Lies, lies, they’re all lies

A formal analysis of the likelihood of LHC creating weird stuff that eats the Earth and destroys life as we know. Btw, ultra-high energy cosmic rays, WTF? Who makes up this shit?

(Tony): More Consise summary here

Blessings Upon the Throne of Tyranny

is a song title. It would have been a blog subtitle, but someone beat me to it with one that has been lurking in the background for a while now. HJ needs to wake up and get off the couch so he can go here for this and this.

monkey with (an extra) robitic arm

So I just read an article and watched a related video wherein a monkey is able to able to address a robotic arm with brain alone.

Step one: monkey uses joystick to play a game. map out the brain activity that the motions correspond to.

Step two: switch motor control of the robot arm, so that it’s the brain activity, not the joystick that triggers the motion.

Step three: monkey realizes that it doesn’t have to move its arm to control the robot arm, and does so (this is the big thing). Monkey can now address the robotic arm and its meat arm independently.

So, how many spare limbs do you want? Prehensile tail? What about mapping the motions for a typing hand directly into keystrokes with no actual mechanical interface involved? The first plan is obviously for limb replacement/exoskeleton control for amputees, paraplegics, etc., but there’s no reason you can’t map more limbs or movable interfaces on, if a monkey can get a spare arm right now.

video:  (sounds are great. the big deal is at about 4:30)

cf: SA forums thread.  First page is pretty good- degenerates into mind-body quandaries on page two…  the OP finds some pretty neat things, and runs the science megathread.

Hitchens

This is easily the happiest I have ever heard Chris Hitchens sound in a column. It is, as one might expect, about booze. I do enjoy his usual spleen-filled contributions (c.f. God is not Great), though.