Frisbees of Death

ByJohn Brown

Yes, a weapon in development. Add this to the fart bomb, the scream, and The Rods from God and you’ll see where the future of the military is going to be very interesting. Here’s a list of interesting weapons.

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  • Move over Internet, here comes the Grid

    ByJohn Brown

    This geeked me out today.

    THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

    At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

    The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

    Can you imagine that game world? Can you imagine a world that’s an actual world? Where adventurers set out to find fortune and encounter all sorts of nasties being played by hundreds of thousands of other people around the globe?

    Dude.

    More here.

    Zing, Baby!

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  • Hitler’s Father and Snake Venom

    ByJohn Brown

    Hitler

    I’ve just begun HITLER by Ian Kershaw. Fascinating. And full of zing. Did you know that Hitler’s father:

    • Smoked like a chimney
    • Went to beer table after work instead of home
    • Took little interest in family and had multiple affairs with women
    • Beat Adolf almost daily, his gentle mother sometimes waiting outside the door while he thrashed his son
    • Had a passion for bee-keeping

    See, it’s weird, unexpected, almost against-type details like the last one that always seem to stimulate the zing meters.

    3 ways that snakes kill

    Let’s see: digest you, hundreds of blood clots, and brain attacks. Cool visuals of how the 3 types of venom work!

    And article explaining more about venom and why, for instance, sea snakes have such quick killing venom or why cobras have venom that could kill an elephant with one bite.

    So after reading this, I’m thinking of Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamsnake where in the future this woman uses snakes to manufacture medicine. Not in a factory, but in the snakes themselves. And she delivers them through natures brilliantly evolved hypodermics.

    But what other applications are there of this to a story? Heck, a murder mystery where you’d need to know the type of venom and the snakes nearby, a new type of dragon’s breath (instead of fire, could they breathe out a fog of one of the three toxins?), some new enzyme protein cocktail that leads to…superhero skills or is it immortality?

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  • TED

    ByJohn Brown

    I LOVE TED.

    No, I’m not coming out of any closet. I’m talking the annual Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) forum. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

    For example, here’s Richard Dawkins’ “Queerer than we can suppose: the strangeness of science.”

    Or here’s Hans Rosling’s “Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen” and his New insights on poverty and life around the world.

    Or how about Howard Rheingold’s “Way-new collaboration”There is, if done well, very few things as stimulating as an excellent speech. Thank you TED for providing a way to revive this marvelous genre by sharing it on the internet.

    Go to TED. But beware: you may end up unable to stop listening to one fascinating idea after another.

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