Saturday, December 20, 2014

Who's really running things?


Yeah yeah , you can theorise all you like about conspiracy by the rich and powerful to control America and the world by extension . . . . . . . but here is a well written article about it, with supporting docs. Yep, it's as bad as you thought.  Special thanks to Alternet.org - plenty of meaty stuff there .
Merry Xmas, Rubes!

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Not my Bleedin' Network





I have been a fibreoptic broadband user for many years.  We have now received a box on the wall for the NBN and a letter from our service provider that suggests we migrate to the National Broadband Network.  Since I am the main user of such in out household I thought I would check it out.

First, I ran a test on my existing connection:
for which we pay about $67/ month including landline. Note that this was during the day too: in the late evening I would bet that this is even faster.

Then I checked out the offer for the new NBN service:
12 MB/sec  for $70/month.

I think we will be hanging onto our current service for as long as possible . . . . . . .


Friday, December 12, 2014

Weasel Stomping Day

I can't resist it:


Why I think this is so good: It really get at all that is stupid about human society.
"It's tradition, that makes it okay" is a line from the lyrics, and that is THE point:
In my view, most of us are floating along half asleep, blindly following what everyone else is doing even though it is clear that many of these things are stupid or even damaging . . . and now we are in the situation where our leaders seem oblivious to the real threats facing us (and I don't mean terrorists either)  . . .but don't bother reading any further, sit back, watch teevee, drink another beer and have some more junk food . . . . . .

Saturday, December 6, 2014

The News . . . .

Since I'm here, I might as well put in a few words in support of the sites I regularly look at . . . . .

VICE

The Daily Beast

Alternet

Boing Boing

I'm sure you can find something to entertain you here, and preferrably something that will make you THINK.

Friday, December 5, 2014

Visual Aggregate No.1





Yes, this is a real product.

Frivolous stuff

 . . . . . And now for something completely different.


 . . . or is it? I don't like all of MC 900 Foot Jesus' songs but that one is right on target.

Enforced holidays are over again, I'm back to work on monday.

Smoke and mirrors

Lately I have had some free time to surf the net and there sure is a lot of crap out there not worth mentioning . . . . . but there are a few good bits. Here is a vid I found that pretty much sums up the whole mess that's going down. Of course, it's from an american point of view but even taking that into account there is some interesting stuff here. Be warned, it is long and pretty low res, and the second half is pretty much all the extra bits of interviews that didn't make it into the original cut - but they are worth listening to too. 

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

CYRIAK !

Need I say more?
I am very happy to see that he is still creating mind-bending animations like this one:

I just looove his warped work. Subscribe to his YouTube channel or look at his homepage where there are some vids that are not on YT as well, including anims he has done for music vids.

A specia lHi to those good folks who asked to freind me on G+ and an apology for my tardiness: Yes, I have not posted much lately. Things have taken a slight downturn . . .but I'll be back on top soon enough!

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Holy What?

Okay, ESA (The European Spac Agency) landed a small spacecraft on a comet. Great.
Now look at the headline over at "WIRED" :
"Holy Shit We Landed a Spacecraft on a Comet". I don't care wether they think this is some kind of newspeak, it still looks childish to me.

I have noticed for a while now that proofreaders in general appear to have been turfed out of almost all big media sites: some of the mistakes are funny, most are just stupid. . . . .

Special mention goes to the mythical "Oliveri Trudi" who supposedly sent me an offer of employment in which I would  "directly corporate with clients in USA, Eastern Europe and Asia": that sounds like it would be interesting to try out, as soon as I figure out what it is and how to do it!

On Psychopaths and what they do in our society:
http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/dr-james-fallon-makes-being-a-psychopath-look-like-fun-110

Or if you really want some punishment, chech THIS out: Chessboxing. Surreal.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Bonus - Iron Sky theme video

Here's the Iron Sky theme song done by a different group  - and also some great scenes that I don't recall seeing in the original movie as well. Enjoy!


Iron Sky 2 coming

Don't know if you saw the first Iron Sky but it was darn good especially when you consider that it was NOT made by any of the big studios or distributed by them. In short, it was a sort of B-movie tale involving Nazis who have been hiding on the dark side of the moon since 1945, who come back to get their revenge in their flying saucers. I love the whole thing because it's fun, quite well made and chews on the well-known bones of power mad leaders . . . . . . well, a sequel is being made, and this time they have dug into more bones from the Nexus-magazine-conspiracy-wacko graveyard, this time it is Nazis again, but in the hollow earth, with Dinosaurs!
I have to hand it to these guys in finland, there is soooo much source material to work with out there and provided you don't take any of it seriously,  you can have a lot of fun with this stuff. I can't wait to see it, who knows what wild stuff they will come up with this time?

Have a look here for the trailer, and support them if you like via indiegogo.





Sunday, October 12, 2014

Economics, or what's wrong with our societies . . . .

Check out this page where Cory Doctrow provides a review of Thomas Picketty's "Capital in the twentyfirst century".
Of note is the observation that despite the clear solution to the dramatically uneven distribution of wealth being to Tax the rich, no government is willing to do that.
I'm not going to go over every detail of it since I have not read the book myself but this does point out the simple fact of the situation we are all in : We don't get rid of the gangsters or try to attack them because after decades of caving in to their every whim, they are now preceived as too powerful.
What will come next? 
 

Saturday, October 11, 2014

The Leaders . . . . .

Have a read of this:
Being a psychopath looks like fun
Never mind the title, the content really hits on a big issue for the human race:
Our Leaders, and their mental state.
Never mind the definition of "Psychopath" for now, (or places like North Korea) just consider what it takes to get to the position of being in control of a country or corporation . . . . .
For me, there is a clear divide between self-interest alone and mutual interest.  Also, there is the matter of who loses out, a major issue that seems to be all too often ignored or not even considered.
. . . . but these things are just my personal views, right? I am not the "boss" of anything big. 
As we live in a world where more and more "wealth" is concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer pointlessly wealthy people,  the lives of us "have-nots" will be more and more at the whim of a small cadre of people who did not even pretend to go through the motions of  qualifying for positions of power or responsibility.
You have been warned.

The Fear Merchants

Check this out.
Why you should visit a muslim country
I won't be leaving home any time soon but the truths expressed here deserve to be repeated.

Quote: (about Iran)
"Their government is a little unhinged. But would you want all Australians to be judged by ours?"

 What I find disturbing is that our government does not seem to represent the views of a majority of citizens: noone I know supports a number of recently introduced policies -  for that matter, whose views ARE they expressing?

I leave the answers up to you, dear reader. 

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

More Anime, anyone?

Okay, if you want some free anime, all legal, go to www. animelab.com and sign up. There is a fair bit of anime of various styles and new episodes are still being added. I am not sure ofthe exact nature of it, - maybe they are old, some are only two episodes long as if they got canned after that - but there are some gems there. My favourite is STEIN;S GATE (yes, that is how it's spelled) a story of Time Travel - well, it starts with sending SMS messages back in time, okay? In the first ten or so episodes it looked kind of silly but then all gets explained and the story is excellent, I went right through all 24 episodes very fast - ( Time travel is one of my favourite subjects ) and it is well written - dramatic, funny and touching too - and just in case you were wondering, yes, there really was a guy posting on the net back in the nineties calling himself John Titor who claimed to be a Time Traveller. No-one has ever owned up to faking it either.  You will have to see the series to get the rest of it.

 . . . and now onto something much stranger. . . .
DYNAMO. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb6AqhT9quA>
Paste the link and you can watch episode 1 of this home made series. I mention it here because it seems to me to sufer from all of the classic faults of home made SF movies:
1. The plot  - well, okay, I have only seen five episodes so far, but the plot seems to be swimming in visuals, mostly adrift  . . . . . There are flying machines and so on, all done in Blender, but they suffer from what I decided to name "Transformers disease"  - lots and lots and lots of moving thingies like wings and so on that really don't seem to do anything except decorate - if your ship has antigrav lifters, why the heck do you need fins? - and then they all fold or bend up or down? what for? If they were control or lift surfaces, you really would want them solidly mounted to keep your craft in the air - ah, but they are just there to look "scifi".  
2. Visual - more and more visuals of surreal scenes, low lighting and yet more surreal scenes. A woman typing on a mechanical typewriter. A character who does not talk in one episode then talks in the next - it's all very cryptic and picturesque but not really my cup of tea.
It just seems to me a bit incoherent at the moment.

More oddities as they come to light . . . .

Saturday, August 30, 2014

BIG MACHINES FOR BIG JOBS?

First, let me assure you that I am not a fan of "Machine intelligence": I am a skeptic about all such ideas because I have never yet seen any system that even vaguely resembles human awareness of its world or human mental ability.
That said, there are things computers could do that might improve lives if they are permitted (or, cynically, if someone pays for it to be done) . . and this is the sort of thing IBM is now trying out in this article.
This could be good, dealing with the mountain of stuff churned out by people in labcoats, boiling it down automatically and deriving or "mining" information from the mountains of data . . . .
but something sticks in my mind about this.

I recall an old scifi short story where someone invented the "de-legaliser" - software that read legal documents and rephrased it in simple terms that anyone could understand. Of course, the next step was to make the software work in reverse . . . . and by then the machines had started taking over the whole legal business.

I am curious to see how far this whole circuit circus goes.
Just remember that there is no actual research going on here folks, and also note that not all research papers are true and accurate:
Is the software smart enough to know when it "reads" faked research? 
How does it deal with the minefield of legal ownership, copyrights and patents?

One can imagine a scientist who has just completed his life's work only to be trumped effortlessly by a machine in a few minutes.
Hmm. . .

 


Friday, August 15, 2014

Science or Fiction?

All of us Space nuts know that what you really need to travel in space is a form of space drive that does not involve throwing matter out the back of your ship as rockets do. First, it is limited: once you run out of stuff to throw away, that's it.  Second, it means you need to keep lots of explosive, dangerous stuff in your ship while your drive is operating and as the stuff gets used up it changes the ship's performance.  Oh, and it's very limited.  If only we could just use energy itself to drive our ship through space we could equip it with generators, batteries and solar panels and just Go. No need to stop and refuel anywhere, no huge tanks of dangerous liquids required, just thrust at one gee aslong as you like and you can enjoy earth-normal gravity while getting there much, much faster than any rocket ship. 
Well the idea has been around for a long time, but recently people have claimed success doing just that: making a reactionless, exhaustless thruster.
Have a look here, and here courtesy WIRED.  To date, the total thrust output of the test devices is tiny, but even so, it already beats existing satellite systems and it never needs refuelling.  Then consider  the potential of a more advanced model using superconductors, which would work very well in space since the main requirement of superconductors as they are today is near- zero temperatures, which are already plentiful (as it were) in space.Provided you can take enough electric power with you, you can get anywhere in the solar system fast enough (and with artificial gravity, esssential for healthy humans) to do some proper exploring. Okay, so I am going out on alimb here postulating a reactionless thruster that can push one gee, but even with a lot lessthan that we could at least make a start. 

Then there is the backlash: according to some people this drive cannot work "because it disobeys Newton's laws of motion": Hilarious!  I don't care a damn what critics say: the proof is in the results and so far I can see that  there is a principle here that might work - and there are at least two science labs working on it so I think it will come to pass as real.  Actually, the very fact it does work will once again shake up the world of science and force people to question their blind assumptions.  Great!
Actually the "how" of it does not matter: only that it does. I recently read about big arguments by scieintific types about how ariplanes actually fly: the classical definition of how a wing profile generates lift is  not just open to argument, it cannot work that way: yet every day thousands of aricraft certainly do fly so it really does not matter so much - the truth seems to be a good deal more complex than the simple explanation I grew up with . . . . .

Saturday, August 9, 2014

IT'S ROBOT SEASON AGAIN . . . . . .


You have been deceived: machines and robots will not "take your jobs", they are not capable of that.  Humans running Corporations and Governments are doing that. 

Once again, I read the same old fears and expectations about robots:
How they will take our jobs
How they will soon be so smart they will replace people
Where is the sense from these people?

Manufacturing truth and illusion


Myth No.1: Robots are about to take over production and will soon replace everyone in manufacturing.

It seems that some people believe what I call “The George Jetson Idea Of Automation”: in the cartoon, George goes to work every day and presses one button that starts the machinery of his employer. That's it, nothing more to do. I have followed automation for many years and have worked on automated production lines and machinery and none of them were ever like the George Jetson's world – or will be in the forseeable future.
First and most importantly, the machines are just not smart enough to work by themselves and at the rate of computer progress we see today they will not be smart enough to diagnose their own faults and correct them for a very, very long time.
Don't be fooled by application specific devices either: sure, Google can get a car to drive itself but that is after many humans spent millions of manhours developing it, and as of writing this, it is still in development – and this is application specific : you could not take that same computer driver and then throw it in an office chair and expect it to read and write reports. Computers are really, really dumb. They can only deal with things in their area of experience.
Every so-called automated machine needs human oversight. Not “should have”, must have: machinery and robots are not cheap and when they go wrong, they really mess things up.
There are ways to cut the number of human overseers and operators but these result in some very negative outcomes for the factory: first, you can set up your machines to only produce the same product over a long period – but you still need to check the output and make sure the machine is doing what it should, and even then, a company that produces exactly the same product year after year is unlikely to compete against other companies that constantly change theirs even if the changes are only cosmetic because humans like variety.

The very idea of manufactured items all coming off a production line all uniform and perfectly identical is a myth. Complex machines don't ever run smoothly for very long before they need human attention, often because the complexity means there are so many things that can vary but also because things shake, bend and wear and so the first fifty, hundred or thousand items might be fine but gradually the output will get worse and worse with no human overseer to stop the line and fix it.

What has really happened in manufacturing is that corporations that have no moral or national limitation have moved their production to wherever is cheapest for them, using the cheapest human labour possible to get the highest profit margin possible. 

-------------------------
Myth No.2: Robots will soon be smart enough to replace humans in technical and engineering jobs.

Let's take a serious look at this: the claim is that computers will be “smart” enough to engineer products and processes and develop new products, their manufacturing lines and logistic and supply systems that will get those products to the end users.
Who writes this stuff? No computer has the capacity to do any of these things now and I don't see any in the near future either. Consider the matter of “artificial intelligence”. We don't know what intelligence is, so lets ignore that for now: consider the processing capacity of the human brain.
One estimate of note is that in 2002, if every computer in the world were connected together running the same master program, they would equal the processing power of one human brain. One. We don't know what that program would be, but we can be certain that even if we had a computer on our desk that had the processing power of a human brain (and the estimates of that vary too) it would be no use without the “program” that would make it “intelligent".

The companies making computer chips are not making endless progress toward faster and more complex computer chips because the nature of matter and energy create limits that are not easily avoided. Already they are looking to change the whole architecture of computer chips to get around the limitations of existing chip production. 
There is no “Moore's Law”: it is all marketing.

What we are is the result years of learning in a mobile body with sensory information coming in continuously and being handled in ways we don't understand which we then use to generate new actions and reactions. There may well be information and/or processing methods that are built in from conception but the nature of them is open to debate.

A second, and perhaps more important problem for robot makers of the future is memory capacity:
human memory is nothing like computer memory – the memory system of a human brain is mixed in with the thinking system, there is no discernible division of function unlike a computer. In computers, we have storage areas that are completely discrete from the processing area. Then there is memory reliability. In current computer systems, up to a quarter of the whole storage capacity of your computer is used to correct errant data and fix errors when they occur when copying or transferring data from one place to another. Human memory is far from perfect as any court case will remind you, but the method of storage is different.

=======================================

You have been deceived: machines and robots will not "take your jobs", they are not capable of that.  Humans running Corporations and governments do that. 
The real issue is what we humans will be doing in future for jobs and money.
Machines are very good at doing boring, repetitious and dangerous jobs for long hours - but they still need human oversight. . . . The REAL issue here is how we, the common and not-so-rich people, can survive in the future if sociopathic people and corporations have swallowed up our sources of income, work and contribution in their insane machinery of acquisition.

People need jobs. I know you might say “We don't need jobs, we just need money” - but in my experience, people need to contribute to society in some meaningful way, and recieve from it return. Those of us who have a sense of fairness and morality know that: even if it is trivial, actions that affirm our membership and right to contribute to, and receive goods and services from society keep us connected and sane.
Prevent people from participation in society and there won't be any society - or they will make their own new one.

Big business does not have the right to drain our society of income just so that we can all (well, those who still have money) buy cheaper appliances or furnishings.
Already small people have begun to create their own self-support groups, bypassing the Big Business funding and operation models that have cut them out of the services. I expect this to continue and expand - the test case is currency. If new electronic currency develops like it should, the Megabanks will be cut out of all the billions of small trades going on since they demand a fee for each trade – and by using blockchain currency e.g. bitcoin, they are not needed or wanted.
This could result in a two-level economic system where only the biggest trades will involve the old money while most of us use purely electronic currency for day-to-day trading. This creates a lot of questions, but for now I will only say that something must change, the only question is wether the change will be peaceful or bloody.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

When an update isn't better

Well, I am pretty sure no-one Really Important reads this, but I just can't be bothered signing up for yet another site and seeing my post at no. 220 in a long list so here it is.
Call it a modern problem.

What I am referring to in the title is the new version of Mac OSX, "Yosemite". I always look at the websites that talk about this stuff,  partly for the improvements, but mostly for self-defence.
"Updates" are not always improvements, you see.

This one is definitely not: Apple has gone further in removing all aesthetic pleasure from their OS imagery and that alone is just plain stupid . . . if you look at your computer screen all day you want it to look at least pleasant - but Apple seems to be going backwards toward Windows 3 ugliness.
Of course, if there were features in the new version that made it essential or even desirable to get despite the ugliness I would reconsider but there aren't any, or at best none that I need.
Here I partly refer to iCloud. I have tried to find a way to take my iPhone's music off iCloud but it isn't there.  So far OSX does not force you to use iCloud for all your files but it may be coming.

Apple does not want anyone to make interface "improvements" or "skins' for their OSes so you can forget about "personalising" your OSX either.
At one time I had such and it was excellent, but that was back in the OS9 days, long, long ago - so we will once again get a new version with uglier interface and more features we didn't want (I mean iCloud. I don't care if other folks like it, I just want the choice to NOT use it.  I don't do anything criminal, but I like looking after my own stuff rather than hoping that the net and Apple will always be there.)

Don't get the idea that I will be sailing off to another OS any time soon though: you think they are better? Take a look at Windows 8: they had to bring out 8.1 because so many users had trouble using 8 because it didn't have a Start  Menu.  I won't go into any more now, just remember that everything is imperfect and sometimes making thengs better isn't the only element of the story.


Saturday, July 5, 2014

All Trekked Out

Once upon a time there was a teevee show that appeared courtesy of Desilu and some guy name Rodenberry: it was originally supposed to be "covered wagons in outer space" - or so the rumour goes, that was how it was sold to the TV Execs . . . . . . but it was a whole lot more than that.
Okay, it was good:  In the world of crappy sixties television, it was freakin' amazing.

Around that time when I was about seven, BEFORE Star Wars existed, I tried to make my own spacesuit out of cardboard.  I stopped when I realised what people would say when they saw me walking around in it . . and because it was really, really hard to do too for a seven year old from a poor family. . but it was not a copy from some teevee show or movie, I just did it from my own imagination. There was a whole lot of boyhood in there too but that is beside the point here.  . . .

Now . . . . . . in the last few months I have seen not one but two fan-made remakes of the original Star Trek series appear. First, there was Star Trek Continues, and now there is another, Star Trek Phase 2.
 ------------------------------------------------------
Am I the only one who thinks all this is way, waaay over the top?  Guys, WHY CAN'T YOU COME UP WITH SOMETHING ORIGINAL? Sure, it was good in a cheesy-effects-cardboard-sets-sixties kind of way but hey, that was fifty years ago ! How the frack did so-called sci-fi get so CONSERVATIVE?
------------------------------------------------------
I don't pretend being original is easy, heck it takes more work, but shit, if you are doing Sci Fi stuff the essence of Sci Fi is to go outside the borders of boring old Earth life and explore NEW ideas !
Present things in a different setting or way to get people thinking in ways they wouldn't otherwise!

Oh, riiight, and I guess maybe I don't get the idea of fandom either: it's really about Big Commercial Operations that are only too happy for kids to dress up and promote their products at their own cost. 

Sigh.  Well, I've got to get back to work making my own little ORIGINAL comic/graphic novel.




 


Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Science is now magic

Back in the eighties I bought a mailorder book of "free energy" patents and other inventions from the US and included was the Howard Johnson patent for a purely magnetic motor. I didn't have the time or money to attempt a replication of it but the idea has always been there.  I have messed with my own relatively primitive ideas of magnetic devices but had no success since I didn't even have the equipment to make proper machines let alone the right principle unlike Howard.
I have never seen a video of it working before though and that always created a sense of doubt . . . . .


Here it is, from Mike at Quanta Magnetics. His more recent efforts are very, very interesting too.  If I had the money and time I would have built one of his Resonance Generators already.

How do I know this stuff works?
First, lots of background experience: as a child, mucking around with electric motors, batteries, magnets, etc. etc. It seems that nowadays there are too many children who don't get to experiment with real stuff and so don't have a real grasp of physics  - so they equate it with magic.
They might get a computer program that simulates electronics instead and think that will tell them what it is really about . . . . scary.

Then there is the understanding of science, what it is, and just as important what it is not: much of science research is done in the pay of corporate or industrial concerns to improve their devices or at least improve their bottom line, NOT for the benefit of people in general and not for the discovery of new or different ways of doing things.

 Finally, there is a clear understanding of reality: science can only discover what is real, and the real universe does not change simply because someone wants it to.

There are an endless series of fake or fail "free energy" vids on YouTube, but this one is not. It is easy for people who have not spent the time and energy to claim things are fake because they could not make it work in their garage - but that does not make it a fake. How many people could make a working electric motor in their garage from raw metal and wire? It really is not as easy as you might think to make devices that work, let alone work long term.
I would point people here to the Mythbusters TV show and specifically the "Gorn Cannon" episode: modern people attempted to make a gunpowder cannon from raw materials, and these were not stupid people either - and they could not even get gunpowder that exploded. It really is not easy unless you have the knowledge, experience and the right resources.

It is painful for me to point this out but I am spelling it out because I am fed up with people who have so little idea of science that they equate it with magic.

The main problem as I see it is that too many humans get all caught up in how great they are rather than giving due credit to the long, hard work of others who have come before.  It has been known since at least as early as the fifties that the oil WILL run out, that the environment is getting damaged by all our pollution and that we need to do something about all this or we will end up like Venus - and solutions have been found, but where are they? The only ones that have been put into practice so far  have either been half-done or have made little difference because huge powerful interests don't want to change things. Batteries that don't run out don't make profit for that manufacturers so if they were invented they would swiftly disappear.

Have a go: build yourself an electric motor that actually works, just a couple of AA batteries will be enough power - get some real world experience of physics and you might just be able to find something other have missed in their rush to make a fast buck while ignoring the future consequences of a half-arsed invention.  But don't expect millions of dollars or public acclaim.

Friday, May 16, 2014

More fun stuff

As stated in my previous post I have been watching a lot of Anime vids lately, mostly from YouTube: I got a treadmill and it is almost essential to me to find something to watch lasting twenty to twentyfive minutes while I stomp and sweat: it is so much easier to make it to the twenty plus minutes when you have something to distract you.  
And now for something completely different:

Mel Brooks

I stumbled on to this vid recently that does not appear in his movie "The Producers" (although it looks like it could) but it is so fabulously awful I just can't resist linking it here. Disco and rap as you have never seen it before . . . . . .



Mel also made Blazing Saddles, Young Frankestein and of course the Get Smart series with Buck Henry.
Mel has always been at his best taking the mickey out of racists and bigots, while making us laugh about it: we need more poeple like Mel around.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Anime Top List No.1

I have spent some time looking at Anime recently and there are a lot of bad ones so I thought I might offer a few that are really good (as in more than just machines blowing each other up or superteens with giant eyes and 5 yeear old personalities).
Of course this list has a general sci-fi flavour to it but that's just my preference. 

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***** Mobile Suit Gundam - The 08th MS Team (Series) : This is excellent. It has gundam battles, sure, but it also has a well written story and some really good scenes. Unlike any of the other Gundam videos I have seen. I wish there were more like this.

***** Un-Go (Series) Actually not scifi, more spook-fi or something like that but it didn't matter: it is so well made that it kept me watching until the last episode, and after I was still hoping that more would turn up. Make sure you watch episode 0 (zero) first.
*** Galaxy Express 999 : An older movie,  a boy's adventure during which he attains wisdom.

** Space Battleship Yamato : okay, this one is just plain weird in places, you wonder if it will make sense but in the end it does.  Why Yamato?  I guess it is something very Japanese . . . . it does look great flying thourough space though.  My only question is what the extra bridge underneath the ship was for. (You need to see the movie to get the reference I guess)
 
**** No. 6 (Series) Post- apocalypse story set in and around an artfifcially perfect city called No.6.
Due to copyright restrictions I could not see the last four minutes of the final episode but that's okay I guess - if you really want the whole thing, buy it.

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All of these were what I could find for free on YouTube. I have no intention of supporting piracy or copyright violations  - I am just saying these are great.  More when I find them.

Mobile Suit Gundam - The 08th Team

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Overstepping Artifacts

Here is a video that is really surreal: it is all 3D fractals made in a program called Mandelbulb.
I always thought this sort of shape (solid fractals) would be ideal to make using a 3D printer (well, actually you could not really make them any other way!)  . . but of course it is completely useless and I am not exactly sure if you can call it "art" since it is all done by computer, the only artist input is choosing the formula for the program to express.  . . . . but hey, who cares, it looks awesome.

Overstepping Artifacts (Sorry, Blogger won't let me embed a vimeo. huh?)

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Moral Hazard

This post by Cory Doctrow is so good I just could not avid posting a link to it: it points to a common fallacy, one often used by the bullying types to justify getting rid of anyone who does not agree with their views. Thanks Cory !

Cory Doctorow: Cold Equations and Moral Hazard

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Ten Dimensions

I have heard of many dimensions before, but it was never clearly explained to me HOW we might have extra dimensions nor how they would interact . . until this video which shows simply how it could all work.

Honest University Commercial


Yup, the Internet is full of garbage but occasionally there is a bit of gold. Enjoy.

Friday, February 14, 2014

PERSECUTION OF THE ULTRA-RICH?

I really cannot quite believe this article: it is just too bombastically amazing.
While the machinery of megabank automated theft continues, this rich guy is complaining about paying taxes - you know, those things that pay for roads, security, defense, basic welfare (well, maybe). Funnily enough, he seems to be making the case FOR persecution of the ultra-rich by his stupid statements.

I think there are definite problems with American society and western society in general  - but I see most of those problems as the result of too many greedy immoral people getting extrememly rich by what can only be described as criminal activities such as Ponzi schemes or making extermely addicitive food simulants that turn addicts into balloons.

But hey, people are supposed to just stop eating it, right? Just like they can all go out and get jobs tomorrow and stop collecting welfare right?
The trouble is, it really is not that that easy and never was. 
   Even in you are not a human blimp or crazy or a drug addled loony it is still a lot of work and a long term gamble just to get a job, let alone one worth keeping -  because the jobs are disappearing at a stready rate, being replaced by machines and cheap foreign labour. 


Much of this criminal profiteering works because the corporate machinery has made use of the weaknesses and character traits of  the human customers and current human societies. 
So successful are they that now 99 percent of America is being drained by these vampiric monsters - and it does not look like anyone, even the US President himself, can do anythng to stop the vampires.

Read it here and be amazed.


Saturday, January 18, 2014

Faraday The Blob

Here is the link to one weird and very funny comic.
This is Faraday:








Try these three, my favourites:
Your New Favourite Bland
Voodoo Economics
 . . and what is probably the ultimate Faraday comic:
A Right Beating for the Wrong Guy

Something to brighten a stinkin' hot day.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Minus One Twelfth? You must be joking!

Have a look at the video on this page: in it mathematicians claim that the sum of 1+2+ 3+4+5+6+7+8+9........  is minus one twelfth.

I don't care who the heck these people are: its crap.

Look at their "proof" : it involves serial sums of numbers that are added in funny ways.  This does not prove anything to me, what's worse, the guy at 3:27 moves one serial sum to offset it from the other with no excuse at all and then proceeds to sum them vertically. This is garbage.
Anyone can fiddle with numbers until you get funny stuff like this but it does not make it so. 

I am not a mathematician and this sort  of crud is the reason why.
Groan complete.


Sunday, January 12, 2014

SCAM ALERT !

I just got scammed - well, they tried anyway.  Here is the page that appeared in my browser.


 Yes, it looks very official, but there is one serious problem with it:  The AFP do NOT do this.
Look closely : "criminal's procedure" is not good english.
Of course, there is more phoniness to be seen too: "All your files are encrypted",  "your browser has been blocked" - well clearly it has not or I ould not be able to post this !

Whoever it is should be getting the rewards of their work soon enough. I have sent all the details to Scamwatch already.  I'll enjoy  thinking about their suffering and misery when the real AFP turns up to give them a serve.



Saturday, January 11, 2014

Instruments . .

These come from "Futility Closet", an interesting blog I just found via BoingBoing.





This is not unique, of course. I realised a while back that my own nom-de-net had been "borrowed" from another person . . . . . but I have never recieved any communcation from said person, so I assume that it does not matter.






This just might be the source of the "King Kong" story . . . . .
 -------------------------------------------

Music for today: Art Of Noise
I bought some of their music on the iTunes Store but hte record I really wanted "In Visible Silence" does not appear there.  What is really strange though is that some of the songs although named the same are completely different, specifically "Instruments of darkness", which includes a chunk of spoken word from a South African Politician in the version I remember.  eventually I got the orogianl recording n a vid and stripped the soundtrack off it to get the songs  . . . . must be some political footsie going on.

Finally,  Relax.
Some songs just stick in your head, and today I honour what to me is the sexiest song ever: RELAX by Frankie Goes To Hollyood. It still sounds good to me today.

I don't even need to give you a link, you can already hear it in your mind, right?
Happy 2014 Frankie wherever you are.