Monthly Archives: January 2008

Security versus Privacy

Posted on January 30, 2008 by Strange Loops

How would you feel if law enforcement started scanning all of your email, your file transfers, and your web search history that Google and other companies keep (often going back years)? The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell, is … Continue reading →

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In- and Out-of-Body Experience

Posted on January 26, 2008 by Strange Loops

Normally our bodies receive sensory input through eyes, ears, skin and other systems, and those inputs synch up in consistent ways, such that our brain can put it together into a coherent picture of the 3D world around and including … Continue reading →

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Monkey-controlled Robot

Posted on January 19, 2008 by Strange Loops

Researchers in the U.S. and Japan successfully synched up a monkey’s brain with a robot across the world, and after about an hour of practice the monkey could control the robot’s legs while it walked on a treadmill. First the … Continue reading →

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Caesar’s Last Breath

Posted on January 18, 2008 by Strange Loops

Over enough time, molecules released into the air disperse pretty evenly (this is why polluting smoke-stacks are so tall, avoiding local pollution by dispersing the output more widely). It’s reasonable to assume, then, that whenever you breathe out, eventually those … Continue reading →

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Last Week’s Potatoes

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Strange Loops

“So what is this mind of ours: what are these atoms with consciousness? Last week’s potatoes! They now can remember what was going on in my mind a year ago — a mind which has long ago been replaced. To … Continue reading →

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Chimpanzee Memory

Posted on January 7, 2008 by Strange Loops

At the Primate Research Institute in Japan, Ai is a chimpanzee in her thirties who has been involved in cognition research for decades. She’s well-known for learning to use our familiar numerals (1, 2, 3…) to appropriately label sets of … Continue reading →

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Shortage of Proper, Trained Sorcerers

Posted on January 6, 2008 by Strange Loops

The Catholic Church just announced an effort to train hundreds of priests to become exorcists. Apparently, right now “you have to hunt high and low for a proper, trained exorcist,” according to the Vatican’s Exorcist in Chief, Father Gabriele Amorth. … Continue reading →

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Farcical Semiotics Returned

Posted on January 6, 2008 by Strange Loops

Fear not, I have done my best to banish the bandwidth-eating demon of hotlinking, so that you, my dear reader, may safely once again peruse my collection of odd signs at the Introduction to Semiotics.

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No More Hilarious Semiotics

Posted on January 3, 2008 by Strange Loops

I’ve taken down the Funny Signs (Intro to Semiotics) page from the website. I logged in to find that in a single day, many gigs of bandwidth had been burned by someone hotlinking to my images there. Initially, I tried … Continue reading →

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Our Lives are a Waste

Posted on January 3, 2008 by Strange Loops

or: You Didn’t Pay For What You Bought When we buy an item at the store, there’s a price tag attached and we usually assume that price on the tag is made up of two things: the cost of making … Continue reading →

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Poetic iTerrorism

Posted on January 1, 2008 by Strange Loops

Someone in Maryland has been secretly replacing ipods inside their boxes with culture-jamming ransom-style notes. Quote: “Reclaim your mind from the media’s shackles. Read a book and resurect[sic] yourself. To claim your capitalistic garbage go to your nearest Apple store.” … Continue reading →

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