[Very important point. -egg]

xkcd: Cells.

Wondermark » Archive » #939; A Knight is Technically an Aristocrat.

Venus of Google – Matthew Plummer-Fernandez

“The Venus of Google was ‘found’ via a Google search-by-image, googling a photograph taken of an object I had been handed over in a game of exquisite corpse. The Google search returned visually similar results, one of these being an image of a woman modelling a body-wrap garment. I then used a similar algorithmic image-comparison technique to drive the automated design of a 3D printable object. The ‘Hill-Climbing’ algorithm starts with a plain box shape and tries thousands of random transformations and comparisons between the shape and the image, eventually mutating towards a form resembling the found image in both shape and colour.”

Venus of Google, 2013

From the Long Tail Multiplier Series/ Algorithm27.2 x 14.9 x 8.0 cmz-corp powder 3D Print

via #algopop.

Advances in agricultural technology—including, but not limited to, the genetic modification of food crops—have made fields more productive than ever. Farmers grow more crops and feed more people using less land. They are able to use fewer pesticides and to reduce the amount of tilling that leads to erosion. And within the next two years, agritech com­panies plan to introduce advanced crops that are designed to survive heat waves and droughts, resilient characteristics that will become increasingly important in a world marked by a changing climate.Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised. That is because agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers.To purchase genetically modified seeds, a customer must sign an agreement that limits what can be done with them. If you have installed software recently, you will recognize the concept of the end-user agreement. Agreements are considered necessary to protect a company’s intellectual property, and they justifiably preclude the replication of the genetic enhancements that make the seeds unique. But agritech companies such as Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta go further. For a decade their user agreements have explicitly forbidden the use of the seeds for any independent research. Under the threat of litigation, scientists cannot test a seed to explore the different conditions under which it thrives or fails. They cannot compare seeds from one company against those from another company. And perhaps most important, they cannot examine whether the genetically modified crops lead to unintended environmental side effects.Research on genetically modified seeds is still published, of course. But only studies that the seed companies have approved ever see the light of a peer-reviewed journal. In a number of cases, experiments that had the implicit go-ahead from the seed company were later blocked from publication because the results were not flattering. “It is important to understand that it is not always simply a matter of blanket denial of all research requests, which is bad enough,” wrote Elson J. Shields, an entomologist at Cornell University, in a letter to an official at the Environmental Protection Agency the body tasked with regulating the environmental consequences of genetically modified crops, “but selective denials and permissions based on industry perceptions of how ‘friendly’ or ‘hostile’ a particular scientist may be toward [seed-enhancement] technology.”

via Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?: Scientific American.

[I’m totally down for a chatelaine revival. Anyone? -egg]

Adrift in a sea of digital apps for every imaginable function, we often feel our needs are met better today than in any previous era. But consider the chatelaine, a device popularized in the 18th century that attached to the waist of a woman’s dress, bearing tiny useful accessories, from notebooks to knives. In many ways chatelaines provided better access to such objects than we have today: How often have you searched for your keys or cell phone at the bottom of a cavernous bag?

via The Killer Mobile Device for Victorian Women | Collectors Weekly.

[There’s a video too, which I haven’t seen before with him. -egg]

Hyperrealist sculptor Ron Mueck works in the realm of the ultra-real where he spends hundreds of hours perfecting the shape of the human form, the appropriate color of skin, and the most realistic hair texture. All of his efforts culminate in incredibly lifelike figurative sculptures with one small (or large) exception: the artworks are often gigantic or miniaturized, resulting in an uncomfortable “does not compute” moment when trying to comprehend exactly what you’re looking at. Each sculpted person is as bizarre as it is amazing, in part because of the raw intimacy portrayed in their faces, as if we are somehow witnessing the documentation of a private moment.

via New Hyperrealistic Sculptures by Ron Mueck | Colossal.

[Oh hell yes. -egg]

Walktopus: 5′ tall bronze – Boing Boing.

One of the oldest green building materials known to humankind, bricks have great thermal mass and last almost forever. But laying them takes skill, and complex forms and shapes are hard to design and build.

Now Professor Ingeborg Rocker and students at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard have taught a computer to do it.

via Computer Lays the Prettiest Brick Walls Since Eladio Dieste : TreeHugger.

A Virtual Weimar: Hyperinflation in a Video Game World – Peter C. Earle – Mises Daily
http://mises.org/daily/6435/A-Virtual-Weimar-Hyperinflation-in-a-Video-Game-World

As virtual fantasy worlds go, Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 3 is particularly foreboding. In this multiplayer online game played by millions, witch doctors, demon hunters, and other character types duke it out in a war between angels and demons in a dark world called Sanctuary. The world is reminiscent of Judeo-Christian notions of hell: fire and brimstone, with the added fantasy elements of supernatural combat waged with magic and divine weaponry. And within a fairly straightforward gaming framework, virtual “gold” is used as currency for purchasing weapons and repairing battle damage. Over time, virtual gold can be used to purchase ever-more resources for confronting ever-more dangerous foes.

But in the last few months, various outposts in that world — Silver City and New Tristram, to name two — have borne more in common with real world places like Harare, Zimbabwe in 2007 or Berlin in 1923 than with Dante’s Inferno. A culmination of a series of unanticipated circumstances — and, finally, a most unfortunate programming bug — has over the last few weeks produced a new and unforeseen dimension of hellishness within Diablo 3: hyperinflation.

(via Instapaper)

[The Bloggess is extra funny today. Because it’s extra true 😛 -egg]

Me:  I have work to do.

Weasel: You should check the internet because  remember yesterday when that one person on the internet was wrong and it made you so mad, but not actually mad enough to register to leave a comment.  Go see if someone else left a comment calling them out.

me:  No.  I don’t care.

Weasel:  LIAR.  And check your blog because there might be a secret comment from Doctor Who asking you to go time-traveling with him.

me:  That’s not…possible.

weasel:  You hesitated.  You totally think it’s possible.  Quick – check twitter.

me: No.

weasel:  Just once.  And check your replies.  And check that girl you hate.  And check that girl you want to be more like. And check that girl who used to be on that show who’s totally crazy now and is posting insane shit that you can’t look away from.

me:  No.  I don’t remember her name.

Weasel:  Then IMDB her.  And then IMDB all the Anchorman quotes.  And then go look up all the trivia on the Mythbusters site.  And then go see if you were right about how many times the Vulcan mind-meld was used in the last movie.

via Me and the internet — TheBloggess.com.