digitaldust

I love the BBC. Check out the Squirrel Cam. There’s also a baby mouse cam, which is very cute. Too bad the old kitten cam is gone.

A fairly longwinded essay on rights for avatars in MUDs. Basically equally applicable to any kind of technologically enhanced/enabled community/society.
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This java art I like a lot… in the aesthetic sense of course, don’t get me started on the nature of good art. Would look very good in some kind of VJ set. It’s called dakadaka, and its from the website of Golan Levin.

I’m not sure what is exactly going on but I like it. Feral Robotics: Dog Report

Probably the freshest movie I’ve seen in a long time. I think the thing that stood out for me most is the different shooting style. I seem to be noticing this more, not sure if I am paying more attention to non-hollywood movies and noticing the interesting camera techniques or if maybe there are more movies coming out now that are experimenting, breaking away from a hollywood lead cinematography. Anyway, City of God does that. Its also good Cinema Verite, most of the actors are first time, many taken from the ghettos, its all shot on location and the plot seems to be a heavily modified version of a true story.

It’s epic in style, extending across ten years of brazillian gangsterdom and with a cast of hundreds. Very deserving of being mostly seen.

I so want this. A particle detection Cloud Chamber for only $8. Probably twice that in shipping to the UK.

Very interesting casual poll by Time Europe. Asks who the biggest threat is to world peace, Nth Korea, Iraq or the US. When I checked it the US was leading, sitting with a comfortable lead at 80%.

Not suprising really. The US has to muscle in on any war going on anywhere in the world. If its at war then its not a peaceful nation, so of course they are a threat to peace. Logicaly follows.

Reminds me of the Roman republic who were always very proud of themselves for never having declared war on any other nation, they were always attacked first. Of course usually after they had done such harmless things such as sea blockades, piracy, huge build ups of troops and fostering foreign rebellions. The Roman senate learnt the fine art of goading.

And on a final note, I read this Onion story yesterday. It’s about the whole Bush, Iraq, N Korea thing. Usually the Onion never lets the truth get in the way of a good story, but this time they just couldn’t invent anything that matches the truth.

I just remembered about this article on Kuro5hin about reputation. “Pondering Digital Reputations”.

Worth a read. Drifts on and off the topic of completely digital reputations as I’ve found everything does. When it comes down to quantifying reputation it becomes quite dry. Which is fortunate of unfortunate depending on ones outlook. Mostly this dryness is due to the dimensionality reduction that goes on when one converts from a fuzzy real world brain based system to a limited exact digital system. The price you pay for switching from a system based on millions of years of evolution to one based on less than 100 years of rational research.

I wonder if there is some kind of proportionality between what evolution can achieve and human research can discover.

I’ve given this talk a couple of times now and have messed around with the presentation based on how it was received. So here’s a link to the new one.

Washington state is back on my USA road trip map. The town of Soap Lake is building a 60 foot tall GIANT LAVA LAMP!!!

I thought it might be a hoax but there’s some news coverage. Reminds me that I need to get some sort of guide book to the strange sights of america… some sort of weird guide to the highways and backroads. Then I can plan a long windy weird wander through the less populated parts of the states.