Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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Worst. Liberal. Conspirators. Evar.
JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.
And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.
Be sure to read Emerson's commentary on this.
Four and a half years ago, I blogged about researchers here in Durham who had built a brain implant that allowed monkeys to control a robotic arm using nothing more than brain waves. At the time, the next step was to make the whole thing wireless, which seemed like a minor hurdle. I hadn't heard much since, but then I saw this NYT headline tonight:
Monkeys Control a Robot Arm With Their Thoughts
Not exactly news, I thought. Must be something else going on there, right?
In previous studies, researchers showed that humans who had been paralyzed for years could learn to control a cursor on a computer screen with their brain waves and that nonhuman primates could use their thoughts to move a mechanical arm, a robotic hand or a robot on a treadmill. The new experiment goes a step further. In it, the monkeys' brains seem to have adopted the mechanical appendage as their own, refining its movement as it interacted with real objects in real time. The monkeys had their own arms gently restrained while they learned to use the added one. [...]
After several days, the monkeys needed no help. They sat stationary in a chair, repeatedly manipulating the arm with their brain to reach out and grab grapes, marshmallows and other nuggets dangled in front of them. The snacks reached the mouths about two-thirds of the time — an impressive rate, compared with earlier work. The monkeys learned to hold the grip open on approaching the food, close it just enough to hold the food and gradually loosen the grip when feeding. On several occasions, a monkey kept its claw open on the way back, with the food stuck to one finger. At other times, a monkey moved the arm to lick the fingers clean or to push a bit of food into its mouth while ignoring a newly presented morsel.
The animals were apparently freelancing, discovering new uses for the arm, showing "displays of embodiment that would never be seen in a virtual environment," the researchers wrote.
"In the real world, things don't work as expected," said the senior author of the paper, Dr. Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. "The marshmallow sticks to your hand or the food slips, and you can't program a computer to anticipate all of that. But the monkeys' brains adjusted. They were licking the marshmallow off the prosthetic gripper, pushing food into their mouth, as if it were their own hand."
They haven't yet figured out a way to make it all wireless, meaning you'd still need cords coming out of the back of your head. And the implants seem to wear out after a few months, for reasons that aren't clear. So, a ways off from being useful for disabled people, but it sure is an intriguing project. However. Training monkeys to control robots with their minds still seems like an idea that might come back to bite us in the ass.
The Phoenix Mission image gallery.
This was the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on Mars with thrusters in 32 years.
At 8:30 a.m. PDT Sunday, the spacecraft was approaching Mars at 6,300 miles an hour; by 12:30 p.m. its velocity had increased to 8,500 miles an hour under the tug of the planet's gravity. By 4:30 p.m. that speed had reached 12,700 mph - the spacecraft's fastest before its final approach. That final approach to the surface was a scheduled hair-raiser in every respect - but the signals from Phoenix before those last seven minutes had shown that all was well.
At 4:24 p.m. the spacecraft itself - the vehicle's cruise stage that had carried it all the way from Earth - separated by firing pyrotechnics from the instrument-laden lander. Descending now at 12,700 mph, the spacecraft's ceramic heat shield flamed at 6,200 degrees Fahrenheit to burn away 99 percent of the speeding spacecraft's formidable energy in the tenuous but thickening Martian atmosphere. The heat shield was jettisoned by another pyrotechnic device automatically just 202 seconds before landing.
Then the spacecraft's red-and-white striped parachute deployed about 7.8 miles above the surface, slowing the lander's speed from 1,100 mph to a mere 120 mph in a little more than 3 minutes. At almost the same instant, 192 seconds before landing, the lander's three legs lowered automatically to form the tripod on which Phoenix and all its instruments are mounted.
Next, the lander's ground-seeking radar switched on, sending its signals aloft to Mars Odyssey, the orbiter flying directly overhead, and relaying Odyssey's signals to the antennae of NASA's Deep Space Network at Goldstone in the Mojave Desert, near Canberra, Australia, and Madrid. At landing time, Goldstone would catch the signals and send them instantly to Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
And finally, 18 seconds before landing and with its parachute already detached, Phoenix was in free fall for a mere half-second 100 feet above the ground before its 12 retrorocket thrusters fired downward to slow the landing to a bare 5 mph - and as Goldstein had predicted earlier, "Phoenix would gracefully and slowly reach the ground." [...] Phoenix's 12 hydrazine-powered thrusters were needed because the spacecraft and its instruments weigh a total of 904 pounds atop its three legs.
So cool.
This one's extra good. Seriously.
g'wan, click him
Unfunkked 6: Suckers Can't Buck the Mustard Truck
150.6 MB .zip, 1:19:48
01 Laura Lee - Crumbs off the Table
02 Stevie Wonder - You Met Your Match
03 Pieces of Peace - Flunky for Your Love
04 Charles Hilton Brown - I'm Comin' Home
05 The Sister and Brothers - Yeah, You Right
06 Man's Theory - You Talks a Good Talk
07 Sound Experience - Don't Fight the Feeling
08 The Futures - Ninety Days (in the House of Love Correction)
09 Willie Hutch - Ain't Nothing Like Togetherness
10 Mike James Kirkland - Got to Do It Right
11 Baby Charles - Step On
12 Sweet Blindness - Queen Street
13 Southside Movement - I've Been Watching You
14 O.V. Wright - You Must Believe in Yourself
15 Johnny Adams - More than One Way
16 Bill Withers - Moanin' and Groanin'
17 Chicago Gangsters - Music for the People Pt. 1
18 Natural High - Bump Your Lady
19 Rhythm Machine - Lil's Place
20 General Crook - Fever in the Funkhouse
21 Larry Graham - The Jam
22 The Delta Rhythm Section - Funkin Fever
If you're burning it to a CD, set the gap between tracks to zero seconds to get it all to fit. Earlier ones are here.
Y'know, some of this is gathered off Usenet, but I've found most of it through some jaw-droppingly amazing blogs that just pour out this stuff. Particularly Nikos, Four Brothers Beats, Oufar Khan, and Home of the Groove, but the blogrolls on each of those are treasure troves too. Incredible work they do, and they're keeping a lot of this music from just disappearing altogether.
After almost ten months in transit, the Phoenix Polar Lander is scheduled to touch down on Mars' north pole this weekend, and start digging in the soil for signs of life. That is, assuming it isn't sabotaged by Martians, like the last Polar Lander we sent. And assuming NASA can successfully slow it down from 12,500 mph to 5 mph before it lands. Video here.
Japanese bug fights are brutal. (h/t: Jeremy)
Helicockter threatens Garry Kasparov. And the explanation. (h/t: shpx.ohfu and Richard)
The platypus genome was published earlier this month and, man, is that one weird animal.
Is that a javelin in your leg or are you just happy to see me? Oh, it's a javelin in your leg. Keep working, then.
Yves Rossy is the world's first man to fly with jet fuel-powered wings.
I've been listening to a lot of Fela Kuti recently. If you're unacquainted, you could (and should!) get extremely well-acquainted here and here, and a 50-minute documentary from 1982 is up in six parts on Youtube (high-quality version downloadable at the second "here" link above), alongside all manner of concert footage.
This post, however, is not really about Fela, but about James Brown. It was simply by way of Fela-related searches that I ended up at this Afrofunk Music Forum post that calls the clip below "the Rosetta Stone of Afrobeat," and that seems about right. It's James Brown in Paris in 1971, not long before most of his backup band split to form Funkadelic.
And from the same show:
Jesus. There oughta be a law.
This is why I so dislike seeing this particular scrap of titillating exhibitionism grafted onto mainstream network television shows. The deep vortex of anxiety and insecurity that lies within so many adolescent girls too often prompts them toward behavior that is contrary to their natures and to their better sense.
This is not about gay couples, or about actors portraying gay characters. It’s about the pitiful degradation of girls performing a shabby burlesque for a fleeting moment of popularity with a manipulative male audience.
Hmm. Discuss.
BitchPhD emailed this astonishingly beautiful photo gallery of technicolor sea slugs, and I forward it to you.
There is nothing new under the sun. Here's the second story in under two years (first one here) where a teenage boy dug up a corpse and cut off the skull to use for a bong. I know it sounds like a compelling idea, kids, but try to work a little originality into your drugs and desecration. It won't seem like a big deal now but, believe me, you'll be glad you did down the road.
One of the teachers at Noah and Cassidy's daycare came over and shot a CD full of pictures of us and the kids, and I've put a few dozen of them up at my Flickr page. For a funny-looking fellow, I do make some pretty children.
If someone turns in a big upset in the last minutes here, at least Barack Obama has other career opportunities. View the photo gallery at this link...
Following up on Fever in the Funkhouse (which gets steadily more awesome with repeated viewings), asl sent me a couple of musical links from April Winchell's blog that I'm passing on gratefully. First, Norma Lee wants Jesus to come sit on her heart and then, possibly the most confusing use of blackface ever.
The numbers of registered voters in North Carolina:
Democratic: 2,632,402
Republican: 1,933,645
Unaffiliated: 1,244,538
We have closed primaries, so 4,566,047 voters eligible to take part in the primaries. And you'd expect turnout to be low for the Republican primary, what with the nomination already being decided. The State Board of Elections reports just under half a million votes were cast during the early voting period.
I'll be interested to see what the final numbers are come polls closing tomorrow.
The previously mentioned Wielechowskis say they were not fighting each other (just arguing, but specifically that he never "karate-kicked" her) and that the "Good Samaritans" were attacking them, not helping her.
"I will concede that my client and his wife were probably making a lot of noise," Mr. Mielnicki said. "They were euphoric and intoxicated. They were being silly." He said the pair was arguing loudly because Dr. Wielechowski, who was toting four six-packs of beer, couldn't find their room. The beers tumbled from the bag and Mrs. Wielechowski bent down to pick them up.
The groom's lawyer said the female witness who spoke to police "couldn't have been in a position to see" the karate-style kick that allegedly knocked the bride to the floor. Both the bride and groom have stated repeatedly to their lawyers that no such kick was ever dealt, he said. Also, contrary to the police report, Mr. Mielnicki said four to five men assaulted the couple that evening, including the two "good Samaritans." He said, he believed "everybody involved in this was clearly intoxicated." [...]
"The first blow was a sucker punch from a total stranger. It was unexpected, undefended, unanticipated and it hurt. For some unexplained reason, the man who had no shirt on punched my client in face," Mr. Mielnicki said.
Either way, it's another amusing photo at the link. That is not a happy dentist.
I don't know much about Nevada governor Jim Gibbons and certainly don't have any opinions about his marriage, but this is odd.
Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons filed Friday for a divorce from his wife, Dawn, and asked for a court order to determine whether the governor or first lady will live at the governor's mansion. A complaint filed in Carson City District Court by Gibbons' lawyer, Gary Silverman, lists incompatibility as grounds for ending the couple's marriage of more than 21 years. Silverman also said he's seeking "a court ruling concerning the living arrangements" at the mansion in Carson City. Dawn Gibbons is staying at the taxpayer-supported mansion while the 63-year-old governor lives in their home in Reno.
Well, it is called the governor's mansion. Seems like that one ought to be pretty straightforward.
"Police in Texas have arrested a man for trying to cash a cheque at a bank for $360 billion. The cheque was made out to 'Fulla Comp and Entertainment,' the record company Fuller wanted to start. Police said Fuller stole the check from Paula Prettyman, the mother of Fuller’s girlfriend, Andrea Greer.
The fifth richest man in the world is building the world's largest and most expensive private residence: a $2 billion, 27-story tower in downtown Mumbai with 400,000 square feet of interior space. This is to replace their current home, a mere 22-story tower.
[Senator Clinton] said that she was sorry that she would miss the Kentucky Derby, but noted that Chelsea would be on hand.
"I want everybody to place a little money on the filly," she said.
And the filly ran a great race, but came in second, then collapsed with two broken front ankles and was euthanized on the track.
I linked this over at Unfogged but nobody should miss it, so go read Beyerstein et al about the overt criminalization of the Bush Justice Department, now manifesting in burglaries and arsons against targets of politically motivated federal probes and various witnesses across Alabama and Mississippi. It goes without saying that this is standard operating procedure for Republican DoJs, having been tirelessly practiced all through the Nixon and Reagan administrations. And this, I suspect, is exactly the reason they have pushed back so hard against revealing even the tiniest details of their warrantless wiretapping and domestic surveillance programs, because they always had less to do with national security than opposition research and good, old-fashioned ratfucking. It is, after all, the only thing they do with even the tiniest shred of competence.
But this, much like the nearly unreported story that the news networks didn't bother to tell anybody that their bemedalled "military analysts" have almost uniformly been paid administration plants, pales in significance to the fact that Obama's former preacher (whom the media would like to remind you is blackblackblackityblack) said something inflammatory. And black.
