Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Readers Against DRM (logo)

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 10:51 PM PST

Mechanical Turks: a hive of spammery

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 03:36 AM PST

Intrigued on hearing that Amazon's Mechanical Turk is increasingly used by spammers, Mark Alen, a UC Berkeley Operations Research PhD candidate decided to see whether he could hire Mechanical Turks to spam him, so he posted an offer to pay for writeups of things to see and do in Shiraz City, France. There is no Shiraz City in France (there is a Shiraz City in Iran, though). This did not deter a flock of MTs who happily wrote fictitious reviews of the good times to be had in Alen's fictitious town:
I receive[d] three types of responses:

* 1- Random excerpts from our old friend "the internet" about cities in france (mostly Paris)
* 2- Email addresses of the turkers
* 3- Random user names

We all know that Mechanical Turk challenges the whole "Junk-in, Junk-out" dilemma and makes it more like "Always junk-out, regardless of the input process" but I feel that users posted junk for my junk HIT assuming that there is no quality assurance process working behind the task and I would probably just accept them all (which I have done for many jobs before)

Anyways I just wanted to highlight that the spamming goes both ways. Turkers spam requesters, requesters spam turkers, everybody wins!

Everybody is spamming everybody else on Mechanical Turk (via O'Reilly Radar)

BBC newsteam kidnapped, hooded and beaten by Gadaffi's forces

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 11:42 PM PST

A team of BBC journalists in Libya were kidnapped by security forces loyal to the Gadaffis. They were hooded, imprisoned, beaten, and subject to repeated mock-executions. While imprisoned, they witnessed horrific torture of rebels who'd been captured by Gadaffi's forces.
One of the three, Chris Cobb-Smith, said: "We were lined up against the wall. I was the last in line - facing the wall.

"I looked and I saw a plain-clothes guy with a small sub-machine gun. He put it to everyone's neck. I saw him and he screamed at me.

"Then he walked up to me, put the gun to my neck and pulled the trigger twice. The bullets whisked past my ear. The soldiers just laughed."

A second member of the team - Feras Killani, a correspondent of Palestinian descent - is said to have been singled out for repeated beatings.

Their captors told him they did not like his reporting of the Libyan popular uprising and accused him of being a spy.

The third member of the team, cameraman Goktay Koraltan, said they were all convinced they were going to die.

Gaddafi forces beat up BBC team

Slow dust devil lifts plastic sheets off of a strawberry field

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 10:35 PM PST


[Video Link] Gever Tulley says: "This might just be the most beautiful piece of collaboration between nature and industrial agriculture that I have ever seen."

The video gets much better after the first 30 seconds. It reminded me of the transcendental plastic bag scene in American Beauty.

Stereo photographs of 1906 San Francisco Quake discovered

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 10:17 PM PST

A volunteer at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has discovered what is believed to be the first, and maybe the only, color photos of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire that nearly destroyed the city.

Photography pioneer Frederick Ives shot the images. They may be the earliest color photographs of San Francisco ever taken.The photographs were intended to be viewed with the help of a 3-D image viewing device. From the SF Chronicle:

Frederick Ives was an inventor. In 1881, he patented the halftone process still used for newspaper and magazine photographs. He also became interested in color photography, then in its infancy. He developed a process using mirrors and filters to create separate slides for each primary color of light.

"The slides were then bound together in a special order with cloth tapes in a package known as a Krömgram," [museum volunteer Anthony Brooks] wrote in a blog about the photos.

Anthony Brooks, the museum volunteer who made the discovery, wrote about the color plates in this Smithsonian blog post in January, with some really interesting details about the science and aesthetic theory behind the technology Ives used.

More on the story today in this San Francisco Chronicle article, and a related AP piece is here. Images: Above, Half of a Krőmgram by Frederick Eugene Ives. A view towards downtown San Francisco, October 1906. Below: Half of a Krőmgram by Frederick Eugene Ives. A view from near city hall, San Francisco, October 1906.



Dalai Lama announces plans to retire as political leader of Tibetan government in exile

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 10:15 PM PST

In Dharamsala, India today, His Holiness the Dalai Lama announced plans to step down as political leader of the exiled Tibetan government, and cede power to an elected representative.

This will not come as news to those who have followed the exiled government's progress in recent years, which has trended towards popular elections for positions previously designated by appointment. Nor will it come as news to those close to the spiritual leader's activities: he has hinted in the past of plans for what should come when his time passes.

"As early as the 1960s, I have repeatedly stressed that Tibetans need a leader, elected freely by the Tibetan people, to whom I can devolve power," the Dalai Lama said in a prepared speech. "Now, we have clearly reached the time to put this into effect."

The Dalai Lama has long seen himself as "semi-retired" from political leadership with an elected prime minister already in place in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala. He remains Tibet's spiritual leader.

Image: The Dalai Lama gestures before speaking to students during a talk last month in Mumbai. (REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui)





Live feed from inside Wisconsin Capitol

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 06:48 PM PST

Watch live streaming video from theuptake at livestream.com

Wisconsinites have flooded back into their Capitol Building tonight, aided by police officers who largely stood back and let them in. It's not clear what happens next, or whether the building will be cleared. A call has been put out for a full-scale protest at 9:00 am tomorrow. The Uptake blog is at the Capitol interviewing people who are re-occupying the building, hoping to stay overnight.

Update: It's really hard to tell much of anything from the video. You can't hear the commentator at all, so it's mostly a bunch of yelling. But I thought you all would want to see.



Breaking news: Wisconsin GOP passed controversial legislation using backdoor maneuver

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 05:22 PM PST

Tonight, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker passed a controversial law that will make it illegal for certain classes of public workers to bargain collectively on important issues like working conditions and benefits. Up until now, he and the state's GOP senators had been prevented from passing the law because they didn't have quorum—all 14 Democratic senators left the state so the bill couldn't be voted on.

But it turns out that that only works if the anti-union laws were being voted on as part of a larger fiscal package. Tonight, Wisconsin Republicans split the anti-union parts out into a separate piece of legislation. And, around 6:30 Central, they passed it—18-1. The only "nay" vote being GOP Senator Dale Schultz. (Who certainly deserves some nice notes in thanks for his bravery on this. I can't imagine that vote is going to be a career boost for him.) The new bill now goes to the legislature, where it's expected to be very quickly passed the Republican majority.

Dave Weigel at Slate says:

This is incoherent in a number of ways. First, Gov. Scott Walker's argument for not putting the collective bargaining and union dues/formation reforms on the negotiating table has been, since the beginning, that they were necessary for letting local governments balance their budgets. They are, technically, not "fiscal components" -- they just deal with huge sums of money. Second, Republicans punted on a voting reform bill two weeks ago because they did not want to split the fiscal portions of the bill -- funding for IDs, for those who couldn't afford them -- from the rest of it.

This is a desperation move. It's happening, say Democrats, before they read the new bill. Obviously, had Democrats not fled the state, the un-changed legislation would have passed last month. But this happens a day after e-mails from the governor's office floated the possibility -- which Democrats didn't quite buy -- of negotiation on the collective bargaining parts of the bill.

I'm hearing from friends in Madison tonight that people are flooding the Capitol building, even as the Senate session ended. If I hear more, I'll keep you updated.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin's Democratic senators are on their way home, pledging to join the people of Wisconsin in taking back the government.



Video game in your browser's location bar

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 03:24 AM PST


Probably Corey's HTML 5 video-game "URL Hunter" takes place entirely in the URL bar of your browser, in which you must chase down rogue "a"s with your mighty "O" and clobber them with the spacebar. I keep running into croggling demos of HTML5's capabilities -- last week in Toronto, Mozilla.org's Brett Gaylor showed me a WebGL demo that left me with my jaw on the floor. It's going to be a cool couple of Web-years, most surely.

URL Hunter (via Engadget)



This is not a plate of nachos: The food magic of Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 02:51 PM PST

Desert-nachos.jpg

The food transformation magic of Homaro Cantu and Ben Roche was one of my favorite presentations at TED2011

TED director Chris Anderson introduced Cantu as "a mad scientist who became a chef." Cantu opened a restaurant in Chicago called Moto.

paper-maki-roll.jpgEven though Moto is a Japanese word, and the restaurant uses a Japanese character, they do not serve Japanese food. But as you might expect, said Roche, Moto's executive pastry chef, customers frequently asked for Japanese food. "After about the 10,000th request for a Maki roll we decided to give people what they wanted." Well, kind of: they put all the flavor ingredients of a standard Maki roll onto an edible piece of paper, and served it to their customers. (Image: Reuters)

carrot-cake-ice-cream.jpgCantu and Roche described some of their other creations: they took a carrot cake and blended it, injected the liquified carrot cake into a balloon, and froze it with liquid nitrogen, which turned it into a "hollow shell of carrot cake ice cream."

cuban-cigar-sandwich.jpg They made a Cuban pork sandwich that looks like a Cuban cigar. "We take the spices that go into the pork shoulder and fashion that into ash," said Cantu." We take the sandwich and wrap it up into a collard green" and add an edible cigar band. "We put it in a $1.99 ashtray and charge you about 20 bucks for it."


They also make a desert that looks like nachos with melted cheese and hamburger (see photo at top). "The chips are candied, the ground beef is chocolate, and the cheese is made from mango sorbet that gets shredded liquid nitrogen to make it look like cheese," said Roche. "After doing all of this dematerialization and reconfiguring of these ingredients we realized it's pretty cool, because we learned that the dish actually behaves like the real thing... the cheese begins to melt and it really looks like a plate of nachos. It is not till you begin to taste it that you realize this really is a desert, and it's a real mind ripper."


box.jpg

At this point Cantu and Roche told everyone in the audience to open a small cardboard box that had been placed on the armrest of each chair in the auditorium of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center.

Inside the box there were several different items: a piece of paper with a drawing of a tongue, 2 edible packing peanuts, a lemon slice, two little cubes of orange brownish material, and a pink tablet.

We were instructed to eat half the paper. Roche said that it was going to be "kind of reminiscent of a Greek salad." We were then instructed to eat one of the orange brownish balls, which was a kind of chocolate with spices in it. The packaging peanut was flavored to taste like hot and sour soup. We were told to lick the lemon. A lot of people in the audience grimaced when they sample these items. Roche explained that the items weren't designed to taste good. "You'll see why in a minute," he said.

"This is where everything starts getting nuts," said Cantu. He told us to remove the little pink tablet from the packaging and "suck on it like a SweeTart or a cough drop." It was sour.

The tablet, explained Roche, is made from a fruit called the miracle berry. "It contains a glycoprotein called miraculin. It masks certain taste receptors on your tongue, primarily sour taste receptors. So things that normally taste very sour begin to taste very sweet."

"The miracle berry has a very controversial and fascinating history," said Cantu. A French explorer came across it in 1725 in Africa. The explorer observed that one out of the 30 tribes he came into contact with used the miracle berry to make bad tasting food palatable, and that they were the only tribe that was not suffering from famine.

burger.jpgWhile everyone was waiting for the miracle berry tablet to take effect, Cantu went on to describe some of their other culinary hacks. They asked themselves, "Can we take what the cow eats, remove the cow, and turn it into hamburger?" They combined corn, beets, and barley (staples of a cow's diet, according to Cantu) and converted them into fake hamburger. What they came up with "basically forms like hamburger meat, and basically cooks up like hamburger meat... and tastes like hamburger meat." It also "bleeds" like real hamburger, Roche pointed out.


watermelon-ahi.jpgThey converted a watermelon into ahi tuna. They sprinkled it with some "magic pixie dust" that converts the watermelon's sweet taste into a savory taste. Then they dipped it into liquid nitrogen to "sear" it.

Finally it was time for us to re-taste the ingredients with our miracle berry treated tongues. The paper, we were told, was going to taste like cheesecake. The spicy chocolate ball was going to taste like a truffle. The hot and sour packaging material would taste like sweet and sour soup. And the lemon was going to taste like "freshly squeezed lemonade." To me, everything simply tasted a lot sweeter and a lot less sour. The lemon was absolutely delicious. If I had been given a whole lemon instead of just a slice, I would've happily eaten the whole thing.

About an hour after the conclusion of the presentation I had dinner at a nearby restaurant with some friends. We ordered a bottle of wine. When Morgan Webb, who was sitting next to me, had a sip of the wine she nearly gagged. This is the worst wine I've ever tasted, she said. "It tastes like Manischewitz."

"Maybe it's the miracle berry," I said. We all tasted the lemon slice in our water and it was very sweet. The miracle berry was taking the tartness out of the wine, ruining the flavor. I'm not a wine drinker, so it didn't bother me. By the time our appetizers arrived the effect had worn off and we were able to enjoy the meal with normal tongues.



Hitchhiker's Guide tattoos

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 03:19 AM PST


Love these (sadly unattributed) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tattoos. Illustrating the flowerpot/whale scene is particularly poignant, as it is perhaps the most humorously existential moment in one of the great existential comedies of all time.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Tattoo (via Forbidden Planet)



Waterboarding is torture, but not when the U.S. does it

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 02:51 PM PST

One of the funny things about the New York Times' avoidance of the word "torture" is that everyone knew it eventually slip up or give up. It finally did so in a discussion of waterboarding. Glenn Greenwald:
So according to The New York Times, it's journalistically improper to call waterboarding "torture" -- when done by the United States, but when Nazi Germany (or China) does exactly the same thing, then it may be called "torture" repeatedly and without qualification. An organization which behaves this way may be called many things; "journalist" isn't one of them.
Presumably the NYT prefers to give up on the logic behind its euphemisms rather than follow it to places like Nazi Germany, where phrases like "enhanced interrogation techniques" would stop being a joke and become offensively stupid.

NYC teen may face 2 years in prison for hamster murder

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 10:28 PM PST

A 19-year-old teen is accused of choking and squeezing her 9-year-old sibling's 4-ounce hamster and throwing it on the floor. "It was then thrown across the street, though a necropsy concluded the animal was probably already dead by the time that happened," reports the AP. The teen may face 2 years in prison.

1976 patent for a device to control a television set

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 01:48 PM PST

1976-tv-remote-control.jpg

United States Patent 3962748: "A TV control device for rotating a dial of a TV set, from an area distant from the set." (Via Futility Closet)

Wondrous, detailed map of the history of science fiction

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 03:14 AM PST


Artist Ward Shelley's brilliant map of the history of science fiction from 2009 is a kind of interestingness black hole whose event horizon captured me for several hours this morning as I pored over the diagram and the arguments it makes about the history and origins of science fiction. I don't agree with every conclusion illustrated here, but thinking about them made me reconsider a lot of cherished beliefs.

History of Science Fiction (JPEG)



Using cams to solve math problems

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 12:57 PM PST


[Video Link] Who needs computers when you can simply make grooved cams to solve math equations? (Via Nerdstink)

Seussian peaks in a can of spackle (photo)

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 12:03 PM PST

"Seuss-ish mountain ranges can be found in every can of spackle," Boing Boing reader Dave says of this lovely macro shot he contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr Pool.

Zelda: Link's mother gives him what for

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 02:51 AM PST

Why HP stole the antique dresser

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 11:37 AM PST

A comedy of errors, some understandable, and some inexplicable, leads to HP's repairs department kidnapping an antique dresser from someone's porch and then vengefully reducing it to splinters. (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Interview with Ted Molczan, citizen satellite tracker

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 12:45 PM PST

Video: Chiefland Star Party Skyscape Time Lapse by William Castleman

The skies have stories to tell. Some of the stories make for interesting puzzles, particularly sightings of previously unseen objects in earth orbit. My friend Ted Molczan is part of a small but dedicated group of private citizens who track satellites, with a special focus on unannounced/secret satellite launches. 2011 has already been an interesting year for the group, who post their findings at the SeeSat-L website (satobs.org) and others. Ted presented compelling evidence that he had spotted a possible Prowler satellite that may have been secretly launched in 1990 on space shuttle launch STS 38. Today, Greg Roberts of their group found the USAF's X-37B OTV 2-1 spaceplane, launched into a secret orbit on Saturday. Ted was kind enough to share his philosophy, techniques, and consumer-grade equipment, all of which is easily available for interested citizens wishing to get involved.

Do you consider yourself a government transparency activist?

Ted: "I see myself as a hobbyist who enjoys solving technical puzzles that help to increase public knowledge of space flight, and improve the transparency of activities taking place in Earth orbit."

How do you respond to your critics within government intelligence agencies?

Ted:"The most common criticism is that by publishing the orbits of intelligence gathering satellites, we may enable adversaries of the U.S.A. and its allies to

conceal their activities, by scheduling them to avoid periods when the satellites are overhead. Since our informal little group uses very simple equipment and methods to find and track nearly all of the more than 300 objects currently in secret orbit - launched by France, Germany, Israel, Japan and the U.S.A. - it seems reasonable to conclude that given sufficient motivation, even the poorest nation could accomplish at least as much. Moreover, at least a few nations have the means to conduct far more sophisticated space surveillance. Therefore, it appears that the secrecy of orbits depends entirely on the cooperation of adversaries, in which case they cannot practically be considered secret, and to pretend otherwise is a potentially dangerous self-deception."


In what ways do you consider your work valuable to other citizens?


Ted: "Our small contribution to public knowledge, potentially enables citizens to make more informed decisions regarding the activities that their governments conduct in space on their behalf."


How did you get started tracking satellites?


Ted: "I was fascinated by the start of space exploration when I was growing up in the 1960s. Television coverage was very extensive, especially of piloted missions, but seeing satellites from my own backyard made it seem more personal and more tangible."


molczan-telescope.jpg
What equipment do you currently use?


Ted: "I track objects and measure their positions relative known stars with 25 X 100 binoculars, mounted on a tripod with fluid pan head. I make timings using a stopwatch with a 200 split time memory, which I manually synchronize to a high precision time signal."


What would be on your wish list of equipment?


Ted: "I would like to replace the stopwatch with a device of similar size, operation and precision, but which records absolute time instead of relative time, to eliminate the need to synchronize with a time signal. I have never found anything like that for sale."


What is the climate of collaboration with other citizen satellite observers?


Ted: "There has long been excellent collaboration among the small worldwide group of satellite observers. Our group is highly informal; we have no name and no leader. It is no one's responsibility to do anything, yet we track nearly all of the objects currently in secret orbit. Statistics compiled in 2008, revealed that twenty observers located in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, UK, and USA, produced more than 20,000 observations annually."


Your most recent white papers at satobs.org were about a possible Prowler satellite that may have been secretly launched in 1990 on STS 38. Can you describe the process and information you used to come to that conclusion?


Ted: "The unknown object I suspect is Prowler was one of a small number left over after researchers had identified the current orbit of each of the more than 150 objects acknowledged to have been placed in secret geosynchronous orbit. It had been discovered in 1998 by fellow hobbyists Ed Cannon and Mike McCants, of Austin, Texas, who reported optical characteristics much more typical of a payload than a rocket body or debris. Information from a trusted source, that Prowler was built on the common HS-376 satellite bus, enabled testing the hypothesis that the unknown object was Prowler, by comparing its brightness with known HS-376 satellites, which revealed a striking similarity.


Analysis of the object's orbit reveals a strong correlation with the STS 38 shuttle mission, as well as the constellation of Soviet geosynchronous satellites at the time, which Prowler reportedly was designed to surreptitiously inspect at close range. That its present orbit librates (oscillates about a given longitude, instead of drifting all the way around the planet) makes it statistically highly probable that the object is a satellite, and not a rocket body or debris.


Prowler had reportedly been designed to be optically stealthy when operational, but that capability would have been lost upon decommissioning, which would have complicated its disposal. The Prowler suspect appears to have been decommissioned by the mid-1990s, and its orbit shows signs of having been designed to avoid detection by Russia, by limiting the range of longitude over which it librates to a portion of the western hemisphere out of sight of space surveillance stations on Russian territory.


Librating orbits are frowned upon for satellite disposal, because they remain close to the altitude of operational satellites, creating a collision hazard that lasts for many thousands years, at least. The Prowler suspect's librating orbit appears to have been designed to mitigate this problem, by making it slightly eccentric, such that over the long term its presence in the most critical zone would be reduced to about one percent of the time.


I believe that I have presented a strong circumstantial case that the unknown object is Prowler, but since its existence remains unproven, there is room for doubt. In an effort to test the veracity of the Prowler story, I made a retrospective analysis of the opportunity for STS 38 to have launched Prowler. I found that the shuttle could easily have launched the combined mass of both Prowler and the one satellite STS 38 was known to have launched, and accommodated both within its payload bay. The orbital and observational history of STS 38 reveals the time of both payload deployments, and narrows the time of their manoeuvres to GEO to a roughly half day period.


Prowler was at risk of detection by the Soviet Union's space surveillance and signals intelligence (SIGINT) systems, from deployment until arrival at its initial location in GEO. Taking into account likely detection avoidance measures narrows the time of its manoeuvre to GEO, to three revolutions. Evidence of deception consistent with providing cover for Prowler is found in the shuttle's nonstandard payload separation manoeuvres after both satellite deployments, and the apparent timing of Prowler's deployment to avoid detection by the Soviet SIGINT facility at Lourdes, Cuba."


Your group announced today that Greg Roberts has found the USAF's X-37B OTV 2-1 spaceplane that was launched into a secret orbit on Saturday. Can you give some background on the new find?


Ted: "The USAF has procured two X-37B space planes, which are small, experimental, unpiloted, shuttle-like vehicles. The two spacecraft are called OTV (Orbital Test Vehicle) 1 and 2. OTV 1 was launched first, in April 2010. Our group discovered it several weeks later, and due to a sort of a fluke, the NYT broke the story as an exclusive. As you can imagine, that resulted in huge worldwide news media interest, that in my opinion far exceeded the importance of either X-37B or our discovery of it.


OTV 1 landed successfully in December, and now its sister, OTV 2, is on its maiden voyage - it was launched on Sunday. Greg Roberts, who was one of the co-discoverers of OTV 1, found OTV 2 this morning, and we now know its approximate orbit, which we made public. [ here -aj]


What has been the observation you are most proud of to date?


Ted: "I take the greatest pleasure in the discovery of AFP-731 in October 1990, by Russell Eberst, of Scotland, and Daniel Karcher and Pierre Neirinck, of France. It had been launched on a secret shuttle mission in February 1990, and suddenly disappeared a week later, leaving behind only debris. It had been thought to have exploded, but my colleagues found it apparently intact, in an orbit of higher altitude and inclination than the one into which the shuttle had placed it.

Years later, the satellite's true identity and mission leaked out: it was a stealthy imagery intelligence satellite called Misty, designed to be more or less invisible at visual and radar wavelengths. The optical stealth mechanism is believed to have been a mirror that could be accurately aimed to reflect the blackness of space toward detection threats. Our hobby was not well known at the time, so it is unlikely that we were among the identified detection threats, which explains why Misty was about as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper when my colleagues spotted it by chance, on different nights over a several day period.


If someone wanted to get involved in citizen satellite tracking, what basic equipment, tips, and location do you recommend for optimal results?


Ted: "Equipment ranges from binoculars and stopwatch, to telescopic, computer driven still or video CCD cameras. Computer software is available to assist in data reduction. Most of us observe from urban locations. The basics of making the precise positional observations required to maintain accurate orbital elements of satellites are explained here:


http://www.satobs.org/position/posn_measure.html


Several observers track satellites through the analysis of the Doppler shift of their radio transmissions, which has proven to be a very useful technique.


We share our observations via the SeeSat-L mailing list, which is devoted to all aspects of visual satellite observation. Subscription information and the public archive are available here:


http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html


Thanks for sharing your work with everyone, Ted!


Image: Ted's tripod-mounted binoculars on the balcony of his Toronto home. Used with permission.



Photos from the heart of a glacier

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 02:46 AM PST


Eric Guth discovered a cave-entrance on the side of an Arctic glacier in Juneau, AK, and set out to explore it. He returned with a series of breathtaking photos of curvy, crystalline beauty. Guth's other photos are likewise pretty wonderful.
Working with an expedition cruise company that sails to the world's most remote places like Alaska and the Arctic, Eric Guth is constantly surrounded by large bodies of ice. In fact, he gets to experience, first-hand, places like Antarctica like most of us have never done before. "The landscape and icebergs of Antarctica have captured my senses the most. Antarctica, being so remote and raw and unpredictable, also has a very gentle side. I have experienced days with zero wind, 50 degree temperatures, clear skies and every snow-capped mountain, sculpted iceberg and waddling penguin reflected back at me with perfect symmetry. Days like these, where everything glistens and sparkles...these days make every howling, windy day I've experienced worth it!"
Inside Glacier Caves (17 photos) (via Super Punch)

For the Win on Readergirlz

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 10:46 AM PST

My novel For the Win is the featured title this month at Readergirlz, a literacy site that does wonderful work. I'll be answering questions there through the month.

Consumer's Dilemma: a polemic about economic disparity disguised as a copyright license

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 10:41 AM PST

Simon Phipps sez, "As an adjunct to creation of its report 'Media Piracy In Emerging Economies', the Social Science Research Council has devised a license that tries to show people in rich economies what it is that makes people in emerging economies use torrents rather than pay the author. Thir paywall and outrageous commercial pricing only apply if your IP address is in a rich country. They say: 'The resulting consumer dilemma is a ubiquitous experience in medium and low-income countries but one that confronts the American or European reader (or the media company employee conjured up by the commercial reader license) much less frequently and with much less intensity.'"
Not unexpectedly, our Consumer's Dilemma license for the report has generated some controversy. To recap, the CD license creates different paths to acquiring the report: first, we have an IP address geolocator that sends visitors from high income countries toward an $8 paywall when they download the report; all other resolvable IP addresses get free access. Second, and separately available, a 'commercial reader' license that costs $2000. There's also a $28 book, but I will assume that's not at issue here.
The Consumer's Dilemma (Thanks, Simon!)

TOM THE DANCING BUG: Counter-Earth's Dept. of Education, Kicking Ass

Posted: 08 Mar 2011 07:18 PM PST

1028cbC counter-earth - education.jpg



SPECIAL FEATURE: Errol Morris: What's in my bag

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 01:38 PM PST

Errol Morris is an academy award-winning documentary filmmaker. His films include Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control, and Standard Operating Procedure. Roger Ebert said, "After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven't found another filmmaker who intrigues me more...Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini." Recently, The Guardian listed him as one of the ten most important film directors in the world.

Read The Ashtray, his five-part series on "meaning, truth, intolerance and flying ashtrays" in The New York Times.

Read the rest



What happens to shipping containers lost at sea?

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 09:53 AM PST

shippingcontainer.jpg

Brace yeselves fer a tale of the high seas. Out there, in the deep, there be abandoned shipping containers. Yarr.

The merchant vessel Med Taipei left San Francisco on February 25, 2004, in the middle of a winter storm. As the ship steamed south toward the Port of Los Angeles, it began rolling violently in seven- to nine-meter (23- to 30-foot) swells. In a rush to get his goods to port, the captain continued southward at high speed, despite the rolls. Unbeknownst to the captain and crew, the containers on their ship had been stacked incorrectly, with massive, heavy containers perched on top of lighter ones.

Shortly after midnight on February 26, when the Med Taipei was directly offshore of Monterey Bay, stacks of containers began to break free of their lashings and topple sideways. Fifteen of the 40-foot-long containers fell overboard into the churning sea. Yet the ship continued south. By the time the ship reached the Port of Los Angeles, nine more containers had fallen overboard, and another 21 lay crumpled on deck.

This kind of thing happens all the time. In fact, I've been told that one of the hazards of trans-oceanic sailing trips are lost shipping containers that haven't quite sunk yet, but are still hard to spot. In the middle of the Atlantic, the last thing you want is to pull a Titanic on a metal box full of lawn chairs. But what hadn't occurred to me is what happens after these containers find their way to the ocean floor. Now, that sentence would make a nice lead-in to telling you about how lost shipping containers affect the environments they drop in on. Unfortunately, though, nobody yet knows the answers to that question. It's not been studied before.

But that's about to change. See, one of the containers from the Med Taipei managed to land within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, where it was discovered by scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. This week, they're using a robotic submarine to study the container— which holds 1,159 steel-belted tires, if you're curious—and the impact it has on deep seafloor ecology. Better yet, the research is funded by the $3.25 million settlement that the owners of the Med Taipei paid to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

I'll be checking up on this later, to find out what the scientists learn from that box full of tires. When I find out, you'll be the first to know.

Via Joe Rojas-Burke

Image: © 2004 MBARI



Web wisdom: Google Before You Tweet

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 02:41 AM PST


Joe Newton's letterpress poster, "Google Before You Tweet is the new Think Before You Speak" is damned good advice.

Google before you Tweet (via Super Punch)



American Library Association task forces to take on ebook lending

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 02:34 AM PST

The American Library Association has struck two new task forces to investigate the future of ebooks in libraries: the Equitable Access to Electronic Content Task Force and the E-book Task Force. The objective is to come up with a nationwide, coherent strategy to address the fact that some publishers will not make their books available as lendable ebooks, while others require ebooks to be packaged in crippleware formats that self-destruct after a certain number of checkouts.
ALA members and the public can communicate with ALA on these issues through a new website dedicated to the challenges and potential solutions in libraries for improved access to electronic content. This site will be live within 10 days, and the URL to be announced at launch. These efforts reflect on libraries' long-standing principles on equitable access to information, reader privacy, intellectual freedom, and the lawful right of libraries to purchase and lend materials to the public.

ALA calls upon all stakeholders to join us in crafting 21st century solutions that will ensure equitable access to information for all.

American Library Association tackles new challenges in the e-environment (Thanks, INFOdocket, via Submitterator!)

Stupid, unhealthy diet is stupid and unhealthy

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 09:11 AM PST

I know this is going to come as a shock, but a diet that involves eating only 500 calories a day while injecting yourself with pregnancy hormones is probably neither healthy, nor proven to be effective. I really hope this is one of those New York Times "trends" that isn't.

NPR: Help us figure out which Senator killed Whistleblower Protection

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 08:44 AM PST

blowthewhistle.jpg

Last December, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act—a popular, bipartisan bill that would have protected public workers who exposed corruption, waste, and illegality—died a sudden and surprising death, not by vote, but by a legislative tactic called an anonymous hold. Basically, one senator killed that bill, and doesn't have to be publicly accountable to his constituents for doing so.

NPR's "On the Media", along with the Government Accountability Project, set out to identify the secret senator, by asking listeners to contact their senators and ask, "Were you the person responsible for killing the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act?" As of yesterday, the field has been narrowed down to three—Jon Kyl of Arizona, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, or James Risch of Idaho. One of these men refused to protect government whistleblowers, and doesn't want the people who voted for him to know that he did it, or why. If you're a resident of Arizona, Alabama, or Idaho, maybe you can help unravel the mystery.

We are asking constituents to call the remaining three Senators and ask them if they placed the hold and why they believe the public does not have a right to hold them accountable for something as basic as killing a bill.

Below are some suggested questions to ask those Senators. Regardless of how they answer, even if you are forwarded to an answering machine, let us know how they respond by emailing blowthewhistle@wnyc.org and we will post their responses on the website in the table below. Together, we can can forcefully remind our elected officials how much transparency matters to the people they represent.

When calling the remaining Senators, use these questions as a way to guide the conversation:
• 1) Did you place the anonymous hold on the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act?

• 2) What is the Senator's policy regarding inquiries from constituents about his use of the anonymous hold?

• 3) When is the Senator's "hold" the public's business, about which the public has the right to know?

• 4) What determines when use of the "hold" is a "personal, private matter" that is not the public's business?

• 5) Why would the Senator be publicly supportive of the bill but work to defeat it in private?

• 6) All but three Senators have confirmed that they did NOT use the hold to kill S. 372, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. Assuming that the senator who placed the hold is eventually identified—as they frequently are—and it is your senator, is he prepared to deal with the fallout that comes from ignoring constituent questions?

On the Media: Blow The Whistle!

Image: Some rights reserved by stevendepolo



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