Top jobs: Operations Research Scientist at U. of Phoenix and Apollo Group; Data Mining Consultant/Scientist at BCBST
Backlink: http://www.kdnuggets.com/2011/09/top-news-week-Aug-28.html
Top 5 Most Popular Artificial Intelligence Posts
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Bristol board is a type of heavy, high quality paper which was originally produced in Bristol, England, in the early 1800s for the purpose o...
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← Older revision Revision as of 02:20, December 14, 2010 Line 16: Line 16: |era= |era= |types= |types= - |n...
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ABN Amro, the nationalized Dutch lender, announced on Friday that it would cut 2,350 jobs over the next three to four years, as it continues...
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Alyson Schafer's latest parenting book, Ain't Misbehavin' is an excellent companion to her Honey, I Wrecked the Kids ; the la...
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Home automation is quickly becoming the "new normal." Don't think you have a smart home? Think again - the technology is ther...
5 set 2011
Top News For Aug 28 - Sep 3
New Poll: What do you call data mining? Fake reviews online; Big data revolution: 5 startups mining the trend;
Top jobs: Operations Research Scientist at U. of Phoenix and Apollo Group; Data Mining Consultant/Scientist at BCBST
Top jobs: Operations Research Scientist at U. of Phoenix and Apollo Group; Data Mining Consultant/Scientist at BCBST
3 set 2011
Early Flight
The quest of insects to achieve total world domination is wing-powered.
Insects, the only invertebrates that have learned how to fly, use their wings as key assets in their global colonization. Their wings can be protective shells, musical instruments (grasshoppers), camouflage, signals to recognize each other, a means of attracting mates or warning predators, even tools to fly.
Insects are our greatest competitor for food. They also keep the earth clean and productive. These ecosystem workhorses could easily manage without us, but we could never manage without them.
In celebration of these chitin-made wonders, we’ve collected images to take you on a tour of the insect wing world.
Above:
Early Flight
Dragonfly wings, like those seen above, are stiff and heavily veined, representing an early kind of wing, entomologists believe. Wings probably began as protrusions of the insect body: lobes that gave extra gliding stability. Traveling along with those protrusions, came the insect's circulatory system. Today those are the veins we see in the insect wings.
Despite being relatively primitive, dragonflies are the fastest flying insects: clocked as fast as 35 miles per hour.
Image: Jon Garvin/Flickr.
Backlink: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/insect-wings/dragonfly.jpg
Light Wings
Light Wings
Wings can take on almost any color, texture, or appearance: metallic sheen, transparent or ghostly white, as in this cabbage white butterfly (genus Pieris).
Image: Evan Leeson/Flickr.
Backlink: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/insect-wings/light-wings.jpg
User Blog Comment:halonerd101/best Halos/@comment-thesunsword-20110901211401
New page: I liked Halo 2 and Reach, I liked Halo2's Gameplay and Pistol, oh... How it was so fast firing. And In Reach I absolutly loved the Sniper and yet again, the Pistol. Also I'm bummed they to...
New page
I liked Halo 2 and Reach, I liked Halo2's Gameplay and Pistol, oh... How it was so fast firing. And In Reach I absolutly loved the Sniper and yet again, the Pistol. Also I'm bummed they took the Multi-Player out of H2!
User blog comment:Halonerd101/Best Halos/@comment-TheSunsword-20110901211401
User Blog Comment:halonerd101/best Halos/@comment-godzillamaster-20110901140126/@comment-apache287-20110901211103
New page: With Reach that's is why the marketing tagline was 'from the beginning...you know the end'.
New page
With Reach that's is why the marketing tagline was 'from the beginning...you know the end'.
User Blog Comment:ooduke42/best Forge Map?/@comment-thesunsword-20110901211046
New page: It is certainly Forge World, in Reach, atleast.. My fav in Hao: 3 was Sandbox... I guess cause they both have so much to work with and alot of space.
New page
It is certainly Forge World, in Reach, atleast.. My fav in Hao: 3 was Sandbox... I guess cause they both have so much to work with and alot of space.
User blog comment:Ooduke42/Best forge map?/@comment-TheSunsword-20110901211046
William Gibson Interview: Boing Boing Exclusive
William Gibson's most recent novel, Zero History, was recently published (Cory called it an "exciting adventure that wakes you to the present-day’s futurism").
I asked William a few questions by email. Here are his answers:
The paperback edition of your newest novel, Zero History, is out. Now that Kindle sales top both hardbound and paperback book sales on Amazon, it doesn't seem as important to have a paperback release. Or does it?
I think I bought a total of maybe four new hardcover novels, as an undergraduate, so I still think of the hardcover as a sort of word-of-mouth trailer for the mass market paperback. And I still see people expressing impatience, on Twitter, that a given title isn't out in paperback. Maybe Kindle et al aren't quite that evenly distributed yet.
What things are keeping your interest lately?
The sheer surreality of the Republican presidential primary, Libya, Iain Sinclair's monolithic ongoing anti-Olympics project (Hackney, That Rose Red Empire and now Ghost Milk), the "gray man" concept in personal security, the culture of personal aerial drones, parts of the United States as newly undeveloped sub-nations and the foreign outsourcing thereof...
How have your interests changed? By that, I mean, what used to interest you but now doesn't? And vice versa?
I don't really lose interest in things I've been very interested in, but there's limited room on the working face.
Do you have a "daily carry?" If so, what are the things in it?
A very thin, almost weightless wallet, made of a material called Kuben (which is sort of like Dyneema but less fancy-looking) deployed in front pocket. (I had a walletectomy for a back issue; back-pocket carry is murder on the back, plus much less secure.) A steel-cable Muji keyring with keys and a SwissTech Utili-Key 6-in-1 tool (which looks like a key). A Montblanc roller-pen from before they become a luxury brand (I found one on eBay after reading Hiroshi Fujiwara's fascinating book Personal Effects).
What do you think of the DIY/Maker movement, with individuals now about to make 3D printed objects at home, and sharing 3D models for all sorts of things online?
My grandfather owned a small-town lumberyard, and old-fashioned hardware stores have always been among my very favorite retail environments. I grew up with the idea that most of the environment we actually inhabit is the result of human labor. Anyone who can make something really well, more or less from scratch, has my respect. So I see DIY/Maker activity as extremely healthy. I'm not sure that owning a machine that can make something more or less from scratch impresses me quite as much, but I have no personal experience of that yet.
What do you think of the way industrial design is going -- for cars, electronics, medical devices, etc.
Generally, I like the way those things are looking, but it's a rare day I see anything new that I *really* like. I saw a photograph of Dieter Rams' basement workshop recently. Man alive. Would I have liked to be a fly on the wall in there.
I'm not going to ask you about any specific movie development projects you have cooking, but I have general question -- Almost every fiction writer I know who has worked with the Hollywood movie industry has told me they hated the experience and hated the results. Has you experience been better?
Liking the Hollywood movie industry is like liking war. Some people do like war, though, and I've sometimes enjoyed my own experience of the Hollywood movie industry. People who haven't actually been there, been fully in it, with some paid role on which something actually depends, really have very little idea. One of the more oddly hellish things about it is that so many of its civilian consumers assume that they understand exactly how it all works. There's a huge subsidiary industry filmgoers pay to keep them convinced that they have insider knowledge, actual experience of the beast itself. They don't.
You don't really get it until you're in a situation in which some entity has invested sixty or seventy million dollars in something and seems to be in the process of deciding that your creative input may be endangering that investment. It's an experience that will definitely get your fullest attention.
I enjoyed your recent essay in Scientific American titled, "Life in the Meta-City." Can you talk about why you wrote this?
Thanks. They asked me. And I suppose writing for Scientific American was a sort of bucket list item! Plus I have always been interested in cities.
You have a great Twitter feed. What are your feelings about reading and participating in social media?
Glad you enjoy it. I find it completely ludic, pure play.
Twitter is really my only experience of social media, so far. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I'd had access to some sort of agreeable social media in my early teens. I think I would really have liked it, so then I feel a little sorry for my younger self. Then I remember that all of that stuff might still be around, and I feel a huge relief that it isn't.
What do you worry about? I'm talking about loose nukes, global warming, economic meltdown, creeping fascism.
All of the above, and anything else in that general ballpark. As one does. Sometimes I remember that I evidently assumed that Ronald Reagan was probably about as weird as it was going to get; that that all seemed a bit over the top, a grave if semi-comic but blessedly temporary anomaly. That's scary.
William Gibson interview: Boing Boing exclusive
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