years ago, while ranting about some distopian vision of the world, I offhandedly said something like, "in the future when robots do our chores".

Well, I don't know about all that, but this is really really cool:


The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2009/02/the_evolution_of_life_in_60_se.php

Shepard Fairey On NPR

From Fresh Air's web site:

The Associated Press has threatened to sue the artist who created the iconic "Hope" poster of Barack Obama for copyright infringement, but Shepard Fairey says his work is protected under the principle of "Fair Use," which exempts artists and others from some copyright restrictions, under certain circumstances.

Three things:

1. It was kind of cool how the "blogosphere", not the AP, was able to track down the image on which this poster was based.

2. I love how simple this image is . . . it really is quite a rudimentary picture, but look at the almost universal appeal that it has: we will be seeing echos of Fairey's image for a long time . . . so much for, "my kid could paint that".

One of my favorites:



by Mike Rosulek

If you are not design literate you can even go to this website for an informative "how to" on making your own hope poster!

3. Fairey is your quintessential outsider artist gone sellout--but of course even though he did graffiti and got arrested a bunch of times he went to one of the most prestigous art schools out there, RISD. But there is nothing wrong with all that! I love it, I love how everyone's ideals of revolution mellow as we get older.

So Good, its Painful . . . literally

Must see, must watch, whatever:

The Crisis of Credit, Visualized


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Related to this morning's Dune tangant at the end of that last post . . .

Me, personally, I am eagerly awaiting the jihad against the "thinking machines"

http://www.heritage.org/Research/nationalsecurity/bg2093.cfm

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Future Shock - Roombas of Doom

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Important Things With Demetri Martin

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Joke of the Day

Lamarckian!

Waldo Jaquith comments and links to this ridiculously amazing story:

The effects of an animal's environment during adolescence can be passed down to future offspring, according to two new studies. If applicable to humans, the research, done on rodents, suggests that the impact of both childhood education and early abuse could span generations. The findings provide support for a 200-year-old theory of evolution that has been largely dismissed: Lamarckian evolution, which states that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring.

Here is Waldo's two cents:

But, in science, everything’s always up for grabs, even the fundamentals, which is why two new studies are getting attention for showing that environmental effects can be inherited by offspring. How? Not by altering genes, but the expression of genes, basically by activating dormant genes, which is a heritable change

Wow, now the Bene Gesserit and the Kwisatz Haderach can't be that far away?

More Eric Cantor Please!

As Elmer Fudd is to Bugs Bunny, Eric Cantor is to Barack Obama:

Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo

I'm not sure what other ways he's going to follow in Newt Gingrich's steps. But GOP House whip Eric Cantor seems to have the megalomania and ego front down pat. He's been putting out word over the last few days that he's modeling himself off Newt and now apparently Winston Churchill too. And now there's this from the Post ...

But Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House minority whip who led the fight to deny Obama every GOP vote for the plan, is studying Winston Churchill's role leading the Tories in the late 1930s, a principled minority that was eventually catapulted into power over the Labor Party. He calls the stimulus bill "a stinker."

Now, I guess it's possible this is the Post's error and not Cantor's. And even if it's not you'd think they might have corrected this point. But Cantor's handle on his new hero seems pretty thin.

In the late 1930s, of course, Great Britain didn't have a Labour government with a principled Tory minority. It had conservative Tory government with a Labour minority. And Churchill was on the outs with both, although on some fronts he was beginning to make common cause with some Labourites on his key issue, which was foreign policy. When Churchill eventually came to power it was in a national coalition government for the purposes of fighting the war. And when he eventually went to the voters as head of the Tory party toward the end of the war they got crushed by Labour in a landslide.

I say all this as a big Churchill fan. But, I mean, not only is Eric Cantor no Winston Churchill, I'm not even sure he's read a book about Winston Churchill.

Now this is amazing:

My goodness, what fools . . .