The Modular Man

The Joy of Quiet

2012-01-06T14:08:00.000-08:00

ABOUT a year ago, I flew to Singapore to join the writer Malcolm Gladwell, the fashion designer Marc Ecko and the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister in addressing a group of advertising people on “Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow.” Soon after I arrived, the chief executive of the agency that had invited us took me aside. What he was most interested in, he began — I braced myself for mention of some next-generation stealth campaign — was stillness.
A few months later, I read an interview with the perennially cutting-edge designer Philippe Starck. What allowed him to remain so consistently ahead of the curve? “I never read any magazines or watch TV,” he said, perhaps a little hyperbolically. “Nor do I go to cocktail parties, dinners or anything like that.” He lived outside conventional ideas, he implied, because “I live alone mostly, in the middle of nowhere.”

Around the same time, I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms.

Has it really come to this?

NY Times

H&M Puts Real Model Heads On Fake Bodies

2011-12-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

The bodies of most of the models H&M features on its website are computer-generated and "completely virtual," the company has admitted. H&M designs a body that can better display clothes made for humans than humans can, then "dresses" it by drawing on its clothes, and digitally pastes on the heads of real women in post-production. For now — in the future, even models' faces won't be considered perfect enough for online fast fashion, and we'll buy all of our clothing from cyborgs. (This news sort of explains this.) But man, isn't looking at the four identical bodies with different heads so uncanny? Duly noted that H&M made one of the fake bodies black. You can't say that the fictional, Photoshopped, mismatched-head future of catalog modeling isn't racially diverse.

Jezebel

Goodbye Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

Apple

From the man who discovered Stuxnet, dire warnings one year later

2011-09-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

One year ago a malicious software program called Stuxnet exploded onto the world stage as the first publicly confirmed cyber superweapon – a digital guided missile that could emerge from cyber space to destroy a physical target in the real world.
It took Ralph Langner about a month to figure that out.

While Symantec, the big antivirus company, and other experts pored over Stuxnet's inner workings, it was Mr. Langner, an industrial control systems security expert in Hamburg, who deciphered and tested pieces of Stuxnet's "payload" code in his lab and declared it a military-grade cyberweapon aimed at Iran's nuclear facilities.
Days later, he and other experts refined that assessment, agreeing Stuxnet was specifically after Iran's gas centrifuge nuclear fuel-enrichment program at Natanz.

After infiltrating Natanz's industrial-control systems, Stuxnet automatically ordered subsystems operating the centrifuge motors to spin too fast and make them fly apart, Langner says. At the same time, Stuxnet made it appear random breakdowns were responsible so plant operators would not realize a nasty software weapon was behind it.

Christian Science Monitor

Futureworld-Com Truise

2011-08-31T13:01:00.001-07:00

Nuns, a ‘Dying Breed,’ Fade From Leadership Roles at Catholic Hospitals

2011-08-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

When Sister Mary Jean Ryan entered the convent as a young nurse in 1960, virtually every department of every Catholic hospital was run by a nun, from pediatrics to dietary to billing. After her retirement on July 31 as the chief executive of one of the country’s largest networks of Catholic hospitals, only 11 nuns remained among her company’s more than 22,000 employees, and none were administrators.

NY Times

The Annotated Toffler

2011-08-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

Think you've heard it all about the global financial crisis, the Internet distracting us into stupidity, dysfunctional and self-destructive politics, the demise of the nuclear family, and degenerating cities? Well imagine having predicted, written about, and imagined the consequences of all of these postmodern maladies -- before they ever happened. Meet Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the accidental futurists who have lived to see so many of their foresights become our daily reality.

Foreign Policy

The Modular Man would like to tell you that we told you so.

Preserving One Copy of Every Book Ever Published

2011-08-01T11:54:00.001-07:00

The Daily Show: Leroy Petry Interview

2011-07-24T22:12:00.000-07:00

Medal of Honor winner Leroy Petry talks about his experience in Afghanistan and demonstrates his robotic hand.

The Daily Show - Exclusive - Leroy Petry Extended Interview Pt. 1
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show - Exclusive - Leroy Petry Extended Interview Pt. 2
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Lab-made organ implanted for first time

2011-07-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

For the first time, a patient has received a synthetic windpipe that was created in a lab with the patient's own stem cells and without using human donor tissue, researchers said Thursday.
Previous lab-generated transplants either used a segment of donor windpipe or involved tissue only, not an organ.

CNN

Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces

2011-06-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.

The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.

Digital Trends

New graphic cigarette warnings unveiled

2011-06-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

The federal government Tuesday unveiled nine graphic images that will be required on all cigarette packs and advertising as part of a powerful new warning strategy.

The images include a picture of a man smoking through a tracheotomy hole in his throat, a horribly diseased lung, mottled teeth and gums, a man breathing with an oxygen mask and a man’s body with a large scar running down the chest. They will be accompanied by messages such as, “Warning: Cigarettes are addictive,” “Warning: Cigarettes cause cancer” and “Warning: Smoking can kill you.”

Washington Post

U.S. Students Remain Poor at History, Tests Show

2011-06-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released on Tuesday, with most fourth graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean War.

The New York Times

Rocket Man

2011-06-01T09:49:00.000-07:00

WHO declares cellphones "possibly carcinogenic"

2011-06-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

Those who are worried about the possible health risks of cellphones just received some backing from a significant source: the World Health Organization. A group within the organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, has announced it is listing the electromagnetic radiation produced by cell phones as "possibly carcinogenic." The IARC's use of the term "possibly" is key to the decision, as its expert panel determined that the information available is too limited to say anything with a greater degree of certainty, but is sufficient to warrant careful monitoring.

ars technica

US Pentagon to treat cyber-attacks as 'acts of war'

2011-06-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

In future, a US president could consider economic sanctions, cyber-retaliation or a military strike if key US computer systems were attacked, officials have said recently.

The planning was given added urgency by a cyber-attack last month on the defence contractor, Lockheed Martin.

A new report from the Pentagon is due out in a matter of weeks.

"A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response. All appropriate options would be on the table," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters on Tuesday.

Mr Lapan confirmed the Pentagon was drawing up a cyber defence strategy, which would be ready in two to three weeks.

Cyber-attacks from foreign nations that threaten widespread US civilian casualties, like cutting off power supplies or shutting down emergency-responder networks, could be treated as an act of aggression under the new policy.

BBC

Largest-Ever Survey of Cosmic History Confirms That Dark Energy Exists, Is Tearing the Universe Apart

2011-05-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

After a five-year study of 200,000 galaxies, scientists are more certain than ever that dark energy acts as a repulsive force, tearing the universe apart at an accelerating rate. The research confirms the idea that dark energy dominates gravity throughout the cosmos. But no one has any idea what dark energy actually is or how it works.

popsci

About Fallout

2011-05-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

How a Fake MLK Jr. Quote Took the Internet by Storm

2011-05-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everything but the first sentence is indeed by King and can be found in Strength to Love. That first sentence, though, is a complete fake.

...

Retractions and corrections on real-time social services like Twitter are nearly impossible. As is so often the case, the great Internet fact-checking machine is already in full swing, with discussions on Reddit and numerous blogs. That, however, will do little to reach all of those who retweeted this fake quote today. Indeed, this fake quote will likely become part of the MLK Jr. canon soon. While many will post about how this quote is fake, these stories will only reach a minority of those who read it today. Instead, it’s still being retweeted a few times per minute and continues to appear on new blog posts and Facebook status updates.

NewsGrange

Your iPhone's watching you. Should you care?

2011-04-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

Researchers announced today that they found what look like secret files on the iPhone that track user location and store it on the device, without the permission of the device owner. It's unclear what the data is used for and why Apple has been collecting it in iOS products that carry a 3G antenna for nearly a year now.

Alasdair Allan, senior research fellow in astronomy at the University of Exeter, and writer Pete Warden, who discovered the log file and created a tool that lets users see a visualization of that data, say there's no evidence of that information being sent to Apple or anybody else. Even so, the pair note that the data is unencrypted, giving anyone with access to your phone or computer where backups may be stored a way to grab the data and extrapolate a person's whereabouts and routines.

To help users understand more about the data that's being collected, what the risks are, and what they can do about it, CNET has put together this FAQ.

CNET

25-story Seattle apartment tower to be demolished

2011-04-21T12:32:00.000-07:00

Demolition is scheduled to start next month on a 25-story apartment tower in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. The 10-year-old McGuire building has to come down because of construction defects.

The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce reports crews have started salvaging washers, dryers, refrigerators and stoves. It will take more than a year to remove the highrise. Builders plan to reuse 95 percent of the concrete.

Seattle Times

The New Wedding Guest

2011-04-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

Gone are the days of capturing a sea of guests with genuine emotion on their faces. Now you have to give an elbow to Aunt Clair who’s blocking the aisle with her Digital Rebel in hand as the bride makes her grand entrance. I used to love capturing guests emotion during the first dance, parent dance, even the toasts. But now my subjects are a handful of guests with point and shoots held up blocking their faces, or the tops of everyones head because they are looking down at the back of the camera to check the photo they just took. My favorite moment so far was a photo of the bride going down the aisle from behind. Everyone in front of the bride has their cameras up, everyone that the bride has past is still facing the back of the church with the heads down looking at the back of their camera. Very few people stopped to enjoy the moment of a father walking his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.

Tiffinbox

Thx, AJ

RIP Comics Code

2011-04-14T14:44:00.001-07:00

Wikipedia

Soaps Dissed: ABC Kills 'Life,' Abandons 'Children'

2011-04-14T14:29:00.001-07:00

ABC pulled the plug on the classic soap operas All My Children and One Life To Live on Thursday.

The final episode of All My Children will air in September, and One Life To Live will end in January, the network announced.

NPR

Here's to 50 years since Gagarin went into the cosmos: First Orbit - the movie

2011-04-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

Why more and more women are using pornography

2011-04-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

It was an ordinary weekday morning when Caroline first noticed how much pornography was taking over her life. With 15 minutes to go before she was due to leave for a job interview, she opened up her laptop to print off an extra copy of her CV and there, onscreen, was a grab she'd saved from pornhub.com.

"I remember the feeling of being sucked in, really wanting that two-minute fix, that numbness I got when I used porn," says Caroline. "I was stressed out, and I risked being late for my interview, but I pressed play anyway and fast-forwarded it to the bit I wanted. It took two minutes." But the relief was to be short-lived. "Afterwards I just hated myself for giving in and getting off on images that treated women like pieces of meat. But I kept going back."

Although there is much debate about whether "porn addiction" even exists, Caroline, a 21-year-old English graduate, has just finished seeing a sex addiction therapist to help get her porn habit under control. Having started watching porn out of curiosity when it became available over the internet in her mid-teens, she and her mates used it as a graphic form of sex education. She saw nothing wrong with it, particularly as she was raised in a generation of girls for whom it was seen as hip and liberated to enjoy watching sex.

The Guardian

Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.

2011-04-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you.

I can say that with confidence because it’s about Peter Thiel. And Thiel – the PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist – not only has a special talent for making money, he has a special talent for making people furious.

Some people are contrarian for the sake of getting headlines or outsmarting the markets. For Thiel, it’s simply how he views the world. Of course a side benefit for the natural contrarian is it frequently leads to things like headlines and money.

Consider the 2000 Nasdaq crash. Thiel was one of the few who saw in coming. There’s a famous story about PayPal’s March 2000 venture capital round. The offer was “only” at a $500 million-or-so valuation. Nearly everyone on the board and the management team balked, except Thiel who calmly told the room that this was a bubble at its peak, and the company needed to take every dime it could right now. That’s how close PayPal came to being dot com roadkill a la WebVan or Pets.com.

And after the crash, Thiel insisted there hadn’t really been a crash: He argued the equity bubble had simply shifted onto the housing market. Thiel was so convinced of this thesis that until recently, he refused to buy property, despite his soaring personal net worth. And, again, he was right.

So Friday, as I sat with Thiel in his San Francisco home that he finally owns, I was curious what he thinks of the current Web frenzy. Not surprisingly, another Internet bubble seemed the farthest thing from his mind. But, he argued, America is under the spell of a bubble of a very different kind. Is it an emerging markets bubble? You could argue that, Thiel says, but he also notes that with half of the world’s population surging to modernity, it’s hard to argue the emerging world is overvalued.

Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is over-valued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

Tech Crunch

My Life is My Own

2011-04-05T09:35:00.001-07:00

Last island prison in U.S. closes

2011-04-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

Revisiting Chernobyl: A Nuclear Disaster Site of Epic Proportions

2011-03-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Dying Industries

2011-03-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

A new analysis by research firm IBIS World looks at 10 industries that appear to be dying. The list isn’t exactly shocking, but it represents a mix of sectors that are being left behind by technology or have been hurt by cheaper overseas competition.

The biggest industry profiled by IBISWorld is wired telecom carriers, largely being supplanted by cellphones and the Internet. The dominance of the Web and digital media also puts Newspaper publishers, record stores and video-rental companies on the list. Meanwhile, photofinishing also takes its place among the top 10 dying industries thanks to the growing influence of digital photography.

Cheap imports are blamed for a decline in mills and apparel manufacturers. Companies that rent formal wear are also counted among dying industries amid both competition from abroad and lower prices making owning your own formal wear a more attractive option than renting.

The only clear recession casualty that makes the list is manufactured home dealers. The housing boom led to a surge in the industry, but now years after the bubble burst the sector has continued to struggle.

The full list is below:

The Wall Street Journal

Paul Baran, Internet Pioneer, Dies at 84

2011-03-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

Paul Baran, an engineer who helped create the technical underpinnings for the Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, died Saturday night at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 84.

In the early 1960s, while working at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Baran outlined the fundamentals for packaging data into discrete bundles, which he called “message blocks.” The bundles are then sent on various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination. Such a plan is known as “packet switching.”

New York Times
Wikipedia

SmartBird

2011-03-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Popsci

In Case of a Moon disaster

2011-03-22T13:04:00.001-07:00

Japan quake shortened length of days on Earth: NASA

2011-03-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

The massive earthquake that struck Japan last Friday was so powerful that it accelerated the Earth's rotation speed, shortening the length of the day by 1.8 microseconds, a new analysis by NASA has claimed.

According to scientists at the US space agency, the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the way the Earth's mass is distributed, which made the planet spin a little faster, cutting the 24-hour day by an estimated 1.8 microseconds. That is less than two millionths of one second.

The initial data suggested that the quake moved Japan's main island about eight feet and shifted the Earth's figure axis, around which the Earth's mass is balanced, by about 17 centimetres, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Earlier, scientists have estimated that the quake has shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds.

IndianExpress.com

Too Much Information Makes You Make Bad Choices

2011-03-07T06:58:00.000-08:00

The problem has been creeping up on us for a long time. In the 17th century Leibniz bemoaned the “horrible mass of books which keeps on growing,” and in 1729 Alexander Pope warned of “a deluge of authors cover[ing] the land,” as James Gleick describes in his new book, The Information. But the consequences were thought to be emotional and psychological, chiefly anxiety about being unable to absorb even a small fraction of what’s out there. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary added “information fatigue” in 2009. But as information finds more ways to reach us, more often, more insistently than ever before, another consequence is becoming alarmingly clear: trying to drink from a firehose of information has harmful cognitive effects. And nowhere are those effects clearer, and more worrying, than in our ability to make smart, creative, successful decisions.

Newsweek

The Future of Space Farming

2011-02-25T14:08:00.001-08:00

Popular Mechanics

Where Have The Good Men Gone?

2011-02-24T08:43:00.000-08:00

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men.
"We are sick of hooking up with guys," writes the comedian Julie Klausner, author of a touchingly funny 2010 book, "I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I've Dated." What Ms. Klausner means by "guys" is males who are not boys or men but something in between. "Guys talk about 'Star Wars' like it's not a movie made for people half their age; a guy's idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends.... They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home." One female reviewer of Ms. Kausner's book wrote, "I had to stop several times while reading and think: Wait, did I date this same guy?"

WSJ

Is the internet killing empathy?

2011-02-18T13:29:00.000-08:00

A TV news reporter for a Los Angeles station was doing an on-camera report on the Grammy Awards Sunday night, and suddenly her speech became garbled. Was she having a stroke on the air?

The newscast quickly cut away when it became apparent that she was in trouble. But by the next morning, televised news reports were making it part of their Grammy coverage. (One AOL.com page featured the incident at the top of its five "memorable moments" from the Grammys.)

The video went viral on the internet. At the UK Telegraph website, where we caught up with the video showing her sudden slurred speech, 9,388 people noted they "liked" the video with a thumbs up signal and 6,027 recommended it to Facebook friends.

People couldn't turn away. They were drawn to it, watching the images over and over with the same kind of grim curiosity that compels drivers to slow down and gaze at a fatal car crash -- drawn often by a subconscious fear that the same thing could happen to us. By observing it in other people, we have our own experience of it, but at an emotional distance. The more we observe terrifying events happening to other people, the more they reinforce our sense of denial and detachment: It can't happen to us.

CNN

“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords."

2011-02-17T07:23:00.000-08:00

Ken Jennings, contestant on Jeopardy! famous for winning 74 games in a row, borrowing a line from The Simpsons to congratulate his computer opponent, Watson, for handily winning a three-day competition.

New York Times

Payback: Upset Ex-Girlfriend Spams Boyfriend In Google Images

2011-02-08T10:36:00.000-08:00

Upset boyfriends and girlfriends are nothing new. There are plenty of stories of girlfriends getting back at their ex-boyfriends for mistreatment and visa versa. But in the age where Google ranks supreme, you do not want to mess with a girl who knows how to manipulate Google.

One guy learned this the hard way.

Apparently, a disturbed ex-girlfriend took her ex-boyfriend's professional taken picture and polluted it all over Google Images for a search on his name. You can see the Google Image search spam yourself by clicking here or in the screen shot below:

Search Engine Roundtable

Carnivorous Clock

2011-02-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

NPR

Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots

The internet has (kind of) run out of space

2011-02-03T11:18:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, the internet as we know it ran out of space.

The nonprofit group that assigns addresses to service providers announced that, on Thursday morning, it allocated the last free internet addresses available from the current pool used for most of the internet's history.

"This is an historic day in the history of the internet, and one we have been anticipating for quite some time," said Raul Echeberria, chairman of the Number Resource Organization.

CNN

Sputnik Moment?

2011-01-27T06:01:00.000-08:00

"This is our generation's Sputnik Moment," President Obama said during Tuesday's State of the Union.

...

So I couldn't help wondering: Could we ever have a Sputnik moment?

Frontiers? We live on them. In 1969, things were still analog. You didn't have to discard your devices after a few months because Steve Jobs had decided that light purple was the new purple. Now, if something is lasting, we look down on it. "The only thing that lasts these days are dead armadillos and those seasonal breads in the glass case at Starbucks," we point out. Ephemeral is the new permanent. We have the collective memory -- and persistent desire to mate with anything in sight -- of Viagra-addled mayflies.

This comes with many boons. Thanks to our insistence on living on the bubble of the present moment, our world is rife with unnatural wonders - iPhones, iPads, Clouds, memes, videos of cats in Japan stuffing themselves into boxes. When I have a sore throat, I can go online and describe my symptoms, and strangers from across the globe (or the part of the globe that follows me on Twitter, at any rate) can suggest that I drink blueberry syrup and hot toddies! This is the stuff!

Everyone admits that the world has shrunk. But this shrinkage has also closed the window for Sputnik moments.

Washington Post

Technology Loop

2011-01-27T05:56:00.001-08:00

Excessive Video Gaming Not Just A Symptom

2011-01-17T09:28:00.000-08:00

Spending hours with a PlayStation or an Xbox every day can lead to serious psychiatric problems in children -- but "pathological" video game playing may not be just a result of preexisting mental disorders, researchers reported.

A two-year prospective study of more than 3,000 children identified several baseline psychological factors such as impulsivity that predicted excessive video game playing, according to Douglas Gentile, PhD, of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, and colleagues.

Nevertheless, such conditions as depression, social difficulties, and poor school performance "seemed to act as outcomes of pathological gaming," Gentile and co-authors wrote online in Pediatrics.

"Pathological gaming seems not to be simply secondary to other disorders but to predict poorer functioning longitudinally, and it can last for several years," they added.

For their study, the researchers gave questionnaires to 3,034 elementary and middle-school children in Singapore from 2007 to 2009. The survey, conducted in the students' classrooms, asked age-appropriate questions to elicit information on video gaming habits, social interactions, decision-making skills, affect, and other aspects of their psychiatric status as well as school performance.

Gentile and colleagues noted that response patterns indicated that causation could go in both directions for some factors.

"For example, although impulsivity is a risk factor for becoming a pathological gamer, impulsivity worsens after a youth becomes a pathological gamer," they wrote.

MedPage Today

NASA - The Frontier Is Everywhere

2011-01-13T11:01:00.000-08:00

Your BlackBerry or Your Wife

2011-01-12T08:58:00.000-08:00

When you're out to dinner, does your BlackBerry occupy a seat at the table? Does your spouse ever check email before saying "good morning" to the kids? Does your son sleep with his laptop?

It may be time for a technology cleanse.

Like an extreme diet that cuts out all processed foods for a short period of time with the promise of lasting good health, a technology cleanse means you unplug for a short time with longer-term benefits for your relationships.

But be warned: As with any other diet, it isn't easy.

The Wall Street Journal

The Shallows

2010-12-30T19:26:00.001-08:00

Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle, and that, says author Nicholas Carr, is what you're doing every time you use the Internet.

Carr is the author of the Atlantic article Is Google Making Us Stupid? which he has expanded into a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.

Carr believes that the Internet is a medium based on interruption — and it's changing the way people read and process information. We've come to associate the acquisition of wisdom with deep reading and solitary concentration, and he says there's not much of that to be found online.

NPR

Tweeting in court: why reporters must be given guidelines

2010-12-15T07:46:00.000-08:00

The decision by a district judge to allow tweeting from the court in the Julian Assange extradition hearing raises interesting legal questions.

First, has the district judge, Howard Riddle, set a precedent which other courts will follow? Not exactly: it is a magistrates court, lowest in the pecking order of courts, so decisions do not bind other courts. However, his decision may be persuasive of other courts, especially other magistrates. The sky did not fall in as a result of yesterday's tweeting, so why not allow it again? For the decision to gain wider acceptance we really need a crown court judge or high court judge to follow suit.

guardian.co.uk

Assange's 'poison pill' file impossible to stop, expert says

2010-12-08T13:29:00.001-08:00

The Poison Pill. The Doomsday Files. Or simply, The Insurance.

Whatever you call the file Julian Assange has threatened to release if he's imprisoned or dies or WikiLeaks is destroyed, it's impossible to stop.

"It's all tech talk to say, 'I have in my hand a button and if I press it or I order my friends to press it, it will go off,'" said Hemu Nigam, who has worked in computer security for more than two decades, in the government and private sector.

"Julian is saying, 'I've calibrated this so that no matter how many ways you try, you're never going to be able to deactivate it,'" Nigam said. "He's sending a call to action to hackers to try it. To the government, he's also saying, 'Try me.'"

CNN

2010-12-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

For the first time a commercial spacecraft was launched into orbit and returned safely to Earth.
The launch, a test of a commercially developed spacecraft designed to take cargo and eventually astronauts to the International Space Station, was successful from beginning to end on Wednesday.

The flight was the first demonstration flight in a program by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to use private companies to ferry cargo and supplies to the space station.

“It reinforces what the president laid out and what Congress endorsed as the future of space transportation,” said Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator. “This does indeed validate the path we are on.”

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, launched its Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon capsule, at 10:43 a.m. Eastern time from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rocket appeared to operate flawlessly as it headed skyward.

Nine minutes later, the Dragon capsule reached orbit. It circled the Earth twice at an altitude of 186 miles before re-entering the atmosphere. Slowed by three parachutes, it softly splashed in the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles west of northern Mexico. Ms. Garver said she had been told it landed within a mile of the recovery ship.

The entire flight lasted less than three and a half hours.

A second demonstration flight, going close to the space station but not docking, is scheduled for next spring. A third and final demonstration flight under SpaceX’s $278 million development contract would dock at the station.

With the success of the first flight, SpaceX is likely to pursue its desire to combine the second and third demonstration flights. With the completion of the demonstrations, SpaceX would then begin delivering cargo under a separate contract, worth $1.6 billion.

New York Times

4chan rushes to WikiLeaks' defense, forces Swiss banking site offline

2010-12-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

The forces of Anonymous have taken aim at several companies who are refusing to do business with WikiLeaks. 4chan's hordes have launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against PayPal, Swiss bank PostFinance, and other sites that have hindered the whistleblowing site's operations.

A self-styled spokesman for the group calling himself "Coldblood" has said that any website that's "bowing down to government pressure" is a target. PayPal ceased processing donations to the site, and PostFinance froze WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's account. The attacks are being performed under the Operation: Payback banner; Operation: Payback is the name the group is using in its long-running attacks on the RIAA, MPAA, and other organizations involved with anti-piracy lawsuits.

The initial attacks against PayPal were substantially ineffective; the PayPal blog was taken offline, but the main PayPal site wasn't harmed. The attacks against PostFinance, however, have resulted in the bank's website being unavailable for more than 16 hours. It remains unavailable at the time of writing. The latest target is the site of the Swedish prosecutors in Assange's sexual misconduct trial. This too appears to be offline. Twitter has also been named as a future attack target, due to its censorship of the #wikileaks hashtag.

ars technica

Are Aliens Among Us? Sort of, NASA Says

2010-12-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

Alien life has been among us all along, according to new biological findings announced by NASA Thursday.

Research conducted by biochemist Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon from the U.S. Geological Survey has turned the quest for alien life on its ear, suggesting that phosphorous -- which is found in every living thing -- is not necessarily the only sign of life. Wolfe-Simon will explain the findings at a hotly anticipated NASA press conference today at 2 p.m.

After a two-year study at California's Mono Lake, near Yosemite National Park, Wolfe-Simon found that a bug will grow in the presence of the toxic chemical arsenic when only slight traces of phosphorous are present. It's a radical finding, says molecular biologist Steven Benner, who is part of NASA's "Team Titan" and an expert on astrobiology -- forcing the space agency to redefine the quest for other life in the universe.

Fox News

Amazon cuts off WikiLeaks

2010-12-02T08:47:00.000-08:00

WikiLeaks no longer has a home at Amazon.

The controversial site, which has roused the ire of the U.S. government for leaking classified information, is no longer being hosted by Amazon's Web servers as of yesterday.

WikiLeaks had been tapping into Amazon's EC2, or Elastic Cloud Computing service--including earlier this week. WikiLeaks said yesterday it's now being hosted by servers in Europe, according to Reuters.

cnet

Everything Counts

2010-11-22T14:16:00.001-08:00

Nicaraguan Invasion? Blame Google Maps

2010-11-08T17:35:00.001-08:00

An embarrassing error on Google Maps has been blamed for Nicaragua’s accidental invasion of Costa Rica. Last week, Nicaraguan troops crossed the border, took down a Costa Rican flag and defiantly raised their own flag on Costa Rican turf.

But the troops’ commander, Eden Pastora, told a Costa Rican newspaper, La Nacion, that his invasion was not his fault, because Google Maps mistakenly said the territory belonged to Nicaragua. Government officials in Nicaragua have also blamed a “bug in Google” for the error.

Wired

"They all look alike": Understanding the "other race effect"

2010-11-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

We’ve all heard conversations, comments, and even jokes about how all the members of some race look alike. While that statement is certainly a generalization, it is true that people have a harder time distinguishing between people from a different race than they do within their own race. This phenomenon, called the “other race effect,” was first written about nearly a century ago (and supported by several subsequent studies), but researchers have made little progress on determining why, exactly, this task is so hard for people. Last week, two European psychologists published a paper in PNAS that begins to help us understand the neurophysiological basis of the other race effect.

Twenty-four subjects participated in the study; half were of East Asian descent, the other half were Western Caucasian. Each participant saw a series of two faces presented on a computer screen and had to determine whether the two faces belonged to the same person or not. The two faces were either both East Asian or both Western Caucasian, and were either the faces of two different people, or the same person’s face repeated twice. In all trials, the facial expression changed between faces to make the same face slightly harder to identify.

ars technica

Is NASA Covering Up the 100-Year Starship?

2010-11-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

A NASA official may have made a 35-million-mile slip of the tongue.

The director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California casually let slip mention of the 100-Year Starship recently, a new program funded by the super-secret government agency, DARPA. In a talk at San Francisco's Long Conversation conference, Simon “Pete” Worden said DARPA has $1M to spend, plus another $100,000 from NASA itself, for the program, which will initially develop a new kind of propulsion engine that will take us to Mars or beyond.

There's only one problem: The astronauts won't come back.

FOX News

Yes, Violent Video Games are Protected by the First Amendment

2010-11-01T13:41:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow the Entertainment Software Association will stand before the Supreme Court and argue on behalf of the video games industry that video games are protected by the same First Amendment rights as music, books, and movies. The law they'll be arguing against involves an attempt by California's legislature, signed into law by governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, to ban the sale of "violent video games" to minors.

Were the law to pass, stores found in violation of selling such games to minors would be subject to a $1,000 fine.

What's a "violent video game"? According to the California law, a game which depicts the "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting [sic] of an image of a human being in a manner that a reasonable person would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors." If this first "prong" applies, it's then run through a second check that asks whether "the patently offensive, deviant level of violence causes the game as a whole to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."

PC World

Invisible Man

2010-10-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

"We the machines inside the machine."

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

We Dance to the Beat-Robyn

2010-10-11T08:32:00.001-07:00

'Star Wars Trilogy' In Paper Animation

2010-10-07T08:46:00.001-07:00

Hungarian sludge spill reaches Danube river

2010-10-07T08:18:00.000-07:00

A toxic red sludge spill from an alumina plant in western Hungary reached the Danube river on Thursday and crews were trying to dilute it to protect the major European waterway.

Reuters

Exploring The (Nearly!) Empty Post Office Building On 8th Ave

2010-10-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

What are they going to do with all the postal workers? In fact, about 90% of the building is already vacant. And covering an entire city block, that means a LOT of interesting places for OHNY guests to tour, including empty offices, an old cafeteria, a medical wing, a police wing, and more!

Scouting New York

Space tourism agents lined up

2010-10-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

LAS CRUCES - They're like your neighborhood travel agents - except their package tours' most unique feature is nowhere to be found on earth.

A group of actual "space agents" is touring Spaceport America and the surrounding Mesilla Valley through Thursday during the New Mexico Spaceport Authority's annual forum.

The agents are taking a guided tour spanning three counties to help impress upon potential customers what the area has to offer: Las Cruces, Mesilla, Hatch, Truth or Consequences, White Sands Missile Range and White Sands National Monument, the National Solar Observatory at Sacramento and the New Mexico Museum of Space History.

Currently under construction near Truth or Consequences, Spaceport America has been providing commercial launch services since 2006 and its state-of-the-art launch facility, which counts Lockheed Martin, Moog-FTS, Armadillo Aerospace, and UP Aerospace as tenants, is expected to become fully operational next year.

Spaceport America's anchor tenant Virgin Galactic plans to provide sub-orbital space flights and commercial service via its WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo vehicles. Only Virgin Galactic-affiliated agents will be able to book travel on SpaceShipTwo, which is progressing in development and will fly from Spaceport America when testing completes, according to a news release.

"Spaceport America is going to be a major destination for tourists from all over the world, whether visitors or Virgin Galactic customers," said Spaceport Authority Executive Director Rick Homans. "These (Virgin Galactic-)accredited space agents will help spread the word about New Mexico by promoting the spaceport."

Las Cruces Sun-News
Spaceport America

Chicken Nuggets Are Made From This Pink Goop

2010-10-02T23:27:00.000-07:00

Basically, the entire chicken is smashed and pressed through a sieve—bones, eyes, guts, and all. it comes out looking like this.

There’s more: because it’s crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia, soaked in it, actually. Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially. Then, because it is weirdly pink, it will be dyed with artificial color.

But, hey, at least it tastes good, right?

Early Onset of Night

Newly Discovered Planet

2010-10-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet

2010-09-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

NY Times

Breaking News

2010-09-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

BREAKING NEWS: Facebook is down. Worker productivity rises. U.S. climbs out of recession.

OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting)

Why God Did Not Create the Universe

2010-09-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

According to Viking mythology, eclipses occur when two wolves, Skoll and Hati, catch the sun or moon. At the onset of an eclipse people would make lots of noise, hoping to scare the wolves away. After some time, people must have noticed that the eclipses ended regardless of whether they ran around banging on pots.

Ignorance of nature's ways led people in ancient times to postulate many myths in an effort to make sense of their world. But eventually, people turned to philosophy, that is, to the use of reason—with a good dose of intuition—to decipher their universe. Today we use reason, mathematics and experimental test—in other words, modern science.

Albert Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." He meant that, unlike our homes on a bad day, the universe is not just a conglomeration of objects each going its own way. Everything in the universe follows laws, without exception.

Newton believed that our strangely habitable solar system did not "arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature." Instead, he maintained that the order in the universe was "created by God at first and conserved by him to this Day in the same state and condition." The discovery recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many laws of nature could lead some back to the idea that this grand design is the work of some grand Designer. Yet the latest advances in cosmology explain why the laws of the universe seem tailor-made for humans, without the need for a benevolent creator.

Stephen Hawking for WSJ

Cybercrime is Rampant Around the World, Says Study

2010-09-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

A new study by security vendor Symantec reports that Internet crime has grown into a widespread problem globally. It also provides intriguing insights into consumers' lax attitudes toward online piracy, plagiarism, and other illegally or unethical activities.
Some 7,000 adults in 14 nations participated in the Norton Cybercrime Report: The Human Impact, which was released Wednesday.

The study says that cybercrime is quite commonplace; more than 65 percent of participants say they've been a victim of online crime, including virus or malware attacks, online scams, phishing, social network profile hacking, credit card fraud, and sexual predation.

PC World

Adult Smoking Hits Plateau

2010-09-07T14:38:00.000-07:00

One in five U.S. adults continues to smoke cigarettes -- a percentage that hasn't budged since 2005 -- suggesting that more aggressive efforts are needed to reduce smoking-related diseases and deaths, the CDC said.

Data from the 2009 National Health Interview Survey and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) indicated that 20.6% of Americans 18 and older reported being current smokers, according to an early-release report in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

In 2005, smoking prevalence stood at 20.9% -- not significantly different from the 2009 figure or the rate for any year in between, according to the MMWR.

"There has been no progress in reducing that number in five years," said Thomas Frieden, MD, director of CDC, in a conference call with reporters.

MedPage Today

Only in Japan, Real Men Go to a Hotel With Virtual Girlfriends

2010-09-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

6 Baffling Flaws in Famous Sci-Fi Technology

2010-09-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

As a species, we are tool makers first and foremost. That's why we love to see gadgets in our movies, and to watch our Captain Picards and Batmans and David Hasselhoffs defeat the bad guys with technology we know we'll never own.

But in the course of trying to dazzle us with their fancy spaceships and battle vehicles, sometimes Hollywood forgets to make sense.

Cracked.com

However, in response to #3 (The Batwing), the flaw is explained away by a Jungian analysis of Tim Burton's 1989 Batman by Robert E. Terrill found here (PDF) - entitled, "Put on a happy face: Batman as a schizophrenic savior."

Digital Overload: Your Brain On Gadgets

2010-08-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

"Just as food nourishes us and we need it for life, so too — in the 21st century and the modern age — we need technology. You cannot survive without the communication tools; the productivity tools are essential. And yet, food has pros and cons to it. We know that some food is Twinkies and some food is Brussels sprouts. And we know that if we overeat, it causes problems. Similarly, after 20 years of glorifying technology as if all computers were good and all use of it was good, science is beginning to embrace the idea that some technology is Twinkies and some technology is Brussels sprouts." —Matt Richtel

NPR

Pentagon computers attacked with flash drive

2010-08-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon says a foreign spy agency pulled off the most serious breach of Defense Department computer networks ever by inserting a flash drive into a U.S. military laptop.

The previously classified incident took place in 2008 in the Middle East and was disclosed in a magazine article by Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn and released by the Pentagon Wednesday. The Pentagon did not say what nation's spy agency was involved.

He said a "malicious code" on the flash drive spread undetected on both classified and unclassified Pentagon systems, "establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead," for stealing military secrets

He did not say what, if any, information was taken.

Washington Post

Worst traffic jam ever? Gridlock spans 60 miles

2010-08-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

A traffic jam stretching more than 60 miles in China has entered its ninth day with no end in sight, state media reported.

Cars and trucks have been slowed to a crawl since August 14 on the National Expressway 110, which is also known as the G110, the major route from Beijing to Zhangjiakou, Xinhua News reported.

Officials expect the congestion to continue until workers complete construction projects on September 13, the report said.

State media reported that Chinese drivers have become accustomed to the severe delays, noting a similar jam in July that slowed traffic for close to a month.

Britain's Sky News reported that the snarls have been commonplace since May as a result of a spike in the number of trucks using the roads, with the daily peak reaching about 17,000.

"Insufficient traffic capacity on the National Expressway 110 caused by maintenance construction since August 19 is the major cause of the congestion," a Beijing Traffic Management Bureau spokesman told the Global Times.

Chinese national radio reported Sunday that minor traffic accidents and broken-down vehicles have complicated the traffic mess, Xinhua reported.

Approximately 400 police officers are patrolling the road 24 hours a day in an effort to keep the situation calm, Sky News said.

Concerts?
Motorists have taken to card games or chess to pass the time, Sky News reported. Others joked that "concerts should be held at each congested area every weekend, to alleviate drivers' homesickness," the report said.

Residents from communities alongside the expressway have seen opportunity in the traffic slowdown, setting up food and drink kiosks for the drivers.

Some drivers have complained of price gouging. One truck driver, identified by his last name Huang, told the Global Times that "instant noodles are sold at four times the original price while I wait in the congestion.

"Not only the congestion annoys me, but also those vendors," he added.

MSNBC

Alien hunters 'should look for artificial intelligence'

2010-08-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

A senior astronomer has said that the hunt for alien life should take into account alien "sentient machines".

Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has until now sought radio signals from worlds like Earth.

But Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence (AI) would be short.

Writing in Acta Astronautica, he says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than "biological" life.

Many involved in Seti have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting extraterrestrials would not only not look like us, but that they would not at a biological level even work like us.

BBC News

Radiohead: Live from the basement show

2010-08-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

Reverse-Engineering of Human Brain Likely by 2030, Expert Predicts

2010-08-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

Reverse-engineering the human brain so we can simulate it using computers may be just two decades away, says Ray Kurzweil, artificial intelligence expert and author of the best-selling book The Singularity is Near.

It would be the first step toward creating machines that are more powerful than the human brain. These supercomputers could be networked into a cloud computing architecture to amplify their processing capabilities. Meanwhile, algorithms that power them could get more intelligent. Together these could create the ultimate machine that can help us handle the challenges of the future, says Kurzweil.

Wired

Boeing offers a glimpse of air travel 30 years from now

2010-08-03T13:37:00.000-07:00

What kind of planes will we ride in 30 years from now? While Airbus not too long ago offered a wild vision full of holographic projections and morphing seats, Boeing is keeping it real after an 18-month-long study on the future of air travel.

So, what can we look forward to? Well, quieter, more efficient planes that don't take as long to take off, according to Boeing. The company is calling the hypothetical plane the "SUGAR Volt," which, according to Boeing, "which includes an electric battery gas turbine hybrid propulsion system." That'll have the aircraft burning up to 70% less fuel, which would mean cheaper energy costs overall. Electronic systems will also be improved, and airplanes will use half the power for their electronics as they do now.

DVICE

Beer-Fetching Robot

2010-07-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

Nadia

2010-07-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

Nadia is a camera designed by Andrew Kupresanin that, instead of a viewfinder, features an artificial-intelligence judger of aesthetic. Originally found on Today and Tomorrow.

Nadia from Andrew Kupresanin on Vimeo.

U.S. Navy Laser Weapon Shoots Down Drones in Test

2010-07-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

In a grainy, black-and-white video that looks like a home movie of a UFO attack a sleek aircraft streaks through the sky one minute, only to burst into flames the next and plummet into the sea. The silent video, which Raytheon Co. debuts Monday at the U.K.'s Farnborough International Air Show 2010, however, is not science fiction. The defense contractor says it depicts part of a test conducted in May during which the U.S. Navy used a solid-state laser to shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles over the Pacific Ocean.

Scientific American

70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

2010-07-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

Blogetery, a Wordpress platform, has seen its entire community shut down by its host, BurstNET. Subsequent statements by BurstNET indicated that the service was suspended at the request of an unidentified law enforcement agency.

"(Blogetery) was terminated by request of law enforcement officials, due to material hosted on the server. We are limited as to the details we can provide to you, but note that this was a critical matter and the only available option to us was to immediately deactivate the server."

The gist of the conversation on the discussion board initially indicated that copyright infringement might have been the motivation. Torrent services, like Bittorrent, are the frequent target of legal actions as they are an efficient way to share large amounts of information, such as television shows or movies. This does not appear to be the case, however. The owner stated that the service dealt with copyright issues without prior problems.

ReadWriteWeb

Stephen Colbert Speaks With EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn

2010-07-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Cindy Cohn

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

2010 Election

Fox News

EFF

Cat amputee fitted with 'bionic' feet

2010-07-09T10:24:00.000-07:00

If cats have nine lives, they may have just acquired a 10th -- thanks to a groundbreaking surgery that saved the life of a feline double amputee.

A British cat, Oscar, has made a full recovery after being fitted with a pair of prosthetic feet in November. The cat's hind paws were severed by a combine harvester.

The three-hour procedure, performed at an animal hospital in Surrey, England, by neuro-orthopaedic veterinary surgeon Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, could serve as a model for human amputees.

CNN

Prince declares internet 'over'.

2010-07-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

"The Internet's completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it. All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

Prince

Attenborough Design Group

2010-07-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Attenborough Design Group is a fictional organisation, created by James Chambers and Tom Judd. It investigates the use of animal behaviours to defend emerging technologies. These products include the Gesundheit Radio, which sneezes periodically to expel potentially damaging dust, Floppy Legs, a portable floppy disk drive which stands up if it detects liquid nearby, and the AntiTouch Lamp, which sways away from you if you get too close to its sensitive halogen bulb.

Today and Tomorrow

AT-AT day afternoon

2010-06-30T13:02:00.000-07:00

AT-AT day afternoon from Patrick Boivin on Vimeo.

Can digital I-Doser sounds mimic the effect of drugs?

2010-06-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

For decades, parents, doctors and school administrators have worried about the dangers of drugs. In the digital age, they've got a new arena for concern: Sound waves that, some say, affect the brain like a drug -- and cost only 99 cents on iTunes and Amazon.com .

Many scientific experts say they're unfamiliar with ``digital drugs'' -- sometimes sold under the brand name I-Dosers -- and doubt whether sound patterns could have the same effect as chemical drugs. But some parents -- and at least one Oklahoma school system -- worry that downloading these sounds could be a teen's first step toward physical drugs.

As proof, they point to YouTube, where hundreds of videos -- some of teen ``users'' getting ``high'' -- have been posted. On the I-Doser Facebook page, users recommend tracks with comments such as, ``Last night I did `peyote' and `alter-x' and they really worked.'' The I-Doser free software is the second most downloaded program in the science category on CNET.com , with 6,500 downloads in a single recent week.

Miami Herald

Why FIFA Refuses to Sanction Goal-Line Technology

2010-06-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

Technology is everywhere in soccer. From hi-tech fabrics, divot-defying cleats, and dynamic new ball technology, sports firms such as Adidas and Nike are constantly pushing the boundaries for new and innovative products. And the matches you see on TV are the best yet, with FIFA, who owns the television rights, sticking cameras everywhere they can possibly stick them so that TV spectators can enjoy the hits--and misses--from every conceivable angle.

There is, however, one blind spot. And perhaps it is where the game needs it most: on the goal line. And on Sunday morning, at approximately 10.38 EST [Ed: And at least once in every U.S. match], we had glaring proof that FIFA needs to move with the times and start using technology as a fifth pair of eyes. On Saturday the footballing body's secretary general, Jerome Valcke, stated that the next World Cup might well have an extra pair of assistant referees, one behind each goal, "to have more eyes helping [the referee] to make decisions."

Fast Company

A Colossal Fracking Mess

2010-06-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

Vanity Fair

The Good Life

2010-06-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

"Today the good life means making full use of science and technology — without succumbing to the illusion that they can make us free, reasonable, or even sane. It means seeking peace — without hoping for a world without war. It means cherishing freedom — in the knowledge that it is an interval between anarchy and tyranny."

John Gray

Thanks Melvillian

Gene data for all 'within a decade'

2010-06-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

Genetic information will be available to most people in the developed world within 10 years, allowing better treatment and safer prescription of drugs.

Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, believes mass genome sequencing of individuals would soon be possible at a cost of less than $1,000 per person.

Telegraph

The Menace of Mechanical Music

2010-06-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

"I foresee a marked deterioration in American music and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue -- or rather by vice -- of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines."

John Philip Sousa, "The Menace of Mechanical Music," Appleton's Magazine, Vol. 8 (1906).

New law changes cigarette packaging

2010-06-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

Iowa public health experts say new federal regulations will change cigarette packaging.

The Iowa Department of Public Health says starting Tuesday words such as "light," "mild" and "low-tar" will be banned from describing cigarettes on packaging. The department says the regulation was enacted because the terms can "mislead consumers into thinking certain types of cigarettes are safer."

Bonnie Mapes is a director for the department's Tobacco Use Prevention and Control division. Mapes says consumers might notice packaging color and design changes too. She says regardless, "there's just no such thing as a safe cigarette."

Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb

2010-06-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

Artificial Immortality

2010-06-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

A song by Christian progressive death/metalcore band Becoming the Archetype.

Technology will conquer, Biology will fall
Machines provide the means for the chosen few
To rise up and be "immortal"
Discard the body to elevate the intellect
Remove the head, remove the soul, implant the artificial
Remove the head, remove the soul, dehumanize…NO!

Shake off the chains
The constraints of your mortality
This new evolution puts "perfection" within our grasp
Discard the body to elevate the intellect
Remove the head, remove the soul, implant the artificial
Remove the head, remove the soul, dehumanize…NO!

I am not a mechanism
I am part of the resistance
I am an organism
An animal, a creature, I AM A BEAST!