Random Picture of Rob Callahan Being Iconic
Brenda Karunya Peters took this picture back in the dead of Winter, when long hair and beards made more sense.
Common, Unexceptional People Believe They Are the Elite
Anyone with a hundred bucks can get an iPhone, and pretty much everyone with a hundred bucks who wants one already has. Apple ownership is no more an exclusive club than is Honda ownership.
Still, the internet is made of idiots, and those idiots don't understand this. So, when the instagram app was ported over to the Android operating system, the idiots revolted. There's nothing I hate more than revolting idiots.
For example, @joelby1328 says, "Instagram went from a gated community to section 8 all in 1 day"
Then @ashwindeshmukh responds: "Someone needs to cover the overtly racist reaction of more than a few @instagram users to Android joining their club."
Well, no one wants to be called a racist. iPhone owners are the enlightened elite, so @MelleMontana then attempts to take the perceived racism out of the equation with, "Instagram just went from a Country Club, to a club in the country all in one day!"
Sadly, that doesn't even make sense.
Why am I surprised?
The iBrain Picks Up Brain Signals and Interprets Them as Commands
It could one day be used to generate speech, or to control the movements of an artificial exoskeleton. They've tested it on Stephen Hawking, to see if his brain can generate a signal that the device recognizes as the signal to clench a fist. And his brain does...
There are many implications, all of them awesome. They range from allowing someone like Dr. Hawking to speak easily and fluidly through a synthesizer to letting him walk about inside a high tech walking suit, not to mention the heavy mining, loading and alien queen fighting potential.
I know I shouldn't diminish this thing's significance, but all I can think about when I read this is the Spider Slayer.
Custom Robots from 3D Printers
This is a printable robot that takes commands and moves about on its own. It's made from mostly cardstock, from the looks of it. The gist of this article is far more impressive than the example pictured. It talks about the future of customized robots built by 3D printers. The example, cardstocktron, is not. They put this thing together for "under $100."
When I was a kid in 1988, you could get instructions out of Omni to build a similar robot out of about $25 worth of capacitors and toy cars from Radio Shack. Of course that was 1980s money, so I guess it's all a wash when you adjust for inflation.
But the fact that cardstocktron is being touted as something new and cutting-edge has me feeling like Neil deGrasse Tyson is right: Technologically speaking, we are standing still at best while we reinvent wheels, and we're patting ourselves on the back for doing so.
Forget About 2012
Neil deGrasse Tyson on future asteroid collisions: "If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, we would be the laughing stock of aliens in the galaxy, for having a large brain and a space program, yet we met the same fate as that pea-brained, space program-less dinosaurs that came before us."