Stuff that caught my attention

Here are some things that caught my attention:
http://bygonebureau.com/2011/02/18/being-and-nothingness/

http://www.theselby.com/10_10_HennessyBarrels/


http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/09/60-beautiful-examples-of-night-photography-2/



http://www.alfaromeo.com/com/#/home

(Book Log) Disappointment

I'm starting to wish I had stopped reading the Space Odyssey series after 2001, for some reason I thought a sequel to one of the best Scifi books I've read would also be good. 2010 was written a little differently than 2001, but the suspense of the story kept me reading it. Now on 2061, the book seems pointless, the characters do exactly what you expect them to do, and the plot is stagnant. On top of that Clarke adds in misplaced and odd social commentary. Rather than the constant rising action that I saw in 2001, 2061 was filled with uneventful and un-inspiring descriptions of space-age life. Eventually I got tired of it and skipped 3 or 4 chapters and found that there actually a climax to this book. However, it was a short climax and it was followed by close to 150 more pages of boringness. So, I guess I have to find a new book series.

The "Short List"

 These are my options for the Spartan Reader blog-

Stuff similar to this.

Option#1) The Photo Essay: I have a DSLR so this shouldn't be too difficult. I would just need to find a good place to do it. I was thinking about doing one on Night.


Option#2) Best music of the week: I listen to a lot of music. Usually by the time something makes it to the iTunes featured page, I've already been listening to the band for a couple of weeks.

Option#3) Best of memes: Just random stuff from the internet that's funny or going viral. Examples: Nyan Cat, Arrow to the knee, "Ya don't say" ect, most of them consist of photo-shopped pictures. They're pretty much self explanatory.

Best Post

A Good Blog: There is nothing in the world but the mind its self; this blog actually feels like a real blog. Most people are still kinda figuring it out (including me), so a lot of posts feel disingenuous, (comparing them to someone giving a speech) it feels like they're proclaiming what ever they are saying with the utmost confidence and at the same time sweating profusely and shaking. On the other hand There is nothing in the world but the mind its self seems more honest and straight forward.

I'd rather be in the snow than inside reading...

A Scottish Tune

  

Peter Weir's 1989 classic, Dead Poets Society gives an ephemeral look into the world of the student at Welton Academy. The film begins with the year’s opening ceremony. A procession of students enters a stone chapel filled with family members as bag pipes drone in the background. Each student holds a banner bearing words like "EXCELLENCE", "VIRTUE", and "TRADITION". The Scottish tune played by the bag pipes gives the watcher a sense of the importance of this ceremony, as if the school is comparing its self a Scottish castle of old. While exuding this sense of self importance, the physical appearance and gait of the banner bearers have an ironic entropy to them that contrasts their environment. Combined with the pompous expression of the head master and the standards upon the walls, these elements contribute to the establishment of the setting in this first scene, from which, the rest of the movie can continue.

(Book Log) The Crystal Slab-- an MRI?

In the first few chapters of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke covers the initial spark of humanity by telling the story of an Ape-Man named Moon-watcher and his group, which is on the verge of extinction. One day while scavenging, the group comes across a 15ft high transparent crystal slab which mesmerizes the group and somehow taps into their brains. It tests them and evaluates them, trying to get them to do and understand simple tasks. Finally after several days, Moon-watcher completes the task of throwing a rock, this is the initial spark of humanity that, according to Clarke, grew into what it is today. While the idea of mind reading technologies has been widely used in Sci-Fi, Clarke says that the Slab creates new, artificial pathways with-in the brain. Essentially, creating familiarity with task or idea so there is little to no learning curve. After Moon-watcher successfully completes the Crystal Slab's task, he gradually begins to exhibit signs of higher thought. This shows that the Slab created the necessary neural pathways to support higher thought. 

The idea of achieving anything like this was previously unheard of, but as of December 11th 2011 this technology is officially no longer fiction. The NSF (National Science Foundation) released a video describing a technique called Decoded Neural Feedback using a fMRI and its potential uses (see bottom for video). An article posted with the video said that it is:

 ...possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort... Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks...Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease...

It is interesting to see yet another technology predicted or imagined by a Sci-Fi author made into reality. We've seen the Trans-coder turn into the smart phone and countless authors predict inter-planetary travel. If you want to see technology that will be released in the next fifty years, look at the Sci-fi from the past hundred and fifty years. If someone has thought of it, it going to be invented.

While man tirelessly searches the skies, looking for some sign of  life, the idea that he and his intelligence are alone in this universe looms in the back of his mind. If at some point in the future, man looks at the sky and decides nobody is looking back, he may just forget his loneliness and abandon his search; or he may find that reality unbearable and take matters into his own hands. Who knows, maybe someday man will send his own probe to some far off planet and pass on the spark of intelligence that was given to him long ago.

Autobiography

I've been reading since before I can remember, but not seriously until I was in 3rd grade. At my elementary school there was a point based reading program, called Accelerated Reading, that gave you rewards if you earned a certain amount of points. The bigger and more complex books you read, the more points you got. While most kids were reading fifty page abridged versions of popular novels, a small group in my school began reading larger books to get more points. I read the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and several of the Chronicles of Narnia, which put me in first place. This experience created several habits which I continued until very recently. First, starting in 3rd grade and continuing through 7th grade, I read every night until I fell asleep, this allowed me to read a large volume of literature because as time went on and my endurance got better. I could read from 9pm to 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. The next thing that the Accelerated Reading program instilled in me was the hunger for knowledge. I learned a lot from the books I read, but as I exhausted all of the bookshelves in my house, I had to find another way to read. My solution was the Internet. Much of my reading on the Internet has consisted of tech blogs and finance sites like Investopedia.com. These sites have shaped my interests to include Science-Fiction. I have always liked Sci-Fi, but until recently, I hadn't realized its importance. Sci-Fi authors are modern day prophets, every day more things imagined by people like Clarke and Bradbury become reality thanks to Silicon Valley and Moores law. In addition to being a good place to look for the future of man kind, Sci-Fi tells us a lot about the present. By moving social and political issues to a different time and place, Sci-Fi gives us a different perspective on the problems that effect us and removes our preconceived notions.