Archive for February, 2008
Beam Me Up Scotty
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Remember that Star Trek episode where everyone is playing that game with a headset and they’re lured into zombie-like status? Can you imagine a world where your thoughts can control the game you’re playing? Well, imagine no more, the future is now:
The Epoc technology can be used to give authentic facial expressions to avatars of gamers in virtual worlds. For example, if the player smiles, winks, grimaces the headset can detect the expression and translate it to the avatar in game.It can also read emotions of players and translate those to the virtual world. “The headset could be used to improve the realism of emotional responses of AI characters in games,” said Ms Le.
“If you laughed or felt happy after killing a character in a game then your virtual buddy could admonish you for being callous,” she explained.
The $299 headset has a gyroscope to detect movement and has wireless capabilities to communicate with a USB dongle plugged into a computer.
The Emotiv said the headset could detects more than 30 different expressions, emotions and actions.
The headset could be used to improve the realism of emotional responses of AI characters in games
Tan Le, EmotivThey include excitement, meditation, tension and frustration; facial expressions such as smile, laugh, wink, shock (eyebrows raised), anger (eyebrows furrowed); and cognitive actions such as push, pull, lift, drop and rotate (on six different axis).
Don’t Get Sick In The Hospital
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Certain things are common knowledge if you’ve had the unfortunate experience of spending much time in the hospital: 1) bad things happen on the weekend and 2) bad things happen at night. If I had to do one thing over again at the hospital when my premature sons were there, it would have been to trade off and stay all night with my son. That’s when the shit hit the fan, and when stupid mistakes were made. As it was, I stayed at the hospital until midnight every night. But the real drama happens from 1 to 5 a.m.
The current study examined cardiac arrests among 86,748 adult hospital patients at 507 hospitals during a seven-year period ending last February. The researchers compared survival rates by the time of day and day of the week that cardiac arrest occurred. Among patients who had cardiac arrest between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., only 15 percent survived long enough to be discharged. That compares to about 20 percent of day-shift cardiac arrest patients who were discharged. Other measures, including 24-hour survival and favorable neurological outcomes, also were worse if the patient had a heart attack at night. The study also confirmed earlier research showing that weekday cardiac arrest survival was better than if cardiac arrest occurred on weekends.
Obama Campaign in A Nutshell
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008So I think he definitely has convinced people that he stands for change and for hope, and I can’t wait to see what he stands for.
–Susan Sarandan
Best quote ever about Obama. John Hawkins has the whole story.
Muslim Prayer Tower in St. Louis
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008A St. Louis, Missouri neighborhood will now receive prayer calls through a public speaker system. Gateway Pundit has more.
Sperm Damage Passed To Children
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008This research interests me because it might explain autism’s grip on whole families through the generations. It seems that a man’s sperm health affects generations:
A team from the University of Idaho in Moscow tested the effects of a hormone-disrupting fungicide chemical called vinclozolin on embryonic rats.
The chemical altered genes in the sperm, including a number associated with human prostate cancer.
Rats exposed to it show signs of damage and overgrowth of the prostate, infertility and kidney problems.
The defects were also present in animals four generations on.
So, men in toxic environments should be aware of the dangers and also realize their jobs and or behavior may affect their children.
Suicide in Mid-Life
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008Buried deep in the New York Time’s article is the possible cause:
At the moment, the prime suspect is the skyrocketing use — and abuse — of prescription drugs. During the same five-year period included in the study, there was a staggering increase in the total number of drug overdoses, both intentional and accidental, like the one that recently killed the 28-year-old actor Heath Ledger. Illicit drugs also increase risky behaviors, C.D.C. officials point out, noting that users’ rates of suicide can be 15 to 25 times as great as the general population.
This seems plausible to me. There really isn’t any understanding of how the meds affect people going on and off of them and mixing them. And then there is the fact that the Boomers may have the most difficult time with aging of any generation.
Black Is Better II: "Identity Politics Is Rational"
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008Sunday I wrote about Frank Rich’s racist and cynical views. First, he is viewing the world through a color prism. Second, he believes all Americans are as racist as he is racist.
Evidently, Rich is in good company at The New York Times. Today it’s another white male, Stanley Fish, opining about how identity politics can be a good thing. Well, at least these guys are coming out of the racist closet and airing their views instead of pretending at fairness. Fish says:
We should distinguish, I think, between two forms of identity politics. The first I have already named “tribal”; it is the politics based on who a candidate is rather than on what he or she believes or argues for. And that, I agree, is usually a bad idea. (I say “usually” because it is possible to argue that the election of a black or female president, no matter what his or positions happen to be, will be more than a symbolic correction of the errors that have marred the country’s history, and an important international statement as well.) The second form of identity politics is what I call “interest” identity politics. It is based on the assumption (itself resting on history and observation) that because of his or her race or ethnicity or gender a candidate might pursue an agenda that would advance the interests a voter is committed to. Not only is there nothing wrong with such a calculation – it is both rational and considered – I don’t see that there is an alternative to voting on the basis of interest.
A commenter made the point that on the Right Christians voted based on a candidate’s specific religion and that too, was a form of identity politics, yet no one criticizes that. Well, I happen to believe that voting that way is also wrong and foolish. It is nice when one finds a candidate whose personal beliefs mirror one’s own, but please, if his policies are repugnant, who gives a flip if he thumps his Bible on Sundays ala Mike Huckabee?
The Right screwed themselves over, as others have noted, because they held on to identity politics of just this sort. Religious prejudice harmed Romney’s chances as much as anything. I know this because I had more than one shock-inducing conversation with religious conservatives around Houston. They were voting Huckabee because Huckabee was a good Christian man. To which I responded, “Who raises taxes.”
My philosophy in politics is the same as in medicine: Are you the best? Do you want a surgeon who prays but can’t cut his way out of a paper bag? Or do you want a surgeon who can cut, and worships Abraham Maslow? I’ll take the latter, thank you. My preference would be a world-class surgeon who also prays, but you know what, sometimes we don’t get what we want.
This political season has been all about not getting exactly what we want. And both the Right and Left are making moronic choices in candidates because they’re choosing form over substance. Black skin is form. Ovaries is form. Bible beating Baptist is form. The substance is symbolic, but politicians will be making real decisions that affect real lives. Christopher Hitchens says:
People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of “race” or “gender” alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.Madeleine Albright has said that there is “a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” What are the implications of this statement? Would it be an argument in favor of the candidacy of Mrs. Clinton? Would this mean that Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama don’t deserve the help of fellow females? If the Republicans nominated a woman would Ms. Albright instantly switch parties out of sheer sisterhood? Of course not. (And this wearisome tripe from someone who was once our secretary of state . . .)
On Day 1 in office, Obama or Clinton will cease to be symbols and become the leader of the free world. Mocha skin tone and female gonads mean little in the face of real challenges–except that in both of these cases, these candidates are weak and will project American weakness–and not because of their color or reproductive organs, either. They will project weakness because their policy positions are weak and because they believe America is weak and flawed. Suddenly, their policies matter.
Well, policies matter now. Character matters now. And these should be the determining factors in this election. But with guys like Rich and Fish extolling identity politics for its own sake, we can be sure they represent a considerable number of people who feel just the same.
Conquering Fat: A Global Task Force
Monday, February 18th, 2008It seems that the world’s lot improves when the problem of the day isn’t famine or pestilence but fat children. There are twice as many fat kids as malnourished kids and it needs to be dealt with. Should the world dedicate resources to lengthen a life shortened by fat and, ostensibly, happiness?
How to Survive A Recession
Monday, February 18th, 2008Maxed Out Mama has some good advice on surviving a recession and how to ferret out if your company is in trouble. She says (go read it all):
So it’s terribly important to pay attention to your working environment to catch those subtle clues that your company may not be doing so well. If your company is publicly traded, you should read their quarterly and annual SEC filings, and you should periodically check Edgar to see if management and board are selling stock. But there are many other environmental clues, such as:
- Management all moves to a separate area which is closed off from the working peons.
- The background music at a company function seems to be “Nearer, My God, To Thee“.
- Human Resources starts including helpful articles about “Understanding COBRA” and a chapter by chapter discussion of “What Color Is Your Parachute” in their monthly newsletter.
I would also add: the company is in trouble when it stops all transfers, freezes new hires and starts discussions about a “re-org”.
Election 08: Black Is Best–UPDATE
Sunday, February 17th, 2008Will the 2008 election boil down to one thing? According to Frank Rich, this election won’t be about ideas or policy or platforms, it will be about brown, young and new versus white, old and used up. He says:
Even by the low standards of his party, Mr. McCain has underperformed at reaching millennials in the thriving culture where they live. His campaign’s effort to create a MySpace-like Web site flopped. His most-viewed appearances on YouTube are not viral videos extolling him or replaying his best speeches but are instead sendups of his most reckless foreign-policy improvisations — his threat to stay in Iraq for 100 years and his jokey warning (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys’ version of “Barbara Ann”) that he will bomb Iran. In the vast arena of the Internet he has been shrunk to Grumpy Old White Guy, the G.O.P. brand incarnate.
It’s interesting to me that the Left embraces Obama for all the reasons they’ve lamented American society: they judge him worthy based on not the content of his character or experience but that he is young and black. And they judge the Right unworthy because of whiteness and age.
Cross-posted at Righ Wing News.
UPDATE:
Here is what Frank Rich could have addressed in his column over the weekend. They are called policies.
And if the press wasn’t so intent on kissing his rear, Obama would be investigated more closely about a few of these things. Plagarism being one thing, but really who cares about stealing stupid ideas?
