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BREAKING SURF
The Resurrection of Philip K. Dick
Once upon a time, Philip K. Dick was renowned as a SF writer who focused on the meaning of identity and reality. It's no accident that "The Matrix" borrowed theme and even title from his body of work. And that segues into his second life, which started shortly after his death in 1982 with the release of "Blade Runner". Dick, who did not earn much as a writer, is raking in millions in movie rights. His hits include "Total Recall" and "Minority Report", and the upcoming "Paycheck" is due later this month. Wired has a great take on Dick and his work. An amphetamine freak and possibly a few degrees into insanity, he burned out pretty quickly, but his tales of paranoia and pseudoreality strike close to home. Plastic offers some literate commentary on Dick as a writer and on how his work translates to the silver screen.Dick: http://www.philipkdick.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/philip.html
Plastic: http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=03/11/28/06370158;sid=03/11/28/06370158
Max Lyons has been playing with large-format digital photographs, images on the order of 20-150 MB, for several years. While the feat has been widely discussed in photographic circles, as far as he could tell nobody had yet managed to produce a 1-gigapixel, non-scientific photo without resizing a smaller, lower resolution image or using an interpolated image. So he decided to do it, and he has produced a 1.09-gigapixel photo of Bryce Canyon in Utah. He digitally stitched together 196 photographs he took with a 6-megapixel digital camera over the course of 13 minutes. The final image is 40,784 x 26,800 pixels in size, a total of 1,093,011,200 pixels. It has about 100 times more detail than a human eye would see at the actual Bryce Canyon and is sharper than anything you can get with multi-megapixel $25,000 digital cameras. Of course, Lyon is now looking for somebody to help him print the image. His Gigapixel Images page has a detailed writeup of how he did it, while his home page has much more information about working with large-format digital images.
Lyons: http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/index.html
Gigapixel Images: http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm
Various Weblog Award Nominations
Given the number of self-congratulatory weblog awards going around maybe we should just convene the Netsurfer Awards for the Best Weblog Awards. Maybe not. For the 2003 Weblog Awards, the number of nominations is "staggering", according to Kevin Aylward, whose own blog is host to the nominating process. Perhaps that's not so surprising, since the rules allow you to nominate your own blog. All the usual categories are here - Best Overall Blog, Best New Blog, Best Liberal/Conservative Blog, etc. But what are we to make of categories like Best Playful Primates Blog, Best Slimy Molluscs (and below) Blog or Best Higher Beings & Mortal Humans Blog? Voting closes Dec. 15. There's also the second annual 2003 Warblogger Awards, which recognize the best and worst of political and war-related weblogs. Most Annoying Right-of-Center Blogger anyone? Favorite Columnist Who's Not a Blogger? Maybe we should all just vote for Most Overrated Blog and be done with it.Weblog Awards: http://wizbangblog.com/archives/cat_2003_weblog_award_nominees.php
Warblogger Awards: http://www.rightwingnews.com/special/warblogger2003.php
A Short History of Computer Virii
The first computer virus, Pervade, spread through Univac systems in 1975 so that it could install the 20-questions guessing game, Animal. The first person to introduce the term "virus" into the computing lexicon was Fred Cohen, in 1984. Since 1975, of course, viral work has increased exponentially, and now entire enterprises are devoted to the exploitation of antivirus software. Perversely, the creators of virii generally release them for free while corporations reap millions by developing techniques to counteract them. CNet has an excellent look at the transition of computer virii from theory to release.Animal: http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/animal.html
CNet: http://news.com.com/2009-7349_3-5111410.html
Umberto Eco on Memory and the Web
Umberto Eco's meditations on memory, first given as a lecture at the new Library of Alexandria, are well worth reading, especially for those given to believing that books are going to vanish or that the Web will become a repository for all human knowledge. It's too limiting to summarize this thoughtful and elegant lecture, so just go read it. Remember, there is a world of difference between those who actually know something and those who act as if they do. With Eco, you get the real thing: erudition, wit, and wisdom. Props to the Al-Ahram Weekly for the text.http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/665/bo3.htm
The Literary Review's Bad Sex Prize
"Her breasts are placards for the endomorphically endowed." And just wait until you catch a glimpse of what lies behind her white and translucent panties. Then you'll understand exactly why author Aniruddha Bahal and his novel "Bunker 13" won this year's Literary Review's Bad Sex Prize for bad sex writing. Other nominated passages on the short list for the Prize are equally - uh, memorable. You know they're bad, but much like bad sex you'll go ahead and finish them anyway. Does that mean that bad sex writing is better than no sex writing? Probably. Now pass the damn cigarette.Winner: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1099417,00.html
Short List: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1099719,00.html
"Bunker 13": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374117306/netsurferdigest
GDP, Microsoft Licence Fees, and Piracy
Rishab Ayer Ghosh had a bright idea. If you compare software licence fees to a country's per capita GDP, you can determine the fee's real cost across national economies. For example, it costs $560 to licence Windows XP and Office XP. Annual GDP per capita in the Philippines is $912 - so the Microsoft licence costs Philippinos 7.37 months worth of income. As you'd expect, the more a licence costs in local terms, the more users turn to piracy. Although Ghosh posts no analysis, we did it ourselves. The data fit a geometric curve remarkably well. The data also help explain why so many third-world countries are looking at inexpensive open-source software.http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ghosh/index.html
We suspect that nearly everyone who has seen a 20-sided die first encountered it playing role-playing games, most likely some version of D&D, or in stores selling the same. Fans of Strat-O-Matic's sports games saw the 20-sider as a great invention as it replaced their numbered decks of tattered orange paper. Little did they know that the d20, as the D&Ders call it, is at least two millennia old. Christie's is hosting an auction of one such d20 from the second century. Other than the fact that it's made of glass, it's chipped, and it has symbols instead of numbers, it looks like it could easily have rolled out of any gamer's dice pouch. If you just have to add this to impress your dungeon master, Christie's expects you to pony up about $5,000. The auction will take place Dec. 11.
Strat-O-Matic: http://www.strat-o-matic.com/
Christie's: http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/search/LOTDETAIL.ASP?intObjectID=4205385
The newest largest known prime number weighs in at 6,320,430 digits and took about two years to find using a distributed network of more than 200,000 computers. The new number, technically the 40th known Mersenne prime, is over two million digits longer than the previous one, also found by the distributed Great Internet Mersenne Prime (GIMP) project. The prime number showed up on a computer belonging to 26-year-old Michael Shafer, a chemical engineering student at Michigan State University. The GIMP site has extensive information about the search and the math, links to coverage of the discovery, and the software you can download to lend your computing cycles to the project. Incidentally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) offers a $100,000 prize for the discovery of the first prime with ten million digits - certainly an incentive to join a project like GIMP.
GIMP: http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm
EFF: http://www.eff.org/coop-awards/award-prime-rules.html
As reviewers of a sort, we know how tantalizing it can be when you find a substandard product. What you can sometimes bring out is a review that sparkles in and of itself far beyond the ineptitude of the subject at hand. Peter Lewis at Fortune succumbed - nay, embraced the opportunity to critique the Dell DJ, Dell's take on a digital-music player. Lewis borrows heavily from Bizarro, the alternative-and-backward-universe version of Superman. It's a good review, mind you, and points out the DJ's strengths and weaknesses, and those of the Dell Music Store, in comparison to Apple's iPod and iTunes Music Store. The flavor of the generally positive review is summed up in its last paragraph: "Cheer up, Bizarro. With your superior battery life, lower cost, and intuitive user interface, you am definitely terrible, at least in the Windows universe."
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,548314,00.html
In "Consumption of Information Goods and Services in the United States", Pew shows how subsets of the US population function as information elites, leading the way in the adoption of electronic/digital technology and media. The report puts Americans into eight categories, based on generation wiredness. The largest group of heavy users of information technologies consists of wired Generation Xers, followed by young tech elites, older wired baby boomers, and a small group of wired senior men. Together, these groups comprise about a third of the US population. Although the intensity of use and breadth of emerging technologies varies a good deal among the four leading groups, all depend much more on the new technologies and less on traditional ones than the rest of the population and spend considerably more money on them. Wired Generation Xers are as likely to be women as men, but the other three leading segments contain mostly males. The report is in the familiar no-nonsense Pew style. The conclusions stem from a survey of 1,677 Americans conducted in October 2002. The study has important implications for all those marketing tech gadgets and services and even for suppliers of traditional goods and services.
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=103
This tantalizing analysis of what ails the music business uses contracts theory, economics, and information theory perspectives. Traditionally, the music business has pretty much done what it wanted, insensitive to what consumers may have liked. With the advent of Internet file-sharing, the situation has been turned on its head. Now consumers pretty much do what they want, insensitive to the needs of the music business. That's the gist of this skewering economic analysis of the situation. Is there a middle ground that allows profits and thus sustainability for music companies while meeting consumer needs? It's hard to be optimistic about that, if, as this entry at the Bubblegeneration blog states, the companies don't understand the microeconomics of their own business. Solutions such as iTunes and its increasing number of imitators aren't the answer as they lack a way to ensure customer satisfaction, which is described here in terms of insurance, hedging, and risk management. While the arguments about the problem and possible solutions aren't entirely convincing, they do make you think. The article suggests that the way out of this ruinous battleground is for music companies to develop innovative ways of helping the customers to hedge risk. Spending legacy profits on that, rather than litigation, would make more sense.
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/level2.cfm?resource=musicrisk1
Google, originally just a search engine, is now also a verb and may quite possibly become a gold mine. Its IPO, when it comes, should generate billions for its founders and anyone with options - or will it? This detailed and thoughtful Fortune article goes inside Google and its strategic situation. Fortune reveals that Google is living in a measure of chaos with respect to its corporate culture and that it is not entirely clear who is running the show, let alone who is responsible for making decisions. Also, competition looms as a problem. Microsoft is building a search engine into Longhorn, its 2006 version of Windows. Yahoo is going to drop Google as its search engine any day. Six months after an IPO, Google may have some serious competition; and all those options will still be worth something, but perhaps not as much as everyone thinks, or hopes.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,548765-1,00.html
Fighting Spammers with Honeypots
A honeypot is a computer system set up specifically to attract hackers in order to study their methods. But honeypots can also be part of an anti-hacking strategy. Specifically, you can use them to help fight spam, as explained in these two technical articles from SecurityFocus. The articles show how to ensnare spammers during all phases of their operation - harvesting addresses, creating proxies, and exploiting open relays. The folks who maintain Honeyd, one tool that can create honeypots, has some preliminary results from their spam traps that show what operating systems spammers like to use. Although the large number of unknowns throws doubt on the data, of known operating systems, Unix is favored by spammers. You'll find numbers, graphs, and results on the Honeyd spam Web page. Good reading for sysadmins.SecurityFocus 1: http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1747
SecurityFocus 2: http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1748
Honeyd: http://www.honeyd.org/spam.php
Raw Data on Corporate R&D Spending
MIT's Technology Review has put together a spreadsheet that rates the world's top 150 companies in terms of spending on research and development. Overall, R&D spending has grown by about $4 billion this year, but nearly every sector other than automotive industry - which by itself posted a $5-billion gain - was flat. Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler, perhaps surprisingly, rank number one and two in R&D spending among all corporations worldwide, budgeting $7.4 billion and $6.4 billion, respectively. One notable exception to automotive dominance is the biotech sector, which doubled last year's total R&D budget. If you're into raw data you can download the Excel spreadsheet with the details here. There are also links to previous year's reports and some related subscriber-only articles.http://www.technologyreview.com/scorecards/index.asp
LA County Did Not Ban Master/Slave
You've probably heard that Los Angeles County, Calif. has outlawed the computer system terms, "master" and "slave". That's got to be a hoax, right? Wrong. Even though the terms have physical significance independent of racial relations, the county now suggests that suppliers drop such usage merely because it resembles terminology inappropriate in human relationships. It's not an ultimatum; just a request. Snopes has the scoop, including the text of LA County's memo. If you haven't already done so, you ought to think about bookmarking Snopes - it has solid poop on items that you're sure to find of interest.http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp
ONLINE CULTURE
Barrett Lyon's Opte Project to map the Internet in a day is a kind of ego project, a boastful one man enterprise of intellectual/IT one-up-manship. A dare over lunch, a little thinking outside the box, and a lot of open-source code later, Lyon has a map of the location of every class C network on the Net. What results can best be described as a technicolor dandelion of information. This is one weed definitely worth checking out, but it's not all showing off and making pretty pictures. Lyon thinks that weekly mapping of the Internet will highlight disasters in the world and also illustrate the growth of the Internet. You can find out how the project is making out and pore over the technical details if you like. Otherwise, well, the pictures sure are pretty.http://www.opte.org/
BlogShares was a fantasy stock market simulation of, as the name implies, shares in weblogs (see NSD 9.13). It was a fairly popular site in the blogging community, feeding the vanity of blogging as people vied to pump up the share price of their own weblogs. That very popularity seems to have killed it. In a statement on the BlogShares home page, Seyed Razavi, the creator of BlogShares, says that the site has become too much work and will not be resurrected after the latest system crash. This leaves subscribers who paid for premium services in the lurch, unless Razavi can find a buyer for the site - he's actively looking to sell.
NSD 9.13: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.13.html#BS13
BlogShares: http://www.blogshares.com/
Sale: http://www.monkeyx.com/archives/web/for_sale_blogshares_one_careful_owner.html
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100 Suns
Veniss Underground
Life: The Odds (And How to Improve Them)
PC Annoyances: How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Personal ComputerSURFING SITES
Time Magazine's Top Tech of 2003...
As we move into December, holding our noses with one hand while dragging a still-struggling 2003 to the curb, we find ourselves hobbled by tradition, which dictates that we look back on the year. Time magazine steps up to slap us with its take on the coolest inventions of 2003, and topping that list is the iTunes Music Store. The magazine also likes the camera phone, which doesn't seem so much an invention as a convergence of digital tech. Inventor Dean Kamen made the list, not for his Segway or any accessory thereof, but for his new method of producing potable water, which has far greater implications. Time covers an array of items unveiled this year, and you can check them out - with links to additional information - with just a click. How about that robotic lobster/minesweeper? If you don't agree that the iTunes Music Store ranks as the invention of the year, you can vote. It's unclear that doing so will change anything, but it's an option.http://www.time.com/time/2003/inventions/
...And Popular Science Has Its Choices, Too
Popular Science weighs in with its own take on the top innovations for 2003, opening with a stunning photo of Burt Rutan's high-tech spaceplane in flight. Unsurprisingly, Popular Science covers a broad range as it delves into wireless tech, flight and rocket science, and computing along the way. When you see the Mitsubishi MegaView Wall, you'll salivate. For a second or two, until you see the projected pricetag. Antacid, anyone? Site design is generally tight, although it does waste your time with pop-up ads that exhort you to buy a gift subscription. Fortunately, the ads are small and easily disposed of - or circumvented, if you have a decent browser. The descriptions are brief but compelling, and the images are great.http://www.popsci.com/popsci/bown/
If you don't have broadband Internet access, the Open Video Project presents a compelling reason to bite the bullet and go for the upgrade. This archive of historical film clips is designed for the Internet2 community, and its intent is to function as a repository for digitized video in conjunction with research efforts into such diverse areas as recognition systems and autosegmentation. Frankly, that's just jargon, and what you should care about is that you can view stuff from at least as far back as 1901 and up to the present. Our own research indicates that in excess of 1,500 video clips derived from an assortment of genres are available here. Want JFK's 1962 speech at Rice University? You got it, as long as you have a spare 300 MB. In addition to a broadband connection, you might want to invest in several new hard drives as well. Many of the items in the collection feature storyboards - selections of relevant frames from the video that are displayed as still images - so you can at least preview a topic even on a dial-up line. The search function is useful in determining whether or not the material you seek is available in the archives, and you may contribute material if you wish.
http://www.open-video.org/
When Claudia Severa invited Sulpicia Lepidina to her birthday party, nowhere in her mind was what folks would think of her note 2,000 years in the future. Yet her letter reads as if Emily Post were standing over her shoulder. You can see her handwriting, one of the earliest examples of writing in Latin by a woman, up close and personal in the online exhibit of the late first and early second-century tablets excavated at Vindolanda in northern England. For each tablet, the paleographers have presented the original Latin alongside the English translation. The highlight, however, is the digital image provided of each tablet, at such excellent resolution that you can zoom in at home with Java to look at the original writing more closely.
http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/
The Battlefield of Faith, Philosophy, and Consistency
Religious beliefs can be a complex minefield of contradictions and impassioned ideals. The good people at the Philosophers' Magazine have taken this to the next level and designed a series of 17 questions, which they call Battleground God. The questions prompt answers that are then tested for rational consistency with earlier answers. The questions are fairly general and relate to issues such as morality, evolution, the Loch Ness Monster (yes, really), and innocence. You even get warnings when you're approaching a logical contradiction in your avowed beliefs, and there's an amusing graphic of your avatar wearing an arm-sling if you step on a moral landmine. As the game progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid inconsistencies - but when they arise, you're offered the choice of biting the bullet and renouncing part of your beliefs or taking a direct hit for them. Perhaps the Spanish Inquistadors would have liked this one.http://www.philosophers.co.uk/games/god.htm
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, now is the time of year when a steaming bowl of soup appears especially appealing and the Joy of Soup site is ripe for reading. You can browse the excellently presented recipes for the long-lost ingredients of the heart-warming concoctions your mother used to make, submit your own recipes, post comments and queries on individual recipes, or even read about how soup can be made from a stone (see the Soup from Nothing recipe). The tone of this recipe site is friendly and should inspire any reluctant cook to try out some of the concoctions. With the holiday season upon us, you could try the turkey bone soup or the cranberry soup even though our favorite is the idea of the decidedly non-soupy Irish potato candy, for its sheer wackiness. Oh, don't worry if you're in the Southern Hemisphere - you can always try out some of the chilled soups.
http://www.joyofsoup.com/
This entertaining animated spoof of the recent Matrix trilogy of films highlights the problems inherent in profit-driven factory farming. Go ahead, we'll wait while you reread that.... Ready? A seriously hip cow called Moopheus explains the rise of agri-business to an innocent pig called Leo. Issues such as animal cruelty, overuse of antibiotics, and destruction of small farming communities are outlined in simple terms to encourage consumers to wield their economic power to change the situation. The Farm Sanctuary organization, which is behind this Flash movie, may not have a huge effects budget, but the shade-wearing chicken and the slo-mo kung-fu pig certainly make it worth watching. The site fails to mention any plans for a sequel but the inclusion of some high-kicking spaceship flying sheep would make it a sure-fire hit.
http://www.bancruelfarms.org/meatrix/
What to Do When Your Net Goes Down
In a world increasingly reliant on the Internet and tools like e-mail, have you considered how you'd cope if the plug were pulled? Could you manage without your daily hit of netsurfing? Would your social life disintegrate were you unable to contact friends locally and internationally with a quick joke e-mail? Do you dub a LAN a "Less-than Adequate Network" because it can't cope with your game-playing? If that sounds like you, check out this life-saving site which suggests tongue-in-cheek substitutes for online time, such as using the telephone or defragmenting your computer. Alternatively, you could always read, speak to your spouse, or - dare they say it - go outside into the real world. In cases of extreme panic, use your emergency AOL disk - but perhaps not in the usual manner.http://www.thetoque.net/031118/internetdown.htm
That Cultural Icon, "The Karate Kid"
"Wax on, wax off." Who doesn't know that phrase? Fans of "The Karate Kid" (1984) will appreciate this comprehensive Web site dedicated to bringing the most unique information and pictures to admirers of the famed teen martial-arts movie. Choose either the original movie or "The Karate Kid, Part II", the first of three sequels. Once you choose (by the left margin), you can browse message boards, media, trivia, and more. Originally created by Nick Alaway, this site was transformed into a labor of love by adoring fans of '80s movies. Alaway states he's not alone in missing the kind of honest, naive movies that were so common then. Fans of the decade might appreciate Alaway's mission to bring these cinematic gems back into the minds of movie lovers everywhere.http://www.fast-rewind.com/kkid/
Do you like martial arts films? Do you enjoy watching people engaged in beautifully choreographed violence? If you answer "yes" to either question, you have to check out these two sites on "Xtreme Martial Arts". Yes, it is a television show on the Discovery Channel, but the site allows you to pose questions to the professionals behind this new style of fighting and watch video clips of this fusion of dance, gymnastics, and performance art with the martial arts. It sure looks a lot better than "Gymkata".
"Xtreme Martial Arts": http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/xma/xma.html
"Gymkata": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089243/
The 419 scams are ubiquitous. The only people who've never received one are people who've never had an e-mail address. NSD has covered 419 scams in the past (search NSD for "scammer" for a few links), and now we'll add 419 Eater to our archives. The 419 Eater site views the scammers as targets for our amusement, and the site owner strings along the scammers as far as he can. The technique is called scambaiting, and you even get a primer on how to do it yourself. The site has definitions and examples of 419 scam e-mails just in case you've forgotten what they look like. The meat is the section on how to scam bait, with appropriate safeguards. Sample e-mails are provided, and there's a nice forum for communicating with other scam baiters.
http://www.419eater.com/
Is My Puppy/Kitten Hot or Not?
These hot-or-not sites are nothing new - we gave you a rate-my-fish site a couple of months ago - but they sure are fun. This one lets you give pictures of puppies marks out of ten for cuteness; low marks go to ugly fur balls, and a ten is a widdle doggy that would weduce a gwown man to a simpewing fool. If you register at the site, you can submit your own photographs, if you can handle your puppy being judged by total strangers. Simon the Pembroke Corgi is currently the site users' favourite pup, though Tired Thunder, the little scamp currently at number two, is just so cute, even John Ashcroft would baby-talk to it. If cats are more your style... - well, we can't do anything for you except point you to an equivalent kitten site.Puppy: http://www.ratemypuppy.com/
Kitten: http://www.ratemykitten.com/
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
First of all, don't ever call it hari kiri, certainly not if you want to gain the respect of your peers for carrying out this delicate ritual with all the aesthetic dignity it deserves. Enjoy.http://kyushu.com/gleaner/editorspick/seppuku.shtml
How does your Web page look in Mac OS X's Safari browser? If you don't have a Mac, you can use this Web page to test. Apparently, it's pretty popular since its bandwidth was pegged when we looked.
http://www.danvine.com/capture/
National Weather Service RSS Feeds
The US National Weather service is trying out the RSS format for some of its data feeds. The feeds are organized by state and territory and feature current watches, warnings, and advisories. This is still an experimental service, but it seems to work just fine with typical news aggregators.http://www.nws.noaa.gov/alerts/
When cute little stocking stuffers just won't do for the holiday season, try instead ToyVault's offerings, from Monty Python's neck-chewing rabbits with big pointy teeth to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu in plush form, which can be bought with a little Santa hat.
http://www.toyvault.com/
When Bessemer Venture Partners announces its mistakes as loudly as its triumphs, it deserves publicity for rare honesty. Who else would have passed on Apple, HP, FedEx, and Intel and still shouted about it?
http://www.bvp.com/port/anti.asp
The University of Minnesota offers students this online companion to aid in keeping track of school assignments. Enter the assignment due date and this planner calculates due dates for elements of the assignment. Tips and resources are offered for subject areas, as well as e-mail reminders.
http://www.lib.umn.edu/help/calculator/
SOFTWARE
There's a considerable body of opinion that the Perl programming language is really a religion. Hence the Perl Advent Calendar, with which Mark Fowler brings you the description of a different Perl module each day for the 24 days of Advent, and an extra module on Christmas day. What's an Advent calendar, you ask? These days it's usually a little cardboard construction containing a candy behind a little paper door for each day until Christmas. Go watch "Bad Santa" to see what we mean. Advent calendars originated in the 19th century Christian community, and you can find out all about them at the Advent Calendars Web site, complete with an online museum.Perl Advent Calendar: http://www.perladvent.org/2003/
Advent Calendars: http://www.sellmer-verlag.de/history.htm