Okay, I'm going to have to plug The Last Ringbearer. See download link for an english translation (which cannot be sold for money for legal reasons but can be downloaded for free).
Originally written in Russian, which pretty much explains the tone. The hobbits and the ring never existed and the Lord of the Rings is the long-after-the-fact mythologized retelling of a war as told by the victors. Aragorn was a power-hungry opportunist who stole the throne. Sauron was a ruling dynasty of the rich nation of Mordor, invaded by the barbarian hordes at its borders. Its trolls and orcs were human ethnicities, with the retelling of the war warping their portrayal into monsters. Saruman quit the council of wizards in disgust when he learned that they sided with the barbarians in their genocide of Mordor because of the fearsome power that Mordor's new industrial revolution could bring. And we get a glimpse at an 'industrialized' middle-earth 3,000 years into the future where, among other things, aerospace companies try and fail to replicate the ancient lost materials science of mithril.
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...From GTORangeBuilder (featured on /.):
...Consider the standard game of Rock Paper Scissors with the following twist. At the start of each round an independent judge flips a fair coin and tells your opponent the result but does not tell you. If the coin came up heads your opponent must play rock. Otherwise he can play whatever he wants. You can always play whatever you want and standard RPS rules apply (paper beats rock, which beats scissors, which beats paper). Your opponent is a smart thinking player and will adapt perfectly to whatever strategy you pl
Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance.
I have to say that this was the most blatantly transhumanist mainstream lecture that I've seen in a long time, with sentences like "a human being can never be broken - only technology is broken [because it doesn't allow us to remove all of the human's disabilities yet]". Also generally one of my favorite TED Talks so far.
Note that the implications of the technology go beyond just healing the physically disabled: the exoskeletons he mentions will do wonders to old people. We're looking at the possibility of people maintaining the mobility and ease of movement of a young person for potentially their entire lives, and this technology may become widely available within quite a short time. That means that countless of people might become capable of moving back from nursing homes to living independently with only limited assistance.
This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.
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