Real-time Mocap and VR in UDK - YouTube: ""
'via Blog this'
Talking and posting items about my interests and concerns. This includes but is not limited to Education, Art, History and Science.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
Heroes in a half shell: autonomous robot sea turtles in development -- Engadget
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/05/robot-sea-turtles/?a_dgi=aolshare_facebook
Heroes in a half shell: autonomous robot sea turtles in development
By Nicole Leeposted Oct 5th 2012 12:37AM
Sure you could have a robot assist you around the home, or even one that'll make factories friendlier, but we'll opt for a robot sea turtle any day of the week. The Swiss folks over at ETH Zurich are working on making that a reality with the Naro-Tartaruga, a turtle-inspired machine that would swim efficiently while carrying cargo in its shell. It's currently a cylindrical aluminum vessel with a couple of flippers, but concept designs include that totally bad-ass bot in the image above. The turtle-bot has a top speed of over 7 knots, so it'll handily beat any real sea turtle in a race, and the big torso has enough space for battery and sensors that are necessary for autonomous function. The fins on the turtle have a fully three-dimensional mechanism -- there are three actuators per fin, and each actuate the fin axle independently. The end goal is for the development of underwater autonomous vehicles, which will hopefully bring us one step closer to SeaQuest DSV. In the meantime, we'd like one just so we can freak the hell out of our cats.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Government and Education
Article Source: http://www.cm-life.com/2012/02/22/column-santorums-education-plan-good-but-lacks-in-some-areas/
COLUMN: Santorum’s education plan good, but lacks in some areasAgree? I do.
The topic of education is always a key issue in Presidential elections, and 2012 will be no different.
On Sunday, Rick Santorum went on CBS, saying he wants parents to take a stronger role in shaping education.
Santorum has been a longtime supporter of homeschooling, and some in the media unfairly twisted what he said to make it sound like he wants to end public education. Nothing could be further from the truth. What he said was, “Local communities and parents should be the ones who are in control of public education.”
When pressed for his overall plan, he said, “First I’d get the federal government out … To the extent possible, with respect to mandates and designing curriculum and the like, I would get the state government out,” saying he wants parents to be “in charge, working with the local school district to try to design an educational environment for each child that optimizes their potential.”
In some ways, his plan is good, but in others, it falls short.
In terms of the federal government, the Department of Education has turned into a monstrosity of mandating test standards and failed policies like No Child Left Behind. The constitutionality of the Department of Education is shaky, at best, with supporters of the department saying Congress has the right to regulate education under the Commerce Clause. The existence of the department violates the Tenth Amendment, and the right to regulate education should rightfully be left to the states.
If Americans want a Department of Education, the Constitution should be amended to truly enable Congress to regulate education; however, such an amendment is unlikely to pass, because it would require lawmakers to admit the department has been running unconstitutionally for the past 32 years.
In lieu of abolishing the department, the department’s role should be shrunk to only stepping in as a last resort to help struggling states and school districts.
As for Santorum’s plan to decrease state involvement, this also violates the 10th Amendment. The federal government has no right to tell a state they cannot implement mandates or design curriculum.
That being said, the people who know what students need most are often found at the local level. Teachers in Detroit know what Detroit students need a lot more than a bureaucrat in Lansing. The role of states in education should be setting broad standards and ensuring these standards are upheld.
Struggling districts like Detroit may be unwilling to admit there is a problem until it is too late, and it should be the state’s job to keep school districts in check, but when it comes time to fix those problems, it should be fixed at the local level when feasible.
Broad solutions that give near-complete power to local communities will be just as harmful to students as placing too much power in the hands of the federal government, and candidates should try to find a middle ground that is best for students.
Nathan Inks is the president of College Republicans. The column does not reflect views of the organization.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
ACTA, SOPA & PIPA Conversation
Everything here is a direct quote.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/ us-signs-international-anti -piracy-accord.ars
20 hours ago ·
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Ancient City of Angkor
Drought Led to Demise of Ancient City of Angkor - Yahoo! News:
Source for Article: http://news.yahoo.com/drought-led-demise-ancient-city-angkor-142407479.html
Drought Led to Demise of Ancient City of Angkor
By Charles Choi | LiveScience.com – 21 hrs ago
The ancient city of Angkor — the most famous monument of which is the breathtaking ruined temple of Angkor Wat — might have collapsed due to valiant but ultimately failed efforts to battle drought, scientists find.
The great city of Angkor in Cambodia, first established in the ninth century, was the capital of the Khmer Empire, the major player in southeast Asia for nearly five centuries. It stretched over more than 385 square miles (1,000 square kilometers), making it the most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world. In comparison, Philadelphia covers 135 square miles (350 sq. km), while Phoenix sprawls across more than 500 square miles (1,300 sq. km), not including the huge suburbs.
Suggested causes for the fall of the Khmer Empire in the late 14th to early 15th centuries have included war and land overexploitation. However, recent evidence suggests that prolonged droughts might have been linked to the decline of Angkor — for instance, tree rings from Vietnam suggest the region experienced long spans of drought interspersed with unusually heavy rainfall.
Angkor possessed a complex network of channels, moats, and embankments and reservoirs known as barays to collect and store water from the summer monsoons for use in rice paddy fields in case of drought. To learn more about how the Khmer managed their water, scientists analyzed a 6-foot (2-meter)-long core sample of sediment taken from the southwest corner of the largest Khmer reservoir, the West Baray, which could hold 1.87 billion cubic feet (53 million cubic meters) of water, more than 20 times the amount of stone making up the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Also, to collect samples from across the greater Angkor region, researcher Mary Beth Day, a paleolimnologist at the University of Cambridge in England, hired a "tuk-tuk" (motorized rickshaw) driver, and was able to convince him to drive her around the countryside, "often on tracks that tuk-tuks probably aren't designed to travel on," she recalled. "We nearly got stuck in the sand a couple of times, but my driver was remarkably accommodating given that he probably thought I was crazy."
The researchers deduced a 1,000-year-long climate history of Angkor from the baray. They found at around the time Angkor collapsed the rate at which sediment was deposited in the baray dropped to one-tenth of what it was before, suggesting that water levels fell dramatically as well. The discovery "really emphasizes how significant the events during this period must have been," Day said.
As both water levels and sediment deposits ebbed, the ecology of the baray changed as well, with more bottom-dwelling algae and floating plants coming into existence.
"The ecological shift primarily serves to underline how environmental conditions in the West Baray have been fundamentally different since the 17th century, post-collapse, as compared to what the baray was like during Angkorian times," Day said.
In the end, the water management systems of the Khmer might have been insufficient to cope with sudden and intense variations in climate. [10 Ways Weather Changed History]
"Angkor can be an example of how technology isn't always sufficient to prevent major collapse during times of severe instability," Day told LiveScience. "Angkor had a highly sophisticated water management infrastructure, but this technologic advantage was not enough to prevent its collapse in the face of extreme environmental conditions."
"It's important to understand, however, that failure of the water management network was not the sole reason for the downfall of the Khmer Empire," Day added. "The collapse of Angkor was a complex process brought about by several different factors — social, political and environmental."
The scientists detailed their findings online Jan. 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Historic Assault
The NDAA's historic assault on American liberty | Jonathan Turley | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:
Article Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/02/ndaa-historic-assault-american-liberty?newsfeed=true
The NDAA's historic assault on American libertyBy signing into law the NDAA, the president has awarded the military extraordinary powers to detain US citizens without trial,
Do believe the hype, says Professor Turley: the NDAA, signed into law by President Obama on 31 December, authorises the US military to detain citizens indefinitely without trial. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment, to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country … and citizens partied in unwitting bliss into the New Year.
Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely (see the text of the statement here).
Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.
The latest claim is even more insulting. You do not "support our troops" by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the president. The "American way of life" is defined by our constitution and specifically the bill of rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.
The almost complete failure of the mainstream media to cover this issue is shocking. Many reporters have bought into the spin of the Obama administration as they did the spin over torture by the Bush administration. Even today, reporters refuse to call waterboarding torture despite the long line of cases and experts defining waterboarding as torture for decades.
On the NDAA, reporters continue to mouth the claim that this law only codifies what is already the law. That is not true. The administration has fought any challenges to indefinite detention to prevent a true court review. Moreover, most experts agree that such indefinite detention of citizens violates the constitution.
There are also those who continue the longstanding effort to excuse Obama's horrific record on civil liberties by blaming either others or the times. One successful myth is that there is an exception for citizens. The White House is saying that changes to the law made it unnecessary to veto the legislation. That spin is ridiculous. The changes were the inclusion of some meaningless rhetoric after key amendments protecting citizens were defeated. The provision merely states that nothing in the provisions could be construed to alter Americans' legal rights. Since the Senate clearly views citizens as not just subject to indefinite detention but even to execution without a trial, the change offers nothing but rhetoric to hide the harsh reality.
The Obama administration and Democratic members are in full spin mode – using language designed to obscure the authority given to the military. The exemption for American citizens from the mandatorydetention requirement (section 1032) is the screening language for the next section, 1031, which offers no exemption for American citizens from the authorisation to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial.
Obama could have refused to sign the bill and the Congress would have rushed to fund the troops. Instead, as confirmed by Senator Levin, the White House conducted a misinformation campaign to secure this power while portraying the president as some type of reluctant absolute ruler, or, as Obama maintains, a reluctant president with dictatorial powers.
Most Democratic members joined their Republican colleagues in voting for this un-American measure. Some Montana citizens are moving to force the removal of these members who, they insist, betrayed their oaths of office and their constituents. Most citizens, however, are continuing to treat the matter as a distraction from the holiday cheer.
For civil libertarians, the NDAA is our Mayan moment: 2012 is when the nation embraced authoritarian powers with little more than a pause between rounds of drinks.
Article Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/02/ndaa-historic-assault-american-liberty?newsfeed=true
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