Daily archives: April 14, 2005

Nothing to be scared of here, pass on by

This entry was posted in london Manchester on by

Manchester will become the second Police force in the country, after London, to get a dedicated anti-terrorist unit.

The team, to be led by Det Supt Peter Minshall, will head terror inquiries and develop contingency plans.

A spokeswoman for the force stressed however that there was no intelligence to suggest the area was a “specific terrorist target”.

Riiiiiight. I feel so safe now.

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Top of the Stops

This entry was posted in Robot on by

10 scientists predict ways the world might end in terms of likelihood over the next 70 years and danger to the human race.

7: Robots taking over

Hans Moravec is a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh:

“Robot controllers double in complexity (processing power) every year or two. They are now barely at the lower range of vertebrate complexity, but should catch up with us within a half-century. By 2050 I predict that there will be robots with humanlike mental power, with the ability to abstract and generalise.

“These intelligent machines will grow from us, learn our skills, share our goals and values, and can be viewed as children of our minds. Not only will these robots look after us in the home, but they will also carry out complex tasks that currently require human input, such as diagnosing illness and recommending a therapy or cure. They will be our heirs and will offer us the best chance we’ll ever get for immortality by uploading ourselves into advanced robots.”

Chance of super-intelligent robots in the next 70 years: High

Danger score: 8

I, for one, welcome our new metal overlords.

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Like a record baby

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on by

Is the universe repeating on itself? A theory allied to the Big Crunch suggests that the universe cycles through a series of expansions and contractions. The Big Bang didn’t come from nowhere but was actually the natural progression from a previous contraction. This contraction left random quantum fluctuations that propagated as ripples after the Big Bang and seeded galaxies and nebulae.

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You are what you throw away

This entry was posted in Compost Waste on by

Around a third of all food in the UK is thrown away. The process starts with the need for perfect, symmetrical and clean groceries and continues all the way through the process to failure to reuse left overs and throwing out stuff that’s a second past its sell by date. I couldn’t calculate it, but I’d hazard a guess that Casa Spinneyhead’s cost per capita in food waste is less than the national average of £420 per year, especially now we’ve started composting. (A matter for another time is just what the hell am I going to do with the compost when it matures? It’s not like we have a garden or anything.)

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Hangar 8

This entry was posted in Warren Ellis on by

Area 51 satellite images from Google.

The balloon, which google uses to indicate �cool� sports (in this case the Ale�Inn) is on the left, the lake is toward the middle, and there are weird LITTLE green circles barely visible at the top�

Now let�s look at those circles in an extreme close-up, shall we???

I have NO idea what these are, and I�m not sure there are roads connecting these circles to the base (you folks should investigate this too, and let me know), but I get the overwhelming idea that this ISN�T a Tofu farm�

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via Warren Ellis

Queerest of the Queer

This entry was posted in Canal on by

I’ve ridiculed wrestling before and it’s time to do it again. Most of Canal Street would mock WWE “sports entertainers” for dressing too camp, but the fans and the wrestlers generally can’t see the homoeroticism of oiled up perfect young men grappling each other whilst half naked. I think The Rock gets it, and his self mocking role in Be Cool plays to it, but he’s one of the few.

Jim Hellwig, now officially known as Warrior was one of these wrestling clones during the 1990s. Lacking the acting ability (!!??) of Hulk Hogan or the political ability of Jesse Ventura, he had to cast about for a career when the WCW collapsed, and chose to become Ranty the Right Wing Arsehole(tm). A recent appearance organised by College Republicans has brought him to the American public’s attention again after he was videoed making stupid proclamations such as “Queering don’t make the world work!“

It was fairly obvious what I had to do- old wrestling footage, a snippet of a Garbage song and one of the other stupid things he said later- warrior.avi (1.8mB)

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