Journal Journal: C-5M Super Galaxy
New JonesBlog update. Lockheed Martin C-5M Super Galaxy
New JonesBlog update. Lockheed Martin C-5M Super Galaxy
New JonesBlog update. Louisville, Kentucky
We are starting out on a new collaboration on retinal research. Fun stuff.
Jonesblog has finally made the transition to modern underpinnings. It is now running on Wordpress... Huzzah.
Anyone could send me an invite?
Use the address found in my Slashdot profile.
New JonesBlog update. Experiments
I had checked out... The environment was so complete that for a discrete moment I had completely forgotten that we were still in the continental United States. Perhaps it was the smell of kebabs cooking or the sound of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan playing from the electronics shop that also sold pirated Western DVDs or the afternoon call to prayer coming from the tops of the minarets in the local mosque. It could have been the women selling bread, fruits or flowers by the side of the road or the Arabic men playing backgammon in the cafe with shisha pipes. Toyota trucks or bicycles being repaired in the roadside repair shops under Iraqi flags added to the realism along with a tangle of wires on poles carrying telephone and electricity around town with satellite dishes for television on rooftops were added elements. But the thing that completed it was the sound of Baghdadi Arabic from a gentleman greeting us as we drove through town.
Read all about it here. Medina Wasl with the 3rd Special Forces Group
New JonesBlog update. Sundance New Frontier 2010 and a Banksy sighting
I ran up to Park City for the Sundance Festival and to photograph an art installation, the Cloud Mirror by Eric Gradman. The point of the Cloud Mirror is to search out information on the Internet about visitors and merge that information with a real time image of the person on an LCD screen in front of them using computer vision to augment reality. You see yourself reflected back live, in person on the LCD screen in front of you with a thought bubble out of a comic book superimposed next to your head displaying all sorts of information that can be dug up through the Internet. The Cloud Mirror searches Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, IMDB, sex offenders databases and displays activities, relationship status, your favorite movies, books, music, any status updates you post etc...etc...etc... along with snarky comments.
I flew down to Las Vegas to do some work that I'll talk about here later. But while I was in town, I took two days to document Media Day and Shot Show 2010 for a number of sources including Wired, The Firearm Blog and other resources. There was some interesting new technology including a new pistol from Armatix that uses RF signals to disable the sidearm if it is too far from the wristwatch the accompanies it. Also new ballistics computers that are mounted on rifles are discussed.
New JonesBlog update(s). Shot Show 2010 Media Day
Shot Show 2010. The Actual Shot Show
and a little after party. AAC Big Bang Party
New JonesBlog update. Bionic implants
The device seen in these images is called the Utah Electrode Array (WARNING: potentially graphic image after the jump of an implant in a human brain). The Utah Electrode Array is a brain implant technology developed here at the University of Utah by Richard Normann. The purpose of this device, built by currently built for us by Blackrock Microsystems is to transduce signals from external devices to deliver to the brain for interpretation. Alternatively, the device can record impulses generated in the brain for delivery of neural signals to external devices. Our potential interests in this approach are manifold, but real use and implementation of these devices is some years away still.
New JonesBlog update. Bonneville Speed Week 2009
I posted this here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1318879&cid=28869075 and decided I liked it so much, I wanted to save it, and point to it every time someone starts saying that we shouldn't have regulation of blah blah blah.
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In a TRULY free market, the government wouldn't have power to establish currency, protect ownership, extend licensure... all sorts of things that the economy depends on.
The "hypothetical free market" requires perfect information, perfect competition, and perfect mobility. As none of these are feasible to attain, government regulation is required to simulate them or compensate for their lack. For example, legal definitions of what "organic" produce is, and establishment of certifying bodies (which are private enterprises, but have some sort of charter or something from the government that establishes their certification as adequate for usage of the term "organic") help compensate for the lack of perfect information about farming practices. Without them, someone could say "Yeah, my produce is organic!" after spraying it with tons of pesticides, and you wouldn't really have any way of verifying that unless you traveled out to their farm yourself and watched them for a while... or brought your own lab kit to the market.
So, markets that work on the scale we expect them to will always require SOME amount of regulation, and insofar as there is such regulation, there will be disagreements about how that regulation should be put in place. Some methods would favor the producer or the consumer. Hence, there's a business interest in attempting to shape the regulatory process.
I'm all for making lobbying illegal... but that, some say, is over-regulating the market.
New JonesBlog update. Its spelt F-L-Y
New JonesBlog update. USS Toledo SSN-769
New JonesBlog update. A Computational Framework for Ultrastructural Mapping of Neural Circuitry
We have just published a manuscript in PLoS Biology where we describe how to build a complete and accurate neural network. This of course is one of the long standing holy grails in neuroscience. So, this effort meets two goals: 1) It meets the goals of building a complete neural connectome (we'll be finished collecting all of the data with cell identity, physiologic response and all synaptic connectivity in approximately six days) and 2) It defines a workflow whereby investigators from around the planet can download and use the tools we are providing to build their own connectome projects using existing infrastructure. We are making those tools available here to enable other groups to assemble, browse and annotate the terabyte sized datasets required of connectome level projects.
1) They have perfectly ordinary and reasonable first names, but last names that appear to be semi-random assemblages of letters in a vaguely pronounceable order. (These are probably approximate transliterations of their true alien names.)
2) Dislike for pizza and ice cream, but strange affection for haggis.
3) Internet presence appears to date back to 1997, but hits only reference memes from 2005 or later.
When I find out more, I'll let you know.
Love may laugh at locksmiths, but he has a profound respect for money bags. -- Sidney Paternoster, "The Folly of the Wise"