1. How to get awesome abs. RE: Health. How To.
2. 40 years of Star Trek 2006-09-06. RE: Chill. Culture. Star Trek. TV.
3. Spaceman, Spaceman, Spaceman!. RE: Funny. Movies. Wikipedia.
4. BSG3 trailer. RE: BSG. Science Fiction. TV.
5. Bye-bye Pluto. RE: Astronomy. News.
6. Flatlife. RE: Animated. Funny. Kids.
7. Wally Wood's 22 panels that always work!!. RE: Comics. Images.
8. Hi res background images used in Star Wars. RE: Chill. Images. Star Wars.
9. Farewell fond fish. RE: Chicago. Death. Nature.
10. Why manhole covers are round. RE: Culture. Microsoft. Work.
11. Laser laughs. RE: Chill. Funny. Gadgets. Games. Hardware.
12. Counter Strike live. RE: Cyber Life. Funny. Games. Video.
13. Sluggo video. RE: Chill. Comics. Philosophy. Tao. Video.
14. Web ego stroking. RE: Cyber Life. My Stuff.
15. 19th century vernacular. RE: History. Words.
16. speedtest.net. RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Measurements.
17. Google Book Search now allows downloads. RE: Cyber Life. Education. Free Gratis. Google. Words.
18. Interview with subtitles. RE: Funny. Video.
19. Geotagging. RE: Flickr. Geography. Images. Photography.
20. Mashups. RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Programming.
21. Steve Irwin (1962/2006). RE: Animals. Death. News. Sustainability.
22. Pakistan lets al Queda back in. RE: Politics. U.S.A. (America). War. World.
23. Inspirations from a counseling center. RE: Inspiration. Philosophy. Pscychology. Relations.
24. Quick note at a Starbucks. RE: Kids. Life. Martial. My Stuff. Nanotech. Rambling. Science. Wikipedia.
25. Robinson Crusoe Island. RE: Animated. Economy. Education. Geography. Sustainability. Video.
26. Churburg Armoury. RE: Books. Images.
27. Solar windows. RE: Engineering. Sustainability.
28. Throw those biking helmets away!. RE: Culture. Funny. Health.
29. Bionic arms with thought output and input. RE: Comics. Engineering. Hardware. Health. Martial.

2006-09-01t20:15:53Z | RE: Health. How To.
How to get awesome abs

How to Get Six Pack Abs [wikihow.com/Get-Six-Pack-Abs]

Simple enough: Do a lot of ab work and lose fat. Some people might do this for the looks but I'd do it so that your puny fists would bounce off my invincible abs of steel!

2006-09-01t20:23:44Z | RE: Chill. Culture. Star Trek. TV.
40 years of Star Trek 2006-09-06

One more week until the 40th anniversary of the first airing of Star Trek [W]! I'm sure there will be all sorts of goodies on TV Land, the SciFi channel, etc.

2006-09-01t21:47:12Z | RE: Funny. Movies. Wikipedia.
Spaceman, Spaceman, Spaceman!

My wife and kids were surfing and they thought they'd watch a few minutes of this movie called Spaceman. They ended up watching the whole thing and told me about it. So I decided to watch a few minutes of it too, but I also ended up watching the whole thing. Spaceman is a science fiction/comedy film about a man adjusting to life on Earth, but the problem is he has been trained only to be a killer since he was abducted as a toddler. It is an awesome B-grade movie, clearly filmed in Chicago.

There was no entry in Wikipedia, so I had the honor of creating the entry for Spaceman (film) [W], including the image for Spaceman [W]!! Here's the link for Spaceman at Amazon and Spaceman at IMDB.

2006-09-01t22:05:39Z | RE: BSG. Science Fiction. TV.
BSG3 trailer

The Battlestar Galactica season 3 preview [http://bsg-cz.net/news/files/teasers/bsg_s3_trailer2.avi; 00:30 video] [via http://digg.com/television/New_Battlestar_Galactica_Season_3_Preview_avi] came out a few days ago. I can barely wait for the show to restart on 2006-10-06. I didn't know they were working on Caprica (TV series) [W], set 50 years before the Ceylon invasion? More stuff at scifi.com/battlestar/.

2006-09-02t11:30:03Z | RE: Astronomy. News.
Bye-bye Pluto

It's practically old news by now, but since I had posted earlier about the redefining of "planet", I felt obligated to make this follow up post. Instead of adding at least three more planet, they actually downgraded Pluto [W] to a dwarf planet, thus instead of the following (which I had posted earlier):

A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.

The final 2006 redefinition of planet (passed on 2006-08-24) was this:

The IAU ...resolves that planets and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A "planet" [1] is a celestial body that: (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

(2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that: (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape [2], (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects [3] except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies".

Footnotes:

[1] The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
[2] An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either "dwarf planet" and other categories.
[3] These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.

---

The IAU further resolves:

Pluto is a "dwarf planet" by the above definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects.

Given how we've been bickering about the planets since the ancients had their seven planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and the Sun), who knows how long the 2006 definition will hold? Don't feel bad for Pluto: It's still defined as a planet on the spaceprobes Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2. And Pluto itself is still there in space with Charon to keep it company.

2006-09-02t12:23:06Z | RE: Animated. Funny. Kids.
Flatlife

2006-09-02t13:04:38Z | RE: Comics. Images.
Wally Wood's 22 panels that always work!!

Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work: Unlimited Edition [joeljohnson.com/archives/2006/08/wally_woods_22.html] [via metafilter.com/mefi/54173]

Incredibly good! Not only are these 22 panels seminal in comics but the ideas could probably be used in photography, video, art, graphic design, etc. I like how these 22 panels have been photocopied and distributed throughout the comic book industry for years.

Ask any working comic book artist who has been in the business for more than ten years about "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work", and they know of it like it was the bible. Google "Wally Wood" and "22 panels", and you get over 150 hits. It is with great pleasure that GothamCityArt.com brings this historic piece to market. Once shrouded in secrecy, Wally Wood would selectively give assistants and those close to him three 8x10 photocopies of comic panels that bore the absolute essence of drawing comic book panels. 22 images in total, they held the secret to a comic book illustrator's success, and those who learned from them benefited from the master's wisdom. The panels were gold, but were not packaged in such a way that was easily disseminated.

(You can even see the effect when shrunk to this size.)

It also gives you an appreciation of other comics like this variation of 22 panels linked in the MetaFilter thread: ivanbrunetti.com/portfolio/images/howtodraw.jpg.

2006-09-02t13:47:39Z | RE: Chill. Images. Star Wars.
Hi res background images used in Star Wars

Hi resolution images used in Star Wars III from the original artist [dusso.com/pages/EP3/EP3main.html] [via digg.com/design/High_Resolution_Image_of_Naboo]

So good that I changed my desktop.

On the digg thread, some people thought that it was absurd to build a city on top of waterfalls, so I made this comment:

As far as cities on top of waterfalls there is a famous example from ancient Greece that comes pretty close:

"The Acropolis rises sharply from the plain of Attica with steep cliffs on three sides. It is accessible by foot only to the west, where it is linked by a low ridge to the hill of the Areopagus. It is formed by a layer of blue-grey limestone, which is very hard but water-permeable. This rests on a layer of schist-sandstone marl, softer than the limestone but water-impermeable. This arrangement leads to the ready formation of artesian springs, as well as sheltered caves at the hill's feet, which was also a factor that attracted human habitation on and around the rock from early on." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acropolis,_Athens

2006-09-02t13:59:24Z | RE: Chicago. Death. Nature.
Farewell fond fish

Fish that lifted hopes of cancer kids dies [chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0608240175aug24,1,277963.story]

Alas! A great fish in Chicago has died. The odd thing is that the biggest guppy in my fish tank, Butterspoon, died this morning as well. A sad fish day indeed.

The 154-pound Queensland grouper, estimated to be about 24 years old, had an odd and extraordinary life that many--including children suffering from cancer--have found inspiring. Bubba showed up at the Shedd in 1987 as an abandoned pet that someone left in a bucket on the aquarium's doorstep. At the time, Bubba was female. Groupers and some other fish may change gender as they mature based on social influences and other factors, and in the mid-1990s, as Bubba grew to become one of the biggest fish at the Shedd, he made the transition from female to male.

Bubba also liked people:

That became evident in 2003 when keepers became worried about a recurring growth on his head above his eyes. It was diagnosed as connective tissue cancer, and the fish was taken from his public pool in the No. 2 Gallery, since torn out and replaced by the Amazon Rising exhibit. Bubba was placed in a windowless reserve tank while the veterinary staff tried to figure out what course of treatment they could use to treat the cancer. "As soon as we put him in that tank, he stopped eating," Parsons said. "After a few days, we put him in a reserve pool with a window, and he started eating again, right away. He just wanted a room with a view so he could see what was going on."

He became an instant star with the public once the cancer story was publicized. "We've always had visitors asking how to find Bubba, the fish who beat cancer," Parsons said, "and he was usually right there, right next to the windows. People adored him. I think he inspired them."

2006-09-02t14:20:19Z | RE: Culture. Microsoft. Work.
Why manhole covers are round

Why manhole covers are round [W] [via Why_are_manhole_covers_round_What_if_you_get_that_in_a_job_interview]

Well, duh. A circle is the simplest curve/shape with a constant width and won't fall in. Plus it's cheap and easy to manufacture.

As far as an interview question goes, it's now half about awareness of tech-culture (because Microsoft notoriously used this question on their interviews) and if  you're not aware of the history, then it's about seeing how you respond.

Interviews are fun because both sides have a short period of time to evaluate the other side, and yet each might end up spending a lot of time with the other.

2006-09-02t14:29:44Z | RE: Chill. Funny. Gadgets. Games. Hardware.
Laser laughs

I like the title of "Frickin laser beams!" better:

• wickedlasers.com [via digg.com/gadgets/Insanely_powerful_laser_pointers_they_Light_cigarettes_and_burn_plastic]. Surely the blaster gun can't be far off? And does it come with wicked music that plays each time you fire your all powerful laser pointer?
  • "Let's get something straight, you’ve come to the wrong place if you are looking for a laser pointer. We do not sell laser pointers. Wicked Lasers can burn, slash, melt plastic and when your lighter runs dry, it’ll even light up your smoke. This is a joke right? Well you can see here. Have you seen videos like that anywhere else? Didn’t think so. Can your laser pointer do that? Didn’t think so."
  • 
• Frickin laser beams! [metafilter.com/mefi/54249]. Dude: There have been so many variations of this over the years.
  • "Friday Flash Fun Chill out with lasers and mirrors this afternoon. (Apparently similar to this one.)"

2006-09-03t23:54:45Z | RE: Cyber Life. Funny. Games. Video.
Counter Strike live

Counter Struck [video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4923563961458933726&q=counter+struck; 07:16 video] [via http://digg.com/videos_people/Counter_Struck]

Geeks with guns. The Counter Strike game rendered in live action. I love the rendition of game lag and the idiocy of the hostages.

2006-09-04t13:38:57Z | RE: Chill. Comics. Philosophy. Tao. Video.
Sluggo video

A little while back a lot of people were linking to Jim Woodring's post on The greatest Nancy panel ever drawn [jimwoodring.blogspot.com/2006/07/greatest-nancy-panel-ever-drawn.html] [via boingboing.net/2006/08/27/animated_version_of_.html] (including myself). Now an animation has been made out of the panel with some music and talk about the Tao. Revisiting The Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn [glyphjockey.com/2006/08/revisiting-greatest-nancy-panel-ever.html; 02:40 video]. The Tao [W] of Sluggo: very soothing.

2006-09-04t16:31:33Z | RE: Cyber Life. My Stuff.
Web ego stroking

I'm not much for "social" sites because I don't have the time to really talk with that many people. When I communicate with a person one-to-one, whether in person, on the phone, IM, via email, a chat room, Skype, etc., I try to make myself present and give them my full attention. When it's one-to-many outbound communication like a web page, a blog posting, commenting in a public forum, a message board, I try to be just as present and focused. However when it's one-to-many inbound & outbound communication it becomes much harder. Trying to talk with that many people with a one-to-one style would be overwhelming.

However social sites have this interesting aspect of quantifying one's popularity. I think the "counting friends" phenomenon (a la myspace.com) is absurd because most of the "friends" people count are, well, not. However I am a big fan of quantifying by votes, sales, links, visits, comments, etc.. A small sampling of "experts" can be good, but a large sampling has its own value.

This article, Ego surfers count their 15 clicks of cyberfame [chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0608300222aug30,1,2582103.story], talks a bit about that quantification on a solo level.

Web sites put this tracking information to use in different ways, all based on the idea that there is value in continuously keeping tabs on what people are doing online. As a result, Amazon keeps score of book sales, from "Freakonomics" at No. 13 to "A History of the Fragrant Rose" at No. 1,063,867 on Tuesday, while YouTube.com promotes its top 100 videos, and Yahoo.com lists its most e-mailed news stories. But for those Web denizens who use the Internet as a means of communication and identity, the ability to count visitors, or comments, has become an entirely new form of personal validation.

At EgoSurf.org, an ego ranking is calculated based on how many people linked to a certain blog, or how often someone's name pops up during a Google search. The more times a name appears in cyberspace, the more points are earned. Soloway, for example, earned 3,176 points, less than celebrated Chicago author Studs Terkel's 4,572. Neither approaches Canadian blogger Steve Dinn's 12,445.

I just ego surfed "george hernandez, looking for links to georgehernandez.com" on google.com, and I came up with 3,418 points. I don't really know what that means but it makes me feel good. Technorati.com on the other hand has always made me feel small: Rank: 229,478. (I never did go through their "claim your blog" process, so here goes: Technorati Profile.) I don't even want to know my rank at alexa.com, but I do like to check which are the top sites [alexa.com/site/ds/top_500] now and then. I made the "mistake" of checking out qq.com (the biggest name in Chinese IMing) and now I get Chinese spam!

2006-09-04t18:55:00Z | RE: History. Words.
19th century vernacular

How to Speak 19th Century [metafilter.com/mefi/54376]

Forgotten vocabulary. Words and phrases from an earlier era, the early Nineteenth century. Some slang too.

Palaver? Or perhaps useful for deciphering text from the 1800s?

2006-09-05t01:19:53Z | RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Measurements.
speedtest.net

speedtest.net [via http://digg.com/gadgets/A_new_way_to_test_your_bandwidth_and_it_looks_pretty_cool_too]

A very pretty Flash site that tests your connection speed with different servers around the world: upload, download, and latency.

• My DSL connection at work is 2,520 Kb/s download, 421 Kb/s upload, and 25 ms latency to a hometown Chicago server.  3,200, 330, and 115 to a London server.
• My cable connection at home is 7,689 Kb/s download, 352 Kb/s upload, and 24 ms latency to a Chicago server. 2,350, 310, and 117 to a London server.

Either one still beats 56 Kb/s phone modem connection.

2006-09-05t02:40:36Z | RE: Cyber Life. Education. Free Gratis. Google. Words.
Google Book Search now allows downloads

Google to allow free downloads of public domain books [technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17385]

This sort of thing is powerful. People just need access to it and knowledge of it.

Google Inc. on Wednesday plans to begin letting consumers download and print free of charge classic novels and many other, more obscure books that are in the public domain. Using Google's Book Search service, Web surfers hunting titles like Dante's ''Inferno'' and Aesop's ''Fables'' will be able to download PDF files of the books for later reading, to run keyword searches or to print them on paper. Up to now, the service only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online.

Google's Book Search service is the product of its Books Library Project, which is digitizing books from major libraries around the world in order to make them searchable online. Its partners include the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, the University of California and the New York Public Library. Google is also conducting a pilot project with the Library of Congress.

For kicks, I looked up "eve mark twain" at Google Book Search [books.google.com] and I did find a full copy of Eve's Diary: Translated from the Original Ms., a short story by Mark Twain. I was able to download a PDF copy of a 1906 copy of the book illustrated by Lester Ralph, published in New York by Harper & Brothers Publishers, and scanned from the Harvard University Library.

• I like how they scanned everything from the front cover to the back.
• There were a few bad scans, especially on the pages with just illustrations.
• The website has the page numbering right, but the PDF I downloaded has the page numbering off by one. Hence if I view the document in Acrobat in "facing" page, the odd pages are on the left hand side instead of the right hand side. This is more annoying than usual because this is a book where each odd page has text matched with an illustration on the even numbered page.

I've checked several other books (like Aesop's Fables and Plato's Republic) and their PDFs both had the odd/even problem.

It's funny but if you look you can see scans of the fingers of some of the scanners!

http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC02133295&id=EtkMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PT6&dq=Inazo+Nitobe

Of course free texts are also online at Gutenburg.net, but text typed in is different from scans of original books.

Now if only Google could archive public domain music and video too!

2006-09-07t02:03:12Z | RE: Funny. Video.
Interview with subtitles

Funny Subtitle Iraq interview [video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7373128225578708570; 01:45]

Very funny and very reminiscent of a Monty Python skit.

2006-09-07t02:12:00Z | RE: Flickr. Geography. Images. Photography.
Geotagging

Putting Pictures in Their Place [technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17427&ch=infotech]

This would have to be implemented in a way that can be effortlessly consumed. As it is I have a huge box of personal photos that I don't have the time to go through. Even my digital photos are just briskly filed away. A digital camera that automatically adds GPS info to the file would be nice but every app should be pretty explicit about all metadata attached with digital photos.

Last week, photo-sharing website Flickr announced new features that let people easily assign a location to a photo and search for pictures on a map, an activity called "geotagging." Its latest offering is enhanced by advanced search technology that Flickr leverages from Yahoo--its parent company--which allows newly geotagged photos to be searchable within a minute.

A number of websites already allow users to add location information to their pictures and to search geographically, including Zooomr, a photo-sharing site; Mappr, which maps Flickr photos; and Platial, an online atlas built with user-generated pictures, video, and comments.

Privacy issues remain a concern, however, with the increasing popularity of geotagging. Flickr's Butterfield and his team have added some features to allow varying degrees of disclosure for pictures and geographical information. For instance, pictures can be either publicly visible or viewable only by some people. Additionally, a person has to actively add a geotag, and it can be private even if the picture itself is public. "One of the aspects of this that we've thought quite a bit about is privacy," Butterfield says.

2006-09-07t02:28:27Z | RE: Cyber Life. Cyber Tech. Programming.
Mashups

Assembling great software: A round-up of eight mashup tools [blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=63&tag=nl.e539]

I have been a big proponent of the lazy programmer for years. The idea of mashups or reusable chunks of code as APIs in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is fascinating especially if it can be brought to a lower tech, end user level.

There is a frequently recurring piece of software development lore that plays on the fact that good programmers are supposed to be lazy.  In these stories, a good programmer will take a frequently recurring, monotonous task (like testing) and instead of doing it by hand, will instead write a piece of code once that will do the task for them, thereby automating it for future use. Put another way, instead of carrying out the work by hand, a lazy programmer will spend 95% of the time allotted to the work by developing code that will carry it out for them, and the last 5% of the time will be spent running it to get the actual work done.  Then, every time the task must be carried out in the future, software can be directed to complete it swiftly and automatically.

How many routine tasks could we get out of our way if we had powerful task automation tools that almost anyone could use?  How many one-off tasks could be automated that couldn't possibly justify the expense of custom software development?  These problem areas — automating repetitive work, and automating complex, collaborative problem solving (the tacit interactions I tend to cite so much) — are potentially ripe for enabling low-barrier tools that let us assemble solutions out of the rich landscape of services that are beginning to flourish in our organizations.  This world of available services is already a vibrant ecosystem on the Web.

ProgrammableWeb maintains the best up-to-date API directory of the Internet's Global SOA currently available (272 APIs as of today). And of course, we have more that just services that we can reuse, widgets are an increasingly popular method of adding code to Web pages via the addition of short snippets of Javascript or the inclusions of Flash components.  Widgets further up the ante by making it possible for just about anyone to integrate software within the browser, most frequently in blogs or wikis.  And people are widgetizing their sites in very large numbers these days. Just take a quick tour of MySpace to see how encrusted most pages are with widgets, badges, and other page element inclusions.

But even though we have vast arrays of usable components and so many services to leverage today, most frequently achieved for now through basic snippet insertion in HTML, it currently seems to be the lack of enabling tools that's holding back the widespread creation of meaningful mashups.  While Google Maps mashups, for example, are possible with very little code, it nevertheless still requires code.  And that creates a barrier that the average Web user or enterprise employee will not be able cross without professional intervention.  But if the Web really is made of small pieces, loosely joined, it should be possible to create capable, end-user friendly tools that make it possible to quickly combine pre-existing services and components together into applications and living business processes — carrying out the necessary technical wizardry of integration under the covers — similar to connecting the pieces of a home audio visual entertainment system together.

Fortunately, as I covered recently with sites like DataMashups.com, the tools do finally seem to be arriving and a week doesn't go by without someone telling me about yet another mashup product heading on its way to market.  And though too many of them aren't Web-based, or are still too technical, or have very rough edges and too high a barriers to use, it's clear that a lot of smart people are working hard at solving this last piece of the puzzle; great tools for leveraging the vast repositories of hard-to-recreate data sources, rich services, and Web components that are growing out of the Web 2.0 generation.

He goes on to list some mashup sites. Oddly enough, most of these still reek of hi-tech enterprise stuff.

• aboveallsoftware.com
• daappit.com
• jackbe.com
• nexaweb.com
• procession.com
• ratchetsoft.com
• rssbus.com

2006-09-07t03:09:06Z | RE: Animals. Death. News. Sustainability.
Steve Irwin (1962/2006)

Steve Irwin [W] (1962-02-22/2006-09-04), the "Crocodile Hunter" died almost immediately after pulling poisonous barb out of his own heart. Steve and his cameraman were filming and must have boxed in a stingray [W] a wee bit too much. If they showed the footage, I would watch it to honor his spirit.

He had great courage, passion, and enthusiasm. He was a great proponent of Environmentalism [W] and the Conservation movement [W].

These Hitlers use the camouflage of science to make money out of animals… So whenever they murder our animals and call it sustainable use, I'll fight it. Since when has killing a wild animal, eating it or wearing it, ever saved a species? There are people who butt out their cigarettes in gorilla-paw ashtrays, with wastepaper baskets that were once elephant feet, who have ivory ornaments… who wear cheetah fur. Don't buy these things! Then there'll be no market and the animals won't be killed. We have domesticated livestock raised for consumption and perfectly good fake leather and fur, so why must we kill wild animals to satisfy the macabre taste of some rich person?

Here is something he said years before he died:

My number one rule is to keep that camera rolling. Even if it's shaky or slightly out of focus, I don't give a rip. Even if a big old alligator is chewing me up I want to go down and go, 'Crikey!' just before I die. That would be the ultimate for me.

So he died as he lived and the way he wanted to die. He died at the height of his game. Who could ask for anything more?

2006-09-07t16:44:16Z | RE: Politics. U.S.A. (America). War. World.
Pakistan lets al Queda back in

"You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror" -- GWB [metafilter.com/mefi/54536]

I haven't done a post on politics in a while and I barely want to do this one, but this one is so baffling and waffling that I think I need to go ask the Republicans to explain this one. It seems like al Queda and bin Laden are going to be given practically free reign in Pakistan and the Bush administration supported this. "Peace in our time" for Pakistan.

ABC News: Osama bin Laden offered sanctuary in Pakistan:

If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden "would not be taken into custody," Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, "as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen."

Offer comes as truce is concluded between Pakistan and Al Queada:

The Pakistani military will no longer operate in the area where Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda operatives are believed to be hiding, according to terms of what the Pakistan government calls a "peace deal," signed today with militant tribal groups allied to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

San Jose Mercury News reports Bush Administration approved truce, will offer millions in aid:

The Pakistani military is striking truces with Islamic separatists along the country's border with Afghanistan, freeing Pakistani militants and al-Qaida fighters to join Taliban insurgents battling U.S.-led troops and government forces in Afghanistan..... when the military failed to crush the separatists, the Bush administration agreed to support Pakistan's truce-making efforts and pledged millions of dollars in additional aid.

2006-09-10t13:50:02Z | RE: Inspiration. Philosophy. Pscychology. Relations.
Inspirations from a counseling center

Inspirational Readings [westhartfordcounselingcenter.com/inspiration3.html]

These guys have a bunch of good ones. The thing I like is that this stuff has probably been vetted in real life counseling sessions at the counseling center.

Here are a few that I liked:

You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for as long as you live. How you take care of it or fail to take care of it can make an enormous difference in the quality of your life.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. -Carl Sandburg

I've learned that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty everyday, and if you can source your life from it's presence.

It doesn't interest me who you are or how you came to be here. I want to know if you can stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in empty moments.

2006-09-19t22:45:00Z | RE: Kids. Life. Martial. My Stuff. Nanotech. Rambling. Science. Wikipedia.
Quick note at a Starbucks

My laptop just booted up, I'm in a Starbucks, the kids are at their Shidokan karate class [shidokan.com/cfc.htm], and I have 25 minutes of FREEDOM.

Hello self! What do I have to say? There's a lot of martial arts stuff I want to write about. I've been falling behind on my blogging, which, as of late, has been more about logging interesting stuff out there instead of in here. I need to fix both of those issues. I've been fretting about the technological singularity [W]. I seem to be more into martial arts than ever, as if I've gotten my second wind. I've been struck by the concept of the seven ages of man [W] as portrayed in Shakespeare's play As You Like It. Perhaps it's a twinge of mid-life crisis, like how I also want to get a good go at doing the martial arts while my body is able to. With the singularity looming, it's hard to get excited about anything that I wouldn't do if there was no money involved.

I think I've been more weepy lately. When I think about how Amy, my youngest, is leaving her baby years behind, I feel so mortal. It's wonderful to see her growing but it's also terribly sad to say goodbye to who she was, it's like saying good bye to someone I'll never see again. I guess it's because children change so fast. Really it's the same way with adults: after a few years, we'll never see the people we know today because even adults will have changed by then. If the singularity was here, complete with nanotechnology like we're starting to dream about, then I think it would be apparent that life without it was no less dear. I wonder if we would yearn for the past even more when we become the primitives to our meta-human creations?

Positioning and psychology have become a very strong concepts for me in the martial arts. I've been reading Mastering Jujitsu [Amazon.com/...] by Renzo Gracie and On Killing [Amazon.com/...] by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, both very good martial books —some of the best I've read in years. My return to martial arts seemed irresistible, as if it had the martial had become part of my psychological profile. I've been firing handguns, doing swords, getting into grappling, studying the principles, history, and psychology.

I wish I could do more with Wikipedia, but it slows me down. It's good but for me it's like the difference between R&D and exploring. Exploring is fun and random, while R&D is work and restrictive. I believe that the best R&D is really exploring at heart.

gtg

[The links above were added later —just before posting.]

2006-09-22t19:09:12Z | RE: Animated. Economy. Education. Geography. Sustainability. Video.
Robinson Crusoe Island

Chasing Crusoe [rcrusoe.org] via metafilter.com/mefi/54556

A documentary site rendered in Flash with activities, games, and video.

I've always liked Robinson Crusoe [W] by Daniel Defoe. The idea of marooned adds texture to maroon, my favorite color. I also happened to pick up a 1930 edition of the book at a rummage sale.

The documentary itself is very nice but the thing I liked about it the most was its National Geographic quality work on life at the modern Robinson Crusoe Island [W] where the real life Alexander Selkirk [W] was marooned for 4 years and 4 months (much less than the 28 years of the fictional character!). Even though the island only has a few hundred inhabitants, they manage to have 4 soccer teams! They want to keep in rhythm with the modern world (via the Internet, news, cultural events, etc.) but they want their own identity too. Everyone wants to have the resources and education to have a good life, but it has to be sustainable. Their economy is built largely on lobster harvesting, civil services, and tourism. If they over-fish, i.e. become too efficient, they ruin themselves.

The island is like a microcosm but while the island can fall back on the mainland, Earth has nothing else to fall back onto.

2006-09-22t19:27:52Z | RE: Books. Images.
Churburg Armoury

The Churburg Armoury by Carlo Paggiarino [213.136.32.111/hp/start.html]. A book with beautiful photos of the Trapp Family Collection of Historic arms and armour at the Castle of Churburg. Neutral backgrounds and close ups draw attention to the lines and surfaces.

2006-09-22t21:30:16Z | RE: Engineering. Sustainability.
Solar windows

Solar Cells for Cheap [technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17490&ch=biztech]

This is an interview with Michael Grätzel, "chemistry professor at the Ecoles Polytechniques Fédérales de Lausanne in Switzerland, is most famous for inventing a new type of solar cell that could cost much less than conventional photovoltaics."

The Dye-sensitized solar cells [W], aka Grätzel cells, operate more like photosynthesis, but with nanotechnology they have become even cheaper and more efficient.

Light generates electrons and positive carriers and they have to be transported. In a semiconductor silicon cell, silicon material absorbs light, but it also conducts the negative and positive charge carriers. An electric field has to be there to separate those charges. All of this has to be done by one material--silicon has to perform at least three functions. To do that, you need very pure materials, and that brings the price up. On the other hand, the dye cell uses a molecule to absorb light. It's like chlorophyll in photosynthesis, a molecule that absorbs light. But the chlorophyll's not involved in charge transport. It just absorbs light and generates a charge, and then those charges are conducted by some well-established mechanisms. That's exactly what our system does. The real breakthrough came with the nanoscopic particles. You have hundreds of particles stacked on top of each other in our light harvesting system.

It's a commonly accepted fact that the photovoltaic community thinks that the "building integrated" photovoltaics, that's where we have to go. Putting, as you say, those "ugly" scaffolds on the roof--this is not going to be appealing, and it's also expensive. That support structure costs a lot of money in addition to the cells, and so it's absolutely essential to make cells that are an integral part. [With our cells] the normal configuration has glass on both sides, and can be made to look like a colored glass. This could be used as a power-producing window or skylights or building facades. The wall or window itself is photovoltaicly active.

Konarka has a program with the military to have cells built into uniforms. You can imagine why. The soldier has so much electrical gear and so they want to boost their batteries. Batteries are a huge problem--the weight--and batteries cost a huge amount of money. Konarka has just announced a 20-megawatt facility for a foil-backed, dye-sensitized solar cell. This would still be for roofs. But there is a military application for tents, and Konarka is participating in that program.

TR: When are we going to be able to buy your cells?

MG: I expect in the next couple of years. The production equipment is already there.

TR: The main advantage of your cells is cost?

MG: A factor of 4 or 5 [lower cost than silicon] is realistic. If it's building integrated, you get additional advantages because, say you have glass, and replace it [with our cells], you would have had the glass cost anyway.

TR: Why does producing your technology require less energy?

MG: The silicon people need to make silicon out of silicon oxide. We use an oxide that is already existing: titanium oxide. We don't need to make titanium out of titanium oxide.

2006-09-22t21:40:19Z | RE: Culture. Funny. Health.
Throw those biking helmets away!

Wearing helmets 'more dangerous' [news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/5334208.stm]

I almost want to say: "I knew it! When we were kids, we never wore helmets and we turned out OK! Ha ha!"

The lack of a helmet may urge drivers to give you more space, and thus lower the probability of an accident, but if you do have an accident, then a helmet might be good —if it's a serious helmet and worn properly.

To carry out the research, Dr [Ian] Walker used a bike fitted with a computer and an ultrasonic distance sensor to find drivers were twice as likely to get close to the bicycle, at an average of 8.5cm, when he wore a helmet. The experiment, which recorded 2,500 overtaking motorists in Salisbury and Bristol, was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

We know helmets are useful in low-speed falls, and so definitely good for children, but whether they offer any real protection to somebody struck by a car is very controversial.

Apparently wigs make a difference too, but I'm guessing that this is that people are more protective over women and children then men. I wonder if a blatantly gay man would be given more or less space?

To test another theory, Dr Walker donned a long wig to see whether there was any difference in passing distance when drivers thought they were overtaking what appeared to be a female cyclist. While wearing the wig, drivers gave him an average of 14cm more space when passing.

2006-09-22t21:55:16Z | RE: Comics. Engineering. Hardware. Health. Martial.
Bionic arms with thought output and input

New bionic arm is almost like the real thing [chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0609140198sep14,1,5067898.story]

A thought driven arm must be a great improvement over previous arms.

Mitchell is the fourth person [but first woman] to be successfully fitted with the bionic arm, which weighs about 6 pounds and costs between $60,000 and $75,000. She said she typically wears the arm two to eight hours a day.

The four main nerves that used to connect the brain to the missing limb communicate with the computerized arm instead, a breakthrough pioneered by Dr. Todd Kuiken, director of the institute's Neural Engineering Center for Artificial Limbs and Center for Bionic Medicine. To do this the nerves are rerouted from the stump to muscles in the chest. The nerves still carry the electric signals from the brain that formerly activated the arm. By placing delicate sensors over the nerves these signals can be used to operate the artificial prosthesis, which is equipped with three motors and a small computer.

The equipment can give output naturally, but, surprisingly, can also take input! This could result in an arm that could feel.

The possibility of making a bionic arm that can feel came to light with Jesse Sullivan, a double amputee from Tennessee who was the first person to receive the Rehabilitation Institute's thought-controlled prosthesis. Kuiken and his team were startled to discover that touching the skin over the chest muscles where the arm nerves had been transplanted gave Sullivan the feeling that a part of his hand was being touched. .... The idea, Kuiken said, is to develop sensors in an artificial hand that can sense such things as temperature and pressure and have them transmitted to amplifiers on her chest.

 If we can make thought operated bionic arms, then why stop at replacing lost limbs? Why not make a Doctor Octopus [W] or Gundam [W] suit? I'm sure the military must be thinking about using this technology not only for injured veterans but for the battlefield too.