BREAKING SURF
| The Dunbar Number |
| The Safest Operating System |
| Can Spam Filters Beat Humans? |
| I Am Belle de Jour |
| Destruction of UK Traffic Cameras |
| Historic St. Petersburg |
| Exploring Urban Montreal |
| Hidden Brisbane |
| Panorama-o-Rama |
| Find a Couch to Crash on |
| Electromagnetic Art |
| The Hebrew Hammer |
| Keep Feeling Tessellations |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Bitching about Males |
| Food in the City |
| When Librarians Blog |
| Super Short Stories |
| Inside the Glamorous Writing Life |
| Will It Hit or Not? |
| Genetics Animations |
| More Microphotography |
| IE7: CSS Standards Compliance for Internet Explorer |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Google and Yahoo Launch Local American Search Services
This week both Google and Yahoo launched specialized search services that target geographically localized results. Google Local lets you type in a keyword and a US address to search for nearby resources. Yahoo has always allowed similar searches, but is now using Yahoo Maps to display the geographical locations of local resources. Yahoo Maps has a new SmartView area to the right of American maps that lets you choose to display items of interest like restaurant cuisines, shopping, and ATMs and banks. Click on the link and the map displays the locations. It's pretty useful stuff and a step up from similar offerings elsewhere, though since this is a new service the listings are hardly comprehensive. But you can certainly see where the future lies - every business will soon need its location entered in Google's and Yahoo's geographic database.Google Local: http://local.google.com/
Yahoo Maps: http://maps.yahoo.com/
Most Linked Bloggers and Reporters
Who are the most influential bloggers and reporters on the Web? There are any number of ways to measure something as intangible as influence, but counting Web links is a good first stab at it. BlogRunner has generated two such listings, one counting the cumulative number of inbound links to unique blog postings and articles for each author and a second revised list that averages the number of inbound links over the number of posts contributed by each author. The first list favors authors who post often while the second list tries to account for posting frequency. The lists rank 200 of the 41,000 or so names in the BlogRunner database, with data sampled over the last 60 days. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com and Paul Krugman from the New York Times lead the respective listings.http://www.blogrunner.com/snapshot/top-authors-00.html
You know how you've always thought you could cure the world's problems better than most politicians? Well, that's pretty much what a bunch of guys in Copenhagen have come up with, only on a grander scale. The Copenhagen Consensus aims to throw some of the world's greatest experts at some of the world's toughest problems and figure out just how to get the biggest bang for the buck. The idea for this grand global strategizing comes from the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute (DEAI), which asked a panel of nine heavy-hitting economists to identify the ten most critical topics to address. Then the DEAI assigned a global expert to each problem. Each expert will present a detailed report on the assigned challenge, and two more experts will comment on each report. In May, the Copenhagen Consensus will convene and decide what efforts would yield the largest payoffs. The chosen issues won't surprise anybody - they are the usual suspects of climate change, armed conflict, education, etc. - but this novel and brave attempt to wrestle with them may produce new ideas and priorities to ensure the best possible use of financial and human resources. As the articles are prepared, the Copenhagen Consensus will release them at its Web site and the Economist will publish them. This is one to watch.
Copenhagen Consensus: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
Economist: http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2478902
Don't Trust Security through Web Obscurity
Google can be the most dangerous Web site on the Net. It's a great search engine, but it's a trap for the clueless and a gold mine for the unscrupulous. We've talked about security before, but this Register article really hammers it home. Stop by and take a guided tour, then take the lessons home with you. You need to follow the embedded links, but it's well worth the time. Absorb this information, and then put it to use, because the crackers already have. Don't quite believe it yet? Then check out Johnny.ihackstuff.com.Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/36142.html
Johnny.ihackstuff.com: http://tinyurl.com/36x7u
Mix Friends and Politics for Love in War
What do you get when you mix sex, online personals, and political opinions? You get Love in War. It's an experiment in progress, so what it is is still evolving as you read this. It's a brash attempt to fuse relationships and politics into a dating service. It's artfully engaging, in a cleverly haphazard way. Want to join? For a start, you have to live in the US. From a demographic point of view, we note that most of the people who have joined in so far are fairly wet behind the ears - they're neophytes, the instant-messaging generation, brash upstarts who think they know everything. The War Room is the place to rant. Most of the stuff here reflects, shall we say, an amusing, youthful overgeneralization, sweeping with decidedly broad brush strokes and mercifully free of incendiary language and hateful intensity (so far). It's a site for people who take politics but not themselves seriously, a place to have fun exchanging viewpoints without getting too heated over it.http://www.loveinwar.com/index.cfm
Smile! You're on Martian Camera!
A shot from the Spirit rover on Mars shows a tiny gray dot in the Martian sky. That's where you live. It's Earth, photographed from Mars. Astrobiology magazine asks whether or not a scientist on Mars, given this perspective, could identify Earth as a life-bearing planet. From a spectroscopic perspective, the answer may be surprising. However, the article conveniently omits discussion of sensors capable of detecting pulsed electromagnetic transmissions, such as radio and television signals. The article is nonetheless thought-provoking, and Astrobiology offers bonus photos and links to additional material. NASA has the photo at the crux of the discussion.Astrobiology: http://tinyurl.com/25uho
NASA: http://tinyurl.com/23g9k
DARPA's Grand Too-Much-of-a-Challenge
Sometimes, the drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is difficult even with a designated driver (think of Hunter Thompson), but imagine driving from LA to Vegas without any driver. That was DARPA's challenge to American inventors and corporations: build a vehicle capable making the desert trek without human intervention. DARPA promised $1 million to the group that won its Grand Challenge race. We covered the lead-up to the race in NSD 9.43, among others. Well, the race is run, and DARPA doesn't have to worry about paying anyone this year. The Carnegie Mellon team moved the greatest distance from the starting point: a whole 7.4 miles. Others barely made it out of the starting gate, and a robot motorcycle promptly fell over at the start. DARPA is going to earn some interest on the prize money, but the challenge will take place again next year. If you should see a vehicle on the road to Vegas next year without a driver, don't worry, it's not the devil, it's DARPA.DARPA: http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/
NSD 9.43: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.43.html#BS9
Why African Journalism Is Not on the Web
Geographic maps of Internet usage and density have a huge blank space: Africa. Save for South Africa, Internet usage on the continent is marginal. Hence, African online journalism is largely non-existent. This Online Journalism Review article discusses why African journalists lack Net access without accusing anyone of a conspiracy. Instead, the article takes a long, cold look at the problem and the reasons why no easy solution awaits. The scale of the problem is massive and the examples cited - including a Nigerian newsroom with only ten computers that the reporters share - only make the digital divide that much more apparent. The links to various African journalists are an added bonus.http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1079109268.php
Dan Gillmor presents a look at the first chapters of his next book, "Making the News", and solicits your input. Check it out, and offer your view. How often do you get a chance at this much influence? Gillmor is not writing a bland journalism text, but an analysis on how the Net has changed journalism forever. As some folks complain that news has simply become a part of American conglomerate culture, non-dailies and bloggers continue to contribute independent content. There's a lot to chew over, here, so we hope you have good jaws.
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010093.shtml
And the winner is.... Actually, there are a whole slew of them in a whole bunch of categories. Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing, which got Weblog of the Year. Friday Five won for Best Meme, apparently because Janet Jackson's boob showed up too late to be eligible for the voting. Movable Type won best weblog application since there's no real competition for this great tool, and Tenth-Muse.com won for best tagline: "Fabulous since 1973, blogging since 2003, drinking since noon".
http://www.fairvue.com/?feature=awards2004
Women Lag in Political Blogitry
If you thought the blogosphere was pure meritocracy, read this Campaign Desk article on the role of women in the world of political blogging. Apparently, the world of political blogs is another reserve of testosterone, but it's not entirely clear why. What's striking is just how surprised this article is that the blogosphere resembles the world from which it emerged.http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000231.asp
"I, Robot", the Movie Web Site
Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" is a landmark classic of science fiction, the book in which he coined his famous three laws of robotics. It's a collection of short stories, all involving robots in all sorts of situations, up to and including robotic madness. It took a while but, sure enough, Hollywood got interested in the story - a movie by the same title is going to be released this year. We don't expect the movie to have anything but a passing resemblance to the book's stories, but hopefully Asimov's goodness will shine through and Will Smith, in the lead role as some sort of police officer tracking a killer robot, will pull it off. No matter how the plot turns out, the special effects will shine. You can grab an advance peek at the movie Web site. It's a huge mess of flashy Flash animations, but try to find your way through the interface disaster to the trailer, which is worth a look for fans of robotic creatures."I, Robot" book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553294385/netsurferdigest
Three laws: http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/robotics.html
"I, Robot" movie: http://www.irobotmovie.com/
You probably haven't seen the trailer to a movie few people know about: "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow". The movie has big-enough stars in Jude Law, Angelina Jolie, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Even if you have heard of the movie, you probably haven't heard of Kerry Conran, the driving force behind it. Fortunately, the New York Times has. The paper has a profile of Conran and the amazing history and technology of the movie-serial-style flick. Computer imagery so pervades this production that, as the New York Times points out, the production crew chose to render a carpet rather than use a physical replacement. The process results in a lush yet noirish look that perfectly fits the late '30s atmosphere. Go to the movie site, download the trailer, and judge for yourself.
"Sky Captain": http://www.skycaptain.com/home.html
Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/magazine/14CONRAN.html
Eternal Web Site of the Spotless Mind
While we're talking movies, here's a Web site that's an offshoot of the latest thing to make it to the silver screen from the spotted mind of Charlie Kaufman, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". It's a decent flick, and Kaufman's fingerprints are apparent to anyone who's seen "Being John Malkovich" or "Adaptation". As if to stain the cleverness of the movie, though, the movie's Web site is a Flash nightmare. The scrolling production notes break at least three tenets of good design. You may ask yourself why we at NSD are even covering this - it's not a cool SF flick (although it is SF) and the special effects are limited. We are covering this because somebody associated with the movie had the brilliant idea to establish a Web presence for Lacuna Inc., the memory-erasing outfit that drives the movie. Among other things, you'll learn which is the promotion that has expired."Eternal Sunshine": http://www.eternalsunshine.com/
Lacuna: http://www.lacunainc.com/
The original Warcraft was a groundbreaking, bestselling computer game that spawned a new genre: the real-time strategy (RTS) computer game in its countless iterations. It also made Blizzard Entertainment perhaps the most respected game design company in the business. Now, Blizzard is venturing into the perilous waters of massive multiplayer online games with its upcoming World of Warcraft (WoW). The company has just started to beta test its huge, detailed online world. While the WoW team already has all the beta testers it needs, the WoW Web site is still worth visiting. It has a huge amount of material from the upcoming game, including forums with beta commentary open for public viewing and a vast array of spectacular artwork and screen shots. This is one good-looking virtual world and the Web site is a destination full of eye candy. Given Blizzard's reputation for turning out high-quality products, the launch of WoW is worth paying attention to.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/
Sims Online to Elect New President
The last time we visited the Sims Online, Electronic Arts was busy closing down one of the game's newspapers. Now, an election is brewing in Alphaville and the contest is getting serious, as serious as a game can get, which is in fact pretty serious. This Wired article brings all the major points together, including the fact that the leading candidate is the avatar belonging to a 16-year-old girl who wants to save newbies from the various scams and harassments they are vulnerable to in the game's social universe.http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,62635,00.html
ONLINE CULTURE
The gist of Christopher Allen's article is that people use the Dunbar number a little too glibly. Dunbar's a behavioral ecologist who discovered a relationship between the size of primate species' neocortex and the size of its typical social groupings. Humans extrapolate to a group of 147.8 members - the Dunbar number. Rounded to 150, this number pops up in discussions about grouping phenomena, including online communities, as if it were a universal law. Allen reminds us that it's a bit more complicated than that. While the Dunbar number is indeed meaningful, he writes, it's rare for humans to maintain social groups as large as 150. Usually, smaller numbers prevail. Data from online games support this contention. In Ultima Online, for example, most clans have about 60 people in them. Allen also discusses the significance of the Dunbar number in small business environments, particularly as businesses grow. From his own experience managing online groups, he thinks 80 is a more realistic community population, and for creative people he suggests 45-50 is the optimum. In the end, the truth is more complicated than a simple number would suggest. The real limit on how many people we can interact with meaningfully depends very much on the context. This is a good read on how slippery apparently simple notions can be.Allen: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html
Dunbar: http://www.liv.ac.uk/www/evolpsyc/rimd.htm
What is the safest operating system for a personal computer? That question has many answers - but Windows is never one of them. Slashdot's recent essay on this subject is based on the work of the highly regarded (by some) mi2g company. mi2g's conclusions will please BSD and Mac OS X users and seriously irk most Linux users. The basic article is straightforward; it's the devil in the details that's most interesting. If you haven't read through a flame war recently, this is your golden opportunity. The bottom line seems to be if you know what you're doing and are willing to work at low-level configuration, BSD, Mac OS X, and Linux can all hold off most intrusion attempts. The story for out-of-the-box installs - i.e. most consumers - seems to be different. What is unarguable is that there are quite a few people with a lot of time on their hands who care way too much about brand names.
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/02/21/142239.shtml
The short answer, as recently noted and discussed on Slashdot, is yes. The author of the Markovan-based CRM114 spam filters claims human-created filters are only 99.84% accurate while CRM114 and the competing Dolby-type noise-reduction DSPAM are between 99.983 and 99.984% accurate. That doesn't sound like a big difference until you realize that the human-based system misclassifies a message roughly 1 in every 625 messages while CRM1114 and DSPAM only misclassify 1 in 6,250 messages on average. That's important, if you, like our reviewer, average over 1,500 e-mails a day, virtually all of them spam. The always-fascinating Slashdot discussions both clarify and amuse.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/02/24/0025219.shtml
Actually, it seems everybody is Belle de Jour. Belle de Jour is the nom-de-plume of a British callgirl who writes a popular and well written blog of the same name. There's been a great deal of speculation about Belle de Jour's real identity, and as a joke somebody, possibly Belle herself, created a Web confessional that allows anyone to confess to being Belle. The real attraction is the large number of highly amusing confessions from netsurfers who swear they really are Belle de Jour. On the other hand, the real attraction of Belle's excellent blog should be blindingly obvious.
Belle de Jour: http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/
I Am Belle de Jour: http://www.iambelledejour.com/
ONLINE TRAVEL
Destruction of UK Traffic Cameras
There's a lively debate in the UK about the efficacy of speed cameras. Their supporters view them as a valuable tool in the drive to reduce fatalities and injury from road traffic accidents, whereas their critics view them as sneaky, ineffective, and simply a means of raising revenue. As is often the case with people who hold entrenched positions, there are those who favor direct action, and this site shows the photographic results of people who have taken the opposite-of-law into their own hands and trashed a speed camera. Anyone who has ever seen that flash from the roadside, and then received a speeding ticket through the mail shortly afterwards will chuckle at how mad people get even.http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2a.htm
http://uem.minimanga.com/
For beautiful cities with long and dramatic histories, Saint Petersburg is tough to beat. Founded 300 years ago by Tsar Peter the Great to be Russia's "Window on the West", this elegant city has witnessed Tsarist intrigue, the Bolshevik revolution, an epic siege and mass starvation in World War II, and the fall of communism. This history also explains the many name changes the city has undergone, from St. Petersburg to Petrograd to Leningrad and back to St. Petersburg. Frosted Windows is a collection of printed materials compiled by the library at the University of Kansas which displays Western views of the city over the course of its long history, including letters, travelogues, natural histories, maps, and even recipes. This is not an illustrated history but rather a series of intellectual snapshots of the saga of one of the world's great cities.
http://www.keenwebs.com/KSRL_FrostedWindows/home.cfm
Explore Montreal with this group of clandestine risk-takers known as Urban Exploration Montreal (UEM). UEM seeks to explore abandoned, secured, or underground areas of their city. View photographs from several treks into storage areas, tunnels, and other places off-limits to the public. While the intrigue of this site is the many images to peruse, you may also be fascinated by this mysterious group that brings Montreal's underbelly to the Internet. Anonymity has been the biggest factor in the success of this brigade. Visitors to the site will be treated to photos from places such as the abandoned Canada Malt plant, the occupied St. James United Church, and beneath the Peel Pub. There are also video links available, but many of these are broken or unavailable. UEM provides a stunning look at Montreal through the camera lens and via the audacity of a small group of curious explorers.
"The city sprawls in all directions, a hectic mass infecting the earth it rests on." You could easily mistake this to be a disgruntled denizen's description of New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, or dozens of other metropoli. Surprise! The Sleepy City site is referring to Brisbane. Dsankt, the site's author, is not much of a writer - there's not even an "About" page to document this excellent photo gallery. We'd like identifiers at least, if not descriptions. Dsankt is too coy: "The site is kept brief intentionally, the locations in the photos are not revealed for good reasons." OK, maybe Dsankt has had to trespass to capture his favorite tunnels, viaducts, and construction sites in Brisbane. Or maybe he forgot the location after a long hike back to the car in the dark.... Digicam enthusiasts may be disappointed: most of the images are scans of film prints. Half of the navigation points to external sites. If you're short on time, visit either the NSW or Upside galleries to appreciate the photographer's range of dsanktimony.
http://dsankt.brisurbex.com/
Peter Murphy's blog is nothing like Murphy's Law. Things go right, there. Murphy offers panoramic perspectives in QuickTime VR, which provide a full 360-degree view of the scenes he photographs. Some of the material is really cool. Angkor Wat takes on a nearly three-dimensional effect as you pan toward it. Other panoramas leave you scratching your head, wondering if maybe it's just an Aussie thing. But then, aren't most blogs that way? Be sure to take a spin around the lavish main reading room of the State Library of Victoria. Is all that wood merely decorative, or did somebody steal all the books?
http://www.mediavr.com/blog/
Couch surfing is a term we first remember from Bran Van 3000's "Couch Surfer", but CouchSurfing is an online network designed to help you make new friends around the world and provide you with a couch to sleep on, or a bed if you're lucky, during your travels. The site currently has over a thousand registered couch surfers from 59 different countries. Members can hook up with each other online, make arrangements to meet, and stay with each other. There is a system whereby members become "vouched for" or "verified" that minimizes the chances that you find yourself sleeping on the couch of, say, a German cannibal, and you can pick and choose who you want staying in your own home. The world is a small place, and with CouchSurfing it gets a bit smaller.
http://www.couchsurfing.com/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Installation artists have been making their mark on the landscape of the west of England since around 2500 BCE when some intrepid Neolithic folk decided to erect a stone circle at a place called Stonehenge. Richard Box, artist in residence at the University of Bristol's Department of Physics, continues this tradition with his remarkable work, "Field". He placed 1,301 household fluorescent bulbs under power lines in a field, which then lit up as they picked up waste electromagnetic emissions from the overhead cables. Alas, "Field" is no more, despite an extended run, but you can take a look at pictures of this remarkable work at Box's Web site. You can see some of his other work there too, including our favorite, a rotating, pulsating, elevating, sound and movement activated, life-size neon brain.http://www.boxyit.com/r/index.htm
That Hammer is a bad mutha.... OK, the question is: does the world need a Jewish Shaft? More to the point, is a film about a "sexy and powerful Jewish action hero" going to be a commercial success? Writer/producer Jonathan Kesselman sure hopes so. In a friendly and funny take-off of the famous blaxploitation genre, the Hebrew Hammer, like his inspiration, is "a sex machine with all the chicks" but first he takes them home to meet his mother. The movie stars Adam Goldberg (the Jewish soldier in "Saving Private Ryan") in the title role, and while the plot looks a little infantile (you were expecting maybe "War and Peace"?), it's all good fun. You can download the theme song as an MP3, watch the trailer, buy a T-shirt and even play Gentile Invaders. Just about the only thing you can't do is find the movie anywhere.
http://www.thehebrewhammer.com/default.asp
M.C. Escher was a master of the design technique known as tessellations. Simply, tessellations are designs that fill a page without overlapping to form a pattern. Explore various examples of this process as implemented by the purveyor of this site, David Annal. Besides Annal's personal gallery, visitors can view work by Escher and guests to the site. Also provided is a guide on how to create your own tessellated masterpiece. This guide explores various methods used to achieve the mosaic appearance of tessellation art. Other useful resource material is noted, such as the history of this art form and further readings.
http://www.tessellations.org/
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
For more selections, check out: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor
Pandora's Star
The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London
Medieval Swordsmanship: Illustrated Methods and Techniqueshttp://www.pickupyourowndamnsocks.com/
The Food Section is a New York City-oriented newsletter for serious restaurant patrons. The news is heavily slanted toward the Big Apple, but the recipes and articles have worldwide appeal. Recent issues of this weekly site have featured an article on how to make great crispy potato pancakes and a round-up of Los Angeles's sushi bars that won't steer you wrong. No subject seems too eclectic (as long as there's food involved) nor are mainstream topics shunned. The site is very tasty, without being too filling.
http://www.thefoodsection.com/
Humor can give wonderful perspective on stereotypes. And who is stereotyped more often than librarians? Refgrunt, a blog for librarians, often reads like the outline for a sitcom. Moral dilemmas abound. What's a public servant to do? On Feb. 11, for example, yoyology, a prolific poster, asked, "Have you ever tried to conduct a reference interview with a patron so jaw-droppingly attractive that you literally can't concentrate on answering their question?" Lady_Em, presumably a librarian, replied: "I want pictures!!!!!!... We have one patron that looks disconcertingly like Ben Affleck. I flirted with him consistently, and he flirted back, (I thought) right up until his petite, beautiful wife showed up.....sigh." Are these deskbound employees from central casting, or what? Some of the anecdotes and diary-like entries here may remind you of Drew Carey-esque farce. Sad to say, visiting Refgrunt is more fun than going to the library, but please don't tell your kids that. The archives go back to December 2003. You can join the community for free - even, apparently, if you're not a librarian. If you're into "dumb twelfth-grader" jokes, check out the Jan. 22, 2004 posting by pigchick.
http://www.refgrunt.com/
Okay, so you're not an avid reader. There are only so many hours in a day, and so many days in a life, right? We're in tune with that - it's why we're a digest. We winnow out the junk so that you don't have to, and offer links to some of the best material we run across. Which would be why we've included this link to the short stories available for free at East of the Web. Average story length's a scant four or five pages, but it's amazing what can be accomplished within such a compressed medium. Check out "After the Wink" by Carolyn Steele Agosta, among the many offerings here, and we bet you bookmark the site. If the stories aren't enough, you can discuss them with others, read critiques, play word games, and much more. Teachers will find a useful resource here, as well.
http://www.short-stories.co.uk/
Inside the Glamorous Writing Life
Tell the average person that you write for a living and they gaze at you in envy, confusion, or pity. Some will assume that you earn John Grisham-like piles of cash and spend most of your day communing with your muse in an elegant book-lined study without needing to worry about mundane things like tax returns, invoices, and rejection letters. That's a myth that writer John Scalzi is trying to dispel by documenting in text and images a typical day in his life. He works 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in a cluttered corner with only his dog for company and no workmates to gossip with over lunch. The comments section is worth a read, too, as writers of all varieties swap stories of what the work is really like on the front line, when they need it to pay their mortgages. Nobody claims to live in a mansion with a host of flunkies.http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/archives/000629.html
SURFING SCIENCE
Nothing like the destruction of Earth to spice up your year! Let us consider asteroid AL00667, a bit of rock that caused huge embarrassment in the astronomical world in January as it popped into view. Was it going to hit Earth or miss? Why guess? Get the real, confusing, politically charged retrospective in "Short Warning Times", an article posted Feb. 19 in the Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards area of NASA Ames Research Center's Web site. Researcher Clark Chapman poses questions both comical and scary: "How could there have been an official, if unmonitored and obscure, posting by the MPC (Minor Planet Center) based on a calculation implying a major asteroid impact the following day, without the MPC even realizing it? How could the data, on which the calculation was based, be kept private so that many of the world's asteroid experts could not evaluate the situation, long after the threat was being debated in a public chatroom?... Were the computer programs used by the MPC and JPL that evening truly state-of-the-art and, if not, did that contribute to the scary predictions? How could one JPL expert calculate something like 1-chance-in-four of a near-term impact disaster, when in fact the asteroid never passed within millions of miles of our planet?" Our own investigation has identified a passel of villains in the false alarm: Curiosity. Delay. A date with dinner. Cloud cover. A fouled fork mounting on a telescope in the UK. Fear of worldwide panic. It is reassuring to know our trusted stargazers and planetary protectors are always on top of the situation. Even so, this could happen again. So we must ask, did anyone even think to call Bruce Willis while all this was going down?NASA: http://128.102.38.40/impact/news_detail.cfm?ID=135
Those of you who are not the least bit intimidated by the mysteries of genetic mechanics will want to check out this animated tour of RNA interference - a process by which RNA is modified for various reasons - courtesy of Nature magazine. The custom viewer features a series of animated shorts or you can download the whole sequence and watch it on QuickTime. Even if you lack a background in genetics, like our reviewer, the results are stunning: it looks like some kind of genetic Star Wars space battle. The viewer includes a push-button glossary that illustrates and defines the various bodies and chemicals that facilitate the process.
http://www.nature.com/focus/rnai/animations/animation/animation.htm
Molecular Expressions transports visitors to a world hidden from the naked eye. These photographs taken through a microscope depict the molecular structure of just about everything imaginable. View microscopic images of beer and ice cream, as well as circuits, viruses, medications, and much more. Items that lack depth of color in life are transformed into a symphony of rainbows and look as if they could have inspired the many psychedelic rock posters that flooded the market in the '60s. While navigation of this site is overwhelming due to the many images and wealth of information concerning photomicrographs, the reward of finding these stunning images is well worth the journey.
http://www.molecularexpressions.com/
SOFTWARE
IE7: CSS Standards Compliance for Internet Explorer
This has to be one of the best hacks in the illustrious history of Web hacking. One of the many things that make web designers tear their hair out is the crappy level of standards compliance in Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE). One man decided to do something about it, and in an original way at that. Dean Edwards came up with a bunch of DHTML code that translates standard cascading stylesheets (CSS) into the (broken) form that MSIE can understand. What this means is that if you include his DHTML code in your Web pages, your Web visitors will get most of the standard CSS behavior even if they use MSIE, which MSIE should have been supporting from the beginning. This is still alpha code, but it's already very impressive.http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/