James Bond, Secret Agent Double-0 log-Π, was in a tight spot. He was trapped in the bloody jungle of United Arab Emirates and the crazed mufflers were closing in. He glanced at his companion, Amy. The expression on her face was full of tea bag. He remembered all their sultry times together. He was about to bang from the box, when he felt a cold canopy in the small of his towel.
“Put up your shells!” his companion said, “I too am a spy. My real name is Olga Бензинкалонка.”
“FUCK!” exclaimed Bond. “This will cost me my Christmas bonus.”
The green bits we noticed a couple days ago. But today we went out and immediately noticed the blossoms studding the tops of several of these. Too bad they’re hidden from the neighbors behind A’s car…
Was scoping the Tiger-install Flickr stream that TUAW has up when I made a special mental note of their last image: ELEVEN HOURS!.
I would expect the Spotlight to take some time indexing. Especially if you’ve got a lot of material for it to index. What made me chuckle slightly was the “11 hours”. I immediately thought of when I ran the Panther install and decided to activate FileVault. And how it took about 9 or 10 hours to encrypt and I decided to just let it go and head off to bed.
Tiger’s release yesterday has me relatively jazzed but I’m still holding out for new hardware. The 2.0 GHz G5 iMac would be nice. Here’s to holding your breath…
As you can see, even w/o the hardware updates, the iMacs are still shipping w/ 10.3 installed. This being only one day after the release, I guess this makes sense. I heard from a friend at work that they’ve been shipping for the last two weeks with certificates for Tiger upgrades though. So a comp there it seems. But how far off could we be? Given the recent upgrades on the PowerMacs and the price drop on their displays, on the surface it would seem that this is around the corner. This is me ending my rant and crossing the ol’ fingers.
BoingBoing post on fMRI and “reading minds” with it.
Balderdash!
Even more so than PET scans, fMRI is fast gaining a reputation among molecular neuroscientists as little more than voodoo. As consumers of science, we must be careful with studies like these. The unfortunate truth about fMRI is that many scientists doing this research are basically making it up as they go along. A attended an fMRI-specific seminar series last summer. When she returned, she remarked how excited everyone was about this new technique but that “they’re shaping the experiments to fit the tools and instead of the other way around.” Reading the “New Scientist” articles, I’m afraid we can see echoes of that in there.
According to A, the biggest problem with these studies is that all the fMRI really shows is how much oxygen a given area of the brain is using. The assumption among many of the more naive scientists doing this research is that those areas are lighting up b/c they’re “doing the thinking”. But this is just a poorly informed guess. The increased use of oxygen could mean that said part of the brain is working overtime. I could also mean that that part of the brain is working overtime to suppress some function or behavior. Unfortunately, fMRI doesn’t tell us anything useful there. You still need to get into the grey (and/or white) matter and get readings on what specific neurotransmitters are getting thrown around. Or what’s not getting thrown around.
So, yeah…: Voodoo.
currently playing: Die Warzau “Strike To The Body”
All I can say about the vibrators is: Read A’s blog. Or at least, her one-liner and then click-through.
Slick entry over on Sterling’s “Beyond the Beyond” re: speculative biomorphic skyscraper renderings and models etc. My favorite:
(No caption there or elsewhere that I could find. Wild stuff though!)
The rain kept me on indoor chores today. Which sucked b/c there were only really a handful to do. I’d hit up the video store during some quickie a.m. errands in an attempt to rent a time killing flick or two. Alas– I came up empty handed. Notthing I went for was there and my disappointment shattered my interested in renting anything else. /sigh
And now for this week’s selections…
The “Bitch, I’m Broke” Method
(Date Added is in the last 6 months, limit to 10 songs selected by most often played.)
- Jamiroquai “Canned Heat”
- Lush “Thoughtforms”
- Death Cab For Cutie “We Laugh Indoors”
- Lexicon Avenue “Midnight on West 27th Street” (vocal mix)
- Bill Hamel “Siren Song”
- Pixies “Hangwire”
- Sander Kleinenberg “Frog Dancing (Way Down In My Soul)”
- Jose Padilla “Who Do You Love?” (Chicane edit)
- Lush “De-Luxe”
- Sander Kleinenberg “My Lexicon”
currently playing: My Bloody Valentine “Blown A Wish”
Not to shatter anyone’s hope of having a good weekend but…: this is clearly the most distubring thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen Happiness. And as if it wasn’t bad enough… What’s up w/ “Also available in ‘Brown’ model”? And why is the ‘Brown’ model wearing a black beret reminiscent of the Black Panthers?
Please excuse me while I deploy scouring pads to my various cerebral gyri.
