By Cory Doctorow at 11:27 pm Thursday, May 11
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BrilliantDreams -- a site for lucid dreaming -- hosts a page of famous discoveries and inventions inspired by dreams, like the dream in which Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz discovered the
Benzene molecule:
"...I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis."
Link
(
Thanks, Rick!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:24 pm Thursday, May 11
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March sez, "It's been 2 years since the last one, but the wait is finally over. This Saturday, May 13, will be the next Vintage Computer Festival East; this time at a new venue on the Jersey shore, precisely where Marconi did his early trans-Atlantic wireless experiments. You'll see computers from the Fifties to the Eighties, up and running in all their former glory. There will also be speakers, including _Creative Computing_ magazine founder, David Ahl."
Link
(
Thanks, March!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:20 pm Thursday, May 11
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This is a thumbnail gallery of links to Soviet-era technology and gadgets, from the BK0100 Soviet come computer to chunky old mics, radiation meters, typewriters, stereo cameras and the transistor radio kit shown here.
I love this stuff -- Soviet engineers had a terrific eye for physical design. My great-uncle Bora is a curator at St Peterburg's A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications a tremendous exhibition of Soviet and pre-Soviet gadgetry . It's absolutely packed with things like these. I nearly passed out with joy when I toured it (check out my photos from my visit to Russia last summer).
Link
(via Digg)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:14 pm Thursday, May 11
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Guatam Rao has produced some whimsical oil paintings showing magnified, impressionistic elements of MacOS X's GUI (like this detail from the Safari interface). Quite lovely!
Link,
Link,
Link
(
Thanks, Gautam!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:11 pm Thursday, May 11
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Diebold's
notoriously insecure voting machines -- in use across the USA -- have been found to have an even deeper vulnerability than previously known. A new
report by Harri Hursti, released on BlackBoxVoting, documents how an attacker with a few moments' of private physical access to a machine could compromise it and load it with his own software, compromising every function of the machine, including the ability to count votes.
Ed Felten and Avi Rubin have written an excellent summary and analysis of the Hursti paper and published it on Freedom to Tinker -- if you care about whether you vote gets counted in 2006, read this now.
Hursti’s findings suggest the possibililty of other attacks, not described in his report, that are even more worrisome.
In addition, compromised machines would be very difficult to detect or to repair. The normal procedure for installing software updates on the machines could not be trusted, because malicious code could cause that procedure to report success, without actually installing any updates. A technician who tried to update the machine’s software would be misled into thinking the update had been installed, when it actually had not.
On election day, malicious software could refuse to function, or it could silently miscount votes.
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 11:06 pm Thursday, May 11
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Some MIT students have transformed their room with a homebrew automation system called MIDAS: Multifunction In-Dorm Automation System. The system is incredibly comprehensive, automating party effects, alarms, music, surveillance cams and much more -- and they've documented it in loving detail on this page.
Link
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via Digg)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:16 pm Thursday, May 11
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This guy plays music by squeezing air out of his hands. As Tom of
Backup Brain says: "I believe in honoring the office of the Presidency, even though I despise the current occupant of the Oval Office. But here's the kind of honors our current President has earned, and deserves."
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:00 pm Thursday, May 11
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FedEx, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have successfully trained a pair of dogs to detect DVDs in boxes. Why? Because, as you know, DVD piracy supports terrorists.
The dogs were trained over an eight month period to identify DVDs that may be located
in boxes, envelopes or other packaging, as well as discs concealed amongst other goods which
could be sold illegally in the UK. These DVDs are often smuggled by criminal networks
involved in large scale piracy operations from around the world.
For their first major live test, Lucky and Flo were put to work at FedEx’s UK hub at Stansted
Airport and were immediately successful in identifying packages and parcels containing DVDs
for destinations in the UK.
“This is the first time dogs have been used anywhere in the world to search for counterfeit
DVDs and the results were amazing, said Raymond Leinster Director General of FACT. “With
the cooperation and assistance of FedEx and Customs we were able to properly test the dogs
in a real life situation and prove that they can work in a busy airport environment.”
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 1:30 pm Thursday, May 11
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A farmer in
Middlesex Suffolk builds and exports gallows to African dictatorships, where they are used to execute dissidents and others who've been railroaded through corrupt judicial systems. He's been condemned by Amnesty International, but insists that "business is business," and some people deserve the death penalty. His business will be outlawed by a new EC regulation in July.
The execution equipment he says he sells ranges from single gallows, at about £12,000 each, to "Multi-hanging Execution Systems" mounted on lorry trailers, costing about £100,000.
Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said: "It's appalling that a British man is apparently attempting to sell gallows to President Mugabe's government [in Zimbabwe].
Link
(
via Neatorama)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:25 am Thursday, May 11
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This gallery of "redneck" photos is a testament to human ingenuity.
Link (via Neatorama)
By David Pescovitz at 11:18 am Thursday, May 11
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A new scientific study reports that monkeys housed alone drink more alcohol than those living in groups. Also, monkeys overall tend to drink after "stressful periods," according to research from the National Institutes of Health Animal Center. From Discovery News:
The study, recently published in the journal Methods, also found that booze affects monkeys much the same way it affects people.
"It was not unusual to see some of the monkeys stumble and fall, sway, and vomit," (researcher Scott) Chen added. "In a few of our heavy drinkers, they would drink until they fell asleep..."
Lower-ranked monkeys and males tended to drink more overall, but certain individuals consistently drank more than others, regardless of status or housing conditions.
"Similar to humans, rhesus macaques have individual differences in taste preference, stress levels, drug tolerance and genetic background that lead to differences in alcohol intake," explained Chen.
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:17 am Thursday, May 11
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This guy explains how he changed the text on some light-up roadside signs which were still in operation long after the construction crew had finished its work.
This was the first time I had attempted a prank like this, so I expected the control box to be locked, and the programming functions password-protected. I was wrong. First of all, the control cabinet had no lock. Swinging open its door, I found a deliciously inviting handheld keypad, then took a wild guess and pushed a button labeled STOP. The display on the control box flashed ENTER PASSWORD. I was about to give up in disgust when I noticed that someone had written the password in large Sharpie lettering above the box.
Link (via Neatorama)
By David Pescovitz at 11:10 am Thursday, May 11
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A 47-year-old Munich man tried to commit suicide by jumping in front of a train. He missed and smashed through a window of the engine car where the captain sits. On Tuesday, courts ruled that the suicidal man must pay a couple thousand Euros for repairs to the train and the wages that the driver lost because he was too freaked out to work for several weeks.
Link (via Fortean Times)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:08 am Thursday, May 11
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Adult literacy pioneer Mary Godolphin (1723-1764) (
w --
but see update below) rewrote many books, including
Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, and
The Swiss Family Robinson, in words of one syllable.
I was born at York on the first of March in the sixth year of the
reign of King Charles the First. From the time when I was quite a
young child, I had felt a great wish to spend my life at sea, and
as I grew, so did this taste grow more and more strong; till at
last I broke loose from my school and home, and found my way on
foot to Hull, where I soon got a place on board a ship.
When we had set sail but a few days, a squall of wind came on,
and on the fifth night we sprang a leak. All hands were sent to
the pumps, but we felt the ship groan in all her planks, and her
beams quake from stem to stern; so that it was soon quite clear
there was no hope for her, and that all we could do was to save
our lives.
Link
Reader comment:
Martha Imparato, librarian at Mabee Library, Washburn University, in Topeka, KS says:
I am writing to inform you of a small correction that needs to be made
in the article about an author, Mary Godolphin, who rewrote several
classic works for children with simple language. The name is actually a
pseudonym for Lucy Aikin and she has different birth and death dates
than the ones you posted. Something about the 3 titles listed didn't
click with me and after investigating, sure enough, one of the titles
was published after Mary was supposedly dead. There was a real Mary
Godolphin who was a British noble whose dates were those on your post,
but she was not an author.
[Here] is a link to Project Gutenburg which will clear things up.
Lucy's dates are 1781-1864.
Swiss Family Robinson was published 1818 so the Mary on your post could
not have reworked it since she died in 1764.
A librarian in Kansas sent this link to our state listserv knowing some
of us would be interested, so that's how I happened across the story
and thus began my investigation.
I don't usually look for things like this, but I hope you will look
into this in the spirit of accuracy.
By Mark Frauenfelder at 10:46 am Thursday, May 11
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Here are a bunch of old cartoons you can watch on Google Video.
"There are 27 Betty Boop cartoons, 11 Felix the Cat cartoons, and 3 Krazy Kat cartoons."
Link
