Living after the end times

Note: this article was originally published at www.earthlightbooks.blogspot.com.

A lot of the weirdness of contemporary life can be laid at the cyborgian feet of media technology. We don't just live in a world of the talking, life-like facsimiles of Dan Rather and Bill Clinton and Tom Cruise--a veritable Hades of talking ghosts. No, our lives are set within a history of fake-live personas. That is, we live in a world where television and film aren't just real; they're even dated. For most of human history, the idea of literally listening to dead people, with them visibly standing right there, in front of you, was the stuff of magic: a sacred, or at least ethereal, experience. Now, it's still magic, but our all-consuming drive for technology has multiplied the number of talking ghosts so far that they now outnumber the living. Our ghosts are common and banal.

‘Wiki Weapon Project’ Aims To Create A Gun Anyone Can 3D-Print At Home

‘Wiki Weapon Project’ Aims To Create A Gun Anyone Can 3D-Print At Home By Klint Finley on Aug 24, 2012 04:21 pm Earlier this month, Wilson and a small group of friends who call themselves “Defense Distributed” launched an initiative they’ve dubbed the “ Wiki Weapon Project.” They’re seeking to raise $20,000 to design and release blueprints for a plastic gun anyone can create with an open-source 3D printer known as the RepRap that can be bought for less than $1,000. If all goes according to plan, the thousands of owners of those cheap 3D printers, which extrude thin threads of melted plastic into layers that add up to precisely-shaped three-dimensional objects, will be able to turn the project’s CAD designs into an operational gun capable of firing a standard .22 caliber bullet, all in the privacy of their own garage. “We want to show this principle: That a handgun is printable,” says Wilson, a 24-year-old second-year law student at the University of Texas. “You don’t need to be able to put 200 rounds through it…It only has to fire once. But even if the design is a little unworkable, it doesn’t matter, as long as it has that guarantee of lethality.” Forbes: ‘Wiki Weapon Project’ Aims To Create A Gun Anyone Can 3D-Print At Home As the article notes, someone has already managed to print a working lower receiver (ie, the important part) for a rifle. Read in browser »

More to read: India’s SMS Hoax Panic: Could It Happen In The U.S.? Parody: League of Extraordinary Gentlepersons DARPA Has Seen the Future of Computing … And It’s Analog Panopticon Now Aqua Drone Used As Life Guard

New Lifeguard Drone Used in Oregon Rescue

Link to Original Article, thanks to Technoccult for the heads up.

Interesting use for remote-controlled drone tech. I'm curious what other non-military uses folks will come up with eventually. 

Of course, my new idea: I WILL VOTE FOR WHOMEVER GIVES ME MY OWN DRONE. 

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Think of a lifeguard and you might conjure up images of sunburned teenagers working a summer job. A new and relatively inexpensive lifesaving device could change that.

Meet EMILY, a remote-controlled lifeguard. It looks like a buoy, but it's a small watercraft fitted with a flotation device. It can go up to 22 mph and can get to people more quickly, and in some cases more safely, than any human.

It's being used by a handful of communities. Last month, it was used in its first rescue.

"In the day and age of shrinking budgets and the availability of personnel, this is just another thing we can use," said Joshua Williams, chief of the Depoe Bay Fire District in Oregon, which performed the rescue with it July 15. "It's proven itself by saving a father and a son. It's really all the proof that we need."

EMILY stands for Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard. It's a little over 4 feet long, weighs 25 pounds and costs about $10,000. It's made by Hydronalix, a Green Valley, Ariz., company established in 2009.

If a swimmer is struggling, a lifeguard or anyone else can put battery-powered EMILY in the water and, with a remote control, send it through even rough waves to help. Some locations attach an emergency radio so they can instruct panicked swimmers on what to do.

EMILY can't bring swimmers back to shore, but it can keep them safe until rescuers get there, or be attached to a rope so rescuers can pull EMILY and anyone holding on back in.

In Los Angeles County, the lifeguards made famous by the TV series "Baywatch" use EMILY to shoo people away from rip currents, said Rori Marston of Hydronalix.

EMILY doesn't replace a lifeguard. Someone must be on shore to operate EMILY, and lifeguards have skills EMILY can't replicate. EMILY also can't be used if a swimmer is unconscious.

Louis Misto, chief of the Misquamicut Fire District in Westerly, said he was skeptical but soon changed his tune.

"When you're talking about getting right into the surf line, where most of these drownings or rescues take place, EMILY is going to be one of the most useful tools," he said.

Westerly bought two EMILYs this summer after Barbara Stillman, who runs a beach resort, proposed the idea. Over the years, she has jumped in to help distressed swimmers when lifeguards are off duty.

"They're so panicked that they push you down," she said.

She has been trained on how to use EMILY for the next time that happens.

"I could run over there and grab EMILY and put a rope on her, throw her in the water, and bring her in myself," Stillman said.

Depoe Bay has no lifeguards and a small volunteer fire department to cover about 16 miles of rocky coastline. The water is cold, the currents are strong and not every firefighter knows how to perform water rescues, Williams said.

In the July rescue, when firefighters arrived, the father was exhausted, having already saved one son from a rip current. He was swimming toward another son, the mother frantic on the beach, Assistant Chief Hank Walling said. In the past, they would have had to call in a Coast Guard helicopter or find a firefighter certified to swim.

Instead, they sent EMILY.

News of the rescue was validation for communities using it.

"It's an awesome tool," Stillman said. "I know all it's going to take is one life. Then, to me, it's worth all its value."

Best U.S. Places to Survive the Apocalypse

This one was my favorite: Original Post

Silohome

During the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. government built hundreds of Atlas-F missile silos in preparation for a nuclear attack that never came. Most of these silos were abandoned, but Bruce Francisco and Gregory Gibbons acquired one in New York’s Adirondack State Park and transformed it into an underground haven.

 

Silohome sits atop a 1,350-foot mountain overlooking the Saranac River Valley and is surrounded by acres of untouched wilderness, which means it’s ideal for many of your post-apocalyptic duties: farming, hunting and fishing. On the surface it features a hangar, living room with fireplace and a wraparound porch, but the best stuff is below ground. In what was once the 2,300-square-foot launch control center there are now three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, a living area and a kitchen.

 

Don’t feel safe enough? Well, there’s always the 20,000-square-foot silo that’s connected to the underground living quarters via a tunnel complete with “Star Wars doors.” It’s the perfect place to stockpile canned goods and ammunition, or you can give it a home makeover so you and the family can kick back and enjoy the nuclear winter in comfort. Buy it now for just $2.3 million — cash only.

Related Link

• Top 10 ways to prepare for the total breakdown of society without looking like a (complete) lunatic

Peter Lamborn Wilson: Revert Back to 1911

Another interesting one from Klintron and his Technoccult hive-mind. Wilson sure comes up with some cool shit for being such a wacko. Archived Post Here.

By Klint Finley on Aug 09, 2012 09:35 pm

New(ish) material from Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), published in the Spring 2012 issue of Fifth Estate:

Reversion to 1911 would constitute a perfect first step for a 21st century neo-Luddite movement. Living in 1911 means using technology and culture only up to that point and no further, or as little as possible.
For example, you can have a player-piano and phonograph, but no radio or TV; an ice-box, but not a refrigerator; an ocean liner, but not an aeroplane, electric fans, but no air conditioner.
You dress 1911. You can have a telephone. You can even have a car, ideally an electric. Someday, someone will make replicas of the 1911 “Grandma Duck” Detroit Electric, one of the most beautiful cars ever designed.
1911 was a great year for Modernism, Expressionism, Symbolism, Rosicrucianism, anarcho- syndicalism and Individualism, vegetarian lebensreform, and Nietzschean cosmic consciousness, but it was also the last great Edwardian year, the twilight of British Empire and last decadent gilded moments of Manchu, Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian, French and Ottoman monarchy; last “old days” before the hideous 20th century really got going.
The next step backward would be to join the Amish and other Old Order Anabaptists in 1907 — no telephones, no electricity at all, and no internal combustion. With this move, the battle would virtually be won. The next generation would be able to make the transition to no metal — the neo-neolithic. Arcadian pastoralism.
After that a dizzying sliding spiral back into — illiteracy. Oral/aural culture. Classless tribal anarchy. Democratic shamanism. The Gift. This would be the ultimate Luddite goal. But the first step will be back to 1911.

Full Story: Autonomedia: Peter Lamborn Wilson, “Back to 1911″

And people told me quitting most Google services was extreme 

(via the newly rejuvenated Aurthur Magazine Twitter account)

Update: It turns out this is an excerpt from a longer manifesto first published byOVO in November 2011:

Back to 1911 Movement Manifesto: Music

Back to 1911 Movement Manifesto: On (Type) Writing

Back to 1911 Movement Manifesto: Energy

Back to 1911 Movement Manifesto: Photography

Back to 1911 Movement Manifesto: Telephone

Former DARPA Director Heading Up New Experimental Technology Department At Google

Original Link on Technoccult, thanks as usual to Klintron.

By Klint Finley on Aug 14, 2012 11:43 pm

Remember how earlier this year Regina Dugan, the former director of DARPA, took a job at Google? Now we know what she’s up to there:

Google has also created a department within Motorola—Advanced Technology and Projects—comprised of researchers charged with finding cutting-edge technologies that could give Motorola’s products an edge. And the executive refresh includes a new senior vice president, Regina Dugan, a former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s long-term research arm. [...]
But whether the DARPA research model can work in the fast-evolving world of smartphones is unclear, says Chetan Sharma, a wireless analyst in Seattle. “Regina does bring in outside perspective specially related to projects that are leaps, versus incremental steps,” he says. “However, this will need to be executed under the constraints of competition, time, and money.”
While DARPA has had some storied successes—such as the precursor to the Internet—it also freely admits that it often fails. And it has pursued some odd projects, such as setting up a research program to figure out how to reassemble shredded documents.

Technology Review: Can DARPA’s Strategy Help Motorola Compete Again?

An unorthodox firestarting tactic