Blógünder Schlock

Remember this strip, where Kevyn’s blood-nannies communicate with him by discoloring his skin with handy, easy-to-read text messages? (Warning… the strip depicts a compound fracture. Eeew.)

Well, here’s a “digital tattoo interface” for a cellphone. Long story short, your cyberpunk implants are waiting for funding, and the marketing fluff includes such gems as “this product is waterproof, and it is powered by pizza.” Hat-tip to Alexander Proff for the link. Thanks!

Of course, the biggest problem I see with implantable hi-tech gadgetry is the life-cycle. There will be adoption hurdles if we need surgery in order to change carriers.

Also, I’m not sure where the audio interface is. I assume that she’s not talking into her forearm — that would be awkward. In a perfect world, they’ve bored a couple of holes in her skull, and installed Bose.

I just got word that Arthur C. Clarke passed away.

He is the science fiction writer I think most of us want to be — the one who dreams of something that is both wondrous and practical, and which is made into reality into his own lifetime.

In the 40’s he suggested that humans would walk on the moon by the year 2000. While working for the RAF during World War II, he predicted the network of communications satellites we have today. Geostationary orbit is called the Clarke orbit, and the Clarke Belt is that band of space almost 36,000 kilometers above equatorial sea-level where such orbits are found.

We’ve lost a great mind, and a great man, but his contributions will live on.

Here’s the CNN article: Ancient Frog Was As Big As A Bowling Ball

Neat fossil! I love the name “Beelzebufo!” Here’s the problematic argument that its discoverer presents to us: since the fossils of Beelzebufo ampinga, the giant Madagascar frog, indicate that it is related to modern South American toads, then maybe Madagascar and South America were not completely separated by ocean(s) as early as we think they were.

Here’s Occam’s Razor, Please Shave Often: It’s more likely that Beelzebufo is a cousin, not a grandfather to the Ceratophrys. Instead of looking for land bridges, you should be looking for giant frog fossils in South America. I mean, you can look for land bridges if you want to, but I’ll bet you find more giant frogs first.

Hopefully this alternative explanation is just something CNN failed to report.

Yesterday’s Insectpod.com deserves a read.

Then read today’s. Yeeek!

Okay, I’ve got your attention, right?

The 2007 Spaceward Games are on! Come see a space elevator competition featuring laser-powered, ribbon-climbing robots this Friday through Sunday at the Davis County Fairgrounds north of Salt Lake City. My friends from Lasermotive will be there, and I’m trying to bang out enough comic work this week to be able to make it up there my own self.

If you need Mapquest help, you’re looking for The Davis County Event Center, 151 S 1100 W, Farmington, UT. The event runs from 11am to 6pm on Friday the 19th, and from 10am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday the 20th and 21st. Tickets for a single day are $10 for adults, $5 for kids, but there are other ticket options available (VIP access, anyone?)

I’ll post more later this week (especially regarding my attendance or non-attendance at the event).

Security Guru Bruce Schneier linked to an Anders Sandberg blog post in which the topic is Warning Signs for Tomorrow.

Sandberg’s fourth paragraph, before he gets into creating some truly cool warning signs, references some ancient Schlock Mercenary strips.

Well… okay. I’m at once flattered and pleased to learn that Sandberg reads the strip, but I’m also forced to admit that the signs Sandberg went on to create are much, much better than my own. (I may be forced to borrow them…) I take heart in the assumption that he is speculating in deadly earnest, where I was just trying to make a few quick jokes.

And now, commentary:

Sanders remarks that the “ghostbusters” symbol on the wall seems a little out of place given Kevyn’s rationality. While this interpretation is supportable, if you take the sign to mean “there is no such thing as a ghost” as opposed to “no ghosts allowed” then it fits just fine. Then again, maybe Kevyn has the sign posted because it makes him giggle. I’m pretty sure it made me giggle at the time.

Sanders commented on the DNA spiral I used, saying:

The DNA helix suggests some alternative to the (IMHO great) biohazard symbol, or that it was too hard to draw. Maybe it is about threats to the genome.

Rest assured, Anders, even back in 2000 I was able to draw a biohazard symbol. That’s not to say I don’t make compromises in the artwork from time to time (read “every day”). It’s just that the DNA helix wasn’t one of them. I’m thinking that “threats to the genome” is a better interpretation. Not that I have any idea what Kevyn was working with that he needed that particular sign.

Perhaps he picked it up at an Umbrella Corporation asset liquidation.

Finally, that stupid Disney dog can be relegated to the dust-bin of nomenclatural history. Goodbye, planet Pluto.

Anybody who thinks that that an eight-planet Solar system poses problems for our educational curricula needs to realize that at least this generation of kids will have an interesting reason to talk about the planets.

Not only that, they’ll have actual definitions for planets that they can learn and stretch their growing young minds with. And if some of them were emotionally attached to Pluto the Planet, they can stretch their growing young minds with the exploration of concepts like “living with disappointment” and “only cartoon dogs live forever.”

In scanning this article I was struck the the obvious irony: The “Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology” or “DART” spacecraft collided with the satellite it was supposed to be rendezvousing with.

Why? Because when it thought it was moving away from the satellite, it was actually moving towards it at five feet per second… and it “darted” right into it. Wow. If that’s not a demonstration of autonomous rendezvous technology, I don’t know what is. Sign me up for rides that have an actual human pilot on board, please.

The collision was a year or so ago. The “news” is that the findings of the investigation were just released. The other “news” is that it’s never a good idea to name something after the very specific thing you hope that it does. Murphy is always gunning for optimists, and he’s a crack shot.

Our home is on a lovely lot at the back of a quiet cul-de-sac, but it’s also at the back of the residential zone. Thus it is that when I look out the kitchen window, sometimes I can see a crane.

This morning I saw it pull away, off to work. This evening it was parked again, and I thought “how nice… it’s home from work and gets to sleep.”

(Yes, I had just gotten up from a nap. A cartoonist’s life is rigorous and tiring.)

And then I got to wondering idly about sleep, and whether any of our machines are complex enough to actually need it. Sure, they need maintenance. Some even need to be left “off” for periods of time — especially machines that generate lots of waste heat.

But what about SLEEP? Do we have machines that get annoyed with us if we ask them to work during their planned nap? Will any of them go quietly insane if we don’t give them a little dream-time to themselves?

Of course not. They are all far too simple, and besides, we are not about to build machines that suffer from something as inefficient as a requirement that they spend a third of their time sucking power while not getting any work done.

(I am very carefully ignoring the fact that my computer is very sluggish when I try to use it on Saturday evenings during the scheduled virus scan. And don’t get me started on the Sunday Night Backup.)

Just a quick note: There’s an article about the business imperatives behind space elevators up at Money Magazine.

If you’re interested in the “realities” of space travel, money better be on your short list of things to learn up on. This article is a good read.