Technoccult

Mutate Your Mind

Show menu Hide menu

MonthApril 2008

Slashdong builds working interactive sex game with Fleshlight

April 28, 2008 /

you can now literally have sex with your computer

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in on the open source teledildonics projects at Slashdong, but luckily Grinding tipped me off to this:

Ladies and gentlemen, you can – oh, sorry, I’ll start again. Gentlemen, I’m pleased to announce you can now literally have sex with your computer. Those noble innovators at Slashdong have taken the humble fleshlight device, and published detailed instructions on extactly how to control your favourite PC game with your penis.

The article gives instructions on hooking it up to some 3d sex game, but of course now that it’s loose on teh interwub, someone will get it operational for SecondLife. And then World of Warcraft – imagine grinding your way through a few instances purely through pelvis power!

Full Story: Slashdong

Alternative 3 and Lost

April 28, 2008 /

alternative 3

What was Alternative 3?

Alternative 3 is a television programme, broadcast in the UK in 1977 as a fictional hoax, an heir to Orson Welles’ radio production of The War of the Worlds. Purporting to be an investigation into Britain’s contemporary “brain drain,” Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the moon and Mars habitable in the event of a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth.

The programme was originally meant to be broadcast on April Fools Day, 1977. While its broadcast was delayed until June by industrial action, the credits explicitly date the film to April 1st. Alternative 3 ended with credits for the actors involved in the production and featured interviews with a fictitious American astronaut. However, some conspiracy theory supporters have argued Alternative 3 is at least partly true.

Full Story: Wikipedia

Black Belt Jones writes:

Chances are if we’ve been to the pub together over the last 15 years, I will have mentioned Alternative-3, amongst the canon of great media proto-ARGs that include Orson Welles’ War Of The Worlds, Ghostwatch, etc.

I re-watched it on the plane over to the USA, and my addled-brain couldn’t help but retcon the whole thing into the LOST universe.

It was made of course, when the DHARMA initiative is intended to have made their orientation movies, which helps.

But the plot within it is worthy of Abrams, Lindelhof, et al.

Full Story: Black Belt Jones.

CCTV Space Invader

April 28, 2008 /

Photo by Black Belt Jones

(via Grinding)

Scientists Flesh Out Plans to Grow (and Sell) Test Tube Meat

April 28, 2008 /

In five to 10 years, supermarkets might have some new products in the meat counter: packs of vat-grown meat that are cheaper to produce than livestock and have less impact on the environment.

According to a new economic analysis (.pdf) presented at this week’s In Vitro Meat Symposium in As, Norway, meat grown in giant tanks known as bioreactors would cost between $5,200-$5,500 a ton (3,300 to 3,500 euros), which the analysis claims is cost competitive with European beef prices.

Full Story: Wired

(via Grinding)

The beginnings of personalized health care

April 28, 2008 /

The latest weapon here utilizes the advances in the understanding of the human genome.

Thanks to companies like Navigenics for $US 2,500 and a sample of your spit you can get a full, personal DNA analysis.

So you have your personal DNA, but what can you do with it? While science is working on reading the codes to work out the mapping to health risks and diseases, it’s still a way off from actually having enough knowledge to get in there and eliminate them all together. But you can do a lot with some advance warning; as Navigenics says in it’s advice to Doctors:

Depending on the condition, these can include watching for early signs; taking advantage of further screening tests; and taking steps to prevent, delay or minimize the condition.

Full Story: Grinding.

Anti-population control book reviewed

April 28, 2008 /

Connelly criticizes Ms. Gandhi, influential author Paul Ehrlich (“The Population Bomb”), and other thought leaders who agreed that only population control could save the world from poverty and other maladies. The 20th century marked the first time the future of a species – not only its numbers but also its nature – became the object of its own design, he writes. People eradicated diseases, regulated migration, and manipulated fertility rates. Human populations became the subject of scientific experiments and political struggles. The stakes – and the consequences – were huge.

Americans were the first to pursue policies to shape the world population and played a leading role in institutionalizing the science of demography and the political strategy of family planning. But critics on both the left and the right have attacked population control as something perpetrated by white, wealthy, elite people (especially in the United States), upon the rest of the world, particularly poor nations, where populations had been spiraling out of control.

[…]

But now that Asians have reduced their reproductive rate to 2.1 children, for example, there are other issues to consider. If they also have air conditioning and automobiles, they will have a much greater impact on the global ecosystem than a billion more subsistence farmers, he writes.

Full Story: Christian Science Monitor

Latest Sany Pitbull mixtape

April 28, 2008 /

Download here

More new funk carioca at Fat Planet

First brain implant research with human subjects

April 27, 2008 /

Researchers at Osaka University are stepping up efforts to develop robotic body parts controlled by thought, by placing electrode sheets directly on the surface of the brain. Led by Osaka University Medical School neurosurgery professor Toshiki Yoshimine, the research marks Japan’s first foray into invasive (i.e. requiring open-skull surgery) brain-machine interface research on human test subjects. The aim of the research is to develop real-time mind-controlled robotic limbs for the disabled, according to an announcement made at an April 16 symposium in Aichi prefecture.

Full Story: Pink Tentacle.

(via Grinding)

Those not wanting to cut open their skulls might want to take a look at the less intrusive Emotiv EPOC Neuroheadset, which will is scheduled to be available commercially by Christmas of 2008 for $299.

Banksy paints anti-CCTV message while under CCTV surveillance

April 27, 2008 /

The secretive graffiti artist managed to erect three storeys of scaffolding behind a security fence despite being watched by a CCTV camera.

Then, during darkness and hidden behind a sheet of polythene, he painted this comment on ‘Big Brother’ society.

Yesterday the scaffolding gang returned to remove all evidence – again without the camera operator stopping them.

Full Story: Daily Mail

(via Grinding)

Sacramental Theory and Practice

April 27, 2008 /

“The medieval theologian Peter Lombard provided a definition of sacramentum that is still often cited by Catholics today: ‘an outward sign of inward grace.’ Since Thelemites accept neither grace nor guilt as the basis for interaction with the divine, it is evident that at a minimum this definition would need to be altered for our purposes to reflect a signification of ‘will’ rather than ‘grace.’ But even then, the relationship between ‘outward’ and ‘inward’ is suspect on such grounds as CCXX I:8. Thomas Aquinas’ definition of sacrament as ‘the sign of a sacred thing in so far as it sanctifies men,’ may perhaps be of use, as long as it is understood that the condition of sanctification in Thelemic Gnosis differs considerably from that found in the slave-religion Christianity.

Certainly, we do not make the sacramental status of a practice dependent on its institution by Aleister Crowley, any more than we do by Jesus of Nazareth. While Crowley’s precedent may lead us to consider certain practices as sacraments (and to define the regular form of those practices); it is in no way a necessary ingredient for those sacraments which are demanded by the vital circumstances of the Church or its members.”

(via Vigorous Food & Divine Madness)

(Thanks DJ!)

Older posts Newer posts

Archive by Subject

Archive by Date

© 2025 Technoccult

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑