Archive for October, 2010

‘Ninja Group’ Mastermind Faces Death Penalty

Most of the times ninjas that are breaking into homes with nun-chucks and such get caught, fans revel in the fact ‘real’ ninjas are on the loose. But this story of a ‘ninja group’ mastermind who helped orchestrate a botched robbery that ended up with Byrd and Melanie Billings getting murdered as the couple’s nine young disabled children hid nearby is by far the worst case of ninjas at work that these webs have ever seen..

.:dailymail.co.uk->

Respect the Architect, Give Props to the Process and Go Hard on the Hustle

The first step you should already do accept the status quo and their landscape and get a full understanding. After all, for them to be status quo in the first place, they had to build up the architecture to keep them in power so let's give them the credit they deserve. In addition, they have architecture in place to keep them in power and you need to understand this. The most typical structure is the people of power create a sphere of influence with socialites and the media and other characters such as politicians and appointed officers in the government structure.

For example, a lot of these cornball magazines take advertisement money from these status quo cats and that pays the writers salaries and you know the writers are going to write cute fluff about the status quo. Then what these writers do is ignore the up and coming cats and start acting like only status quo matter. Then you see cats on TV and in the media name-dropping status quo and what you do is find out who is the one behind the scenes keeping the status quo in the picture. Just monitor their activities and take their names and their involvement in the structure to keep the status quo on top.

Then you have to accept the fact there are goons and muscle out there keeping them in power. Goons and muscle is not your knucklehead brutes with guns. These are the lawyers and the laws that protect the status quo. You have to find out who are the lawyers, who are the politicians and the laws that are designed to protect the status quo. In some cases the government tries to partner with status quo and you need to know names and connections. So just monitor what is going on and take names and learn connections to understand the architecture.

.:dreamandhustle.com->

Secrets of the Centenarians

My ninja, please! Most ninjas don’t make it this far… but the elders live far past 100. But, seriously, this is an interesting photo essay/article/interblog from the NYT profiling some venerable old human beings. If you get the chance to take a peek, say in the next 100 years, you will be amazed, astounded, and regaled.

OK, maybe not. But I thought it was interesting.A Here’s the link: click me.

The Rise and Fall of Liberalism

In Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, James Piereson asserts that, as the 1960s began, liberalism was the single most creative and vital force in American politics and that the Kennedy assassination caused a split within this movement between its more traditional supporters and cultural activists that still exists today. Peter Robinson explores with Piereson how and why this happened — how a confident, practical, forward-looking philosophy with a heritage of accomplishment was thus turned into a doctrine of pessimism and self-blame, with a decidedly dark view of American society.

.:cobb.typepad.com->

NINJAPAN BLOG vol.10

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kosuke(@kosukem9)

Why Japanese Love Robots (And Americans Fear Them)

The affection of a certain island nation for all things robotic — fromAhundred foot tall warfighting mecha toAinfantile therapy robots — is well known. It contrasts sharply with the equally entrenched Western fear of automatons, beginning with the very invention of the term "robot," which was coined in aACzech play that debuted in 1921 in which, naturally, the robots eventually rise up and kill their human masters.

How could two cultures come to such fundamentally divergent conclusions about the status and future of the semi-autonomous helpmates whose increasing presence in our lives seems pre-ordained by nearly every sci-fi vision of the future?

Heather Knight,Afounder of the world’s first (non-industrial) robot census, has made the study of robot / human interaction her life’s work. She posits that the difference between Japanese and American attitudes toward robots is rooted in something much older than even the idea of robots: religion. "In Japan… they’re culturally open to robots, on account of animism. They don’t make a distinction between inanimate objects and humans."

.:technologyreview.com->

Ability to ‘See’ Advances Artificial Intelligence

Eric Horvitz, a distinguished scientist atAMicrosoft Research, has an equally distinguished receptionist.

After eight years of working with him, she’s developed a feel for his habits and routines. She can predict how long his meetings are likely to last, knows when he can’t be interrupted and senses when he’ll be running late.

Not bad for an avatar.

The Personal Assistant for Scheduling system, a disembodied head floating on a computer screen outside Horvitz’s office in Redmond, Wash., is one of the most advanced artificial intelligence programs in the world. It can understand speech, detect faces and interpret body motion. It analyzes years of Horvitz’s daily routines to find patterns that suggest the appropriate responses to most workplace scenarios.

The 21st century secretary underscores the breakthrough underway in artificial intelligence and what becomes possible as computers learn to, for lack of a better term, perceive. Through what are broadly called natural user interfaces, machines can increasingly make sense of activity in the real world, from touch, motion, images and sounds, as opposed to information entered through keystrokes.AComputers are learning our language, instead of forcing us to learn theirs.

.:sfgate.com->

Andreas Gursky's 2007 photograph, "Pyongyang IV," showing a massed dancing display in North Korea, was one of the few works to sell for significantly more than estimate. It sold to a telephone buyer for 1.3 million pounds against expectations of 500,000 pounds to 700,000 pounds.

Focus: the Age of Distraction

'Our life is frittered away by detail … simplify, simplify.' ~Henry David Thoreau

We live in curious times. It's called the Age of Information, but in another light it can be called the Age of Distraction.

While humanity has never been free of distraction a from swatting those bothersome gnats around the fireplace to dealing with piles of paper mail and ringing telephones a never have the distractions been so voluminous, so overwhelming, so intense, so persistent as they are now. Ringing phones are one thing, but email notifications, Twitter and Facebook messages, an array of browser tabs open, and mobile devices that are always on and always beeping are quite another. More and more, we are connected, we are up to our necks in the stream of information, we are in the crossfire of the battle for our attention, and we are engaged in a harrying blur of multitasking activity.

When we're working, we have distractions coming from every direction. In front of us is the computer, with email notifications and other notifications of all kinds. Then there's the addicting lure of the browser, which contains not only an endless amount of reading material that can be a black hole into which we never escape, but unlimited opportunities for shopping, for chatting with other people, for gossip and news and lurid photos and so much more. All the while, several new emails have come in, waiting for a quick response. Several programs are open at once, each of them with tasks to complete. Several people would like to chat, dividing our attention even further.

.:focusmanifesto.com->