Mood:  mischievious

Not the everyone doesn't already know that men are pigs, but one research group at Purdue is taking that adage to a whole 'nother level.

Collagen-laden ECM from a walking side of ham did that? Who knew: despite not posessing proper hands, as such, a pig has still somehow managed to give a person the finger!

...no, nothing on that one? Not a chuckle, at least? Alright, fine...

This really surprises me: a ground-up sprinkling of dried pig bladder kick-started a body into action. Basically this schmo's finger healed itself before it could get plastered over with dense, crusty, irrevocable scar tissue (think about an abandoned building being purchased and renovated before it can be demolished to make way for a parking lot).

Assuming those picture that go along with the story are legit then this is major news: the damage in that one photo is clearly catostrophic, but then there's that nearly-perfect finger (nail and all) in the other one.

And, like the story says, no skin-grafts. No surgery. No cuts and blood...

No stitches... 

I personally thought that the next big breakthrough in body-part regeneration would involve accelerated growth of adult clonal cell colonies extracted directly from the patient in question (eg: Justin's 'test-tube-grown skin', pg 8) but this is really cool: regenerating fairly complex body parts (fingers ain't simply a mess of flesh, after all) without invasion. With, metaphorically, the touch of a wand.

With, quite literally, the sprinkling of some pixie dust.

This is something to watch. Consequently, given the astouding sci-fi quality of the story, it's suitable that they're calling this stuff mined from the insides of these animals 'pixie dust', 'cause I wouldn't image getting results like these when pigs flied.

Scientific Progress goes down to the corner store to get some bacon to slather on that old wakeboarding injury... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:45 PM ADT

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Mood:  a-ok

I'm gonna post 'On the Razor's Edge' together with the followup chapter, 'If One Wake at Midnight' (for all you Dickinson fans...). Two for the price of one, yeah, but it has the added effect of delaying the overall post (not too long: it's all almost done, really, and I'm only posting both at once 'cause I won't know where I want the actual break between them to be until I AM completely done with both...)

I was gonna name a REEEEAAALLLY late chapter in the next book after a Dickinson line: 'The Thing With Feathers' (ie: hope) until I found out that an episode of Without a Trace (of all things) already used that phrase.

So, instead, Emily gets her shout-out here, instead. Good thing, too, 'cause I had no f**king clue what else to call this second half otherwise...

Check the screenshot out down there for a small line of rambling notes. It looks better worked into dialogue, I'd say.

At least, I'd hope...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 3:46 PM ADT

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Mood:  surprised

This time it's Shane himself that gets the benefit of scientific progress:

I got my TYPERS montage up on the main site; it glides on a smooth stream, it plays mp3-quality sound, it has picture and volume controls, it has good resolution even at full-screen viewing, it'll clean your house, cook your steaks and get wine stains out of carpet: everything one could ask for!

My noobness quotient is dropping, I think...

Of course, the fact that it works for ME implies that it won't work for the majority of computer users simply by taking Murphy's Law into account. If one owns a Mac (god help you anyway...) this is WMV so, again, the thing might not work right.

For that matter I've only tested it on Firefox 'cause... well... that's what I use, so there. Other browsers might... I dunno: explode, or something bad.

Hope not, anyway...

Scientific Progress goes to look for more code it doesn't understand to tinker with...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 6:18 PM ADT

Updated: Sunday, 27 April 2008 6:20 PM ADT

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Mood:  lyrical

It only occurred to me after seeing it for the fourth time, but in retrospect Carmen has one of the weakest overall storylines of any opera I've ever seen.

I won't go into little points, or anything, but take another popular opera that is (musically) inferior to Bizet's work: La Boheme. There's a story: right parts development, pacing and a suitably sad ending giving the audience a hearty spoonful of mono no aware, if you will.

...god, I sound like an a**hole right now, don't I?

Anyway: in Carmen the problem, mainly, is that the lead character is an idiot, values 'freedom' to the point of running right into a man's knife 'cause he won't let her go see a bullfight, didn't avoid the man despite being warned about her impending death repeatedly via tarot cards, and she is, ultimately, not a poetically tragic figure, but a bitch.

It's one of the only operatic death scenes where I want to start clapping AS the knife finds flesh, and not after the ensuing mourning overture.

Hell: Madame Butterfly (I'm stuck on Puccini, I guess...) evokes more sympathetic emotional response from me in five minutes than Carmen does in three and a half hours.

Carmen's only saving grace is that it has, hands down, absolutely the best f**king musical score in operatic history. Makes up for the terrible story enough to make it my favorite opera, anyway.

But in conclusion: story ain't everything, but it certainly helps... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:51 PM ADT

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Mood:  a-ok

The new James Bond film is named after an obscure short story published in the 'For Your Eyes Only' series of exploits.

It's one of the atypical entires in the canon: while Bond's previous night's exploits are glossed over in the opening, for almost all of the story he is a passive listener to his host's tale of 'true love', or lack thereof.

Given the track record on the set of this new cinematic Quantum, however, it seems that Bond ain't sittin' on his ass most of the time...

The title's a stretch, I've gotta say. In the book it worked so well as one of the clear defining points of the host's story, while it's been clumsily adapted to fit a storyline involving the fictional 'Quantum' agency (a stand-in for SPECTRE, 'natch...) in this new cinematic outing.

I'll be first in line to see the damn thing, regardless, but with all the talk about the extra stuntwork (Craig reportedly says that 'Royale' was a walk in the park compared to 'Quantum') and the focus 'more on gadgets', as a propmaster put it, I'm hoping they don't make the mistake of devolving into a Roger Moore-era reliance on Bondian silliness and technology-to-the-extreme...

I think they're cleverer than that. What they've got going here is really good stuff, after all: Craig's damn-near second on the list of great Bondians (currently tied for number-2 with Timothy Dalton, in my reckoning) and while a million more movies with the same quality as 'Royale' couldn't help him dethrone Connery he's shaping into the role quite nicely, says I.

(BTW: If I haven't posted in a week, and... well, I haven't... it's 'cause I'm both strapped for time, and, on top of it all, polishing 'On the Razor's Edge'. That's due any day, incidentally...)

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 3:17 PM ADT

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Mood:  suave

...

...

Huh? What do you want?...

GO AWAY... I'm busy!...

...

... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 4:59 PM ADT

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Mood:  incredulous

Brits and Europeans who read this blog are, more likely than not, aghast about things we've got going on over here in the US 'o A such as, oh, I dunno... Capital Punishment, for one.

But facts are facts, and we kill our worst offenders. Most of us think this is sensible, and the appeals process is surreally long and all, so end of story.

But in good old Louisiana they're prepping an oblong box for a guy who didn't even kill anyone.

He just brutally raped his 8-year-old stepdaughter.

Now, I say good for LA (that is, I agree with the jurisprudence) but with some qualifiers...

In my book it is repeat sex offenders, not especially first-timers, that should be introduced to the cold needle of justice. After all, the first time around there can always be that shadow of a doubt: did the witness lie, did their PARENTS ensure conviction through embellishments, etc... etc...? These are kids testifying, after all, and absolute credibility is difficult to obtain, more often than not.

Of course, if the evidence is OVERWHELMING, this qualifier is moot. In the LA case the evidence seems to be compelling enough to excuse this point, but I still broach it as a valid argument: stick a kid once, then twice: your ass is on ice... 

So, I say a first offense and conviction should merit a hefty prison term (...hefty...) so that, barring overturning on appeal or the recantation of the victim's story, the perpatrator is beyond a reasonable age of 'active libido' upon their release.

The offender COULD be allowed to get out sooner, perhaps within a decade, even, but they would have to agree to a little surgical intervention (by that I mean full-fledged under-the-knife castration, not that wimpy 'chemical castration' thing in use today...)

Even after getting 'clipped' or getting old, there's always a compulsion with these people, be it mere overriding desire or sadism, that might trump their lack of either libido or 'nads, so they might reoffend even after all this.

If so, kill 'em.

If these policies seem 'draconian' (and, by definition, they are) one must realize the truth about violent sexual predators: unlike some punk who robs a liquor store, or even a person who kills another human being in a fit of passion, it is almost STATISTICALLY GUARANTEED that a sexual predator, especially a child sexual predator, will have SOME additional transgression somewhere down the line if allowed to. Recidivism rates for this 'worst of the worst' population are staggeringly high, and it is the ANOMALIES in the system who will not ever reoffend again, even if that 'offense' is purchasing and using child pornography.

Which, by the way, makes them only an accomplice to child rape. What a wonderful distinction...

LA should tread lightly here, but technically their jurisprudence is in the right place: morally and ethically this man deserves to die for his crime.

But, at the end of the day, ten'll get you one the Supreme Court vacates the sentence. They've got something of (ironically!) a 'lack of balls' when it comes to letting blood. Maybe they should.

But maybe this defendant needs to check out, too. 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:44 PM ADT

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Mood:  bright

This is a totally "TYPERS"-related post, so if you don't care, you know what to do...

As long as I'm on the subject of eyes (and I still am), I churned out a five-minute art piece from source material graciously provided by the GNU free license over at Wikipedia.com.

Yeah: I stole the entire eye image and barely modified it at all. Eh: I rationalize it by saying that, unlike all the OTHER source material I've cannabalized to make some of my other images, this one's technically open to such use, per the license.

So, there.

What to call it? "Reflections on Antithesis"?

(sounds like some really bad case of Engrish, or something...) 

Ostensibly the eye up there belongs to Ever, bein' blood-red and all, but it's certainly not obvious.

I've found the technical relationship between Antithesis and Ever troubling of late: Ever is, after all, BYDO Core material stolen from the Great Communion in Dimension 26 in order to create the Platinum Heart, whereas the rest of that Core went on to attack Earth as the Galilean Mass; a certain part of that stuff later encounters Justin Storm at Deimos as the Antithesis Entity...

So, at the end of the day, technically, Ever and Anti are identical twins...

I say 'technically' 'cause it's a moot point; the relationship between Anti and Justin is far more important (infinitely so) than that between Ever and Anti. In fact, I don't think it'll be an issue at all: both of them are smart enough to put two-and-two together, but kinda like the fact that the Joker technically knows who Batman really is, but simply doesn't care, so too are neither of them interested in their own relationship.

Besides: it really is just semantics. They're identical in source material only:

Antitiesis was born out of a minutes-long download of human prejudices and basal instincts, and that's all he's running on. He's a monster.

Ever was born out of her own long-term unique experience with her pilot, understanding her pilot's mind, and from analyzing the learning experiences Quint and Mehta had with their pilots.

I don't wanna say too terribly much, but it's not too difficult to figure out: she's a human. 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:49 AM ADT

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Mood:  a-ok

Take a lookit this picture.

Nice, huh? It was selected as a Feature Picture by Wikimedia Commons (Wikipedia's media dump) but for some reason all efforts to nominate it as an FP on Wikipedia proper are stymied.

I bring this up not just because I love to use the word 'stymied' in a sentence (and I do) but because I have a hard time understanding the rationale for not FP-ing the thing: some naysayers claim that much better and higher-resolution pictures of the eye can be taken for Wikipedia's use.

Ooookay: but right now that's the best eye image they've got, and I wouldn't poo-poo the act of taking a photo of the human eye: it's not as easy as it looks. After attempting the act myself I'm convinced that the resolution of that photo is damn-well excellent. If it's beatable as an image, it ain't beatable by much.

For all my attempts I couldn't manage half the resolution power of that image (granted my camera's not as good, but it is usually excellent with extreme close-up shots). Lighting issues are a nightmare, eyelashes get in the way and hog the focus, shit gets reflected off the eye and into the picture (especially the camera itself: I've got a stack of pictures where my pupil proudly states that it's a product of the Canon corporation...) 

I've given up on getting a really crisp eye shot. The best I could do is take two of my better attempts and false-color the things; makes 'em interesting enough to overcome their lack of clarity, anyway...

^ The lightsource got into this one (that long black smudge on the left). I have neither the proper equipment nor the expertise with lighting issues to fix that...

^ At least you get some nice blood vessels with this one. The light was visible on it as well, but here I cheated and smoothed-out the left side. You can see the rim of the camera circling the pupil about a third of the way outside the iris. I didn't notice it 'till I was finished coloring. To hell with it...

These pics are 800 x 600, but the originals are a massive 2560 x 1920. Doesn't matter, though: it's all grains and blurs at that resolution.

Anyway: my own attempts make me appreciate that image a whole lot more... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:36 PM ADT

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Mood:  lazy

I'm not really a big fan of rewriting organ music for strings...

Shane thinks that guitars are best suited for more... well, electrical pursuits...

Ah, well. 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 7:15 PM ADT

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