jlm-blog
~jlm

21-Sep-2012

Pre-desecrated ikons

Filed under: animals — jlm @ 12:10

A distressing report from National Geographic: Elephant poaching for ivory is growing alarmingly, devastating elephant populations, and the demand for elephant ivory is for making holy objects. I don’t understand this at all. How can anything made from the illegal killing of an African elephant for its tusks’ ivory be holy? How is that poaching for making ikons not sacrilege to Christians and Buddhists? How can the buyers worship using an ikon made from such desecration?

19-Sep-2012

Foray into short science fiction

Filed under: fiction, science — jlm @ 18:58

“So, what’s the news?”

“Nothing much. The ship with Bob Ritchie and Lori Walton’s bodies arrived on Earth, so they’ll be getting put to rest.”

“Ah hah! I had my fingers crossed this whole time. We’re saved then!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, you know I have the secret battle station plans, and I performed Bob and Lori’s autopsies…”

“So, what good is that? This may be the most advanced bio lab this side of Tau Ceti, but even you can’t grow a hypernode transmitter in a vat, and you can’t smuggle 100 exabytes of secret plans in a pair of corpses–”

“– I can and did.”

“What? They put those bodies through a full nanometer scan before letting them through. If there were a single molecule which didn’t belong in a human, or even the right molecules in the wrong place, that’d pick it up. And even if you get a few through, the holographic encoding of the plans means you have to smuggle all 100 exabytes or it’s useless as none of it.”

“But the scanners don’t check the DNA.”

“Sure they do. If the body’s cells don’t have the right amount of DNA in the right place, or if there’s extra DNA in the wrong place, that’ll cause a red light.”

“I meant they don’t check the DNA sequences.”

“Well, no. Everyone’s is different, and no one is going to smuggle DNA, it’s thousands of times cheaper to make it yourself, even if you have only the most rudimentary equipment.”

“The makers of the scanners weren’t thinking about smuggling information. After all, hypernode is going to be faster and cheaper than any ship. But when your enemy has control of all the hypernodes… Well, there are 3 billion base pairs in the human genome. Each cell has a copy of that genome. And there are 50 trillion cells in the body. And this equipment can replace each cell’s DNA with a unique sequence. Those plans are written into their nuclei, redundantly many many times over. And when Earth checks their DNA against the stored records for identity verification, they’ll discover sequences which aren’t human, and don’t even match any lifeform whatsoever.”

“So, we’re going to be rescued by a pair of corpses, which you turned into digital media…”

“Yes, we’re saved by the stateful dead.”

11-Sep-2012

Getting Assange out of the embassy

Filed under: humor — jlm @ 21:41

Julian Assange is holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, which is basically equivalent to being under house arrest, making Ecuador’s granting of asylum somewhat moot. Usually in these situations, embassy staff will hustle the asylum seeker out in a diplomatic car, but the Ecuadorian embassy doesn’t have on-grounds parking, so those few feet of British-jurisdiction sidewalk between the embassy door and the street are causing him much consternation. How might he leave the embassy grounds?

1) Stick diplomatic plates on one of these bad boys and have him step into its cab from a balcony or roof.
Hertz lifter

2) In Europe, fugitive rapists get to walk free if they’re famous filmmakers. Assange is already famous, so all he has to do is make a movie, and he can be confident the court will reverse itself on extraditing him.

3) A bunch of helium balloons will lift a lawn chair and occupant, so he can wait for a strong wind blowing to the southeast and float away to France.

I’m confident this advice will help Assange achieve his freedom!

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