Lives Of Others

Had a late night last night. And so I was woken quite late by the telephone. As usual when I finally answered they had already hung-up. "Damn that must have been the Job seeker people phoning me back about my claim." I picked the phone up to keep with me and so I wont miss them next time they call, then went to use the loo (nice :P). The caller managed to redial almost immediately and I had no choice but to answer still sitting on the toillet. I'm not sure how you let a complete stranger on your telephone know that your currently taking a dump whilst speaking to them but surely the flushing noise was a give-away.

I managed to pay my credit card off today also so all is good now.

The rest of the morning was spent playing with some css stuff and I've embedded a you tube player into my web space on sdf (super dimensional fortress) the only reason I'm a member of sdf was because a friend told me it would be good. I've never done anything with the site before but maybe I'll use it to play with different ideas.

Holt was looking very cold today, though, I managed to make it to the shops and back in one piece. On my return I watched the film 'Lives Of Other' or 'Leben Der Anderen.' I have seen this film at least five times now and still find it quite moving.

There was a new program on BBC Four tonight called 'Visions Of The Future'; it's nice to be told that there is a future. The presenter was a Dr. Michio Kaku and the episode title 'The Intelligence Revolution.' Things included were the IBM1401, a self driven Smart car, 3D Teleimmersion, a bearded man with dirty hair called Jaron Lanier and also the Nagoya robot museum. I'm not sure what to make of the program yet some silly statements were made like, " the words traffic accident and traffic jam will in the future disappear from the English language". And the question, " at what stage will we lose are sense of being human?" Also some animal experimentation creeped into the program at some point near the end. The most interesting thing shown was a Lady that was suffering from depression for more than twenty years. She was given what is known as 'Deep Brain Stimulation.' A brain pacemaker is implanted into her that's connected to probes travelling up into her head nearly five to ten centimeters deep. After the operation the doctors fine tune the pacemaker according to the effect of how she feels. I think I saw something similar to this at a talk I attended by Professor of cybernetics 'Kevin Warwick' at What The Hack.

Tonight I will be listening to these recording at:

http://wwww.audiodharma.org/talks-buddhist-meditation.html

http://www.robot-museum.net