BREAKING SURF
| Community-Recommended Surfing |
| Human-Powered Spam-Filtering at a Cost |
| I-Names Try to Block Spam |
| Accents and Dialects of the British Isles |
| The US, West to East |
| The Grand Canyon |
| Mount St. Helens, 1980 |
| Swedish Street Art |
| Joseph Wu, Origami Master |
| Body-Art Art |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Love Letters |
| Chaucer in Audio |
| Becoming a Know-It-All |
| Hulk Blog Smash Hit |
| Interactive Medical Simulations |
| Tracking a Mars Rover's Tracks |
| Lunar Panoramas |
| The USSR's Quest for the Moon |
| Virtual Apollo Guidance Computer |
| Keep an Eye on Mount St. Helens |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
The 2004 Presidential Election: Maps Tell the Story
If you look at the typical red vs. blue map of state electoral results in the US (see USA Today), you clearly see that President Bush won the majority of states. It looks like a huge victory, and in strategic terms, it certainly is. But the state map does not tell the whole story and beautifully illustrates how incomplete information can distort the truth. A map of states shows that the South and West are solid Bush country, but a second USA Today map, of counties, reveals numerous enclaves of Kerry support within the solid red Bush states. The South and West are not quite as solidly pro-Bush as the state map indicates. Robert Vanderbei takes analysis a step further by shading counties according to proportion of Presidential vote, which shows that the South and Southwest are far more evenly divided than any other map would lead you to believe. Electoral Vote Predictor 2004 compares this year to the 2000 election by county, and ESRI adds height to indicate county population. Mandate or not, the President, like any politician, will do whatever the heck he wants in power, but it's worth remembering that he only won by some 3 million votes out of 116 million cast (Bush: 59,645,158; Kerry/Nader: 56,553,949).USA Today 1: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/
USA Today 2: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm
Vanderbei: http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/
Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: http://electoral-vote.com/
ESRI: http://www.esri.com/industries/elections/graphics/results2004_lg.jpg
The Voting Process: Not without Issues
For such a huge and contentious effort, the 2004 election was remarkable free of serious problems (so far as we know, the conspiracists would add). But whenever 116 million people get together, it's only natural to expect some issue to crop up. The armies of lawyers and witnesses seem to have suppressed any blatant vote-rigging within acceptable noise levels - only the naive would think that you can eliminate all fraud in such a huge and dispersed election effort. Most of the reported glitches relate to electronic vote machines. Wired brings together several stories of malfunctioning (rigged?) machines in Ohio, North Carolina, and San Francisco. We expect that over time more such stories will emerge, although we doubt they'll impact the results. Perhaps the most rigorous post mortem of electronic voting is being coordinated by Black Box Voting, which has issued what may be the most massive Freedom of Information Act request ever, seeking electronic voting records from numerous districts around the country. These serious techno-geeks are tackling a serious job. Why isn't a government agency doing this kind of thing? No, don't answer that.Wired: http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65609,00.html
Black Box Voting: http://blackboxvoting.org/#foia
2004 Presidential Candidate Personal Glimpses
Someday, probably sooner than later, people will write and publish books about this year's Presidential campaign. The most engrossing books will be those that focus on personal portraits by those close to the candidates. Until that time, you can subsist on a news-lite version of events from the writers at Newsweek, who condense the grueling campaign, as viewed from the candidates' points of view, into a couple of pages of print. Both campaigns granted the Newsweek team extraordinary access to the campaigners, and the team members, once the election passed, were able to relate what they found, especially the personal attributes of the candidates as they saw them from up close. The final product is a shallow view, necessarily condensed by the requirements of print space, but it hints at much larger aspects of the campaign story which, when fully told, will make for terrific reading. It's worth a few minutes now.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6407226/site/newsweek/
Titan has long puzzled astronomers with its dense atmosphere, unique among moons in the solar system. With the Cassini-Huygens mission settled safely in position in the Saturn system, scientists now have a powerful means for unraveling some of its mystery. Cassini's trajectory and sensors gave scientists their first glimpse of Titan's surface, and showed it streaky and free of craters, which suggests a young, dynamic surface affected by wind. Radar images taken from within a thousand miles show light and dark areas with no mountains or valleys. The radar scan shows details down to only about a thousand feet in size, so it's not super sharp. So far, the probe has only mapped about 1% of the surface this way. The strange observations have given scientists much to speculate about and new reason for looking forward to the Christmas Eve release of the Huygens probe, which should land on Titan in January and send back a wealth of data.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/titana/index.cfm
US Air Force Commissions Study of Teleportation
Did you know that the US Air Force is using hard-earned tax dollars to study teleportation? It is the job of the military to study everything and anything which might contribute to global world domination, so we can't fault honest soldiers for tossing money at even the most unlikely possibilities. It's what they do and if some good science comes out of it, even negative findings, then more power to them. But this? There is evidence that quantum teleportation can exist, but the Air Force paid $25,000 for "Teleportation Physics Report", a proposal to spend $1 million per year to study "Star Trek"-like matter transmission. Somebody is pulling a scam on the flyboys to fund bogus studies of thoroughly debunked pseudoscience. Fortunately, there's no indication that anybody is taking this seriously, and it may be just a case of the wrong guy being handed $25,000 to write a coherent paper on the subject - which is a completely different problem of scientific oversight. The paper is not entirely a waste of space since it does gather together an impressive number of references to various real scientific disciplines such as legit quantum-teleportation research. But nobody's going to be teleporting troops to Iraq to beat the high cost of jet fuel any time soon. USA Today has the scoop and Slashdot has an entertaining discussion of this mess."Teleportation Physics Report": http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/teleport.pdf
USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-11-05-teleportation_x.htm
Slashdot: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/05/2013248
The European Union (EU) has taken another step, a highly significant one, in its evolving political experiment. In Rome, Oct. 29, as classical music played and fighter jets circled overhead, representatives of the 25 member states signed the new European Constitution, which is intended to bring a common level of democracy throughout the EU. How well the negotiators responsible for the new document managed the challenging task of finding common ground amid a wide diversity of opinion will be put to the test, as all member states must ratify it if it is to come into force. France and the UK, both nations with a highly skeptical public, and other member states will put ratification to a public referendum. The BBC article announcing the signing is also a resource on the new constitution, with links to analysis of its features, information on national stances, and a host of analytical commentary. The EU offers the full text of the constitution in 21 languages, as well as various fact sheets and a summary. At 855 pages (in English at least), the European Constitution is no quick slog.
EU: http://europa.eu.int/constitution/index_en.htm
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3963701.stm
Spread Firefox, One Broadsheet at a Time
Firefox advocates aren't just coding - they're taking the open-source idea and stuffing it into a big cream pie, which they plan to slap into the face of corporate America. The Spread Firefox site spearheaded a fundraising campaign to place a full-page ad for the browser in the New York Times (NYT). Firefox supporters forked over $10 or more to pay for an ad that will tout the advantages the free open-source browser has over Microsoft Internet Explorer. The campaign gathered over $250,000, and since a full-page ad in the NYT runs only $50,000, the remaining funds will be funneled into Firefox support and development. The NYT is giving the ad a cut rate because it's an advocacy ad - in other words, a non-profit going up against the for-profit Microsoft. Red Herring has more.Spread Firefox: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/3749
Red Herring: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=10937
Anyone who likes challenging the antediluvian mindset of music-label and motion-picture tycoons will be pleased to know that contrary to popular reports in the media, file-sharing may not be in decline. According to researchers, file-sharers have responded to the entertainment industries' barrage of aggressive legal actions and ad campaigns by switching from public, distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols to more hidden methods. Their careful investigation shows that P2P traffic has never declined, it has simply become harder to spot. Beyond the news that file-sharers are not cowed by aggression and the explanation of the analytical process, the highly technical paper also puts forth some interesting implications for ISPs. For one, the researchers point out that file-sharing may not fit the ISPs' assumptions of asymmetric bandwidth usage, on which cable and DSL technologies rely. ISPs assume users download much more data than they upload. The authors think P2P activity will continue to affect Internet engineering profoundly, and that's probably good news.
http://www.caida.org/outreach/papers/2004/p2p-dying
Hilary Rosen Gets Creative Commons
Hilary Rosen was the RIAA's chief bulldog for years. Her name became synonymous with the RIAA's campaign to intimidate file-sharers, and she was vilified, loathed, and despised for the RIAA's aggressive pursuit to stamp out music piracy. A few months after leaving the job, she found herself facing off against longtime rival Lawrence Lessig, co-founder and advocate of the Creative Commons license, in a debate. And a funny thing happened in the course of the forum: Rosen came to realize just what Lessig and the Creative Commons is about, that it is not a screen to allow end runs around copyright holders, and that this had underlain his decision to move Creative Commons into play. She began to warm to the idea she previously dismissed out-of-hand. As she notes in this first-person account in Wired, Creative Commons isn't a cure-all, but it seems a start in the right direction, that of giving the creators of the art a bit more control over distribution and payment. Lessig adds his take to the discussion. It's all a quick read and well worth a look for anybody who needs a grounding on what this is all about.http://wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/larry.html
BBC legend John Peel died Oct. 25 from a heart attack while visiting Peru. What do Elton John, Ozzy Osbourne, Joy Division, and so many other musicians have in common? Peel. Osbourne succinctly states that if not for John Peel, Black Sabbath would never have hit the airwaves, and Sir Elton notes the help Peel gave him in the formative stages of his career. The BBC has an exhaustive online tribute. John Peel received tons of demo tapes over the years, and his interest in music almost certainly shaped yours.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/johnpeel/index.shtml
Happy Birthday, Hello Kitty World
In an event which almost eclipsed the Presidential elections in importance - almost - Sanrio and Typhoon Games announced the imminent debut of Hello Kitty Online World, which "will allow thousands of players to live and participate in Hello Kitty's magical and cute online world." Shares of porn companies plunged in value in anticipation of the massive migration by millions of online porn addicts to the pastel virtual reality of Hello Kitty World. Players will be able to roam around the lands of Kitty Kingdom, XO Federation, and Melody-land, enjoying the architecture and earning Sanrio Dollars as shopkeepers and traders. They will also be able to build their dream Hello Kitty houses, teach their pets special tricks and skills, duel (with virtual fluffy pillows perhaps?) and "make new friends through special in-game telepathy." While we jest, the Hello Kitty World artwork is rather nicely realized. The game is not yet open for business, but is signing up beta testers (later it will be pay to play). We figure letting our readers influence the early development of Hello Kitty World is just too good an opportunity to pass up. GamersHell.com has the press release.GamersHell.com: http://www.gamershell.com/news/18290.html
Hello Kitty World: http://www.sanriotown.com/onlinegame/index.php
Apple's iPod is the coolest portable music player of them all, and is among the most expensive. In time for the holiday season, Apple has released an updated iPod, the iPod Photo, with a color screen capable of displaying photos. The new iPod comes in 40-GB and 60-GB versions, which is pretty danged impressive if you think about it. Apple also now offers the black 20-GB iPod U2 Special Edition, which comes with U2's signatures' engraved on the back and an iTunes Music Store coupon that will save you some money on U2 purchases. If the new iPod Photo can show pictures, it can surely play video. And that means not only films, but the birth of the iPorn. Now that's a Christmas present for somebody on your list. CNET has a short look at the new iPods, while Virgin cutely compares its Player to an apple.
iPod Photo: http://www.apple.com/ipodphoto/
iPod U2 Special Edition: http://www.apple.com/ipod/u2/
CNET: http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5427237.html
Virgin: http://digbig.com/4byee
There was so much iPod news this week that we couldn't fit it all into one item.... First, some high-end hotels think iPods are so cool that they are making them available to guests. At least one enterprising hotel takes the precaution of encasing the iPods in lucite and bolting them to the table, but still - an iPod in your room is cool, right? CNET has that story. Next, CNET notes that Apple is taking measures to appease the big music labels. Its latest iTunes update disabled iPodDownload, a popular application that let users download music from iPod to hard disk. The effort was clearly cosmetic; instructions for how to re-enable the functionality are all over the Net (see HardMac), and iPodDownload's author soon updated it to work again - and was promptly shut down by his ISP, bending to Apple's takedown notice. Finally, as it had previously warned, Apple modified its iTunes Music Store so that you can't use old versions of iTunes to buy songs anymore. You'll need to upgrade to the latest and greatest. CNET has that, too.
CNET 1: http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5439378.html
CNET 2: http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5436447.html
iPodDownload: http://www.wildbits.com/ipoddownload/
HardMac: http://www.hardmac.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2004-11-01
CNET 3: http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5437738.html
Lucasfilm this week released a teaser trailer of the next film in the Star Wars franchise, due next May. Oddly, the company only released it to a few gated online communities, and trying to confine it there is like trying to carry water in a colander. Still, Lucasfilm is having a go, but our intrepid seekers found a couple of places not yet quashed. We have a link to the trailer and a link to the torrent of the Trailer.
Trailer: http://davidtitus.free.fr/Star_Wars_Episode_III_Teaser.mov
Torrent: http://66.90.75.92/suprnova//torrents/2962/star.wars.ep.3.quicktime.torrent
Bush Campaign Blocked Foreigners from Web Site
The US election is over, but at least one tidbit pertinent to the online world remains. President Bush's official campaign Web site shut its virtual doors to foreign non-Canadian visitors on Oct. 25. Akamai seems to be the doorman, but of course isn't talking about its orders, and the Bush campaign has offered no explanation as to why it made this choice. Netcraft has the evidence.http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/10/26/bush_campaign_web_site_rejects_nonus_visitors.html
ONLINE CULTURE
Channel-surfing the Web isn't a new phenomenon, but the proliferation of toolbars meant to help you is. If you weren't selective, you could probably obliterate all the real estate your browser has to offer by applying toolbar after toolbar. StumbleUpon, a recent addition to the toolbar stable, reminds us of the Netstumbler tool - but while Netstumbler ferrets out WiFi hotspots, StumbleUpon finds hidden Web sites, recommended by word-of-mouth, so to speak. Other users rate Web sites, and your copy of the tool can suggest sites to you based on those ratings and your own preferences. Some folks really love the thing because of the community-based approach to websurfing, and while it may really be the best thing since sliced bread, we prefer to hang back and observe for a while. It seems sort of like NSD, but with more overhead and none of the snappy repartee. The toolbar will work on a wide variety of systems and browsers, with the notable exceptions of Safari and Opera.http://www.stumbleupon.com/
Human-Powered Spam-Filtering at a Cost
You know the feeling: you're back from a week's vacation and your e-mail inbox is groaning under the weight of a week's worth of spam. Wouldn't it be wonderful if instead of relying on spam filters, which struggle to keep up with spammers' innovative tactics to circumvent them, you could rely on a team of people or monkeys trained just to keep your e-mail running cleanly? eProvisia offers you that opportunity, but without monkeys, we think. The company's low, low price comes with low, low expectations of privacy, however. Read the Terms of Service page to understand just how low, low that is. If you have nothing crucial to hide from prying eyes, this may still be a great option for you, but we wouldn't bet on it.http://eprovisia.dione.cc/
The i-name is the latest effort to filter out spam. It's not a new idea, really - an i-name is an individual's single gateway to all digital communication. Before anyone can get anything to you, you have to approve their use of your i-name. XDI.org explains the process, and notes that you can get a 50-year lock on your choice of i-name for $25. The process uses open-source technology and the organizations throw around all the right terms, but we're skeptical this will work any better than similar programs tried in the past. BetaNews looks at the concept in more detail.
XDI.org: http://xdi.org/i-names-explained.html
BetaNews: http://www.betanews.com/article/1098715716
ONLINE TRAVEL
Accents and Dialects of the British Isles
Back in the late 1940s, Harold Orton and Eugen Dieth proposed a systematic survey of English dialects. Spoken English, they felt, deserved special attention as social and geographical mobility and wider access to broadcast media would drastically alter the linguistic landscape of post-war Britain. A team of fieldworkers then set about recording English speakers from a number of locations in Britain, drawing largely from more isolated rural communities with historically stable populations, in order to capture the diversity of speech. The recordings are held in the British Library Sound Archive and a selection of 131 sound files, from the North of England, is available online. If you are not a Brit, the only Northern accent you might be familiar with is that of Daphne's, on "Frasier", supposedly a Manchester accent but in actual fact nothing of the sort. Come and listen to some real Northern accents as spoken by real Northerners. We wager that even most British netsurfers will not be able to understand the 74-year-old joiner from Heddon-in-the-Wall, Northumbria who describes how to make a cartwheel.http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/dialects/
Lacquer, a French musician, has a cool video out and available at his Web site. "Behind" showcases a drive from Los Angeles to New York in time-lapse photography. Directed by Michel and Olivier Gondry, the video is a beautiful, flowing strip of American cityscapes and countryside, west to east. It's jarred somewhat toward the end when a passenger joins and takes over the driving occasionally. The tune is kinda snappy in an '80s technobeat kinda way. How they filmed this without getting the camera stolen or at least peered at by a potential thief is beyond us.
http://www.lacquersound.com/english/opener1.html
Anyone who's ever visited the lip of the Grand Canyon has no doubt felt awe at its sheer magnitude. Those who have yet to make the trip can grab a little taste at this primer. National Geographic explores one of the wonders of the world in an online exhibition. The society shows a film, "Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets", 365 days a year at the National Geographic Visitor Center, and visitors to this Web site can watch the trailer and learn more about the film seen by 40 million people so far. The site also has photos and wallpaper for your desktop, and an interactive map that explores the history and geology of the canyon. There are plenty of games and brainteasers presented in the Kids section of the site.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/grandcanyon/
"I don't know where I'ma gonna go when the volcano blow," sang Jimmy Buffett. No need to worry, yet, as the latest rumblings from Mount St. Helens have turned into much ado about nothing. That's not really all that surprising, because it took a lot of energy to blow the top of the mountain away in 1980. James Jacobs was there in 1980, and he took some cool pre-explosion photos of the steam and ash venting, not to mention some of the aftermath. Jacobs presents several cool photos, and excellent documentation.
http://www.jqjacobs.net/photos/volcano/index.html
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
In some countries, the only street art is graffiti by teenagers. In others, street art includes classical sculpture that might deserve a museum. In Sweden, street art can be altogether more funky than either. Akayism International is a Swedish outfit that brings street art to new levels. It has decorated motorway sound barriers with slogans that challenge the indifference of passing commuters. It has raised a strange menagerie of silhouette animals on a hillock of wasteland. It encourages pedestrians to express themselves on roadside whiteboards that now host spontaneous messages of hope, confession, and love in an outpouring of emotion that surprised even the artists. Akayism's piece de resistance has to be the miniature Swedish country idyll complete with cottage, washing line, and picket fence on a traffic island in the middle of urban gridlock. When passing motorists dream of a rural escape, they can look to the side for inspiration. We need more art like this, projects that make people think as they go about their daily lives.http://www.akayism.org/hq.html
The Japanese art of paper folding, origami, is as much about the process as the result. That's typical of many Japanese crafts. How you get there is as important as what you create. Joseph Wu is both a superb photographer and an origami master. His photos of other origami masters and the results of both his and their efforts are nothing short of spectacular. His site infuses what can be mundane with beauty and spirit. A major benefit are his full-size diagrams and instructions for some of the creations. By practicing how masters create and work, you can greatly enhance your own origami skills. Overall, this is far and away the best origami site our reviewer has come across.
http://www.origami.as/home.html
Whether you consider body art a true artform or simply an exotic pastime, you'd be hard-pressed to call the works of the online Dunbar/Chiappin Gallery anything but innovative and spectacular. Anthony Chiappin, the painter, adorns nude models with colorful splashes of liquid latex and Andrew Dunbar, the photographer, positions them in curious poses and tableaux. The result is a wild collaboration that is nothing short of brilliant. Regardless of the color and context, these are still nudes, but sometimes the nudity or even the entire model is so well camouflaged that you won't realize you're looking at a person. In an age when art seems to blend from one uninspiring piece to the next, these collaborators have proven that with a little ingenuity and a lot of talent the art of art has not been altogether lost.
http://www.alisonholland.com/dunbarchiappin.htm
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Has Been
The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy
Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements
Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Volume Two
http://sleeptrip.com/300loveletters/
The Chaucer MetaPage Audio Files are fascinating for windows they open on both Chaucer and the language he wrote in, Old English. The site offers many selections from Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", including several versions of the first lines of the General Prologue. Although no one alive today has ever heard actual Old English, the voices of the scholars speaking here probably get reasonably close. It is perfectly clear that English and Old English have mostly only a name in common. Chaucer in modern English can sound harsh. Old English is a pleasant, rhythmic language, and makes Chaucer much easier on the ears and just about as understandable.
http://academics.vmi.edu/english/audio/audio_index.html
No matter how big a reader you are, chances are you've never read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. But just because it's a crazy idea doesn't mean that nobody has ever done it. A.J. Jacobs did. He's better known as an editor at Esquire, but he has the ambition to become the smartest person in the world by absorbing that entire multi-volumed work of reference. He wrote a book about the experience - which we recommended in NSD 10.39 - and his book has been optioned as a movie. We dug up this excerpt at Media Bistro, which covers Jacobs's foray into the M entries. Understandably, his experiences start to become a little strange. He muses on the bizarre behaviors of composer Gustav Mahler and then checks out his chances of winning on "Jeopardy". He finishes with an interactive education about animal dung for his niece. No surprise that her mother wasn't impressed, but we are - this guy makes the encyclopedia fun and that isn't easy.
NSD 10.39: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v10/nsd.10.39.html#NBR
http://mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a2927.asp
If you're into comics and tongue-in-cheek humor, Hulk's Diary That Is on the Internet is for you. Witness the entry for Tuesday, Aug. 17: "Hulk learned meaning of word 'reparations' today. Hulk has to give school near Avengers mansion $13,000 for 'reparations' Hulk did to playground. Stupid swingset." The entire blog is written with a wonderful combination of naivete and witticism that makes it a winning combination to be read over morning coffee.
http://incrediblehulk.blogspot.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
Interactive Medical Simulations
You may not be a doctor, but you can play one on the Internet. Grab your mouse and check out On-Line Interactive Patient Simulators, a gateway to scads of detailed educational tools for physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. The host site, New York Emergency Room RN, has collected links to treatment simulators for many kinds of pediatric and adult trauma and emergencies, as well as to surgical simulators for occasions when you might need to perform liver biopsy, say, or cut open someone's chest. We're amazed by the educational resources here: virtual body tours; life-support scenarios; there's even a bioterrorism simulator. Yikes! Better to make virtual mistakes now, in the comfort of your seat, than later on in meatspace. Whether you're a student, parent, or patient, your appreciation for caregivers' versatility will likely grow as you explore the challenging sites linked here.http://www.nyerrn.com/simulators.htm
Tracking a Mars Rover's Tracks
Mars Global Surveyor started mapping Mars in March 1999. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the spacecraft has sent back more images of the Red Planet (170,000) than all other Mars missions combined. It's still in orbit, still taking photographs, and still expanding our knowledge of our planetary neighbor. Astrobiology Magazine reports a special feat of documentation, owing to scientists in San Diego who came up with a technique to roll the Surveyor so that its Orbiter Camera captures details with thrice its original resolution. On Sept. 27, the camera photographed the wheeltracks of the Spirit rover, its lander, and Spirit itself. The rover is minuscule in the black-and-white photo, but what do you expect from orbit? The long-distance photo of Spirit's tracks is not as dramatic as photos of Neil Armstrong's footsteps on the Moon, nor has it had much impact on public perception of NASA, but it's nice to know that sometimes NASA's robots keep on ticking and clicking and transmitting. Mars Global Surveyor has mapped only about 5% of the Red Planet's surface, so further discoveries may be forthcoming, thanks to an extended budget and the craft's help in preparation for the scheduled arrival of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2006, the Phoenix Mars Scout lander in 2007, and Mars Science Laboratory Rover in 2009. While you wait, there's time to follow the link to thousands of images in the Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera Image Gallery.http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1220.html
From 1969 to 1972, the US sent six manned missions to the moon. Using a Hasselblad camera on the surface, 12 astronauts took thousands of photographs of the lunar landscape, of their equipment, and of each other, including the famous photo of Buzz Aldrin with Neil Armstrong reflected in his faceplate. Thanks to the wonders of digital editing and helpful plug-ins - QuickTime, specifically - these images have been rendered into beautiful 360-degree panoramas that you can manipulate as you see fit. The views themselves are breathtaking; one starts to get a sense of what it must have been like to walk and work on this unworldly terrain. All that's missing is the low gravity. We especially liked the view of the Lunar Roving Vehicle from Apollo 17. If your interests are more terrestrial, the drop-down menu at the top of the home page gives access to a variety of similar 360-degree views of landmarks from around the world.
http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen3/f29.html
Some folks believe that the Apollo missions were an elaborate NASA hoax. Most, however, accept the substantiated data. Many more people, we're sure, think that the Americans handily beat the Soviets to the moon, and that the USSR had no real human moon-landing effort to speak of. That might be a hoax, too. If the Real Moon Landing Hoax site is to be believed, the USSR was close on the tail of the Apollo missions but scrapped and hid their efforts once the US won the race to land a human on lunar soil. The site is a great read with great photos. The USSR lost the space race to the USA. But the race was a lot closer than you may have thought.
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/theghoax.htm
Virtual Apollo Guidance Computer
The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was the main onboard system NASA used for Apollo missions and lunar landings. While surviving examples are few and far between, coders may enjoy working with the Virtual AGC emulator. Designed to work in Linux, Windows, and OS X, the emulator would work as a component in the construction of a flight or lunar simulation, but is not, by itself, a simulator. The self-described geek behind this project got the idea while watching "Apollo 13". Bringing the AGC back to life seemed like a nifty thing to do, though it turned out to involve a considerable amount of digital sleuthing. This is one of those projects that the true geeks will find occupies them into the wee hours.http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/index.html
Keep an Eye on Mount St. Helens
A few weeks ago, Mount St. Helens hogged the headlines as it threatened to erupt. The mountain, and expectations, now merely simmer. If the volcano does blow, you could be one of the first to see the eruption - and you don't have to put your life on the line in southern Washington to do so. Just keep an eye on the Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam. The US Forest Service maintains the site and has an archive of movies and still images of this year's activity, along with text updates. Of course, the volcano webcam is the star. The camera is located at an elevation of approximately 4,500 feet about five miles north-northwest from the volcano, and looks across the North Fork Toutle River Valley. The area receives more than 100" of rain a year so you stand a good chance of looking at rain, clouds, fog, or some combination thereof.http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/