Dimensions in Film (20110220)

Is there a trend to remake movies in 3D? Is this the same as colorizing? Or are there more financial motivations: we shouldn't expect Casablanca 3D before they make Gone with the Wind 3D, The Sound of Music 3D, Birth of a Nation 3D, Jaws 3D (Hey!)...

As Orwell might have said, in 1984 3D,

if you want a picture of the movies of the future, imagine a ball bouncing on a wooden stick &emdash; forever

Given The Third Man was successful enough to inspire a toy, I would not be surprised to see that. In fact, The Third D Man might actually work, so long as they reserve the 3D effect for just the scenes in the sewers.

But I think we should fall back to the axiom that "dimensions should not be multiplied unnecessarily". Sometimes 0D is enough.

Retweets (20110220)

• "...it's as exciting as discovering a new kind of tornado just before the midwest trailer park management conference" (February 17)
• "...governance, risk, compliance and risk." "You mentioned 'risk' twice." "I like risk." (February 17)
• "EVERYONE has snow routes, no one goes to space,...except,... Star Wars" - Bob McKenzie (February 11)
• "that's no spam...it's a numbers station" (February 11)
• "...designed in the 1980s but built future-ready; with a helipad, and wider corridors for accomodating robots" (February 9)
• "Send it REGISTERED MAIL. This requires the USPS to deliver it only to an addressee wearing a top hat, monocle, with bags with dollar signs." (February 7)
• "...and when held up to the light, you see your private key, beautifully etched at the center of the crystal" (February 3)
• "[The search] has been disappointing, as it often turns out that retired or elderly engineers have just recently cleaned out their garages." (February 2)
• "Good news, we've made it to 401 Unauthorized. Won't be long now!" (January 21)
• ..."And this little box is the DOT Extended Tarmac Delay Snack, for the entire airplane" (737-800) (January 13)
• "...and remember, my friend, future events such as these will affect you, in the future." (January 10)
• " check in at Nolan and Joe's original Pong Factory Outlet - Where the freeways meet in Sunnyvale! (January 9)
• "real programmers often wear climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room" (January 8)
• "Banzai Institute issues warning against children playing its upcoming 8-D system" (January 1)

A friend's just a stranger you haven't unmet, 2009/11/16

The blog of the Oxford University Press announced yesterday that the New Oxford American Dictionary 2009 Word of the Year is: unfriend.

unfriend — verb — To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

In the post, Christine Lindberg writes that It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Although befriend and antonym unbefriend are available, e.g., ...hazard may also favor as well as disfavor, and will not unbefriend the enterprising any more than the timid. from The Century magazine, Nov. 1884.

This definition raises more questions than it answers.

For instance, is there a noun form? What is an unfriend? Who are they? When unfriending someone, do they stop being a friend and start being an unfriend? Is there a division between the friends, the unfriends, and everyone else?
Typically a social networking site has a closed-world model. Both transitions A and B are to remove someone from the collection of friends on the site, yet the apparent (to the site) unfriending in A results in the person still being a friend, just not a ‘friend’ on the site.
Does a site acknowledge its boundaries? Does a community? What happens to those who leave? Is leaving 'willingly' and being 'unfriended out' the same?	Source: The Commissar Vanishes

Last Modified Time, 2009/8/8

Big Ear Twitter, 2009/5/7

What would improve the Twitter UI? How about a "Big Ear" application:

 

Before:

 

After:

long lines, 2009/3/31

The 2008 National Academies workshop report on societal and economic impacts of severe space weather events, covered earlier this year by New Scientist and NASA, included contributions from John Kappenman of Metatech Corporation, based on a study under the auspices of the Electromagnetic Pulse Commission and FEMA.

A 1989 solar storm shut down the Quebec power grid, with some areas not being brought back online for days. An even larger geomagnetic storm was recorded in 1859, which first demonstrated the connection between auroras, electricity and magnetism when it brought down telegraph networks

During the display I was calling Richmond, and had one hand on the iron plate. Happening to lean towards the sounder, which is against the wall, my forehead grazed a ground-wire which runs down the wall near the sounder. Immediately I received a very severe electric shock, which stunned me for an instant. An old man who was sitting facing me, and but a few feet distant, said that he saw a spark of fire jump from my forehead to the sounder.(New York Times, September 5, 1859)

This was followed by another in 1921

After 10 o'clock last night Washington was cut off telegraphically from the rest of the United States exept over a few wires. (New York Times, May 16, 1921)

A solar storm of the magnitude of the 1859 or 1921 storms, occuring today would bring disruption of GPS and other radio and satellite services, and might also cause significant long-term damage to the power distribution infrastructure, namely transformers.

The least understood aspect of this threat is the permanent damage to power grid assets and how that will impede the restoration process. Transformer damage is the most likely outcome, although other key assets on the grid are also at risk. In particular, transformers experience excessive levels of internal heating brought on by stray flux when [induced currents] cause a transformer's magnetic core to saturate and to spill flux outside the normal core steel magnetic circuit. Kappenman stated that previous well-documented cases have involved heating failures that caused melting and burn-through of large-amperage copper windings and leads in these transformers. These multi-ton apparatus generally cannot be repaired in the field, and if damaged in this manner, they need to be replaced with new units, which have manufacture lead times of 12 months or more.

A hypothetical storm at 50° geomagnetic latitude could significantly impact the Pacific Northwest, portions of the Midwest and almost all of the Northeast.

(source: J. Kappenman, Metatech Corp)

More midflight departures, 2009/3/27

Rivière rang up to learn the latest messages from the planes in flight. Night Flight (1931) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Bryan Alexander picked up on my post from yesterday and added ...the long decades of in-flight UFO stories, which form the background for these. Not to mention that terrific Twilight Zone Shatner episode (YouTube). There's something different about these airborne fears, apart from general anxieties concerning air travel (fear of crashing). It's a mix of features: the loss of control in a large vehicle controlled by someone else, the associations with dreaming (since many sleep), being closer to the skies and space. And the general complex of technology anxieties are all in play, too.	(source: wikipedia.org)
Commenter Mark of The Analytical Engines adds Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Horror of the Heights" (1913) A visitor might descend upon this planet a thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, and if he chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them.	(source: amazon.com)
and the Doctor Who serial "Time-Flight" (1982) by Peter Grimwade, in which BA Concordes on approach to Heathrow disappear from the radar, as they are sent back in time 140 million years. Psychic energy keeps the passengers and crew hallucinating that they have in fact landed at Heathrow airport, not in the Jurassic. TEGAN: Ladies and gentleman, we do apologize for the delay. Your flight is now ready for boarding. Would you care to proceed to your aircraft immediately?	(source: tardis.wikia.com)
For time-traveling aircraft, Gardner Campbell also adds The Odyssey of Flight 33 (1961) by Rod Serling A Global jet airliner, en route from London to New York on an uneventful afternoon in the year 1961, but now reported overdue and missing, and by now searched for on land, sea, and air by anguished human beings fearful of what they'll find. But you and I know where she is, you and I know what's happened. So if some moment, any moment, you hear the sound of jet engines flying atop the overcast, engines that sound searching and lost, engines that sound desperate, shoot up a flare or do something. That would be Global 33 trying to get home from the Twilight Zone.	(source: magnify.net)
and then there's Stephen King's The Langoliers (1990), So I was flying with some guys who had a small jet and I said, as, this would be really great if only you didn't, ah, have to be aware through the whole thing. If you could just get on and there'd be a black place in your mind. And the guy says to me, well, we can lower the oxygen back there and you'd go right out.	(source: video.olympus.ru)
Or the more recent Flightplan (2005). Ms. Sherin, there are 425 passengers on this flight who are NOT receiving any attention at the moment because everyone of my flight attendants is busy conducting a search for a child that none of them believe was ever on board. I'm sorry if you think we could be doing more to meet your needs, but you'll have to take it up with Customer Service after we land. Fair enough?	(source: boxofficemojo.com)

Midflight departures, 2009/3/26

There were unconfirmed reports of incidents high above the planetary surface that no one talked about in any but the most careful euphemisms. The list of passengers who arrived was not always identical to the list of those who'd departed. Something was happening, in between, up there.

Vineland (1990) by Thomas Pynchon

That something is the paramilitary in-flight boardings of the ill-fated Kahuna Airlines, from an vessel of advanced (but plausible) technology: The captain took what evasive action he could, but the other matched his maneuvers exactly. Finally they stood, side by side above the tropic of Cancer, between them, some twenty meters across, a flow of savage wind, as, slowly, not telescoping out, but assembling itself from small twinkling pieces of truss-work, the other spun across to them a windproof access tunnel, with a cross section like a long teardrop, that locked firmly on to the forward hatch of the Boeing....When the hatch at last sighed open, the intruders entered the flying nightclub with elite-unit grace, automatics ready, faces dim behind high-impact shields, all Business. Everyone was ordered to a seat. The captain came on the PA. "This is for our own good. They don't want all of us, just a few. When they get to your seat number, please cooperate, and try not to believe any rumors you hear. And till we get the rest of you where your tickets say you're going, all drinks are on the Kahuna Airlines Contingency Fund!"	(source: businessweek.com)
A predecessor work with another sufficiently-advanced technology, "Air Raid" by John Varley, published in The Persistence of Vision (1978), in which the "stewardesses", agents from the future, board planes about to crash and push the passengers through a portal to the future, refilling their seats with simulated bodies. ...Is this some new kind of rescue? I mean, are we going to crash-- I switched my gun to prod and brushed it across his cheek. He gasped and fell back.	(source: badmovies.org)
Another retrieval, this time unworldly, in the "Tempus Fugit" (1997) episode of The X-Files written by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz. You're saying that, that Flight 549 was in the grip of... sort of a UFO tractor beam?	(source: mediacircus.net)

Great classic computer technology: PrestoServe, 2009/3/14

In 1989, Legato Systems, founded by former Sun NFS engineers, is developing its backup software, NetWorker. But first, it releases a non-backup product, PrestoServe.

I suggested we run with PrestoServe to gain some experience in marketing and selling a product and to create an early awareness of the company, [said Louis Cole, former CEO of Legato Systems]. Essentially, PrestoServe gave us the chance to establish the Legato name and to put the business processes in place that we would later need for NetWorker.

The Legato PrestoServe was a hardware and software package for UNIX servers, priced at around $8000, and later resold by Sun and bundled by Digital. The hardware consisted of a card with 1 MB nonvolatile, battery-backed up RAM. The software leveraged this RAM for disk write caching. This was intended to provide a significant performance boost for NFS deployments, since the NFS server could respond to the client as soon as a write was commited to NVRAM, rather than waiting for the write to reach the disk.
	PrestoServe as an SBUS card	PrestoServe as a SIMM

Besides NFS, it would also help with servers where many small, short-lived files were being created:

• build servers
• mail servers
• news servers

physicists vs privacy, 2009/3/7

In March 1989, five days after Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons held a press conference announcing their findings of cold fusion at the University of Utah, Pons' Internet (NSFNET) email address was posted to sci.physics.

Here's Dr. Pons's e-address:
pons@chemistry.utah.edu
You can try to finger it first.

Gary Taubes writes in Bad Science: The Short Life and Wierd Times of Cold Fusion that

Two physicists, who requested to remain anonymous, did try to "finger" Pons's mail account.

(I presume the author implies the meaning of the word "finger" as in "to pilfer", and while this is not what the finger command does, it would seem sensible to finger an account prior to breakin to ensure that the target user is not currently logged in.)

To assure that they wouldn't be traced, they used the account of another physicist who rarely used his computer...Pons's account was guarded by a password of his choosing. The two physicists tried "cfusion," which didn't work, then remembered that Pons had said he was a homebody, so they tried the names of several family members and hit eventually and correctly on Sheila, the name of his wife. So they broke into his computer account and spent two hours reading his mail... They justified the breaking and entering by the importance of the controversy and the inability to get a straight story out of Utah [Emphasis added]...[One of the two anonymous physicists] added that he knew of at least two other scientsts who did the same, one from Oak Ridge and one from Caltech. In any case, Pons later changed his password.

In Ur Crossword, 2009/3/3

I noticed that the March 1, 2009 edition of AmericanWay (the inflight magazine of American Airlines) crossword puzzle assumed a slightly higher degree of familiarity with Internet culture (I am used to their clues being chosen from the "friend of Kukla and Ollie" set).

1 Across was easy,

Comments on a blog (5 letters)

of course is SPAMS; but 78 Across

Prepare to check one's email (5 letters)

was a challenge as CAPA was too short and STARTTLS too long. Fortunately I had no problem with 68 Down,

Nigeria's largest city (5 letters)

Call completion times, 2009/2/28

This table, from the Bell System 1969-1970 Switched Telecommunications Network Connection Survey, indicates the time which elapsed between dialing the last digit of the telephone number and the receipt of a test tone supplied by automatic answering equipment at that number. This time includes a 100 msec delay for the equipment to apply the tone. The standard deviation is affected by the ringing cycle - typically 6 seconds with 2 on, 4 silent.

Conn Length (airline miles)	Mean (seconds)	Std Dev (seconds)
All	11.7 ± 1.8	4.3
0-180	10.7 ± 1.5	3.7
180-725	14.7 ± 3.2	5.0
725-2900	13.9 ± 2.6	4.5

C of the sea, 2009/2/26

The article Radiocarbon Dating of the Human Eye Lens Crystallines Reveal Proteins without Carbon Turnover throughout Life by Lynnerup et al published last year describes a mathematical model which predicts the year of a person's birth based on Carbon 14 dating of the eye lens, at least for people born after the bomb pulse. (This technique is already applied to analysis of the teeth and bones.)

Source: Radiocarbon Dating of the Human Eye Lens Crystallines Reveal Proteins without Carbon Turnover throughout Life

The model is however affected by the diet, specifically the lack of marine food:

Consumption of fish would have a significant effect on the ¹⁴C content of the lenses, because the ¹⁴C concentration in the sea is smaller that in the atmosphere (marine ¹⁴C reservoir effect).

This effect is summarized on the page Corrections to radiocarbon dates:

The average difference between a radiocarbon date of a terrestrial sample such as a tree, and a shell from the marine environment is about 400 radiocarbon years (see Stuiver and Braziunas, 1993). This apparent age of oceanic water is caused both by the delay in exchange rates between atmospheric CO2 and ocean bicarbonate, and the dilution effect caused by the mixing of surface waters with upwelled deep waters which are very old (Mangerud 1972).

Another component, the Suess Effect, although not discussed in the eye lens paper, is due to industrial production. The "absolute radiocarbon standard" is tied to a piece of wood that would have been growing in 1890, where there was comparatively little fossil fuel consumption.

The activity of 1890 wood is corrected for radioactive decay to 1950. Thus 1950, is year 0 BP by convention in radiocarbon dating and is deemed to be the 'present'. 1950 was chosen for no particular reason other than to honour the publication of the first radiocarbon dates calculated in December 1949 (Taylor, 1987:97).

Plain and Secret Language, 2009/2/25

The 1959 Telegraph Regulations of the International Telecommunications Union (as of the Geneva conference) included the provision that for telegrams crossing national boundaries,

The sender of a telegram in secret language must produce the code from which the text or part of the text or the signature of the telegram is compiled if the office of origin or the Administration to which this office belongs asks him for it. This provision should not apply to Government telegrams.

CCITT Recommendation F.4 (1988) later expanded this to be

If requested by the origin Administration, the sender of a telegram in secret language must produce the code or identify the dictionary language used in drafting the telegram. Administrations may also require the sender to produce a translation of the telegram into plain language or a language acceptable to the Administration. This provision shall not apply to government telegrams.

Just an 18-bit Western Sheriff, 2009/2/17

The MIT Lincoln Laboratory TX-0 computer was built in 1956, and was made available to the Research Laboratory of Electronics and Electronic Systems Laboratory in 1958. It was delivered with 4K of memory, later expanded to 8K. On October 26, 1960, the CBS Television Network broadcast a one hour special called "The Thinking Machine". This broadcast included the first television production from scripts written by computer. Doug Ross writes, The CBS director said, "Gee, Westerns are so cut and dried couldn't you write a program for one?"

The program SAGA-II, written by Doug Ross and Harrison Morse, output a short script which described the actions in a scenario: a sheriff surprises a robber hiding out in his shack. The 13,000 line macro-generated program took 6 weeks to develop, and each run of the program took approximately 2 minutes to generate a new script.

beginnt1+23| X
 gun is in right hand
 money is in left hand


nt1+23|          tra bwr            tra bwh

begin t0
 gun is in right hand
 money is in left hand
 drink is on table
 robber is in corner
 right hand is on robber
 left hand is on robber
 holster is on robber
 bottle is on table

 right hand has gun
 left hand has money
 holster has nothing

t00
 gun is in corner

t01
...

The program combined a logic flowchart with several random decision points (e.g., how much has the robber had to drink) which affected the outcome (an "inebriation factor" led to the robber being a poorer shot). Out of the 50 runs, 3 were televised.

Doug Ross: The memory was used to keep track of everything down to the actors' hands. The logic choreographed the movement of each object, hands, guns, glasses, doors, etc. A line of English script was written for each direction, even if it went wrong. That's how we got the loop sequence which was an actual error run. If you watch closely, the sheriff puts his gun in the robber's holster, and other strange things.

Dit Morse: I've been asked if the error sequence was rigged. Well, it turns out that the CBS people were in the TX-0 room when the machine got into that loop. They saw what the programmer was doing and they grabbed that sucker so fast-they knew it was theater.

John Pfeiffer later wrote, in the follow-on book to the show, that

The ending of one script was definitely offbeat. The rule is that the winner goes to the corner, picks up the money, leaves the shack, and takes one last look through the window. This time, however, a mix-up occurred. The sheriff thought he had won and went through the scheduled actions. But the robber was not dead. He was supposed to follow the winner's routine, which meant, first of all, getting the money. Since the money was not in the corner, he reached through the window and took it from the sheriff's hand. Then he left the shack and joined the sheriff at the window. The script ended with both men alive and on the outside lokoing into an empty room.

This is the closest the machine came to writing an "original" script. Apparently nothing was wrong with the circuits or the program at the time, and it is still a mystery why the sheriff thought he had won.

The Very Model of a Modern Magnus Envelope, 2009/2/16

This photo from the Magenn Power web site illustrates the visitors from the future model Magnus Spherical Airship.

This Magnus Airship was a large spherical envelope filled with helium to achieve static, buoyant lift. As the sphere rotated during forward motion, Magnus lift was generated proportional to the airspeed flowing over the sphere; the faster the vehicle, the higher the Magnus lift.

The approach is described further in US Patent 4,366,936 by Frederick Ferguson, from 1979.

Unfortunately when scaling up, the contribution to lift from helium is proportional to the volume of the balloon, but the contribution to lift from the Magnus Effect is only proportional to the area.

The Wild West Death Game, 2009/2/15

The romanticized "wild west" is filtered through the preconception of the storyteller of how the wild west should work. Their environment and assumptions might mix with the reality and myth of the actual US Western frontier times to make a hybrid that appears more familiar, believable or understandable. Karl May's universe seemed to have an inordinate number of German emigres wandering Arizona. Similarly, James Thurber (in "Wild Bird Hickock and his friends") describes a French Far West story, in which, when suspicious strangers come to town

The sheriff listened gravely for a while, got up and buckled on his gun belt, and said, "Alors, je vais demander ses cartes d'identite!" [Then we will demand to see their identity cards!]

A principal expectation of the wild west is the ever-present risk of death. Even in the 1880s a "Wild West" show included spectacles: a simulated attack on the Deadwood mail coach...a faked battle with Indians. The movie The Great Train Robbery (1903) was described as having ...been posed and acted in faithful duplication of the genuine `Hold Ups' made famous by various outlaw bands in the far West, and only recently the East has been shocked by several crimes of the frontier order, which fact will increase the popular interest in this great Headline Attraction. Furthermore, this movie ended with the outlaw taking aim and firing point blank at each individual in the audience, causing those not familiar with the motion picture concept to scream in fear.

The "new" Old West of the mid to late 1960s films, including the so-called spaghetti westerns with settings inspired by the constraints of low budget filming in Spain, was immediately followed by western simulations in science fiction TV episodes. The TV shows were set in present-day or far future times, but would drop into a simulation of the wild west to show the theme of unescapable killing.

One example is the "gunfight at the OK Corral" simulation in the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun" (1968). This simulation, controlled by the Melkotians, is decidely not realistic: clocks float in the air, the Enterprise crewmembers brought into the simulation do not even know initially who they are supposed to be, a force field prevents them leaving, and even if they choose not to participate, they are transported into the Corral at the predetermined time to play out their role as victims in the shootout. Yet there is an unusual relationship between the simulation and the participants. By refusing to accept what they are experiencing is 'real', Kirk, Spock and McCoy do not believe that the bullets shot at them will affect them, and thus within the simulation they do not: the bullets pass right through them.

Spock: Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. When the laws do not operate, there is no reality.

However, the simulation keeps running even though the unreality of this situation becomes apparent to the simulation characters as well. Furthermore, the Enterprise crew are able to continue to interact with the simulation characters in other ways: e.g., Kirk then attacks the simulated Wyatt Earp in a fistfight and even considers shooting him, but decides not to. The simulation ends when the Melkotians see this as an interpretation of human behavior which seems worthwhile to them.

Due to the intense drugging, the simulated wild west experience in The Prisoner episode "Living in Harmony" (1968) is accepted by Number 6 as real. The opening credits in this episode re-state the background of the series, with the key elements transplanted to this new environment: Number 6 resigns as a marshal, is subsequently captured and taken to a town (Harmony) he's never heard of. As in the Village, leaving Harmony is not possible, and he's initially questioned by the local authority about his reasons for resigning. Analogous to "Spectre of the Gun", this simulation is also being run with a scripted pattern of interactions:

Number 8: It's always worked and it would have worked this time if you hadn't...

Number 2: But it didn't, did it? "Give him love; take it away, isolate him, make him kill, then face him with death: he'll crack. Break him, even in his mind, and the rest will be easy!" Hmph. I should never have listened to you.

The simulation fails: Number 2, Number 8 and Number 22 have gotten caught up in the action; in the simulation Kathy is killed by the Kid, the Kid is killed by Number 6, the Judge shoots Number 6. After being "killed", Number 6 wakes up, sees himself dressed in his village clothes and the town of Harmony as just false fronts and cutouts, and the episode ends as the simulated murder replays within the world of the Village.

Many places in the US have movie set reconstructions of western towns, where the visiting public can stand by and watch simulated showdowns and shootouts occuring several times daily. There is no risk to visitors, and their interaction with the simulated, presumably highly scripted, events occuring is limited. Umberto Eco, in Travels in Hyperreality (1975) writes about the western town simulated for the public at Knott's Berry Farm, giving them the ability to observe what they expect the wild west to be like:

For example, the village school, reconstructed with hyperrealistic detail, has behind the desk a schoolmarm wearing a bonnet and an ample checked skirt, but the children on the benches are little passing visitors, and I heard one tourist ask his wife if the children were real or "fake"...

Eco assumes that the visitors would easily fall into the role that would be most appropriate to them:

And if the dry-goods store is fake nineteen-century and the shopgirl is dressed like a John Ford heroine, the candies, the peanuts, the pseudo-Indian handicrafts are real and are sold for real dollars, just as the soft drinks, advertised with antique posters, are real, and the customer finds himself participating in the fantasy because of his own authenticity as a consumer; in other words, he is in the role of the cowboy or the gold-prospector who comes into town to be fleeced of all he has accumulated while out in the wilds.

But that seems a stretch to me, that someone would recognize themselves in a role that would be a negative sterotype to them, instead of just continuing in expected behavior to a tourist location.

Similarly, the movie Westworld (1973), inspired in part by Michael Crichton's visit to Disneyland, takes this to its reasonable conclusion, for a price you can play the role in the Delos' resort simulation WestWorld, with all the benefits and none of the risks, and still be yourself:

Gardner: When you played cowboys and Indians as a kid, you'd point go "bang, bang" and the other kid would lie down and play dead. Well, Westworld is the same thing, only it's for real! I shot 6 people! Well, they weren't real people!

Ed: What Mr. Lewis means is he shot 6 robots scientifically programmed to look, act, talk and even bleed just like humans do. Isn't that right?

Gardner: Well, they may have been robots. I mean, I think they were robots. I mean, I know they were robots!

Without the risk, however, the visitors to Delos have a harder time taking it seriously -

Woman: They're robbin' the bank!

Peter: Robbin' the bank? Hey, maybe we oughta go help out.

Generic Universal Facebook Viru-Quiz, 2009/2/5

1. Delight.

2. Bath.

3. Border.

4. May I see your passport please?

5. Rail.

6. Bobolink.

7. Cassowary.

8. Leaflets.

9. Yes.

10. Yes.

11. Yes.

12. Yes.

13. Size 12.

14. Yes.

15. We are just good friends.

, 2009/1/25

"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard Inconvenience you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."

, 2009/1/15

Narrow dessert, 2009/1/6

1.     A dessert comprising,
(a)    a binder portion comprising
greek honey yogurt, and
(b)    a contents portion comprising
pearl mozzarella cheese,
raisins,
chopped dried apricots, and
chopped pitted dates.

2.     The dessert of claim 1, further comprising
frozen corn kernels.

City Burn, 2009/1/3

"A Change in Time", part of First Night Austin 2009, was the burning of a wooden clock tower on New Year's Eve (12/31/2008) on Auditorium Shores in downtown Austin, TX.

...

...

The Dawn of Automatic Business Computers, 2008/9/3

Estimated Number of Automatic Computers in Use

From Introduction to Automatic Computers. The IBM-650, while not IBM's first computer offering, appears to be far outselling all other computer models, probably because it was easier to integrate with existing unit record accounting electromechanical systems.

Bluetooth Headset and Mouthpiece, 2008/9/3

Bluetooth Headset and Mouthpiece

Work in progress - putting a Bluetooth telephone headset back together amalgamated with vacuum tube radio headphones and a former telephone's mouthpiece. One earpiece works and the Bluetooth mike is on the mouthpiece. Later need to complete the attachment hook for the mouthpiece.

Report on an unidentified social networking site, 2008/4/21

Usually my spam filter would remove messages that have the message dated in the future, assuming them to be from improperly-configured clients. However it seems to have fortuitiously missed a few messages, refiling them in the data sharing folder.

From: Thomas Jefferson Stamford <stamford@nasa.mil>
To: address deleted
Subject: SURVEY REPORT 1
Date: 12 Apr 2012 10:13:13 0000

SURVEY REPORT 1

By good luck we have been able to transfer all our accounts and relationships into this empty social networking site. There have been no lost contacts from our community. We all count ourselves fortunate to have found this replacement so quickly after our previous site suffered a sudden and inexplictable bankruptcy.

This site we have moved to has no obvious branding and no domain name. We believe it to have been a staging area, a holder of identities in transit from one network to another. Its applications consist of the typical set of chat boards, horoscopes, groups, fan profiles, and search tools. As yet we have not been able to locate any administrative or moderation functions. We assume that this site was temporarily decommissioned due to a decline in use.

A curious feature of this site is in its lists of "friends of friends" and "people you may know", which, when we compared across several users, had few names in common and do not appear to be consistent with the size of our community.

Estimated size of our social network: 500 connections

 

 

(with apologies to ballard)

Franchise Tax, 2008/4/20

This set of "security questions" for a forgotten password is for a web site for filing franchise tax - a tax typically paid by corporations. This form is filled out by a person acting in a role as the corporation's financial provider or senior officer (e.g., a CFO, if a small business). So why does it want personal information about them? The role might be the same next year, but there's no guarantee that it will be the same person - does one CPA have to call up another CPA to ask their favorite toy? And why is there such an emphasis on childhood experiences - this seems to be a psychodynamic therapy session as much as a tax filing session.

PC Load Letter, 2008/4/14

Flattening with a pair of sledgehammers.

Androbot scarecrow, 2008/4/14

A TOPO shell which was a planter for many years. Hopefully it will keep the robot birds at bay.

Six Earth Cities, 2008/3/31

The author of "Six Earth Cities That Will Provide Blueprints for Martian Settlers" picked Black Rock City, an Antarctic base, Dubai, Las Vegas, Nunavut and pueblos of the Southwest. The illustrations show the buildings sitting on the surface or on the sloping side of a crater.

Presumably the inhabitants of these cities, when they're not playing with their Perky Pat Layouts, would either be recovering from radiation sickness or cleaning out the everpresent dust.

I'd suggest as my six models,

• Coober Pedy
  

  Interesting attractions in Coober Pedy include the mines, the graveyard, and the underground churches. The first tree ever seen in the town was welded together from scrap iron. It still sits on a hilltop overlooking the town. The local golf course - mostly played at night with glowing balls, to avoid daytime temperatures - is completely free of grass and golfers take a small piece of "turf" around to use for teeing off.

• Siq
  

  The Siq is a natural geological fault produced by tectonic forces and worn smooth by water erosion. The walls that enclose the Siq stand between 91-182 meters (300-600 feet) in height.

• an Ice Hotel
  

  The walls are more than 4 feet (1.2 m) thick on average. All of the furniture is made of ice. In addition to using ice glasses as in the Kiruna ice hotel, the bar (and room service) also serves cold cuts on ice plates.

• a Combat support hospital
  

  The great operational advantage of the DEPMEDS facility ... is the use of single or double expanding milvans to create hard sided, air conditioned, sterile operating rooms and intensive care facilities, which can produce surgical outcomes similar to that seen in fixed facility hospitals, and do so in an austere environment.

• Cousteau's Underwater Habitat
  

  Conshelf III was tested in 1965, six divers lived in the habitat at 100 metres in the Mediterranean near the Ile du Levant for three weeks. In this effort, Cousteau was determined to make the station more self-sufficient, severing most ties with the surface. A mock oil rig was set up underwater, and divers successfully performed several industrial tasks.

• The caves of Afghanistan (book)
  

  Some of these huge tunnels reached 1640ft and contained a hotel, a mosque, arms depts and repair shops, a garage, a medical point, a radio center and a kitchen. A gasoline generator provided power to the tunnels and the hotel's video player. This impressive base became a mandatory stop for visiting journalists, dignitaries and other 'war tourists'.

It appears you'll get three chances to be encalmed during behavior evaluation, 2008/3/31

From TSA Checkpoint Evolution come Ambient Sounds:

Soothing music is played to calm passengers in the checkpoint queue area, allowing behavior detection officers to better identify suspicious passengers.

The placement of the speakers in a light panel is illustrated in a video they posted to YouTube..

Diagram from Wired:

This means, order your steak well-done, Walter., 2008/1/28

From ABC News,

Savvy criminals are using some of the country's most credible logos, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, DirecTV and the U.S. Border Patrol, to create fake trucks to smuggle drugs, money and illegal aliens across the border, according to a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement...The report says criminals have been able to easily obtain the necessary vinyl logo markings and signs for $6,000 or less. Authorities say "cosmetically cloned commercial vehicles are not illegal."

So a Piggly Wiggly truck, in Wyoming, could be due to aliens.

Bouncing to Graceland, 2008/1/12

Last night saw casiotone for the painfully alone, who was touring with his brother (Concern), at The Vera Project in Seattle Center. The 45-min set included "I Love Creedence", "Streets of Philadelphia", "Toby, take a bow", "Scattered Pearls", "Jeane if you're ever in Portland", "Hobby Bobby", others, and closed with "Graceland".

Difficult Listening Hour, 2008/1/5

Lightness war

The phrase lightness war (or lightness race) refers to the art industry's tendency to paint, color and print art at progressively increasing levels of lightness to create an image that stands out from others. This phenomenon can be observed in many areas of the art industry, particularly in galleries and in pictures distributed as giclée and as Sofa-sized art. In the case of gallery prints, the war stems from artists' and distributors' desires to create pictures that seem as bright as possible or brighter than pictures from competing artists.^[1]

However, as the maximum brightness of a picture is dependent on its illumination, the overall lightness can only be increased by reducing the dynamic range. This is done by making the darker areas brighter while the brightest peak shades are either destroyed or severely diminished.

Example

Runways and Volcanos-on-a-Plane, 2008/1/2

This quite readable report from the FAA describes the US airports which will likely not keep up with their anticipated passenger/cargo demand over the next 20 years, based on their current construction forecasts: An Analysis of Airports and Metropolitan Area Demand and Operational Capacity in the Future 2007-2025. 23 pages + appendicies

On a lighter note, what did Shatner and Nimoy have to say about air travel?

(fwd) i-card hero ROCKS!!!!, 2007/12/30

A thank you note email I received this week: Dear Mark, Thank you very much for getting me the icard hero video game for Xmas!! i know a lot of my friends have also got it, but i'm not sure how many are really playing it much when i started playing i suc...

Boeing Surplus Sales, 2007/12/21

Boeing Surplus Sales in Kent, WA closed on December 21, 2007. My last loadout - Friday afternoon

changetype:add, 2007/11/1

dn: cn=Marsden Wahl cn: Marsden Wahl cn: Marsden Burnside Wahl sn: Wahl objectclass: top objectclass: person objectclass: newperson birthTimestamp: 20071030052000Z

Universal Frequencies, 2007/10/23

The US Radio Act of 1912 limited amateur ("ham") radio communication to "short waves": wavelengths less than 200 meters, or frequencies of greater than 1.5 MHz. No private or commercial station not engaged in the transaction of bona fide commercial business...

Nolan Bushnell, 2007/10/23

From " Nolan Bushnell: Serious Thoughts about Fun and Games " on home console Pong: I can remember people saying, 'It's neat, but how does the TV station know I turned this knob?' Their whole metric was TV signals came from TV station.

Hyperreality and children's literature, 2007/10/18

Fakelore : children's books, mass-produced aboriginal art, that "improves" a traditional theme but takes it out of its original context. At its worst, fakelore can replace folklore. From " Fakelore, Multiculturalism, and the Ethics of Children's Literatur...

Why did they have to ruin a perfectly servicable wagon story with all that fruity singing?, 2007/10/4

Burning Man 1862 In 1847, Larry Harvey and his followers, fleeing persecution on Baker Beach, reached the Black Rock Desert and announced It is enough, this is the right place, leave no trace. Greeters Hard to tell what's going on, lots of dust The first T...

Exodus, 2007/10/4

World's largest pinhole photograph, 2007/10/4

The Great Picture . Taken using a 6mm pinhole. Image is 3375 square feet, gelatin sizing, covered by 80 liters Rockland Liquid Light. Exposure was 35 minutes. Developing required 600 gallons developer, 1200 gallons fixer.

I gotta fight the lion!, 2007/10/4

From Takkorngartaub Arvertarninga : Pilgrim's Progress translated into Inuktitut , available as a scanned PDF from University of Alberta SunSITE. Unlike the earlier 1901 translation, which borrowed generic 'European' illustrations from other missionary tran...

Would you buy a satellite dish from this man?, 2007/10/3

The first rule of advertising is, Stalin sells! . Especially when he offers a free trial !.

Balloons against drugs, 2007/10/3

An aerostat tethered to a locomotive on a little circle track provides border patrol assistance outside Marfa, Texas. Its radar observes aircraft coming in low over the horizon from Mexico.

No lightning without prior approval?, 2007/10/3

Seen on the grounds of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory ( APL ). (April 2007, Laurel, MD).

You are not Facebook's customer, 2007/10/3

Doc Searls in his DIDW2007 keynote discussed the relationships between users and vendors of computing services. For a social networking service like Facebook, you (the individual) are not the customer. Advertisers are Facebook's customers. You are bait.

Consent Decree and Computing, 2007/10/3

Not many people realize that the model of "computing" we have, as well as the computer industry of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that led to the personal computer, the Internet, the free software movement, etc., was due to a Department of Justice consent decre...

Big Science and Little Kids infant and toddler clothing, 2007/10/2

The Zetona Clothing store Big Science and Little Kids has infant and children's clothing. Mir/Shuttle Kid's T-Shirt 100% Cotton: the Mir space station and the Space Shuttle. International Space Station Kid's Hooded Sweatshirt Cotton/Polyester Fleece: the IS...

Working Characters, 2007/9/26

I'm reading the new book "Hello, Please! Very Helpful Super Kawaii Characters from Japan" . Working characters can be found in nearly every corner of Japan, every drug store and supermarket, every doctor's office, every police box, every military base, an...

Perceiving colors and the visible spectrum, 2007/9/21

IIRC the color gamuts which are used to "define" RGB and other computer models of color were based on experimental averages of testing lots of people in the 1920s. They were of course then limited in testing for what was easy to see and discern using their ...

Hiding BRC, 2007/9/20

See for example this page . Think of the shade!

The Title Grabs You, 2007/9/18

Much better than those books on Language and Social Change in VB or Perl...

Anti-utopian social networking #3 - the real world and its online representation, 2007/9/17

Dan Brickley who blogs at danbri's foaf stories wrote last week in his post "The World is now closed" that one problem with popular social networking service sites such as Facebook is that their software is making the closed world assumption : anything the ...

Winnetou, 2007/9/14

The New York Times has an article on the most famous German Apache of all time.

Webcast Spectators, 2007/9/4

Alice: "No Burner would be a spectator." Bob: "But Carol-the-Burner watched the BM webcast." Alice: "Aye, but no True Burner would be a spectator."

Driving a Capacitor, 2007/9/4

The authors of a patent for a capacitor power source propose an array of 2736 1000-layer caps totaling 31F (with a charge voltage of 3500V) to keep an EV rolling at 60 mph (14 hp) for 5 hours.

Nobodobodon, 2007/8/31

Johnny Cash Liner Note Mad Lib, 2007/8/31

"The initial idea for the ______________ came from a dream I had .........................(type of media)......................... ________ years ago. I was in _____________ and had bought a book (number)......................(distant town)...............

Narrative of community and redemption, 2007/8/30

It will turn this year's Burning Man into a "narrative of community and redemption" as the attendees get to see or assist in the public rebuilding of the statue, he said. I wonder which definition of "redemption" is being invoked. "After the uprising of ...

Pods are coming to town, 2007/8/29

Yes, less than a week ago, Austin was like any other town: people with nothing but problems. Then, out of the playa came a solution. Pods, which had the power to reproduce themselves in the exact likeness of any form of life. Your new bodies are growing in...

Street Skate Song, 2007/8/29

"Magic street skate Mystery street skate Take a little ride Let me be your guide Through the street skate paradise. Juju street skate Voodoo street skate Take a little fall. Spend a splendid night Where there's never hills or walls. It's a natur...

Dune Chanting, 2007/8/29

I had shuffled just a metre further down the slope with a good sand avalanche going, when it began. The burping sound suddenly transformed into a low growl, as if a thousand yogis hidden beneath the dune had started chanting 'Om'. It felt like the ground...

The Burning Man did not take place, 2007/8/27

Watch as five guys driving art cars wander into a theme camp, knock over some electronic equipment and steal a guitar. On Youtube .

EOE M/F/D/V/Vampire-Slayer?, 2007/8/24

New Scientist is a UK based magazine that also has a US edition. The main difference is in the jobs section at the back of each issue: the US edition are naturally US-based jobs, primarily from pharma/biotech companies needing researchers or lab workers. ...

Art that goes Boom, 2007/8/22

Maybe my work sometimes is like the poppy flower. It's very beautiful, but yet because of circumstances it also represents a poison to society as well. So from gunpowder, from its very essence, you can see so much of the power of the universe-how we cam...

Scratch Monkey, 2007/8/22

Don't forget your scratch monkey

GEB Parody, 2007/8/19

Tortoise: And so, our little game went on like this for a few more rounds, and eventually our friend tried to become very smart. He got wind of the principle upon which I was basing my own MP3s, and decided to try to outfox me. He wrote to the MP3 player ...

Anti-utopian social networking #2, 2007/8/11

In an earlier post on anti-utopian social networking , I outlined a scenario in which An anti-utopian social networking site is a social networking site that has developed a flaw that "spoils" it, and one flaw could be the misapplication of undercover/viral...

"My" Story: biography in social networking services, 2007/8/10

Pamela Dingle (who blogs at Adventures of an Eternal Optimist ) writes in "The Dating Mashup (or my Facebook Adventure)" ...I see that a photo has been 'tagged' as being of me....When my friend posted that picture, only those in his network saw it - general...

Dramaturge in Space, 2007/8/3

I propose that Samuel Beckett's " Act without Words I " would be a prototypical candidate for inclusion in a set of plays ideally suited for being performed by a theater of astronauts located on the Moon, or perhaps on Mars.

Don't fly to Burning Man, 2007/8/1

Gremlin on the wing says: Don't waste oil. (Parody)

Anti-utopian social networking, 2007/7/30

First, some background. Tupperware parties, undercover marketing and viral marketing The party plan is a marketing technique developed by Brownie Wise in the early 1950s, initially for selling Tupperware (tm) plastic storage containers. The 1995 documentary...

Botnets, 2007/7/23

Someone posted: The two images below show graphical depictions of what has and IS trying to connect to my computer even in an idle state Things trying to connect to a computer? They are called "BotNets". They've infected hundreds of thousands of machines a...

Hello World: 90 years of user-centric graphics design in a global virtual community, 2007/7/21

Those who work in user-centric identity management and are not ham radio operators should have read Hello World: a life in ham radio , by Danny Gregory and Paul Sahre , published by Princeton Architectural Press . This is a QSL card . Whenever hams connect ...

Transport help needed for BM Art Project, 2007/7/18

At the time when North America was hardly explored, one of those early French trappers went westward from Montreal, and he was the first white man to set eyes on Niagara Falls. When he returned, he told of waterfalls that were more vast and immense than ...

Eno iPod, 2007/7/13

The Brian Eno iPod - plays a single song for 1000 years (assuming regular maintenance). (Parody)

Keep busy with cheerful things, 2007/7/11

...Accounts suggest that the initial impact of the missile immediately crippled the [HMS Sheffield's] onboard electricity generating systems and fractured the water main, preventing the anti-fire mechanisms from operating effectively, and thereby dooming th...

It's tough to be a famous writer, 2007/7/6

...as illustrated by this QuickTime video clip .

Phishing Attack, 2006/5/1

BM Products Pavilion, 2007/6/29

This reminds me of a story I read someplace. He found in the temple courts those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers sitting at tables. So he made a whip of cords and drove them all out of the temple courts, with the sheep...

X.501 Matching Rules OK, 2007/6/15

Worst. Captcha. Ever, 2007/6/15

Repositories responding to a breach with an offer of free credit monitoring, 2007/6/13

An article on the MSNBC web site posted last year, "Few takers for free credit monitoring" , discusses the scenario in which a company has suffered a potential loss of customer identity information, provides their customers with a free year of credit monit...

Choosing an identity provider by altitude, 2007/6/12

On a less serious note, Dave Kearns mentioned in " IdP marketing 101 " that "I've no idea where he thinks this might arise, except perhaps thru stray gamma rays flipping bits in the database. " In a 2004 article "Soft errors' impact on system reliability" ...

Too much tong, 2007/5/13

Event Boundary, 2007/5/12

Europe's largest non-commercial rocket launch, 2007/5/4

Using the scientific principle that "it's a bit pointy at the front", a Reliant Robin was selected as the shuttle. From BBC TopGear and Youtube

Get ready, 2007/4/24

On Memorial day weekend, a community will come together for their annual gathering. They come from all over the US, though predominately from the Central time zone. Many have been planning this for months; this is what they expect to do every year. There a...

Information Assurance in science fiction: outrunning the Bounty Bear, 2007/3/26

In an earlier post today I mentioned the fictional bounty hunter's Bounty Bear skiptrace locating device from the movie Until the End of the World . The Bounty Bear aggregates credit card and identity transactions occuring anywhere in the world. How might s...

Information Assurance: audit trail aggregation in science fiction: the Bounty Bear, 2007/3/26

One of the areas of difficulty in applying information assurance in enterprise networks is a proliferation of cheap, plentiful, unmanaged network-attaching devices: in the 90's it was modems, today it is wireless access points. These devices add benefit t...

Corporate Takeover, 2007/3/7

I am also a intrigued by the strategy employed in forming RCID . While it requires a larger initial capital outlay, and works best in sparsely rural or unpopulated areas, one ends up with complete control afterward, e.g., eminent domain, ability to issue t...

Bagpipes explained, 2007/2/16

Ten movies streaming across that, that bagpipe, and what happens to your own personal bagpipe? I just the other day got... a bagpipe was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all the...

Hoax Devices, 2007/2/1

It was trickly to find Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 266, Section 102 and-a-half, as for whatever reason it doesn't show up in the online table of contents for chapter 266. However it _is_ on the legislature page .

Wikipedia self-promotion, 2007/2/1

(Parody of the famous New Yorker cartoon)

Dune-bashing, 2007/1/1

(Parody)

1000lb hamster, 2006/12/31

(Parody)

Three Laws of Santa, 2006/12/25

(Parody)

Yes VIRGINIA, there is a heavily-armed Santa Claus, 2006/12/22

It's surprising to see someone so twinkly-eyed so heavily armed, but this is normal for North Pole. It solves the mystery of where the plotters would have got the guns. There are guns everywhere. This is mainly because of the bears. There are bears everywhe...

Ⓐ Cafe in Miami, 2006/12/12

From the Ⓐ Cafe in Miami myspace page : Hi, we're Marc and Blue and we have a small boutique restaurant that serves tasty organic foods filled with flavor and smiles! We serve dinner Tuesday through Saturday nights from 8 p.m. until... (the kitchen us...

West Texas Spaceport, 2006/12/8

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06314/737330-84.stm http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA073006.01A.spaceport.1b3dd0a.html http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4629743

Buyer Beware, 2006/11/28

(Parody)

Mask Laws, 2006/11/22

IIRC some states, particularly in the south US, have laws which prohibit public mask wearing, due to one kind of organization in which the members thus disguised would levy (and carry out) threats. Thus some communities have identified that anonymity in pu...

Scriabin, 2006/11/13

The Russian composer Scriabin, at the time of his death had not completed his intended ultimate work, in which There will not be a single spectator. All will be participants. The work requires special people, special artists and a completely new culture. ...

It's like all your themes are wood, 2006/11/10

...and they're headed for the chipper! Can't make the town hall? Play along at home with Magnetic Poetry, Flipside Theme edition (tm)! How it works: 1. Print out http://www.plasmator.net/fs/themes.php on some magnetic paper, e.g., http://www.staples.c...

The Black Mailbox is White, 2006/11/1

Mass Migrations, 2006/10/2

What could trigger a mass migration? Natural disaster, economic or political instability, typically if occuring in a central american country, but potentially any populated area of the world. Even climate change could trigger one. Several mass migrations t...

Watch from Home, 2006/8/30

Postal alternatives, 2006/8/29

While it is permitted by the Postal Service recommendations for delivery by private hands without compensation 39 CFR 310.3(c) or by private carriage in limited instances 39 CFR 310.2(b)(1), however in practice these methods might not necessarily provide ac...

toothpaste, 2006/8/25

You will be allowed your screwdrivers, brother. You will be allowed to bring a corkscrew or toy uzi. You will be allowed to bring scissors with pointed tips and blades shorter than four inches in length. But the TSA won't let you bring toothpaste. The TSA w...

Dunicode, 2006/8/1

Could someone confirm this is a reasonable Unicode enoding for the Fremen word Muad'dib: 0645U 0624U 062fU 0628U (MEEM, WAW WITH HAMZA ABOVE, DAL, BEH) ( There are also rumors of an unpublished Gnostic Dune, in which Alia is the major figure, and Rakis is r...

Answer to a boycott question, 2006/8/1

Can someone please explain to me why _asking a question_ gets you reported to a national security department? Because the question was actually a requirement to participate in a boycott in order to complete an export transaction. Many of the reporting requ...

Business Plan Sketch, 2006/7/26

Moriarty: Three days we've stood waist-deep in this ice-bound Loch Lomond. What's the idea, eh? Grytpype-Thynne: Don't you like fishing, Moriarty? Moriarty: Fishing?! Oh-type-oh! We haven't any rods! How do you catch fish like this? Grytpype-Thynne: Well, t...

Fake Zombies, 2006/7/25

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Six friends spruced up in fake blood and tattered clothing were arrested in downtown Minneapolis on suspicion of toting "simulated weapons of mass destruction." Police said the group were allegedly carrying bags with wires sticking out, m...

Critical Buoyancy, 2006/7/25

In addition to or in place of a city or commercial sponsored event, I'd like there to be Critical Buoyancy on Town Lake. (Critical as in Critical Mass, substituting human-powered boat for human-powered cycle). See for example http://www.gcbr.com/tips.html o...

BF3K, 2006/7/20

(Parody)

Identity Selector Album Cover, 2006/7/18

(Parody of an Identity Gang photo by Kaylia Hamlin)

Clippy, 2006/7/13

(Parody)

Privacy, 2006/7/12

One of the difficulties facing individuals managing risk in interactions with "social networking" services, especially those in the US, is the mismatch of expectations around such concepts as "private" or "personal" labels of identity-related or interperson...

Important Reminder, 2006/7/8

If it is necessary to issue a press release for a cover story, choose a mundane cover story. July 8, 1947: RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region

Who first invented the Steam Piston?, 2006/7/7

Not invented by Watt, Watt was just tweaking an existing design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Newcomen By 1711 his first commercial engine was completed, replacing a team of 500 horses. which was based on 17th century steam piston inventions, e.g. ht...

Birdstrike, 2006/7/6

Or a helicopter...March 8 2001 Aircraft was transporting a heart patient to Barnes-Jewish Hospital, when a duck crashed through the windshield. The pilot was slightly injured and was partially incapacitated. The duck ended up in the patient's lap. (http://w...

Don't look down, 2006/6/13

BRC personnel will discourage travel, including travel by aircraft, to other historical, cultural, recreational or geographical resources in the Black Rock Desert area during the event.

Official business, 2006/6/5

"It's, uh, fascinating," said one first-time participant, Scott Bensing, chief of staff for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Bensing, who was attending from Washington with his wife and children on what he called "semiofficial, semipersonal business," looked a ...

All bugs are shallow, 2006/5/15

Sanborn said the error went unnoticed for years because he's avoided looking carefully at the text for fear that he would somehow leak clues about it.

Disabling an RFID, 2006/5/8

You might be able to bend the chip off the substrate (unless its well potted) or try to burn it out with a burst of strong RF, but it'd probably be easier to cut the antenna (typically the largest part anyway), so that the range it can respond from becomes ...

Speeding has killed the Dodo bird, 2006/5/1

If we go by the book, like Lieutenant Saavik, hours could seem like days, 2006/4/25

Windows desktop users can tweak their local cache settings via HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters

Hilltops no longer burst into flame, 2006/4/14

On the Saturday evening preceding Easter, bonfires [were] lit atop as many as twenty-two specified hills flanking the Texas German town of Fredericksburg. At the appointed hour the church bells of the town toll, lights are extinguished, and the hilltops bur...

Crackpot drivers directed to cliffs of death, 2006/4/5

Drivers following satellite navigation systems through a village called Crackpot have been directed along a track at the edge of a 100ft cliff... "The tests showed that if you keyed in Crackpot as a destination then you would be sent along this route so we ...

A4, 2006/4/4

Sneaking into SXSW from 900 miles away?, 2006/3/24

Chow had been on the standby list for the flight, booked through American Airlines, but when she learned it was full, Chow sneaked past gate agents at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and boarded, court documents show. With no seats available, Chow w...

Have your own van?, 2006/3/17

The San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority is a tiny, privately run organization that provides bus rides to disabled people and senior citizens. It operates out of an auto repair shop. Maiwandi is the owner of Homer's Auto Service in Monrovia and is also one...

Terra Antarctica, 2006/3/8

Terra Antarctica is a slide lecture about the history of artistic, cartographic, and scientific images of the Antarctic, the world's most isolated continent. Fox will show how human cognition reacts to deserts, and then, when our neurophysiology fails to co...

Haunted Possessed Gift Card Dangerous?, 2006/2/26

I tried cutting it apart with scissors and threw it in the trash, the next day I found it in my wallet - completely whole and untouched. I checked the serial number and it was EXACTLY the SAME CARD!

Flipside Reloaded, 2006/2/20

Safety Last, 2006/2/11

(Parody)

Disney/Pixar, 2006/1/24

Mounting bullet cameras, 2006/1/12

It could be much cheaper if the only thing in the bullet/rocket is a lens and perhaps an image amplifier - send the image back down a fiber bundle (similar to the wire-guided missile like the TOW) like a very long borescope, where it's fed into a 10000fps r...

IKEA TARDIS, 2005/12/24

Survival Guide, 2005/12/6

If Happy Flat Creek begins to rise, get away immediately. Caution: falling off a cliff at Happy Flat Creek may suddenly accelerate you straight down to dangerous speeds. Cacti at Happy Flat Creek may stick to certain types of skin. Do not taunt Happy Flat C...

Sock Puppet, 2005/12/6

(Parody)

Mail order selective disclosure of organizational role, 2005/11/30

One reason social engineering attacks continue to occur is the ease by which victims can misinterpret the attacker's role/intentions, which can lead to fraud based on the victim's trust of that role. When meeting someone in person, the determination of whet...

changetype:add, 2005/11/11

dn: cn=Tegan Wahl cn: Tegan Wahl cn: Tegan Moira Wahl sn: Wahl objectclass: top objectclass: person objectclass: newperson birthTimestamp: 20051111183400Z

Burning Man New Zealand regional, 2005/10/13

Intern, 2005/12/6

This espionage activity is an essential way for France to keep abreast of international commerce and technology. Of course, it was directed against the United States as well as others. You must remember that while we are allies in defense matters, we are...

Borg Apprentice, 2005/9/30

Joe, your coffee team sold half as much as the ice team. You're fired!

Air Force's picture of Flying Saucer on Mars, 2005/9/20

(The Viking aeroshell)

PKD-A, 2005/9/16

There are some other pictures of PKD-A at http://hansonrobotics.com/project_pkd.php and http://www.pkdandroid.org/ and in most it seems to be lacking the back of the scalp, presumably to simplify debugging access. May I suggest a small addition.

Paul's drinking the water of life ... from a Brita filter, 2005/9/9

In the quarterly junkmail pile I sometimes find the Smarthome (audio/video/home automation) mail-order catalog. One of their products is a Sony kitchen TV. The caption is "Now you can cook along with your favorite cooking show with this multi-function TV/ra...

Zombie Spokesman, 2005/8/26

Intriguingly, the phrase "a zombie spokesman" is quite rare on the Web, according to Google and other search engines, and the phrases "the zombie spokesman" and "zombie spokesunperson" do not appear at all. Or maybe they're just waiting for this one to com...

Revival and Alcohol don't mix, 2005/8/10

NRS 201.280 Every person who shall erect or keep a booth, tent, stall or other contrivance for the purpose of selling or otherwise disposing of any wine, or spirituous or fermented liquors, ..., within 1 mile of any camp or field meeting for religious wors...

Flipside Trail, 2005/7/28

Recap, 2005/6/24

David Lynch's It's a Wonderful Life, 2005/7/28

Pottersville is not a hypothetical alternative to Bedford Falls, it's a part of the same town, that George Bailey hadn't noticed until that night.

returning after parking, 2005/6/3

Returning to the conversation, following a break last week to set up the volunteer system for Parking management for the Texas regional festival Burning Flipside . There were approximately 700 vehicles handled for 1520 participants. Each vehicle heading bey...

Taser Town, 2005/4/22

"Hi. Ed Ramsey from Delos. If there's anyone who doesn't know what Delos is, well, as we've always said: Delos is the vacation of the future, today. At Delos, you get your choice of the vacation you want. There's Medieval World, Roman World and, of cours...

i13b, 2005/4/9

There were giants living in those lands, 2005/4/22

IIRC, it started its existence as a giant Santa.

Cirque de Harvey, 2005/3/12

SunRay, 2005/2/8

But I'd rather have a sunray in front of me, than have to have a frontal lobotomy.

Tower of Pallets, 2005/2/8

When more than 2,000 pallets arrived at his house, he set about stacking them in concentric circles until he had built a cone 22 feet high with a staircase winding around the outside. He did not create art, Wheatley said. "Instead, he used his eccentric ...

What is Burning Flipline?, 2005/1/26

What is Burning Flipline? Let's start with the easy answer: Burning Flipline is an art and music festival held on Red River Street in Austin over one week in January. It is inspired by Hands on a Hard Body . Yeah, but what is it, really? "Flipline is l...

We interrupt this program, 2005/1/24

(FADE IN PIANO PLAYING) ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, here, nearer home, comes a special bulletin from the Hill Country. It is reported that at 8:50 P. M. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a ranch in the neighborhood of Dripping...

Searching for Aliens, 2005/1/2

NORAD Threat Monitoring, 2004/12/18

The moment our radar tells us that Santa has lifted off, we begin to use the same satellites that we use in providing warning of possible missile launches aimed at North America. Rudolph's nose gives off an infrared signature similar to a missile launch. Th...

Trailer park spacecraft?, 2004/12/15

The New Threat, 2004/12/8

The 21st-century technologies - glitter, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) - are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses. Most dangerously, for the first time, these accidents and abuses are widely within the reach of indi...

Review of Polar Express Club, 2004/11/24

It's a classic 1950's CE3 case. The main character, in a state of half-sleep, hears a noise from outside the house and investigates. He is taken along with other abductees to the secret Arctic base operated by an army of small, apparently cloned, creature...

UN Weapons Inspector and Race Car Driver, 2004/11/19

Space Folding Veterans for Truth, 2004/11/10

If you have any question about what Paul Maud'Dib is made of, just spend 3 minutes with the men who served with him. Manual of Muad'Dib by Princess Irulan Gurney Halleck: "I served with Paul Maud'Dib." Duncan Idaho: "I served with Paul Maud'...

Algae - it's what's for dinner, 2004/11/3

Do you realize that in addition to algae in water, why, there are companies out there which put algae in smoothies, energy bars, puddings, ice cream? Ice cream, Mandrake? Children's ice cream!...

Debugging Scripted HTML, 2004/10/22

Oh, hey. We're rehearsing a - a scene for the upcoming company play called uh, "An error occurred while processing this directive". It's a musical. [singing] An error occurred while processing this directive, An error occurred while processing this directiv...

Sanctity of the pitch, 2004/10/21

There is one thing that -- even if it were considered essential -- no student movement or urban revolt or global protest ... would ever be able to do. That is to occupy the football field on a Sunday Umberto Eco in "Sports Chatter"

Drag-and-Drop Cruise Ship, 1999/1/1

Sea Patrol, 1947/1/1