The Latest from Boing Boing

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• Militant arm of the infoviz movement gets serious about PowerPoint
• Funny sign in the alley south of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, CA
• Ada Lovelace short film for kids
• Modular 3D-printed Gothic cathedral
• Peter Watts may serve two years for failing to promptly obey a customs officer
• Protecting Earth and space from people
• Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Melting steel with the sun

Militant arm of the infoviz movement gets serious about PowerPoint Posted: 20 Mar 2010 11:37 PM PDT By Mark Goetz. (Thanks, PeaceLove)

Funny sign in the alley south of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, CA Posted: 20 Mar 2010 05:23 PM PDT A happy sign I spotted in the alley.

Ada Lovelace short film for kids Posted: 20 Mar 2010 02:22 PM PDT BrainPOP, makers of short educational animations, created this short film based on the life of Ada Lovelace, inventor of computer programming, daughter of Lord Byron, partner-in-crime of Charles Babbage, and horse-fancier. BrainPOP | Ada Lovelace (Thanks, Karina!) Previously: Ada Lovelace Day needs your support! Ada Lovelace Day T-shirts! Ada Lovelace biopic needs letters of support Comic about Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage Linda Stone profiled for Ada Lovelace Day Lisa Randall on the origin of the universe -- Happy Ada Lovelace ...

Modular 3D-printed Gothic cathedral Posted: 20 Mar 2010 02:18 PM PDT Skimbal created this 3D-printable Gothic Cathedral playset -- you can print and add as many segments as you'd like and assemble a church to your specification. As Skimbal notes, "Have you ever wanted a Gothic Cathedral of your very own? Are you intimidated by the centuries long construction schedule, and the punishing job requirements of being a European Bishop during the Dark Ages? Then We Have a Thing For YOU! The Gothic Cathedral Play Set!" Gothic Cathedral Play Set by Skimbal (via Make) Previously: MakerBot: 3D Printers for the mildly solderphobic Shapeways interviews Makerbot: 3D printing ahoy! Can Bre Pettis Replicate Himself? Parts Nebula: a parts-tracking inventory system for makers - Boing ... Successful marriage proposal via 3D-printed ring

Peter Watts may serve two years for failing to promptly obey a customs officer Posted: 20 Mar 2010 11:39 PM PDT I've spent the last day in a funk at the news that my friend, Canadian sf writer Peter Watts was convicted of obstruction for getting out of his car at a US Border crossing and asking what was going on, then not complying fast enough when he was told to get back in the car. He faces up to two years in jail. David Nickle, a mutual friend who worked with Peter on his defense, has a very good post on the subject, including a quote from one of the jurors: The job of the jury was to decide whether Mr. Watts "obstructed/resisted" the custom officials. Assault was not one of the charges. What it boiled down to was Mr. Watts did not follow the instructions of the customs agents. Period. He was not violent, he was not intimidating, he was not stopping them from searching his car. He did, however, refuse to follow the commands by his non compliance. He's not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. The customs agents escalted the situation with sarcasm and miscommunication. Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime, although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs don't make a right, so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge. That's apparently the statute: if you don't comply fast enough with a customs officer, he can beat you, gas you, jail you and then imprison you for two years. This isn't about safety, it isn't about security, it isn't about the rule of law. It's about obedience. Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It criminalizes the act of asking "why?" It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small. I don't know if Peter will appeal. I hope he does. I hope he gets a jury who nullify the statute (Thanks to all who reminded me that the appellate division has panels of judges, not juries). I hope he brings a civil action against the officials who clearly played fast and loose with the truth (From David: "Under cross-examination by Mullkoff, the border guards had conceded that Peter hadn't assaulted anyone; hadn't threatened to assault anyone; and that his aggressive stance was nothing any reasonable person would consider aggressive. The allegations that he had somehow choked border guard Andrew Beaudry while Beaudry was hitting him, were demolished."). I don't know if he will. He may decide to take his chances for a suspended sentence and forswear ever visiting America again, opting to be a writer instead of a professional litigant. I'd understand. But tonight, I'm understanding that dark place that so many of Peter's books seem to come from. I think of myself, fundamentally, as a optimist and a believer that justice can and will prevail. But in the face of that jury's decision, in face of the dishonesty of the officials, in the face of the absurdity of the statute, I feel like justice is a joke and hoping for it is a waste of time. I'm sorry that the system failed you, Peter. Guilty Update: More from Peter Previously: Peter Watts found guilty Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and ... Peter Watts's wonderful dystopias under a CC license

Protecting Earth and space from people Posted: 20 Mar 2010 09:44 AM PDT Don't muck around in the affairs of planets that are less technologically advanced than yours. Despite how often it gets ignored, Star Trek's Prime Directive is a pretty nice attempt to take a universe brimming with life and figure out how to interact with it in an ethical way. Unfortunately, the Prime Directive isn't terribly nuanced. How do we relate to alien life that's as, or more, advanced than us? What if alien life is bacteria—do we still have to leave its home planet alone? How do we explore the galaxy without spreading—or picking up—any deadly diseases? The Prime Directive can't really help you here. That's why scientists from NASA and the SETI Institute are boldly going where no bureaucracies (real or fictional) have gone before—drawing up the safety protocols we Earthlings will use as we explore new worlds, and the social and ethical guidelines we'll turn to if we ever do find life on other planets. It's all part of NASA's Office of Planetary Protection. Home of the Planetary Protection Officer, surely the most awesome job title in the sciences, the OPP has been around since 1967, before the Apollo landings on the Moon and the concept has been around since before NASA was even founded. Originally, the goal was to keep today's science from screwing up the science of tomorrow. "Even before NASA, before Sputnik, the International Astronautical Federation was pointing out that, when we study space, we need to be careful about not spreading Earth microbes to other planets," said John Rummel, Ph.D., a professor at East Carolina University and two-term former Planetary Protection Officer. "If you do, you might end up studying your own contamination, rather than what's really out there." The next obvious step: Worrying about the alien microbes we might bring back to Earth. Nobody wants a species-reversed version of War of the Worlds where the human race is accidentally killed off by an interstellar cold bug. Planetary Protection Officers were in charge of setting up quarantine measures for astronauts and rock samples returning from the Moon. Today, they're creating the protocols—and designing the containment facilities—that will be used when we travel to Mars and back. These protocols are constantly evolving, Rummel said, with the changes based both on science and on societal values. "In 1992, I canceled a document that allowed the PPO to arrest somebody who was exposed to extra-terrestrial life or material," he said. "That was originally put into place as a stopgap measure in case somebody who was working on lunar return samples got exposed but didn't want to go into the quarantine. But I read a dissertation showing how this provision wasn't in accordance with the Constitution. I found that disturbing." The social side-effects of exobiology are every bit as important as the tech details, according to Margaret Race, an ecologist at the SETI Institute who works on planetary protection and risk communication.. With the help of a grant from NASA's Astrobiology Institute, Race put together a 2009 conference on the social and ethical implications of extraterrestrial life. She's trying to spark conversations that reach researchers in disciplines outside of the astrobiology community. "Carl Sagan asked: If Mars has life, even if it is just microbial, does Mars belong to the martians?" she said. "This question has ethical, legal, cultural and theological implications ... and those are not what scientists study." To remedy that, Race is working to build a loose network of space scientists, anthropologists, ethicists, legal experts, theologians and others. The goal is to make sure that ethicists have their science correct, and that scientists are aware of the ethical implications of their work. If we do this now, she hopes, mankind may be able to avoid repeating some of the mistakes we made while exploring our own planet—like careless overuse of natural resources or large scale environmental destruction. We can start, she says, by learning from earthly examples. "I'm working on a paper right now comparing the international treaties concerning outer space with those that cover the Antarctic," she said. "The Antarctic Treaty has established regulations that deal with environmental management and commercial activities like fisheries, tourism, oil, gas and mineral exploration. With growing commercial and private interests in space, we need to include experts from many different disciplines as we develop guidelines for human activities beyond Earth. Now is the time to think about the costs, benefits and potential impacts of our plans, particularly if we share this universe with other life forms--however simple or advanced they may be." Image courtesy Flickr user x-ray_delta_one, via CC

Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Melting steel with the sun Posted: 19 Mar 2010 11:08 PM PDT Remember the satisfying sizzle of ants under a magnifying glass? No? Is that just me, then? Whatever, haters. ANYway, the same science responsible for frying ants is at work on a larger scale in this clip from James May's "Big Ideas" series. What you've got here is a solar furnace, a carefully arranged array of mirrors that catches heat from the sun and reflects it, focusing it to point—effectively taking a lot of disparate, comfy sunbeams and gathering them together in a tight bundle. By their powers combined, the reflected beam can reach temperatures of 3,500 °C (6,330 °F). Watch in wonder and terror as the beam turns a hot dog to char and melts steel. Thumbnail courtesy Flickr user gi, via CC

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