IT'S SATURDAY AND THE CHEMBOTS ARE COMING!
As if life wasn’t complicated enough, the wonderful Valerie sent the following that decidedly slowed down my breakfast…
“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking innovative proposals to develop Chemical Robots (ChemBots): soft, flexible, mobile objects that can identify and maneuver through openings smaller than their static structural dimensions; reconstitute size, shape, and functionality after traversal; carry meaningful payloads; and perform tasks. ChemBots represent the convergence of soft materials chemistry and robotics to create a fundamentally new class of soft meso-scale robots.”
But you really need to read the whole thing.
The secret word is Slither
Friday, April 13, 2007
WHAT? NO BLOODY SINGULARITY?
And just as Doc40 embarks on the possible endeavour of seeing how much anarchic fun can have with the nebulous but all-encompassing doom scenario of 12.21.12, HCB, with his famous timing, sends over this fascinating debate on the other possible big whammy in humanity’s future.
WHAT IF THE SINGULARITY DOESN’T HAPPEN
By Vernor Vinge
It's 2045 and nerds in old-folks homes are wandering around, scratching their heads, and asking plaintively, "But ... but, where's the Singularity?" Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge--who originated the concept of the technological Singularity--doesn't think that will happen, but he explores three alternate scenarios, along with our "best hope for long-term survival"--self-sufficient, off-Earth settlements.
This is really worth reading. (Although it might just be science fiction writers taking themselves too seriously.)
Meanwhile Valerie sends over the following piece numerology. (She also provided the graphic above.)
12 + 20 (zero doesn't count) + 12 = 26 = ZThe rest is the same.Though have probably just ruined all credibility for attempts to analyse thefuture with numbers theory.PS. There are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. Z, irritatingly, is number 6.
WHAT IF THE SINGULARITY DOESN’T HAPPEN
By Vernor Vinge
It's 2045 and nerds in old-folks homes are wandering around, scratching their heads, and asking plaintively, "But ... but, where's the Singularity?" Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge--who originated the concept of the technological Singularity--doesn't think that will happen, but he explores three alternate scenarios, along with our "best hope for long-term survival"--self-sufficient, off-Earth settlements.
This is really worth reading. (Although it might just be science fiction writers taking themselves too seriously.)
Meanwhile Valerie sends over the following piece numerology. (She also provided the graphic above.)
12 + 20 (zero doesn't count) + 12 = 26 = ZThe rest is the same.Though have probably just ruined all credibility for attempts to analyse thefuture with numbers theory.PS. There are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. Z, irritatingly, is number 6.
The secret word is Prospect
Thursday, April 12, 2007
TIME TO START WORKING ON THE MASS PANIC
We have just five and half years to go to what everyone from the ancient Maya to the late Terrence McKenna would seem to agree is going to be the absolute, unqualified, total, all-encompassing, full-on, no-one-here-gets-out-alive, Elvis-has-left-the-building, End Of Everthing. The theory is that, on December 12th, 2012, the full finality will fall upon us. The fat lady will sing and reality will simply cease. Even the numbers for December 12th, 2012 look really good and ominous. I mean…
12.21.12
…now doesn’t that have a ring to it? What William Blake called a fearful symmetry? As regular readers will have gathered by now, there’s nothing I like better than a good, old-fashioned looming catastrophe. Global calamity is good, but something promising to wink-out the complete known universe -- plus an infinite number of other dimensions as well -- into pure black nothingness really has to be the business. Even when the shit doesn’t happen, it can be a whole lotta fun. Who can forget the mass fear generated by the Nostradamus quatrain that suggested a serious nasty was going to come to pass in 1999 and seven months? Who doesn’t remember the paranoia conjured by Y2K, hey? And let’s not forget the merchandising!!!
So time to get moving brothers and sisters. If the squares find it beyond their capacity to muster so much as a simple lick of sense – fuck ‘em and the Administration they rode in on. If they refuse to act rationally, they wholly deserved to be zapped by a taser-shock of blind, uncontrollable mad-lemming panic.
Shall we get down to creating that mass panic? We have a whole five years to work on it.
(For those who need to bone up a bit on the background, this summation provides a suitably bizarre and impenetrable rundown on the whole 12.21.12 deal.)
The secret word is Trepidation
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
DOC'S PAPERBACK CLASSIC'S #4
Clearly mental health is not what it used to be, but whoever said it was? At least, pro tem, the patient gets to keep her clothes on.
TO REJOICE IN SMALL VICTORIES
Alan Burridge writes (see last Saturday)…
Interesting to note, yet not due to my diatribe below, the lack of Hot X Buns at our local Hospital made the front page of today's Bournemouth Daily Echo newspaper. The decision was obviously reconsidered over the Easter Weekend by the hierarchy after the furore caused by hospital staff, and the buns, (usually given out on Good Friday), were reinstated and given to patients on Easter Sunday. The storm in a teacup now over, a normal cup of tea with a Hot X Bun was then enjoyed.
The secret word is Prevail
Interesting to note, yet not due to my diatribe below, the lack of Hot X Buns at our local Hospital made the front page of today's Bournemouth Daily Echo newspaper. The decision was obviously reconsidered over the Easter Weekend by the hierarchy after the furore caused by hospital staff, and the buns, (usually given out on Good Friday), were reinstated and given to patients on Easter Sunday. The storm in a teacup now over, a normal cup of tea with a Hot X Bun was then enjoyed.
The secret word is Prevail
