Majorityrights Central > Category: Science & Technology

The Japanese are an ageing people with the low-birthrate typical today of a prosperous first-world economy.  The Japanese are also fiercely ethnocentric, and really, really don’t intend to import millions of black and brown gaijin.  The Japanese are also crazy about horizon technology, especially electronic gadgetry.

The result?

It’s on display at the 2007 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, a 1,000-booth show that ends tomorrow.  The greater part of the floor area is devoted to manufacturing robots, since that’s where the money is today.  But the buzz is coming from the non-manufacturing robot sector, which is still in its initial research phase.  The vision shared in the big Japanese corporations, universities and public research institutes involved in this effort is of a future in which, if robots don’t do everything (human contact work, for example), they will certainly share in the execution of the more utilitarian tasks.

The main categories where development is proceeding now are: maintenance (inspection, repair); home automation (cleaning, security); life assistance (for medical and welfare use); entertainment; hobbies.

The Guardian ran a piece on the exhibition today:-

In Japan, robots can already be found working as home helps, office receptionists and security guards, as well as on the factory floor. There were more than 370,000 industrial robots in use in Japan in 2005, according to a report by Macquarie bank, 40% of the world total, with 32 robots for every 1,000 manufacturing workers. The economy ministry calculates that the Japanese robot market will be worth more than £26bn by 2025.

There are compelling economic reasons for Japan’s obsession with robots. The population recently went into long-term decline and a reduced workforce is expected to struggle to fill jobs in the health and welfare sectors. As long as Japanese leaders remain cautious about relaxing immigration laws, robots will be seen as at least part of the solution.

Here are a very few of the Tokyo machines I’ve been able to identify:-

Hitachi’s EMIEW2 is an office worker.  Of course.  What else?

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The following essay by “John Boisdarc” provides some background and support to the intriguing concept of Alexander Thiele, as presented by him to this month’s Ateney (Athenaeum) in Moscow.  Much of his presentation I reproduce at the end of John’s piece.  It announces itself as “a Successful Group Evolutionary Strategy using Subliminal Audio Programming”.

GW

Let me first of all attempt to dispel any preconceived notions that subliminal programming is bunk.  It is a curious aspect of subliminal programming that people do not wish to recognize its effectiveness, even while it is being worked upon them successfully, non-stop, 24/7, via television, radio, and almost every other form of electronic entertainment (including, since the 80’s, subliminal messages embedded in screen savers used on personal computers).

The question must be asked: why do the victims of this precision technology refuse to recognize its efficacy, despite the fact that it is being constantly, successfully used against them?  In order to answer the question, we must examine the relatively recent origins of subliminal programming as it is perceived by the public.  I will strive to be as mercifully brief as possible.

In 1957, a journalist named Vance Packard produced a book, The Hidden Persuaders.  It was a huge hit.  Among other things addressed in his book, he examined the use of subliminal advertising techniques. (Subliminal means “below the limen”, a term psychologists use to describe the threshold of consciousness.)  Mr Packard also critiqued the use of subliminal methodology in swaying the body politic in its choice of elected politicians - a practice he had studied and documented in depth.

As I have said, the book was immensely popular, and the public outcry of indignation, at having been abused in such a sinister manner caused US Representatives Frank Boykin (AL) and Craig Hosmer (CA), in 1958, to introduce into Congress two bills proposing to outlaw the use of subliminal advertising and projection by radio and television, and prescribing penalties for the same.  Both bills died on the vine, quite probably because the politicians, having witnessed in recent elections the powerful effects of subliminal persuasion upon the body politic, were disinclined to discard this powerful weapon.  Therefore, subliminal projection, not having been outlawed, continued to be used and refined.

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From yesterday’s Telegraph:-

Coming soon, a pill that stops periods forever

A contraceptive pill that aims to halt indefinitely a woman’s period is expected to receive full approval from US health officials this week, a move that could end discomfort and pain for many women.

The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to give the green light to Lybrel tomorrow. Wyeth, the drug’s manufacturer, has requested approval from British officials for the drug, which will be marketed here as Anya, but it is unlikely the pill will be available until next year.

... Lybrel, however, is taken for at least a year at a time. Like the majority of oral contraceptives it is a combined pill, containing both oestrogen and progestogen, but the doses of hormone have been lowered to allow for it being taken without a break.

Supporters of Lybrel claim there is no need for women to menstruate and the pill is an easy and safe way to eliminate what many consider to be a monthly ordeal.

Gynaecologists say they have been seeing a slow but steady increase in women asking how to limit and even stop monthly bleeding.

Surveys have found up to half of women would prefer not to have any periods and most would prefer them less often.

... Rebecca Findlay, of the Family Planning Association, said yesterday: “It’s a good lifestyle option for some women, and gives them extra choice, though clearly will not be welcomed by all women.”

Some experts believe that blocking periods could be unsafe. Paula Derry, a health psychologist in Baltimore, wrote in the British Medical Journal two weeks ago that “menstrual suppression itself is unnatural”, and that there was not enough data to determine if it was safe long-term.

Her stance is supported by research in the US which has found many women view their periods as symbols of fertility and health. Christine Hitchcock, of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, told The New York Times: “My concern is that the menstrual cycle is an outward sign of something that’s going on hormonally in the body. [I worry about] the idea that you can turn your body on and off like a tap.”

The same hormones that control the menstrual cycle act on the brain, bones and skin and the long-term effects of suppressing them were unknown, she said. “You need to think whether there are consequences for the whole body that we don’t know about,” she added.

Of course, we can’t have any of this going on, can we?

I don’t care to nurse my politics all day long.  Nope, once or twice in my day some opportunity comes along that lifts the spirit a little.  Here’s a prime example, courtesy of NASA and Nature.com.  Not that NASA isn’t political, you understand.  Sending minority equal-people into space is nothing if not political.

But none of that Shuttle stuff comes into play with the pure research goals of the Mars Rover programme ...

What’s the Opportunity rover up to now?

Opportunity has just finished an epic voyage to the edge of Victoria crater and is taking a good look over the side.

It has taken 21 months to make the 9-kilometre journey – breakneck speed, according to project scientist Bruce Banerdt at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

What’s the Opportunity rover up to now?

Opportunity has just finished an epic voyage to the edge of Victoria crater and is taking a good look over the side.

It has taken 21 months to make the 9-kilometre journey – breakneck speed, according to project scientist Bruce Banerdt at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“It was a gamble to go to Victoria,” he says. It was so far away that Opportunity was quite likely to run out of steam before it got there. “We decided to drive as fast as we could.”

Why is this crater worth such a dash?

It’s big. It’s deep (70 metres). It’s wide (800 metres). Other craters investigated by Opportunity have been small fry in comparison. The depth of the cliffs means that more layers of rock are exposed and so a longer geological history can be probed than before. The bottom is at least a billion years old, say researchers.

The rover has ventured out on to a rocky point on the crater’s rim and now has a panoramic view of the nearest cliff face.

What is Opportunity looking for, specifically?

The rover has a number of instruments on board: a thermal emission spectrometer will probe the rock layers to discover their composition, an alpha-particle spectrometer will give information about the elements, and a Mössbauer spectrometer will work out the abundance and composition of any iron-bearing minerals. Opportunity doesn’t have a way to age the rock, although the deeper it gets the older it will be.

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The prospects are great for ecologically imposed patriarchy enhancing the fertility of whites via oceanic frontiers.  The majority of the earth’s surface remains not only uncultivated, but not biologically productive despite the presence of adequate sunlight and near-adequate nutrients. If recent experiments in iron fertilization of high nitrogen low chlorophyll oceanic surface regions are any indication, the primary ingredient lacking is the pioneering spirit that led to the cultivation and increased carrying capacity of the Anglosphere’s frontier territories: The United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.  It is reasonable to expect that the Anglosphere alone could increase its numbers by a factor of 10, relatively unmolested by multicultural supremacists, during this pioneering renaissance and maintain if not improve the quality of their populations.  Other, less sea-faring European peoples could enjoy smaller but nevertheless profound population and territorial relief.  Moreover this population increase could be very rapid if the fertility rates of the United States frontier is any guide.  This is a prospect that seems plausible in no other way short of world war.

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Today’s Telegraph alerted me to a survey of leading scientific thinkers conducted by The Edge website.

John Brockman, the New York-based literary agent and publisher of The Edge website posed the question: what is your dangerous idea? in reference to a controversial book by the philosopher Daniel Dennett that argued that Darwinism was a universal acid that ate through virtually all traditional beliefs.

Brockman received 116 responses to his challenge from Nobel laureates, futurists and creative thinkers. These were among them

This one from Craig Venter, Genomics Researcher and Founder & President, J. Craig Venter Science Foundation, is a real breath of fresh air:-

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A little good news is needed now and then. The pioneer spirit is still alive. As a person somewhat responsible for the resurgence in technology prize awards, I have a few things to say about Burt Rutan’s capture of the Ansari X-Prize by being the first to fly a man to space in a reusable craft twice within a week. He follows the great technology pioneers Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, both of whom came to prominence during similar fair contests: The Guggenheim Trophy and Orteig Prize respectively. (From these exemplars some might now see a reason the powers that be shy away from fair contests—contests where they can’t really control who wins the prizes—and it was left to an Iranian family, the Ansaris, to fully fund the X-Prize.)

A speech by Burt Rutan before the National Space Society is worth a view (requires QuickTime ). He repeatedly and angrily declares his embarrassment at the risk averse culture that has strangled the pioneer spirit since the feats of the 1960s—nearly 40 years ago. I’ve got my issues with his speech but we clearly agree that something went horribly wrong with the pioneer spirit subsequent to the 1960s. The turning inward of the human potential has resulted in the halting of human progress upward and outward with aerospace technology being bureaucratically and monotonously scaled up for jumbo jet transportation. The result is the sort of danger warned of by Charles Lindbergh in his 1939 Reader’s Digest article “Aviation, Geography, and Race”: a sea of humanity threatening our race which is, after all, a global minority. Indeed the technological exemplar of this era has been driven by the rise of finance to preeminence—the inward-turning microelectronic revolution. The unintended side-effect of this revolution you see before you now as a website, but it is small consolation for the damage to our pioneer spirit.  As we were warned by Henry Ford the great struggle of the 20th century was creative industry vs global finance.  Global finance has dominated the past 30 years or more. Perhaps men like Burt Rutan can lead us out of our malaise and realize the human potential.  If so it may be due to prize awards like the Ansari X-Prize that give men even younger than Burt Rutan a chance to make a name for themselves purely via their own grit and gifts.

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A fascinating story that complements Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of Troy in 1871 has appeared in the press today.  To quote from Nasa’s pre-press announcement:-

The location of Greek hero Odysseus’ homeland - the island of Ithaca described in the poet Homer’s Odyssey - is a mystery that has baffled scholars for nearly 3,000 years. Now this ancient enigma has been solved with the help of World Wind, NASA’s 3D planetary visualisation tool.

The site of Homer’s Ithaca has been identified by Robert Bittlestone, Chairman of the UK management consultancy Metapraxis, whose quest was motivated by combining his company’s experience in the visualisation of complex data with a lifelong interest in Greece and the classics. He has solved the problem with the help of James Diggle, Professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, and John Underhill , Professor of Geology at Edinburgh University.

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