Eureka Renewed for Third Season

Great show, funny and smart. Looking forward to the third season. The season finale is on this Tuesday on SciFi.

Discworld reading order guide

I haven't read them, but Sarah enjoys them. Here is a graphic with the order in which to read the various tracks of stories. [Link]

iTunes vs Amazon

Amazon's MP3 store has the potential to become a big hit. MP3's with no DRM, cheaper per song and album price, and a large and growing selection means that iTunes is going to have some big competition. Apple has dominated the market to this point, but they're going to have to move quickly to keep up. Amazon even has an application to add your downloaded music to iTunes or Windows Media Player. Apple will be forced to keep up to compete and the winner in all of this will be the consumer.

Single Album: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Once More, With Feeling

• iTunes: 11.99
• Amazon: 8.99

Double Album: Pink Floyd - The Wall

• iTunes: 16.99
• Amazon: 8.99

Single: Feist - 1234

• iTunes: .99
• Amazon: .89

The MP3 files are watermarked, but contain only that the song was purchased from Amazon.

A spokesperson for Amazon confirmed my theory that the unprotected MP3s it started selling today contain watermarks that identify the songs to a certain extent. According to an Amazon spokesperson, the watermark only contains data indicating that the MP3 was purchased at Amazon (in other words, there's nothing in the file that indicates who purchased it):

"Amazon does not apply watermarks. Files are generally provided to us from the labels and some labels use watermarks to identify the retailer who sold the tracks (there is no information on the tracks that identifies the customer)."

Since Amazon itself does not apply the watermarks, and labels presumably supply only one MP3 copy of any given song, there's no way for a label to directly identify and sue an individual if, say, someone were to steal that person's iPod and share its songs all over the internets.

Treating the customer as a customer and not as a lawbreaker is refreshing.

Recipe

For that Italian classic, Fried Ravioli.

Here's a quick and easy recipe from Mrs. Spanno Giada De Laurentiis. Fried ravioli combines two of my favorite things: ravioli and olive oil. If you're feeling creative and have some time on your hands, you could make your own ravioli and marinara.

The connection between creativity and mental illness

It has been linked to a process called 'latent inhibition', the ability to ignore things that are not threats.

"This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment," says co-author and U of T psychology professor Jordan Peterson. "The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities."

Previously, scientists have associated failure to screen out stimuli with psychosis. However, Peterson and his co-researchers - lead author and psychology lecturer Shelley Carson of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard PhD candidate Daniel Higgins - hypothesized that it might also contribute to original thinking, especially when combined with high IQ. They administered tests of latent inhibition to Harvard undergraduates. Those classified as eminent creative achievers - participants under age 21 who reported unusually high scores in a single area of creative achievement - were seven times more likely to have low latent inhibition scores.

The authors hypothesize that latent inhibition may be positive when combined with high intelligence and good working memory - the capacity to think about many things at once - but negative otherwise. Peterson states: "If you are open to new information, new ideas, you better be able to intelligently and carefully edit and choose. If you have 50 ideas, only two or three are likely to be good. You have to be able to discriminate or you'll get swamped."

"Scientists have wondered for a long time why madness and creativity seem linked," says Carson. "It appears likely that low levels of latent inhibition and exceptional flexibility in thought might predispose to mental illness under some conditions and to creative accomplishment under others."

For example, during the early stages of diseases such as schizophrenia, which are often accompanied by feelings of deep insight, mystical knowledge and religious experience, chemical changes take place in which latent inhibition disappears.

"We are very excited by the results of these studies," says Peterson. "It appears that we have not only identified one of the biological bases of creativity but have moved towards cracking an age-old mystery: the relationship between genius, madness and the doors of perception."

Good News not spreading

Good news, but not of interest to the media.

With only two days remaining in September, U.S. forces are on pace for the lowest number of monthly fatalities in more than a year. According to the icasualties.org website, a total of 59 American military personnel have died in Iraq so far this month, compared to 79 in August--a 26% decline.

As we've cautioned in the past, casualty totals should be taken with a grain of salt. The number of military personnel killed during a certain period isn't always an accurate reflection of what's happening on the battlefield. A decrease in casualties may reflect a lull in the fighting; conversely, a jump in fatalities may portend a decisive battle that secures final victory.

Still, the September numbers from Iraq are good news, no matter how you analyze it. Not only did the overall military death toll continue its decline, the number of troops killed by hostile fire was at its lowest level in fourteen months. So far this month, a total of 36 U.S. troops have been killed by enemy fire, the lowest total since July 2006, when 35 died. The other 23 fatalities for September were attributed to non-hostile causes, including accidents and illness.

Artificial brain falls for optical illusions

Interesting, software that sees things the same way we do.

It suggests the illusions are a by-product of the way babies learn to filter their complex surroundings. Researchers say this means future robots must be susceptible to the same tricks as humans are in order to see as well as us.

For some time, scientists have believed one class of optical illusions result from the way the brain tries to disentangle the colour of an object and the way it is lit. An object may appear brighter or darker, either because of the shade of its colour, or because it is in bright light or shadows.

The brain learns how to tackle this through trial and error when we are babies, the theory goes. Mostly it gets it right, but occasionally a scene contradicts our previous experiences. The brain gets it wrong and we perceive an object lighter or darker than it really is – creating an illusion.

Robot Chicken

Behind the scenes article about Robot Chicken.

A big lesson from season one was that action figures, like their human counterparts, get old and creaky. Their joints have limited range of motion and don't hold up to the rigors of stop-mo. "I cried twice trying to animate them," Meyer says. ShadowMachine ditched the store-bought figures and now creates replicas, molding foam latex bodies over flexible wire armatures, allowing Meyer to manipulate the dolls with ease.

They are working on a movie.

Now, using the techniques it has honed for TV, ShadowMachine is revving up production on its first animated feature, Naughty or Nice (think Shrek meets '60s-era stop-mo Christmas specials). If the studio's track record is any indication, it can shoot the film at a fraction of the budget for previous stop-motion movies. But for the Robot Chicken-ShadowMachine rebel alliance, the bottom line is only part of the appeal. "We've become a family — as cheesy as that sounds," Senreich says. "We've been through highs and lows together and find ourselves wanting to do as many future projects together as we can."

Sliderules

Slashdot was talking about slide rules. The math aid before calculators.

Self guided course

Virtual Slide Rule

A whole page of different virtual Slide Rules

Swim in a lake, have your brain eaten by bacteria

Well, I'm not going swimming in a lake anytime soon.

It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

and

Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria lives almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even dirty swimming pools, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment.

Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose — say, by doing a somersault in chest-deep water — the amoeba can latch onto the olfactory nerve.

The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, "basically feeding on the brain cells," Beach said.

People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes, he said.

Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have stopped the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.

"Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," he said.

Car Chases

Chase from Bullitt



Second car chase from "Ronin"



French Connection Chase



From a French film, "Pas de Problème!"



Blues Brothers chase



Italians Adventure Russia



Bourne Identity chase



Gunsmith Cats chase

TV This Week

This was a good week for TV. Mostly new shows aired and the ones I watched, I enjoyed.

Monday

• Chuck - I liked this a lot. I liked that Chuck was competent, but goofy. And Adam Baldwin always plays a good thug.
• Heroes - Interesting twists with some genre specific expected plot points. Looking good for the sophomore season.

Tuesday

• NCIS - I like the show, but don't love it. If this is the sort of thing you like, you'll like this sort of thing.
• Eureka - One of my favorite shows. Good characters and good stories. I like the show's podcast, but I wish it was posted more regularly by Colin Ferguson.

Wednesday

• Bionic Woman - Good story. Lots of possibilities. Special effects and fight scenes were good too. Sarah was annoyed that Jamie was so upset at getting bionics. We both kepy going "Jordan" in a Boston accent every time Miguel Ferrer came on screen. Katee Sackhoff is a good villain. Not sure how often she will appear.
• Life - This one is growing on me. He is a little crazy, but he gets results. Lots of possibility for conflict.

Thursday

• CSI - I had few doubts about Sara Sidle's chances. Sarah was very uncomfortable and anxious with what happened to Sara in the episode up until the end. [EDIT: Sarah wants to let you know that this was because of the contract issues Jorja Fox and CBS had, not because she doesn't understand the conventions of storytelling and drama]
  
• Without a Trace - Workmanlike. I watch this because Sarah watches it. James Marsters is in an arc of episodes this season, but he doesn't look right with brown hair or sound quite right with an American accent, even if both are his natural state.

Friday

• Doctor Who - Liked the Valiant and Saxon. Martha Jones is a very different companion. She is the Doctor's equal, with her saving him nearly as often as he does her. I like her better than Rose.

Hypersonic Jets getting closer to reality

This is moving along. How soon until we get 2 hour trips to Sydney from New York? Probably about fifteen to twenty years.

In September, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) completed 10 months' testing of a sub-scale combustor for a hydrocarbon-powered, dual-mode ramjet engine designed to operate over a wide range of Mach-number speeds -- that is, multiples of the speed of sound.

Using JP-7 jet fuel, PWR ran the combustor successfully at a variety of Mach numbers from Mach 2.5 to Mach 6.0, demonstrating "desired operability and performance" at each speed, the company said.

"No engine, to our knowledge, has (previously) demonstrated a range from as low as 2.5 to a high of 6.0," said Michel McKeon, PWR's hypersonics and advanced programs manager. "The FaCET (Falcon Combined-Cycle Engine Technology) engine demonstrated a very wide Mach range, with high performance. This really shows the technology lends itself to application for a variety of different things."

Star Trek through a Conservative lens

National Review has a number of articles involving Star Trek up. Now don't turn up your nose because they're conservatives. They're Trek fans. Read on and enjoy.

Growing Up Star Trek

the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, reintroduced the series as a vision of the future in which in humanity has transcended its pettiness and imperfections, taming its baser instincts so that it might teeter on the edge of Utopia. Taking place in a moneyless, peaceful, egalitarian society, it announced triumphantly that man, through socialism, can do all — and that when we do, we’ll be lead by a tea-drinking, smartypants Frenchman named Jean-Luc.

Who's Better than Trek?

The Federation is, for the most part, viewed as a benign United Nations in space (just look at the emblem of the United Federation of Planets), which competently brings peace and reconciliation to the galaxy and succeeds through the selfish devotion of Star Fleet personnel to its ideals. The implication, of course, is that we are children and the Federation represents us when we’ve grown up. There will continue to be children, like the Klingon Worf, but they will be educated by Philosopher-Kings like Picard and their space therapists like Troi. It is no coincidence that in the best Trek episodes, the Federation is either irrelevant (Cause and Effect), left behind (the Klingon arc, most notably Redemption), or revealed as incapable (Best of Both Worlds). When the writers finally felt open to explore the realities of the Federation, after series creator Gene Roddenberry’s death, it was revealed to have a secret dark side in a compelling Deep Space Nine story arc. The background improved immeasurably as a result.

The Sources of Klingon Conduct

This is an excerpt from a classic essay first drafted as a memo to Federation Headquarters by an anonymous Vulcan diplomat and published in Interstellar Affairs in its Stardate 1114.3 issue. The essay had an enormous impact on the decision to pursue a confrontational policy toward the Klingons. Its author was later revealed to be Kennok, who would spend the balance of his career disavowing much of the intragalactic policy that was made partly as a result of it.

A Conservative Trek

But some people only understand a photon torpedo up the dorsal vent port, and we’d best be prepared to deal with them. The Federation, after all, had something called General Order 24, which called for the total destruction of a planet’s surface if the civilization was considered a threat to the Federation. As Vader might have said: Impressive.

Kirk actually invoked General Order 24, in “A Taste of Armageddon.” He used it as a threat, and didn’t carry it out. You can imagine his relief; the paperwork alone would have been a nightmare. But he would have done it if he had to, and not just for the reputation you get back home at the Officer’s Club. Not for Kirk the niceties of diplomacy: If he had to violate a treaty, he’d do it. If he had to save a civilization from the lifeless machinations of an ancient operating system, he’d harangue its computer until it smoked and crashed. In “The Arena,” Kirk didn’t win the battle against a rubber-suit Gorn because they hammered out a six-point Roadmap to Peace. Granted, he got the thumbs-up from the League of Judgmental Effeminate Aliens because he didn’t cave in the Gorn’s head with a stone. But prior to that, he nailed him in the chest with an improvised cannon that shot diamonds. In a cannon-free zone, no less.

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Federation Tax Collectors

The Federation is not just “socialist” in the sense that some conservatives denounce any big-government policy as “socialistic.” It’s socialist in the classic sense of the word: government control of all or most major economic activity. In the absence of a currency and price system, central planning seems to be the only way to coordinate a complex economy to even a limited degree. Moreover, virtually all large-scale Federation enterprises in the Star Trek universe seem to be government-owned: from space stations to research facilities to mining operations. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Federation is communist; we don’t see much evidence of class struggle (though maybe that’s because all of the bourgeoisie have already been safely packed off to Gulag planets) or of a monolithic one-party state. But it at least has some form of kinder, gentler non-Marxian socialism.

The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Pelosians

The situation with the Romulan Empire is rapidly becoming the defining crisis of our age.

Over the course of this magazine’s four centuries (not counting the Great Interegnum during the Eugenics Wars, when conservatism was deemed a mental defect) National Review has always endeavored to chart a course balancing idealism with realism. Even in its infancy, facing the first great existential crisis of Old Earth, we argued for challenging aggression, whether in the form of the Soviet threat or the violence done to humanity through hubristic tinkering with the genetic code. We are proud to say that our opposition to the Soviets played its part in the prevention of one nuclear holocaust and saddened that our warnings fell on deaf ears before as so many of us were marched off to reeducation camps on the Mars colonies. After the Interregnum we counseled a different course when making first contact with the Klingons and the Romulans than that chosen by Starfleet Command. History has vindicated us on both scores, which is small comfort given the terrible price we all paid for Starfleet’s stubbornness.

It's a completely different kind of flying altogether

It's a completely different kind of flying.

Zero Hour, a movie later remade and parodied into Airplane!

Airplane! is indeed a spoof of the disaster movie genre, but it cribs mostly from one film: Zero Hour!. This 1957 low-budget airplane suspense film has the same plot, characters, and much of the same dialogue. Both films even feature a former pro-athlete in the cockpit (the 50s version being footballer Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch). No wonder that Leslie Neilsen style of acting worked so well - the original is pretty much all in that same awkward mater-of-fact brusque attitude.

None of this is surprising when you find out that the producers of Airplane! purchased the script and remake rights to Zero Hour! after accidentally catching the film on late night television. Airplane! is half parody - and half loyal remake.

Watch the video at the link. It's Airplane!, done straight.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking.

Scotty for Star Trek?

He looks the part.

TrekMovie.com reported that former Stargate Atlantis regular Paul McGillion has auditioned for the role of Scotty in J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek movie.

The Scottish-born Canadian actor is best known to SF fans as Dr. Carson Beckett on Atlantis; the character appeared to die in season three, but will return for a few episodes in the upcoming fourth season.

Ridley Scott on updated "Final Cut" of Blade Runner

It will be released to theaters in October and on DVD in December.

Fresh off his second successful movie, an up-and-coming director takes a chance on a dark tale of a 21st-century cop who hunts humanlike androids. But he runs over budget, and the financiers take control, forcing him to add a ham-fisted voice-over and an absurdly cheery ending. The public doesn't buy it. The director's masterpiece plays to near-empty theaters, ultimately retreating to the art-house circuit as a cult oddity.

That's where we left Ridley Scott's future-noir epic in 1982. But a funny thing happened over the next 25 years. Blade Runner's audience quietly multiplied. An accidental public showing of a rough-cut work print created surprise demand for a re-release, so in 1992 Scott issued his director's cut. He silenced the narration, axed the ending, and added a twist — a dream sequence suggesting that Rick Deckard, the film's protagonist, is an android, just like those he was hired to dispatch.

But the director didn't stop there. As the millennium turned, he continued polishing: erasing stray f/x wires, trimming shots originally extended to accommodate the voice-over, even rebuilding a scene in which the stunt double was obvious. Now he's ready to release Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which will hit theaters in Los Angeles and New York in October, with a DVD to follow in December.

Rebooting DC

I think it may be a good idea. I only really started to read comics right around the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, so changing over to the new Post-Crisis world didn't bother me. It's been more than twenty years, maybe starting from a clean slate is needed. It would be simultaneously new and old, with echoes of the previous worlds adding to the interest for older fans, but still new for newer fans. If this happens after Final Crisis, which I think it might, hopefully it will be line wide rather than scattered like after the first crisis.

For example, what if DC had decided to stick with the Jay Garrick Flash instead of switching over to Barry Allen?

Though I have no idea if fans were as rabid then as they are now, picture this scenario:

You are a dyed-in-the-wool Jay Garrick Flash fan. Suddenly, your fave character, whose adventures you followed so lovingly in both his own title & All-Star Comics, has been replaced with this joker in red pajamas.

Horrors! It's an outrage!

And yet, I think the introduction of the Silver Age Flash & Green Lantern were key developments in revitalizing both DC and capes-and-tights comic books.

Now granted, Jay Garrick & Alan Scott were reintroduced, sort of, into the DC continuity -- though they were assigned to a different "Earth." And while these alternate Earths had occasional adventures with each other, the boundaries between each was clear.

And thus The Flash & Green Lantern saw successful reboots.

A drive in the park

The crew of the ISS took their Soyuz out for a drive to move to a different parking spot.

The short Soyuz spaceflight clears the space station's Earth-facing Zarya docking port to receive a new Russian spaceship on Oct. 12. That spacecraft, Soyuz TMA-11, will ferry the station's new Expedition 16 crew and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor -- Malaysia's first astronaut -- to the ISS after an Oct. 10 launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Kotov undocked the 24-foot (7.3-meter) long Soyuz TMA-10 from its Zarya berth at 3:27 p.m. EDT (1937 GMT) as the two spacecraft passed high above the southeast Pacific Ocean. He deftly piloted the eight-ton Soyuz along a graceful arc to the station's aft-mounted docking port on the end of the Russian-built Zvezda service module.

The two spacecraft reconnected at 3:47 p.m. EDT (1947 GMT) as they flew 211 miles (339 kilometers) above western Africa.

Amphibious Cars

These are cool. Very Bond like.

In recent years a couple of amphibian cars were created using modern technology to reach much higher speeds. These include the Aquada from the British company Gibbs Technologies, capable of 160 kilometres per hour (100 mph) on land and 55 kilometres per hour (30 mph) in water. Another high-speed amphibian is the Rinspeed Splash which utilizes hydrofoil technology, allowing the body to be raised out of the water. Using hydrofoils this vehicle can reach 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph) on the water and as a sports car 200 kilometres per hour (125 mph) on the road.

Big Tent Islam

I think this is a good thing. Islam needs to have it's own Reformation and I think it will start here.

Only natural that things get more tense over here between Shia and Sunni. But our country is a rare place for Islam, an environment where Shia and Sunni regularly and unremarkably pray together in the same mosques, something that stuns Muslim journalists when they cover our scene.

As one journalist from India recently put it:

“It is something we never see at home. They want to kill each other everywhere except in the USA.”

How can we export that to the the rest of the world?

At a time when rising numbers of American Protestants are attending non-denominational community churches and referring to themselves simply as Christians rather than Baptists, Methodists or Lutherans, a similar thing is happening among Muslims in the USA.

“It’s a whole new era,” says [Muslim sociologist Eboo] Patel. “The bulk of the American Muslim community is overwhelmingly young, under age 40. And they are experiencing a huge momentum toward ‘big-tent Islam.’”

“We don’t want to be defined by the classification of history and the Middle East. The Quran is our authority,” says Salim Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Al-Marayati, a Shiite married to a Sunni, expects to see 10,000 Muslims of all sects celebrate the Eid [feast at the end of Ramadan] with the Islamic Center of Southern California next month in Los Angeles.

He calls himself “Sushi,” the popular term for a combination of Sunni and Shiite. Once the glib nickname for the children of intermarried couples, it has become shorthand for Muslim who blur sectarian lines.

Gotta love “Sushi.” Yet another example of Japan’s successful cultural exports! Seriously. A term people choose for themselves because the word strikes them as cool.

Star Trek, Orwell, and Political Correctness

It's time to rewrite history to reflact the contributions of other cultures.

In George Orwell's classic novel, 1984, Inner Party member O'Brien tried to teach Winston Smith that the struggle to control history is over. It is what the Party says it is. Today the Daily Telegraph reminds us that this dictum is truer than ever.

Parts of British history need to be rewritten to emphasise the roles played by other races and religions like Muslims, a prominent race relations campaigner has said. Trevor Philips, the chairman of the new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, said the history of Britain did not properly reflect the contribution of other cultures. ...

Mr Phillips said: "When we talk about the Armada, it was the Turks who saved us because they held up the Armada after a request from Elizabeth I. Let’s rewrite that, so we have an ideal that brings us together so that it can bind us together in stormy times ahead in the next century."

The past, present and future are all one place. In the inimitable words of George Orwell, "he who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." And wouldn't you know, the screenwriters of Star Trek agree.

Peru Meteorite Coverup Begins

The zombies must be really spreading for them to cover this up as reports of "mass hysteria".

Some health officials suggest that the symptoms described by the locals, the large number of people reporting symptoms, and the apparently rapid spread have all the hallmarks of a case of mass hysteria. "Those who say they are affected are the product of a collective psychosis," Jorge Lopez Tejada, health department chief in Puno, the nearest city, told the Los Angeles Times. This psychosis could have begun as a result of fear of the meteorite and the mysterious "disease" on the part of the residents and spread as official and media reports seemed to confirm it and give it credence. "The Peruvian event seems to be a rare case where we may be witnessing collective anxiety that is approaching near hysteria," said Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at John Moores University in England. "The major[ity] of the affected Peruvian town hinted that some of the mass anxiety is due to fear of imminent impacts and psychological stress which is not surprising given the premature speculation and media hype."

Who Killed Captain America?

Was it Sharon Carter? Or was it someone else?

“Hey,” noted a fellow register jockey. “That text is still blacked out!”

Lo and behold, the script shown in the Director’s Cut was included in the omnibus and on the last page, detailing page 31, panel 4, was at least four lines with a big black mark across them and clearly labeled CENSORED. Little did I know, these four lines would lead us all down a path of investigative discovery the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the days of Zapruder film. Only this time, it was a comic book. And quite possibly, it could break the internet in half. No, really. This time, we meant it.

Face front, True Believers and read on!

You just need to ask yourself, "Who benefits?"

The Return of the Newton?

Interesting if true. I think the iNewton could live up to it's potential now.

For the past 18 months, well-respected sources tell AppleInsider, a small team of Apple engineers have been at it again, this time tapping the company's revolutionary multi-touch technology as a foundation.

During that time, sources have observed the project slip in and out of limbo, as Apple struggled to meet its self-imposed June, 2007 launch date for the iPhone. In at least two instances, the company pulled software engineers off the project to assist in the completion of the iPhone software, only to return those same engineers to the their original task months later.

With the initial iPhone now out the door and two successive models well underway in Apple's labs, it's believed to be full steam ahead for the modern day Newton project. Like iPhone and the iPod touch, the new device runs an embedded version of Apple's Mac OS X Leopard operating system.

Externally, the mutil-touch PDA has been described by sources as an ultra-thin "slate" akin to the iPhone, about 1.5 times the size and sporting an approximate 720x480 high-resolution display that comprises almost the entire surface of the unit. The device is further believed to leverage multi-touch concepts which have yet to gain widespread adoption in Apple's existing multi-touch products -- the iPhone and iPod touch -- like drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste.

Supposedly coming in the first half of 2008.

Presidential Candidates and Superheors

What superhero is each candidate? The best:

Hillary Clinton = She-Hulk
Trained as a lawyer, can kick pretty much any guy's ass, marriage to Man-Wolf was probably a mistake.

Rudy Giuliani = The Punisher
Italian American, native-New Yorker, people seem to like pretending he's a hero for some reason.

Al Gore = Galactus
Lurking out there somewhere, feeds off the destruction of the planet to maintain his massive girth.

Ron Paul = Matter-Eater Lad
Getting a lot of internet buzz, but... c'mon.

This Country

We wouldn't want to question anyone's patriotism, in this country.

Katie Couric speaking at the National Press Club yesterday:

“The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying ‘we’ when referring to the United States and, even the ‘shock and awe’ of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring the ‘Today’ show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this?’ And is this really being properly challenged by the right people? And I think, at the time, anyone who questioned the administration was considered unpatriotic and it was a very difficult position to be in.”

What a fascinating little slip! How deeply disturbing it is when Americans refer to the United States in a time of war as "we"! Some may think this is a little thing, but I truly don't. I hear liberals refer to the United States as "this country" quite often, usually accompanied with an eye roll, as in: "Of course, in this country, we have to pay for our own health care." Or, "in this country people think it's 'unpatriotic' to call America an evil empire." The "in this country" thing makes it sound like some sort of accident or mistake that the speaker was born here.

What a piece of junk

She'll make point five past lightspeed. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special modifications myself.

Wow. that is one large LEGO set.

Lego has just released their biggest and most insane set ever: a $500, 5,000-piece Millennium Falcon set so monstrous that the instructions alone weigh a whopping 4 pounds. It's sure to take many, many hours to build, which is more than half the fun of Legos, and when all is said and done you'll have a seriously impressive model to show off/play with.

Land Warrior in Action

High tech for troops. It has had controversy for weighing a lot on top of the regular load soldiers have to carry, but the exoskeletons that are being developed right now will help that eventually.

Cash was on hand to send the 4/9 into battle with Land Warrior, though. And their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Bill Prior, was a big fan. So, this spring, Land Warrior went off to Iraq.

I've just spent a week with Prior and the 4/9 (known as the "Manchus" since their assaults on China in 1901). And much to my surprise, a bunch of the soldiers in the unit are warming up to Land Warrior, especially now that the gizmo ensemble has been pared down and made more tactically relevant. So now the question is: can this once-doomed soldier-of-the-future ensemble spring back to life?

Over the last decade, the military has connected nearly all its command posts and all its vehicles into a kind of internet for battle. That allowed them to, at the very least, see each other's locations and better coordinate attacks.

Individual soldiers, however, still remain largely off the grid -- only now, more than four years into the Iraq war, are many troop teams getting radios of their own. That's a problem because counterinsurgency fights, like the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, are almost wholly dependent on small groups of soldiers like these. Land Warrior was supposed to be the way to plug them in.

Eventually they may turn into this:

Secret Potion for Multiplying Money

Of course it's in Florida.

Jean-Luc Mbilli and Constant Yao were arrested in Fort Lauderdale, FL after trying to convince Samith Ghazawi, an convenience store employee, that they could use a special potion to multiply money.

Ghazawi suspected that the men were using slight of hand and not a magical potion, so he called the cops. The BSO Economic Crime Unit and U.S. Secret Service set up a sting operation, complete with surveillance.

While the Secret Service watched, Ghazawi offered the men $3,000... which they refused because they wanted more. From the Sun Sentinel:

The two men were then arrested and investigators found a metal box filled with paper the size of U.S. currency in their vehicle.

Authorities asked any other people who may have fallen prey to the "black money scam" or "wash wash scam" to call sheriff's detectives at 954-321-4255 or Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477.

You know, if we had a potion that doubled our money, we'd sit around doubling it and not bother with store clerks except to buy life-time supplies of this really expensive dark chocolate that we like. What a nice thought.

Justice League News

Jessica Biel is in talks to be Wonder Woman. Plus possible spoiler story details that have a whiff of deja vu for the current comic reader.

Furries vs Klingons Bowling Tournament

This is a weird world we live in.

Planning for the next President

Bush is quietly advising democratic candidates on Iraq.

“It’s different being a candidate and being the president,” Bush said in an Oval Office interview. “No matter who the president is, no matter what party, when they sit here in the Oval Office and seriously consider the effect of a vacuum being created in the Middle East, particularly one trying to be created by al Qaeda, they will then begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy.”

To that end, Bush is institutionalizing controversial anti-terror programs so they can be used by the next president.

“Look, I’d like to make as many hard decisions as I can make, and do a lot of the heavy lifting prior to whoever my successor is,” Bush said. “And then that person is going to have to come and look at the same data I’ve been looking at, and come to their own conclusion.”

As an example, Bush cited his detainee program, which allows him to keep enemy combatants imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay while they await adjudication. Bush is unmoved by endless criticism of the program because he says his successor will need it.

“I specifically talked about it so that a candidate and/or president wouldn’t have to deal with the issue,” he said. “The next person has got the opportunity to analyze the utility of the program and make his or her decision about whether or not it is necessary to protect the homeland. I suspect they’ll find that it is necessary. But my only point to you is that it was important for me to lay it out there, so that the politics wouldn’t enter into whether or not the program ought to survive beyond my period.”

The Examiner asked Bush why Democratic candidates such as Clinton and Barack Obama, who routinely lambaste his handling of Iraq, should take his advice.

“First of all, I expect them to criticize me. That’s one way you get elected in the Democratic primary, is to criticize the president,” Bush replied. “I don’t expect them to necessarily take advice from me. I would expect their insiders to at least get a perspective about how we see things.”

He added: “We have an obligation to make sure that whoever is interested, they get our point of view, because you want somebody running for president to at least understand all perspectives, apart from the politics.”

I think it's a good thing. Whether it goes anywhere is another story. Most of the Democratic candidates have been giving themselves wiggle room with regards to Iraq despite the yelling by the immediate withdrawal crowd.

Blogs and Monolitihic Media

Interesting article on objective media and blogging.

But eventually, the connection between media elites and their audiences began to fracture. Though apocryphal, the line frequently attributed to Pauline Kael of the New Yorker in 1972 sums up the growing chasm between the overculture—particularly the media—and its audience: “I don’t know how Nixon won. No one I know voted for him.”

Just as the Big Three car manufacturers, with a once-monolithic hold on American consumers, seemed unaware that the public wanted a wider choice of cars (until Japan listened and responded), Pauline Kael’s in-crowd of coastal elites has, if anything, become even more clueless and resistant to emerging changes in the culture and dissemination of information.

How clueless? In 2004, Jonathan Klein, the former executive vice president of CBS News, described blogging as “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.” Last May, Time-Warner CEO Richard Parsons was quoted as saying, “The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation. They will lose this war if they go to war. The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”

Just how did the mainstream media (“MSM”) become so monolithic and unresponsive in the first place? And how is the rise of “Weblogs” helping to establish a new, more “fair and balanced” form of journalism?

The Rock as Captain Marvel and Black Adam?

That could be interesting. He has the look and charisma for either.

Japanese opening theme of Batman cartoon

Wow.

Crazy Conspiracies

I love this stuff. It's amazing what people will shovel into their head and believe. Some top items:

• Hitler and some associates escaped to the Arctic in a submarine, to live with super-advanced aliens who reside within the hollow earth. (This story originated with Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel The Coming Race, was treated as fact by the pre-Nazi Vril Society, was bolstered by the forged "secret diary" of Admiral Byrd, and was adopted by the likes of Ernst Zundel)
• Denver International Airport was built expressly to conceal a vast underground complex, headquarters of the New World Order elite. Clues are hidden in the airport's peace-themed mural.
• Scientology: Billions of years ago the intergalactic overlord Xenu used a film to brainwash our souls ("Thetans") into believing in the world's major religions, which he invented.
• Gnosticism: The entire material world is an evil trap created by the imposter God of the Bible.
• The early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never occurred. Everything that supposedly happened during those years was either a misunderstanding, an event from a different era, or an outright lie - Charlemagne, for instance, is a fictional figure. And we are actually living in the 1700s. (Herbert Illig's phantom time hypothesis)

One writer I follow, Ken Hite, writes about conspiracies and hidden history with regards to role playing games. The column he writes for Pyramid magazine has been collected into two volumes:

• Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast
• Suppressed Transmission 2: The Second Broadcast

There's some really crazy stuff there. He's covered some of these conspiracies.

Corruption With Clarity

This is disgusting. A site by cops complaining about other cops who do their jobs and give tickets to (law breaking) cops. Cops Writing Cops

Apparently, police corruption isn't worthy of hiding any more. Here's a site where cops (of various flavors) name and shame other police officers who have the temerity to issue tickets to their "brother" police officers when said "brothers" break the law. Don't miss the "Dick of the Month" section of the website, which could, in my opinion, be renamed "Cops Who Actually Do Their Jobs."

Here's an example:

As my uncle and I were exiting from a gas station onto a major roadway, we had to pass over 3 lanes of stopped traffic to get into the left lane. My uncle stopped for each lane before proceeding. The right lane and middle lane waved my uncle on and then the left lane began to move. My uncle was at a complete stop in the middle lane. The driver in the middle lane then decided to pull forward however, we were still in her lane and she hit us. The police were called we waited for them to arrive. When the officer arrived, my uncle had all the information needed for the officer's report, including mine on a piece of paper. He told the officer that he was a police officer and he handed him the paper. The officer handed it back to him and proceeded to ask me the same questions that were already answered on the paper. He then asked my uncle what happened and he stated the above. My uncle showed the officer his badge as he pulled out his DL and again told him where he worked. The officer then went to his car and completed not only a accident report, damage less then $500, but a traffic citation for failing to yield out of a private drive. The officer appeared to be having a bad day and was rude. I told my uncle that he should have complained about the attitude of the officer however he refused. If this was not bad enough the officer stated in court that my uncle NEVER said anything of the sort about the accident.

Later when the officer was asked by a co-worked about the incident he lied again by saying that my uncle did not identify himself and that there was no way of knowing that he was a police officer. This guy was sure clue less. My uncle has a special law enforcement memorial plate, FOP stickers, and his uniform was hanging on the passenger side hook (the same side he talked to me on). Let alone my uncle said that he was a police officer twice and that he could have filled out the accident report for him. I am glad that this paid observed noticed that. Now I hear that this guy is a SGT. Go figure.. No professional courtesy in West Chicago,IL.

He had stickers! He had a special plate! He should be above the law.

Zero G makes bacteria more dangerous

Zero G flips a genetic switch on some bacteria. making them more dangerous.

Prior to Nickerson and her team's study, the genetic behavior of Salmonella typhimurium--the main culprit in cases of food poisoning and typhoid fever--was unknown. The microbe poses a significant threat to astronauts during spaceflight, especially because it is resistant to many antibiotic treatments.

The researchers' experiment revealed that a genetic switch called "Hfq," which may control more than 160 genes in S. typhimurium, turns on in space and causes S. typhimurium to become three times more virulent than on the Earth's surface.

Based on what the space-faring bacteria did to animal models on the ground, Nickerson and her colleagues think hard-to-control biofilms are responsible for the increased danger.

"Biofilms are associated with increased pathogenicity because the immune system can't clear the bacteria effectively and antibiotics don't treat them effectively," Nickerson said. "The change that we observed [in space] is consistent with what looks like formation of a biofilm. The ground-grown samples did not show biofilm formation."

JC Penney's 1975 Catalog

Oh my. I think the toddler leisure suit is my... I'm not sure favorite is the right word.

What a hole in the ground

These are amazing. It doesn't look real. Like the Mole Man just showed up to attack the surface world.

Two One Gigabyte Drives

You've come a long way baby. From refrigerator sized monstrosities to drives smaller than a deck of cards, random access storage has come a long way.

What you're looking at is a gigantic 1GB hard drive from 20 years ago. The 70-pound, belt-driven monster is positioned next to someone holding up a 1GB flash card for comparison. So there you have it: over the course of 20 years, 1GB of storage has gone from the size of a Yaris' engine to something smaller than a postage stamp.

I remember buying my first large drive as I wanted more space on my computer and the 128MB drive I had just wasn't big enough. So I decided to get a drive big enough that I would never need another. Ah, youth. I bought an 850MB drive that kept me happy for quite some time.
Now my computer has 250GB and I', starting to feel cramped.

Jim Henson's Birthday

Some of my favorite films and tv shows came from the mind of Jim Henson. Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street. Jim Henson did a lot. Here's a short film he got an Academy Award nomination for 4 years before Sesame Street.

Explaing the different kind of news blogs

Very funny, and true.

This week, Uncle Jay helps you understand “blogs.” How can you tell the difference between (a) Amateur blogs that are biased and undependable, and (b) Solid, professional JOURNALISM that’s biased and undependable? Uncle Jay shows you!

He explains the Left, Right and Middle.

Reasons to leave the 1967 Outer Space Treaty

It seemed like a good idea at the time, preventing any country from claiming territory anywhere off Earth. But it has also hindered private development. Without that, we'll never leave the cradle.

This year is the 40th anniversary of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration of Outer Space Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, more commonly known as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Born out of anxiety about the Cold War and excitement about the Space Age, the agreement is a tribute to the ability of diplomats to draft international law that is simultaneously effective but bad. Successful in preventing states from claiming sovereign territory in outer space the treaty also hobbled space exploration and development. Today, human activity in outer space is confined to low Earth orbit and unmanned space exploration of the solar system proceeds at a leisurely pace. The Space Age has sputtered to a crawl and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty deserves a large measure of the blame.

Most of Mattel's China recalls due to faulty design

It seems that lead contamination is being used to deflect news that 80% of the toys Mattel recalled worldwide were due to super strong magnets falling out and becoming a choking hazard. It did seem surprising that Mattel vice president, Thomas Debrowski apologised to Chinese official Li Changjiang for having faulty designs.

Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologises personally to you, the Chinese people and all of our customers who received the toys. It is important for everyone to understand that the vast majority of these products that we recalled were the result of a flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in Chinese manufacturers.

For months, Mattel has blamed rogue Chinese subcontractors for endangering American children by violating Mattel's strict safety standards in pursuit of profit. The truth revealed hiding in plain sight by Debrowski's apology is slightly more complex.

Time best explains the discrepancy between Debrowski's apology and Mattel's public position:

Of the 19.6 million toys that [Mattel] has recalled this year globally, 2.2 million were due to lead paint; the remaining 17.4 million (11.7 million in the U.S.) were toys recalled not because of lead paint but because they were made with super-strong magnets.

The United States bans the use of lead in children's toys. Lead contamination can be rightly and exclusively traced to foreign subcontractors. Small magnets, however, which can kill children if ingested, are the result of shoddy designs.

Mattel is scapegoating China to cover themselves. Shameful.

High powered solar cells to be mass produced cheaply

This will be big.

Produced at less than $1 per watt, the panels will dramatically reduce the cost of generating solar electricity and could power homes and businesses around the globe with clean energy for roughly the same cost as traditionally generated electricity.

Sampath has developed a continuous, automated manufacturing process for solar panels using glass coating with a cadmium telluride thin film instead of the standard high-cost crystalline silicon. Because the process produces high efficiency devices (ranging from 11% to 13%) at a very high rate and yield, it can be done much more cheaply than with existing technologies. The cost to the consumer could be as low as $2 per watt, about half the current cost of solar panels. In addition, this solar technology need not be tied to a grid, so it can be affordably installed and operated in nearly any location.

The process is a low waste process with less than 2% of the materials used in production needing to be recycled. It also makes better use of raw materials since the process converts solar energy into electricity more efficiently. Cadmium telluride solar panels require 100 times less semiconductor material than high-cost crystalline silicon panels.

Best and Worst Logo Redesigns

Some of these are awful. Baskin Robbins and Payless Shoes are the worst.

Lost Season 4 Trailer

Interesting little film that reveals some strangeness in the world of Lost.

Entertainingly Bizarre

Polish rap/bollywood hybrid music video.

This music video for Masala's "Od Tarnobrzegu po Bangladesz" is a remarkable example of Polish "ragga-bhangra" music -- funky Indian music performed by Poles with a proper bollywood-style video.

Traveling Terabyte

This is nice. A care package sent to the troops. Hard drives filled with music and movies for their entertainment, to be passed on to other troops when they're done.

A New Jersey network engineer is on a mission to send some love and care – of the digital kind – to Americans stationed overseas. Going by his hacker handle ‘Deviant Ollam’, he’s been sending out hard drives filled with popular movies, television shows and music for over a year. Dubbed the Traveling Terabyte Project (TTB), the drives have seen action in war-torn countries and one set is now making a small contingent of Marines very happy in the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan.

Wil Wheaton to be on Family Guy

He and Seth McFarlane are mutual fans. Should be funny.

Seth MacFarlane directed my session, and when I met him, I said, "Okay, I'm not even going to try to pretend to keep it cool. I am a huge fan, and this is more exciting for me than I can quantify."

Yeah, I said quantify. I say stupid shit like that when I'm giddy and excited.

"Well, if you're going to do that," he said, "then I'll have to tell you that Next Generation is my favorite of all the Star Treks, and I've seen every episode about a thousand times. The First Duty is just great, man."

I did my best not to faint.

Software performance with large sets of data

I have seen this many, many times. Something that runs fast during development and maybe even testing because the data used in testing was too small and didn't match real world conditions. If you are working on a small set of data, everything is fast, even slow things.

Your application is useful and popular. Your users love it. Your users love you. But over the next week, something curious happens. As people use the application, it gets progressively slower and slower. Soon, the complaints start filtering in. Within a few weeks, the app is well-neigh unusable due to all the insufferable delays it subjects users to-- and your users turn on you.

Raise your hand if this has ever happened to a project you've worked on. If I had a buck for every time I've personally seen this, I'd have enough for a nice lunch date. Developers test with tiny toy data sets, assume all is well, and then find out the hard way that everything is fast for small n.

I remember a client-side Javascript sort routine we implemented in a rich intranet web app circa 2002. It worked great on our small test datasets, but when we deployed it to production, we were astonished to find that sorting a measly hundred items could take upwards of 5 seconds on a user's desktop machine. JavaScript isn't known for its speed, but what the heck?

Well, guess which sort algorithm we used?

Japanese Vending Machines

Huge gallery of vending machines that serve up anything you can imagine and probably some you can't.

Vending machines in Japan are as commonplace as temples, bicycles, and karaoke booths. It's not uncommon to see a street lined with a dozen or more machines selling products ranging from cold and hot drinks to flowers or rice. And almost none of these vending machines are vandalized or non-functional. According to the Vending Machine Manufacturers Association, Japan has one vending machine for every 23 people.

Hot and cold, beer and cigarettes, bags of rice and lingerie. Japan is unique.

A-12 Officially Unveiled

The precursor of the SR-71 was just unveiled at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA.

The OXCART program story began in 1957, when a contractor suggested that high-altitude supersonic flight was the only way to avoid Soviet air defenses. CIA's Richard M. Bissell, who was directing the 1954 U-2 spy plane program at the time, was concerned about their vulnerability to URSS radars and anti-air missiles. He was right: in 1960 the soviets shot down Francis Gary Powers' U-2 near Sverdlovsk.

By then the A-12 program was already under way: after Lockheed Aircraft completed "antiradar studies, aerodynamic structural tests, and engineering designs," the CIA gave the green light to produce the 12 aircraft on January 30th, 1960. It was still called the A-11 at the time and Lockheed engineer Clarence L. Johnson was the main designer. He also was responsible for the U-2 but, for some reason and after months of drawings and wind-tunnel model testing, people were still not convinced this beast could fly.

New Space Drive proposed

A Mini-Orion. It would be able to get to 10% light speed.

The original Orion project was headed by Ted Taylor from General Atomics, who together with the famous physicist Freeman Dyson suggested ejecting nuclear explosives behind a spacecraft in order to propel it forward. The Mini-Mag system uses a magnetic field in order to trigger an explosion of compressed material in the form of small pellets weighing several grams. This explosion, although being significantly weaker than a nuclear explosion, creates plasma that is directed through a magnetic nozzle to generate vehicle thrust. The proposed technology enables the production of thrust at high efficiency, hopefully allowing drastic reduction of interplanetary travel time. According to calculations performed by AS&T, this type of propulsion system can produce the same thrust as the Space Shuttle Main Engine, with 50 times more efficiency.

Due to the magnetic compression thrust technology, spacecraft could be smaller and lighter. The spacecraft itself will only have to carry a relatively small amount of fissionable material as fuel and will be able to reach speeds of approximately 10% of the speed of light. Dr. Dana Andrews, AS&T Chief Technology Officer and Mini-Mag Orion inventor, and Roger Lenard from the Sandia National Laboratories, have published a paper describing their research into the Mini-Mag Orion concept in the Acta Astronautica – Journal of the International Academy of Astronautics.

Belgium headed for breakup?

I didn't know things were so tense there.

“We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer,” said Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Bloc, the extreme-right, xenophobic Flemish party, in an interview. “It’s ‘bye-bye, Belgium’ time.”

Radical Flemish separatists like Mr. Dewinter want to slice the country horizontally along ethnic and economic lines: to the north, their beloved Flanders — where Dutch (known locally as Flemish) is spoken and money is increasingly made — and to the south, French-speaking Wallonia, where a kind of provincial snobbery was once polished to a fine sheen and where today old factories dominate the gray landscape.

“There are two extremes, some screaming that Belgium will last forever and others saying that we are standing at the edge of a ravine,” said Caroline Sägesser, a Belgian political analyst at Crisp, a socio-political research organization in Brussels. “I don’t believe Belgium is about to split up right now. But in my lifetime? I’d be surprised if I were to die in Belgium.”

Red Shirt Analytics

This is funny. An analysis of red shirt fatalities on Star Trek TOS.

Data Segmentation:
However, we need to segment the overall mortality (conversion) rate in order to gain the specific information that we need:

• Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%)
• Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %)
• Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4
• Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%)

So, the basic segmentation of factors allows us to confirm that red-shirted crewmembers died more than any other crewmembers on the original Star Trek series.

However, that's only just simple stats reporting - ready for some analysis?

Official LEGO AT-AT

Very cool.

Motorized action straight from the Star Wars™ movies!

Behold the power of the Empire! For the first time ever, the ultimate Motorized Walking AT-AT is ready to crush the Rebel Alliance at your command. Thanks to the new Power Functions System, the mighty All-Terrain Armored Transport really walks forward or backward into battle!

• Features an opening cockpit and rotating laser cannons!
• Motorized Walking AT-AT really walks and its head moves up and down!
• Handle on top allows for easy transport!
• Stands over 12" (30 cm) tall and over 14" (36 cm) long!
• Includes AT-AT Pilot, General Veers, Snowtrooper and Luke Skywalker with grappling line and lightsaber!
• Includes battery box and motor!
• Requires 6 AA (1.5V) batteries, not included.

But is it TXH Certified?

A Star Wars Themed home theater designed for uber Star Wars fans by Doug Chiang.

Super-fans Vic Wertz and Lisa Stevens used to run the Official Star Wars Fan Club and even the “Star Wars Insider” magazine. But even though they’re both out of that business now, they still pay homage to their dark lord and master each and every day—thanks to their incredibly impressive and geeky home theater.

Darth Vader wouldn’t call in an Ewok to do his dirty work, and neither did this couple. Instead they recruited Doug Chiang, the lead designer on “Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace” and “Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones.” Stevens met him during her days at another game company, Wizards of the Coast. “When we decided to do this project, I wanted to make sure I had the right designer, and he was at the top of the list,” says Wertz. Sure, but was he gettable? “He was pretty busy at the time, so it almost didn’t happen, but at the last minute, he was able to schedule a block of time for the designs.”

Three designs later, the couple brought in Mike Dillon and his custom design and fabrication company, Dillon Works, to do the icing on the cake. “We can design and fabricate just about anything,” he says. And he wasn’t kidding.

“It ended up being the control deck of the Death Star,” says Eric Ward, custom sales manager at Definitive Audio. The Bellevue, Wash.-based installation company was responsible for all of the audio and video for this 36-month project.

They worked at WotC? Of course, they're gamers. That explains a lot.

College Students don't know History

College Freshmen and Seniors score badly on civic history tests.

The study from the non-profit Intercollegiate Studies Institute shows that less than half of college seniors knew that Yorktown was the battle that ended the American Revolution or that NATO was formed to resist Soviet expansion. Overall, freshmen averaged 50.4% on a wide-ranging civic literacy test; seniors averaged 54.2%, both failing scores if translated to grades.

Is it all schools or do the elite schools do better?

•Average scores for the 25 selective colleges — chosen for type, geographic location and U.S. News & World Report ranking — were much higher than the 25 randomly selected schools for both freshmen (56.6% vs. 43.7%) and seniors (59.4% vs. 48.4%), but the elite schools didn't add as much civic knowledge between the freshman and senior years. At elite schools, the seniors averaged 2.8 points higher than the freshmen vs. 4.7 points for the randomly selected schools.

Looks like the students already knew most of it before they got there. That's how they got into an elite school. How about the Ivy League?

•Harvard seniors had the highest average at 69.6%, 5.97 points higher than its freshmen but still a D+. A Harvard senior posted the only perfect score.

•In general, the better a college's U.S. News & World Report ranking, the less its civic literacy gain. Yale, with the highest-scoring freshmen (68.94%), along with Princeton, Duke and Cornell, were among eight schools with freshmen outscoring seniors.

Take the test here I scored pretty well:

You answered 52 out of 60 correctly — 86.67 %

Average score for this quiz during September: 75.1%
Average score since September 18, 2007: 75.1%

CCTV cameras no help in solving crime

I thought the reason London is the most surveiled city in the world was to provide safety and prevent crime. It certainly hasn't helped solve them.

A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.

In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average.

Holy Crap! IED in Iraq

Watch. No one was hurt that I can see.

New, Low Powered Exoskeleton

It's designed to lighten the loads of soldiers and the enormous amount of gear they carry.

In the September issue of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, the researchers report that their prototype can successfully take on 80 percent of an 80-pound load carried on a person's back, but there's one catch: The current model impedes the natural walking gait of the person wearing it.

"You can definitely tell it's affecting your gait," said Conor Walsh, a graduate student who worked on the project, but "you do feel it taking the load off and you definitely feel less stress on your upper body."

Power consumption is really low.

The person wearing the exoskeleton places his or her feet in boots attached to a series of tubes that run up the leg to the backpack, transferring the weight of the backpack to the ground. Springs at the ankle and hip and a damping device at the knee allow the device to approximate the walking motion of a human leg, with a very small external power input (one watt).

Other research teams have produced exoskeleton devices that can successfully carry a load but require a large power source (about 3,000 watts, supplied by a gasoline engine).

One watt is amazing.

Galactica Season 4 split in two parts

Good news, bad news. Good news is that Battlestar Galactica's fourth season has been extended to 20 episodes instead of the previously announced 13. Bad news is that the season is split in two, 10 episode chinks that will air month apart.

There are 20 episodes in the final season and the plan now from Sci-Fi is to show 10 of them in Feb. of 2008 and then wait until Feb. of 2009 to show the final 10! Needless to say, the large crowd at the panel was not pleased considering the 18-month gap we are already enduring.

I'm just glad we get to see the end of the story.

Lucas talks about Star Wars on TV

I am cautiously optimistic.

Animation:

"There's Clone Wars, and we're in the middle of that," he said. "It's basically like Star Wars [in that it] takes place between, obviously, Episode II and Episode III, but it's the same kind of action. Unfortunately, it doesn't fall into the realm of what animation [typically] is, which is either adult, kind of off-color humor or kiddie stuff. This is, like Star Wars, sort of in between those two things. It's a lot of battle stuff, and it's obviously the Clone Wars, so it's a war picture. ... It's very much like the features. We're still trying to figure out how to put it on the air."

Lucas said that there are a hundred episodes planned for the series, half of which should be completed before the first one airs. Lucas and his company are aiming to premiere the series in the fall of 2008 but are still considering where it would fit best on the broadcast schedule. "So far, everybody's got the same conundrums," he said. "'How do we program it? Where does it live? Where can we put something like this?' You know, it has to go after 9 o'clock and it can't be on a kiddie channel."

Live Action:

Lucas is also working on a live-action series for television and said that he expects to be writing it about a month from now. The series will be set in the Star Wars universe between Episode III and Episode IV and will feature minor characters from the films.

"It's like Episode IV in that the Emperor and Darth Vader are heard about—people talk about them—but you never see them because it doesn't take place where they actually are. There are stormtroopers and all that, but there are no Jedis. It's different, but I think it's very exciting because I get to explore a part of that universe that I haven't been able to explore."

Martian Tripod Prototype

It's a little small and doesn't have a mounting point for a heat ray, yet.

Apparently, robot designers are worried that they're not creating automatons that are creepy enough, because a team of engineers at Virgina Tech have put something together that will give even the toughest of men chills. The robot in question is the three-legged STriDER (Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot, not to be confused with CMU's Strider) which balances itself on two legs and then flips its body 180-degrees, bringing its third leg forward with the motion. According to project leader Dennis Hong, "STriDER's gait is closer to that of a human walking than most bipedal humanoid robots you see today," adding, "This is how we humans walk, we do not actively control our knees, we just let them swing."

Jaw dropping figure

Wow.

The article quotes a pair of dentists, one from a Paris teaching hospital and one from the French dentistry association, and offers the following statistics (without citing sources).

- one million French citizens never brush their teeth

- half of all French do not brush their teeth in the evening

- 57% of French children under five have never brushed their teeth

- the average French citizen uses between one and two toothbrushes in a year

Two Great Tastes...

That taste great together: LOLCats and Cthulhu.

Bose Suspension

I didn't know they did much beyond sound. It appears to have impressed the experts.

The fact that Bose has been working on a different sort of suspension system for cars isn't news— the company announced it two years ago, after it had been researching car suspension for over 25 years (Dr. Bose said yesterday that the company has spent over $100 million on the project). After the initial announcement, the car experts over at Edmunds raved, "We were stunned by this achievement. To say that this technology is the biggest advance in automobile suspension since all-independent design would be an understatement."

Reasons I love comics

Beta Ray Bill

This kicked off a huge cosmic storyline that is still one of my favorites.