A couple of weekends ago I attended one of the IEET's conferences in California on the topic of Religion and Transhumanism. While I was there I took notes during the speakers' presentations, and I promised some people that I'd put them online at my earliest convenience. Here they are, in the best order I can conceive of and with whatever links I can dig up to elucidate my somewhat cryptic chickenscratch. Please note that I took notes on things I don't necessarily agree with, and that I advise you to follow some of the links before jumping to conclusions …
Arguably, even more important than bringing the price of 3D printers down to affordable levels is making them more practical. A commonly cited limitation of 3D printing right now is that they can only fab with one or two materials and can't really reproduce their own circuitry. They're both fair points, I can't argue with them. I can, however, point doubters in the direction of the Rabbit Pronto, a new print head for RepRap-derived 3D printers that is capable of fabbing functional electronic circuitry in addition to structural plastic. The Rabbit Pronto incorporates a 10cc syringe that can be …
Once upon a time, prosthetic augmentation of a failing sense of hearing took the form of devices the size of a paperback book hung around one's neck and smallish headphones pumping amplified sound into the wearer's ears. As technology progressed and the sizes of components shrank to sub-surface mount form factors (for illustration please note the sizes of the 603 and 402 components) hearing aids shrank in size until they could be custom molded to fit snugly into one's ear canal. All of the benefit with very little of the mass or weight. Hand in hand with the miniaturization …
Ordinarily if something happens that causes a chunk of your body to be removed (like, say, a shark bite) there isn't a whole lot that can be done to fill it back in. Scar tissue will form over the wound and skin will eventually cover over it, but that doesn't cause lost muscle and bone to come back. It's kind of scary, when you think about it - what's lost is lost. But that may not be the caes for much longer. A research team active in the field of regenerative medicine at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the …
One of the things that Lyssa and I bonded over early in our relationship were the works of Neil Gaiman, in particular the graphic novel which spanned seven years and seventy-five issues called Sandman. It was considered the flagship series of DC's Vertigo imprint and has a community of fans around the world for whom these stories are very important indeed even to this day. Earlier this year the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco hosted an exhibit (which was so popular they held it over) called Grains of Sand: 25 Years of the Sandman. So of course, when Lyssa …
If you've ever been injured enough to need stitches, you know that it's no picnic. Administration of local anesthetic aside (which usually involves multiple shallow injections directly into the wound site), flesh is touchy stuff to suture back together. Get the suture too close to the edge of the wound and it might rip through and pop open again. There may not be enough usable skin far enough away from wound site to stick a needle through (such as on particularly skinny fingers or the backs of some ankles). Some parts of the body just don't take well to being …
Fans of Shojou Kakumei Utena will no doubt be thinking exactly the same thing I was when I took these pictures in a rose garden in Miami Beach, Florida a couple of weeks ago.
Shortly before departing the DC metroplex late last year, Lyssa and I went to one last concert at the 9:30 Club downtown. It is noteworthy in that it was one of the first shows after the death of Josh Burdette, former chief of security; long-time concert goers at the 9:30 left things in memoriam of him on the street, sidewalk, and inside the building (which we took some photographs of). The concert we went to see was Ego Likeness opening for elder statesbeings of goth The Mission UK. Chances are you've heard some of the Mission's work on …
While cleaning out Windbringer's hard drive, I stumbled across a set of photographs that I took but forgot up upload last year. I had gone to see the bands Chant, Legion Within, and KMFDM at the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia. It was easily one of the best shows I'd seen all through 2013, and it was well worth getting there early so that I could get right up next to the stage.
Without further ado (because it's been over a year since the concert and I don't remember very many specifics about it), here are the pictures I …
