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Maggie speaking in Albuquerque Aug. 16
I'm speaking Monday, Aug. 16th, at the University of New Mexico's INCBN IGERT Symposium, which focuses on the integration of neuroscience and nanotechnology. As the pre-symposium dinner entertainment, I'll be talking about "Those Fabulous Octopus Brains"—looking at cephalopod intelligence and brain structure. I fully admit that my topic choice is a blatant attempt to curry audience favor w/ cute pictures of octopuses. If you won't be attending, don't worry. It looks like I should be able to get video of the presentation, which will be posted here. (Unless I bomb, in which case we shall never speak of this again.)
Categories: Other
Moresukine -- a comic book about a German cartoonist's experiences in Tokyo
In late 2005 Dirk Schwieger, a German cartoonist, went to live in Japan for a year. He got an office job, and started keeping a journal of his experiences in Tokyo. On his blog, he invited readers to email him "assignments," which he dutifully carried out and reported in comic strip format in a Moleskine notebook.
The assignments included eating fugu (blowfish sashimi that has a toxin that could kill you if not prepared properly), going to a capsule hotel, visiting the Ghibli Museum, riding a roller coaster on top of a building in a shopping center, reporting on the "coolest of the cooler things happening in Japan" (some kind of barrel with poles on it and tentacle-backpacks hanging from it -- I have to admit I had no idea what he was talking about here), eating okonomiyaki (a bowl of raw egg, red ginger, pork, squid, shrimp, and cabbage that you cook yourself), and so on.
Schwieger's art is funny and detailed, and his observations are insightful. Moresukine is an enjoyable, too-brief account of a Westerner trying to discover Japanese culture.
Categories: Other
Stieg Larsson Is First Author To Sell 1M E-Books
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that the late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, has become the first author to sell more than one million e-books on Amazon. The Swedish noir thrillers features Lisbeth Salander, an asocial and extremely intelligent hacker and researcher, specialized in investigations of persons, and investigative journalist Mikael Blomqvist. Quercus has sold 3.3M copies of Larsson's books in the UK, and estimates that worldwide sales of the three novels are somewhere between 35-40M copies."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Tech
Tokyo's oldest man actually dead for 30 years
Sogen Kato was believed to be the oldest man in Tokyo. Officials heading out to congratulate him on his 111th birthday, however, met not an ancient gent but a corpse, mummified in his own bed for perhaps 30 years. [BBC; photo and cake by Ann Larie Valentine]
Categories: Other
A $20 8-Bit Wikipedia Reader For Your TV
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired about another entry in the ongoing quest for low-tech-high-tech educational tools to take advantage of distributed knowledge: "The Humane Reader, a device designed by computer consultant Braddock Gaskill, takes two 8-bit microcontrollers and packages them in a 'classic style console' that connects to a TV. The device includes an optional keyboard, a micro-SD Card reader and a composite video output. It uses a standard micro-USB cellphone charger for power. In all, it can hold the equivalent of 5,000 books, including an offline version of Wikipedia, and requires no internet connection. The Reader will cost $20 when 10,000 or more of it are manufactured. Without that kind of volume, each Reader will cost about $35."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Tech
Refutation of a children's book
I admire Sheila C. Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, more than any other official in government. Ms. Bair's actions during the financial meltdown in 2008 and in intervening years has shown a steady hand, remarkably free of partisan favor, that likely prevented a much worse banking and mortgage catastrophe.
Thus it is with a heavy heart I must reveal a book she's written that hasn't gained much notice, which is full of the bad ideas that led to low consumer savings, inflated investor expectations, and financial innumeracy.In this book, Ms. Bair advocates:
• Immediate gratification of consumer desire.
• Disregarding employment opportunities that aren't a perfect fit when a job is needed.
• Undercutting a market with unfair competition through low-cost labor.
• Zoning violations.
• Tax avoidance on earnings.
• Avoidance of rent.
• Lack of collateral against risky investment.
• Use of shared resources for private gain.
• Disdain for state taxes.
• The use of monetary symbols to substitute for Roman characters.
The book also tells investors to expect a 100-percent return on capital in a single day, along with the dissolution of a 24-hour partnership. And, she claims that newspapers continue to print stock charts every day.
On the plus side, she encourages entrepreneurship, word-of-mouth marketing, and the value of hard labor.
Now, you might argue, "This is a children's illustrated book, you moron, and uses simple lessons to tell a complicated story!" And then you might grab me by the shoulders and shake me, and possibly slap me a few times across the face.
When I'd recovered, I'd argue in response, "True. But Ms. Bair muddles some of the fundamental aspects of economics and the market in this lesson in a way that may leave questions." I'd say that while running away from you, fast, and holding my hands in front of my head.
I hear in the distance, "Aren't you like that ranting Sun-Times columnist, Terry Savage, who, along with her brother, yelled at kids running a lemonade stand for giving away lemonade and Cory Doctorow blogged about here before and stop running away!"
Well, no. I'm not ranting. I'm dispassionate. And my concern about this book arises from the real world, not a fever dream of Ayn Randism dreamt by Ms. Savage.
My children have read this book several times, and request it all the time. This leads to awkward questions, like, "Daddy, is negative amortization a function of deflation, or does the basis of a loan remain the same regardless of CPI?" I find those questions hard to answer, or even understand.
In the book, Isabel's Car Wa$h (see what she did there with the "s"?), Ms. Bair tells the story of a little girl who wants a $10.00 doll, but only has 50¢.
Rather than recommending the age-old solution of begging her parents for money until their ears are bleeding, Isabel comes up with the idea of suckering her friends. After discarding dog walking and babysitting, Isabel spots a car wash. She fails to examine the price the car wash charges, but sees plenty of vehicles entering.
She decides to go into business washing cars without any additional market research, training, or a business plan. She finds herself $4.50 short of the funds for the supplies she needs to bootstrap the business.
Isabel remembers that friends once loaned her money for lunch, and her mother repaid them with a 40-percent premium for assuming the risk. Using that as the basis, she prepares a road show to sell her initial public offering, selling 50 percent of her shares split evenly among five friends.
Ms. Bair now takes a huge leap into socialism. Isabel sets up shop, without any permits, in her parents' front driveway in likely contravention to neighborhood convenants about operating businesses. She uses her parents' water and facilities, but pays them no dividend or rent. Shameful.
Her first customer isn't concerned about quality, but price. She spreads the word that a child laborer is offering what is likely an 80-percent discount off the going rate for an automatic car wash. (Remember that Isabel didn't find the going price, so she has imperfect knowledge and underprices her labor. She realizes this when called upon to wash a dog.)
After a hard day's work in which Isabel generates about $2.50 per hour, she repays her investors a 100-percent dividend and cashes them out, dissolving her company. For a total of $25 raised, Isabel keeps $10, or about $1.25 per hour. She pays no taxes and provides no 1099 forms to her shareholders. (Once again, socialism: her mother provides free cookies and lemonade, and provides a meeting space for the corporation at no cost.)
Isabel is set to purchase her doll (street price, $10), but on arrival at the store is visited by the dread spector of state sales tax: a 5-percent fee is levied on the doll. (Dolls have a 5-percent tariff in Isabel's state, along with shelled split peas, dog collars, and used DVDs.)
Curses, she thinks (I'm assuming that), as Ms. Bair veers into libertarianism. Unjust state, taking my earnings! Nonetheless, Ms. Bair has Isabel deplete her savings, taking her last 50¢ to pay the full $10.50 for the price. This leaves her with nothing, and the doll is only worth $4 when she leaves the store with it. Consumer impulses--gratified!
In a dense two-page addendum, Ms. Bair explains what happened, but likely leaves children more afraid of bears than they were when she started.
This short book contains the entire spectrum of economic philosophy and speculation, leading children into a trap: kids who read these book are likely to become economists and derivative traders, and create new, worse financial vehicles and theories that will eventually take us down.
Ms. Bair is the worst form of super-villain. A patient one.
Categories: Other
HDMI Labeling Requirements Promise a Stew of Confusion
An anonymous reader writes "In many ways HDMI has revolutionized the way we connect devices. By unifying video and audio into a single cable manufacturers have been able to make their products easier to set up than ever before. Until recently there hasn't actually been much difference in HDMI cables. But things are about to get confusing with the introduction of HDMI 1.4. By the 1st of January 2012 manufacturers of products with HDMI ports won't actually be able to call HDMI 1.4 by its real name. In fact, come November 18 this year those selling cables won't be able to use HDMI 1.4 or HDMI 1.3 to delineate between different products. Instead cables that support version 1.4 of the HDMI standard will have to use one of five different labels. The new labels? Well, as this story explains, they're going to cause a new level of confusion for anyone hooking up a home cinema. Add to this the fact that the HDMI organisation keeps the details of its specifications secret, and translation between version numbering and marketing-speak will be well nigh impossible."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Tech
Haircuts and Popsicles
I like haircuts and I like Popsicles -- hell, who doesn't? But I will apparently never be an art impresario, let alone a performance art impresario, because it never would have occurred to me to combine the two, as the downtown Los Angeles gallery Actual Size is doing this Saturday: Filmmaker Josh Lee will sell his inventively flavored popsicles to onlookers while they watch haircuts and buzz cuts performed by artists in the gallery space. The hair clippings will accumulate for the duration of the performance, resulting in a sculptural work. Walk-ins are welcome. No appointments are necessary. This comes via PSFK, which adds: The project has the potential to lead to a meditation on human waste; however, the act of cutting people's hair builds on a set of power relations that allow artist and audience to forge a more intimate relationship as he/she manipulates the image of the viewer. Plus, come on: Popsicles!
Categories: Other
Hallucinogen to be tested as cure for opiate addiction
Ibogaine, a hallucinogen derived from an African plant, is used (illegally) as a cure for opiate addiction. This month, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research will test the effectiveness of Ibogaine on heroin addicts.
Popular Science has a brief article about the upcoming trial.
“As great as ibogaine seems, no one knows exactly how effective it is as a treatment,” says Valerie Mojieko, the director of clinical research for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research (MAPS), a privately funded Massachusetts-based nonprofit. So starting this month, MAPS will enlist Clare Wilkins, the director of Pangea Biomedics, to run the first long-term study to gauge the drug’s lasting effects at her clinic in Mexico (where patients already pay $5,000 for the treatment). She will treat 20 to 30 heroin addicts and, for the next year, MAPS will subject them to psychological and drug tests to quantify ibogaine’s effectiveness.
Fighting Drugs With Drugs: An Obscure Hallucinogen Gains Legitimacy as a Solution for Addictions
Photo by Hive. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Categories: Other
LCD 'Engine' For Spacecraft Attitude Control
Bruce Perens writes "Japan's IKAROS satellite, which earlier performed the first successful demonstration of a solar sail, has broken more new ground. Liquid-crystal displays — yes, like in your video monitor — were fabricated into strips on the edges of the solar sail. By energizing some of the LCDs and changing the reflective characteristics of parts of the sail from specular to diffuse, JAXA scientists successfully generated attitude control torque in the sail, changing the spacecraft's orientation."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Tech
MAKE Volume 23 is on newsstands!
MAKE Volume 23 is on newsstands now!
In this special GADGETS issue, we show you how to make a menagerie of delightful machines: a miniature electronic Whac-a-Mole arcade game, a tiny but mighty see-through audio amplifier, a magic mirror that contains an interactive animated soothsayer, a self-balancing one-wheeled Gyrocar, and the Most Useless Machine — the creepy mechanical box whose only purpose is to turn itself off (as seen on The Colbert Report!). Plus: how Intellectual Ventures made their incredible laser targeting mosquito zapper, how to use the industrial-strength microcontrollers called PLCs, and a lot more.
Project highlights in MAKE Volume 23 include:
The Most Useless Machine
Gyrocar
Squelette, the Bare-Bones Amplifier
Magic Mirror
Solar Car Subwoofer
College Bike Trunk
and much more, of course!
Categories: Other
Hard Russian hardware
Russian manufacturer Lenpolygrafmash makes the computer component equivalent of brutalist architecture. According to the Russian culture blog Metkere.com, the devices such as the printer and scanner above are designed for harsh mechanical and climatic conditions. Lenpolygrafmash (via Submitterator, thanks Metkere!)
Categories: Other
Glenn Beck's website gives him something to cry about
Glenn Beck's website, it turns out, can be manipulated into doing strange and NSFW things by messing with the URL. An insecure PHP utility accessible at the site allows for shenanigans like directory traversal, exposing all sorts of things that should not be exposed. Like password files, and a user group named for Rush Limbaugh. [Thanks, Dean!]
Update: the discussion thread is down. Here's the Google cache of it.
Categories: Other
Global Warming 'Undeniable,' Report Says
BergZ writes "Scientists from around the world are providing even more evidence of global warming. 'A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record,' the annual State of the Climate report declares. Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, including Canada, the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its analysis of 10 indicators that are 'clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Tech
Cartoon about prohibition: The Flower
Categories: Other
Android Data Stealing App Downloaded By Millions
wisebabo writes "A wallpaper utility (that presents purloined copyrighted material) 'quietly collects personal information such as SIM card numbers, text messages, subscriber identification, and voicemail passwords. The data is then sent to www.imnet.us, a site that hails from Shenzen, China.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Tech
Manning linked to classified Afghanistan reports
Investigators say they've found concrete evidence linking Pfc. Bradley Manning with the "War Logs" ultimately leaked to the Guardian, New York Times and Der Spiegel. From the WSJ:
A search of the computers used by Pfc. Manning yielded evidence he had downloaded the Afghanistan war logs, which span from 2004 until 2009, the official said. It's not clear precisely what that evidence is.
The investigation is also looking at who might have helped Pfc. Manning provide the documents to WikiLeaks, a web-based group that earlier this week released 76,000 secret reports from Afghanistan.
Evidence Ties Manning to Afghan Leaks [WSJ]
Categories: Other
How to clone vinyl records
Categories: Other
Man Wants to Donate His Heart Before He Dies
Gary Phebus wants to donate his heart, lungs, and liver. The problem is he wants to donate them before he dies. Gary was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in 2008. Phebus says he'd like to be able to donate his organs before they deteriorate, and doesn't consider his request suicide because he's "dead anyway."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Categories: Tech
White House shifts criticism of Wikileaks to focus on "naming of individual" Afghans
The initial response to the Wikileaks Afghan document leak from the Pentagon and White House focused largely on the documents' purported irrelevance as "old news," and general condemnation of the leak as a violation of federal law. Now, the response has shifted more specifically to focus on the fact that within the massive cache of documents, names of Afghan informants are included in plain view, with no redaction. Those informants can now be located and punished or murdered by the enemy, the logic goes. For its part, Wikileaks frontman Julian Assange has stated in interviews this week that the organization is holding off on releasing the next 15,000 or so documents from the Afghan leak material to scrub some personally identifying data, as "harm minimization procedure."
Supporters of Wikileaks counter that, basically, now's a fine time for the military to be fretting about harm to Afghans. Glenn Greenwald of Salon tweets that Wikileaks should have been more careful about redactions, but: So the WikiLeak-ed documents might put Afghans at risk? You know what else does? 10 yrs of bombings, air raids, checkpoint shootings, drones Report in today's New York Times (and note a related report indicating some folks at the Times were none too happy with Wikileaks for other reasons).
- Wikileaks releases classified Afghanistan war logs: "largest ...
- NYT unhappy at being dependent on Wikileaks for news
- Daily Show does Wikileaks
- Iraq: Wikileaks video of US military killing journalists
- Wikileaks megadump reveals US pays local Afghan media to run ...
- Wikileaks: Q&A with Jacob Appelbaum on "The Afghan War Diaries ...
- Wikileaks/Manning: "Are America's foreign policy secrets about to ...
- US Army: alleged Wikileaks source Manning faces 52 years
- US will press criminal charges against Manning, alleged Wikileaks ...
- Was alleged Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning's crisis also one of ...
Categories: Other
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