Submarine Launched Helicopter

Bond villain escape craft? [Link]

The helicopter is sized to take off from within submarines using existing openings; of necessity, it is large enough to hold only two passengers. Note that this is a design only; no prototype exists.

Waterspout would also float on the water even in rough seas; it would have enough fuel to fly 260 kilometers at a time. The small submarine-based helicopter would make use of stealth technology; it is designed with low heat emissions and special coatings to make it harder to spot with radar.

The Pennsylvania team was responsible for the aerodynamics of the rotors and the fuel system; the Technion team planned the rotor mechanics, the blade-folding mechanism, and the takeoff mechanism.

The model won first prize in the first-degree student category in a helicopter planning competition organized by the American Helicopter Society.

British Army tank cloak

Invisibility system for tanks being tested by the British Army.

[T]he British Army is reportedly staying busy by "testing technology it claims makes tanks and troops invisible." Apparently, the (previously) uber-secret trials were conducted by the Royal Engineers and scientists from QinetiQ, and if eyewitness reports are to be believed, they were able to "make a vehicle seem to completely disappear." The illusion (read: we're no closer to actual invisibility cloaks) was reportedly created by utilizing "cameras and projectors to beam images captured from the surrounding landscape onto a specially-adapted tank coated with silicon to maximize their reflective qualities," and if things go as planned, these elusive machines could make their way onto the battlefield "within five years."

The Acorn Wand

This is just cool.

Puzzle hunts are a popular pastime at Microsoft. For the Microsoft Intern Puzzleday 2007, the puzzle design team decided upon a Harry Potter theme. Competitors ("students") formed teams ("study groups") as they attended classes at the Hogwarts campus at Microsoft. Of course, since this is Harry Potter, you need a magic wand, so the puzzle design team made a bunch of functional magic wands.

Wand web site here.

Clarke's Third Law in action.

Variations on a theme

Rifftrax - Mike Nelson & other MST3k alumni record MST3k style DVD audio commentary tracks
MST3K Animated - New animated adventures starting November 5th (more info here)
Cinematic Titanic - Joel, Trace Beaulieu, Josh Weinstein, Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl doing MST3K style stuff

Cool stuff.

Halloween Weirdness

Corsair is feeling weird because he is the only one at his workplace in a costume. [Link]

I'm feeling weird because my workplace is crazy about Halloween. More than 50% are in costume, and the decorations are amazing. Each department has a theme.

• Hollywood
• Vegas
• Mexico
• Ancient Greece
• Tailgate Party
• Monopoly Board
• KISS Concert
• Construction Site

Plus, there's a pumpkin carving contest. IT has turned our pumpkin into a Pac Man game with two ghosts and a Pac Man on a board.

I've never worked at a place that took this that seriously. I keep getting told that this is nothing like the good old days, when they really decorated.

Not So Small World

We are getting too fat as a nation to ride the It's a Small World ride. It apparently bottoms out whn too full.

Back in 1963, when the boats that carry customers through Disneyland's "It's a Small World" ride were designed, the average male weighed 175lbs and the average female 135lbs.

Not anymore. Nowadays the boats frequently bottom out, overloaded with extra flesh, says CalorieLab:

The Small World ride now must accommodate adults who frequently weigh north of 200 pounds, which it often cannot do. Increasingly, overweighted boats get to certain points in the ride and bottom out, becoming stuck in the flume.

The ride monitors attempt to leave empty seats on many boats to compensate for the hefty, but this routinely antagonizes the hundreds of paying customers waiting in line. When a boat does bottom out, a long line of other boats backs up behind it, their passengers slowly going mad from listening to the ride's theme song.

Orwellian

Wow. The free exchange of ideas on a college campus... as long as they are pre-approved ideas.

NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech.

When you have to force acceptance of an idea or concept, that weakens it as if it could not stand on it's own.

Agile Dungeon Mastering

I think this metaphor works. I try to do most of these points.

“Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.” A roleplaying game can often take a turn in a direction you didn’t expect. Be ready to adapt to this - don’t plan too much or set those plans in stone.

“Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.” Take your players’ input into the game. Often, your players can come up with fantastic and inventive ideas that even work better than what you had in mind. Let them know that their choices matter.

“Working software is the primary measure of progress.” While some DMs enjoy writing lengthy histories and campaign worlds histories, these are irrelevant to your game unless the gameplay itself is handled well. Remember that you’re running a roleplaying game, not writing a novel.

“Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.” Don’t just jump on the first solution you find. Always consider alternative options and decide on the best way forward before you commit to an idea.

“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.” Talk to your players! Remember that it’s the players’ game as much as it is the DM’s. Encourage discussion, not just one-way feedback; hold regular sessions during which players can confer on how best to take the game forward.

The Next Big Color

Will be iridescence.

JDSU, a paint and pigments company, is showing off its newest "ChromaFlair" and "SpectraFlair" pigments at the SEMA auto show, but the color-shifting paints won't just be on cars in the near future. There's a whole line of products that will be covered in shimmering iridescence, the clear materials choice of today's future, as measured by the "What do sci-fi force fields look like when absorbing blaster fire?" metric. If you don't like the coming wave of soap-bubble paint jobs, don't blame JDSU—blame Halo.

You can see a products gallery at JDSU.com.

I'm partial to silver and white with blue LEDs.

Why Isn't Giuliani Less Popular?

I think this is a good explanation. [Link]

People in the know used to think the rubes just didn't realize Rudy has dressed in drag and once lived with 2 gay guys; they just remembered him as the star of that 9/11 show they saw on TV that one time.

But now it's dawning on the pundits that Americans probably know all that stuff by now, so why isn't Rudy sunk? They're shuffling around for explanations. You could say "terrorism fears trump everything," or "the rest of the field is weak." But Rich thinks the right answer is that Americans really aren't as narrow-minded as they are portrayed by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values

And I agree with this as well:

This is my favorite thing about Giuliani: his potential to bring out the social liberal in the Republican Party.

By the same token, my favorite thing about Hillary Clinton is her potential to bring hawkishness to the Democratic Party.

Director set for Live Action Green Lantern Film

Cool.

Warner Brothers has set Greg Berlanti to direct Green Lantern, a live-action take on the DC Comics superhero, Variety reported.

Berlanti will write the script with Marc Guggenheim and Michael Green. Donald De Line will produce; Andrew Haas is executive producer.

Hopefully it will not be the humorous take that Jack Black wanted to do.

The Science Education Myth

This is unexpected. [Link] I think this goes directly against the common wisdom that we are falling behind in Math, Science and Engineering. Apparently not:

The call has been taken up by some of the most prominent people in business and politics. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, said at an education summit in 2005, "In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind." President George W. Bush addressed the issue in his 2006 State of the Union address. "We need to encourage children to take more math and science, and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations," he said.

Salzman and Lowell found the reverse was true. Their report shows U.S. student performance has steadily improved over time in math, science, and reading. It also found enrollment in math and science courses is actually up. For example, in 1982 high school graduates earned 2.6 math credits and 2.2 science credits on average. By 1998, the average number of credits increased to 3.5 math and 3.2 science credits. The percent of students taking chemistry increased from 45% in 1990 to 55% in 1996 and 60% in 2004. Scores in national tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the SAT, and the ACT have also shown increases in math scores over the past two decades.

And the new report again went against the grain when it compared the U.S. to other countries. It found that over the past decade the U.S. has ranked a consistent second place in science. It also was far ahead of other nations in reading and literacy and other academic areas. In fact, the report found that the U.S. is one of only a few nations that has consistently shown improvement over time.

Why do we think we're so far behind?

Salzman says that reports citing low U.S. international rankings often misinterpret the data. Review of the international rankings, which he says are all based on one of two tests, the Trends in International Mathematics & Science Study (TIMMS) or the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), show the U.S. is in a second-ranked group, not trailing the leading economies of the world as is commonly reported. In fact, the few countries that place higher than the U.S. are generally small nations, and few of these rank consistently high across all grades, subjects, and years tested. Moreover, he says, serious methodological flaws, such as different test populations, and other limitations preclude drawing any meaningful comparison of school systems between countries.

Smug Arrogance

Apple has a history of annoying smugness. But this is just petty. [Link]

There is simply nothing less attractive than a person who is both flawed and smug, and apparently one of the few plausible justifications for treating corporations as legal persons is the fact that this holds true for companies as well. And Apple is a smug company.

The new version 10.5 of Mac OS X ^[1] rather famously features the following display when you're browsing machines that appear to be running Microsoft Windows:

That is just petty.

Two words I never expected to hear together

Bathtub Cheese. [Link] Just writing it makes me a little nauseous.

California police arrested the pair on "felony cheese making charges" after they tried to sell 375 pounds of bathtub cheese at an open-air market in San Bernardino. Bathtub cheese, otherwise known as "illegal soft cheese," can cause a range of maladies including listeria, salmonella, and everybody's favorite gut goblin, E. coli.

The 375 pounds of seized illegal cheese included panela, queso fresco and queso oxaca varieties, the [California Department of Food and Agriculture] says. It was a significant find, the department says.

Eew.

EveryScape - Miami Children's Museum

Explore the outside and inside of the Miami Children's Museum. [Link] Very cool. You can explore the museum and look around before going there. Cool. The site is still beta.

Feeding Conspiracies

This book sounds cool. A whole bunch of patches from secret military projects. [Link]

By submitting hundreds of Freedom of Information requests, the author has also assembled an extensive and readable guide to the patches included here, making this volume the best available survey of the military's black world -- a $27 billion industry that has quietly grown by almost 50 percent since 9/11.

Tired

Just back from Disney with Sarah, Debbie and Dan. We spent three days there, staying in the All Star Sports resort. We're not sports fans, but the price was nice to stay on the Disney property. We did the Wine and Food festival at Epcot, eating our way around the World Showcase. We also ate at Boma in the Animal Kingdom Lodge resort. It is an African themed buffet. Great food that was enjoyed by all.
The updated Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion were interesting. I think the Haunted Mansion fit it all in more naturally. The changes were subtle and fit in with the look and feel of the existing setting. The changes at Pirates seemed very much like Johnny Depp, dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow, is hiding in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney. His animatronic was very lifelike; too lifelike compared to the existing figures. His presence makes the originals look bad in comparison.
Too tired. Must sleep.

D&D Pumpkin

Go. See the Beholder Pumpkin. [Link]

Galactica Razor preview movies

Here are the collected Razor videos and a few fan produced ones as well. [Link] I especially like the space battle during the First Cylon War. [Link] Bill Adama, crazy Viper pilot and old school Cylon raiders!

Miniature of Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin

This is cool. Very full of detail. [Link]

Ouch

Ouch. [Link]

Things have gotten so bad in the Netherlands that even French intellectuals are now accusing us of “unacceptable cowardice” because of the way Ayaan Hirsi Ali was treated recently. Several intellectuals wrote an open letter, which was published in the French newspaper Libération. In it, Pascal Bruckner, Luc Ferry, Alain Finkielkraut, André Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Levy don’t just accuse the Dutch of cowardly behavior, they also call on their own government to offer Ayaan Hirsi Ali the French nationality.

Unleaded Gas = Lower Crime

Fascinating if true. [Link]

In the early 1990s, a surge in the number of teenagers threatened a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. But to the surprise of some experts, crime fell steadily instead. Many explanations have been offered in hindsight, including economic growth, the expansion of police forces, the rise of prison populations and the end of the crack epidemic. But no one knows exactly why crime declined so steeply.

The answer, according to Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an economist at Amherst College, lies in the cleanup of a toxic chemical that affected nearly everyone in the United States for most of the last century. After moving out of an old townhouse in Boston when her first child was born in 2000, Reyes started looking into the effects of lead poisoning. She learned that even low levels of lead can cause brain damage that makes children less intelligent and, in some cases, more impulsive and aggressive. She also discovered that the main source of lead in the air and water had not been paint but rather leaded gasoline — until it was phased out in the 1970s and ’80s by the Clean Air Act, which took blood levels of lead for all Americans down to a fraction of what they had been. “Putting the two together,” she says, “it seemed that this big change in people’s exposure to lead might have led to some big changes in behavior.”

Reyes found that the rise and fall of lead-exposure rates seemed to match the arc of violent crime, but with a 20-year lag — just long enough for children exposed to the highest levels of lead in 1973 to reach their most violence-prone years in the early ’90s, when crime rates hit their peak.

We'll be able to prove it, checking crime rates 20yrs later in countries that have stopped using leaded gas.

Blackberry vs iPhone ... Fight!

An interesting thesis. [Link]

I was chatting the other day with Brad Burnham, with whom I'm on the board of Wesabe. He saw my iPhone, and asked if I'd ever had a Blackberry. No, I haven't. Brad said that he'd tried an iPhone, but soon switched back. "Everyone who's never had a Blackberry loves the iPhone," he said, "but if they've used the Blackberry, they're just like me. They try it, and then go back."

A strong endorsement for the Blackberry. Right?

Wrong. What it brought up in me was a powerful sense of deja vu, and the response of die-hard Lotus 1-2-3 users to the new graphical spreadsheet, Excel.

Most people aren't power users. Keyboard commands vs mouse, GUI vs CLI, touchscreen vs buttons, it's all the same. With tactile feedback coming to touchscreens and their coming ubiquity, I think the touchscreen is the interface of the future.

This

OR

Full Season of Pushing Daisies Ordered

This is good news. This is one of the best new shows this season. [Link]

TV Guide's Ausiello Report reported that ABC has ordered a full season of its hit fantasy series Pushing Daisies.

"Multiple sources confirm that ABC has ordered nine additional episodes, for a grand total of 22," the column reported.

The Best Tool for the Job?

A multi track audio editor for Windows Mobile. [Link]

it's impressively nifty that someone has built a multi-track audio editor for the platform, dubbed "MeTeoR." The developer has just released a new version, adding time stretch and more to the 12-track recorder.

I'm not sure how practical this is, but it is cool.

Bringing back "Made in America"

Can we seize this opportunity? [Link]

But quality control weaknesses in overseas manufacturing of toys, tires, and toothpaste have resulted in huge losses in reputation and value, environmental repercussions, and employee layoffs. Our overseas competitors are learning from these lessons and developing advanced automation to ensure consistent product quality. The next wave of high-value products will require assembly at the micro and nano scales, where manual labor is no longer an option. These trends suggest enormous opportunities.

US manufacturing is not a lost cause: the production of goods from consumer electronics to industrial equipment accounts for 14 percent of the U.S. GDP and 11 percent of U.S. employment. But U.S. manufacturing today is where database technology was in the early 1960's, a patchwork of ad hoc solutions that lacked the rigorous methodology that leads to scientific innovation. That all changed in 1970 when Ted Codd, an IBM mathematician, invented relational algebra, an elegant mathematical database model that galvanized federally funded research leading to today's $14 billion database industry.

Hopefully, we can do what Japan did to us in the 50's with regard to manufacturing.

Pregnancy at Sea

It's a problem for the Navy. [Link]

About 15 percent of U.S. Navy sailors are female, and 14 percent of them are single mothers. Overall, 38 percent of all female sailors have children. Caring for a child is more difficult for a single mother, so the navy now gives all new mothers twelve months guaranteed work ashore. Until recently, new mothers only had four months of that, before they were again eligible for assignment to a ship at sea. At any given time, about 14 percent of female sailors are pregnant. It's lower (about 11 percent) for women at sea, and they are sent back to a shore job once they are about halfway through their pregnancy. This causes bad feelings on the ship, because some women openly admit to using the pregnancy to get out of finishing the cruise. This is made worse by the fact that a replacement is usually not available for months, or until the ship returns to port.

I think they should be given Norplant implants when deployed to sea. That way, there are no surprises. But i don't see it happening anytime soon.

I HAVE to see this movie

I have no choice. [Link]

Richardson is producing "My Name Is Bruce," a forthcoming horror-comedy in which a sleazy actor named "Bruce Campbell" is kidnapped by small-town yokels in the fictional town of Gold Lick, Oregon; they believe the thespian really is the zombie-slaying hero of the "Evil Dead" series, and want him to battle a real-life Chinese demon. Campbell co-wrote, directed and stars in the movie, and shot much of it on his property in Jacksonville, Oregon.

The script practically writes itself.

Jesus walks into a bar...

Go read the comic [link]

Sharpshooting shells from the sky

Very cool.

Mortars pose a significant threat to infantry as even if they aren't always lethal, they drop out of the sky and can effectively pin a squad down. Well, some crazy military engineers decided to take the Phalanx M61 (pictured above) that protects naval vessels from anti-ship missiles and toss it on the back of a truck to counter mortars before they can land.

That big white lump on the top of the M61 is a radar. Once an incoming mortar is detected, the M61 spews out several hundred shells from its six 20 mm barrels until said mortar explodes. The Phalanx M61 "Counter-Rocket" is a closed-in weapon system (or CIWS) — meaning it takes care of itself for the most part — and it can fire 4500-7000 rounds per minute.

In the tradition of the "Shining" trailer...

Go watch. [Link] I especially like the When Harry Met Sally one.

Amazing Lego Spaceship

This is pretty amazing. A minifig scale ship that is super detailed.

[C]heck out the Pathfinder, a Lego spaceship designed by a talented person who goes by "Grey Fang." Not only does the Pathfinder have plenty to obsess over on the outside — including escape pods, turrets and probes — but the interior is fully realized and all of the hallways, the control room, barracks, kitchen and even the bathroom are rendered in full. The ship has a crew of over a dozen Lego people and a few security droids as well.

[Brickshelf]

For the Edison Carter* in you

A mobile journalism toolkit.

The rise of the cameraphone has certainly changed the face of journalism, and old-guard wire service Reuters isn't about to get passed by -- the company has entered into a long-term partnership with Nokia to develop new mobile reporting technologies, and the two companies have recently completed trials of an N95-based "Mobile Journalism Tookit" that takes moblogging to a whole new level. Reporters were given a hardware bundle that consisted of an N95, a Nokia SU-8W portable keyboard, a Sony condenser mic with special N95 adapter, a tripod, and two Power Monkey power stations, including the solar-capable Explorer, all of which linked into a custom mobile CMS that allows stories to be posted almost instantly. Reuters also partnered with Comvu for GPS-linked video streaming, and the N95 also provides a host of other metadata about each piece of content as it's filed.

* Edison Carter

A Cold Civil War

Interesting article about Left and Right and the lack of common ground. [link]

A year before this next election in the U.S., the common space required for civil debate and civilized disagreement has shrivelled to a very thin sliver of ground. Politics requires a minimum of shared assumptions. To compete you have to be playing the same game: you can't thwack the ball back and forth if one of you thinks he's playing baseball and the other fellow thinks he's playing badminton. Likewise, if you want to discuss the best way forward in the war on terror, you can't do that if the guy you're talking to doesn't believe there is a war on terror, only a racket cooked up by the Bushitler and the rest of the Halliburton stooges as a pretext to tear up the constitution.

Americans do not agree on the basic meaning of the last seven years. If you drive around an Ivy League college town -- home to the nation's best and brightest, allegedly -- you notice a wide range of bumper stickers, from the anticipatory ("01/20/09" -- the day of liberation from the Bush tyranny) to the profane ("Buck Fush") to the myopically self-indulgent ("Regime Change Begins At Home") to the exhibitionist paranoid ("9/11 Was An Inside Job"). Let's assume, as polls suggest, that next year's presidential election is pretty open: might be a Democrat, might be a Republican. Suppose it's another 50/50 election with a narrow GOP victory dependent on the electoral college votes of one closely divided state. It's not hard to foresee those stickered Dems concluding that the system has now been entirely delegitimized.

This is one reason I think the Democrats have to win in 2008. Until they are in charge, it will remain "Bush's War", in spite of all the inconvenient facts to the contrary.

For some, 9/11 changed everything, for others, not so much.

[I]n the end even "events" require broad acknowledgement. For Republicans, 9/11 is the decisive event; for Democrats, late November 2000 in the chadlands of Florida still looms larger. And elsewhere real hot wars seem to matter less than the ersatz Beltway battles back home. "The domestic political debate has nothing to do with what we're doing here," one U.S. officer in Iraq told the National Review's Rich Lowry this week, "in a representative comment offered not in a spirit of bitterness, but of cold fact." As Lowry remarked, "This is the lonely war" -- its actual progress all but irrelevant to the pseudo combat on the home front.

I remain hopeful that we will find common ground, but then, I am an idealist.

Hidden between the pages

Just the thing to hide whatever it is you want to hide. [link]

Vampires and Lincoln

I love this: [link]

To Romanians Vlad was a national figure, not a vampire. Imagine foreigners coming to visit the Lincoln Memorial by the thousands -- wearing stovepipe hats, false beards . . . and plastic fangs. They love Lincoln. They love how he can turn himself into a bat. How he freed the slaves and rises at night to suck the blood of the living. Imagine you know you could make major bucks off these freaks if you chiseled a pair of wicked-looking teeth on Lincoln's statue.

Stalked by the Paranormal?

Then get a restraining order. [link]

5th Doctor teams up with 10th Doctor

It's only for charity, not part of the regular continuity, but still.

The London Sun reports the fifth man to play the Doctor, Peter Davison, will team-up with the tenth man to play the Doctor, David Tennant, this November 19th on a special BBC-TV "charity bonanza" for Children In Need.

This is hardly the first time the sitting (wandering?) Doctor has met up with his past, but it's the first time since the series was brought back to life almost four years ago. There's a 20 year age difference between the two; the elder doctor told the Sun “It’s an honour for me to make the connection.”

New Toy

I got a new toy yesterday. A 16gb iPod Touch. Since this is replacing my 1st generation 10gb iPod, this is a big jump. The interface is incredible. The screen resolution 163dpi means that even small text is crisp and readable. The wifi works great for browsing and media playback. I haven't purchased anything from iTunes with it yet, but I'm sure I will at some point. The video playback is really nice.

A couple of things that I'm not entirely happy with (that Apple is responsible for):

• No way to manually open a link in another page. I prefer browsing that way.
• No Google calendar import.
• No way to add a calendar item. (Supposedly, this is coming)
• No GMail contacts import. It does it for Yahoo! mail as well as Windows Address book.
• Bookmark syncing is only from Safari or IE. I use Firefox pretty exclusively.
• The built in video conversion in iTunes doesn't seem to work very well. Every file I converted had no sound when viewed in either iTunes or the iPod.
• When viewing photos, if you switch to music to change something, there seems to be no way to get back to where you were.
• No official 3rd party software. (This is coming in February)

A couple of things that I'm not entirely happy with (that is not Apple's fault):

• Mobile Google is too stripped down.
• Regular Google sites are too busy.
• Mobile Google Reader has the sign out link entirely too close to other regularly clicked links. It sucks to have to type in a password again.
• Rotating the view to see a wider selection text doesn't work right in Mobile Google Reader
  
• Mobile GMail pushes message text off the right side and won't let me resize the page to see it all at once. I can scroll, but shouldn't it be wrapped?
• No To Do list (That will be solved in February)

Those are long lists, but I am still very happy with this purchase. I see myself using this as much as the last one.

Old vs. New

Thick vs. Thin

Just out of the box

UAVs and the Future

Interesting article on the difference between the various models of UAV that the military uses as well as the tension between the services over jurisdiction.

But the Sky Warrior and Predator will be merging into a single program. What does that mean, exactly? DID asked. Meanwhile, our readers asked us to explain the differences between the MQ-1 Predator, MC-1C Sky Warrior, and MQ-9 Reaper. DID is happy to oblige…

Ten Things to Know About Battlestar Galactica's Razor

A good list. Can't wait.

Preview copies were distributed to the press last week, and while we're not at liberty to disclose the entire story, I did feel it was my duty as a fellow fan to check it out and share what I could.

So, for your previewing pleasure, I've distilled Razor down to a list of the top 10 things you need to know. Enjoy!

• Setting: Razor switches back and forth in time between Lee Adama's leadership of the Battlestar Pegasus and Admiral Helena Cain's (Michelle Forbes) leadership of the Pegasus immediately following the original Cylon attack. • Winks at the Audience: Gina's (Pegasus Six) last name is Inviere. Inviere is Old Gemenese for resurrection. Oh, those wacky Cylons and their name games. • Characters: Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen—who plays the heroine of our story, Kendra Shaw—is a star of tomorrow. Casting directors, have your phones at the ready. • Mythology: DNA is sooo cool. Just like on Heroes these days, everything is about missing links, evolutionary dead ends and hybrids. Also, maybe a few zombies. • Cast: Razor features lots of Lee, Kara, Adama and Gina/Pegasus Six; a smattering of Roslin; Tigh and Sharon in passing; and no Baltar, Tyrol or Helo. • Pacing: The first 15 minutes are unforgivably slow. • Quote to Remember: "All this has happened before and will happen again." • Foreshadowing: Kara Thrace gets another prophecy. Girl's the most heralded thing since Buffy, I'll swear. • Themes: Cain, for all her robust leadership, is best understood as a "Don't." • Effects: Here's to the creation of the 12 humanoid Cylons for the reimagined series. It was an inspired choice, because as Razor reminds us, the original-recipe toasters really are kind of clunky and dumb. Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on Razor below, and send any BSG-related questions to tvdiva@eonline.com. So say we all!

48k vs 44.1k

Wow, that sounds bad. [Watch]

BB Gadgets maestro Joel Johnson ruined my morning today by sending this clip of a recent Van Halen concert, featuring a "Jump" train wreck. Apparently, the pre-recorded synth parts were accidentally played back at a 48k bitrate instead of 44.1k. The result is a dissonant mess. From RW370:

Eddie tries to transpose on the fly and match the wildly fucked up keyboards but the great thing there is the difference in pitch is non-musical - about 1.5 semitones sharp. So there’s no frets he can choose to fix the problem!

Sick

An "artist" made an art project out of starving a dog to death.

A Costa Rican artist found himself in hot water with the animal protection people in his home country after using a starving, sick street dog as part of an exposition in Managua, Nicaragua, in August. Guillermo “Habacuc” Vargas allegedly found the dog tied up on a street corner in a poor Nicaragua barrio and brought it to the showing.

He tied the dog, according to furious animal lovers, in a corner of the salon where it died after a day. Habacuc’s exhibition included a legend spelled out in dog food reading “You are what you read,” photos and an incense burner that burned an ounce of marijauna and 175 “rock’ of crack cocaine. In the background, according to reports, the Sandista national anthem played backwards.

According to the artist, his “art” was a tribute to Natividad Canda, a Nicaraguan burglar killed in Costa Rica by two rottweilers guarding property he had entered at night. The incident caused friction between the two countries. Habacuc told the daily La Nacion, “I won’t say the dog died. The importance to me is the hypocracy of the people where an animal is the focus of attention where people come to see art but not when it’s in the street starving to death.”

And it's a tribute for a burglar who died while on the job.

Lovecraft Meets Transformers

Neat little post about how Lovecraftian the Transformers are or can be interpreted as.

While the actual fiction of the Transformers franchise is as a rule non-Lovecraftian, it certainly dips into his turf from time to time. In the TV episode "Beast Wars: Code of Hero" we learn that humanity's existence, not to mention our technological development, hinged on the decisions of one tormented machine, millions of years ago. I.e., we owe our human condition to the intervention of aliens. (Not to mention the experiments of the Vok, whose rune-marked ruins might as well have "Welcome to R'lyeh" written on them.) In the comic book Underbase Saga, a vast library literally turns Starscream into a mass-murdering god, before consuming him. In the Generation 2 comic, Earth is wrecked in what amounts to a side-squabble between the Autobots and Decepticons, who then discover that they themselves are just an irrelevant footnote in the eyes of the ancient Cybertronian Empire . . . and then all are made victims by the consuming blackness of the Swarm, which (in a note Lovecraft could well understand) was the product of unrestrained Transformer reproduction. And then there's the movie's All Spark, which can turn any mechanical device into a feral beast.

And hey, let's not forget Primus and Unicron. Not only is there an entity out there who drifts from universe to universe casually consuming planets, but there's also Primus, whose body is Cybertron. Just as humans have to worry that their car may shift and change beneath them, the Transformers have to live day to day with the same worry about their world.

Zombie Policies

Hear, hear. It's about time we talked about the real issues.

Nearly one whole week has passed and I have yet to hear a single candidate from any party say word one about the pressing, clawing, biting issue of the Undead.

Thirty-four billion dollars, in tax cuts Prime Minister?

I call that bull talk from a one-eyed fat man! That's money could-a been much better spent on bite resistant Kevlar body armour for our brave troops on the front line of the undeclared war against the walking dead.

Fridge magnets and national security hotlines? Bah! I ask you instead, where is my $100,000 tax-free grant for zombie-proofing the chateau? That moat's not going to dig itself, Johnny. And your gun laws don't make home defence against ol' Zed any easier you know. My Playboy bunnies do what they can but they're only human, while the moaning, brain-chewing fiends scratching at the door are most definitely inhuman and even with the new, much more flexible workplace agreements I've negotiated with the girls, we just don't have the resources to provide 24/7 cover for the grotto, the hot tub, the volleyball court and the mansion.

Real life ED-209

Reality catches up to satirical SciFi.

The South African National Defence Force "is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday."

SA National Defence Force spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction is not yet known...

Media reports say the shooting exercise, using live ammunition, took place at the SA Army's Combat Training Centre, at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape, as part of an annual force preparation endeavour.

Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have," he said. "It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers."

Other reports have suggested a computer error might have been to blame. Defence pundit Helmoed-Römer Heitman told the Weekend Argus that if “the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found."

The anti-aircraft weapon, an Oerlikon GDF-005, is designed to use passive and active radar, as well as laser target designators range finders, to lock on to "high-speed, low-flying aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and cruise missiles." In "automatic mode," the weapon feeds targeting data from the fire control unit straight to the pair of 35mm guns, and reloads on its own when its emptied its magazine.

Speaking of Heisenbugs

Sean caught his. Here's one I ran into. Well, it's not really a heisenbug, but it was annoying.

I had to modify the install program for the software I write to allow the user of a client installation to check that the database connection works. Easy enough. I'm told what program to modify and I do so. It will now try to connect to the database and display a messagebox with a yea or nay. It goes to testing. It gets rejected because it doesn't show up during a client install, only during a server install.
They told me the wrong program. The program I modified only displays during a server install to tell the user what to enter during a client install.

Great.

I revert the code and now have to figure out how to add a custom dialog to Installshield. I don't like Installshield, it feels clumsy and overcomplicated. I much prefer Inno Setup, but we already had these setups built in Installshield before I got here.
So I add the custom dialog and the code backing it up. Now I have to make a DLL to test the connection. That takes about an hour including the app to test it with. I add the DLL to the install and start testing. It works.

Almost.

As long as you already the database client software already installed. Did I mention that the install installs the database client software? I modify the install to copy the database client DLL to the machine if it is not there beforehand. It works.

Almost.

If I type a correct database path, all is well. If I test for failure, the install locks up when trying to unload the DLL. I spent about a day trying variations trying to get it to work. Is it the database client DLL copy? No. Then I noticed that there was another thread created when there was an exception, but not when it connected successfully.
After digging into database component code, I disabled a monitor flag that records database events and status. It was creating a thread to log some information on an exception, but the thread hung around, stopped rather than freed. This would cause it to wait forever for the thread to finish. In an application rather than a DLL this works fine. It works.

Almost.

Now the standalone install is failing. I didn't change any of that code! More time is spent. Then I try building the setup from the main build script instead of from inside Installshield. It works.

Really? Yes, really.

I had modified the blank database and checked it into source control. This marked it read only. That prevented it from working correctly in a standalone install. The build script marks those files writable for exactly this reason.

Ah. Working software.

Hellboy II movie site

Hellboy is one of my favorite comic characters. The ultimate expression of nurture over nature. A unique visual look that I love along with a Lovecraftian sensibility. Mike Mignola is one of my favorite artists and Hellboy is the reason.

Looking forward to the second movie.

Spoiled Software

This is so true. It's more important to make software with more features, than to make it usable.

In the software industry, the release of newer, better versions is part of the natural order. It's a relentless march towards perfection that started with the first personal computers, and continues today. We expect software to get larger and more sophisticated over time, to track with the hardware improvements that Moore's law has provided us for so many years. Rapid evolution is a good thing, and it's one reason the computer industry is so exciting to work in. If you don't like the way things are today, just wait five years; everything will be different.

Letts' Law: All programs evolve until they can send email.

Zawinski's Law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.

Furrygoat's Law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read RSS feeds.

Panoramic Gundam Simulator

Now this is cool. Giant robots playing 5 on 5 with each player in a pod with a panoramic display.

Japanese game purveyors Banpresto and Bandai joined forces to release Senjo No Kizuna, which features mechs from the ultra-popular Gundam universe blowing each other up. Sitting inside a simulator, the player controls her mech with both dual joysticks and foot pedals. Each pod is a single-seater, closed environment, has a panoramic display and is networked so players will face combatants from adjoining pods and from units in other arcades in matches of five versus five.

Real world ways to make life better

Microlenders like Kiva.org help make life better by lending small amounts of capital to people in underdeveloped regions to start small businesses.

Microcredit == small loans for the poor. Average credit borrowers are women and the amount is around $500. That re-payment rate of 99.7% is generally consistent around microfinance organizations, not just Kiva.

Flannery is from Pittsburgh. A self-described "white, middle-class girl." She travelled around to villages and talked to goat-herders and farmers about the microloans they had received before she started Kiva. "If other people could have face-to-face experiences with the people I was meeting... If you take one person and connect with them and hear their story the world would be a different place." Her husband is a tech geek and wanted to move to Silicon Valley and do tech start-ups, while Flannery wanted to do microfinance in Africa. Kiva is the product of compromise.

Kiva allows their partner microfinance outlets to keep their interest and only re-collect the principal. Kiva is a non-profit, though they "could be a for-profit." They raised money from grants from foundations and individuals to bootstrap Kiva. They are now funded by additional donations given by individual loaners. They try to generate enough money to function within the old system without getting loans.

Statistics about poverty often made Flannery feel "paralyzed." Unlike some charities, where archetypes are presented—"Help someone like Jane"—Kiva tries to actually connect you with the recipient of the loan. "Help Jane."

Replicating Rapid Prototyper

Living in the future. 3d printers are the wave of the future. Real world replicators.

RepRap will make plastic, ceramic, or metal parts, and is itself made from plastic parts, so it will be able to make copies of itself. It is a three-axis robot that moves several material extruders. These extruders produce fine filaments of their working material with a paste-like consistency. If RepRap were making a plastic cone, it would use its plastic extruder to lay down a quickly-hardening 0.5mm filament of molten plastic, drawing a filled-in disc. It would then raise the plastic extrusion head and draw the next layer (a smaller filled disc) on top of the first, repeating the process until it completed the cone. To make an inverted cone it would also lay down a support material under the overhanging parts. The support would be removed when the cone was complete. Conductors can be intermixed with the plastic to form electronic circuits - in 3D even!

This process is called fused deposition modeling; machines that do this are called 3D printers, rapid prototypers, or fabbers. They are very useful. Unfortunately they are also very expensive - €20,000 or more - and existing models don't self-replicate. The RepRap build cost will be less than €400 for the bought-in materials, all of which have been selected to be as widely available everywhere in the world as possible. Also, the RepRap software will work on all computer platforms for free. Complete open-source instructions and plans are published on this website for zero cost and available to everyone so, if you want to make one yourself, you can.

iPhone SDK coming in February

About time. I do wonder if this was planned from the beginning. Did Steve Jobs want to do this or was he forced by the unlocking of the iPhone?

From [Scripting News]

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

How open will the process be? [Engadget]

Less excitingly, Apple claims that it agrees with Nokia's approach of "digital signatures" for applications, meaning that Apple gets to say who qualifies for entrance onto its hallowed devices as was rumored last week; though who's to say what exactly that will look like just yet. But even with that caveat, we suppose we should take what we get from this sometimes benevolent, but never aesthetically challenged, dictator of ours and eat it like we're told.

What happened to the "web as SDK" that Steve Jobs talked about? [Did the web fail the iPhone?]

Flipped around, as a proponent of the web, even I can admit how unexciting standard interfaces on the web are. And how much work and knowledge it requires to compete with the likes of Adobe’s AIR and Microsoft’s SilverLight. I mean, us non-proprietary web-types rejoice when Safari gets support for CSS-based rounded corners and the ability to use non-standard typefaces. SRSLY? The latter feature was specified in 1998! What took so long?!

No wonder native app developers aren’t crazy about web development for the iPhone. Why should they be? At least considering where we’re at today, there’s a lot to despise about modern web design and to despair about how little things have improved in the last 10 years.

And yet, there’s a lot to love too, but not the kind of stuff that makes iPhone developers want to abandon what’s familiar, comfortable, safe, accessible and hell, sexy.

This IS bad news

I guess it is just security theater.

HOMELAND SECURITY, STILL A JOKE: "A Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of tuberculosis crossed the U.S. border 76 times and took multiple domestic flights in the last year, according to Customs and Border Protection interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times.

THIS is bad news?

These reporters seem disappointed. Pity.

Here.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

And here.

American troops killed their own commanders so often during the Vietnam War that the crime earned its own name - "fragging."

But since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has charged only one soldier with killing his commanding officer, a dramatic turnabout that most experts attribute to the all-volunteer military.

And some argue the case of Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez shouldn't even be considered fragging, since his motive was unclear.

Cell phone, barcode checkin for airplane trips

Get an SMS message to your phone that will display a barcode that will be read by a reader.

[T]his new standard consists of a bar code that passengers receive as a text message, which can then be read directly from the phone's screen when they arrive at the airport. The standard, which the IATA hopes will take hold by 2010, even goes so far as to incorporate various bar code systems in use around the world, including Aztec, Datamatrix, and the ever-popular QR codes. Of course, it's more than just convenience that convinced the airlines to sign on, with the IATA estimating that change could ultimately end up saving the airlines more than $500 million a year.

None of which will be transferred to us.

Starfleet Academy

Funny video of J.J. Abrams describing his new Star Trek, drawing from one of his previous shows, Felicity.

Map of America, from Japan for RPG

It almost looks like America.

“This map is basically what would happen if you got a bunch of Japanese guys in a room, got them drunk, and then asked them to draw what they could remember about America on a bar napkin. Hell, that’s probably how this game was originally designed,” says Andrew Vestal on Yukihime.com, here.

This map is included in Tengai Makyou: Daishi no Mokushiroku (The Fourth Apocalypse), a RPG (role-playing game) known for its historical parody humour, Vestal explains. The first three games take place in Japan, the fourth in an America that, cartographically at least, looks like it’s in or near Japan.

Riding the Rails

I've always been fascinated by cars with rail wheel guides, and this car does it with style.

[Edit] Here is a page full of Hy-Rail cars. [Link]

Pot, Kettle

Well. Cory Doctorow stepped in it. After getting all morally outraged over the SFWA sending takedown notices to a website, Scribd.com, that had huge amounts of pirated scifi novels and accidently including one of Doctorow's novels that had been uploaded legally by someone else, he infringed on Ursula K Le Guin's rights. He did this by quoting in a post, in it's entirety, a one paragraph short story. The quote did not include the copyright notice, but the page had a creative commons copyright notice.

From Jerry Pournelle's site [Link]

- URL: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/04/ursula-leguin-rips-i.html Assuming this may shortly be removed or changed, an original would also be visible at ARCHIVE LINK (search in that page for "Ursula", about 1/3 of the way down). Googling on "boingboing ursula le guin chabon" shows a number of other copies made by boingboing readers (assumedly believing the CC license granted them permission).

- Her piece was published, with permission, in several places including Ansible, http://news.ansible.co.uk/a240.html#leguin, which Doctorow identifies as his source. Ansible gave no permission for anyone to copy her story, and indeed it carries Ms. Le Guin's copyright notice; a notice that was omitted in the boingboing copy.

- The boingboing copy is of the entire text of the short story, which would not be covered under Fair Use. Doctorow has spoken widely on copyright matters and the limits of Fair Use, so he should be aware that copying an entire work is not permitted.

- Doctorow and boingboing, of which he is billed as a principal, operate for personal gain via advertising revenue, merchandise sales, publicity for his books, etc. Under copyright law, copyright infringement for commercial advantage may be considered a criminal offense. (Removal of a copyright notice and knowingly placing a Creative Commons license on a work without authorization may also be illegal.)

Doctorow's apology [Link]

The situation with Ms Le Guin was made more complicated by an accident of circumstances. Andrew Burt, the person whom Ms Le Guin chose to communicate the matter to me, is someone with whom I had put in a killfile following an altercation. I delete all emails from him unread, and if he sent me a message, I did not see it. So I didn't find out that Ms Le Guin objected to the quote until someone sent me a link to a page that Jerry Pournelle had put up about it, in which he quotes a letter from Andrew Burt. Burt is the Science Fiction Writers of America VP who had previously sent a fraudulent takedown notice that resulted in my novel being removed from an Internet document server.

Interesting that Andrew Burt's actions in the SFWA takedown notices to Scribd.com are fraudulent, but that Doctorow's actions were a misunderstanding.

Justice League Auditions the Young

Justice League Teen Heartthrobs.

The marathon casting session started Oct. 14 and continues on the 15th, with 35 to 40 actors testing for roles, including Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern and the Martian Manhunter. A few nonhero parts might be testing as well.

On the roll call are Adam Brody (The O.C.), Joseph Cross (Running With Scissors), D.J. Cotrona (Windfall), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Final Destination 3), Michael Angarano (Sky High), Teresa Palmer (Wolf Creek), Max Thieriot (Jumper) and rapper Common.

The cast of NBC's Friday Night Lights is well represented as well, with Minka Kelly, Adrianne Palicki and Scott Porter also among those testing for parts. No costumes are involved in the tests, which are being taped as actors read script pages.

Miller is looking for actors to grow into their roles over the course of several movies. Sources told the trade paper that Miller, known to be an exacting director, is not only testing for the roles themselves but also examining how the actors interact with one another and keeping an eye on the look of the whole group. The director is due to present his findings to the studio midweek.

A series of films? Good.

8 reasons why most gadgets suck

Very good reasons. [Link]

They are ill-conceived. I think the picture of the MP3 player slash breathalyzer I took at CES is the best example here. Too many people sitting in board rooms thinking up crazy ideas that apply to nobody. Also, convergence for the sake of convergence is a terrible idea. If you think consumers want keyboards in their living rooms, or more remote controls, or to carry around something that doesn’t fit in a pocket OR a backpack, you have the wrong consumer experts on your team.

Every gadget designer should read this.

Detecting concealed weapons safely

How can detect concealed weapons in a manner which is not too obtrusive or damaging to Constitutional rights?

On July 24, 1998, a man entered the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC, with a .38-caliber handgun concealed under his clothing. A security check point with a portal weapons-detection system had been established at the entrance of the building. Knowing that his gun would be detected if he walked through the portal, the man stepped around it. Immediately, he was confronted by Jacob Chestnut, one of the Capitol Police officers operating the portal. The man drew his gun and killed Chestnut. He then shot and killed a second officer, John Gibson, before he was stopped.[1]

Seven years later, on December 5, 2005, a man with a bomb vest under his clothing approached a shopping mall in Netanya, Israel. His behavior alerted police and mall security. When he was confronted outside the mall, the suicide bomber detonated his bomb, killing 5 people and injuring 50.[2]

Although there has yet to be a suicide bombing in this country, such an attack could happen anywhere—on a bus, at a mall, at the Super Bowl, or at the Academy Awards. It is vital for law enforcement to be able to detect and respond to weapons at a sufficient distance to allow officers to make decisions and take actions that deal safely with the situation. For over a decade, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has been working to address this need.

Left-Brain vs Right-Brain

Go here [Link] and see which way the dancer is rotating. Clockwise or counter clockwise? Can you make it change directions. I can, but I have to concentrate for a few seconds. Really neat.

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

SQL Joins explained visually

A really good explanation of SQL joins. This is a major part of what I do at work. Well written SQL is a joy to behold and complex, obtuse SQL can cause physical pain. [Link]

Since SQL joins appear to be set-based, the use of Venn diagrams to explain them seems, at first blush, to be a natural fit. However, like the commenters to her post, I found that the Venn diagrams didn't quite match the SQL join syntax reality in my testing. I love the concept, though, so let's see if we can make it work.

For most purposes, it does work. The cases where is doesn't, well, it's close enough without being pedantic.

PS238 RPG in the works

Cool. I don't know if I will get it, but PS238 is one of the best superhero comics out there. It follows students at a school for kids with superpowers. Funny and heartwarming with adventure. The RPG will be based on a simplified version of Champions.

Comparing Shonen Manga to Superhero Comics

Really fascinating look at the similarities and differences between fight manga and superhero comics.

In the hearts of Japanese boys (and those who read stuff aimed at them), the fight between Goku and Vegeta, or the fight between Kenshiro and Raoh, cast a shadow as long as the Fantastic Four vs. Galactus, or Superman vs. Batman in The Dark Knight Returns. Of course battle manga draws comparison with superhero comics. Incredible powers — good vs. evil — fight scenes — basically aimed at children — umm, hello? There is a major difference, however. By the time the Direct Market developed in the late ’70s, superheroes had been the dominant species in American comics for so long, they evolved into new genres like finches isolated on an island. Science-fiction superheroes. Comedy superheroes. Occult superheroes. Battle manga, on the other hand, is a formula. It may involve sports (Eyeshield 21, Slam Dunk). Board games (Hikaru no Go). Cooking (Iron Wok Jan). If superheroes are ultimately a trapping of the story, battle manga dictates the very structure of that story. In some ways this is more flexible, in other ways more limiting.

Worst Halloween Costumes

Wow. These are pretty bad. Those 70's costumes were really cheap. [Link]

Simon Pegg to play Scotty

Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz star to play Scotty. [Link]

That'll work.

The end of the music industry?

Madonna leaves record industry to handle her music independently.

Since reporting Monday that Nine Inch Nails had dumped its record label and was to offer future albums direct to the public, Oasis and Jamiroquai have also joined the move away from the record industry, but the biggest announcement of all is news today that Madonna has dumped the record industry.

According to reports, Madonna has signed a $120million deal with L.A. based concert promotion firm Live Nation to distribute three studio albums, promote concert tours, sell merchandise and license Madonna’s name.

The first of many dominoes. Digital distribution gives every band the chance to find an audience. Most won't succeed, but some will.

Not enough feces in our diet

We live too antiseptically now. What are the consequences?

Americans should have more poop in their diets, writes a doctor at Slate. Like superbugs and anti-bacterial products, we've become too successful at cleansing our food supply of all manner of contaminants—so that kids, for example, "have zero experience with routine gut infections, and when they encounter one that has slipped past our pipes and filters, the result can be catastrophic."

In related news, Taco Bell is moving to Mexico.

Taco Bell has plans to open stores in Mexico with the slogan, "Es Otra Cosa," or "It's Something Else."

In addition to their regular fare, Mexican Taco Bell will serve American favorites such as ice cream and french fries. The "taco" will be called a "tacostada," which is a play on the words "taco" and "tostada," because (let's face it) a Taco Bell "taco" isn't really a taco.

SETI Search Site Startup

Super. Sorry.

The famous technologist will be inaugurating the initial 42 antennas of his namesake, the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) – the first major radio telescope designed from the pedestal up to efficiently (which is to say, rapidly) chew its way through long lists of stars in a search for alien signals. Within two decades, it will increase the number of stellar systems examined for artificial emissions by a thousand-fold. The ATA will shift SETI into third gear.

This telescope is truly a geek's barn-burner. In the last two decades, high-performance radio amplifiers have gotten smaller and, more importantly, much cheaper. This has changed the recipe for building radio telescopes, and the ATA is taking advantage of the new formula.

Consider: the single most consequential characteristic of a radio telescope (at least, for SETI) is its collecting area: the number of square meters boasted by its "mirror." There are two ways to increase this area: either build a bigger antenna, or build lots of smaller ones and hook them together. As an example of the former strategy, imagine doubling the diameter of the antenna's "dish", thereby increasing the collecting area by a factor of four. A good thing, surely. But since an antenna is a three-dimensional device, the amount of aluminum and steel necessary for the larger antenna has gone up by a factor of eight. Expensive. It's cheaper by half to build four of the original-size antennas.

This is a simple scaling argument, but it boils down to this: it's always more economical to assemble a large collecting area by constructing small antennas, rather than large ones.

No sir, I don't like it

New look for a new Captain America.

The good: the shield motif is reminiscent of his original triangular shield.

the bad: shiny costume, gun and knife. Cap doesn't need a gun or knife.


The only consolation is that this will almost certainly not last. It will go away when Steve inevitably comes back.

The Difficulty of Niche Journalism

This article is about comics journalism, but also applies to RPGs as well. Both are very small, niche groups where the line between fan and pro is blurred, sometimes beyond recognition.

The usual suspects are dragged out for examination: Wizard, Newsarama, Lying in the Gutters, etc. "Are they really comics news?" "Do they really ask the hard questions?" Etc.

Dick Hyacinth's post "Journalism and the future of Newsarama" encapsulates the debate nicely.

Here are some thoughts on the subject:

I think a big problem is that this industry is way too small to burn bridges in.

First, it has been my observation that to an extent there is an overlap between people who write about comics online and people who aspire to work in the industry itself in some capacity. This by no means refers to all comic pundits, bloggers, and reporters -- but there is an overlap. And there is also an overlap between people who write comics online and people who have friends in the industry. Why is there such an overlap?

Ringworld Prequels

Ringworld was one of my first favorite sci fi novels. Now Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner have written a prequel Fleet of Worlds.

In Ringworld, adventurers catch a fascinating glimpse of several alien worlds in flight, but they don't actually see any of the aliens, Lerner said in an interview. "Fleet of Worlds explores—as history in the making—the awful secrets the aliens are later so desperate to keep hidden," he said.

As Fleet of Worlds begins, the alien species known as Pierson's Puppeteers are beginning their acceleration toward the edge of "Known Space," Niven said. "A human colony exists on one of the farming worlds," he said. "Members of that community, exploring alien space ahead of the fleet, are only just learning of an ancient crime the Puppeteers committed against them."

Lerner came up with the notion of writing around the events of "Known Space" as Niven laid them out over the past 35 years. "It sounded something like writing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead around and between the events in Hamlet, and that's the way it turned out," Niven said. "We kept ducking back and forth between the fleet and human space."

They've already finished the sequel, Juggler of Worlds.

Jumper the Movie

I haven't read this book, but after watching the trailer, it looks cool. Teleportation is neat.

Steven Gould's Jumper is being made into a Hollywood movie with Hayden Christiansen and Samuel L Jackson, and the trailer has just gone live. I'm an enormous fan of the book -- I must have read it a dozen times since its initial publication -- and I've been waiting with crossed fingers for this movie as it inched its way from the news of the option to today. I'm really impressed with the trailer -- it captures that feeling of giddy delight that made the book so fantastic.

Trailer

More Justice League Movie Details

Looks like Maxwell Lord, OMACs, and Brother Eye. If they can keep the feel of the cartoon when they go live action, I'll be happy.

The plot is starting to sound more-and-more like The OMAC Project and Sacrifice… mostly because it is heavily based off it. Maxwell Lord, OMACs, and Brother Eye - Brother Eye was originally reported as “Red Eye” but that appears to be a goof in what was leaked. Aquaman is also confirmed in the bios that EW gave:

Superman - A.k.a. Clark Kent, news reporter. The morally upstanding Man of Steel battles Batman and has more to worry about than kryptonite.

Wonder Woman - A.k.a. Diana of Amazonian princess. Revered by the other supers for her beauty and ass-kicking abilities.

The Martian Manhunter - A.k.a. J’onn J’onzz, detective. His power to read minds comes in handy as the villain engages in some nifty mind control.

Green Lantern - A.k.a. John Stewart, architect. Designed the Hall of Justice. His emerald power ring shoots beams of energy.

Batman - A.k.a. Bruce Wayne. The most human in the bunch is mistrustful of others, which leads to quite a few problems for the clan.

Flash - A.k.a. Barry Allen, cop. The most enthusiastic superhero, Flash is happy just to be included, but his ravenous appetite leads to trouble.

Aquaman - A.k.a. Arthur, the Atlantean King. Not a fan of humans, Aquaman is more interested in helping his fellow heroes than lending a hand to land dwellers.

Venture Brothers Season 3 details

Go Team Venture! I love how delightfully wacky the show is. It has a very silver age on crack feel.

Now that I can look back on a full 13 scripts, I can truthfully say it will be a weird season. We dug deeper than we have before, told richer stories, took some chances (we'll see if they pay off), and, as promised in the commentary for the Season Two DVD, made no intentional Star Wars references. I think we managed to hit just about every semi-important character who's appeared before (with the exception of Baron Ünderbheit--might as well tell you now), including some Season 1 favorites who didn't get much play in season 2. And we introduced plenty of new ones, adding multiple layers of backstory (and forwardstory) to the Team Venture saga.

Priest asks permission to date. Unsurprising answer: NO

Did he really expect a different answer?

He promises to keep the relationship chaste, and he's asked for "a dispensation to go out with her." The answer is no:

The Rev. Sante Sguotti can no longer work as pastor in his Monterosso parish and cannot hear confessions from the faithful, the diocese of Padua said in a statement....

How Triumph Motorcycles are not made

This is not how they are made.

It seems obvious in hindsight

A water bottle with a filling cap on the side.

We all know what a pain it is to wedge bottles upright in shallow sinks and the like. Come to think of it, the only bottles I remember being easy were the ones loaded into a Super Soaker.

The beautifully simple Binibottle is the work of 15-year-old Anna Axelsson of Sweden and the gold medal-winning design at the "Finn upp" inventor competition. It has the twist-off, pull-up cap you're used to up top but also an additional, recessed twist-off cap on the side so you can hold it sideways while you're filling it.

So when does this movie get made?

I'd go see it.

Japanese Exoskeleton

One more step towards Iron Man.

The suit looks clunky, takes 10 minutes to put on, weighs thirty kilos (66 pounds) and has blinking lights and wires reminiscent of a robot in a sci-fi movie.

But it allows the wearer to lift a person as heavy as 100 kilos as if they were carrying only half that weight.

"I don't feel heavy at all. Because of air pumped in the suit, I just feel like I'm carrying a normal backpack," said Hiroi Tsukui, a participant in the project as she carried a young man onto a table to demonstrate to onlookers.

For now the suit, developed by Kanagawa Institute of Technology, is only made to order and generally targeted at nursing homes and hospitals.

New Zealand and Anti-Americanism

And hey, it can't be blamed on Bush.

Yet Only 29% of New Zealanders had a positive view of the United States in 2004. That puts it on par with Pakistan at 30% and below Russia (43%) and China (42%). So much for the idea that shared cultural ties can bind people together.

In 2005, an American working as a high school teacher in rural New Zealand filed a lawsuit in the country's Human Rights Commission after being verbally abused by his students because of his nationality. Another American, Douglas Sparks, brought his family to the country to oversee the Anglican Church's Wellington Cathedral. Two years later he left vowing never to return after being the target of anti-US graffiti and his children were taunted in school by classmates telling them they hoped American soldiers would be killed in Iraq.

That same year outgoing US ambassador Charles Swindells in his final speech slammed New Zealanders for indulging in "empty, inaccurate criticism of US ideals or actions that offers no constructive alternatives and gives no credit where credit is due."

Many are quick to leap to conclusions that the anti-Americanism is a recent phenomenon due primarily to the Iraq War. However anti-Americanism in New Zealand predates the Iraq War by about 40 years, starting with the Vietnam War protests and more importantly for New Zealanders to the country's refusal to allow port calls by the US Navy starting in 1986, which resulted in a US freeze on high-level political visits there.