Ghost in the Shell 1.5 – Human Error Processor

Human-Error Processor presents for the first time in America the lost GITS stories, created by Shirow Masamune after completing work on the original GITS manga and prior to his tour-de-force, GITS 2: Man Machine Interface, but never collected until now.  GITS 1.5: Human Error Processor is a set of four chapters that were left out: “Fat Cat”, “Drive Slave”, “Mines of Mind” and “Lost Past”.

Deep into the 21st century, the line between man and machine has been inexorably blurred as humans rely on the enhancement of mechanical implants and robots are upgraded with human tissue.In this rapidly converging technoscape, the covert-ops agents of Section 9 are charged to track and crack the most dangerous terrorists, cyber criminals, and ghost hackers the digital future has to offer.Whether dealing with remote-controlled corpses, lethally malfunctioning micro machines, or cop-killer cyborgs, Section 9 is determined to serve and protect… and reboot some cyber crook ass!

 

Site - http://en.wikipedia.org

Virgin Galactic

Space Flight?

Virgin Galactic is the world’s first spaceline. Giving you the groundbreaking opportunity to become one of the first ever non-professional astronauts. Virgin Galactic’s mission is to fly passengers to an altitude slightly over the defined boundary of space 100 kilometers (62 mi) and allow them to experience weightlessness for up to 6 minutes. The first flight is planned for sometime in 2009.

Virgin Galactic has said to already have $30 million in bookings for flights. Although the initial deposit is set to be $200,000 for the first 100 to fly, all passengers after that will pay a deposit of only $20,000 each.

Site – http://www.virgingalactic.com

Space Elevator

As early as 1895, a Russian scientist named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky suggested a fanciful “Celestial Castle” in geosynchronous (always stays over the same point of the Earth) orbit attached to a tower on the ground. The concept finally came to the attention of the space flight engineering community through a technical paper written in 1975 by Jerome Pearson of the Air Force Research Laboratory. This paper was the inspiration for Clarke’s novel ( The Fountain of Paradise ).

Current technology is not capable of manufacturing materials that are sufficiently strong and light enough to build an Earth based space elevator. Recent proposals for a space elevator plan to use carbon nanotube-based materials as the tensile element in the tether design, since the theoretical strength of carbon nanotubes show great promise.

Talk about Jack and the Beanstalk.

Site – http://en.wikipedia.org

Race Is On to Advance Software for Chips

In the computer world’s equivalent of “The Amazing Race,” three rival teams of computer researchers are working on new types of software needed to better use computer chips that can process many tasks at the same time.

Stanford University and six computer and chip makers plan to announce Friday the creation of the Pervasive Parallelism Lab. Besides Stanford, the backers are Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard and Intel.

All three efforts are in response to a growing awareness that the software industry is not ready for the coming availability of microprocessors with 8 or 16 or more cores, or processing units, on a single chip. Computer and chip makers are concerned that if software cannot use the new hardware efficiently, customers will have little reason to upgrade.

Site – http://www.nytimes.com

Best Blog on WordPress

This blog was featured on The Best Blog on WordPress on May 19th.

Info junkies, your eyes will immediately brighten as the machine reveals to you its universe of astronomy, philosophy, society and more. Not to be missed too is the selection of quotations, views cutting across time and space.

Site – http://bestblog.wordpress.com

Radical Evolution

Humans, of course, have always strived to tame or even transcend nature through technology, but our efforts up to now look puny and ineffectual compared with what is about to happen. "We're at an inflection point in history," says Joel Garreau, a writer with The Washington Post whose recent book, Radical Evolution, has made him something of a guru in human enhancement circles. "For hundreds of thousands of years our technologies have been aimed outward, at modifying our environment. Now we've got a suite of technologies that are aimed inward, at modifying our minds, metabolisms, personalities and children."

Site -  http://www.amazon.com

Blogniscient

A great blog clustering aggregation site similar to Technorati.
Site – http://www.blogniscient.com

Google Launches “Google Mars”

Google has just launched a new service called “Google Mars” that lets you browse the martian land just as you would with Google Maps.

Site – http://www.google.com

Quantum Revolution Lecture For Non-Scientists

It doesn’t take an Einstein to understand modern physics,” says Professor Richard Wolfson at the outset of this course on what may well be the most important subject in the universe.  Relativity and quantum physics touch the very basis of physical reality, altering our common-sense notions of space and time, cause and effect. Both have reputations for being bewilderingly complex. But the basic ideas behind relativity and quantum physics are, in fact, simple and comprehensible by anyone. As Professor Wolfson points out, the essence of relativity is summed up in a single, concise sentence: the laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion.

Site – http://www.quantumbiocommunication.com

Happiness

I think I’ve had the revelation that I’m not really happy unless there is a steady house beat playing where I can hear it.

And on that note, on to the next post!

A Personal Appeal From Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia is based on a very radical idea, the realization of the dreams most of us have always had for what the Internet can and should become. Thousands of people, all over the world, from all cultures, working together in harmony to freely share clear, factual, unbiased information… a simple and pure desire to make the world a better place. This is a radical strike at the heart of an increasingly shallow, proprietary and anti-intellectual culture. It is a radical strike at the assumption that the Internet has to be a place of hostile debate and flame wars. It is an appeal to the best within all of us.

Site – http://wikimediafoundation.org

A Selection Of The Most Blogged-About Books Of 2005

This list links to a selection of Web posts that discuss some of the books most frequently mentioned by bloggers in 2005. The books were selected by conducting an automated survey of 5,000 of the most-trafficked blogs. The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kuzweil appears on the list at number 13.

Site – http://www.nytimes.com