MachineMachine /stream - tagged with war http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net Orson Wells Meets HG Wells http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdghSMTXsU&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:52:13 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdghSMTXsU&feature=youtube_gdata Real Samurai Sword Technique - Cutting BB Gun pellet by Isao Machii - Japanese Katana Kenjutsu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzhs1Z8Rwnk&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Thu, 05 May 2011 05:56:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzhs1Z8Rwnk&feature=youtube_gdata The New Virology http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/the_new_virology?page=full Largely unseen by the world, two dangerous germs homed in on their targets in the spring and early summer of 2009. One was made by man to infect computers. The other was made by nature, and could infect man.

The man-made virus could invade a computer running Windows, replicate itself, wreck an industrial process, hide from human operators, and evade anti-virus programs. The natural pathogen could invade human cells, hijack them to replicate billions of copies of itself, and evade the body's immune system.

The man-made weapon was Stuxnet, a mysterious piece of computer… ]]> Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:45:07 -0700 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/the_new_virology?page=full How to Make Anything Signify Anything http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/40/sherman.php It is unlikely that Bacon’s cipher system was ever used for the transmission of military secrets, in the seventeenth century or in the twentieth. But for roughly a century from 1850, it set the world of literature on fire. A passion for puzzles, codes, and conspiracies fuelled a widespread suspicion that Shakespeare was not the author of his plays, and professional and amateur scholars of all sorts spent extraordinary amounts of time, energy, and money combing Renaissance texts in search of signatures and other messages that would reveal the true identity of their author. Even after the recent publication of… ]]> Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:17:39 -0700 http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/40/sherman.php Matters of life and death http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/10/ethics-trolley-problem/ Trolleyology encapsulates the deepest tensions in our moral outlook. To tease out our moral intuitions, philosophers have come up with ever more ingenious scenarios. The trolley is usually racing towards five unfortunates and the reader is presented with various means to rescue them at the cost of another life, involving props such as obese gentlemen, footbridges, trapdoors and lazy Susans. Some of the examples are so complex that, in the words of one exasperated philosopher, this branch of ethics “makes the Talmud look like Cliffs Notes [a US brand of study guides].” But at its root the trolley problem is… ]]> Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:39:00 -0700 http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/10/ethics-trolley-problem/ Ridley Scott goes back to Philip K. Dick for The Man In The High Castle http://io9.com/5658586/ridley-scott-goes-back-to-philip-k-dick-for-the-man-in-the-high-castle According to the Guardian Ridley Scott is producing a four-part BBC miniseries based on Philip K Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle. Howard Brenton, the playwright and Spooks writer, is presently adapting the book. Its a pretty complicated story with handful of story lines that follow a variety of characters, so it's perfect miniseries fodder. It should be interesting to see if Scott keeps his miniseries set in the same time period as the book, the 1960s — we feel like he may be tempted to update it to the here and now. But either way, we're really… ]]> Fri, 08 Oct 2010 03:45:00 -0700 http://io9.com/5658586/ridley-scott-goes-back-to-philip-k-dick-for-the-man-in-the-high-castle Lamest edit wars - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars Occasionally, even experienced Wikipedians lose their heads and devote every waking moment to edit warring over the most trivial thing. This page documents our lamest examples. It isn't comprehensive or authoritative, but it serves as a showcase of situations where people lose sight of the big picture and obsessively expend huge amounts of energy fighting over something that, in the end, isn't really so important.

Back in the good old days, people would just get out their swords and guns and fight a duel; nowadays physical combat has been replaced by careful inciting of personal attacks, strategic… ]]> Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:46:00 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars Christopher Hitchens re-reads Animal Farm http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/christopher-hitchens-re-reads-animal-farm Animal Farm, as its author later wrote, "was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole". And indeed, its pages contain a synthesis of many of the themes that we have come to think of as "Orwellian". Among these are a hatred of tyranny, a love for animals and the English countryside, and a deep admiration for the satirical fables of Jonathan Swift. To this one might add Orwell's keen desire to see things from the viewpoint of childhood and innocence: he had… ]]> Mon, 26 Apr 2010 04:49:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/17/christopher-hitchens-re-reads-animal-farm On Seeing (an Imitation) http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/01/on-seeing-an-imitation.html

by Daniel Rourke

“Mimesis here is not the representation of one thing by another, the relation of resemblance or of identification between two beings, the reproduction of a product of nature by a product of art. It is not the relation of two products but of two productions. And of two freedoms... 'True' mimesis is between two producing subjects and not between two produced things.”

Jacques Derrida, Economimesis

Enlarged pupil (an eye with iritis)
As the day drew closer to its end so I strained…
]]> Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:04:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/01/on-seeing-an-imitation.html Cargo cult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults are focused on obtaining the material wealth (the "cargo") of the advanced culture through magical thinking and religious rituals and practices, believing that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors. Cargo cults developed primarily in remote parts of New Guinea and other Melanesian and Micronesian societies in the southwest Pacific Ocean, beginning with the first significant arrivals of Westerners in the 19th century. Similar behaviors have, however, also appeared…
]]> Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:51:00 -0700 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult Seeing Centaurs http://machinemachine.net/text/featured/seeing-centaur

The Greek CentaurIt is written that when the Maya people of The New World were first set upon by the Spanish cavalry it was spiritual confusion that hastened their demise. To their eyes the seething onslaught of man and horse was made of but one, new and terrifying, species of creature. In the West we might call these creatures Centaurs: liminal entities fused of two distinct species. To the Maya the border between God and beast was breached by the Spanish invaders, truly alien beings who in all…

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:50:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/featured/seeing-centaur Viktor Bulla's Pioneers in Defense Drill, Leningrad (1937) http://www.flickr.com/photos/heidiheidiheidi/736886539/

Heidi Heidi Heidi posted a photo:

Viktor Bulla's Pioneers in Defense Drill, Leningrad (1937)

Bulla's photograph of hundreds of children wearing gas masks was not meant to be ghoulish, a commentary on war or lost innocence, but rather exemplified a reason for pride--the country was blessed with well-trained, well-equipped and obviously courageous young fighters.

]]> Fri, 06 Jul 2007 04:58:00 -0700 http://www.flickr.com/photos/heidiheidiheidi/736886539/ The Simulacrisation of Technology into Life http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50098 As the Pentagon ousts plans to turn insects into cyber war machines you'd be forgiven for asking the question: Where does the real digital end and the faked life begin? Are we simulating life synthetically? or just speeding up an entirely natural process? Technologically engineered life is here to stay. Its not far fetched to speculate that simulacra may become all there is. ]]> Wed, 15 Mar 2006 21:09:26 -0700 http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/50098