Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Roachpower

Today's award for best mad science project goes to the team who figured out how to extract electrical power from cockroaches.  This appears in an article with the grand title "An Implantable Biofuel Cell for a Live Insect."  

Or, as the wondering Ars Techica writer mutters,

science sometimes attracts people who pull the wings off a cockroach, pin it on its back, and stick electrodes inside it to use it as a mini-electricity generator.

And it works!

The specific power densities of the biofuel cell implanted in a female Blaberus discoidalis through incisions into its abdomen yielded maximum values of ca. 55 μW/cm2 at 0.2 V that decreased by only ca. 5% after ca. 2.5 h of operation.

Mad science: providing nightmare fuel science Mary Shelley.

(thanks to Todd Bryant; photo via Wikipedia)

The game is benign

When are games not frightening? When they're intended for old people. The New Yorker reports on Anti-Aging Games, and there's no trace of fear.  Some attitude, perhaps, but not dread.

Peraps we'll see age emerge as a differentiator for gaming attitudes.  Scary games corrupt children; benign games help seniors. 

We await your sweet meteor of death, oh Lord

Expressing frustration with Republican presidential candidates, one American blogger waxes lyrical:

Influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson said he would endorse the “sweet meteor of death” over any of the current GOP candidates,

This pulp/mad/Gothic/apocalypse theme is one Erickson's been developing of late:

speaking Monday on his WSB radio show, Erickson did something similar, endorsing “a great fireball from the sky annihilating us all.”

More prosaically, "Speaking Monday, Erickson called for a 'pox on all their houses.'"

 

A fine Bryan birthday wish from the Gothic world

The Nightmare Network, a fine Thomas Ligotti site, sent me this fine birthday wish:

Even after a person

is gone from this world,

people often tend

to remember birthdays.

They say: today is

the birthday of someone

who would have been

so many years old.

So just in case you're

not around next year:

happy birthday.

"Happy Birthday" by Thomas Ligotti(From DEATH POEMS)

Infocult reads may celebrate darkly here, if you dare.

To the guillotine! cries Santorum

An American presidential candidate evokes a classic horror image during a speech:

SANTORUM: It was a secular revolution on which we relied on the goodness of eacother. This is the left’s view of where America should go. And of course where did France go? To the guillotine. To tyranny. If there are no rights that government needs to respect, then what we see with ObamaCare is just the beginning of what government will do to you.

It's only a single step from Obama's health care reform to mechanized beheadings!  A slippery slope from Obamacare to the gory basket.

We haven't seen many mentions of this French Revolutionary implement so far.  I tracked some instances in 2009, from the right and from the technology world. Maybe it's time for a resurgence.

Here's a video clip:

Beware Sheikh Google: Britain's Home Office

The internet is a very dangerous place, says Britain's Home Office.  Radicals can get more radicalized there.

Sir Norman Bettison, the Association of Chief Police Officers' lead for Prevent, told us that "the internet does seem to feature in most, if not all, of the routes of radicalisation"...

According to the Home Office, the internet "plays a role in terms of sustaining and reinforcing terrorist ideological messages and enabling individuals to find and communicate with like-minded individuals and groups".

Why?  The report's reason is very cyberpunk:

[The internet] was regarded as particularly dangerous as it was now one of the few unregulated spaces where radicalisation is able to take place. 

There's an addition layer of as-yet-unradicalized Muslims, too:

concerns have been expressed about the impact of 'Sheikh Google' on individuals who may be vulnerable, but have not been identified as starting on a journey of self radicalisation.

Excellent phrase, Sheikh Google.  Almost as good as e-qaeda.

Why does this matter?  Because policy often follows panic.  As Reason summarizes,

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the committee (who has a long history of censorship), argues:
More resources need to be directed to these threats and to preventing radicalisation through the internet and in private spaces. These are the fertile breeding grounds for terrorism.
Because of this, the Home Affairs Committee wants Internet service providers (ISPs) to actively monitor and remove "extremist" content and websites, even without a court order.

To be fair, that report cites "[m]any of our witnesses," allowing for an opposing view:

This seemed to be contradicted by more recent Home Office-commissioned research, which concluded that the internet "does not appear to play a significant role in Al Qa'ida-influenced radicalisation". 

Over the past few months a coalition seems to be thickening: one party with security concerns and another focused on copyright.  Let's see how this develops in 2012.

(via Reasonblog)

Scientists breach ancient lake

That team of Russian scientists succeeded in breaking into Lake Vostok.

the drill made contact with the lake water at a depth of 12,366 feet. As planned, lake water under pressure rushed up the bore hole 100 to 130 feet pushing drilling fluid up and away from the pristine water, Mr. Yelagin said, and forming a frozen plug that will prevent contamination...

No word yet about ominous noises groaning up the shaft, or discoveries of alien starships.

(chart via Siberian Light)

Humanoids in Egypt

The uncanny valley runs some outlet shops in Cairo:

Ed Webb relays these Thomas-Ligotti-ish scenes:

Fear the mule-bot

Another day, another disturbing robot: the mule-bot is a US military invention.

Medianite freaks:

I call it nightmare fuel — and so does the rest of the Abrams Media office, who stopped what they were doing and let out a collective “what the what?” Instead of handling heavy payloads, perhaps we should sic it on Taliban fighters — because it would be super effective…and now, I need to start thinking happy thoughts.

(thanks to Ed Webb)

Sin taxing computer games

An Oklahoma legislator suggests we tax video games. Violent ones, specifically, and use the proceeds to fund less disturbing things.

How do we define a violent video game?  Easy: any "one 'that has received a rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board of Teen, Mature or Adult Only."  Ah, that classic American conflation of sex and violence.

What are those less scary things?  "[O]besity and bullying programs", each presumably meaning the opposite - i.e., anti-obesity and anti-bullying programs.  Note the way this characterizes games as driving fat and bullying.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)