[ B l o g / / Archive]

#mRIF: Entropy...

#mRIF: The living...

#mRIF: Vacuum is a hell...

Eye movements reveal readers' wandering minds (Kafka: too engaging)

It's not just you…everybody zones out when they're reading. For a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, scientists recorded eye movements during reading and found that the eyes keep moving when the mind wanders—but they don't move in the same way as they do when you're paying attention.

[...]

Four undergraduate students at the University of Pittsburgh volunteered for the project. Each one came to the lab for a dozen or more one-hour reading sessions of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, chosen because it's "fairly easy but a little bit dry," says Reichle. "We started with Kafka's The Trial, but people found it too engaging.” While the student read the book on a screen, a computer tracked their eye movements. They were asked to push a button marked "Z" when they noticed themselves "zoning out." The computer also asked every few minutes if they'd just been paying attention or zoning out.

Arse Elektronika 2010 @ Mission Comics and Art: Call for Microtalks on Sex/Tech/Art

Roboexotica 2010: Festival Dates Announced / 'Robot Dreams' recommends

The Roboexotica 2010 Festival dates are set for December 2nd-5th in Vienna. If you're into robots, and are of legal drinking age, this is one event absolutely not to be missed.

Here's how the Roboexotica organization website positions this totally unique annual celebration featuring robots contributing to improving life in a meaningful way...

Cheers! Roboexotica will take place in Vienna December 2-5, 2010. Until recently, no attempts had been made to publicly discuss the role of cocktail robotics as an index for the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebenswelt, or to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication. Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. It is the first and, inevitably, the leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics world-wide. A micro mechanical change of paradigm in the age of borderless capital. Alan Turing would doubtless test this out.

#mRIF: I want to believe

#mRIF: Explain...

Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean

As career officers will tell you, drive, determination, and a willingness to try something new are the key requirements in a competitive world. This lesson has certainly been taken to heart by the Somali fishermen who, armed with Kalashnikovs and rpgs, have made a career switch to piracy. Starting out modestly around 2005, they are no longer content just to use small craft operating from the coast, but now employ mother ships which range as far from their home waters as the Seychelles.

In 2008, they captured a Ukrainian ship, the MV Faina, loaded with tanks and antiaircraft guns, which brought in a $3.2 million ransom. Soon after came the supertanker, the Sirius Star, which netted them $3 million. And one of President Obama's early actions in office in April 2009 was to order Navy Seals to kill three pirates who were holding hostage the captain of cargo ship Maersk Alabama in one of its lifeboats. Ironically, the ship was carrying relief supplies for Somalia.

In 2009, there were 217 pirate attacks, resulting in 47 captured ships and 867 captured crewmembers. The ransom business amounts to around $100 million a year.

On shore, a stock exchange operates where investors can put up the money for future operations. Backers abroad help designate what ships to attack, assess the value of the cargo, and supply the pirates' destination and course. The pirates also have access to sophisticated equipment. To check the genuineness of the air-dropped ransom money, they have counting machines of the same type used by Western banks.

As a result of their activities, insurance premiums have shot up. Many shipping companies avoid the Suez Canal and now send their vessels around the Horn of Africa, which adds to fuel costs. Others hire private security firms to go with their ships. A multinational force patrols the Gulf of Aden. But on several occasions, when patrol ships have captured pirates, they have had to release them again because no one wants to prosecute them, as they are likely to be stuck with them, once they have served their time (Somalia is regarded as too dangerous a place to which to repatriate them). This, in the words of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, "sends the wrong signal." As a result of American pressure, in the first piracy case to come to trial in Europe, a Dutch court in June sentenced five Somali pirates to five years in jail, which shipping analysts see as unlikely to deter future attacks. Predictably, the pirates have asked for asylum and to have their families sent over upon their release. More sensible efforts to set up regional courts to prosecute captured pirates are ongoing.

An Amoral Manifesto: A Philosopher's Counter-Conversion

In a word, this philosopher has long been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely, that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn't. … The long and the short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality.

#mRIF: Nice tattoo!

#mRIF: Trolling is about...

#mRIF: They are not in favor...

#mRIF: Double...

Impressive video of asteroid discovery from 1980-2010

This rules.

View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones. The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.

- Earth crossers are red
- Earth approachers (perihelion less than 1.3AU) are yellow
- All others are green 

[Archive]	« August 2010 » Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
	[Articles before May 2010]