Yeah, that's lighting. On an exploding volcano. It's enough to make me want to bring back the original umlaut in "Körth".

Where's the lightning coming from? APoD says:

Why lightning occurs even in common thunderstorms remains a topic of research, and the cause of volcanic lightning is even less clear. Surely, lightning bolts help quench areas of opposite but separated electric charges. One hypothesis holds that catapulting magma bubbles or volcanic ash are themselves electrically charged, and by their motion create these separated areas. Other volcanic lightning episodes may be facilitated by charge-inducing collisions in volcanic dust.

On the drive back from Madison yesterday, I listened to a lecture by MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle on the very personal relationships we have with objects, particularly the objects that help us think. Turkle talked about her 2008 book, Falling for Science, a collection of interviews with MIT students, and established scientists, about the objects that first drew their minds to math, computers, science and technology. Some were what you'd expect: Broken radios, Legos, a computer. But one story, about a My Little Pony, really caught my attention.

I had several small plastic Ponies that I used to play make-believe with my friends. But I had one larger, plush My Little Pony, a bright-green stuffed horse with a vivid pink mane and tail that I played with all by myself. I would sit for hours on my own, braiding and rebraiding its tail. I developed a system for braiding the tail of my Pony that taught me about mathematical concepts-- from division to recursion.

Read more of computer scientist Christine Alvarado's story after the cut.

It's a direct challenge to China's Internet filtering regime... shot entirely within World of Warcraft.

"War of Internet Addiction" is an hour-long protest machinima. It satirizes Beijing's attempt to "harmonize" China's Internet with forced installations of the Green Dam censorware.

Bit of background. "Harmonize" (和谐) is popular China Net-speak for being censored (as it's done under the slogan of "constructing a harmonious society.")

"War of Internet Addiction" was directed by Twitter user CorndogCN, and made with dozens of volunteers on no budget (other than WoW fees).

According to Youku.com, more than 10 million Chinese netizens have seen the movie.

To navigate the language barriers and cultural in-jokes, read the in-depth analysis by DigiCha and Youku Buzz.

Check it out while you can. It hasn't been harmonized... yet.

(Thanks, Bill!)

Born of a time when novel ideas and game mechanics were flourishing and the rules were being rewritten with every new release, Taito's 1983 arcade original Elevator Action might not have achieved the certifiable classic status of Pac-Man or Galaga or Taito's own earlier Space Invaders, but it remains a true cult classic, remembered best for its semi-slapstick themes of lighthearted espionage.

It's a franchise that never managed to lift itself up as well as it deserved: its 1994 arcade sequel -- even more lavishly animated (and far more cheerily ultraviolent) than the original -- only saw console release in Japan on the Sega Saturn, and, most curiously, as a Game Boy Color release re-skinned via Cartoon Network in the U.S. as a Dexter's Laboratory game.

All of that could have changed in 2008, when Taito was pitched a Nintendo DS revival of the franchise, a pitch that would center on original character designs by long-time favorite illustrator (and occasional Vice Magazine comics contributor) James Harvey, better known by his swapped-around pen name Harvey James.

In America, the 80s brought us Max Headroom and power shoulder pads.

While in China, it was poly-fiber track suits and the omnipresent black handbag.

The "romance and energy of 1980s China" is now captured in Shanghai's new Nengmao store (the original closed last year). The name comes from a misspelling from storeowner Xixi's youth.

He says,"Neng Mao was a tiny misspelling of the word "panda" in pinyin Chinese, that I made in elementary school. For some reason, this mistake always reminds me how silly but sweet childhood is. Now I've made this little misspelled creature come to life and hope to remind everyone of the happiness of our childhood."

The new Nengmao store is in Shanghai's French Concession: Shanxi Nan Lu, Lane 38, No. 96, close to Xinle Lu.

Nengmao products also available online (Chinese only).

多谢 NeochaEDGE!

Steward Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr, has just launched his next act, a web-based multiplayer game called "Glitch." It sounds a lot like the original game behind Flickr, Game Neverending, full of puzzles, whimsy and warmth (like Stewart). The game's in private alpha now, but the intro video and Daniel Terdiman's profiles of the company on CNet are damned exciting:

A new game that went into alpha testing on Tuesday, as reported exclusively by CNET, Glitch (see related behind-the-scenes feature about its development) is a puzzle-heavy, Web-based social MMO built around sending players billions of years into the past to develop the optimistic future that today seems increasingly unlikely.

"The whole world was spun out of the imagination of 11 great giants," said Stewart Butterfield, the president of Glitch developer Tiny Speck, and better known as the co-founder of Flickr. "So you have to go back into the past, into the world of the giants' imaginations and grow...the number of things in the world, grow it in terms of physical dimensions, to make sure the future actually happens. So all the game play takes place in the past inside the world of the giants' imagination."

While Glitch shares some of the features of hard-core MMOs like World of Warcraft and EverQuest--principally quests, leveling up, an in-game economy and working socially with other players, as a 2D Flash game--it might at the same time feel mildly familiar to players of Facebook games like Farmville or Nintendo titles like the many iterations of the Mario franchise.

The next SF in SF free science fiction events is coming up on Feb 13, with guests Jedediah Berry and Laurie R. King:

Jedediah Berry was raised in the Hudson Valley region of New York State. His short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and works as the assistant editor of Small Beer Press. The Manual of Detection is his award-winning first novel, now available in hardcover and paperback.

While Laurie R. King's fiction falls into several areas, first in the hearts of most readers comes Mary Russell, who becomes first the apprentice of Sherlock Holmes, and then his partner. Over the course of ten books (and more to come!), Russell and Holmes challenge each other to ever-greater feats of detection, traveling the world from Sussex to Simla. King's other series concerns San Francisco homicide inspector Kate Martinelli, her SFPD partner Al Hawkin, and her life partner Lee Cooper. In the course of her five books, Kate has encountered a female Rembrandt, a modern-day Holy Fool, two difficult teenagers, and a manifestation of the goddess Kali.

Reception begins, and cash bar opens at 6:00PM. Author readings begin at 7:00PM

Each author will read a selection of their work, followed by Q & A moderated by author Terry Bisson. Booksigning and schmoozing in the lounge afterwards. Books for sale at event, courtesy of Borderlands Books

The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg., 1st Floor - entrance between Quizno's & Citibank
582 Market St., at 2nd @ Montgomery, San Francisco

Rusty from SomaFM writes,

"The Space Shuttle Endeavour has taken off and is in space, traveling to the International Space Station where it will be delivering parts including the third connecting module known as 'the Tranquility node' to the station. It's also bringing up a seven-windowed cupola to be used as a control room for robotics. The mission will feature three spacewalks."

"You can hear it all mixed with electronic ambient music on SomaFM's Mission Control channel. Just go to somafm.com and click on Mission Control.

"The best time to tune in is around 2pm pacific time (06:00 GMT), when the astronauts are just getting up and starting their checklists for the day. Astronaut sleep periods are approximately from 6am pacific to 2pm pacific. There will be minimal mission audio at that time, but the rest of the time all sorts of stuff is going on."

[CC-licensed image, via Flickr: "STS-130 Shuttle Launch," photographed on Feb 8, 2010 by Malenkov in Exile]

These early electric doorbells by Rene Binet date to the early 1900s (they were used at the 1900 Paris World Fair). Binet was inspired by Ernest Haeckel in his designs.

When electric doorbells were new

Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan claims that when he went through Heathrow, security staff printed out the naked image of his body from the full-body scanners (scanners that the authorities have claimed won't ever be used to generate printouts) and circulated them among the staff:

'I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You've got to see them. It makes you embarrassed - if you're not well endowed.

'You walk into the machine and everything - the whole outline of your body - comes out.'

Khan said he did not know that the body-scans - installed in the wake of last year's abortive Christmas Day bombing of a transatlantic flight over Detroit - showed up every little detail of one's body.

'I was a little scared. Something happens [inside the scans], and I came out.

'Then I saw these girls - they had these printouts. I looked at them. I thought they were some forms you had to fill. I said 'give them to me' - and you could see everything inside. So I autographed them for them.'

(Image: S3010420, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from dodo_anji's photostream)

Greg from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association sez,

It's not just the U.S. border guards who want to search the files on your laptop and cellphone. The Canada Border Services Agency has been doing the same thing for years. From U.S. journalist Amy Goodman to a Canadian gay couple whose collection of porn got border agents all hot and bothered, the CBSA likes to look just as much as its counterpart in the U.S.

The biggest difference between U.S. border guards and the CBSA is that the CBSA hasn't made their policy for laptop searches public. Judging by how they've handled the BC Civil Liberties Association's Access to Information request, they'd like to keep it that way.

Back in October 2009, the BCCLA filed an Access to Information Request with the CBSA looking for their policies on searching personal electronics and copying data from them. We got a polite acknowledgement, and we settled in to wait for the 30 days allowed by the Access to Information Act.

On November 30, 2009, we got another letter from the CBSA saying that they'd need another 60 days to meet the request, because a timely response would "unreasonably interfere with the operations of the government institution" and "consultations are necessary to comply with the request." We settled in to wait again.

February 1 came and went. Three months after the original request was filed, the CBSA remains unwilling or unable to provide a single document in response to our request.

We've written up an overview of the file and put the correspondence online. We'll be posting more about this over the next few weeks, and we'll be putting documents online as soon as we get them.

(Image: Pacific Highway crossing, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from scazon's photostream)

Gareth Branwyn says:

We're kicking off our Maker Business series with this piece by Jeffrey McGrew, who along with his wife Jillian Northrup, and their trusty CNC machine named Frank, are a two-person (and a bot) design and fabrication juggernaut. From their design-build studio, Because We Can, in Oakland, CA, they do custom interior design, furniture, and create such artistic wonders as the "Art Golf" course they've set up at Maker Faire. Here, Jeffrey shares some words of advice to those who may be thinking of going "Maker Pro."

Look what happens on this podcast when the host clicks the button to play the podcast.

Snip from 1934 Los Angeles Times article about lizard people who lived in tunnels under the city 5,000 years ago. This legend is a long-lived chestnut. A hi-rez scan, more at Strange Maps, and: Reptoids! The Flickr uploader, vokoban, has lots of great stuff.

News story, auto-translated to English in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. More on Google Maps. (thanks, BB reader Kjetil Rydland in Norway!)

Video link. Actor Brian Cox attempts to teach Shakespeare's most famous soliloquy to Theo, age 2 1/2. (Thanks, Lisa Mumbach!)