Thursday, January 13, 2005

Huygens probe For UA professors, 17-year space dream is at hand. TUCSON - It has been a long time coming, this moment. At 3:14 a.m. Friday (Arizona time), the Huygens probe will go screaming through the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, recording everything about its descent.{b} Timeline for the day of contact{b} Equipment on Huygens{b} Probe on its way for crash course with comet [azcentral.com | republicfront] 10:09:21 PM

Disney to Remake Tron Disney to remake Tron. Tron was an amazing movie when it came out, and watching it you still have a feeling of it being ahead of its time and filled with a healthy dose of style and cool effects, as well as some big names in early guises, perfectly proportioned to become a classic movie. So it's not surprise to hear today that it is being revisited by Disney, Coming Soon said: Disney has hired screenwriters Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal to write a remake of Tron, the 1982 Steven Lisberger film about a computer programmer who gets sucked into the parallel world of a computer program, reports Variety. It's interesting that the timing has come round after the Matrix franchise has come to it's last stand with the online videogame Matrix Online (Ingenious title!) to allow everyone to take their place in the Matrix for a nice fat monthly fee. Anyway, the ideas are echoed and the writers want to bring it slightly closer by updating for modern ideals of computing: "We are contemporizing it, taking these ideas that were ahead of the curve and applying them to the present, and we feel the film now has a chance to resonate with a young audience," said Klugman. Sternthal said the new conceit is that the computer programmer gets trapped in a cyberworld, so that the film can utilize the Internet. Well they could end up doing a dumbed down Matrix, by that I mean Matrix without all the philosophy speeches, or they could really flatter the original and bring it forward with a modern day view. Let's hope it's the latter, but I think this is one to watch out for and see if Disney can bring it back. [The Movie Blog] 7:38:18 AM

In Our Time Mind / Body The Mind and Body problem. THE MIND AND BODY PROBLEM At the start of Descartes' Sixth Meditation he writes: "there is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, and mind is entirely indivisible. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish many parts within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete. Although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, I recognize that if a foot or an arm or any other part of the body is cut off nothing has thereby been taken away from the mind". This thinking is the basis of what's known as 'Cartesian dualism', Descartes' attempt to address one of the central questions in philosophy, the mind/body problem: is the mind part of the body, or the body part of the mind? If they are distinct, then how do they interact? And which of the two is in charge? Contributors:Anthony Grayling, Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers' Magazine,Sue James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. Making this MP3 available is an experiment. We value your thoughts about this trial, and would appreciate feedback at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/mp3.shtml#feedback [In Our Time] 7:33:17 AM

XML Putting XML in the fast lane. Data exchange format is just too slow, some say. But there's debate over the best way to make Extensible Markup Language fly. [CNET News.com] 7:25:53 AM