My future tattoo

I, for one, welcome our glorious future of ubiquitous computing. Researchers have come up with a temporary tattoo that functions as a computer, complete with processing power, data storage, and wireless data reception and transmission. Also, drugs.

The researchers constructed the device by layering a package of stretchable nanomaterials — sensors that detect temperature and motion, resistive RAM for data storage, microheaters and drugs — onto a material that mimics the softness and flexibility of the skin. The result was a sticky patch containing a device roughly 4 centimetres long, 2 cm wide and 0.003 millimetres thick, says study co-author Nanshu Lu, a mechanical engineer at the University of Texas in Austin.

They’re not talking about recreational drugs (but maybe in a future update!), but that the purpose of this device is continuous physiological monitoring and delivery of therapeutic drugs in response, so a specific and very useful initial goal.

Give it a few years, though, and forget the iPhone and iWatch and iWhatever — I just my hands and forearms covered with fancy circuitry that does cool stuff.

Unfortunately, the article mentions one serious limitation: we’re waiting for the development of a thin, flexible battery to power all this gadgetry. Once that’s all worked out, though, it’ll be a wonderful fashion accessory to go with my transparent cranium.

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO-PHENAKISTASCOPE

Don’t worry, this video is perfectly safe for work, except for the little fact that if you watch to the very end you’ll get sucked into your computer screen and transported to the 19th century. This morning, I had to fight my way through a mob of Norwegian farmers who hardly spoke any English to find a zoetrope and phenakistascope (which were very scarce on the empty Minnesota prairie, I tell you) and play them backwards to get home again. Bracing.

(via The Verge)

I’m sure this isn’t creepy at all

Maybe it’s just me, but are Purity Balls getting even squickier?

During the ceremony, the fathers present their daughters with purity rings, and the duo become boyfriend and girlfriend

No no no no no no no. Please no. A father’s relationship with his daughter should be completely different than the boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. Blech.

And really, I hope that the sentence below is just an example of awkward and highly infelicitous structure…but it’s the kind of thing a competent editor should have caught immediately and not allowed to go on to publication.

Having sex with, kissing or touching a man (other than their fathers) before marriage is strictly prohibited.

It cites the Daily Mail. I’m just going to assume that level of illiteracy must be contagious.

Debating tips from Ben Shapiro

I was reading these debating suggestions from a particularly stupid wingnut with the idea that I’d just do the opposite…until it sunk in that they’re so contradictory that I can’t even do that.

So to recap, the only way conservatives can win debates is to not look angry, while publicly shaming their opponent, punching first, and calling their opponents liars and haters. And remember: all of this is equivalent to futilely pinning some kind of gelatinous dessert to a wall.

I think it’s also got like three first steps, which means I’m going to have to grow another leg.

The Tom Perkins system

He has opened his mouth again. Tom Perkins, the privileged, overpaid rich guy who thinks the wealthy in America are as oppressed as the Jews under the Third Reich, has an ideal democratic system.

The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get the vote if you don’t pay a dollar in taxes. But what I really think is it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars, you get a million votes. How’s that?

Wait, why base votes on money? There’s an assumption there that what we value in citizens is their income.

Here’s the PZ Myers system: You don’t get the vote if you don’t graduate from high school. You get an extra vote for every year of graduate and post-graduate work at an accredited institution. Professors get an extra vote for every year post-tenure. (I am JOKING. This would be a horrible system.)

The Heinlein system: You don’t get the vote if you don’t serve at least four years in the military. You get an extra vote for every military rank above private that you achieve.

The compensation system: You get one vote for every day served in prison while innocent. You get 5 votes every time the police beat you while peacefully protesting. Every year that you work full time but get paid below the poverty level, you get an extra vote.

The albedo system: Instruments are used at the polling places to measure the albedo of your forehead, and all votes are scaled by that value. Might as well institutionalize it, right? And make it sciencey!

The nerd system: We develop an index that takes into account the number of Magic:The Gathering cards you own, the level of your D&D character, the bulk tonnage of your comic book collection, and your high score at Call of Duty/Harvest Moon, and use that to determine how many votes you get.

The astrological system: Point values are assigned to the zodiac signs. Pisces, of course, get the highest number of votes. Just because we’re the best.

The physiological system: Your erythrocyte count, sampled at the polling station, is multiplied by 1 for type O, 2 for type A or B, and 3 for type AB blood. Finally, cell surface glycoproteins get representation!

The young male system: Everyone gets into a pissing contest each year. You get a number of votes equal to the number of feet your stream reaches.

I’m sure there are other arbitrary vote weighting schemes you can come up with…and then we can vote on which is the best using some other vote weighting scheme!