Category Archives: BULLSHIT

...and other stuff, ART, BULLSHIT, LIVES, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

DYING TO ENTERTAIN

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Why is it that killing, mayhem, destruction, murder, blood & guts, war and death in general are called “entertainment”?  It’s not just on television.  Dying horribly has featured as the prominent theme in books, magazines, newspapers, plays, movies and every kind of “entertainment” ever conceived.  A couple thousand years ago we used to go to arenas all over the Roman Empire to watch people slaughter each other and innocent animals by the thousands!  Bloody “sports” like boxing, wrestling, sword fighting, and jousting have been  popular for thousands of years.  More people have been slaughtered on battlefields all over the world throughout human history than by any other cause (except disease and old age).

Why are homo sapiens are utterly fascinated by, and relish violent, dramatic death?  Why is death entertaining?

My guess is because we don’t really die.  We just keep on coming back and doing it all again.  What we really love about death is the drama, the mystery and the pain of playing a game.

— Lawrence R. Spencer, 2012

...and other stuff, BULLSHIT, MOVING PICTURES, UNIVERSES

RESISTANCE REALLY IS FUTILE!

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The first chemical circuit developed

Swedish researchers have developed an integrated circuit that runs on chemicals as opposed to electronics. The countdown to human assimilation has begun.  First the transistor, then the chip. When the first semiconductor transistor was developed in late 1947, there was no idea how important it would be in the creation of today’s technology. Someone from Sweden must have a clue since he has now developed an IC chip that uses chemicals instead of electronics. The IC is built upon logic gates based on ion transistors first developed in 2009. Now begins further development into more complex chips.

Why chemicals? Why not? For starters, the human body is not electronic. There’s electricity at work (mostly in the nerves), but humans run mostly on chemicals, so the use of a chemical chip has obvious advantages:

(from Phys.org) “We can, for example, send out signals to muscle synapses where the signalling system may not work for some reason. We know our chip works with common signalling substances, for example acetylcholine,” says Magnus Berggren, Professor of Organic Electronics and leader of the research group.

This could be used to bypass damaged nerves to control muscles directly, but this is only one possibility. Such chem-chips can be used for any type of signaling and control. Example: An artificial pancreas can have such a chip that monitors blood-sugar levels, then signals another chip to make insulin as needed.  The Next Step… With a basic circuit done, more complex circuitry can now be developed. That would include elements such as ion inverters and NAND gates… and memristors? Could happen. Then from there…

Source: Nature Communications and Phys.org via Engadget.