Teleporter

“Have you ever heard of what a Teleporter is”?

Those lines echoed inside my head. My eyes were half closed when a strange man approached me when I was hanging around the park. I knew he wasn’t from the neighborhood. Almost everyone knows everyone in this part of the state. I wasn’t really worried. Our neighborhood isn’t really the type that crooks and thugs hang around in. The trees swayed against the wind and my hair seemed like it had a life of its own as it danced in the breeze, despite its boyish length. You know, kind of like one of those scene kids ranting about something irrelevant on the internet. I ran my right hand across my face, rubbing my right eye as I did. I gave the man an odd look under the cover of my hair that reached till my eyes.

He had a crooked, yellowish smile on his face. Like he was eager. It was kind of creepy. I could almost trace with a pencil the lines on his aged face, and the few hairs that dangled from his scalp didn’t help his appeal much. “Uh. Is that like the one from Jumper?” I asked, as I looked up. He looked as if he towered over me. Nothing about him stood out. He was just a plain, old coot. An old creepy coot. He nodded in excitement, quickly pulling out a weird device from his brown coat’s breast pocket. I thought it was a gun. But then again, what was the point on mugging a 16-yearold teenager? I mean I can’t even be considered a sight for sore eyes. Not with my acne problem, at least. Some people even joke about me being a thug myself. Imagine: a girl like me who looks like a crook.

He presented the device to me. Like he wanted me to take a look at it. I shot him a quizzical glance; I was really starting to doubt this guy. As I tried to shove him away from me for me to get out of the park bench, he took that opportunity to slap it around my forearm. The device just wrapped itself around my arm, almost a bit too lose, even. “Dude, w-what the hell!” I stammered, as I tried to pry the thing loose from my arm, only to find that it was slowly gripping to my skin. It felt like that one time at the clinic when the nurse took my blood pressure, only worse. As I shifted my eyes from the weird thing on my arm to the old man, I watched him as he replied with a cynical laugh, and then quickly pranced away from me.

It was disturbing -- a man in his prime prancing, that is.

A sharp pain came as soon as the man disappeared as if like smoke before my very eyes. I grabbed my arm and curled in pain as what felt like a needle dug through my skin. I could almost feel something being injected in me as it urged on in my forearm.

‘Sequence Initiating’

“What?”

‘Starting nanobot protocol 23”

It sounded like it came from my head.

There was a weird, metallic female voice inside my head.

Talking to me.

--Or at least announcing something, to be more precise.

I felt dizzy all of a sudden. It felt like my vision was swinging from left to right so fast that I felt like hurling right then and there. ‘60% Synchronization Ratio…’

I dropped to my knees already. My mind was so frazzled that it couldn’t even process pain anymore; or I think it doesn’t really hurt anymore, unlike a minute ago.

‘90% Synchronization Ratio…’

‘After a full synchronization ration, what in the world will happen then?’I asked myself – and by a long shot, I hoped the metallic voice would answer the question that just drifted aimlessly in my mind.

My sight wasn’t just running wildly from left to right now. Apparently, since someone or something thinks I haven’t quite enjoyed myself enough, my brain started making me hazy by throwing my vision up and down as well. I felt like laundry in a washing machine on turbo, even if I just staggered there in the middle of the cemented pathway.

‘100% Synchronization Ratio…’

“Fuuuuuuuudge.” I stammered, hearing that whatever that’s about to come is coming; and I don’t think it’d be something I’d like.

‘Synchronization Complete. Final Sequence initiating…’

Oh.

Well apparently, there’s another sequence.

Great.

My vision was starting to normalize again. My hands searched the surroundings for the park bench. As soon as my finger stubbed the steel frame, I knew I was still here in the park. I closed my eyes as I sat back on the bench. It felt sort of different. I don’t remember it being cold. It was summer.

I rubbed my eyes with my palms. The weird device that the old man attached on me was still on my arm. I was surprised that it didn’t hurt. Like I was never wounded in the first place. I opened my eyes after what seemed like minutes, and people were staring at me. I then realized I wasn’t California anymore.

‘Welcome, Subject 09 Stump, Elisa Marie. You are now part of the Teleportation Reconnaissance Squad.’

Hello Robot :)

I want to have a Psychologist-ish smart friend Robot! :D

If I ever had a robot that could do every whim I had, that would be cool. I’d want that robot to be smart, kind of like a talking version of Google, but with better searching capabilities. I’d want it to be like a friend also, giving good advice. Kind of like a psychologist, I suppose.

I’d want it to appear like a human. Like no one will know that it’s a robot. A personality would also be good. Probably something that would compliment mine. I guess it should also have a built-in camera in its eyes so it can take pictures and or record videos. Probably something around the lines of Astroboy or I, Robot, only in teenage form and minus the violent tendencies and logically illogical thinking.

It’s hard to say anything with regard to something that hasn’t been fully developed. It’s hard to limit something that is still abstract. Something like robots with the capacity of a human brain is still somewhat far-fetched, but it I think it would be proper that they don’t function to replace humans.

The 3 Aspects

Scenario: You survived a war or natural disaster that wipes out a signficant percentage of the earth's population. The destruction was immense. If you were to make a decision for your co-survivors and yourself, give the TOP THREE (3) things (aspects, etc.) that you would re-establish and develop first to make life sustainable again.

Cooking
Art/Literature
Contact to the outside world.

Reach out.

Children these days, even teenagers from our generation, know little of what it’s like outside. How it is to feel the breeze, the disgusting feeling of sweat drying on your clothes, or having to suffer a bruise and your parents would comfort you and do anything in their parental expertise to calm you down by scaring you with a fictional story of how an headless priest will come out if you don’t stop crying and patch it up. Most of all, people these days feel like they know everything. Just because any and everything can be found in the internet doesn’t mean that you know everything. Experience teaches better than Youtube videos, Wikipedia articles, and How-To-Do guides on the internet.

Art/Literature.

Art is one of the most prominent facets of expression. Art nowadays are just photos patched together and a smart line to deliver a gag. Scarce are the people who write poetry, stories, songs, and the like. Scarcer are those who are able to appreciate it and not say that it is an irrelevant piece.

Cooking

A home cooked meal might take more time compared to dialing Mickey D’s (McDonald’s) number and ordering a quarter pounder, large fries and a coke. People nowadays fail to appreciate how satisfying a home cooked meal can be as opposed to a juicy double down. This also applies health-wise, since fast food products are loaded with preservatives and a ton more things that aren’t even supposed to be with it, like how Mickey D’s fries have a certain percentage of beef flavoring in them. Yes, even the ones that don’t have flavor.

How would I end the world?

1. A. I would like to end the world just like how the movie 2012 went, but in a more subtle sense. Like a relentless wave of earthquakes, but the people are warned beforehand. And then tornadoes with hail and volcanoes exploding and then tidal waves.

2. B. Global Warming is the most prevalent issue nowadays. Countries are striving to find renewable and recyclable sources of energy to replace the consumption of fossil fuels. Proponents such as Al Gore and documentaries such as 6 Degrees Can Change the World are eye-openers for those who are poorly educated with regard to the real status and dangers of global warming; a good reason to believe that 2012 could actually come true, not because the Mayans predicted the end of days on that year, but more of because the possibility that the polar ice caps can melt.

Cerebellar Abiotrophy

A severe, incurable neurologic disorder thought to affect primarily Arabians--cerebellar abiotrophy (CA)--might be able to jump the "breed barrier" and affect other types of horses, according to a University of California, Davis, research team. The genetic disease--caused by a mutation on a certain segment of DNA--other breeds of horses (mostly those with Arabians in their lineage) could be at risk for carrying the CA mutation.

Cerebellar abiotrophy is caused by the loss of a specific type of neuron in the cerebellum (the part of the brain that controls a horse's sensory perception, coordination, and motor control). As a result, affected foals suffer from head tremors and a lack of equilibrium, among other neurologic deficits. Due to the absence of an effective treatment approach the more severely affected foals are routinely euthanized early in life because of the risk they would pose to themselves and others as adults.

Cecilia Penedo, PhD, of the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory (VGL), along with Leah Brault, PhD, who worked on the continuing CA project at UC Davis during her doctoral studies, identified a genetic mutation associated with CA in 2010. But they began to wonder if the Arabian's role in the development of many other breeds could mean that these breeds could have inherited the CA mutation.

http://www.cerebellar-abiotrophy.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=1&Itemid=28

Although only from speculation, it’s not hard to derive the possibility that the growing need for more and more resources by the insatiable species called humans are to blame. We’re creating more and more ways to create more and more things. Or it can be that we’re creating more and more ways to reproduce more and more things at an accelerated rate. It can be attributed to the pollution, the type of food these animals consume, or just about anything. As the ones who rule the majority of the troposphere, we should take full responsibility of what happens around us as well. That includes taking care of the animals that we’ve ousted from their habitat, too.

Inceptor

This small helicopter is called Inceptor and it is the latest product of Insitu, the innovative company behind ScanEagle that is now owned by Boeing. Inceptor weighs only 3.5lbs and fits into a police car trunk. It has an electric motor with swappable lithium polymer batteries. It can fly for around 24min, take-off and land autonomously, navigate and hover via waypoints and also controlled semi-autonomously through a touchscreen. The integrated flight control system is aFCS20 provided by Adaptive Flight Inc.

One can learn to operate it in a few hours and it provides electro-optic or IR imaging immediately even during adverse weather conditions and wind gusts. Video imagery is transmitted to the handheld ground control station and distributed to decision makers for real-time viewing. It flies below 500ft and within line of sight (as dictated by the FAA-issued certificate of authorization).

Inceptor will enter a developing but still very niche market sector that is mostly dominated by quadcopters. Prototypes are already flying and initially it will be available only for US public agencies at a cost of around $50.000. Selected law-enforcement customers will test it soon.

http://robots.net/article/3218.html

it can be useful to both sides of the law, since it wouldn’t be long ‘till it’s available to the public market. Hopefully the government and/or the company responsible for this device will have a certain degree of measures to prevent the misuse of the said technological innovation.

Welcome to the Good Life ;)

A good life is when you’re having fun.

A good life is when you’re doing what you love instead of working.

A good life is when everything goes well.

A good life is despite the challenges that I face, I still manage to overcome them; and I become better in the process.

I could write so many things on what a good life is. But in the end, I personally think that life can only be good when one makes it good. I Like if Kim Jong Il thinks that a good life is running a country through the ground and towards the depths of hell, then that’s his cup of tea.

--but don’t get me wrong. I’m not one to say what a good life is, and what a good life isn’t. I’m only one of the millions, if not billions, of people who exist in this blue and green dot in the vastness of space. After all, anyone and everyone have their own version of what a good life is. Probably even children born into poverty have their own version of a good life.

Personally, I believe I’ve lived and still am living a good life. Even though my own flavor of a good life has its sour and spicy moments, I’ll always treasure the sweetest and the most flavorful moments. I’m not one to say what a good life really is, but right here, right now, in this very moment, even though I’m swamped neck-deep in school work, I believe I’m living a good life.

I am living a good life.

Plato’s concept and hate-love relationship with art is somewhat similar to the movie Equilibrium’s plot, wherein they have created a perfect society by completely removing any and every means of emotional expression because their society has mandated that every emotion that is expressed by humans through the arts are the reason why the societies before theirs have fallen.

The movie ends with the rebellion of one of their censors, realizing that it is art of expression is the one that makes them human, albeit the fact that it can deny them a perfect society. I personally feel that art should remain as free as allowable. It is a facet of human intellect, and allows us to not only share what one thinks, but also what one feels. This is achieved effectively by art.