Archive for the ‘weaponry’ Category

Visualizing WiFi

In Oslo, Norway with the help of long exposure photography, these ninjas visualized the relationships between WiFi networks and their physical environments.

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.:openculture.com->

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Posted: March 3rd, 2011
at 5:11pm by mnp


Categories: computers,art,weaponry

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The Star Wars Effect

From ILM to Pixar to Photoshop and back to Finding Nemo (don’t forget Willow!), in 1971 Lucas Film inspired generations…

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Posted: February 28th, 2011
at 7:58am by mnp


Categories: music,art,too good to be true,games,robots,film,weaponry,design,science,development,internets,americana

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What’s New? : The Data Fountain

What's New? covering what's new in tech, this week looks at data fountains. In the hope of displaying implicit financial data, these dudes have come up with a new form of information decoration, in the form of fountains.

.:koert.com->

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Posted: February 24th, 2011
at 8:04pm by mnp


Categories: myninjaplease,green,weaponry,design,science,"ninja",internets,what's new?,trade

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Beer Advocacy for Ninjas

Thirsty?A I’ve found myself kicking around this site lately, figuring about which beers to drink and which beers to try to brew.A This site lets beer drinkers give grades to their favorite, least favorite, and I-tried-this-because-it-had-a-weedleaf-on-the-bottle brands- a great resource for those interested in bears, uh, beers.A Check out beeradvocate.com

Based in Boston, BA was founded in 1996 by the Alstrom Brothers, Jason & Todd, who provide the site as a free resource to …

-Wake the masses to better beer options.
-Give beer consumers a voice.
-Empower them to learn, share, and advocate.
-Rally to support the beer industry.
-Put the Respect back into Beer.

BA remains solely owned and operated by the Bros, who in addition to providing this online resource publish BeerAdvocate magazine (the only monthly beer magazine of its kind), and organize several Beer Fests and events throughout the year.

"Respect Beer." is their motto.

Personally, I really liked the ShipYard Pumpkinhead….A They clearly hated it:

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Posted: February 24th, 2011
at 9:34am by Black Ock

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Categories: weaponry,drinks

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Pitfalls to Avoid When Writing Sci-Fi

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This manual is intended to focus on the special needs of the science fiction workshop. Having an accurate and descriptive critical term for a common SF problem makes it easier to recognize and discuss. This guide is intended to save workshop participants from having to "reinvent the wheel" (see section 3) at every session.

The terms here were generally developed over a period of many years in many workshops. Those identified with a particular writer are acknowledged in parentheses at the end of the entry. Particular help for this project was provided by Bruce Sterling and the other regulars of the Turkey City Workshop in Austin, Texas.

: Continue reading :

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Posted: February 3rd, 2011
at 2:32pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: weaponry

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Do Technologies Ever Die?

My favorite NPR guy, Robert Krulwich, posted this interesting article today asking whether or not technologies ever really die out. His point was that it seems like there is no technology ever created on earth that is no longer being used/produced in some form. This obviously can’t be completely true, but it IS mostly true. Although the entire article might be a plug for his friend’s book, I still recommend it.

Nothing? I asked. Brass helmets? Detachable shirt collars? Chariot wheels?

Nothing, he said.

Can’t be, I told him. Tools do hang around, but some must go extinct.

If only because of the hubris a the absolute nature of the claim a I told him it would take me a half hour to find a tool, an invention that is no longer being made anywhere by anybody.

Go ahead, he said. Try.

If you listen to our Morning Edition debate, I tried carbon paper (still being made), steam powered car engine parts (still being made), Paleolithic hammers (still being made), 6 pages of agricultural tools from an 1895 Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalogue (every one of them still being made), and to my utter astonishment, I couldn’t find a provable example of an technology that has disappeared completely. (Source)

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Posted: February 1st, 2011
at 4:33pm by Black Ock

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Categories: weaponry,science

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My Ninja Please! 1.2.11 : How Effective are Aluminum Helmets?

Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government’s invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

.:berkeley.intel-research.net->

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Posted: January 2nd, 2011
at 11:28pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: myninjaplease,weaponry,science,development

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CIA Promoted American Modern Art

Some people (continue to) call it revisionist history, but in 1995 some ofA the people involved in the CIA’s campaign to finance and promote American Modern Art during the Cold War began to come forward.A The article quoted below is one of the first examples of this chain of disclosures.A I personally have never been a huge fan of the style of American Abstract Expressionism, but there are certainly pieces that have a huge, even subconscious cultural effect on even me, a hater.A Ninjas beware: The CIA might be promoting our ish… just sayin’…

The US government now faced a dilemma. This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy’s hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.

The connection is not quite as odd as it might appear. At this time the new agency, staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover’s FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.

Until now there has been no first-hand evidence to prove that this connection was made, but for the first time a former case officer, Donald Jameson, has broken the silence. Yes, he says, the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it.

"Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I’d love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!" he joked. "But I think that what we did really was to recognise the difference. It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.

"In a way our understanding was helped because Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another."

To pursue its underground interest in America’s lefty avant-garde, the CIA had to be sure its patronage could not be discovered. "Matters of this sort could only have been done at two or three removes," Mr Jameson explained, "so that there wouldn’t be any question of having to clear Jackson Pollock, for example, or do anything that would involve these people in the organisation. And it couldn’t have been any closer, because most of them were people who had very little respect for the government
, in particular, and certainly none for the CIA. If you had to use people who considered themselves one way or another to be closer to Moscow than to Washington, well, so much the better perhaps." (Source)

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Posted: December 7th, 2010
at 9:12am by Black Ock

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Categories: art,politricks,weaponry,fo' real?,primary sources,ninjas are everyehere,americana

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What You Have That George Vanderbilt Didn’t

I just returned fromAthe Biltmore, America’s largest home.A Built by George Vanderbilt between 1889 and 1895, the Biltmore is a symbol of how good the rich had it during the Gilded Age.A I’m sure that most of the other visitors would answer "very good indeed."

But how many would actually want to trade places with George?A Despite his massive library, organ, and so on, I submit that any modern with a laptop and an internet connection has a vastly better book and music collection than he did.A For all his riches, he didn’t have air conditioning; he had to suffer through the North Carolina summers just like the poorest of us.A Vanderbilt did travel the world, but without the airplane, he had to do so at a snail’s pace.

Perhaps most shockingly, heAsuffered "sudden death from complications following an appendectomy" at the age of 51.A (Here’s the originalANYT obituary).A Whatever your precise story about the cause of rising lifespans, it’s safe to say that George’s Bane wouldn’t be fatal today.

Vanderbilt clearly had it better than most of the people in his era.A But the world has improved so much that, all things considered, the average American is now better off than this prince of the Gilded Age.A I can’t be sure, but I bet that George would have agreed.A How much do you think he would have paid to live for a single day inAyour shoes?

.:econlog.econlib.org->

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Posted: December 5th, 2010
at 10:54pm by Koookiecrumbles


Categories: weaponry,development

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