RTFA: http://www.hemmy.net/2008/04/19/the-impossible-art…

Chinese artist Li Wei from Beijing started off his performance series ‘Mirroring’ and later on took off attention with his ‘Falls’ series which shows the artist with his head and chest embedded into the ground. His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. Li Wei states that these images are not computer montages and works with the help of props such as mirror, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.

Insane. Dangerous! Cool.

RTFA: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/Story?id…

What, then, provoked one U.S. Marine to let himself be videotaped apparently flinging a yelping puppy over a cliff, bursting into laughter at the sound of the animal’s body hitting the ground below? The tape of the apparent incident has rocketed around the Internet, provoking a firestorm of criticism.

The motivation for such an act, if it did indeed occur, may be as complex and deep as the U.S. war that has dragged on for more than four years, experts told ABCNEWS.com. Chief among them: Having to live with the constant fear of being injured or killed might have led this Marine to take his aggression out on a defenseless animal, several psychologists said.

I disagree with the fundamental premise of the article: it’s not clear that this is cruelty. The puppy is obviously in a combat zone, so it’s no surprise that a US Soldier is nearby. It’s obvious that it is a soldier committing the act, and we’re well aware that animals are being used by terrorists.

This is just another instance of the predictable knee-jerk reaction of the liberal media and liberal blogging world. Pity for the puppy, scorn for the soldier. As usual, the liberals jump to conclusions, but I ask: what is the context? Literally, the tail wags this dog, and literally, this particular dog is headed over a cliff.

I must caution you against feeling for the puppy due to emotional reasons. It is a cute, cuddly, and innocent baby of an animal. However, if you allow yourself to think such thoughts, it will be impossible to view this situation in the proper context. How else can you reconcile the actions of this soldier with your beliefs, unless you kill the part of your soul that feels pity for the puppy.

Listen folks: we can’t conclude that this is cruelty, because we’re a nation at war. Feel pity for the soldier, not for some insignificant animal. I say that if it helps our soldiers, then throwing enemy puppies off a cliff is as patriotic as anything else. And another thing: let’s send our troops some body armor, too.

Well, maybe.

RTFA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine

One of the simplest examples of stellar engine is the Shkadov thruster (named after Dr. Leonid Mikhailovich Shkadov who first proposed it), or a Class A stellar engine.[1] Such an engine is a stellar propulsion system, consisting of an enormous mirror/light sail - actually a massive type of solar statite large enough to classify as a megastructure, probably by an order of magnitude - which would balance gravitational attraction towards and radiation pressure away from the star. Since the radiation pressure of the star would now be asymmetrical, i.e. more radiation is being emitted in one direction as compared to another, the ‘excess’ radiation pressure acts as net thrust, accelerating the star in the direction of the hovering statite.[2] Such thrust and acceleration would be very slight, but such a system could be stable for millennia. Any planetary system attached to the star would be ‘dragged’ along by its parent star. The sun: power = 3.85*1026 W, force = 1.28*1018 N, mass = 1.99*1030 kg, acceleration = 6.45*10-13 m/s2. 1000000 years = 3.16*1013 s, velocity = 20 m/s.

Nice! Barring the current issues with human “death,” this would make it a lot easier to communicate with other life forms. Simply drag your star, and the solar system with it, to a reasonably small light-distance near to the life to communicate with. …Time dilation… The act of taking a long nap - what’s several hundred million years? The sun has a good - what - 2 or 4 billion left before it goes “red giant,” right? “We” can just find another stellar engine when the current one (Sol, “the Sun”) is used up.

RTFA: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/01/documentary-c…

Three years in the making, Jon Ronson’s Crazy Rulers of the World explores the apparent madness at the heart of US military intelligence. With first-hand access to the leading players in the story, Jon Ronson examines the extraordinary — and plain bizarre — national secrets at the core of George W Bush’s war on terror.

No comment. Oh - watch this.

RTFA: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/07092…

Many plants form internal communications networks and are able to exchange information efficiently. Chat networkMany herbal plants such as strawberry, clover, reed and ground elder naturally form networks. Individual plants remain connected with each other for a certain period of time by means of runners. These connections enable the plants to share information with each other via internal channels. They are therefore very similar to computer networks. But what do plants want to chat to each other about?

Insane. Plants can be like animals… in the same way that fungus is marginally more animal-like than single-celled organisms.

RTFA: http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/01/1…

October marks 10 friggin years of Slashdot, and nobody is more surprised about any of this than me. Throughout the month we’ll be running a series of navel gazing meta news articles about our history, infrastructure and plans for the future. We’re also going to give away 500 t-shirts and ThinkGeek gift certificates to people willing to organize and attend their own local Slashdot parties. One lucky winner will get a cool grand to blow at ThinkGeek! I’m going to attend “official” gatherings in Ann Arbor, MI on Oct 20 and in Palo Alto, CA on Oct 25. But you can read on for details about party organization and how you can win the grand prize.

The idea is simple. Visit the Slashdot Anniversary Party Web Page. You can sign up to attend a party, or if there’s nobody hosting near you, you can create your own. The details of your local parties are up to you- each has a corresponding discussion so you can work it out amongst yourselves. The Ann Arbor gathering will be at a bar because dammit I’m old and don’t have time to go out for beers much these days. But you do whatever works for the folks in your area. Dorm Room. Bar. Gym. Wherever several Slashdot readers gather, we shall attempt to mail shirts until we run out.

To be eligible for schwag, you need to schedule your party by Oct 8 and sign up to attend a party by Oct 13- this will give us time to figure out where to send the shirts, and time to send them before you all start partying naked during the official party window of Oct 19-28.

As for the one thousand dollar ThinkGeek Gift Certificate grand prize, the winner will be the party attendee who submits the coolest thing for our “scrapbook”. Videos. Pictures. Songs. Anything you can email. Something that proves that your party was the one we all wish we were at. The deadline for submissions will be Oct 28. We’ll have an official submission email address posted later. This is all about creativity and coolness so good luck with that. The grand prize winner will be posted on Oct 31, the end of the month when we can all forget that any of this ever happened.

Oh, and happy birthday to us. Here’s to wasting another decade, same as the first.

Wild… 10 years. My mind is blown.