indyz

I feel sorry for the fan. 95% of the people in that stadium would have done the same thing and the ball had crossed the plane of the wall so technically he didn't do anything wrong. He's lucky a bunch of drunk yuppies didn't beat the shit out of him before security got there. I'm mostly pissed at Dusty Baker for leaving Prior in that long. Prior's good and all, but 7 1/3 innings is way too long for almost any pitcher in such an important game.

Is there some sort of time limit? If not, I'd stick to the "easy" strokes (back, side, breast). Crawling or (god forbid) butterfly will get you there faster but take so much more energy. I've swum a mile probably 5 times in my life. Once in a pool, 3 times in a lake at summer camp with rescue boats, and once by myself in a lake (stupid idea). I tried a crawl in one of the supervised ones and by the halfway point I had to switch to the elementary backstroke my arms were so tired.

I'm pretty sure it's real. A very long lense like the one that was probably used to take this photo "compresses" the image, which can make two distant objects look very close together when they are actually pretty far apart.

I think I edited out most of the ads and stuff. (Oct. 13) -- Monkeys that can move a robot arm with thoughts alone have brought the merger of mind and machine one step closer. In experiments at Duke University, implants in the monkeys' brains picked up brain signals and sent them to a robotic arm, which carried out reaching and grasping movements on a computer screen driven only by the monkeys' thoughts. The achievement is a significant advance in the continuing effort to devise thought-controlled machines that could be a great benefit for people who are paralyzed, or have lost control over their physical movements. In previous experiments, some in the same laboratory at Duke, both humans and monkeys have had their brains wired so they could move cursors on computer screens just by thinking about it. And wired monkeys have moved robot arms by making a motion with their own arms. The new research, however, involves thought-controlled robotic action that does not depend on physical movement by the monkey and that involves the complex muscular activities of reaching and grasping. The study is being published today in the inaugural issue of The Public Library of Science, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that makes articles available free of charge. The research team was led by Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neurobiology professor and co-director of the Center for Neuroengineering at Duke, in North Carolina. Dr. Nicolelis also did the earlier research on monkeys and robot arms at Duke. While other laboratories have helped monkeys use thoughts to move robots, using different experimental designs, the Duke findings go furthest in the sense that their robots were mentally assimilated into the animals' brains. "For nearly completely paralyzed people, this promises to be a fantastic boon," said Dr. Jon Kaas, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, who is familiar with Dr. Nicolelis's research. "A person could control a computer or robot to do anything in real time, as fast as they can think." While experts agree that thought-controlled personal robots are many years off, the Duke University team recently showed that humans produce brain signals like those of the experimental monkeys. "Monkeys not only use their brain activity to control a robot," said Dr. John Chapin, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. "They improve their performance with time. The stunning thing is that we can now see how this occurs, how neurons change their tuning as the monkey does different tasks." Dr. Nicolelis implanted tiny probes called microwires into several brain regions of two rhesus monkeys. At first, each monkey learned to move a joystick that controlled a cursor on a computer screen. When a ball appeared, the animal had to move the cursor to the target to earn a drink of juice. Researchers collected electrical patterns from the monkey's brain as it performed the tasks. After the monkey became skilled at the exercise, the scientists disconnected the joystick. At first, the monkey jiggled the stick and stared at the screen, Dr. Nicolelis said. Even though the joystick was not working, the monkey's reaching and grasping motor plans were being sent to a computer, which translated those signals into movements on screen. There was an "incredible moment" when the monkey realized that it could guide the cursor and grasp an object on the screen just by thinking it, Dr. Nicolelis said. The arm dropped. Muscles no longer contracted. The final step was to divert brain signals to a computer model that controlled the movements of a robot. The monkey continued to think the movements but in doing so it now moved the robot arm directly, without a joystick, which in turn directed movements of the cursor. Controlling a shaky, jerky robot with thought is not easy, Dr. Nicolelis said. When the robot is first added, the monkey's performance degrades. It takes two days for the animal to learn the mechanical properties of the arm and to incorporate its delays into motor planning areas. "By the end of training, I would say that these monkeys sensed they were reaching and grasping with their own arms instead of the robot arm," Dr. Nicolelis said. "Every time we use a tool to interact with our environment, such as a computer mouse, car or glasses, our brain assimilates properties of the tool into neuronal space. Tools are appendages which are incorporated into our body schema. As we develop new tools, we reshape our brains," he said.

I'm Jean-Luc Picard? I dig the quote, but I'm don't think I'm very Picard-ish.

Heh. When I was 16 and wanting to go on a class trip to Germany I took a job at Jewel-Osco (another division of the Albertsons grocery megacorp) to help get the money together. As a part time employee who was forced to unionize, I got totally screwed. There was exactly zero benefit for me, but I had to pay the dues anyway. Quit that job as soon as I had the trip paid for.

0:3:0 Three fun sitfly jumps. I still can't figure out how to do cartwheels. 21st birthday today. My parents insisted on throwing a party, so I couldn't make it out to the DZ. I hate parties, but I like the money my relatives gave me. The cost of a new PC-105 is halfway to being covered thanks to them.

Up by one heading into the bottom of the 11th. This is it, folks.

There's a similar bumper sticker for pilots: "Don't tell my mom I'm a pilot, she thinks I play piano in a whore house."

CRW main for my current container. All new rig for freefall. I'd probably even have some cash left over to jump with.

I've got a few jumps on one loaded at about 1.3:1. Flew great, landed absolutely fantastic. It did have some bizarre openings (hard diving turns) and one slammer, but everybody I've talked to who owns a Lotus say that theirs give great openings.

His novel Snow Crash (lifted from Amazon): "From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible." Snow Crash is one of my favorite novels. It's 11 years old now, but unlike a lot of other "day after tommorrow" sci-fi, it doesn't feel dated at all. I would also recommend his novel Cryptonomicon. It is very different, and probably has a broader appeal. Amazon has a good review of it as well.

Neal Stephenson's new book is out. I've been waiting for this for literally years, and I missed it? Damn, I feel stupid. (PS: This is official encouragement to go get some Neal Stephenson books if you haven't already. It's good stuff.) -- B

enclave.com

I used NetFlix. I had no problem with the service. Always received my movies promptly. Their library of DVDs is excellent. I ended up cancelling my subscription because it turns out that I don't watch a lot of movies. It would be perfect for somebody who rents 6+ DVDs a month, though.

Would you mind elaborating? The bottom dock is off-center, but I can't tell what's wrong with the top picture. Due to a printing error, I don't even have page 40 to see the right way. Grrr.

I buy almost all of my electronics, movies, video games, books, and music on the Web. Almost always use stores instead of auctions. My favorites are Amazon (books, music, movies), NewEgg (computer parts), Crucial (memory), and GameStop (video games). I get the rest of my electronics wherever I can find a good price, as long as the seller checks out with Reseller Ratings.

I'm not a doctor (I just pretend to be one when I'm out at the bars) but some of the medical-babble in the "Nonmilitary Flying" section of this article might be useful. -- Brian

Try here, under "Third Class Certificate Requirements."

There was a legal issue. You might be able to find it from some unofficial sources, but the "official" (as official as illegally modified and distributed software can be, at least) version's website doesn't exist anymore.

0:5:0 4 RW jumps, from 2 to 5 ways, all good fun. 1 CRW jump. We landed in a pasture miles from the DZ, but at least I learned a valuable lesson about spotting CRW loads in very strong upper winds.

Bullshit. Jumpers who choose ignore the opinions and advice of more experienced jumpers tend to get hurt or worse.

I can't download the video (keeps redirecting me elsewhere), but lemme guess, it was a little red Xaos?

I know a guy who jumps in Wisconsin that has done at least one naked jump a month for probably about 2 years now. So, yeah, it happens.

Way lower than 1k. Even with his RSL deploying the reserve, the slider hadn't started coming down when he went behind the tree line. It was less than three seconds on video from the cutaway to going behind/into the trees.