Nature of Man

… nothing that happens to Man is ever natural …

I entered the JayIsGames.com competition for an interactive fiction game following the theme-word “Escape”. I chose to do a semi-parody of the “escape-the-room” genre, but with more characterization and story than usual. You play a miserable intern stuck in the office with half an hour remaining to the end of the workday. Only, as you find out, time does not really flow when you are bored ans miserable. And there’s also a girl. Soon, physically escaping the office is interweaved with the urge to escape from the trap that your life has turned into. Did I mention the girl?

Here’s a link for the game, try it for a spin. HELP for general help, HINT if you’re stuck. Scroll down the page to vote and comment.
“Monday, 16:30″

I will miss you.
The world will miss you.
What you started will be continued, like a snowball on a hill.
May our children find a better world because of what we do.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society does.

Read it up, the guys fucking sank ten whaling ships. They also currently battle Japanese whaling operations in whale sanctuaries. The Japanese of course “don’t do no whaling” anymore, these are just science research vessels for their Institute of Cetacean Research And Sushi Bar

“I stand in honorable company as a modern-day pirate, though I’ve not shot anyone, burned any ships, looted any cargoes or kidnapped anyone. We are also pirates with a sense of humor and a moral code of non-violence. In 30 years of eco-piracy we have never injured a single poacher, though we’ve sent nine whalers to the bottom. Instead of cannon balls, our guns shoot coconut cream and chocolate pie-filling. We toss stink bombs instead of grenades and we are so non-violent we don’t even eat meat or fish on our ships. No fish, fowl or mammals have died in the making of our high seas campaigns. What we do is defend the whales from illegal slaughter by ruthless and merciless killers. If people want to call us pirates for that, we’re proud to be so. We have whales to save and Japanese ships to attack.”

(This post collects a couple of translations of lyrics of Amorphis I made (while facing certain deadlines, excuse the pun) at hazel’s blog. Don’t miss her translations as well!)

Няма да пускам английския текст, да не се вижда как се разминава превода, но почти навсякъде сричките се напасват (само един Изгрев трябва да е изгрЕв и някои думи трябва да се изтъгъдъкат), така че да става за пеене. Демек, чуйте го с песента, няма да стане само с четене ;) Нишката на мисълта (кавичка, кавичка) се губи и в оригинала, но какво пък, това е песен, не философска поезия ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVLCHDw9vOk

Сричките са напасвани с чистите вокали, при другите и без тва няма значение какво се пее ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU2ovtmL7Zk

Artificial molecule evolves in the lab

It’s happened before in silicone: “popular” article, the original research paper.

In short, Adrian Thompson wanted to “evolve” a circuit (using reprogrammable hardware) that distinguishes between two “tones”. He set an “impossible” for human designers limit: use only 100 logical gates (supposedly “traditional” human methods on solving this would take 10-100 times more gates). The result? The evolution came up with a solution using only 32 cells, and of them 5 didn’t appear to affect the output. Strangely though, when these were removed, the circuit wasn’t working anymore. Evolution came up with a solution that worked on intricate effects in this particular piece of hardware, but it still worked.

In unrelated news, Christian challenges atheist bus advert

Mr Green has challenged the adverts on grounds of “truthfulness” and “substantiation”, suggesting that there is not “a shred of supporting evidence” that there is probably no God.

Come on! We all know that Jesus was the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! (collect $1M if you can prove otherwise)

Edit: Also see “evolved antenna”