Accept Fear but Do Not Submit

This is good stuff. It's a clip from G4TV about the Great Firewall of China. Xeni Jardin is a real-life cyberpunk chick. I found this video by way of BoingBoing, which Xeni coedits. The story fascinates me because it encompasses both technology and revolt. I support any person's or people's drive to greater self-determination. I really cannot comprehend what makes Person A want to kill Person B for not wanting to be subjected to Person A. Fuck that shit. Why don't more people see how messed up that is? Why do we allow our governments to behave this way? Fear? What else could it be?

I'm reminded of V for Vendetta.

God bless alliteration!

I am not wholly sympathetic with the Tibetan cause. I can't help seeing shadowy figures from the US government skulking in the background. I'm not a fan of theocracies, even a Buddhist one. And I can't trust what I see:

Question everything. Do not blindly accept what They tell you.

Open Your Wallet to Open Computing

It's nice to get up early.  I recommend it.  There's something right about it.

Gizmodo informed me that computer manufacturer Acer may start producing an open platform gaming console.  I imagine it's basically going to be a gaming oriented linux based desktop computer.  Good idea.  I hope Acer succeeds.  By the way, the computer above is not the one referenced in the article.  The one above is the bitchin' Acer Aspire Gemstone Blue.  What is up with that stuff beside on the left side of the keyboard?  I think it might be an alien device.

In other "open" news, Verizon is, and this is almost impossible to imagine in today's business landscape, studying ways to improve peer to peer traffic!  Verizon has once again shown that it wants to do business the way an increasing number of consumers who want to use technology the way they want to use it and are simply looking for the fastest, cheapest service provider.  While companies like Cox and Comcast are throttling users who are heavy bandwidth consumers, Verizon is looking to improve such users' experiences.  Coupled with last year's announcement that they would open up their mobile service to "any app, any device", Verizon is showing itself to be a worthwhile, progressive business.

Speaking of open phones, check out this video Google's open phone software, Android.

Apoptosis: Pulse of Life

Life's many layers blow my mind.

The interweaving of seemingly disparate wormholes and mindthreads from across the blanket of reality and even from beyond the fabric itself, seeing how it all connects...beginning to see how it all connects, sometimes visibly and sometimes you can just feel it.

Life and death. Good and evil. How beautiful is the above entity? Is it odd that we instinctively know we're looking at a manifestation of life? That's prostate cancer, my friends. Real bad shit. [snicker] Odd how something so deadly can be beautiful. Guess it isn't, though. A great many beautiful things will kill you. Death itself is a thing of beauty. Death is a polytentacled energy vector. Death is simply energy transfer and movement on the atomic level.

Mitochondriate eukaryotic cells live poised between life and death, because mitochondria still retain their repertoire of molecules which can trigger cell suicide.[16] This process has now been evolved to happen only when programmed. Given certain signals to cells (such as feedback from neighbors, stress or DNA-damage), mitochondria release caspase activators which trigger the cell-death inducing biochemical cascade. As such, the cell-suicide mechanism is now crucial to all of our lives.

Cell-suicide mechanism? That'd be a good band name. Biochemical Cascade. Bad-ass.

Programmed cell death. Some cells are designed to die in specified situations. Their deaths benefit us.

Beautiful. We live and we die every day in a million different ways, the pulse of life.

Curt Schilling Pitches Perfect MMORPG

With Major League Baseball in spring training and pre-season, media of all kinds are rife with baseball news. Here's some from beyond the base path.

VentureBeat has a couple great articles today about Curt Schilling's video game company, 38 Studios, and its upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game, codenamed Copernicus.

From baseball to an online fantasy gaming world: Q&A with Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling of 38 Studios

Cryptic words about Curt Schilling’s Copernicus

I'm not a videogamer, but I'm excited by the idea of a game based on visuals by Todd McFarlane and storytelling by R.A. Salvatore. Lead by the drive and focus of one of the best pitchers of all time, a CEO plucked from Electronic Arts, and two of today's great creative minds, tales of the development of 38 Studios' Copernicus will be a part of tech/videogame blogosphere for years to come.

Donkey of the Week

This week's Donkey of the Week:

Yes, it was the first donkey picture I saw when I searched for donkey on Photobucket. So what? I think it's an excellent donkey picture with which to start my Donkey of the Week project.

Donkeys are funny.