BREAKING SURF
| Wiki Spamming |
| Keep Track of Online Developments |
| Cities from Orbit |
| A Visual Record of World Travel |
| Photos of Old Vilnius |
| A Travel Phrasebook You'll Really Use |
| Hawaii and Beyond by Canoe |
| Community of Travelers Has Advice |
| Posters in American History |
| Images of Forestry |
| "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Shooting Underway |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| The Poetry of Henry Reed Also Poetry in Web Site |
| Covering Asimov |
| Debunking the Culture of Anxiety |
| The Truck That Survived Spielberg |
| Global Warming and Kilimanjaro |
| The Robot That Folds Origami |
| Robot Astronaut of the Future |
| Allsci's Take on Science |
| The Physics of Baseball |
| Umbrella Networking |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
This week's transit of Venus across the solar disk was, as you can imagine, extremely well covered online by astronomers all over the world. The event proved equally popular with netsurfers as Web sites all over the Net groaned under the load of their live webcam feeds and the many striking and large images. An Australian researcher told his country's ABC that this was the most watched video-streaming event ever there. The choice of online Venusian eye candy is wide, and many links to coverage can be found on the University of Lancashire's Transit of Venus page. If you don't feel like browsing through all those sites, a couple of good image collections can be found at TRACE and at the Institute for Solar Physics.ABC: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1128156.htm
Transit of Venus: http://www.transit-of-venus.org.uk:8883/ontheweb/
TRACE: http://vestige.lmsal.com/TRACE/transits/venus_2004/
Institute for Solar Physics: http://vt-2004.solarphysics.kva.se/
Copenhagen Consensus Reaches Consensus
Remember the Copenhagen Consensus (CC) we wrote about in NSD 10.11? Its mission is to determine the best way to spend limited resources to achieve the greatest benefit for humanity. According to the CC's calculations, humanity would benefit most by fighting health problems. Control of HIV and AIDS lies atop the CC's list, but combating malnutrition with micronutrients and controlling malaria rank second and fourth respectively. Global trade liberalization is second. The CC does not think much of efforts to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases and puts them at the bottom of its list of ways to spend global resources. Given that the CC was run by the same chap who wrote "The Skeptical Environmentalist", Bjorn Lomborg, we probably should not be too surprised at the low value placed on climate control.NSD 10.11 http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.11.html#BS3
CC: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
Media Leans to Right-Wing Bloggers
What blogs do the media professionals read? A nonscientific survey that ran from September 2003 through January 2004 elicited 140 responses from media pros, and found that places like Instapundit and Daily Dish place solidly in the top two. In the ever-shifting sands of the blogosphere, popular newcomers like Wonkette are underrepresented and obviously so are those blogs that didn't publicize the survey, but a LexisNexis search corroborates the results. Daniel Drezner, the blogger/pollster who ran the survey, notices a distinct right-wing bias in the results, but he's not sure if that disproves the notion of a liberal bias in the press or confirms it as a sort of negative evidence - since the press is left-wing, right-wingers look to blogs for news, the thinking goes.http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001321.html
Blogs are still big in China despite the Chinese government's busy March spent shutting down several leading Chinese blogs. The early links in this Salon article show some interesting screenshots posted by Wang Jianshuo, a blogger with a day job at Microsoft's Shanghai operation. The full article describes a China that, while seemingly more tolerant of the Net than other totalitarian countries, has seen a huge increase in the number of people detained or sentenced for Internet-related offenses over the past couple of years. In such an environment, bloggers almost by definition are testing the ice for thickness as they inch across the frozen pond of personal opinion. Bloggers note that blogging fosters crosscultural understanding, and it may serve that purpose - and as long as politics stays out of bloggin, the Chinese government is happy to let it go on. This is all high-minded political philosophy, and it doesn't answer the question of how blogging blossomed into a hobby undertaken by an estimated 350,000 Chinese. The answer? Sex. That got the place jumping. As Salon makes clear, sex chat is on Beijing's OK list. Talk about politics isn't, and the Chinese government isn't keen on negotiation.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/06/04/china_blogs/index.html
Amnesty International's Best Abuses of 2003
Amnesty International's (AI) 2004 report focuses on the transgressions of 2003 and cites the UN's weak credibility and relevance in the face of US conduct in Iraq. It notes that thousands have suffered "...unlawful detention, unfair trial and torture...", which made us wonder if there's such a thing as fair torture. In any case, it's an interesting read - particularly since they tend to put terms like "war on terror" or "terrorism" in quotation marks. This typographic approach seems intended to denigrate the terms. The report also makes frequent use of "so-called" before "war on terror". AI reveals its bias another way. On its Iraq page, the report expresses US dirty deeds in the active voice - e.g. "US troops shot dead or injured scores of Iraqi demonstrators" - but terrorist violence is passive - e.g. "In August the UN headquarters in Baghdad was bombed...." Despite the report's selective agenda, or maybe because of it, it's worth your time to thoroughly peruse it.http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/index-eng/
Nudity and Psychological Warfare
Many of the pictures of prisoner abuse in Iraq are pretty disturbing, but they follow a long-lived historical trend. Nations have used pornographic images as part of psychological warfare operations since World War II, if not earlier. The Sex and Psychological Operations Web site is a serious examination of the role of pornography in psychological warfare. The well illustrated site presents a disturbing lesson in what nations do in wartime. The images aren't safe for work and they are searing, but they have value nonetheless. The site lends credence to the claim that the pictures from Iraq were part of an abortive psychological warfare effort, although it cannot excuse them. This may not seem timely anymore, but we've been sitting on this review because the site went down for a while.http://www.psywarrior.com/sexandprop.html
Alex Polier's Education in 21st-Century Reporting
The Internet is rapidly turning Warhol's 15 minutes of fame into a nightmare. For an example, read this story by Alexandra Polier in New York Magazine. You may recall her as the intern who supposedly had an affair with John Kerry. The accusation was completely false, and Polier's article is an attempt to find the source of this vicious lie and document its effects on her life. Suffice it to say that contemporary journalism cares more for rumor than for truth. That a scoop scoops reporting. And that even your own best friends can poison your life.http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/politics/national/features/9221/index.html
The Business of Craigslist, and Craig
Do you want to sell a couch? Or do you want to hook up for some casual sex? Only one site lets you do both easily and that site is Craigslist. If you live in the Bay Area, Orlando, Montreal, or one of 40-something other cities, you should find out what Craigslist can do for you if you don't know already. An Online Journalism Review article looks at the threat the regional Craigslist sites pose to newspaper classified-ad income as well as the philosophy of the site's originator and namesake, Craig Newmark. Ironically, the article notes, newspaper people often blame the site for downturns in ad income while recognizing that most of the Craigslist ads would never run in a newspaper.http://ojr.org/ojr/business/1086222946.php
Would You Like Fries and a Song with That?
McDonald's is following in the footsteps of Pepsi - which did it with iTunes - and is offering American customers the opportunity to download a song with their Big Mac Extra Value Meal. It's the usual arrangement: you buy the meal and you get a code you can enter at the Sony Connect online music store to download the song. We bring this to your attention because, as CNET points out, it's an illustration of how the major online music outfits are allying with consumer-goods companies to push their music services. In good conscience, we must also point you to the Web site of "Super Size Me", the amusing and thought-provoking film that illustrates the dangers of adhering to a McDonald's diet.Sony Connect: http://www.connect.com/
CNET: http://news.com.com/McDonald's:+Would+you+like+a+song+with+that/2100-1027_3-5225854.html
"Super Size Me": http://www.supersizeme.com/
Microsoft Patents the Double Click
No, it's not a joke. Microsoft really has patented the use of time-based clicks to launch applications. True, the specific patent applies only to using the technique in the context of a "limited resource computing device", but who really knows what that means these days? Presumably, Microsoft is aiming at the palmtop market, but the notion that this idea is "non-obvious", one of the criteria of a valid patent, is absurd, especially so given the many years of prior button-pressing art in computing applications that go all the way back to Xerox PARC and the birth of the mouse. Microsoft first applied for the patent in 1999, abandoned the claim, and re-filed in July 2002. This patent is liable to become a poster child for the popular argument that the US software patent system is horribly broken. On second thought, maybe patent reform is Microsoft's motivation. If so, the company isn't telling. Wired has the story, with a link to the patent itself.http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63707,00.html
Apple Announces Wireless Music Hub, New High-Speed Macs
Apple made two fairly significant announcements this week. First, the company introduced the AirPort Express, a nifty Wi-Fi hub that, in addition to all typical wireless access point functions, can also be used to wirelessly stream your iTunes music to a conventional stereo. The hub has audio outputs - just plug it into a power socket, attach an audio cable that leads to your stereo or powered speakers, turn on iTunes, and stream your music anywhere within wireless range. The portable $130 unit also has a USB port. Apple also announced new Power Mac G5 models, liquid-cooled 64-bit dual CPU machines that are clearly aimed at the scientific and multimedia creation markets, despite their reasonably consumer friendly prices.AirPort Express: http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/
PowerMac G5: http://www.apple.com/powermac/
Travelzoo Stock Actually Worth Something
Way back in 1998, a discount travel Web site called Travelzoo was a penniless start-up with no money for a flashy ad campaign. Instead, of spending on ads, the site offered people three shares of stock just for visiting and another seven shares for referring others to the site. A half-dozen years later, Travelzoo shares (TZOO) sell for around $18, not far off the recent $23 high that Wired noted in an article on the company. That's a pretty good return - Travelzoo stock has split, so an early Travelzoo visitor with ten shares would be $450 richer at that high. Unfortunately, most of the people who received Travelzoo stock didn't know they had to register them when the company went public back in 2002. Meanwhile, the company is actually making money, which goes to prove that you should never sneer at a piece of the action, no matter how unlikely a payoff.Travelzoo: http://www.travelzoo.com/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63657,00.html
There are a lot of books and magazines in the world, so many that the ISBN book numbering system had to expand to deal with them all. The powers that be in the world of book numbering have decreed that ISBN databases should start converting to the new 13-digit standard by next year. As is common with such seemingly trivial issues, all is not as straightforward as it may appear. A huge number of legacy systems in publishing houses and retail channels are not designed to cope with longer ISBN numbers. It's kind of like the Year 2000 problem, except that this will not cause any librarians to hole up in the hills with survival rations and a shotgun. ISBN.org has a good explanation of what all the fuss is about.
http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/transition.asp
New Strategies for Pop-Up Ads Circumventing Blockers
Spam is on the hitlist of Internet annoyances, but if you think back to before the spam plague, you might remember when we were all complaining about pop-up ads. They're still around, and still annoying those folks who haven't figured out how to block them - it's fairly easy with either the right webbrowser or an add-on like Google Toolbar. CNET reports, however, that pop-up ads are finding ways around these obstacles (we should note that Safari is still rock-steady for us). This is war, and your screen is the battleground. Oddly enough, much as you may loathe and despise the pop-up ad, like spam, the format works. People actually click on ads and buy stuff, and the format is virtually a sure bet for online advertisers. CNET reports that pop-up makers have discarded HTML commands that open a new window in favor of JavaScript or a Dynamic HTML workarounds that bypass most ad-blocking software. The battle rages on, and we're stuck in the middle.http://news.com.com/Can't+stop+the+pop-ups/2100-1024_3-5226273.html
Nike knows marketing. In a new approach to an old topic, Nike commissioned 15 film makers to make short videos about the meaning of speed. You really need a broadband connection to appreciate the films, some of which are rather clever. Of course, some make you think about what speed might actually mean. And you thought the swoosh was fast....
http://www.gawker.com/artofspeed/
Don Moore has conducted a detailed survey of the DNS (informal poll: does the "S" stand for "server" or "system"?) software in use around the Net. TinyDNS author Daniel Bernstein completed the last such survey in 2002 and Moore wanted to update the data. The results are somewhat predictable. The venerable BIND server commands 70.1% of DNS installations, with Bernstein's TinyDNS coming in at 15.5%, and Microsoft DNS Server down at 6.2%. Moore is the author of the MyDNS server, which came in at number four with 2.7%. Moore also includes data on which specific versions are operating and on the number and character of errors encountered in conducting the survey - mostly query timeouts.
http://mydns.bboy.net/survey/
ONLINE CULTURE
Having caused havoc in blog comment systems, webspammers are now targeting wikis, which, as you should know by now, are collaborative Web sites that invite anyone to edit the site content - the Wikipedia is probably the best known example. Most wiki sites have what is known as a "sandbox" area where users can try out their changes. Spammers have discovered that if they fill wiki sandboxes with links to their sites, they will get a higher Google rank. Thus the carnage begins. Netcraft explains the problem and tells how a recent Google ranking contest proved the effectiveness of wiki spamming. In the SEO Challenge page-ranking contest, whoever floats their Web page to the top of Google's list for a given phrase wins an Apple iPod. Some of the top rankings were attained by wiki spammers. Fortunately, there are countermeasures, such as making wiki sandboxes invisible to Google. Netcraft has a good explanation of the mess.Netcraft: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/04/wikis_the_next_frontier_for_spammers.html
SEO Challenge: http://www.darkblue.com/seochallenge/
Keep Track of Online Developments
ToxicBytes.com tracks the appearance of new computer and Web stuff. Sometimes that means tech news like LG's announcement of a multimedia refrigerator, gaming news like a new patch for Battlefield Vietnam, or maybe a new Babelicious gallery. The reason we go is to keep abreast of breaking developments in the field of computer security. The Security page is simple and unintimidating. Among the notes we uncovered during a recent pass: information relating to the first known 64-bit virus, Apple's approach to OS X security, and a spam jam on German governmental systems. It's as worthy of a bookmark as any other collection of links.http://www.toxicbytes.com/
ONLINE TRAVEL
We just can't get enough of satellite and space photography sites. Our latest toy is NASA's Cities Collection, subtitled "Outstanding Astronaut Photography of Cities Taken during Space Flight". The views vary in quality but are all clear and precise - just the thing to help your kid with a geography project. You can start with the site's drop-down menus, but it's more fun to work with the interactive world map and zoom in on your locale of choice. Once you've found the city you seek, a pop-up offers a thumbnail and a list of photos of the city taken from space. A mouse click supplies information about the cameras, exposure, and nadir for every picture. There's even a cool Low Oblique Space Photo Footprint Calculator to help you figure out exactly where the images fit in the greater scheme of things. Hours of fun.http://city.jsc.nasa.gov/cities/default.htm
A Visual Record of World Travel
Shawna Scherbarth gets around. Since 2001, she's explored Japan, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, southwest China, Scotland, and Cuba. Fortunately for us, she's good at both photography and writing. The Travel Photography section of her far-reaching The Visual Record site offers over 650 photos she took from 2001-2003, each with a paragraph or two of background. While many tourists spend time hunting for tickets or passports, Scherbarth seems to always look for, and find, the right color shot at the right moment. "Incense Coils" (Southwest China), "Sunlight on Morro Lighthouse" (Havana) and other photos seem worthy of National Geographic. Here and there, Scherbarth provides a teaser about herself in a foreign land: "China is the first place I've been that felt well and truly foreign from the first minute I arrived," she writes. She describes Cuba as "a highly photogenic country, with the most camera-friendly people I have yet had the pleasure to meet...." Scherbarth remains almost anonymous on her own site, humbled, perhaps, by the magnificent sights she remembers and efficiently presents. She's the sort of enthusiast who makes you want to travel with camera in hand yourself.http://www.thevisualrecord.com/pages/travelphotography.htm
Now that they're out from under Soviet occupation and are members of the European Union, the nations of the Baltic are today the focus of tourists, historians, and culture lovers. One city that truly deserves this attention is Vilnius, the ancient capital of Lithuania nestled in the valley of the Neris River. Founded in 1323, Vilnius is a city rich in architectural treasures, and this collection of pre-World War II photographs from Vilnius University Library portrays not only the city's superb monuments but also the streets, squares, and environs of a Vilnius that first belonged to Tsarist Russia and then was the capital of independent Lithuania between the World Wars. The panoramas are especially beautiful, illustrating the city's rolling hills and river vistas. The site is also of interest as a history of Lithuanian photography.
http://www.vu.lt/mb/Vilnius/index_en.htm
A Travel Phrasebook You'll Really Use
Have you ever struggled to find the German for "But I don't want a new yellow frog, I just wanted a beer"? If so, you need to dump your traditional tourist phrase book, forget about learning verbs, and get some real answers to your language questions here. It starts easily with translations for "Why don't you speak English?" and works up to "Don't 'imperialist pig' me, my good man" and "I bet those machine guns are fake" so it clearly can cater for any moment when a tourist needs the quiet voice of diplomacy. Our favorite section is the one meant to help the tourist romance the locals. What woman could fail to be charmed by "Your mascara is peeling" or "Those have got to be silicon"? Languages covered to date are French, Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Danish, Dutch, and Chinese.http://www.zompist.com/phrases.html
When folks say they spent their summer on a cruise to Hawaii, the image conjured up is one of endless buffets and shuffleboard. Not so for the mariners aboard the Hokule'a, a 62-foot-long canoe that has traveled to the northwestern Hawaiian Islands and beyond "to raise awareness of Hawai'i's native habitats." The vessel's main contact with the outside world is with schoolchildren, who ask questions of the crew via satellite phone, and receive updates through a journal and photo diary on the site by embedded reporter Jan TenBruggencate. This has got to score close to top on the list of most amazing ways to spend your summer, once you get over the sea-sickness.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/hokulea/
Community of Travelers Has Advice
Sometimes a travel guidebook doesn't cut it. You want to hear about the best things to do and see in a new destination from someone who's been there, done that. That's where BallOfDirt.com comes in. The great thing about the site is that it lets anyone publish their pictures and stories; the bad thing about the site is that it lets anyone publish their pictures and stories. Basically, the format breaks down to the next generation of mind-numbing slide-projector vacation play-by-play. Fortunately, the site offers a rating system, and once there are dozens of accounts in each locale, the bad ones will drop to the bottom. For now, however, you've got to slog through the bad with the good, and the site seems to take a while to load, which could be frustrating if you're paying by the minute at some third-world cybercafe.http://www.ballofdirt.com/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
The Smithsonian American Art Museum has a site to accompany its touring exhibition of posters by leading poster artists of the last century. The FAQ explains technical jargon like lithograph and woodblock printing and hosts RealAudio clips of interviews with vintage poster collectors, but the stars here are the images themselves which reflect popular obsessions of the last hundred years. The posters feature topics as diverse as civil rights, the World's Fair in 1939, and even landing on the Moon. Certain posters have become iconic, such as army recruitment posters; others such as Peter Max's "From the Moon" are simply elegant design pieces that reflect the art scene of their eras. Where appropriate, the art movements the posters comment are explained via multimedia files so that students can learn to reach behind the poster for a deeper understanding.http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/posters/mainmenu.html
Check out Forestry Images for an up-close look at the ecosystem of forests. The site presents a wealth of photographs and sketches featuring flora, fauna, and diseases. The incredible number of images is somewhat overwhelming, but the resulting intimate portrait of woodlands is breathtaking. Photographers have collaborated to present a comprehensive and intricate look at woodlands. Using the Advanced Search, you can find images by keyword, photographer, or subject. Be patient as the drop-down menus can be long. With close to 18,000 images uploaded by over 500 photographers, this online portal will serve in years to come as an excellent resource for students, educators, and anyone interested in preserving Earth's rapidly disappearing green space.
http://www.forestryimages.org/
"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Shooting Underway
The official site of the progressing "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie isn't much to look at. But, sort of like Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe, we expect a lot out of it if you stick around long enough. Right now, it's a blog from assorted people on the set, including screenplay writer/adapter Karey KirkPatrick (Douglas Adams himself wrote the drafts) and the producers, which should get more interesting as we get closer to the film's release, planned for next summer.http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/
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/ |
I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick
The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War
A Hat Full of Sky: The Continuing Adventures of Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men
Forge of HeavenThe Poetry of Henry Reed Also Poetry in Web Site
Even if you dislike the writing of World War II poet and dramatist Henry Reed, you may enjoy the Poetry of Henry Reed Web site, thanks to the excellent attention to detail. For example, the intro page cleverly uses a dismantled gun for the index of Reed's poems, symbolic of his most famous poem, "Naming of Parts". Elements of the mechanism link to Reed's poetry in a twist on the standard drop-down menu - which, thank goodness, also exists. You can easily explore each poem further as each poem page provides helpful links to literary criticism and, sometimes, embedded links in the text itself. Audio files let you listen to most poems, read by Frank Duncan and Reed himself. Other features cover Reed's life and work, and even parodies of the latter, with equal panache. This is a poetry site that enhances a reader's experience and uses the available wealth of the Internet to do so.http://www.solearabiantree.net/namingofparts/
Publishers have long known the make-or-break importance of book covers, but when a book is out of print, who but collectors pay attention to its cover? Well, at least one library does, at least if the books come from a famous and prolific author: Isaac Asimov, whose name is practically synonymous with science fiction. Thanks to the West Virginia University (WVU) Libraries' Isaac Asimov Collection, you can refresh your memory or make new ones of the countless covers that once graced Asimov's not easily counted bibliography, a lot of it non-fiction. Much of the fanciful or farfetched cover art in the collection is still arresting, even though some artists' conceptions from the '50s and '60s may strike you as corny. We can only imagine how excited readers must have been to see some of these covers for the first time, often at a time when science fiction was stigmatized. Some visitors will feel nostalgic, and maybe a little sad that Asimov, who died in 1992, isn't alive to marvel at today's technology and tomorrow's with his signature enthusiasm. This page of thumbnails might even prompt you to turn off the video game and (re)read some Asimov for a change.
http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/exhibits/asimov/rare/index.htm
Debunking the Culture of Anxiety
Do you worry that we live in a culture of anxiety? Hypocrite! Anxiety Culture, a mostly humorous e-zine, brims with rants, spoof ads, and alternative viewpoints that help you avoid anxiety. It suggests that our fears are played upon by individuals with vested interests, such as security companies, until we live a life of fear and restraint doing jobs that 60% of workers (in the UK, anyway) feel are of no use to society. Wouldn't it be great if the most unpleasant jobs were the highest paid and people only worked in employment for essential, beneficial, or enjoyable tasks? Bosses won't like the section that advises readers to phone in sick and the US government may argue the e-zine's claim that the Pentagon mislaid $2.3 trillion, but Anxiety Culture has a point to make amid the fun and it makes it with practical hints for the average worker which at the very least will raise a smile.http://www.anxietyculture.com/
The Truck That Survived Spielberg
Quick, what was Steven Spielberg's first full-length movie? Hint: it's a four-letter word. Another hint: It's not "Jaws". Stumped? Then truck on over here, good buddy - you'll find the answer and much more, besides. If you've never seen the movie that answers the above question, "Duel", and watch it, you'll gain new appreciation of the term "road rage". You ought to see the flick before clicking on over to 10-4 Magazine's article on the truck antagonist that survived the filming. We'll wait.... OK, back? Revisit your nightmares here.http://www.tenfourmagazine.com/feature/2004/5.html
SURFING SCIENCE
Global Warming and Kilimanjaro
So, you think global warming is a tree-hugger conspiracy theory? Now, some might consider PBS the home of some strange ideas, but its NOVA program is well respected by the science-minded of all flavors and persuasions. It presents good science. Take a look at the NOVA program "Volcano above the Clouds", on the ice cap and glaciers of Kilimanjaro. Pretty sobering stuff, isn't it? This episode's companion Web site is a brilliant exposition of a serious problem. Did you know that two nations nearly went to war over the melt from a shrinking glacier? And why is it that every glacier on the planet is shrinking at a good clip, and none are expanding? This is a site for both believers and skeptics (who may well need a change of course after their visit). All it fails to provide are quick solutions.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/kilimanjaro/
This origami-folding robot is a doctoral project at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. It's an amazing demonstration of a robot that does material manipulations, which is what origami is all about. The site is well illustrated with photos and QuickTime movies. Be sure to view the robot making a hat. Watch the end carefully. That's the part where the human tries to do the same folds. Paper (and sheet metal) manipulation is an ideal and common usage of industrial robots, and watching this machine in action, with its single, highly maneuverable tool and a simple jig, is a course in the nature and design of simple robots. The added plus is the origami results of the robot's labors.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~devin/
Robonaut is a humanoidy robot NASA and DARPA are developing for extravehicular activities in space. The technology is extreme cutting edge. The project Web site provides a clear picture of the project and the technologies associated with its subsystems. Robonaut's current life status is gestation; it doesn't physically exist yet but excellent simulations show the project's potential, and some can be viewed on the site. The site changes every few months as the project advances. Robonaut's potential is both fascinating and scary - and it doen't help that it looks like a wasp-waisted Rocketeer sliced through the mid-section.
http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er_er/html/robonaut/robonaut.html
Allsci is an e-zine that publishes a few articles a month, near as we can tell. We were attracted by the article entitled "A Home Test for Parallel Universes", likely because we've often wondered if we aren't living in a parallel universe, ourselves. The home test is inexpensive and surprisingly easy to conduct, but we're not sure or smart enough to even know whether the results really do indicate the presence of a parallel universe or whether this is explainable by plain ol' quantum physics. Other article in Allsci cover topics such as why life isn't likely to exist on Mars, statistical manipulation (a must-read), and a critique of NASA. Whether you agree or disagree with the presentations offered here, we bet you'll be tempted to bookmark the site.
http://www.allsci.com/parallel.html
For most baseball fans, knowing that Eric Gagne can regularly throw a fastball near 100 mph is physics enough. But speed, distance, gravity and other factors all affect the game. No one knows this better than Alan Nathan, a nuclear-particle physicist. His fascination with collisions between subatomic particles carries over into collisions between bat and ball. Even fans who care little about science, or baseball, will find relevant topics on his Web site, the Physics of Baseball. Nathan's tour de force is a 50-minute streaming lecture on the physics of hitting home runs. We learned, for instance, that when a pitcher throws a 90-mph fastball, it reaches home plate in 4/10 of a second, and the batter has only 2/10 of a second to decide what to do and do it. His PowerPoint presentations include titles such as "Did Sammy Sosa Take Physics 101?", "A Comparative Study of Wood and Aluminum Baseball Bats" and "The Physics of Baseball: Just How Did McGuire (sic) Hit 70?" There's plenty here for fans to digest, including links to background on other relevant topics such as acoustics, bat speed, and sport technology. Some lucky kid is probably devouring this stuff right now, years before he breaks Mark McGwire's single-season home-run record, with certainty and faith that knowledge is power.
http://www.npl.uiuc.edu/~a-nathan/pob/
Umbrella.net was immediately met with skepticism by our reviewer in Portland, Ore. It rains all the time there, and people never use umbrellas or bumbershoots. You get used to it. The concept of umbrella networking, however, is intriguing. In places where people carry umbrellas, they tend to open them up all at once as rain begins to fall. There are several ways of looking at this phenomenon. One way is to look at the people involved as wimps. Another is to consider the potential for an ad hoc network based purely upon what Umbrella.net terms "coincidence of need". The site envisions a set of routers and nodes attached to each umbrella, which would create evanescent networks that operate only during times of coincidence of need - that is, in this case, rain - dissipating thereafter. It's a pretty elaborate project, with umbrellas that light up and have embedded sensors and Bluetooth hardware, and more. It seems a classic case of a solution in search of a problem. For those of us who don't bother with umbrellas, it'd be nice if we could carry our Wi-Fi-enabled PDA around without having to stuff it into a Ziplock bag. Element-proof the little suckers, and we'd be happy.
http://www.undertheumbrella.net/