New Robot with Biological Brain

Per Seed,

"Life [for Kevin] Warwick’s new robot began when his team at the University of Reading spread rat neurons onto an array of electrodes. After about 20 minutes, the neurons began to form connections with one another. 'It’s an innate response of the neurons,' says Warwick, 'they try to link up and start communicating.'

"For the next week the team fed the developing brain a liquid containing nutrients and minerals. And once the neurons established a network sufficiently capable of responding to electrical inputs from the electrode array, they connected the newly formed brain to a simple robot body consisting of two wheels and a sonar sensor.

(snip)

"At first, the young robot spent a lot of time crashing into things. But after a few weeks of practice, its performance began to improve as the connections between the active neurons in its brain strengthened."

Big Brothers Are Watching You

Per The New York Times,

"A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated [at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries] and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world . . . .

"R]esearchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese government was involved [because, as one of the researchers commented, 'this could well be the C.I.A. or the Russians.'] . . .

"Intelligence analysts say many governments, including those of China, Russia and the United States, and other parties use sophisticated computer programs to covertly gather information. . . .

"The malware . . . has not been merely “phishing” for random consumers’ information, but “whaling” for particular important targets . . . [and it] can, for example, turn on the camera and audio-recording functions of an infected computer, enabling monitors to see and hear what goes on in a room. . . ."

Still Think We Don't Need Paper Ballots?

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers:

"WASHINGTON — The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries' use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines' vulnerability to tampering.

(snip)

"In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now.

"Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results.

(snip)

"Stigall said that voting equipment connected to the Internet could be hacked, and machines that weren't connected could be compromised wirelessly. Eleven U.S. states have banned or limited wireless capability in voting equipment, but Stigall said that election officials didn't always know it when wireless cards were embedded in their machines."

(Emphasis supplied. More at McClatchy, one of the few decent print sources left.)

UPDATE: You can find an updated analysis of the stats from the last few national elections here.

Texas: the Other Canada?

Many don't realize, there actually is some cool stuff from TX (such as Southwest Airlines -- and remember, the Bushes are fake Texans).



A few more cool people, places, things from or that started (or got revived first) in Texas: Janis Joplin, Ornette Coleman, Barry White, Leadbelly, Michael Nesmith, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Holly, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Buck Owens, Lyle Lovett, Meat Loaf, Dale Evans, ZZ Top (ok; but they're cool ironically), Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Richard Linklater, Farrah Fawcett, Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, Ethan Hawke, Joan Crawford, Steve Martin, Tex Avery, Terrence Malick, Alvin Ailey, Molly Ivins, Ann Richards (can't resist including this quote from her speech at the '88 Dem. Nat'l Convention re- Bush Sr., just in case anyone hasn't had the pleasure: "Poor George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."), Walter Cronkite, Jim Lehrer, Katherine Anne Porter, Gene Roddenberry, the Dallas Video Festival, SXSW, and/or gallery, the Webb Gallery, Cadillac Ranch, regional theater (thanks to Margo Jones), Undermain Theatre, Julian Schnabel, Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Judd, James Magee, James Surls, Vernon Fisher, Good/Bad Art Collective, Erick Swenson, The Art Guys, Robyn O'Neil, Trenton Doyle Hancock, lots of other cool artists and galleries, the Rollergirl revival (see the Texas Rollergirls), Kitty Wigs, the silicon-based integrated circuit, the microprocessor, Whole Foods, Austin ("more music venues per capita than any other U.S. city"), Chinati, chicken-fried bacon, fine tex-mex dining, and Big Tex!

List by no means complete; still, not bad for a state that's big but still pretty sparsely-populated.

Another NASA F-up (Not):

Per MSNBC, "NASA's online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. . . . The name 'Colbert' beat out NASA's four suggested options in the space agency's effort to have the public help name the addition. . . . NASA's mistake was allowing write-ins. . . . [The 230,539 votes for Colbert] clobbered 'Serenity,' one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. . . ."

Any chance NASA secretly wanted Colbert to win? He certainly contributes to my serenity.

More at the link.

GREAT Article on AIG and the Bail-Out

in Rolling Stone.

(Seems like they and The New Yorker are among the few print media left in the U.S. doing real journalism anymore. Wonder if they're suffering as much as the print media owned/eviscerated by conservatives {i.e., most of the rest})?

Big Art Group's New Production, "SOS"

Absolutely brilliant.

The group's description says, "[t]his latest project explores futureness, survivalism, revolutionary movements, and contemporary rituals, examining the notion of sacrifice to make space for a new beginning within a supersaturated, hyper-acquisitive society. . . . A multi-camera and multi-screen set creates a nexus of environments that eventually . . . [transform] the stage into a celebration of chaos verging toward the freedom of annihilation."

The show opens with a bunch of human plushies with cameras strapped to their chests having a panic attack in a dark "forest." The photo shows part of what was left of the set after the show ended.

The use of technology was dazzling; the acting and writing were terrific, too. More about Big Art Group here.

At The Kitchen (NYC) through March 28.

Ongoing Consolidation of Organics in the Hands of Big Business

Great charts etc. here. Via HuffPo.