Jeff over at Make It Big In Games posted a video up with Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library TV giving a presentation at Web 2.0 Expo.  Much like Jeff said Gary definitely came across as a bit crass but I had to see past his delivery to the message he was speaking.. Which itself was great.

For all of us saps who are stuck thinking in 3 dimensional terms(which was sooooooo 1992 by the way) it is time your perspective on time and space and take a crash course on understanding the 10th dimension.

An interesting video none-the-less

It can go either way: Is it a synthetic nervous system or is it a genetic computer? Either way Prof. Elisha Moses of the Physics of Complex Systems Department, Drs. Ofer Feinerman and Assaf Rotem crossed the first bridge creating circuits and logic gates with live lab grown nerves.

Test-tube neurons don’t automatically form complex networks. So Moses, Feinerman and Rotem decided to scale things way down and grow them in one dimension only on a groove etched in a glass plate. At this level they were delighted to find that the cells could be stimulated, not with electricity as normal lab grown neurons, but with a magnetic field! On top of this they discovered that the width of this strip or etching could have great effect on how well signals could be transmitted, 100 axons ended up being the perfect number. An axon is a long thin extension that connects brains cells in our brains to a whole shwack of other cells. They sit and wait for a certain number of signals before they send back a response


Inspired by computer design the scientists took 2 strips of 100 axons each and created a logic gate, which we connected to a small amount of nerve cells, in essence creating an AND game. For their next feat the scientists tackled more complex shapes. Out of these Neuron Stripes they created triangles and lined them up in a row, point to rib. What this did was to one-directional pathway for the axoms to send signals. All they had to do them was to attach the ends in a loops and Viola! They formed a closed circuit creating a biological clock of sorts.

What interests me is where we will be able to go with this.. Will this form of circuitry prove to be more efficient than traditional silicon based ones? In the end will the cost of manufacturing be less or at the end of the day? Just another amazing example of the times we live in as our advancements in science and technology approach an infinite point..

Dr Moses will set out to discover just what is required to create a structure capable of complex calculations, or a many-neuron ‘thinking’ machine.

Full paper can be found here

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/98902

So the Question is: Why the heck do people, especially those in business, vote towards a right-winged party when the opposition is painfully the clear choice for better business or other things?

By Jonathan Haidt tackles this from a psychological point of view in his September 16th, 2008 Alternet article.  He starts off by saying “People vote Republican because Republicans offer “moral clarity” — a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.” however as we dive deeper and deeper into the article we realize it comes down to more than that.  Leading us to analyze moral psychology which ‘when gut feelings are present, dispassionate reasoning is rare. In fact, many people struggled to fabricate harmful consequences that could justify their gut-based condemnation.“

A great read for sure, and in line with some thoughts I was pondering today about how people can help themselves improve there lives.. It is my opinion that if people would simply ask themselves ‘why’ , and I mean REALLY ask themselves why and honestly seek the answer, to their motivations we would have a saner world.  Asking yourself ‘why do I feel this way right now’ and don’t stop until you are certain yo uknow the reason.  ‘Why am I drinking this beer?’ – a prime example.  I gaurantee you than 99% of people will allow their ego to answer and say ‘because I enjoy it, it tastes good, etc etc’ but honestly, does it? DO YOU?  If you think so then ask yourself why to that question, why do you enjoy it, why does it taste good?  Because I gaurantee you it sure as hell didn’t taste good the first time you sipped it as a child, infact it probably tasted repulsive.  Unravel these threads and you will find an understanding in the why and be one step closer to being led by the truth instead of being yanked around by the pitbul that is our ego, our past experiences, our mental and societal training, etc etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11ubuntu.html

Found this great article getting inside of the head of them man who is responsibile for the Linux Distro I, and the majority of linux users, use: Ubuntu.   Mark Shuttleworth is indeed what I would strive towards, a ultra rich man that decides to do something that can change the world.  Albeit it isn’t feeding starving kids, his change is much much more pervasive and in the end his Distro of Linux will no doubt be installed (for FREE) in the hospitals and schools of those same children changing their lives in a very real and powerful way, and ultimately changing the way the world looks at proprietary vs. open source environments.

My hats off to him!

Saw this on Myspace today and was moved by the power.. We’ve seen videos like this in the past, and well a ton of them leading up to the victory of Obama but for some reason this one resonated even more powerfully.  The key will be to continue this message for years and years, saturating peoples minds with the notion that being a wonderful human being is the most important thing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/gallery/2009/jan/16/unsold-cars

An amazing piece that demonstrates one of the downfalls of our society in a transition phase.. When we gorge ourselves to complete bursting during the good times there is bound to be an insane amount of waste when we must lean up during the not so good times.

These pictures are absolutely stunning and keep in mind these are the UNSOLD stock that have no place to go because no one is selling any cars anymore.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/29944.html

Wow this is an insanely indepth article on one of the myths that has been touting by people ranging from Spielburg to Wazniak.  Next time you hear someone try to use the QWERTY vs Nvorak line to back up a claim that superior products don’t always win market position you have ammo.  Great article though, well worth the read just to learn where our keyboard(the object that I am in contact with more exponentially more than any other in my lie) came from

In an article submitted in 2005 scientists observed the first tool use from Wild Gorilla’s, scientists Thomas Breuer^1,2*, Mireille Ndoundou-Hockemba¹, and Vicki Fishlock¹ (working with Wildlife Conservation Society, Mbeli Bai Study, Nouabalé-Ndoki Project, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany ) observerd a Gorilla using a walking stick not only to aid her in walking upright, but also to test the depth of the water infront of her.  Besides the remarkable amount of intelligence it takes to use this tool for depth testing it clearly demonstrates a transition to walking upright.

While this may not be that much use in dense forest, if Gorilla’s existed in the plains much like the primates we evolved from, then walking tall would allow them to see predators much more easily and with the use of such tools they may have adapted scouts or an overall upright, albeit aided, stance.  A few hundred thousand years of this and their muscles and bones would have developed to be able to allow this without the stick, leading to a completely upright species and eventually leading to us.

To quote the article “Adult female Leah was seen at the pool edge near where a branch was sticking out of the surface, looking intently at the water in front of her for 1 min before she entering the water . She began to cross the pool walking bipedally, but after her first steps the water quickly became waist deep and she returned to the pool edge. Leah then re-entered again bipedally and grabbed the straight branch in front of her with her right hand. Relative to Leah’s body size we estimated the leafless branch as being approximately 1 m long and 2 cm thick. Leah then detached the stick and, stretching forward with it in her right hand, seemed to use it to test the water depth or substrate stability: she grasped the stick firmly and repeatedly prodded the water in front of her with the end of the stick. She then moved further into the pool, holding the detached branch in her right hand and using it as a walking stick for postural support. She advanced a further 8–10 m from the pool edge , repeating the actions shown in Figure 1, and then, leaving the stick in the pond, returned to her entry point, where her offspring was crying.”

In a second and third demonstration of tool use another female forcibly put a stick into the ground so that she could use it to prop herself upright and then “held the tool for support with her left hand over her head for 2 min while dredging food with the other hand. Efi then took the trunk with both hands and placed it on the swampy ground in front of her, crossed bipedally on this self-made bridge, and walked quadrupedally towards the middle of the clearing”

How could I not share something as creative and fantastic as this?  Created at the UCLA Animation Workshop, with music by Nick Fevola.