This is, apparently, the third time this particular radio station has announced the End of the World in the past twenty years or so. They obviously haven’t learned the lesson of the boy who cried wolf: never repeat the same lie twice.
I threw a party on a different End of the World day back in 1989. Maybe we should host another one on May 21. Who’s in?
From the Russian company called Visual Science comes this absolutely stunning 3D visualization of the human immunodeficiency virus:
From the article on the Web site:
HIV virion is a roughly spherical particle with a diameter between 100 and 180 nm. Virion is surrounded by cell-derived lipid membrane containing surface proteins. Some of these proteins are products of viral genome (surface glycoprotein gp120/gp41) and others are captured from the host cell during viral budding (e.g. ICAM-1, HLA-DR1, CD55 and some others). The gp120/gp41 glycoprotein interacts with receptors on cell surface promoting fusion of virus and cell membranes. Other surface proteins found in HIV perform supporting functions. […]
The HIV genome is approximately 10000 nucleotides long and contains 9 genes, which encode 15 different proteins. The most important viral genes (open reading frames) are Gag, Pol and Env. Gag encodes the p55 protein, which is subsequently cut into structural proteins: MA, CA, NC and p6. Pol reading frame encodes integrase, protease, and reverse transcriptase. Env encodes the two subunits of the surface glycoprotein complex. Other genes (Tat, Rev, Vif, Vpr, Vpu and Nef) produce accessory proteins, which modulate host cell metabolism and facilitate different stages of HIV life cycle.
Click on the picture for a larger version and other visualizations showing different cross-sections of the virus.
I currently have about 40 windows open in my browser, some of which have been sitting there for nearly two months, so you all know what that means! Time for another list of links bringing you wonders beyond imagination from all around the Web.
From the Department of You Can’t Make That Shit Up
In the news from Miami last October, a call went out to a bomb squad to defuse a suspicious package full of kittens. From the story:
Employees at a Cocoa Beach Social Security office called 911 to report a “suspicious package” was left on their doorstep with no postage or address. […] A quick examination by the experts determined the box’s contents was about to explode – with cute and cuddliness. Inside were two kittens.
Soviet Russia was a weird, weird place. When they weren’t building nuclear-powered lighthouses, they were floating projects to dam the Bearing Strait and melt the polar ice cap, which is certainly one way to get a northern port that doesn’t freeze over in winter.
In Italy, the land of the Pope and expensive leather shoes, the High Court annulled a marriage because the wife thought about having sex with other people. Apparently, she wanted an open relationship, he didn’t but married her anyway, then sought an annulment some time later because he couldn’t come to terms with her desire to do the deed with other men. The Italian courts called it a “virtual” betrayal, as opposed presumably to a real one. Thoughtcrime can apparently be a civil offense too. Wonder if he ever thught about another woman?
Unclear on the Concept: In Tennessee, a US judge wrote that military service should be open to lesbians, “thus giving straight male GIs a fair shot at converting lesbians and bringing them into the mainstream.” This would not apply to gay men, who he wrote “spread disease at a rate out of all proportion to their numbers in our population and should be excluded from the military.”
And in more political nuttiness, the new US subcommittee chair on environmentalism, right-wing religious conservative John Shimkus, says that global warming can’t possibly be happening because it contradicts the Bible. His reasinong for believing that global warming (and any other form of environmentla distruction) can’t ever happen: “I want to start with Genesis:8, verse 21 and 22, ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. As long as the earth endures, sea, time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.’ I believe that’s the infallible word of God and that’s the way it’s going to be for his creation.”
Too Cool for Words
Tron: Legacy may have been a lame, half-assed attempt at a movie with dialog so astonishingly awful that Jeff Bridges actually wrinkled his nose while he was reciting some of his lines, but it gave birth to what is arguably one of the coolest things on the road: the street-legal lightcycle. This gorgeous piece of machinery comes complete with a helmet with cool light effects as well; here’s a picture:
I love urban decay. I love large-scale engineering projects. I love bizarre Russian cold-war excess. So it’s probably no surprise I’m a big fan of EnglishRussia, the Web site that dedicates itself to all things bizarrely Russian. One of my favorite EnglishRussia posts these days is this photo shoot of an old, abandoned Russian submarine base located in the Ukraine. If I ever make it back to Eastern Europe, I’d dearly love to see this place. (Also on EnglishRussia, the collection of Cold War military vehicles converted to tractors and construction equipment is pretty fun.)
Sex
It wouldn’t be a linky-links collection if it didn’t include sex. First up, for all you tentacle lovers out there, comes Necronomicox (link NSFW), customizable silicone sex toys inspired by the Cthulhu mythos. Cthluhu may be sleeping, but I’m coming!
In more technical news, it turns out that the pain centers in the brain are active during female orgasm. This handily explains why some forms of pain can enhance sexual gratification, and also shows just how complex the orgiastic response is.
And speaking of pain and sex, this article on non-consent and humiliation fetishes, excerpted from the book “Yes Means Yes,” is a good read. It talks about being both a feminist and a sexually submissive woman, something I’ve long said is not actually a contradiction at all.
Science and Technology
It still, to this day, blows my mind that people actually believe in homeopathy, the notion that water can somehow remember “mystical energy vibrations” from having things dissolved in it in such small concentrations that not even one atom of the supposed active ingredient is left in the “medicine.” According to this line of thought, if you have a headache you want to get rid of, take one aspirin, crush it into fine powder, dissolve one tiny speck of that powder in a bathtub full of water, and then take one drop of the resulting liquid, and that’ll fix you right up. This clever homeopathy vs. science metaphor nicely illuminates the silly reasoning–and I use that word very loosely–behind homeopathic “medicine.”
Research into schizophrenia is starting to suggest that a viral infection early in life, during a critical period of brain development, may be linked to schizophrenia later in life. This so-called “insanity virus,” or other viral infections which disrupt brain development, may be linked to other types of mental illness as well.
From Information Is Beautiful, which has linked to some of my sexual infographics in the past, comes this interactive Mountains out of Molehills chart showing the things we’re afraid of, extracted from media scare stories about various purported threats. The relationship between the level of danger (in terms of number of lives lost) and the level of fear is really interesting; people are about as scared of bird flu (which kills less than 300 people a year) as they are of swine flu (which kills 18,000), but are barely even aware of killer wasps, which kill 11,000 people a year.
Something that I’ve dreamed about for years is now one step closer to reality: flexible subdermal LEDs that can be implanted under the skin. Forget boring old-tech static tattoos; give me glowing tattoos, oh yeah! Though I think I’ll wait for the 2.0 version, myself.
Just For Fun
I’m Comic Sans, Asshole — a spirited defense of this much-maligned typeface that it’s so trendy to hate.
My browser has a ridiculous number of windows open yet again, so here we go with another List of Linky-Links. This episode features some neat science and technology links, polyamory (of course), and some lovely eye candy thrown in for good measure. The eye candy is all the way at the bottom, I’m afraid.
There’s even a bit about hacking your own brain. Well, hacking toys to read your mind, anyway. Well, hacking toys to read your EEG, more like.
Ready? Then off to it!
Technology
First up, we have this article about what happens when you combine a car with a Segway. The result is a bit goofy, but I’d totally drive the black one.
Next up, courtesy of figmentj, a VERY cool new technology for making permanent brain electrodes that dissolve onto the surface of the brain. Conventional implants are stiff, brittle, and prone to damage when the brain moves around, which it does by a surprisingly large amount.
And while we’re talking brains, here’s a quick reference guide for hacking toy EEG devices to do all sorts of other cool stuff, like interfacing with a computer. I love living in the future! I still want Google implanted in my brain.
Speaking of brain hacking, the Scientific American Web site asks, When will we be able to build a brain like ours? Given the complexity of the brain, and how much we still have to learn about it, plus the complexity involved in modeling it, I’d venture to say the answer is “not yet. Not never, but not yet.” We are to doing that what the Wright Brothers were to building a Stealth bomber, I reckon.
From the Department of What The Fuck, someone has modified an old Apple //e computer to be a Twitter feed reader. It doesn’t actually access the Twitter Web site directly–just writing a TCP/IP stack for an Apple II would be a horrifying undertaking–but instead it does something even weirder. It pulls data from another computer through the joystick port.
Society
Someone recently emailed me from my transhumanist Web page (or maybe it was my grammar page, I don’t recall) with this link to Less Wrong, a blog about rationality and skepticism. It’s an interesting read. joreth, zensidhe, datan0de, emanix, seinneann-ceoil, peristaltor, I think you guys might like this place, if you don’t know about it already. I particularly like this quote about the value of introspection: “The road to harm is paved with ignorance. Using your capability to understand yourself and what you’re doing is a matter of responsibility to others, too. It makes you better able to be a better friend.”
From Mashable comes this neat little infographic, Online Dating Is Bigger Than Porn. Really. Once again, I’m in the wrong damn business.
Someone on the Polyfamilies email list posted the link to this graphic showing the trustworthiness of different beard styles. OMG funny. Work-safe too. A rare combination in my world.
Polyamory
Polyamory’s been all over the news lately, and not in a good way. The Religious Right is beginning to take notice of us, in sometimes bizarre and always negative ways.
From the “Americans for Truth About Homosexuality” Web site, which might better be described as “We’re A Bunch of Closeted Self-Loathers,” we learn that the Gay Task Force (they have one of those?) is making polyamory part of the Gay Agenda™. Funny–last time I looked, a lot of GLBTQ folks didn’t like us poly folks, ’cause we mess up the “Gays are just like normal folks” message.
The “Amerika.org” folks, who still use Russian-looking letters in their logo and are still fighting the Cold War, produced this gem called All The Broken People. They aren’t quite sure what “polyamory” is, but they’re damn sure they don’t much like it.
Just For Fun
Understanding general relativity well enough to explain it to someone else is hard. Understanding general relativity well enough to explain it entirely in words of four letters or less is amazing.
The Internet is a neat toy, and sometimes people do bizarre things with it. One very cool Internet toy is the World Of Text. It’s a scrollable Web page that goes on to infinity in all directions (click and drag to scroll), where you can click and start typing anywhere you like. Everything you type is recorded and other folks on the site see it. Pretty cool!
Read the EULA before you buy: GameStation recently added a clause to the EULA claiming ownership of ther customers’ immortal souls…and almost nobody noticed.
Eye Candy
The explosion of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland shut down air travel across Europe and also made for some amazing pictures. This page of gorgeous high-resolution photos (which takes a while to load) is just absolutely spectacular. A small sample:
Volcanic ash plumes tend to be filled with very dramatic lightning, because the ash itself is electrically charged.
Once again I have 40-something tabs open in my browser and my computer is s lowing to a crawl, so you all know what that means! Time for another dump of Linky-Links into my LiveJournal, for your viewing pleasure.
First up, we have some scans from the 1938 Dating Guide for Single Women. And a treasure trove of useful advice it is, for some value of “useful.”
Careless women never appeal to gentlemen. Remember that, ladies. As a completely unrelated side note, I am not a gentleman.
Next up: One of the most beautiful, and most expensive, properties in New York City, the Brooklyn Tower Clock Penthouse, a three-floor, $25 million condo in what used to be an old clock tower.
On the subject of sexual informatics (which will be a whole new wing of my Xeromag site once I get it moved to the new server) is this brilliant flowchart of Medieval sexual morality, which sad to say I did not create, but wish I had.
In the surrealist humor department, we have Sleep-Talkin’ Man, home of the midnight sleep-talking ramblings of a particularly…eccentric individual. “You’ve got to save the curtains! Save the curtains… They hold so many secrets.”
And finally, a blog post about Light Art Performance Photography, in which one opens the shutter on a camera, and then uses LEDs or lighted batons or whatever to paint with light on the canvas of a nighttime scene. The results are quite lovely, and quite labor-intensive.
seinneann-ceoil spent the last ten days or so here in Portland, where it is cold and wet, rather than in Orlando, where it is sunny and warm, and I think we had a good time in spite of the rain and the slop.
She’s very passionate about music, and listens to a lot of music I’ve never heard of. One of the bands she introduced me to while she was out here is called Gorillaz, and one of their songs has been stuck in my head ever since.
They have a YouTube channel and several videos up on YouTube. Unfortunately, they don’t permit embedding of their videos, which I for one think is a profoundly stupid misstep on their part.
I could rant at length about why it’s profoundly stupid for a band to disallow embedding their videos, and how putting a link in a blog will probably result in lower exposure, and how the business model for Internet videos is more about exposure to a new audience than it is about advertising revenue, and about how the ads are embedded in the video so advertising revenue is only minimally impacted by embedding anyway, or even about how it doesn’t matter to Google one way or the other because Google’s already won the online ad revenue game and is just allowing the Great Unwashed Masses to fight over the table scraps it’s too lazy to pick up off the floor, but I’m feeling kind of melancholy today and I just don’t feel like it.
Instead, I’ll talk about what I like about the band and the video.
I really, really like their music. A lot. It’s an interesting mix of different vocal styles, the music is kinda funky and kinda dancey, and the emotional tone of the song that’s been stuck in my head all morning matches my mood pitch-perfect right now.
The song is Feel Good Inc. and the video that accompanies it is an animation of a narow slice of a post-apocalyptic world that reminds me a great deal of Nelvana, the animation studio that did Rock and Rule and the animated bits of Pink Floyd The Wall.
I’d love to show you the video, but, like I said, embedding is disabled. The best I can offer is a link, which I highly encourage you all to check out. Gorillaz: Feel Good Inc.
I’ve set up a Formspring account, which you can use to ask me anything!
I’ve just posted a quick rundown of the ten best things to put under the tree for the naughty people on your list over at weeklysextip.com — and I’m sure you’re all dying of curiosity to know what made the list. Check it out!
…two more updates to two of my long-neglected side projects.
First, I’ve updated and tweaked the software on HackerSluts, which is my server-side RSS aggregator for sex blogs. Or, at least, sex blogs I know about. It’s kind of my own combination of Feedburner and Technorati but for sex and kink.
I’ve also made some user interface changes over at Weekly Sex Tip, which is a site I update with a new sex tip once per week. Err, exactly as the name suggests. The tweaks to the skin now allow you to choose a category and browse sex tips only in that category.
Whew! I almost feel accomplished.
The thing about the Internet is that no matter how long you surf and how many sites you visit, there’s always something really awesome and cool that you just haven’t stumbled across yet.
There’s also a phenomenal amount of teh dumb, to be sure. In that way, the Internet is, as the saying goes, like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea — massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.
But still. There’s a lot of really cool stuff out there. Like PartiallyClips, a clip-art Webcomic that devoured my entire afternoon recently. I ended up reading every single one of them.
Some of my personal favorites:
