The History and Possibilities of Putting Weed in Your Witchcraft – Seattle Weekly

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From your bong to your broomstick.

Cannabis has been included in magical, religious, and spiritual rites for millennia, from Hindu sadhus who use cannabis as a prayer to Lord Shiva to Coptic Christians who burned it on altars as a devotional offering. Witches and warlocks, too, have had a long history with this helper, utilizing it for everything from medical remedies to summoning spirits. Cannabis and hemp were both staples in folk traditions. In his 1653 Complete Herbal, author Nicholas Culpeper wrote of the plant: This is so well known to every good housewife in the country, that I shall not need to write any description of it.

Some classic uses for cannabis were in spells and rites dedicated to healing, love, money drawing, visions, and meditation. Lovestruck witches would wander out under the midsummer full moon to sprinkle hemp seeds while circling a church nine times in hopes of seeing their true love(s). Witches attempting to see into the future would burn an incense made of cannabis, mugwort, coltsfoot, and angelica in front of a magic mirror, watching for signs in the reflection of the glass.

Perhaps the most infamous usage of cannabis in magic is its inclusion in the famed Witchs Flying Ointment. Blended with other mind-altering substances like opium poppies, morning glories, datura, belladonna, and nightshade and mixed with butter or lard, witches would smear it on their broomsticks and ride them, flying off in ecstatic, orgasmic bliss. Modern witches can replicate this by blending cannabis with small amounts of other entheogens like ayahuasca, cyanescens (magic mushrooms), and of course poppies. For an entirely legal version, cunning folks can create a weed blend with blue lotus, wild asparagus root, and mugwort. Make a tincture or decoction from your herbal blend and mix it with coconut oil for a bewitching lube to help you open up and push into the Universe with lust and love.

But you can also turn your cannabis use into a magical act. Do you like to work with crystals? The next time youre having a puff while studying sacred texts or reading tarot, try smoking a sativa that enhances concentration through a pipe made of lapis lazuli, a stone known for facilitating intellectual activity, augmenting learning, and improving memory. You can also keep stones with your weed, or use fruit or vegetables with magical connotations as pipes: apples for love spells, cucumbers before attempting dream or astral work, and potatoes and other root veggies for grounding energy after a ritual.

For an abundance spell, mix a little ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg, or thyme, basil, and mint, into fresh water and carefully paint sigils, a wish, or words of power onto a hemp rolling paper and let it dry. Roll up a joint and smoke it to release the energy into the Universe. Alternately, make some edibles with these spice blends, like cinnamon oatmeal raisin cookies. Dont forget to press a magical symbol into the top of the cookie.

Last but not least, smoking from a bong or bubbler is a special way for weed witches to commune with all the elements: Earth is represented by cannabis, fire is the fire you light your bowl with, air is your breath, and water is in the bottom of the bong. Make sure you charge your bong water, too, by thinking some good vibes at it.

stashbox@seattleweekly.com

Thanks to The Fat Feminist Witch Blog for serving as a reference for this piece.

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Fahadh Faasil and director Anwar Rasheed to team up for Trance … – The Indian Express

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By: Express Web Desk | New Delhi | Published:June 28, 2017 1:10 pm Fahadh Faasil will be seen in Anwar Rasheeds directorial titled, Trance.

Fahadh Faasil has signed a new film titled Trance, which will be directed by National Award-winning director Anwar Rasheed. This project comes as a surprise as the director will be making a comeback after a gap of five years. His last feature film Ustad Hotel starring Dulquer Salmaan fetched him the National Award. After this film, the director worked on a short film for the anthology series Anchu Sundharikal. Since then, the director turned producer for films such as Bangalore Days, Premam and Comrade in America. All the three films have done extremely well. Especially Premam and Bangalore Days have fans from across the country.

The collaboration with Fahadh Faasil in Trance is special, and fans are looking forward to something interesting like Ustad Hotel. Everyone is expecting Anwar to impress the masses with another unique subject. The release date, for now, has been set as April 2018. Amal Neerad, the director of the recent film Comrade In America, will be cranking the camera for this project.

Fahadh, in the meanwhile, is super busy with multiple projects in the pipeline. In Malayalam, his movie Role Models, touted to be a fun-filled family entertainment, released recently. It received a lukewarm response and moderate ratings from the critics. He is looking forward to Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, Aannengilum Alenkilum and Carbon. He is also making his Tamil debut this year and will be seen in two Kollywood film, Velaikkaran starring Sivakarthikeyan and Nayanthara, and Aneethi Kathaigal starring Vijay Sethupathi and Samantha Ruth Prabhu.

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Happy days as Boks wake up from a trance – Citizen

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It was a crystal clear indication that he was mulling things over before talking about the history which had been unrolled before him in the 35-12 Springbok victory over the Tricolores.

Well, he eventually said, that was truly worth watching. And though I have mentioned on several occasions in the past that I would never have the temerity to claim any expertise as a rugby pundit, it does strike me that the difference between this seasons Springboks and the disjointed team which turned out last year is astounding.

The nods from the usual suspects who go to make up the company which habitually assembles to watch sport over the weekends, showed graphically that they were in full agreement with the Silent One.

It is almost as if some enchanted being had suddenly arrived and awoken them from a deep sleep. And while it would be stretching the bounds of credulity to draw the comparison with Sleeping Beauty, for it strikes me that several players are lucky they can play rugby because they certainly are not pretty. It all seems to be working swimmingly for the Boks.

At this juncture it must be said that the oblique reference to the classic tale by the Brothers Grimm went straight past theArithmetically-challenged Golfer, a self-styled expert who tends to take himself far too seriously. But he did pick up on the dearth of film star looks in the Bok side.

Ill give you that Eben Etzebeth is not exactly an oil painting, but what do you want a Springbok forward to look like? Brad Pitt?

You also miss the point that his job is to help fire up the motor in the South African scrum, not pose for pictures. It was a point the Silent One was more than willing to concede, but couldnt resist adding a rider to.

I am sorry if I said anything to upset you over your favourite player. This was not my intention at all. I think though that the Boks seem to have a new purpose and a more concentrated direction. It is almost as if they have collectively shaken their heads and awoken to what it is they are doing out in the middle.

There are very few sides who could lose a captain like Warren Whiteley on the very eve of a Test match and throw Etzebeth in at the deep end as a replacement skipper, reshuffle the scrum to include a debutant, start with a stand-by scrumhalf and still come up with the goods. It truly points to a team who are confident in what they do and play together as a disciplined unit.

That opening of the conscious about what it means to operate as a team and play for one another rather than as a bunch of directionless individuals, strikes me as being the prime factor. In this summation, the Silent One showed that his understanding of the game of rugby football was perhaps far deeper than he owned up to.

Now, he said, if the South African cricket side are able to embrace this aspect, I am sure they would do far better. It is now a matter of record that this passed the Proteas by in their T20 against England in Cardiff, losing by 19 runs for yet another flop in the shortest form of the game.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the Silent One had heeded his own warnings and had not arrived to watch.

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Classic album: Ferry Corsten on LEF – MusicRadar

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Ferry Corsten doesnt like to keep still. Like some kind of Dutch trance shark, he has to keep moving else hell cark it. Constantly releasing, constantly reinventing himself, hes one producer that cant be pinned down. Case in point: His second album, L.E.F. He says the title stands for Loud. Electronic. Ferocious.

Apt, as the energy levels throughout are through the roof. Its also close to the word lef in his native tongue, which roughly translated, means daring or gutsy, and boy, is it that.

Corsten could have made a straight-up trance album. He could have followed the successful blueprint of his previous bangers, like Rock Your Body Rock from his debut album Right of Way. Instead, he plundered the 80s both for vibes and for vocalists, repurposing the voice of Duran Durans Simon Le Bon for the track Fire.

It was a time when I was getting out of the whole trance thing, says Corsten. I was getting motivated by a lot of stuff I was hearing around me at the time - in particular, the whole electro clash thing and the whole 80s electro sound.

Holed up in his attic studio, Corsten worked every hour in the day for well over a year with this sound, crafting beats in Cubase and tweaking his V-Synth. He was drawing on his dance music upbringing, and started to bring a grainy, vintage touch to his production, as well as broaden his palette with more electro and house tinges. It had attitude. It was distorted.

L.E.F. was more than, well trance. It was the perfect balance between old and new. Tracks like Beautiful leaped forward in years, while Cubikated shuddered with nostalgia for a bygone era.

Ive always been playing with that balance, says Corsten. But for this album I really brought that sound into what I was doing at the time: it was trance, but with sidesteps to the left and right. It was important to challenge myself to try and do something different.

As youd expect, Ferry Corsten continues to push the envelope today. Here, he takes, track by track, though the tour de force that is L.E.F..

This starts the album with some Morse code. It was just me really feeling out just how engaged the listeners would be. I was wondering if there would be any nutcases around the world who would take the time out to decode the hidden message.

What was it? Oh, it spells out Ferry Corsten, and the name of the album, L-E-F [laughs]. I hope someone made the effort.

This was the first track proper, and it was put here to really open the album. It really sets the tone of whats to come. I imagine most of my fans would have been expecting a trance album. This track was a bit more housey, with more of an electro vibe to it, and that sound would get explored more as you go along.

It was me saying, OK. This isnt going to be the one thing you expected straight away. They would get more of my classic sound later on, but for now I wanted to shake things up a little. Its a diverse album. Ive always been that way with my albums.

This features Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran. I was listening to one of their albums [1990s Liberty] and I came across a track that I wasnt too familiar with called Serious. The first line of that song is the one that I use here [Oh, woman you make me feel like Im on fire].

My management in the US were also the people who managed Duran Duran. I made a demo with the sample of theirs in, then sent it to them. The band just loved it, and loved the idea. I got the go-ahead, and after that I recreated some of the instrumentation, and it was done. It was also more of a housey track, but also the kind of track that works really well in a trance mix, which is what I made for some of my live shows at the time.

Yeah, this is a club banger. Ive always had a soft spot for vocoder voices as well, so I use that through here to go, Loud. Electronic. Ferocious. Thats me doing that. Just like when I did Rock Your Body Rock - that was me as well [laughs]. I like to mess with vocals sometimes.

It was a good track to put at this point in the album to keep the energy up. It was important to sequence the album like that, with lots of builds and drops - like a DJ set.

This track features another 80s musical icon: Howard Jones. I ran into him at the Amsterdam Dance Event. We were just talking about music and hit it off.

Yeah, hes a legend, and just the type of person I was looking for when I was putting this album together, so it made perfect sense to try and work with him. He was great. He dug my music and, of course, I was into what he did back in the day, so we decided to give it a go.

I made a simple demo for him and he wrote this really cool song over the demo, which pretty much became the song. If you listen to it, its very 80s. It has that [Roland] 606 drum sound and a very analogue vibe. It gave the whole album an attitude.

This is an update of one of my biggest trance tracks from back in the day. The original Galaxia was a B2 track on an EP I released in 96 under name Moonman. The A track was Dont be Afraid. I was just going through all this old Moonman stuff and found Galaxia again. I thought it could do with an update.

The original was super, super basic. I thought I could breathe some new life into it for the album.

The original was super, super basic. I thought I could breathe some new life into it for the album.

This started out as the house track, Forever. It was actually written by Ben Cullum [Jamie Cullums brother] and features Debra Andrews on vocals. Im not sure how I got hold of the acappella. I think it was through my publisher.

Id just picked up the Roland V-Synth, too. The V-Synth had this great feature where you could sample something and make it elastic, if you will. Then you could spread it out all over your keyboard, or do robotics. It was almost like a vocoder, but with a different effect. It did something really cool, like what youd do with Melodyne now, but live on the keys, which was really cool. I just loaded in the chords of Forever, and as I started playing around with this robotic voice on the keyboard, I struck trance gold [laughs].

I really just wanted to make this song a lush, lower-tempo trance track. It came out really cool and definitely has this magic kind of feel to it. It features Denise Stahlie on vocals. I was working a lot with two guys from Holland at the time, called Adrian Broekhuyse and Raz Nitzan. They were songwriters over here. They introduced me to Denise, and she was perfect for this track.

Denise is on this track, too. I had a completely different vocalist on this track to start, but it didnt really work. And as I was working with Denise already, I ran it by her to see if it was something shed be interested in being on. She loved it and gave a great performance.

Its really mellow, and on an album like this, its important to have that. Ive always wanted to show range; what Im capable of as an artist.

This had a bit more of a poppy vibe to it. I do remember that my publisher came up with a lot of vocalists to work with, so [Down On Love vocalist] Oz came from them.

Sometimes tracks just happen. Sometimes, I feel the more you just go with the flow, good stuff happens. If you look for something too hard, often it doesnt really come out. This was one of those tracks that just came out.

This is the original house track for the song that Ben Cullum wrote for Debra Andrews that I turned into Beautiful from earlier in this album. If you listen to Forever, youll notice that the B-section of the chorus is actually the part that I used in there.

I felt that I wanted to make an answer record to my track, Rock Your Body Rock. I felt that this new album was a great place for that. It wasnt too much of a successful outcome, but oh well [laughs].

The album format gives you chance to explore more tempos and moods. What I dont like about todays... Spotify industry, if you will, is that everything is so disposable, and its all singles-based. So everyone is just doing what people expect from them. Theres little room for fresh sounds and doing other stuff.

The album format gives you chance to explore more tempos and moods. What I dont like about todays... Spotify industry, if you will, is that everything is so disposable.

This features the rapper Guru [from hip-hop legends Gang Starr]. I remember playing around with [Ferrys 2002 single] Punk and thinking that Id like to do a new version. Then someone from the label in the states - Patrick Moxey, I believe - said, Maybe its cool to have a rapper over this? Im in touch with Guru; want me to ask him? It sounded like a long-shot, but he was in.

Well, to start with, he gave me one verse [laughs]. I was like, Yeah, its great. How about a second verse? Finally, he delivered and it was great.

It turned out great. And it gave a whole different idea to how Punk could be used as a melody.

This was like an ode to the old Cubik track by 808 State. That was definitely a track that sort of put me into electronic music at the time, alongside A Homeboy, A Hippy & A Funki Dredds Total Confusion.

This was an easy one. I made it just so I could put it in my sets. It also fits in with the whole 80s vibe I was bringing into the album as well. The whole mid-'80s electro stuff was a huge influence, but I dont want to call it a tribute album to the 80s because, at the same time, it was really looking ahead and forward with tracks like Beautiful, which was the next step in trance, if you will. But tracks like Cubikated were an ode to a previous era that I grew up in.

This track was inspired, in a way, by Leftfield. It was really one of those types of dubby, chilled tracks. But at the same time, I wanted it to feel trancey and melodic.

I never want to get known for just doing the same thing, which is why I do this left-and-right stuff - to keep challenging myself and what people expect of me. It was nice to put more chillout-type tracks on here to show that.

Ferry Corsten's new high-concept sci-fi album, Blueprint, is out now. For tour details, check his website.

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The Last Jedi trailer gets a cyberpunk-as-hell remake – A.V. Club

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The below remake of The Last Jedi trailer is certainly interesting, in part, because of how it was produced, using an Apple IIc from 1984, a program from the era called Dazzle Draw, and some 48 floppy disks, the entirety of which contained 6 MB of information. But the method is a little less important than the end result, which is completely, stupidly cool, like youre seeing through the code from The Matrix to visualize the Magic Eye-like images buried underneath it.

According to TechCrunch, Twitter user @pinotski produced the video over the course of three weeks, apparently while holding up transparent plastic sheets against the monitor. That sounds like a lot of work, but the end result is worth it. This probably goes without being said, but maybe someone could do this for the entire prequel trilogy? Just a thought.

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Mind-blowing ultrasonic ‘printer’ uses lasers and high-frequency sound to assemble electronics – Digital Trends

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Why it matters to you

Ultrasonic assembly device would change what we think of as a 3D printer -- and make additive manufacturing far more versatile in the process.

Neurotechnology, a Lithuanian software development company, wants to rethink 3D printing using ultrasonic particle manipulation. That might sound pretty far-out and futuristic but with that goal in mind, the company has developed a radically new kind of printer, capable of printing just about anything you can imagine.

According to its creators, this technology could enable even something as complex as a smartphone to be 3D printed using a single machine: right from the outer casing to the printed electronic circuit boards that make it run.As well as your standard metals and plastics, it can also manipulate liquids with precision.

The apparatus uses an array of ultrasonic transducers that emit ultrasonic waves, lead researcher Osvaldas Putkis told Digital Trends. By having individual control of each transducer, it is possible to create desired pressure profiles that can trap, rotate and move particles and components without touch. The non-contact nature of ultrasonic manipulation offers a few important advantages when compared to mechanical handling. It can handle a wide range of materials having very different mechanical properties, from plastics and metals down to even liquids. It can [also] handle sensitive materials and small components, avoiding the parasitic electrostatic forces.

The physics behind the machine are pretty darn complex. However, if it works as well as the demo seen in the above video, you should be able to manipulate a wide range of particles in such a way that your created object forms together like a reassembling liquid metal T-100 from Terminator II. The company claims that its accuracy in moving objects is in the range of just a few microns.

At present, Putkis says his team has developed an early prototype, capable of assembling simple electronic circuits on a printed circuit board. To do this, it employs non-contact ultrasonic manipulation technology for positioning of the different electronic components, as well as a laser to solder them in place. To coordinate the process, calibrate the laser, and detect the various components, it uses an on-board camera.

At this stage it is very hard to say when such printer will be available as an end-user product as there still needs a lot of research and development to be done, Putkis said. We are seeking partnerships that could potentially help speed up the developments and application of this printing method.

In other words, it could be a bit of a wait until youre printing off the new iPhone at home, rather than queuing to pick one up from your local Apple store. If Neurotechnologys research pays off, though, this could be a serious game-changer even in an industry thats bursting at the seams with high-quality 3D printers.

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Forget political correctness; time to profile young black men | Myrtle … – Myrtle Beach Sun News

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Forget political correctness; time to profile young black men | Myrtle ...
Myrtle Beach Sun News
If we want to put an end to the shootings in Myrtle Beach and elsewhere in the former great country of ours, we need to do one simple thing: start profiling.

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Card cloning racket: Mumbai gang steals debit, credit card data from 1000 customers of 96 banks – Hindustan Times

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Investigations into a card cloning racket which was running in Bandra, has revealed that the six accused who worked as waiters, managed to steal credit card and debit card data of as many as 1,000 customers from 96 different banks including eight major banks.

However, the Bandra police clarified that all of the stolen data may not have been used for stealing money. The data was stolen by the six waiters working in bars and restaurants using credit card skimmers at Mumbai, Pune and Thane from their unsuspecting customers and patrons since early 2016.

Three of them had worked at a restaurant called Persian Durbar in Sakinaka, Andheri. The unsuspecting customers would hand over their card as well as pin code to the waiters, who secretly swiped them on the skimmers. In some cases, they observed the customer while entering the pin code on the keypad and memorised it.

The Bandra police said that there are more links to the case and the involvement of more accused besides the 6 waiters has not been ruled out. Deputy commissioner of police, zone IX, Paramjit Dahiya told HT, We are in the process of identifying the people whose credit and debit card data was stolen.

Till now, 20 people have been identified and as many First Information Reports (FIRs) have been registered in Thane, Pune and Mumbai. The police are simultaneously also finding out if FIRs have already been registered by victims after realising that money had been withdrawn from their accounts.

Detection officer, sub inspector Bhimsen Gaikwad said, We had received a complaint from a private bank in May this year after which we traced the accused, which led to further arrests. Now, another major bank has approached us and we are taking their help to identify the victims.

The complaint filed in May by the private bank had said that an unidentified accused had withdrawn money from an ATM on Carter Road using a cloned card of a customer. The police worked out the information and arrested one of the accused this month. His arrest led to the arrest of seven others.

Apart from card skimmers, the police seized a laptop and a software they used to clone cards.The police have also seized 50 cloned cards which are re-writable. After using these cards to withdraw money, the accused wouls erase the used data and store new data on it by overwriting it.

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In the Future, You Will Have the Same Pet Your Entire Life – VICE

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Near the end of my conversation with Jae Woong Wang, a researcher and spokesperson for South Korea's Sooam Biotech, he asks me to tell the world that they shouldn't stuff any recently deceased pets they hope to have cloned in freezers. It renders cell matter impossible to harvest, which isn't good news if you're in the business of cat and dog duplicates. It's hard to let a grieving family down easy, especially after they've made the day-long trip across the Pacific only to discover their newly dead companion won't be getting a genome-generated second chance.

"You have to preserve the body as long as possible without freezing," says Wang. "That's a mistake a lot of people make. When water freezes, it punctures all the cells, and the chances of cloning becomes extremely low. It's a frustration we're constantly dealing with."

Sooam Biotech's founder, Hwang Woo-suk, ran into significant controversy in 2004 when he fraudulently claimed to have cloned human embryos, but the company has stayed in the business for over ten years. Sooam has fulfilled contracts with the commercial farming industrycloning livestock for breeding and bottom-line purposesbut its pet cloning division is a marketplace built on a more spiritual communion. It'll take $100,000 to reunite with a reincarnated version of an animal you loved.

Its cloning process is more straightforward than you might think. A Sooam clerk will meet you at the Seoul airport and retrieve a fingernail-length biopsy of your dead pet's flesh. A donor dog or cat is selected from the company's kennel. Their eggs are flushed out, gutted of their genetic information, and fused with DNA harvested from the biopsy. If the process works, the retrofitted egg is inserted into a surrogate mother. "Until the point where they actually meet the dog, [the customer] is in a very happy disbelief," says Wang. "But once we deliver the dog, they usually burst into tears."

The jury is still out on what a clone actually is. It's a conundrum that's raged ever since Dolly, the famous duplicated sheep, was brought into the world in 1996. Genetically, they'll be a mirror image of the source animal, an asexually wrought son or daughter built in the flash of nuclear transfer. But will the clone share the same emotions or personality tics? That's difficult to say. Research on cloned cows and pigs has shown distinct differences in personalityand even looksfrom the animal of origin to its clone.

As such, New York Magazine's Science of Us blog called pet cloning "a laughable, extravagant waste of money," when news broke last year that media tycoon Barry Diller and fashion mogul Diane von Furstenberg had their Jack Russell terrier cloned, even though the wealthy power couple seemed pleased with the two puppies they got as a result. And, in an interview with Scientific American, stem cell biologist Robin Lovell-Badge maintained that cloning a pet was, flatly, "stupid." "You're never gonna get Tibble back, or whatever," he added.

But companies like Sooam deal in loveor more specifically, the faint chance that you might love again. Because losing a dog or a cat is really goddamn rough. "A beloved pet is much like a family member," reads the pitch on ViaGen Pets, a Texas-based commercial cloning outlet that offers a pet-cloning service. "The unique life-enriching bond, the love and companionshipa truly special pet provides us a unique sense of comfort and life-enriching fulfillment that is nearly impossible to extend beyond your pet's natural lifespan. Until now."

It was a convincing enough argument for Doug and Michelle Shields, and their fluffy white Maltese, Guinevere. Gwen lived 16 and a half years before she died after a seizure. The Shields had mulled the idea of preserving her genes in the past, but it wasn't until the fresh aftermath of her death that they made the decision to start the cloning process. (Luckily, the veterinarian put Gwen's carcass in a refrigerator, not a freezer or a cremator.)

"We're what you'd deem to be animal people. We have a parrot and another dog we adopted," says Michelle. "But Gwen was just an amazing, amazing, amazing dog. Just unbelievable. She just had a personality. Everyone loved her. There was no replacing her. So if I could get her back, or her personality traits, I would do anything to do that."

The Shields reached out to PerPETuate, an animal genome preservation business run by Ron Gillespie, who used to work at the cattle genetics company ABS Global. Right now, he's partnering with ViaGen, and recently, its laboratory delivered four clones sourced from a genome Gillespie first harvested in 2000. He happily preserved Gwen's DNA, and the Shields family is currently deep in the cloning process, one Gillespie remains optimistic about.

"[Customers] see the whole procedure as a healing journey."

"Dog owners [throughout history] have said, 'This is the best dog I've ever had,' and I'm going to breed them with another dog to get a puppy that's as closed to [the original] as possible," Gillespie says. "That's a very natural, common thing. Selective breeding has been going on for years. This is the ultimate breeding tool. You're not just getting half of the genes; you're getting 100 percent of them. It's an understandable step in the evolution of breeding."

Gillespie's currently working with a client with an autistic son who finds peace in the presence of an old family cat. The client is, of course, terrified of what might happen after the cat dies. He's tried other animals (and other cats), but nothing musters the same pacifying effect. So instead, he holds out hope that maybe he can give his son some peace with a long line of duplicates.

"This cat is of exceptional value to this boy and to this family," says Gillespie. "They tried the brother of this cat, and the boy totally rejected his brother. So they're going to clone him. And what's gonna happen? Is this cat gonna be able to substitute? If it is, think about the significance of that. People don't think in those terms. They just think it's just rich people with a lot of money."

Gillespie tells me that 2017 has been one of the busiest years for PerPETuate since he started the business in '98, and speculates eventually pet cloning will become more common as the prices get more affordable. He thinks ViaGen is a good first step, as they offer a cloning service domestically for $50,000a bargain compared to Sooam's six-figure entry fee. But obviously, that price will have to come down quite a bit more for cloning to truly hit the mainstream.

In a way, Gillespie has been banking on cloning become more accessible for the entirety of his career, since his business is basically built around preserving genomes for an era where it does become more economically viable for the average pet lover. Until then, it's not just the Diane von Furstenbergs of the world who are writing big checks to bring back their beloved pooches: As of the fall of '15, Sooam Biotech estimated it had cloned some 600 dogs, not all of which had wealthy owners. Jae Woo Wang tells me some of their customers liquidate assets to afford the cloning process. Priorities tend to shift in the midst of grieving.

ViaGen's testimonial section illustrates that, no matter the cost, its customers believe it's money well spentdozens of former clients there have drafted sonnets in tribute of the preserved genomes of their dead pets and the hopes for the possible clones they may one day produce. "They see the whole procedure as a healing journey," says Gillespie. "At first it's very difficultyour dog just passed away, you have to go to a vet to get a biopsy done and send it over, or sometimes travel here. You have to wait for us to give the confirmation that the cells are OK. All of that is very, very stressful. But once they actually have the puppy, that's when they unload."

Michelle and Doug Shields just want their dog back, and look at the price tag as a worthy luxury. Some more time with Gwen is a far more important splurge to them than a trip to Italy or a Country Club membership. Michelle says that most of her friends understand, because they all loved Gwen too. "We're just people who really love our dog," Michelle says.

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In the Future, You Will Have the Same Pet Your Entire Life - VICE

A billion-year arms race against viruses shaped our evolution – Nature – Nature.com

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Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library

Viruses have evolved to invade the cells of plants, animals and other organisms.

Viruses and their hosts have been at war for more than a billion years. This battle has driven a dramatic diversification of viruses and of host immune responses. Although the earliest antiviral systems have long since vanished, researchers may now have recovered remnants of one of them embedded, like a fossil, in human cells.

A protein called Drosha, which helps to control gene regulation in vertebrates, also tackles viruses, researchers report today in Nature1. They suggest that Drosha and the family of enzymes, called RNAse III, it belongs to were the original virus fighters in a single-celled ancestor of animals and plants. You can see the footprint of RNAse III in the defence systems through all kingdoms of life, says Benjamin tenOever, a virologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and lead author of the paper.

Plants and invertebrates deploy RNAse III proteins in an immune response called RNA interference, or RNAi. When a virus infects a host, the proteins slice the invaders RNA into chunks that prevent it from spreading. But vertebrates take a different approach, warding off viruses with powerful interferon proteins while Drosha and a related protein regulate genes in the nucleus.

But in 2010, tenOever witnessed an odd phenomenon: Drosha appeared to leave the nucleus of human cells whenever a virus invaded2. That was weird and made us curious, tenOever says. His team later confirmed the finding, and saw that Drosha demonstrates the same behaviour in cells from flies, fish and plants.

To test the hypothesis that Drosha leaves the nucleus to combat viruses in vertebrates, the researchers infected cells that had been genetically engineered to lack Drosha with a virus. They found that the viruses replicated faster in these cells. The team then inserted Drosha from bacteria into fish, human and plant cells. The protein seemed to stunt the replication of viruses, suggesting that this function dates back to an ancient ancestor of all the groups. Drosha is like the beta version of all antiviral defence systems, tenOever says.

tenOever speculates that RNAse III proteins originally helped bacteria to maintain their own RNA, and that bacteria later deployed the proteins against the genetic material of viruses. He points out the occurrence of RNAse III proteins in immune responses throughout the tree of life. For instance, some CRISPR systems, a virus-fighting response in archaea and bacteria, include RNAse III proteins. Plants and invertebrates deploy the proteins in RNAi. And although vertebrates rely on interferons for viral control, this study now shows that Drosha still chases after viruses, in the same way a pet Golden Retriever a dog bred to retrieve waterfowl fetches a stick as if it were a fallen duck.

Donald Court, a geneticist at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, calls the finding cool, but he doesnt buy the evolutionary scenario. RNAse III is involved in many things, in almost all domains of life, he explains. He sees no reason to think that one antiviral system evolved into the next. For instance, he says, the fact that one CRISPR system includes RNAse III whereas others dont suggests that the proteins were probably deployed acquired independently and not inherited.

Its a really intriguing story, and the data are good, but youre talking about processes that happened over millennia so its hard to know whether its true, says Bryan Cullen, a virologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Cullen predicts that the paper will prompt researchers who study RNA and infectious diseases to test tenOevers hypothesis. The immune system has been under tremendous pressure to evolve as viruses overcome defences, and this paper suggests that RNAse III has played an important role in that evolution, he says. Its like what the Red Queen said to Alice in Through the Looking-Glass: you have to keep running to stay in one place.

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A billion-year arms race against viruses shaped our evolution - Nature - Nature.com

Turkey bans teaching of evolution but science is more than a belief system – The Conversation UK

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In the US there have been many attempts to expunge evolution from the school curriculm or demand that creationism the idea that all life was uniquely created by God is given equal treatment in science textbooks. While all these have failed, the government in Turkey has now banned evolution from its national curriculum.

US creationists want both views to be presented, to let children decide what to believe. Bids to reject this are wrongly characterised as attempts to shut down debate or free speech to promote a scientific, atheistic, secular, ideology over a more moral, ethical, commonsense religious worldview.

Turkeys decision goes much further. This isnt about claiming equal treatment, its an outright ban. The government justifies it by claiming evolution is difficult to understand and controversial. Any controversy however is one manufactured by ultra-religious communities seeking to undermine science. Many concepts in science are more difficult than evolution, yet they still get taught.

Evolution, creationists argue, is just a theory its not proven and so up for debate. Evolutionary trees (especially for humans) are regularly re-drawn after new fossil discoveries, showing how poor the theory is. After all, if the theory was correct, this wouldnt keep changing. Often, creationists will pose a challenge for science to prove how life started, knowing that there is not yet a firm, accepted theory. Finally, theres the king of all arguments: if we all evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

These arguments are packed with factual inaccuracies and logical fallacies. Evolution doesnt need an explanation of how life started. It simply describes how life develops and diversifies. Humans did not evolve from monkeys were great apes. Modern apes, including humans, evolved from now extinct pre-existing ape species. Were related to, not descended from, modern apes.

Creationists fail to understand that evolution itself is not a theory. Evolution happens. Life develops and diversifies, new species come into existence. We can see intermediate life forms right now, such as fish that are transitioning to living on land and land mammals that recently transitioned into aquatic life. The theory of evolution explains how evolution takes place. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace first described the mechanism that drives the change - natural selection - in 1858.

Creationists also fail to understand the difference between a theory and a law in science. This is something that even science graduates suffer from, as Ive noted in my own research. Theories explain scientific concepts. They are evidenced and accepted by the scientific community. Theories are the pinnacle of scientific explanation, not just a hunch or a guess. Laws however have a different role, they describe natural phenomena. For example, Newtons laws of gravity do not explain how gravity happens, they describe the effects gravity has on objects. There are laws and theories for gravity. In biology however, there are few laws, so there is no law of evolution. Theories do not, given sufficient proof, become laws. They are not hierarchical.

A third issue is the lack of understanding of the nature of science. Science aims not to find some objective truth, but to elicit an explanation of natural phenomena. All scientific explanations are provisional. When new evidence is found that contradicts what we think we know, we change our explanations, sometimes rejecting theories that were once thought to be correct. Science is always working to try and falsify ideas. The more those ideas pass our tests, the more robust they are and the greater our confidence is that they are correct. Evolution has been tested for nearly 160 years. Its never been falsified. Science only deals with natural phenomena, it doesnt deal with or seek to explain the supernatural.

Banning good science undermines all science, especially considering evolutions place underpinning modern biology, with plenty of evidence to support it. For mainstream scientists, the fact that evolution happens is neither seriously questioned nor controversial. Any controversy in discussions of evolution resides in the role natural selection has in driving diversity and change, or the pace of that change.

This ban on teaching evolution in Turkish schools opens up the possibility that alternative, unscientific ideas may enter science teaching, from those who believe in a flat earth to deniers of gravity.

How do we deal with the apparent schism between religious belief and scientific evidence?

My research and approach has been to distinguish between religion, a belief system, and science, which works on the acceptance of evidence. Beliefs, including but not limited to religious beliefs, are often held irrationally, without evidence, and are resistant to change. Science is rational, based on evidence and is open to change when faced with new evidence. In science, we accept the evidence, rather than choose to believe.

Turkeys move to ban the teaching of evolution contradicts scientific thinking, and tries to turn the scientific method into a belief system as if it were a religion. It seeks to introduce supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, and to assert that some form of truth or explanation for nature exists beyond nature. The ban is unscientific, undemocratic and should be resisted.

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Turkey bans teaching of evolution but science is more than a belief system - The Conversation UK

From a Single Bulb to Marquees Worldwide: The Evolution of Pixar – Film School Rejects

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A supercut of the animation studios illustrious rise to power.

For just over 30 years now, Pixar has been pushing the animation envelope to new, glorious, and mostly infallible heights. The studio has one of the greatest track records of any in the history of the medium, and they seem to have no shortage of ideas for whats next. This year alone will see the release of two new Pixar films, Cars 3, in theaters now, and Coco, a mystery-adventure boasting an entirely Latino cast, which opens in November.

In the latest supercut from Burger Fiction, the evolution of Pixar is traced from its early days in the late 80s making groundbreaking shorts, to its heyday in the 90s making box-office-busting hits, to the present era where it continues to extend the limits of what animation can do, as well as the number of people it can reach. Pixars greatest quality has always been its inclusivity, the way it makes films that can be enjoyed by several different age groups at once, parents included. In fact, it feels safe to say the way Pixar tells stories and the kind of stories they tell has been just as influential as the technology they use to tell them. You cant really have a monopoly on a genre, but if you could, Pixar would own the family film.

So rather round the kids and take a quarter-hours walk through a quarter-century of imagination, innovation, and evolution, the studios and the art forms.

Pixar

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From a Single Bulb to Marquees Worldwide: The Evolution of Pixar - Film School Rejects

Growing robotics industry helps drive development in Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Growing robotics industry helps drive development in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh's growing robotics industry is helping to drive development and the demand for space in the Strip District and other East End neighborhoods, at times pushing rents even higher than they are in the best Downtown offices. That's the conclusion ...

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Growing robotics industry helps drive development in Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The one law of robotics: Humans must flourish – BBC News

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BBC News
The one law of robotics: Humans must flourish
BBC News
The science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote about controlling intelligent machines with the three laws of robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; A robot must obey orders given to it ...

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Industrial robotics security is really, really terrible / Boing Boing – Boing Boing

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Researchers from Politecnico di Milano and Trend Micro conducted an audit of the information security design of commonly used industrial robots and found that these devices are extremely insecure: robots could be easily reprogrammed to violate their safety parameters, both by distorting the robots' ability to move accurately and by changing the movements the robots attempt to perform; hacked robots can also be made to perform movements with more force than is safe; normal safety measures that limit speed and force can be disabled; robots can be made to falsify their own telemetry, fooling human operators; emergency manual override switches can be disabled or hidden; robots can be silently switched from manual to automatic operation, making them move suddenly and forcefully while dangerously close to oblivious, trusting humans; and of course, robots can be caused to manufacture faulty goods that have to be remanufactured or scrapped.

All of this is possible because industrial robotic control systems lack even the most basic security -- instead of cryptographically hashing passwords, they store them in the clear (with a single, deterministic XOR operation to provide a useless hurdle against hackers); controllers expose an FTP process during bootup that accepts new firmware loads without authentication; network-level commands are not encrypted or signed; controllers use hardcoded usernames and passwords; memory corruption attacks are easy and devastating; the runtimes for the control instructions are poorly isolated from other processes -- the paper goes on and on.

Industrial robots epitomize all the problems of the Internet of Shit -- operators who have little or no security expertise, a lack of easy updating, and lazy, sloppy design. But whereas killing someone with the Internet of Shit involves things like turning off the heat in February in Minnesota, industrial robots are giant, barely constrained killing machines.

We explored, theoretically and experimentally, the challenges and impacts of the security of modern industrial robots. We built an attacker model, and showed how an attacker can compromise a robot controller and gain full control of the robot, altering the production process. We explored the potential impacts of such attacks and experimentally evaluated the resilience of a widespread model of industrial robot (representative of a de facto standard architecture) against cyber attacks. We then discussed the domain-specific barriers that make smooth adoption of countermeasures a challenging task.

Interesting future research directions include exploring multi-robot deployments, co-bots, and the safety and security implications of the adoption of wireless connections. Also, an improved survey would produce statistically significant results. We definitely plan to analyze controllers from other vendors, to further confirm the generality of our approach.

An Experimental Security Analysis of an Industrial Robot Controller [Davide Quarta, Marcello Pogliani, Mario Polino, Federico Maggi, Andrea Maria Zanchettin, and Stefano Zanero/Industrial Robots Security]

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University of Tulsa security researchers Jason Staggs and his colleagues will present Adventures in Attacking Wind Farm Control Networks at this years Black Hat conference, detailing the work they did penetration-testing windfarms.

Yesterdays massive ransomware outbreak of a mutant, NSA-supercharged strain of the Petya malware is still spreading, but the malwares author made a mere $10K off it and will likely not see a penny more, because Posteo, the German email provider the crook used for ransom payment negotiations, shut down their account.

Petya is a well-known ransomware app that has attained a new, deadly virulence, with thousands of new infection attempts hitting Kaspersky Labs honeypots; security firm Avira attributes this new hardiness to the incorporation of EternalBlue the same NSA cyberweapon that the Wannacry ransomware used, which was published by The Shadow Brokers hacker group []

Despite the upfront cost, electric toothbrushes are much better at removing plaque than those freebies from the dentists office. For those who struggle to fill the American Dental Associations recommended two minutes of brushing time, or anyone with limited dexterity, a sonic toothbrush can give your oral care routine a boost.To keep your chops healthy []

Learning a new language will give your resume an upgrade, sure, but it will also provide a huge cognitive boost for mental tasks outside of translation and conversation. Bilingual brains have been shown to be better at handling multiple concurrent tasks, and gaining fluency in a new tongue is an amazing way to improve memory, []

If you struggle to get a good nights rest, consider replacing your pillows before dropping hundreds on a new mattress. You can give your tired neck a break with a 2-pack of memory foam pillows, available now in the Boing Boing Store.Each of these pillows is stuffed with cooling polyurethane foam that molds to your []

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Industrial robotics security is really, really terrible / Boing Boing - Boing Boing

Children explore robotics during week-long summer camp … – Kdminer

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Photo by Aaron Ricca.

Celeste Lucier explains the various tasks robots will perform on the space-table.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math might be intimidating for many students, but a popular toy could help quell the anxiety.

Kingman FIRST Robotics, Team 60 coaches and high school science teachers Celeste Lucier and Jody Schanaman, along with Team 60 student mentors, are leading about 40 third- through eighth-grade students through the 2017 First Lego League Lego Camp Monday through Friday at the Kingman High School cafeteria.

Lucier and Schanaman hope the camp will get more students engaged in STEM fields.

The students will be programming and building autonomous Lego robots that will perform coordinated exercises on a table-sized obstacle course. Theyll also be conducting research to identify real world problems, learning how to create innovative solutions and create a presentation to share their findings.

We try to keep this project simple, but also complex enough for all ages, said Lucier, a Kingman Academy of Learning science teacher.

The camps annual theme, Solar Storm, will be tied in with the Aug. 21 solar eclipse. The students will learn how the sun affects the Earth, such as climate and solar energy. Theyll also program their robots to drive across a space-themed table and playing field, moving small objects between planets and resupplying a small space station with Lego trinkets.

The camp is more than about playing with Legos. According to Lucier, by the end of the week, everyone walks away with a sense of Cooper-tition a fine balance of cooperation and competition.

We do a lot of team building exercises, she said. We all learn together. The teachers arent always right.

Lucier and Schanaman began spreading word of the camp to the school districts in late April. This summers activity has attracted 18 third- through fifthth-graders and 21 sixth- through eighth-graders, most of whom are new to robotics. The camp ran parents about $65 for the week (as opposed to about $200 in larger cities), keeping their kids occupied for between three to five hours a day depending on age.

We kept this cost effective, said Schanaman, the Kingman High School robotics class instructor. We want to expose STEM fields to as many children as possible.

The kids had their hands full of Legos and other projects at the KHS cafeteria Tuesday morning. Not one of them looked bored.

I think this is going pretty well, said fourth-grader Ronald Hulse. The fun part is building the robots.

The day-camp tries to push the children out of their sometimes isolated mental boxes.

This camp will help them learn interpersonal skills, Lucier said while showing what objects the robots will do on the space table. Some kids tend to stay focused on their idea only. This will help them break out of that mindset.

Getting kids hooked on STEM can be critical to their success.

If we can get them to like math and science now, we can point them down that direction in their future educational career, Lucier sad.

Final Lego robot competitions will begin 9 a.m. Friday for 3-5th grade and 3 p.m. for 6-8th grade inside Kingman High School at 4182 N. Bank St.

For more information, contact Lucier at 928-377-8586.

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Children explore robotics during week-long summer camp ... - Kdminer

FIRST Robotics world champions welcomed at Capitol – WILX-TV

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LANSING, Mich. (WILX) -- Gov. Snyder welcomed Michigan's FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics world champions to the state Capitol.

Lightning Robotics includes students from three Canton high schools. Stryke Force involves students from several Kalamazoo area high schools. They were part of a four team "alliance" that came out winners in the FIRST Robotics World Championship in April. They defeated teams from 40 countries.

Im proud of these students and also the coaches, mentors, sponsors and parents who worked so hard to show the world the talent and innovation we have here in Michigan, Snyder said. FIRST Robotics brings science, technology, engineering and math to life. Team members learn skills they can use for the rest of their lives to solve challenging problems and follow a pathway to good-paying and rewarding careers.

There are more than 450 FIRST teams statewide. 93 state high school teams participated at the world championship in St. Louis, MO. The levels covered students in Kindergarten through 12 grade.

These teams highlight how we can bring students, industry experts and schools together to help narrow our states talent gap and move Michiganders, their families and our economy forward, said Roger Curtis, director of the state Department of Talent and Economic Development.

In 2018 Detroit will host the FIRST Robotics' World Champion ship for three years.

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FIRST Robotics world champions welcomed at Capitol - WILX-TV

Robotics program teaches students to code, build robots – NBC Nebraska

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HASTINGS, Neb. -- The robotics portion is just one part of the Hastings College Scholars Academy.

Not only are the students working with robots, they are building them as well and writing code to operate them.

The students are learning type coding they will eventually learn in high school and college.

"It really does like give you more to think about and have you think harder," Genieve Miller, a student, said. "We did a math program earlier that helped program the robots and we all we're like struggling a little bit and we had to think hard."

Officials said the program engages the students on a level they may not get in school.

"I think they often are not given an equal amount of attention to other students, just because they don't need the extra help," Aaron Pierce, the assistant director of the Hastings College Scholars Academy, said. "It makes it much easier for teachers which is perfect, but it means that their individuality isn't as embraced or it's not something they get to work as much with, so we want to do something that is at their speed."

The students love the program.

"We do like typing code where you have to do like certain things, if you forget a semicolon it doesn't work and you have to add it," Miller said. "I've also learned like designing a 3D image on a program Fusion 360." "It was really cool," she added.

Officials said the program is a fun, hands-on experience that builds the next generation.

If you're interested in enrolling for the program next year, instructors said you should be able to find out more information on the Hastings College website in December.

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Robotics program teaches students to code, build robots - NBC Nebraska

Steve Mitchell The Mind of Watercolor Blog

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At the writing of this blog, I'mabout to post a video that launches into a bit of a rant (that video is now at theend of this post). But thats enough of the rant. Check the video out below to see the complete rant. Regardless, in watercolor, [Read more]

If you follow my YouTube channel, you may have noticed that I've been uploading Strathmore Workshopvideos over the last couple weeks. These were 4 videos done for their web site last spring (2016) and aired during each week of May. This year, as per [Read more]

Ok, so I just recently posted on Skillshare an extended versionof my latest spontaneous painting with additional commentary.All said, its aboutan hour long and takes you with me through the process ofhow I approach spontaneous landscape painting [Read more]

We all want to improve as artists don't we? Growing as an artist isthe key to more enjoyment and satisfaction as we tread this adventurous but sometimes frustrating path.Practice is a given, but what happens when we get stuck and don't know how to [Read more]

Looking for cool gift ideas for the artist in your family? Or maybe you're the artistjust looking to add a little something to your own Santa's list. Here are a few of my personal picks to keep theartistic inspiration fired up. Art Supply Kits [Read more]

Veterans have servedfor a variety of reasons. For Americans, the reasons usually include the protection or our great nation, propagation of freedom and the dismantling of tyranny. While not all wars have been popular, the men and women who have [Read more]

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Steve Mitchell The Mind of Watercolor Blog

Industry Job Seekers Can Set Up A Free Profile At AutoCareCareers.Org – AftermarketNews.com (AMN)

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Recent graduates and job seekers can connect with potential employers at Auto Care Careers, the premier online career resource center for the $381 billion auto care industry.

After setting up a free profile atjobs.autocarecareers.org, candidates can upload a resume, choose to make it confidential, designate military status and receive email alerts of new job postings.

Career fields in the auto care industry include accounting, customer service, engineering, finance, human resources, inventory management, manufacturing, marketing, research and development, retail, sales, sourcing, supply chain, technical support, training, vehicle repair and more.

When people think of the auto care industry, vehicle repair often comes to mind. The truth is that our industry employs 4.6 million people in a wide variety of exciting career paths, said Courtney Hammer, director, job and career development, Auto Care Association. If you are looking for your first job or want a career change, setting up a free profile at Auto Care Careers and uploading a resume is the first step toward connecting with hiring managers in this thriving industry.

To learn more, visit autocarecareers.org.

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Industry Job Seekers Can Set Up A Free Profile At AutoCareCareers.Org - AftermarketNews.com (AMN)