Current Read: Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Here, in one volume are four original sources for Zen 101: Zen Stories, The Gateless Gate, Bulls, and Centering Together serve as a desirable volume of source readings for one already familiar with Zen.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/1570620636/reviews/qid=1028221778/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-4289166-7212945

Calculate Your Real Hourly Wage

So your boss told you that you were getting paid $10 an hour? Dont believe it! This calculator will show you how much youre REALLY profiting (after-tax, after work-related-expense takehome) from each hour you devote to working -- both paid and unpaid. But wait! Before you approach your boss with this startling computation, make sure you see both sides. You know, your bosss "side" and the "outside!" ;-)
http://www.cheapskatemonthly.com/member_tools_calculator_calc_rhw.asp

Canada Going To Mars?

In a speech on the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedys famous pledge to put an American on the moon, the Canadian Space Agencys Marc Garneau put a challenge to the Canadian space exploration community: "Lets go to Mars." Fourteen months later, Canadian scientists are responding with a resounding "Yes!" The Mars buzz is in response to NASAs Mars Scout 2007 Mission, a call for innovative, cut-rate Mars science projects that can include a foreign component. Piggybacking on the U.S.-led project, Canadian space researchers are submitting a total of nine potential Mars projects, including an ambitious plan for an all-Canadian Mars lander and mini-rover."We believe we can do it," says Ben Quine, a University of Toronto atmospheric physics professor and space technology entrepreneur whoís the project leader for the all-Canadian lander project, dubbed Northern Light.
http://www.canada.com/national/story.asp?id={07ACFC93-6908-4AAC-8812-830F9C1FBDF6}

Boeing Doing Antigravity Research

Researchers at the worlds largest aircraft maker, Boeing, are using the work of a controversial Russian scientist to try to create a device that will defy gravity. The company is examining an experiment by Yevgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device which can shield objects from the Earths pull.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2157975.stm

Red Hot Chili Peppers Album, By the Way, Is Excellent

The Red Hot Chili Peppers eighth studio album finds the California foursome exploring the more melodic freeways of harmony and texture, contrasting the gritty, funky side streets of their early days. Luckily, with this more sophisticated sound, the Peppers have not sacrificed any of their trademark energy or passions for life, universal love, and (of course) lust. Although they recorded the spiky Abbey Road E.P. in 1988, this album actually sounds a lot closer to the Beatles Abbey Road, with a little of Pet Sounds and elements of Phil Spectors lushest arrangements all distilled through the bands well-travelled funk-pop stylings.
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=Aos821vs3zz9a&uid=FTRALBUMS

Debate On Nearness Of ET

My prediction is that the nearest alien neighbors live in feces and food scrap left on the Moon by the six Apollo missions. Even though it?s been three decades, there is a good chance that hearty bacteria live and can reproduce inside encapsulated small damp places and survive the monthly cycles of heat and cold as well as the effects of solar flares, ultraviolet light, and hard vacuum.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/rare_earth_2_020717.html

Japanese Dragon Mythology Lives On

The concept of dragons was probably brought to Japan around 2,000 years ago, along with the technology for paddy agriculture. Their images have been found on the walls of barrow tombs dating to the late sixth and early seventh centuries. Out in the countryside, the Chinese images were combined with indigenous snake-spirits to form deities called ryujin, or "dragon-gods." Ryujin are common guardian spirits inhabiting lakes, marshes, rivers, and also bays and straights along the coast. Fishermen and farmers pray to them for rich harvests, big catches, and favorable weather, and legends like that of Imba Marsh can be found just about everywhere.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20020723wo72.htm

Voyager Current Mission Status

Voyager 1 Voyager 2
Distance from the Sun (Km)
12,644,000,000
10,014,000,000
Distance from the Sun (Mi)
7,856,000,000
6,223,000,000
Distance from the Earth (Km)
12,544,000,000
9,973,000,000
Distance from the Earth (Mi)
7,794,000,000
6,198,000,000
Total Distance Traveled Since Launch (Km)
14,462,000,000
13,570,000,000
Total Distance Traveled Since Launch (Mi)
8,986,000,000
8,432,000,000
Velocity Relative to Sun
(Km/sec) 17.23 15.719
Velocity Relative to Sun
(Mi/hr) 38,542 35,161
Velocity Relative to Earth
(Km/sec) 24 22.441
Velocity Relative to Earth
(Mi/hr) 53,685 50,198
Round Trip Light Time (Hours:Minutes:Seconds)
23:14:38 18:28:46

http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/flteam/weekly-rpts/current.html

Ghost In The Shell TV Series

I feel very fortunate that my work is appreciated enough that I have the opportunity to make a visual production out of it. I am especially grateful for the help of Production I.G, known for its high quality work, advanced skills in digital technology, and worldwide appeal. I must say that I could not have possibly hoped for a better opportunity. I am really grateful to all the participants involved in this project and Id like to thank you all very much.
-Shirow Masamune

http://www.production-ig.com/Ghost_TV.html

Sun Made Of Iron?

Scientists have long believed that the sun was composed of an enormous mass of hydrogen. Not everyone bought this theory, though, and for the last 40-years Dr. Manuel Oliver has been preaching his theory of the creation of our solar system instead. Manuels hypothesis on how the planets formed is very different. He believes that the solar system was born out of a catastrophic explosion - a very different interpretation of the data than that of his fellow scientists. The conventional belief among astrophysicists is that the sun and the planets were formed 4.5 billion years ago in a relatively ambiguous, innocuous cloud of interstellar dust.
http://www3.cosmiverse.com/news/space/0702/space07190204.html

Quantum Crypto Key Distribution Demoed

Boffins have moved one step closer to a practical implementation of the Holy Grail of encryption - quantum cryptography - by exchanging keys across a 67km fibre optic network. Until recently, the idea of quantum key distribution has been tested only in the physics laboratory. Now, a team from the University of Geneva and Swiss electronics company id Quantique have demonstrated what is described as the "first fully integrated quantum cryptography prototype machine" across a telecommunications network. This advance is limited to fibre optic networks but other scientists are beginning to consider how quantum keys can be shared over satellite or wireless networks.
http://www.theregus.com/content/6/25638.html

Sword And Aikido

In studying sword we learn to control the kensen, the line that the kirisaki, the tip of the sword, draws in each cut. Eventually we are able to draw that line with our minds eye alone. This ability is one of the secrets of aikido practice. It enables us see the invisible form within each technique and to send out energy precisely to the correct place in our partners body. This ability takes many years to realize; without sword training, the student is much less likely to discover it.Cutting with the Japanese sword is an expansive motion in which the tip of the sword must be unified with ones center. The basic diagonal cut, called kesa giri, may be equated with ikkyo in barehanded aikido training. If one truly masters this one cut, he or she has already realized shin shin toitsu or body-mind unification. Within kesa giri is the secret of natural spiral movement. The sword falls by its weight alone and the weight of the body comes to ride on top of its free fall. The turning of the hips and the subtle connection between your own center and the tip of the sword create effortless power and speed. Just as in aikido, this basic way of cutting with the sword is dependent on a continual expansion of our feeling; in fact, that is the life of the movement itself.

http://www.aikiweb.com/weapons/gleason1.html

Artificial Blood

To truly end blood shortages and the fears that help produce them, hospitals would need a fluid thats laboratory pure, universally compatible with any human blood or tissue type, and indefinitely storable at room temperature. Most important, it would have to perform the function of oxygen delivery, so far the most elusive function to mimic in efforts to create fake blood. Simply adding oxygen-carrying hemoglobin to a substance like saline wont work - the raw hemoglobin molecule turns out to be both short-lived and toxic to the kidneys and liver unless surrounded by the fatty envelope of the red cell. And numerous other creative workarounds - like encapsulating the molecules in tiny globs of fat or chaining them together into polymers - have failed. Oxygen and CO2 can be dissolved directly into droplets of liquid perfluorocarbon, which holds and releases the two gases about as efficiently as hemoglobin does; when oxygenated, this liquid is even breathable - remember the rat in The Abyss ? This approach too, however, produces side effects, from toxicity to allergies to exhaling an ozone-depleting gas. Only one oxygen-carrying blood substitute has ever been approved by the FDA. That was Fluosol, a perfluorocarbon additive developed in the US and marketed by Japans Green Cross corporation from 1989 to 1993, during which time it was infused into some 13,000 patients in the US annually. Unfortunately, Fluosol was a frozen, two-part drug that had to be thawed and mixed immediately prior to use, and in large doses it required patients to breathe pure oxygen (potentially toxic) for the weeks it took their natural blood supply to recover. Meanwhile, doctors had to keep pumping the stuff in every 12 hours or the patient would die, bloodless in a cloud of exhaled fluorocarbons. Fluosol was eventually pulled off the market.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.08/blood.html

How Viruses Get Named

We try to group by family," Elnitiarto said. However, "thats getting harder and harder with a lot of these new viruses coming out," because many viruses are hybrids that mix the reproductive mechanism of one virus with the payload of another, for example. During such moments of confusion, the researchers categorize them by infection method. For example, a recent variation of Melissa called "Madcow" has been grouped with an earlier type of virus, the "Class" series, Elnitiarto said. The Class virus, which Elnitiarto named after the fact that it tries to infect a module of a Word document called "Class," now has more than 120 variations, he said. That brings up another problem: running out of names.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-223826.html?legacy=cnet

Farks Best Jokes

HOLMES: Watson, look up at the stars and tell me what you deduce.
WATSON: I see millions of stars, and if there are millions of stars, and if even a few of those have planets, it is quite likely there are some planets like earth, and if there are a few planets like earth out there might also be life.
HOLMES: Watson, you idiot! Somebody stole our tent.
http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments-voteresults.pl?232497

Digital Dark Ages

Were storing almost all of the worlds total information on hard drives with one-year limited warranties. Whats to become of our cultural and personal history?
http://www.shift.com/print/web/385/1.html

Oldest Hominid Skull Found

Scientists unveiled on Wednesday the skull of what they called the earliest member of the human family so far discovered, dating back six or seven million years to a period in evolution about which virtually nothing is known. The skull was discovered last year by an international team of palaeoanthropologists working in Chad, Central Africa. It has been nicknamed "Toumai," the name in Chad usually given to children born close to the dry season. Daniel Lieberman of Harvard University, one of several scientists to have seen the remains, said in the Nature journal which featured the discovery that they would have the impact of a "small nuclear bomb" among students of human evolution. "Toumai is arguably the most important fossil discovery in living memory, rivaling the discovery of the first ape-man 77 years ago -- the find which effectively founded the modern science of palaeoanthropology," added Henry Gee, Natures palaeontology editor.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,53753,00.html

Spielbergs 2054 Technology Selections

Eye-scanning spider robots, vomit-inducing "sick sticks," holographic home video cameras, vertical highways: Welcome to the United States circa 2054. Steven Spielbergs "Minority Report" is essentially a neo noir in which Tom Cruise runs around trying to prove his own innocence. But what distinguishes the film -- besides its ominous political warning -- is its dense, ingenious conception of what life will look like 50 years from now. Not since the neon-soaked "Blade Runner" (like "Minority Report," also based on a Philip K. Dick story) has such a conceivable, self-contained and ultimately disconcerting vision of the future been captured on-screen.
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/int/2002/07/10/underkoffler_belker/index.html?x

Russian Manned Mars Mission By 2015 -- Good Luck

Russian space officials have announced an ambitious project to send people to Mars by 2015.

Two ships: one manned, one cargo

Three crew to walk on Mars, three to stay in orbit

Mars Explorer craft to help crew travel on planet

Crew: commander, pilot, flight engineer, doctor, 2 researchers

Leaders of the Russian space programme said the plan needed international co-operation and they hoped to win support from both the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and the European Space Agency (Esa). Scientists have planned the basics of a 440-day mission by six people which would break a huge barrier in space exploration. Preliminary talks have been held with possible international partners for the plan which Russia said would cost around $20bn and for which it could contribute 30%.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2101000/2101861.stm

2600 Drops DeCSS Appeal

Yes, its true. After numerous consultations with our legal team and all kinds of internal debate, we have decided that weve gotten the DeCSS case as far as we can. We wont be bringing it to the Supreme Court. While we share the disappointment many of you will feel, we think its very important to understand why this is the proper course of action. Our chances of the case being taken up by the Supreme Court were very slim. And it was the nearly unanimous opinion of all of the legal experts we consulted that the current Supreme Court wouldnt take our side. Either of these results could have caused a setback to the overall fight that were engaged in. To continue would have meant putting our egos ahead of the best legal strategy, something were not about to do.
http://www.2600.com/news/display.shtml?id=1233

A New Kind Of Science

The underlying theme of "A New Kind of Science" is that reality is like the "cellular automata" which scientists began simulating on computers three decades ago. These are computer programs -- some of them extremely simple -- that, if allowed to run indefinitely, may generate extraordinarily complex images and processes. Gazing at these kaleidoscopically rich images, scholars such as Wolfram and Fredkin began to wonder if they were witnessing more than just pretty pictures. Were they witnessing, in effect, the evolution of mini-universes on a computer screen? They werent alone in speculating about a link between the computer images and the real world. Some scientists, such as Oxford University evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins, claimed cellular automata mimicked the evolution of life. They developed cellular automata resembling insects that "crawled" around the screen and mutated, reproduced and ate each other.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/07/01/MN108224.DTL

30 Billion Earths In Milky Way

Virtually all the stars out to about 100 light-years distant have been surveyed. Of these 1,000 or so stars, about 10% have been found to possess planetary systems. So, with about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, there could be about 30 billion planetary systems in the Milky Way alone; and a great many of these systems are very likely to include Earth-like worlds, say researchers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2078000/2078507.stm

One Billion PCs In The World

Its taken since 1975 for a billion pcs to be sold in the world -- but it will double by 2008. A perfect example of the Kurzweil singularity in action.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2077000/2077986.stm