Hi-Sci-Fi

by Irma Arkus

Kubric-like camera work, with Earth’s surface practically never disappearing out of the field of vision, this so-called “NASA’s accidental art” video represents one of the most beautiful, interesting and haunting visages of Earth from the International Space Station.

The beginning is a bit rough, but the action starts at around 1:40.

[graphic: The people, places, and things that were once the future—but vanished.]

Wired.com has its magazine feature dedicated to Will Ferrel and the Future. Let’s just say that the results are as depressing as they are hilarious.

What happened (or is happening) to concepts such as nanotechnology, singularity, pill shaped food, or birthday cake containing a burrito? Read HERE.

By Irma Arkus

In the interview with About.com, Joss Whedon is confirmed to be attached to The Avengers as a director, as well as what some of the casting choices are.

Mark Ruffalo is announced as Hulk, and Whedon successfully defends his choice. Ruffalo, he says, “visually from new place, and I wanted someone with the qualities that Mark has that was knocked around and still gets up… (when he looks at me from the screen) he’s not thinking about himself that’s me, that’s my guy.”

While that is a strangely worded statement, what Whedon is trying to say is that connecting to Ruffalo and identifying with his version of Hulk on screen comes easier then it had with Eric Bana.

This version of The Avengers will be produced by Marvel, and it will belong in the Marvel universe. Aside from Ruffalo, the film is going to feature Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlet Johannson as the Black Widow, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Don Cheadle as Rhodey, Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) as Hawkeye, and Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.

Watch the interview with Whedon HERE.

By Irma Arkus

It is important to remind ourselves that recent deterioration of labour rights and working conditions does not only entail low skilled jobs, but those of higher skilled workers as well. I present to you the case of Becky McClain, a Pfizer molecular biologist, who has been battling her employer over disclosure of exposure to dangerous, cancer-causing chemicals.

Safe working environment is not only desired by workers in distant lands of seemingly infinite cheap labour - lack of safe working conditions will also affect YOU, and your friends and family.

BACKGROUND OF BECKY MCCLAIN:

Becky McClain is a 23-year career molecular biologist who has worked on cutting edge technologies in mouse embryonic stem cell, vaccine development, molecular genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research within both academia and private industry.

In 2002-2004 she incurred biological exposures at Pfizer, Groton, CT from a biological hood and co-worker using a Lentivirus on her lab bench next to her desk. As a result of requesting the Lentivirus exposure records through OSHA she was terminated and filed a lawsuit in 2006. On April 1, 2010 she won her federal lawsuit against Pfizer, Inc. for whistleblower and freedom of speech claims. Pfizer still refuses to give her the Lentivirus exposure records.

The speech was given in New Britain, CT at the AFSCME Council 4 union office advocating worker rights to their biological exposure records for directed healthcare and public health and safety issues to be addressed to prevent work-related illness, to provide a safe work environment, and to protect the public’s health and safety.

Security equates to big bucks. City of Vancouver for example, spends more money on cops than anything else on the books. 2010 Winter Olympics, for example, spent $1b on security for the event, and we all thought that was overboard. But then G20 in Toronto surprised us even more - apparently, there is gold in ‘them hills - with its whopping $1.2b spent on security for a 3 DAY EVENT!

Either there is a war that we’re preparing for, or the pursuit of securitization is taking our intelligence for granted. Either way, since the 2001 events such as: G. W. Bush elected, plains crashing into Pentagon, Twin Towers, etc…those in the industrial-military complex have made a pretty penny selling security as the recent events prove that the consultants and suppliers pretty much function by being handed a blank cheque for their efforts.

Apart from money, we’ve been parting with personal biometric information at every nook, cranny, and corner.

While Tweeting about our daily bread, Facebook(ing), peeing in a cup, being harassed at the border, and Foursquare-ing our movements, there is little that is left of our sense of selves outside the cybersphere, or better yet, the security apparatus.

The recent introduction of body scanners at the airports caused a good deal of controversy - not because of the potential invasion of our privacy, but rather our collective sense of shyness - we are, collectively speaking, squeamish about our naked bodies. Nudity somehow, hits a nerve.

(This does not mean though that we are suddenly opposed to strip and cavity searches. Innocent until proven guilty does not apply to suspects who are submitted to this rather humiliating and painful process.)

But the body scanners are coming back into controversy corner, because despite the initial promises: genitals are to be blurred, bodies shown do not display full details, images to be immediately erased…as it turns out, that was a lie.

In US, recent survey of these handy scanners, revealing all bits and pieces, including potential contraband and weapons (beware of hair gel!) has also found that Federal Bureau has not quite complied with its initial statements. The Electronic Privacy Information Center released a finding: “approximately 35,314 images…[are] stored on the Brijot Gen2 machine” currently used in Florida federal courthouse.

Furthermore, the images are often stored and then sent to the manufacturer. Great! That way, your personal information, such as detailed minutiae about your height, weight, and those pesky flesh folds, can be now considered to be privately owned by the manufacturer.

Say cheese! [via cnet]

This week we have the amazing Kenneth Shea from University of Irvine, joining us to discuss his new project, synthetic anti-bodies.

This major stepping stone is opening doors to a seemingly unlimited potential in medical advancements: nano-particles are utilized to produce anti-bodies that would not be detected or rejected by an immune system.

Experiments on mice have shown the anti-bodies to be effective. Human trials are expected to begin shortly. More on the topic to follow.

Of all the disappointing, lackluster shows to hit our radars lately, none is as pathetic as The Gates.

This show simply takes the cake in the “suck department.” Somehow, between the Twilight craze, aging Anne Rice readers, and new suburban wives falling over themselves for Taylor Lautner, The Gates was invented, pitched, and made it all the way to our humble TV sets.

My thinking was that maybe, after a few episodes, the show about a secretive gated community in US, in which residents are composed of humans as well as witches, vampires, and succubi, things would get more interesting.

But they didn’t.

Instead, they created a universe of darkness and boredom. That fine soap-opera quality permeates every shot of this strange Twilight-meets-Days of Our Lives, while the storylines are so lackluster, slow and lacking in any form of enthusiasm, that watching this show feels like a form of Hollywood torture or some kind of liquid diet, aiming to strip you of any delight for all things fantastic.

You see, the vampires are parents, and they live in suburbs - just doing their best with schools, bake sales, and an occasional snack on the help.

And the show is boring, disappointing and dissatisfying in every possible way.

While the adults could possibly be part plastic, the high-school progeny of their vampire loins, may be as well be made of the stuff.

I just have a few words for you: don’t watch it. Don’t even bother.

Let’s be clear on this: Stephen Moffat has not won me over.

When Russell T. Davies announced his departure from the show, Doctor Who was at the height of its popularity. Tennant was ooozing that same level of exhilaration when seeing new tech, meeting aliens, or just interesting people. More joy than Indiana Jones, we were led to believe that the Timelord is a responsible, insightful, smart, joyful, and curious creature.

Things were good. Tom Baker level of good.

Sarah Jane had a fantastic little show, aimed at those hungry for a bit more of the Doctor magic. Torchwood rocked our socks off because it gave us that low-budget love, with a bit of sexy thrown in for good measure, and the occasional bout of tears. And Doctor Who was the BEST.

And then Moffat came in. I had faith in the fact that here was a man who was not only a fan, but a working one, garnering recognition while working side by side with Russel T. Davies, “learning the craft.” And my sincere hope was that Moffat will somehow magically be competent enough not to invent things, but rather just keep up with them. But that is not how the things went down.

Moffat’s moment of power was announced with a “reboot” of a beloved franchise. Unexplained reboot, new start, call it whatever you would like, but the idea of some kind of reinvention of a show that good struck fear in my heart.

Then there was the issue of Matt Smith as the Doctor: likeable, cute, some may even say, sexy. But one also might add: bored, slow, not so curious, slightly patronizing, and entirely void of joy.

Similarly, his companion is similarly uninteresting. Amy, while played by gorgeous Karen Gillan: all legs, red hair and lips; is also an underdeveloped character.

As a result, the show took on a different hue. Now, more comparable to Davies’ Sarah Jane show, the Doctor is fascinated with saving the children, usually even smaller and younger than the ones in the care of Sarah Jane. In the Beast Below, the children are the only ones not eaten by the lovely, giant star-whale. Star-whale?! Why not a magic pumpkin, or a giant peach?

Story lines are relatively lackluster, and lead to overly sappy endings, and even the greatest story arcs still feel stilted as if being dumbed down for this massive global audience.

Moffat’s version of Churchill is quite literally pathetic. And the Hungry Earth, a really beautiful story set at an underground facility of cryogenically frozen race of Silurians, was lost due to the meandering nature of the new Doctor: stripped of any semblance of passion, anger, love, excitement…

That Matt Smith is the youngest Doctor is something we understood from the very beginning. But we gave Smith the opportunity to showcase his talents. The same courtesy was offered to Moffat.

That Moffat is more focused on Smith’s abs (see the Lodger) than the Doctor’s endless comprehension, empathy and enthusiasm for kindness and good, is an entirely different, and very sad matter.

The show now is not something I look forward to watching. Instead, I view it, week to week, with a disappointment, watching a beloved character dissipating, murdered by bad writing, acting and lackluster directing.

Doctor Who is, at this point, lesser show than Sarah Jane Adventures. And that is worrisome.

Marketing is everything. Whereas Gene Ray and his TIME CUBE theory has been heavily ridiculed since the early days of the web, Rob Bryanton’s 10 dimension story is actually selling books and seeding hippy pseudoscience cults.

I always considered string theory to be too above my head for me even to fathom it, so I always avoided exploring it - I was saving it for later when I was old and had time to learn tensor calculus and stuff. When someone told me there was a video that makes sense of 10 dimensions and string theory in an easy to understand manner, I was all over it. I have to admit that I got suckered in by Bryanton’s slick animations and smooth narration. There was a moment where I was getting excited because I thought that mainstream physics condoned the notion of time travel and alternate realities. “Woah, I totally understand string theory,” I thought to myself. Then I did a cursory wikipedia search of string theory and 10 dimensions. At that point I realized that Bryanton’s imagination has nothing to do with reality or any educated theory whatsoever and that I was a sucker for believing him.

Normally I wouldn’t be angry - Bryanton’s 10 dimensions is a cool sci-fi concept that unifies time travel, alternate realities and alternate universes. But when you consider that he’s literally selling his imaginary world as truth to eager believers who don’t know any better, then this man is a unremitting charlatan.

Anyways. My main point: marketing makes all the difference. First we’ll have Rob Bryanton’s nice, polished bullshit:

10 DIMENSIONS

See. That was nice. Sort of cool. I’d buy that for a dollar if I didn’t know any better. And people are paying many dollars to buy his books.

Now Gene Ray’s Time Cube as a reference:

TIME CUBE

When you’re selling hot air it’s all in the technique.

Having a great memory often sucks. Because sometimes you’re not certain whether what you envision you know, is a byproduct of your own thought processes, or whether you’ve just perfectly memorized a line from some paper that came across your desk when doing research.

Years of university were filled with trepidation, after realizing that my meticulousness for research has a massive flaw - often I recall entire chunks of text, sometimes without context, a sort of semi-photographic ability - this placed me in a trepidatious position, tethering on infringment, plagiarism…I would often wake up in cold sweat after finishing a paper in a single night, dreading the thought that somewhere, I haven’t referenced a quote.

In my case, that would result in an disciplinary action - a scarlet letter marking a failed class, a zero for a grade, or even worse, a note on my transcript marking me a social reprobate forever. A criminal.

But the idea of plagiarism isn’t nearly as clean cut as universities and colleges would like you to think. My little memory issue aside, the concept of plagiarism, or unethical writing and research, misrepresenting someone else’s work and ideas as your own, is far more complex and nuanced than most “experts” on the subject would have you believe.

And that is why I found recent debate on the subject of plagiarism on New York Times infurating, frustrating and…yes, debilitating.

For one, referencing works adequately takes skill. Generally, I found most students behind the university gates are in actuality merely semi-literate (and the state of reading and writing skills often falls short of expectations by the time they graduate.) Research takes time, and so does juggling a complex line of thought interspersed with other people’s ideas.

My first encounter with psychology 101 quickly convinced me that it was less about psych and more about the APA Style Guide. Referencing is important, and whether it be APA or MLA, the idea that EVERYTHING that comes from someone else, is meticulously noted as such. That’s why copyright laws exist (hmmm, no they don’t but let’s pretend they do anyways).

But that throws the whole idea of plagiarism (or copyright) for a loop too: researching most (art)works and writings, quickly unveils a discomforting fact that every single “original” work, is heavily influenced by the preceeding works. Culture, it seems, tends to suffer from evolution, like the rest of us, and referencing it back tends to be far more difficult than initially envisioned.

I am blurring the issues of plagiarism with copyright, yes, but the two are intricately tied in the brave new world, where your own work, for example, no longer belongs to you, but is rather fed into a giant database. Then a private company charges your institution to maintain and compare your essay or paper with that of other students.

Bingo! Presto! Eureka!

The issue of plagiarism is relevant to copyright because of MONEY. You see, those of us who are convinced of our superiority to others, expect to be paid for our ideas. So, referencing those ideas or creations, associating them with an identity, a person, is a precaution against theft. Especially if those people are supposed to be paid for their genious. You know, like Britney Spears for her singing efforts, or your multi-national pharmaceutical company guarding the recipe to a life-saving medicine.

(Yeah, I was getting to that bit. And fyi, writing these rants can get tough, usually at midnight.)

Did I sound pissed off? Because I generally am.

For one,combating plagiarism in universities is not new. In fact, it is old. Ancient even. If we were to upload undergrad papers from the rosteer of current academia, I would bet that the statistics would show similar rates of plagiarism. The previous generations just had lesser chances of ever getting caught.

The second point comes from anecdotal evidence, but a solid source. Few years back, sitting in the offices of the Distance Education department, I took part in a conversation regarding - you guessed it - plagiarism. Few of the department staff were literally in charge of the committee dealing with plagiarism complaints against students, giving me the inside scoop on what goes on behind closed doors.

International students, often from privileged families, lived in luxurious, shared accommodations with services that ranged from
housekeeping to chefs. But they also had personal tutors on staff, and an exclusive database with old tests and examples of papers associated with each class and professor.

Those students, I was explained, often have enough money to pass a test, or buy a paper.

Similarly to these, any of more privileged students have the capacity to utilize expensive “tutors” who are known to not only assist with research and editing, but are also notorious for writing original content for their clients.

It comes at a price, I know. But I continuously run into wealthy students who had assistance from high-school to their Masters degree. Few years ago, I was offered by a student to finish off an essay for $100. Amazed at the offer, I discussed it over with a friend who coolly remarked “I charge at least $200 for that kind of work.”

The “war on plagiarism” endorses a culture steeped in already draconian measures to preserve works as capital. And it ultimately fails to address the issues at hand. Most students are unprepared to do the work, and importance as well as grades of students can be easily devised as to decrease potential for plagiarism.

It also punishes particular segments of the student population: those who are rich will escape the wrath of the new technology, but those trying to work and juggle impossible deadlines, or have learning difficulties, are turned into criminals without a hesitation.

The idea of uploading our papers onto giant, private databases, seems to smack of “guilty until proven innocent” attitude. Moreover, our rights as creators of these works are being ignored. Noone asked you for permission to “copy” or “distribute” this paper of yours, did they? [illustration created by Poptimism and obviously farts in the direction of copyrighted Coca Cola branding]

Canada will breathe a little easier over the weekend, as recent statement by Google inc. urges CRTC to take action and halt the illegal bandwidth throttling.

“Bell claims its throttling of peer-to-peer applications is a reasonable form of network management. Google respectfully disagrees. Network management does not include Canadian carriers’ blocking or degrading lawful applications that consumers wish to use,” adding that the Internet is too important to be left at the mercy of corporate interests, left to their own devices and acting as usage gatekeepers.

The 15 page submission to CRTC states that the act of throttling is illegal in relation to current telecommunication laws: “From consumer, competition and innovation perspectives, throttling applications that consumers choose is inconsistent with a content and application-neutral internet, and a violation of Canadian telecommunications law, which forbids unfair discrimination and undue or unreasonable preferences and requires that regulation be technologically and competitively neutral.”

In other words, current telecommunication laws imply net neutrality, and Bell, Rogers, Telus & co. are taking advantage of their market positions to impose new usage parameters.

At stake, Google says, are innovation and fair competition, echoing words of numerous net neutrality proponents.

Many worry that technologies such as Google’s famed search engine, YouTube and Facebook, once mere tinkerers’ projects that turned into some of the most important innovation engines of the decade, and grew into multi-million dollar companies, would never have a chance if rules are to change.

From newly announced draconian copyright laws, and digital locks, to traffic throttling, the environment will become hostile to innovation in order to protect the revenues of few existing monopolies and multi-national companies.

One of the more intriguing (at least visually so) films to pop up on the radar is Sucker Punch. Aimed for a 2011 release, this North American take on Lolicon twists the old Alice in Wonderland with…well, hot babes and modern weapons.

Directed by Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen), Sucker Punch allows Snyder to do what he does best: combining fantasy and comics with heavy action.

The story sets on a different type of Alice: a girl with an evil stepfather is kept in a mental asylum. After a lobotomy, her escape is an internal, mental one. In her imagined, alternate reality, she plots her escape.

The story resonates the mental toils of some of our favorite TV characters: Sisko at DS9, who leads an alternate (and unexplained existence) as a black science fiction writer who ends up in a mental asylum; or Buffy (s6, e18), who hallucinates an alternate version of
illusion in which all her friends and enemies are product of a mental illness.

With names like Abbie Cornish, Jamie Chung, Emily Browning, and Jena Malone kicking ass, the film promises to provide thrills with that extra streak of darkness.

This week we’re joined by Aaron Golden, who tells us of his role-playing game and upcoming novel(s). Tune in for the conversation and this week’s news in entertainment.

There’s a huge culture of remixing old video game music. There are entire communities like OCremix that have come full circle and have even had artists do arrangements for new releases of videos games like Street Fighter 2 HD, which featured music made by fans from OCremix.
Although there’s a lot of love for nintendo, sega, and many of the newer consoles the good old Commadore 64 has not gone unnoticed. Here is the original C64 theme music for Comic Bakery, a popular subject of remixes and arrangements. The theme music was composed by none other than Martin Galway who is considered a pioneer of chip music and an elite video game music composer. Just give it a listen.
Wait … Comic Bakery. A Comic Bakery. Like funny, ha-ha, and making baked goods. What sort of bumbling baker needs music this epic to chase away pesky raccoons that are sabotaging his bread machine? This is the sort of music you have if you’re high on Ayahuasca and you’re making cakes made out of sky. This is the sort of music you have if your baking the last loaf of bread on earth, or making a pizza pretzel for Zeus, or if baking bread was actually a metaphor for creating a galaxy with magic or nukes. Maybe he’s making food for a massive UN conference in which world peace will be achieved if and only if the various world leaders are well fed. I stay awake at night wondering how the trials of an earthy baker relates to this music. I think about his world and the people he knows and how baking is the one thing he can do to keep afloat on a sea of troubles. Much like the Divine Comedy was the tale of a mortal traveling hell and heaven for love, I get the feeling the Comic Bakery is potentially about something equally grandiose.

This is one part of a video series called Green Porno featuring Isabella Rossellini dressing up in animal costumes and humping giant fake invertebrates to teach you about nature. It is a charming blend of art, sensuality and education made for an internet age. See all of the videos on the Sundance Channel on Youtube.

yeah, something awful: still relevant today as when the web started (started for real - I’m talking geocities and yahoogames. All that stuff before then was sort of the dark ages.)

When I was a kid the most bad ass thing in the world was Mortal Kombat. The teaser TV ad announcing the release of the game was a video of a kid standing in the streets yelling “Mortal Kombat” at the top of his lungs and that was all we needed to know. It was a world when Sega and Nintendo was in fierce competition for our love – Sonic wouldn’t appear in a Nintendo game unless he was on all fours being spit roast on Mario and Luigi’s cocks, let alone being accepted with open arms into the Super Smash Bros family. But the year Mortal Kombat came out Sega won the hearts and minds of psychotic teenage boys all across the country for the sole reason that the Sega version of MK had tons of blood and more brutal fatalites than those offered by the family-friendly Super Nintendo.

Since then the Mortal Kombat franchise has carried on its tradition of combining unrelenting killer hardcore awesome with super cheesiness, with awesome to cheese ratios varying widely. This tradition has been kept alive to the present day with the release the Mortal Kombat Rebirth trailer.
Is it a fan trailer? Is it a trailer for an actual upcoming movie? Is it a leaked pitch? Can a scientist answer these questions? No - scientists only know about protons, not Mortal Kombat. It can’t be a fan trailer - what are celebrities like Black Dynamite and 7 of 9 doing in a fan trailer? But wouldn’t a real trailer for a real movie have less fan-fictionesque writing? It is a new media for a new kind of war – if Mortal Kombat Rebirth somehow metamorphoses into an actual movie then what we’ve seen is an actual trailer shot cheaply that turned into a multimillion dollar movie, but if the producers down at the big studios tells the Rebirth team to GTFO then the trailer is just like one of many internet fan trailers except that it has Black Dynamite and 7 of 9 (as opposed to hipster-nerd-guy and hipster-nerd-guy-in-wig).

So here’s to Mortal Kombat Rebirth, potentially living the dream of amateur filmmakers everywhere. Here’s hoping that you at least give Stryker a cool death.

This week we bring you the interview with the founder and coordinator of Cryptome.org, John Young.

Cryptome has captured our attention as it, similarly to WikiLeaks, its mission of releasing information and documents generally kept secret recently unveiled the shocking information on just how the business of selling your Yahoo.com or Hotmail email account content by said companies, works.

Apparently, it is relatively simple - anyone from any law-enforcement agency, no matter what capacity, can contact a telecommunications provider and acquire a clear history of your IM chats, contents of your email box, or pretty much any other information collected while you’re innocently browsing the nets.

Yes, even a janitor, with a neatly submitted request on letterhead of a local law enforcement agency can purchase said information. But does this apply to ANY law enforcement in the world? Do Afghanistan police have the ability to check on Joe Schmoe’s for San Francisco communications?

Tune in to find out, and do send us your questions! And do not forget to check out Cryptome.org for yourself, and send them some donations for their excellent work too :)

The first Google result was this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/62_Cases_of_Jam_v._United_States

by Irma Arkus

First of all, I don’t know who Kim Kardashian is. Not a clue. Second of all, why on earth would anyone get $10,000 bucks to promote a product by tweeting about it???

What I do know is that Duncan Watts of Yahoo Inc. is asking advertising agencies to STOP paying such outrageous sums of money to people like Ms. Kardashian. Why? I will simply wave off the reasons and assume it is because Kardashian already has a boatload of money.

Nooooo!?

“If I had a fixed budget, I could get more value from a small amount of very influential [influencers], or a lot of smaller influencers, on Twitter,” Mr. Watts said. “If you recruit enough people who, on average, influence just one other person, you could get a much better return on investment if you aggregated them and altogether paid them a tenth of what Kardashian gets.”

Oh. This is why I back hobo advertising only.[AdAge]

Much more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/birdofthegalaxy/.

by Irma Arkus

It was only a matter of time before topics such war, terrorism, and Islam became assimilated into comedic content. While these are seemingly still out of bounds for American filmmakers, UK seems to be offering this year a surprising roster of comedic films that do address the issues of terrorism, nationality and ethnicity in a multicultural, cosmopolitan arena.

It struck me earlier today that Harold and Kumar are the closest thing North Americans have to inclusion of the “other,” the upcoming UK productions, boisterously irreverent and humorous, have a better time including the idea that the “other” is these days undeniably part of all of us.

The first one is Four Lions, directed by Christopher Morris, a prominent TV name known for “Brass Eye” and “Nathan Barley” episodes. Four Lions tells a story of four young jihadists who are planning a terrorist plot, while obviously engaging in uncovering ideological inconsistencies amongst four men who are the product of western upbringing as much as of their own cultural roots.

Another movie that came as an even bigger surprise this year is The Infidel, by the lovable Omid Djalili, who, as a devout muslim and a family man, discovers that he is actually jewish and adopted.

This twist, I did not expect. And it comes with an entirely new territory of hilarity touching on anything from anti-semitism, famed Islamic apostheosis, and of course, the unearthed joys of Judaism!

I bet you anything that these two will not be released in 3D.

Introducing “Insane Clown Posse,” a US-based band from Detroit (these days better known as hell), that started in 1984 and made its mark with 1995 Riddle Box which pushed the band to prominence up to such an extent that Disney purchased their contract only to relinquish it for the sake of rebuilding its “family values” public image.

by Irma Arkus

ScienceDaily reports on NASA’s reveal of its first, thermodynamic, naturally-powered vehicle, designed for underwater movement. The Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer Thermal RECharging (SOLO-TREC) uses that same concept that most scoff as inefficient: it harvests ocean’s own water-current movements as well as temperature differentiations in order to create enough thermodynamic power for the module to self-propel.

The pilot project is extraordinarily promising, (especially since we know that Google is trying to map the ocean floor systems) in terms of creating better, cheaper and durable underwater probes.

Think about it? I would certainly like a few sent to Europa, a liquid-covered moon orbiting Jupiter during the upcoming Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) in 2020.

by Irma Arkus

Turns out, I’ve interpreted the move to 3D correctly. The latest announcement is that Harold and Kumar movie franchise, the 3rd film in a loveable, ethnically-inclined stoner series, is coming out in 3D. Oh, yes it is funny.

by Irma Arkus

Announced yesterday was a disturbing court finding: the US D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an earlier FCC ruling against Comcast for interfering with the BitTorrent traffic, better known as bandwith throttling. Essentially, the court’s ruling dismisses FCC’s power to regulate the Internet outright, similarly to how US Environmental Protection Agency was hampered from enacting any regulations against corporate polluters in California.

But better question yet is what this means for Internet users, particularly in terms of the ongoing battle for established Net Neutrality?

While EFF wisely points out that Comcast has already succumbed to pressure of its user base, who demanded that Net Neutrality principles be adopted and enacted by the ISP, the remainder of providers may take advantage of this ruling in order to continue with expansion of deep packet inspection and bandwidth throttling.

But as Fred von Lohmann points out, FCC is currently not the regulatory body and it should not necessarily be one either, when considering its history of easily succumbing to public pressure and conservative hysteria. Nipplegate scandal for one, caused the FCC to demand millions of dollars in punitive damage for the Superbowl scandal, and television content has undergone changes in “decency” standards.

Should we expect FCC to also demand the impossible moral clauses for Internet content then?

The ruling is the one hand worrisome, as it allows Canadian authorities and regulatory commission, the CRTC, as well as our federal conservative politicians to suggest that across the border, net neutrality principles have not been adopted, opening Canadian consumers to yet another barrage of potential legalities and regulations that would make Internet content less accessible, and more expensive.

On the other hand, the gatekeepers, electronic rights lawyers, activists and networking specialists all agree that it is time for US to gain a foothold in the Web 2.0 world by having a more politically neutral body to regulate Internet traffic. Unfortunately for us, that usually means that it will also be invaded by corporate instead of civil interests. [EFF]

by Irma Arkus

US Argonne National Laboratory has released an announcement that their scientists, Jeff Greeley, Stefan Vajda and Larry Curtiss, have recreated the propylene oxide molecule, used just about anywhere, from production of plastics to brake fluid.

Using silver nanoclusters, creation of propylene in a laboratory setting, has resulted in familiar chemical minus the environmentally toxic pollutants, a commonly found by-product of the current process in propylene production.

“While the process does not eliminate ALL of environmental hazardous substances, it does cut down on most of them,” Argonne’s media liaison Brock Cooper explains.

Bearing in mind that production of silver nanoclusters itself is relatively intricate, the possibilities of creating man-made materials such as propylene without the usage of currently utilized raw resources would be an expensive and tedious process, but it does give hope for production of these when faced with scarcity, as well as in unconventional settings and locations.

New York invasion by 8-bits creatures !
PIXELS is Patrick Jean’ latest short film, shot on location in New York.

Written, directed by : Patrick Jean
Director of Photograhy : Matias Boucard

/sic

CLICK TO WATCH

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

5th April 2010 10:44 EST

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

Go to http://collateralmurder.com/ to view the video and read the rest of the story.

Iraq has been occupied for seven years. This footage represents only minutes of that time. Such acts are neither rare nor isolated. Go to http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ for more information.