The 10,000-year-old skulls were found in Syria. Like those found in other caches, they have been cleanly separated from their spines, suggesting they were collected from dead bodies that had already begun to decompose. Patterns on the bone indicate that some had been decomposing for longer than others, making it likely that they were all gathered together for a specific purpose. (via Stone Age skull-smashers spark a cultural mystery – life – 16 August 2012 – New Scientist)
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There is one incredible concept: We could place the asteroid in an orbit between the Earth and Mars to allow astronauts who want to get there to hop on and off it like a bus. Think about that. You could make a spacecraft out of the asteroid. (via Asteroid mining by Planetary Resources: Google billionaires are backing an outlandish venture. – Slate Magazine)
Read moreSo about half my job is client-facing, either through email, IMs or Telephone.
The last few months, since going from Kevin to Emily at work (actually my work names are different, we use pseudonyms due to the fact we all pick up a weird level of internet celebrity by virtue of what we do and who…
patron saint of apples and monsters: learning curve
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Read more“When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you’re a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin’ down MasterCard. But there’s no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I’m mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.”
– John Waters on the sorry style of today’s rebels (emphasis mine)
No outfit, no uniform, no paradox of conformist non-conformity. Anonymous has become the label of collections of people networked in a dangerously indifferent world. We are not white, black, brown, male, female, man, woman, adult, or child. Those are not our distinguishing and defining traits. You can not see us on a CCTV camera. You can not pick us out of a crowd. You can not judge us by our appearance but only by the character of our words and the effect of our actions.
Read more‘Smart fingertips’ could allow for virtual surgery | KurzweilAI
Semiconductor devices capable of responding with high precision to touch and finger movement are a step towards creating surgical gloves for use in medical procedures such as local ablations and ultrasound scans.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and Dalian University of Technology used ultrathin, stretchable, silicon-based electronics and soft sensors mounted onto an artificial “skin” and fitted to fingertips.
The team hopes to incorporate the devices into a smart glove with the flexibility of skin that creates virtual sensations of everything from texture to temperature.
“Imagine the ability to sense the electrical properties of tissue, and then remove that tissue, precisely by local ablation, all via the fingertips using smart surgical gloves,” said co-author of the study Professor John Rogers.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 