Found this very funny article over at Kotaku.com in which the author notes with considerable amusement the various explanations for this “Awkward Anime Image”:
At first glance, it doesn’t look like much but there is plenty wrong with it and some of the “explanations” for how this image might be “right” are hilarious…
Trying to Explain an Awkward Anime Image
I’ll give you one of my favorite “explanations” for this particular image being fine…it works if the car is…hovering?!
As anyone who’s read this blog should know, I’m absolutely fascinated with the concept of self-driving vehicles. I firmly believe that they are coming and while people may express some skepticism or hesitancy toward them, in the end this will be the future of cars/trucks.
In fact, I further believe people will no longer actually own a car, that we will travel to work or on vacation by “renting” a car via an app on our cellphone (or whatever equivalent service we use). This self-driving vehicle will pick us up and take us to our destination and when we need to return home we call up another such vehicle and it takes us back.
All the while, we’ll be in the car reading our paper or playing on our tablet/smartphone.
Anyway, Elon Musk, head of Tesla, offers a great interview for Fortune magazine regarding the future of self-driving cars. He offers his predictions regarding when Tesla cars will be self-driving…
Elon Musk Says Tesla Vehicles Will Drive Themselves In Two Years
If his prediction is accurate, the world will change radically. It will be interesting to see…
This story, written by Artemis Moshtaghian and Lawrence Crook III and presented on CNN.com, sounds like something you’d find in a Robert Ludlum book…
Police: Man remembers who he is after 30 years
I have to say, as I was reading the article I kept thinking this was simply some kind of ruse, that the man who had amnesia about his past just couldn’t have had it, that he was fleeing some kind of familiar relationship he no longer wanted any part of and/or had a second “life” with someone else he preferred.
It reminded me of one of the segments of a Zucker/Abrahams’ forgotten comedy creation, Our Planet Tonight (1987), which itself was a parody of the 20/20, 60 Minutes, etc. news shows. In it we have a report on how these two twin brothers were separated at birth and yet live such extraordinarily similar lives while -supposedly unknowingly- also lived in the very same town and in very close proximity to each other.
The upshot of the skit/pseudo-news report (if you haven’t clicked above to see it, you should!) was that there were no twin brothers and the man they were following was in actuality a bigamist with two different wives/lives who, now that he was being investigated for this show, had to pretend mightily he and his “other” were twins. The hosts of the news show hilariously miss all the evidence right in front of their face that points to the fact that these men are one and the same, including how they use the “same type of car” or “work in the same place” yet how, in the reporter’s words, hadn’t once crossed each other’s path!
Toward the end of the episode, the reporter wanted to bring the “twins” together to meet and it was hilarious how “each” twin stated that they didn’t want to meet just yet that they had to digest this information and didn’t want to traumatize the other.
Hilarious stuff and, yes, I was thinking of exactly that when I started reading the above article. I suppose that’s the cynic in me.
Anyway, my cynicism was quickly banished when I found out the man who had this extended amnesia is mentally disabled and has an intellectual development of a 12 year old. While I would be suspicious if a perfectly “normal” man made such a wild claim, it makes more sense in this case that this developmentally disabled individual wouldn’t have the capacity or desire to make such a thing up.
Which makes the story, and the fact that this man and his family will finally be getting together, nothing less than heartwarming.
Even to a cynic like me.
Incredibly fascinating article by Kristen Bobst for Mother Nature Network explores the new theory that our very own Earth may actually be the result of a fusion of two celestial bodies, Earth (as it was 4.5 billion years ago) and the head on collision and subsequent fusion of it with a Mars-like proto-planet called Theia…
Is Earth Actually Two Planets?
This idea is not new. In fact, most scientists feel that evidence of that collision lies in our Moon, which appears to be a residue from that very collision. But the theories were that Earth was “sideswiped” by this planet and the resulting debris caused by the impact caused the Moon to be created over time.
Now, based on close examination of the composition of material from the Earth and Moon, scientists now think the collision was more direct. The debris from the collision still caused the creation of the Moon but now it is thought our planet is actually the direct merging of what was the Earth and Theia.
Which makes one wonder: What was the Earth like before the collision? What was Theia like?
Fascinating, fascinating stuff.
Just blogged about Microsoft testing of underwater data centers and now comes this equally fascinating article regarding the potential end of compact florescent lights, or CFLs…
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It’s the beginning of the end for CFL bulbs
Having (coincidentally, I assure you) just bought a pack of CFL bulbs, the above article by Lily Hay Newman for Slate.com nonetheless does not surprise me. I’ve noticed the growing presence of LED bulbs…
…and heard they were an even better energy usage and light producing alternative to the CFL bulbs, which in turn were a much better, long lasting, more energy efficient bulb than the old filament bulbs. What kept me from buying them was what kept me from going into CFLs at first: Price.
But the price of LED lights is dropping and becoming more competitive to the CFL bulbs. They are clearly a better choice than the CFL bulbs as even GE, a company that makes many electronics including light bulbs, has already decided to discontinue making CFL bulbs.
While the CFL technology is dead quite yet, the writing is clearly on the wall and I seriously doubt we’ll be seeing CFL bulbs for all that much longer.
Perhaps what amazes me the most is how quickly we’ve moved from the regular, not so long lasting (and very hot) bulbs to CFL bulbs to, now, LED bulbs.
Sometimes technology moves at a breakneck speed!
If there’s one thing you can count on regarding professional sports it is that if one can improve one’s standing in their sport by cheating while -of course- not getting caught, they’ll do so.
Sports is a cutthroat business measured coldly with fraction of a second stop-watches and fractions of a millimeter tape.
We’ve dealt with steroids, under-inflated balls, corked bats, etc. etc. but the story below may well take the cake.
In an article by Chris Mills for Gizmodo.com, he notes how a young, professional cyclist was found to have hidden engine in one of her racing bicycles. The terminology used for this form of cheating is amusing, to say the least:
Cycling Has Moved From Actual Doping to ‘Mechanical’ Doping
What did Femke Van den Driessche, the 19-year-old Belgian cyclocross star at the center of this controversy have to say about this? From the article:
(Van den Driessche claimed) the bike (with the hidden motor) belonged to a friend, and mistakenly found its way into her race-day bike lineup.
Uh huh.
I’m sure that’s exactly what happened.
Fascinating article by Leon Neyfakh for Slate.com regarding an ingenious new way to solve cold case crimes. Yes, it does indeed involve a deck of cards!
Cold Case Playing Cards Are An Ingenious New Way of Cracking Unsolved Crimes
At the risk of stepping all over the article (you should read it!), penal authorities have copied the deck of card concept used during the second Iraq war to post information on unsolved crimes. If you don’t recall the whole deck of cards concept from the Iraq War, it went like this: A list of all the “most wanted” Iraq figures were posted on a deck of cards the soldiers played or distributed to people in Iraq. Rewards were offered and, essentially, you had a large deck of “wanted” posters available in a pocket sized edition.
Fast forward to today where this concept is being used with the cards distributed to prisoners, among them, those in Connecticut and Florida. The cards are ordinary playing cards but on them is information regarding a cold case and rewards (if any) are offered along with a number to call if someone has any information on the unsolved crime.
Because inmates mingle in very close quarters, there is a possibility they may overheard other inmates brag/lament/talk of knowing about a crime they were never brought to justice for and/or in which they knew a friend or several friends/acquaintances who were involved. They may sit on this information, never knowing if the story they heard was true or not but with the playing cards, they now have the means of verifying this to be the case and, hopefully, they will subsequently take the initiative and tell someone what they know of these old, unsolved cases.
The playing cards thus become a very clever way to effectively “interview” a large population of their knowledge of any number of crimes.
Rather chilling article by David E. Sanger for The New York Times notes tat because of new technologies, the means by which companies or governments can “spy” on individuals is becoming greater and greater.
That brand new toaster you bought? Believe it or not, it could be a surveillance device, along with any other modern device -toys, clothing, bedsheets(!)- that logs into the internet.
Sounds ridiculous? Read on:
New Technologies Give Government Ample Means To Track Suspects, Study Finds
You know the pocket I’m talking about. It’s usually on the right side of your jeans, a tiny pocket just above the regular pocket…
What’s that all about? Well, prepare to find out!
Suzy Strutner for Huffington Post offers the explanation, and its an interesting one at that:
So THAT’S Why There’s A Tiny Pocket In Your Jeans
The more you know and all that… 😉
As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m loathe to get into politics on this blog yet, let’s face it, with the presidential nominee race heating up, its tough to ignore.
Like many liberals, I’ve been severely turned off by the right wing and their policies. In many ways I have a rather unique reason for my opinion. I was born in a Soviet era communist country, then experienced a near-European socialist country, then what I consider a hard-right Republican wet dream of a country, before settling into the United States which, for most of the time I’ve been here, has been relatively moderate.
To put it bluntly, I’ve experienced it all and am not shy about saying that near-European socialist country (Canada, natch), was, along with the more moderate United States, my favorite places to live. Sure the taxes may be high but given the public services you get, I felt it was very much worth it.
I’ve grown very concerned with the lurches to the right within this country. When I lived in Venezuela in the 1970’s to the very, very early 1980’s, that country was essentially a Catholic right-winger’s wet dream. There were almost no taxes at all. There were also crumbling roads and infrastructure, packs of wild animals roaming the streets (I can’t tell you how often I saw the corpses of very large dogs lying in the middle of streets…there were no public services to remove them and they just rotted there until someone finally decided to take the corpse away. I was also one day actually attacked by a pack once…not fun), a great deal of poverty (nothing like seeing impoverished children your age dressed in rags begging for money on the streets), a military presence in lieu of a regular police force, absolutely no legal abortion/parenthood services (how many women were victims of botched abortions I will never know), etc. etc.
I will give the right wing within this country their props: They know how to advertise their product. To beat down what in the past would be considered moderate Republicans like (yes) Barack Obama and Bill Clinton takes a unique talent for spin and, one hopes, the party is finally reaching a point where hopefully people will finally realize they’re going too far.
Or will they?
Who knows. This article by Dylan Byers for CNN points out how the Donald Trump candidacy is now putting what had been (I thought, anyway) a reliable right-wing mouthpiece in the crosshairs:
Donald Trump Tap’s The Right’s Anger Against Fox News
I mean, if this group of people think Fox News is too “mainstream”, I wonder what they’ll think is appropriate. Or perhaps the ultra-conservatives are reaching for an ideal which doesn’t exist.
Strange times, my friends.