Cool Aikido Pictures

http://www.aikiweb.com/gallery/showgallery.php?stype=2&si=tcg3j&cat=500&sort=1&ppuser=2450

PS2 Supercomputer Beowolf Cluster

The resulting system, with components purchased at retail prices, cost a little more than $50,000. Researchers at the supercomputing center believe the system may be capable of a half trillion operations a second, well within the definition of supercomputer, although it may not rank among the worlds 500 fastest supercomputers.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the project, which uses the open-source Linux operating system, is that the only hardware engineering involved was placing 70 of the individual game machines in a rack and plugging them together with a high-speed Hewlett-Packard network switch. The centers scientists bought 100 machines but are holding 30 in reserve, possibly for high-resolution display application.
"It took a lot of time because you have to cut all of these things out of the plastic packaging," said Craig Steffen, a senior research scientist at the center, who is one of four scientists working part time on the project.
The scientists are taking advantage of a standard component of the PS2 that was originally intended to move and transform pixels rapidly on a television screen to produce lifelike graphics. That chip is not the PlayStation 2s MIPS microprocessor, but rather a graphics co-processor known as the Emotion Engine. That custom-designed silicon chip is capable of producing up to 6.5 billion mathematical operations a second.
http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-1010037.html

New StrongBad Email

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail74.html

Scoping Mars

All telescopes are tuned to Mars as it draws nearer Earth than at any time in recorded history. The record-setting date is Aug. 27.At the same time, an earthly invasion of the red planet nears completion, as rovers of all shapes and sizes are launched toward our next-door neighbor in space.If everything goes as planned, by January 2004 there will be a total of seven spacecraft sniffing around Mars. Four will survey the situation in orbit, while three others will scratch around the rocky red surface.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/5945451.htm

Dark Matter Definately Out There

Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the motion of the satellite galaxies indicated the presence of a much larger, invisible mass. In other words, the larger galaxies are located at the center of giant concentrations of dark matter.
"This is a very important test of our understanding of how the universe works," said one of the researchers, Anatoly Klypin of New Mexico State University. "This is one of the most direct probes of the distribution of dark matter and the properties of dark matter."
The study further found that the gravitational pull of dark matter weakened at its periphery, a unique property not exhibited by bodies composed of ordinary matter.
"We detected a specific law -- the decline in dark-matter density toward the periphery," said Klypin. "The goal of our research is now to measure that law."
Dennis Zaritsky, an astronomer at University of Arizona at Tucson, first postulated dark matter in 1994. Zaritsky saw the excessive motion of satellite galaxies, indicating the presence of an invisible mass, but made no attempt to measure it.
"He was the first to see there was something wrong with motion," said Klypin. "Now (that) weve measured the law, we can reject other theories like MOND."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,58966,00.html

No Weapons Of Mass Destruction in Iraq: Whoops!

Go figure. Those lowly U.N. inspectors were right after all. Who knew? It was all a ruse. Weve been sucker-punched and ideologically molested and patriotically sodomized and hey, what the hell, who cares anyway, we "liberated" an oppressed people most Americans secretly loathe and fear and dont understand in the slightest, even though that was never the point, or the justification, or the goal. Go team.
But wait, is liberation of a brutalized and tormented people now the reason? The justification for our thuggery? That is so cool! So that means were going to blow the living crap out of Sri Lanka and Sudan and Tibet and North Korea and about 47 others, right? Right? Maybe Saudi Arabia, too, second only to the Talilban itself in its abuse of women? Cool! As if.
Ah, but screw the liberal whiny peacenik U.N. inspectors, right? Lets ask the U.S. search teams themselves, ShrubCos own squadrons of biologists, chemists, arms-treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts and Special Forces troops whove been in Iraq for weeks now, searching frantically.
Surely theyve found something, right? Surely we can now prove that Saddam was fully intending to fillet our babies and annihilate Florida and poke the eyes out of really cute kittens on national TV for sadistic pleasure, right? Gimme a hell yeah!
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/05/14/notes051403.DTL&nl=fix

/. Thread On The Matrix

Theres also a fair amount of Buddhism mixed in the Matrix ... more specifically the idea that the world is not real, and that anybody can find enlightenment through belief. But I guess since we dont have a "Buddhist Science Monitor" in this country we get a lot more observations on Christian "Wester Religion" themes. Theres a good essay about Buddhism, Gnosticism and Christianity on the Matrix website...
Thats Gnu/sticism, darn it!
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/13/1634257&mode=thread&tid=188&tid=200&tid=97

Polar Bear Attacks US Sub

During the ICEX 2003 naval exercises near the North Pole, the American submarine Connecticut (SSN 22) poked its sail and rudder through the ice. When an officer looked around outside via the periscope, he noted that his sub was being stalked by a hostile polar bear. The periscope cam was turned on, and these photos of a polar bear chewing on the subs rear rudder resulted. The damage was said to be minor. The SSN 22 is a Seawolf class boat, one of the navys newest submarines. It wasnt designed as a polar bear snack, but thats how life is sometimes.
http://www.strategypage.com/gallery/default.asp?target=bear_sub1.htm

Smart Heuristics

What interests me is the question of how humans learn to live with uncertainty. Before the scientific revolution determinism was a strong ideal. Religion brought about a denial of uncertainty, and many people knew that their kin or their race was exactly the one that God had favored. They also thought they were entitled to get rid of competing ideas and the people that propagated them. How does a society change from this condition into one in which we understand that there is this fundamental uncertainty? How do we avoid the illusion of certainty to produce the understanding that everything, whether it be a medical test or deciding on the best cure for a particular kind of cancer, has a fundamental element of uncertainty?
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gigerenzer03/gigerenzer_p2.html

One Canadians Big Questions About 911

Why did the United States Air Force fail to scramble interceptor jets ? in defiance of all long-standing rules and well-established practice ? for almost two hours after it was known that an unprecedented four planes had been hijacked?
How could the worlds most powerful military fail to react throughout a prolonged, horrifying attack on the financial and political capitals of the nation?
How did the FBI know the exact identities of the hijackers within 24 hours of the attacks? If their files were so readily to hand, why hadnt they been apprehended earlier? After all, several conscientious FBI agents had raised the alarm about a number of known Al Qaeda sympathizers at U.S. flight schools, and had been ignored.
Why did Donald Rumsfeld call for a war on Iraq (not Afghanistan) the morning after the Saudi hijackers had accomplished their attack?
Why did the two squadrons of fighter jets at Andrews Air Force base, 19 kilometres from Washington, not zoom into action to defend the White House, one of their primary tasks?
Why did George Bush sit for half an hour in a Florida classroom, listening to a girl talk about her pet goat, after his chief of staff told him about the second plane? For that matter, why did he pretend that he first learned of the attacks in that classroom, when he had actually been briefed as he left his hotel that morning?
Why has there been no public investigation into the billions of dollars "earned" by insider trading of United and American Airlines stock before 9/11?
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1052251546550&call_page=TS_Columnists&call_pageid=970599109774&call_pagepath=Columnists

Teen Girl Squad #3 (StrongBad Style)

http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs3.html

EU To Look For Life On Mars

If all goes according to plan, a Soyuz-Fregat booster rocket will lift off from Baikonur cosmodrome next month carrying an extremely compact and sophisticated life detection probe that might finally settle one of the most intriguing questions in science: did Mars once harbor microbial life?and is it still there?
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/may03/mars.html

Hackers And Painters

When I finished grad school in computer science I went to art school to study painting. A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in painting. They seemed to think that hacking and painting were very different kinds of work-- that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that painting was the frenzied expression of some primal urge.Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people Ive known, hackers and painters are among the most alike.
http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

New StrongBad Email

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail72.html

US: Canada Cares Too Much About Liberties

The State Department report on global terrorism for 2002 suggests that while Canada has been helpful in the fight against terrorism, it doesnt spend enough on policing and places too much emphasis on civil liberties.It says "some U.S. law enforcement officers have expressed concern" about Canadian privacy laws.The U.S. officers feel those laws, as well as funding levels for law enforcement, "inhibit a fuller and more timely exchange of information and response to requests for assistance," the report says."Also, Canadian laws and regulations intended to protect Canadian citizens and landed immigrants from government intrusion sometimes limit the depth of investigations."
http://canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=78a2260b-4770-4682-be60-e6fe1d3b8144

Hilarious Tale

This one makes me actually want to contribute content to my weblog!
http://www.teemings.com/extras/truelife/scylla6.html

Gibson on Blogging

Is there an art to blogging? I think there is and I dont think Ive necessarily mastered it yet! I have got that feeling of when youre working in a new form and you start to feel the edges of it and its really intuitive. However, if Im ever going to write another book, Im going to have to quit doing my blog as I have a hunch it interferes with the ecology of being a novelist.
What constitutes a good blog? I havent really had that much experience of them as a reader. I wasnt looking at them much prior to starting my own blog. I saw a few more after that and then, I think during the first week of the war in Iraq, I feel as if I saw blogging go mainstream. On a Monday, Id mentioned to a friend in Vancouver that there was a guy in Baghdad who was blogging and my friend asked me "what the fuck is blogging?" By the Friday, blogging was being discussed on the evening news.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,946503,00.html