Posts in Uncategorized
16 offbeat space experiments for the people

International Space Station --

On March 18, astronaut Koichi Wakata arrived at the International Space Station to begin his three-month space sojourn — the longest ever for a Japanese spaceman. Although much of Wakata’s time in space will be devoted to official research and maintenance duties, he plans to set aside a little free time for 16 offbeat experiments proposed by the Japanese public.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) selected the extra experiments from nearly 1,600 proposals they received after asking the public what tests they would like to see performed in space. The 16 experiments are listed here as questions posed to Wakata.

1. Calisthenics: Is it possible to follow an audio-guided workout program in zero gravity?

2. Backflips: On Earth, backflips take a lot of practice and leg strength. How about in zero gravity?

3. Volleying (soccer): Crumple a piece of paper into a ball and try kicking it around. How does the ball behave in zero gravity? Can you volley it?

4. Push-ups: In space, can you do push-ups while facing the ceiling or walls?

5. Cartwheels: In zero gravity, can you rotate yourself continuously like a windmill?

6. Swimming: Try to swim through the air as if you were in water. Can you move forward by swimming? If not, why not?

7. Spin like an ice skater: On Earth, ice skaters can increase their rotation speed by pulling their arms closer in to the body while they spin. Does the same thing happen in zero gravity? If so, what is the reason?

8. Folding clothes: In space, can you fold clothes and put them away as you do on Earth? It seems that the shirt sleeves would be difficult to keep in place. What is the best way to fold clothes in space?

9. Magic carpet: Try to sit on a floating carpet. Magic carpets are a fantasy on Earth, but are they possible in space?

10. Water gun: On Earth, if you squeeze a drink bag, a single stream of liquid shoots out through the straw hole and falls to the ground. How does the liquid behave in zero gravity?

11. Eye drops: On Earth, you have to face upward to put eye drops into your eyes. Is there a better way to do this in zero gravity?

12. Propulsion through space: When floating in zero gravity, how much power do you need in order to propel yourself around? Can you move simply by blowing air from your mouth or by flapping a hand-fan?

The next four activities are to be performed by two people:

13. Arm wrestling
14. Shaking hands
15. Sumo
16. Tug-of-war

JAXA plans to release videos of Wakata’s experiments in July.

[Source: JAXA]

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Test your vocabulary
100 Words that Make You Sound Smart, from kipbot.com's blog.

accolade
acrimony
angst
anomaly
antidote
avant-garde
baroque
bona-fide
boondoggle
bourgeois
bravado
brogue
brusque
byzantine
cacophony
camaraderie
capricious
carte blanche
Catch-22
caustic
charisma
cloying
deja vu
dichotomy
dilettante
disheveled
elan
ennui
epitome
equanimity
equivocate
esoteric
euphemism
fait accompli
fastidious
faux pas
fiasco
finagle
Freudian slip
glib
gregarious
harbinger
hedonist
heresy
idiosyncratic
idyllic
indelicate
infinitesimal
insidious
junket
kitsch
litany
lurid
Machiavellian
malaise
malinger
mantra
maudlin
mercenary
minimalist
misnomer
narcissist
nirvana
non sequitur
nouvea riche
oblivion
ogle
ostentatious
ostracise / ostracize (UK/US)
panacea
paradox
peevish
perfunctory
philistine
precocious
propriety
quid pro quo
quintessential
red herring
revel
rhetoric
scintillating
spartan
stigma
stoic
suave
Svengali
sycophant
teetotaler
tete-a-tete
tirade
tryst
ubiquitous
unrequited
untenable
vicarious
vile
waft
white elephant
zealous
UncategorizedJack DysonComment
US Army, rare archive of medical photography

Staff at the Otis Historical Archives of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC have been uploading their favourites to Flickr. It is, by turns, a fantastic, disgusting, educational and amazing depository of images.

The army is far from happy with it and has blocked them for some bizarre reason, so they have started taking the pictures home to scan them. There's nothing secret in the pictures - they date from the American Civil War, but there's plenty interesting about them.

Some of them are also quite gross (watch out for the one of the dislocated eyeball, the close-ups of the skin graft and pictures of how to get shrapnel out of wounds - yuk) but there are fascinating details on early rehabilitation techniques, treatment of mass-influenza outbreaks and life as an army medic.

They've migrated most of the pictures to THIS Flickr account - click on 'profile' and you'll see other links and updates to their pictures. If you want to read their blog, it's here.

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Say it ain't so - why we can't replace newspapers

Got this off BoingBoing: Clay Shirky explains how all the "visionary planning" in the newspaper business in the 90s amounted to variations on this theme: "Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!" This fallacy drives every conversation about selling digital units of content as though they were physical units of atoms, using DRM to stop copying or divide the uses of content into millions of infinitely fungible "licenses" ("You've bought the right to listen to this song on this player, on Wednesday, only if you've got curly hair and you stand on one leg at the same time"), and suing/"educating" your customers about why they should pay you for stuff that you're not offering in their preferred format.

As these ideas were articulated, there was intense debate about the merits of various scenarios. Would DRM or walled gardens work better? Shouldn’t we try a carrot and stick approach with education and prosecution? And so on. In all this conversation, there was one scenario that was widely regarded as unthinkable, a scenario that didn’t get much discussion in the nation’s newsrooms, for the obvious reason.

The unthinkable scenario unfolded something like this: The ability to share content wouldn’t shrink, it would grow. Walled gardens would prove unpopular. Digital advertising would reduce inefficiency, and therefore profits. Dislike of micropayments would prevent widespread use. People would resist being educated to act against their own desires. Old habits of advertisers and readers would not transfer online. Even ferocious litigation would be inadequate to constrain massive, sustained law-breaking. (Prohibition redux.) Hardware and software vendors would not regard copyright holders as allies, nor would they regard customers as enemies. DRM’s requirement that the attacker be allowed to decode the content would be an insuperable flaw. And, per Thompson, suing people who love something so much they want to share it would piss them off.

Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply pointing out that the real world was looking increasingly like the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times. One of the effects on the newspapers is that many of its most passionate defenders are unable, even now, to plan for a world in which the industry they knew is visibly going away.

And here's the money-shot:

When someone demands to be told how we can replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Kutiman

Re-edits YouTube.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBfj6khrG4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Simply too good to miss. His website is here.

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Raiders of the lost brainstorm...

Here's a leaked, 125-page transcript of the brainstorming session that begat Raiders of the Lost Arc: a sit-down in 1978 with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Lawrence Kasdan. Spielberg and Lucas veritably fizz with ideas.

G — What can he chase them with? What if he jumps on a camel?

S — I love it. It's a great idea. There's never been a camel chase before.

L — Is this camel going to chase a car?

S — You know how fast a camel can run? Not only that, he can jump over vegetable carts and things. It could be a funny chase that ends in tragedy. You're laughing your head off and suddenly, "My God, she's dead..."

S — We still have the big fight in the moving truck to do. And now we have a camel chase.

G — We've added another million dollars.

S — Not really. How much trouble can a camel be?

The “Raiders” Story Conference

Ignore the introduction, just skip down to the main bit.

Via boingboing.

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Dance - c'mon do it!

Right then you 'orrible lot, it's about time you got to work on your dance moves. Happily, we've spotted some handy tips (in Finnish) on the best way to strut your stuff. Guys, get your white flares ready.
And ladies - pay particularly close attention to the female instructor's stance, face and general demeanour.

(it really kicks off at about 2:50)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJj6d5QSYaE&hl=en&fs=1]

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
The new gold mines
Wow7gold

'Playbourers' in a small power-levelling workshop outside Changsha, where they also eat and sleep. Photograph: Anthony Gilmore

Li Hua makes a living playing computer games. Working from a cramped office in the heart of Changsha, China, he slays dragons and loots virtual gold in 10-hour shifts. Next to him, rows of other young workers do the same. "It is just like working in a factory, the only difference is that this is the virtual world," says Li. "The working conditions are hard. We don't get weekends off and I only have one day free a month. But compared to other jobs it is good. I have no other skills and I enjoy playing sometimes."

Li is just one of more than 100 workers employed by Wow7gold, an internet-based company that makes more than £1m a year selling in-game advantages to World of Warcraft (WoW) players. Customers may ask for their avatar's skill level to be increased ("power levelling"), or for a virtual magic sword or precious ore to be obtained. As one player put it: "Where there's a demand, China will supply it."

From the Guardian. Full article here.

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Animations of Sully's Hudson landing

Pinched this off WIRED.com:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imDFSnklB0k&hl=en&fs=1]

It has been more than a month since Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landed his stricken US Airways jet in the Hudson River, but gamers and geeks are still churning out impressive animations recreating the miraculous water landing.

Most of them are using sims like Microsoft's Flight Simulator to navigate the virtual skies over New York, and some of these wannabe pilots are going so far as to use recordings of the conversations between the flight crew and air traffic controllers to recreate the five minutes and 40 seconds of US Airways Flight 1549 with eerie accuracy.

One of our favorites, by Scene Systems, is shown above. Here are four more we really like.

This video, by YouTube user lake2407, shows a combo exterior view/cockpit perspective and includes instrument voice notifications:

Cockpit view by YouTube user sevendst:

This one from boozho.com includes a map that shows 1549's trajectory from above, and points out the little-reported fact that Flight 1549 came dangerously close to colliding with another plane:

This one by YouTube user flightsimulationguru is a little jerkier, has a weird soundtrack, slathers the plane in the wrong color scheme and gets the flight number wrong, but...

Most of the simulations were made with off-the-shelf products like Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is one of the most popular flight sims.

UncategorizedJack DysonComment