Philip Johnson’sGlass House is beautiful. It is stunning. But stunning is not the word for it, there’s no element of surprise in the impression it makes - it fits its surroundings so that you would almost expect it to be there.
I realize, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
And there’s no place for it in the Netherlands, where I live. A house like this needs a forest.
I would like to have a house like this. If I could afford it, I would probably build a house that would be halfway between the Glass House and a Minka. But I would build it to last, my house, with comfort, security, and autonomy in mind. Have you read Charles Platt’s “The Silicon Man”? That’s what I have in mind when I talk about security and autonomy. Or the house from that Bruce Willis movie with the hostages, where the house turns into a fortress at the push of a button.
It’s a libertarian fantasy, I suppose. I’m sure I’m not the only one to think of this. A fortress of one’s own… Not quite what Henry David Thoreau had in mind, I suppose.
Someone should put Numenta HTM and Photosynthtogether. I think HTM could speed up the process of finding associations between pictures, and probably also reduce the capacity demands. Just an educated guess, of course.
What a weird little car! I didn’t know it existed before I saw it on Top Gear.
This clip is definitely worth watching - especially the part where Geremy Clarkson attends a BBC staff meeting on “How to Reduce the Carbon Footprint of our Ethnically Diverse Disability Access Policy for Single Parent Mothers” in this little car.
Every now and then I read the news, and an interesting story catches my eye. Here’s an interesting one:
Scientists at the company, Stemagen, which is based in San Diego, said Thursday that they were the first to use human adult cells to create cloned embryos that advanced to the stage known as a blastocyst, from which embryonic stem cells typically are extracted.
There must be something to it, because the Vatican was quick to condemn it:
“This ranks among the most morally illicit acts, ethically speaking,” said Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Vatican department that helps oversee the Church’s position on bioethics issues.
The story got me thinking about GM - not just about blastocysts and stem cell research, but about GM in general.
And I had an idea.
There are many animals that see in the dark. If we could somehow extract this “night-seeing” property of animals and add it to our genome, then we could significantly reduce global warming! Think about it. If we can see in the dark, then we can turn the lights off!
Another interesting idea I’ve been playing around with:
The Tamakicka (plural: Tamakickas), the anti-social networking device.
It’s a melt of Tamagotchi and kickin’ ass.
You wear a device on your key-chain that beeps when you are close to a person whose ass needs kickin’, aka the target. The target’s thingy beeps too, but with a different tone so that it’s immediately known to both parties who’s attacking whom.
If you kick the target’s ass, you get points that you can use to have someone else’s ass kicked. If the target kicks your ass, he (or she, let’s not be, like, sexistic about this) gets to choose between points or finding out who put a contract on him (or her).
And if you’re wondering who decides who’s ass was kicked, it’s easy: it’s the one who gets to punch his code in the other’s Tamakicka.
Obviously, the Tamakicka will have to be able to stand a few blows. And, of course, we’ll need the mother of all disclaimers to cover this baby internationally.
Now, if this isn’t a million dollar idea I don’ t know what is. Imagine the spin-offs and the merchandising!
The first rule of Tamakicka is: You don’t talk about Tamakicka.
