a warm gun is the personal web site of multimedia artist and resident geek Ian Adams, based out of Seattle, WA.
The most recently posted stuff can be found on the front page. Older posts and articles are listed, by category and date, in the archives. There is also the Link Blog, which is my (almost) daily list of interesting links and brief commentary on AWG-related topics.
Additional areas on this site can be accessed by using the navigation links on the far left. (Or far bottom if you’re visiting this site using an alternative browser like Opera Mini.)
A team from the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., announced on Thursday it had created a synthetic bacterial genome that is a copy of an existing genome. The scientists then transplanted the synthetic genome into a different bacterium cell to create what they call a synthetic cell, although technically only its genome is synthetic.
The new genome then “booted up” the recipient bacterium’s cell in much the same way that a computer’s operating system makes the computer work.
The scientists say the eventual goal is to build new organisms that act in ways that differ from what nature intended, such as custom-made bacteria designed for biofuel production or environmental cleanup.
Jonah Lehrer pegs slot machine addiction to the brain’s love of pattern recognition:
[I]t helps to think about the slot machine from the perspective of your dopamine neurons. While you are losing money, your neurons are struggling to decipher the patterns inside the machine. They want to understand the game, to decode the logic of luck, to find the events that predict a payout.
But here’s the catch: slot machines can’t be solved. They use random number generators to determine their payout. There are no patterns or algorithms to uncover; studying our near-misses won’t tell us how to win. There is only a stupid little microchip, churning out arbitrary digits. At this point, our dopamine neurons should just surrender: the slot machine is a waste of mental energy. But this isn’t what happens. Instead of getting bored by the haphazard payouts, our dopamine neurons become obsessed. When we pull the lever and get a lucky reward, we experience a rush of pleasurable dopamine precisely because the reward was so unexpected.
Salon interviews Tara Parker-Pope, the author of a new book on marriage:
The 50 percent divorce rate is really a myth. The 20-year divorce rate for couples who got married in the 1980s is actually around 19 percent. Everyone thinks marriage is such a struggle and it’s shocking to hear that marriage is actually going strong today. It has to do with how you look at the statistic. If the variables were constant, then a simple equation might work to come up with the divorce rate. But a lot of things are changing. And it is true that there are groups of people who have a 50 percent divorce rate: college dropouts who marry under the age of 25, for example. Couples married in the 1970s have a 30-year divorce rate of about 47 percent. A person who got married in the 1970s had a completely different upbringing and experience in life from someone who got married in the 1990s. It’s been very clear that divorce rates peaked in the 1970s and has been going down ever since.
The full international team of mock astronauts that will be locked in a pretend spaceship complex for a record 520 days in a simulated mission to Mars is all set for their endurance trial, Russia’s Federal Space Agency announced Wednesday.
The volunteer 6-man crew, made up of three Russians, two Europeans and a Chinese astronaut instructor, will enter an 18,800 square-foot (1,750 square-meter), five-module complex on June 3, and live like Mars-bound astronauts, as part of the elaborate Mars500 simulated mission to the red planet.
On one hand, there’s an urge to feel bad for you. You really are getting screwed here. On the other hand, you really did it to yourselves.
…
You also screwed yourselves several years ago, when you couldn’t have possibly known you were doing it. To quote a passage from Jeffrey Young and William Simon’s 2005 book iCon Steve Jobs:
“When Steve returned to Apple in 1997 he invited the executives of Adobe over and asked them to help him create a version of their video editing software for Mac. Even though it had been Steve and Apple that put the company on the map twenty years before, they now refused.“
Whoops. You then followed that move up with nearly a decade worth of under-supporting (or simply not supporting) the Mac. I’m hardly the only one who has noticed this.
Sure, you had your reasons. The Mac had tiny market share and the focus was on Windows. But a decision was made, and now you have to live with it. And you can’t pretend none of that happened and write things today like:
“We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs.”
Um, where were you in 1997 for the Mac? What about 1998? 1999? And so on. There were plenty of Mac users out there that weren’t able to “freely access their favorite content and applications” — because of you.
The whole thing is pure gold.
NBC announced Friday that the original version show would end May 24, after a run of 20 years. Law & Order was on the verge of becoming the longest-running drama in prime-time television history, surpassing Gunsmoke, but it will have to settle for a tie with the 1960s western.
NBC also said Friday that it had renewed Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and is adding a spinoff: Law & Order: Los Angeles.
One isn’t such a lonely number. All life on Earth shares a single common ancestor, a new statistical analysis confirms.
The idea that life forms share a common ancestor is “a central pillar of evolutionary theory,” says Douglas Theobald, a biochemist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. “But recently there has been some mumbling, especially from microbiologists, that it may not be so cut-and-dried.”
Because microorganisms of different species often swap genes, some scientists have proposed that multiple primordial life forms could have tossed their genetic material into life’s mix, creating a web, rather than a tree of life.
To determine which hypothesis is more likely correct, Theobald put various evolutionary ancestry models through rigorous statistical tests. The results, published in the May 13 Nature, come down overwhelmingly on the side of a single ancestor.
A universal common ancestor is at least 102,860 times more probable than having multiple ancestors, Theobald calculates.
Journal references:
Video game designer John Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace will be battling Burt Rutan and Richard Branson in the fight to make space travel affordable.
Space Adventures is going to use an Armadillo Technologies rocket to launch amateur astronauts 62 miles into the sky. Nothing new, except that they will do it at half the price of Virgin Galactic’s ticket, and in a real rocket!
Neil Armstrong has renewed his criticism of Barack Obama’s space vision, insisting that the president’s decision to scrap Constellation and head off to Mars was “poorly advised”.
Speaking yesterday to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Armstrong said: “I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement.
“A plan that was invisible to so many was likely contrived by a very small group in secret who persuaded the president that this was a unique opportunity to put his stamp on a new and innovative program. I believe the President was poorly advised.”
Armstrong went on to insist that the US was effectively throwing away half a century of work which had allowed it to “acquire a position of leadership in space”. He lamented: “If the leadership we have acquired through our investment is allowed simply to fade away, other nations will surely step in where we have faltered. I do not believe that this would be in our best interests.”
Given the lengths to which Mr. Armstrong has gone to stay out of the public spotlight, his throwing down of the proverbial gauntlet should warrant our attention.
“That bad boy south equatorial belt (SEB) has completely faded away. Point your scope at the planet any morning soon and you’ll see only one obvious dark stripe, the North Equatorial Belt,” he says on his blog.
“Jupiter with only one belt is almost like seeing Saturn when its rings are edge-on and invisible for a time - it just doesn’t look right.”
Forty photos of the slowly unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Austrian researchers have concluded that listening to the music of Mozart does not make children and adolescents more intelligent. After reviewing 15 years of research into the so-called Mozart effect, a team at Vienna University’s faculty of psychology found no proof of the phenomenon.
An animal must lie still for a great stretch of time, during which it is easy prey for predators. What can possibly be the payback for such risk? “If sleep doesn’t serve an absolutely vital function,” the renowned sleep researcher Allan Rechtschaffen once said, “it is the greatest mistake evolution ever made.” […]
At Stanford University I visited William Dement, the retired dean of sleep studies, a co-discoverer of REM sleep, and co-founder of the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center. I asked him to tell me what he knew, after 50 years of research, about the reason we sleep. “As far as I know,” he answered, “the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy.”
Forget stitches and old-school sutures. The Air Force is funding scientists who are using nano-technology and lasers to seal up wounds at a molecular level. It might sound like Star Trek tech, but it’s actually the latest in a series of ambitious Pentagon efforts to create faster, more effective methods of treating war-zone injuries.
While this post is meant to be humorous, it isn’t meant to be humorous at the expense of my fellow designers. I know we all try to do what is best for our games and Lord knows I am just as guilty as everyone else, so don’t take offense guys! It’s just me pining for a simpler time…
Albert Kahn was a French banker and philanthropist who financed an extensive photography project in the early 1900s. His photographers traveled all around the world, eventually amassing a collection 72,000 color photos.
Five-year-old Jepheth Afum was brought to a hospital in Ghana last week. Doctors found that he was anaemic and losing blood quickly. He needed a blood transfusion, so they began the procedure. But what did his Jehova’s Witness father do during all this?
[Father] Kwabena Afum and some members of Jehovah Witnesses besieged the theatre room in a bid to prevent them from carrying out their professional duties.
The police, upon hearing the story, rushed to the place to restore law and order and arrested the boy’s father in the process.
The worst part? The boy got better, so his father disowned him.
More than a few years back, I was walking up 40th past Bryant Park with my boss at the time, Jay, and he said– “You wouldn’t even recognize this place back in the 70s… you’d have been tripping over hypodermic needles, and fighting off the hookers back then. It was nasty, man.” A chort was about all I could muster-up as a response. Maybe he was over-stating it a bit, or maybe I just couldn’t fathom– I’ve never felt unsafe in the city. I just couldn’t get my arms around what he was talking about– it felt so far-removed and long ago. But man, these pics and words by Allan Tannenbaum make it vividly clear what NYC was truly like back then– probably just what Jaybird was talking about. It’s hard to imagine… Oh, and there was also some hellacious parties happening as well– and the music scene was incredible.
Shooting lasers at the sky can make the germ of a rain cloud, a new study shows. In an experiment that smacks of science fiction, scientists used a high-powered laser to squeeze water from air, both indoors and out.
I hearby nominate that for “Best Headline of 2010″.
All vans or SUVs headed into Midtown Manhattan would have to stop and have their contents inspected. If any vehicle seemed for any reason to have escaped inspection, Midtown in its entirety would be evacuated.
The titanium being manufactured in the United States in those days lacked the required purity. The only source of purer titanium available was located in the Soviet Union. So, according to the tour guide at the museum, the CIA set up dummy corporations in Europe and bought titanium from the Soviet Union. The Soviets had no idea they were helping the US build an aircraft that would be used to spy on them.
SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on. They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanour charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.
So apparently smoking pot equals “child endangerment”, while storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on equals necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety?
The sound of the dogs being killed, squealing—the man crying as he sees his dog dying—is heartbreaking. Remember, this is for small-time pot possession. Brace yourself:
Of course, in these raids, sometimes it’s a dog and sometimes it’s mom. Middle-of-the-night drug raids should be banned. Especially for pot possession.
[T]he illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.
— Dr. Carl Sagan
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More people die of suicide in King County than from traffic accidents or murder, but no one likes to talk about it. A few words about the history, meaning, and practice of suicide, from third-century Christian death cults to the Aurora Bridge.
A really engaging read. Click that link!
Any human whose ancestral group developed outside Africa has a little Neanderthal in them — between 1 and 4 per cent of their genome, Pääbo’s team estimates. In other words, humans and Neanderthals had sex and had hybrid offspring. A small amount of that genetic mingling survives in “non-Africans” today: Neanderthals didn’t live in Africa, which is why sub-Saharan African populations have no trace of Neanderthal DNA.
Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science/1188021
Set hundreds of years after the events of the first movie, when the world has once again fallen into darkness, “Power of the Dark Crystal” follows the adventures of a mysterious girl made of fire who, together with a Gelfling outcast, steals a shard of the legendary crystal in an attempt to reignite the dying sun that exists at the center of the planet.
The screenplay was written by Craig Pearce based on an original script by Annette Duffy and David Odell. Fantasy artist Brian Froud will reprise his role as conceptual designer of the film.
I think we can probably safely thank Dave McKean for getting them the income for it.
25 minutes from Fritz Lang’s original cut, thought missing for some 80 years, have finally been found. WANT.
That a copy of the original print of “Metropolis” even existed in Buenos Aires was the result of another piece of serendipity. An Argentine film distributor, Adolfo Wilson, happened to be in Berlin when the film had its premiere, liked what he saw so much that he immediately purchased rights, and returned to Argentina with the reels in his luggage.
“If he had gone two months later, he would have come back with a different version,” Mr. Peña said in a telephone interview from Buenos Aires. Initially, the F. W. Murnau Foundation, a German film-preservation group named after the great silent-era director, which holds the rights to Lang’s silent films, did not respond when the Argentines notified it of the discovery. So Mr. Peña made a DVD and while on a business trip to Madrid took it to a prominent film scholar there, Luciano Berriatúa, who watched the film with him, enraptured, and immediately phoned the Germans to tell them, Mr. Peña recalled, “It’s the real thing.”
According to the article, it will be out on DVD later this year.
Frank Frazetta, an illustrator of comic books, movie posters and paperback book covers whose visions of musclebound men fighting with swords and axes to defend scantily dressed women helped define fantasy heroes like Conan, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, died on Monday in Fort Myers, Fla. … The cause was complications from a stroke, said Rob Pistella and Stephen Ferzoco, Mr. Frazetta’s business managers.
Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty.
—Bill Maher