Nanobama: Barack Obama in nanotubes

A technique known as nanolithography was used to build these Obama faces, combining 150 million carbon nanotubes to construct each individual half-millimeter visage. Depending on your political leanings, the result is either the cutest wittle powitician ever or proof that science, in the wrong hands, will engineer miniature robotic Democrats who distract with a message of hope while eating our flesh.

- Mark Wilson @ Gizmodo: Link.

Via The Day They Tried to Kill Me: Link.

See also Wired.com: Link.

“Technology is how we create wealth, how we cure diseases, how we’ll build an environment that’s sustainable and also gives people the capacity to pull more out of this world and still leave it better than when they found it.”
- Dean Kamen

An interviewer asked Dean Kamen:
“What do you think is the most important science and technology issue to be addressed by the next president?”

Is it energy? Genomics? Is it bird flu? Is it the polar caps—are they really melting? Is it terrorism? You pick the crisis du jour: The answer to all these issues is going to be an educated, competent global society. This country ought to lead the world, for lots of reasons. And we ought to help the rest of the world get educated, because if they are educated, their impact on the environment is actually way less. If they are educated, they’ll have better ideas than killing each other or killing you and me.

- Dean Kamen @ Popular Mechanics: Link.

Via Boing Boing.

Dean Kamen @ Wikipedia.

“The plan was simple: Build a laundry and staff it with locals and a few of their own.”

A former British SAS officer describes methods utilized to collect and target the IRA, PIRA [Provisional Irish Republican Army], Gerry Adams and their sympathizers:

The plan was simple: Build a laundry and staff it with locals and a few of their own. The laundry would then send out “color coded” special discount tickets, to the effect of “get two loads for the price of one,” etc. The color coding was matched to specific streets and thus when someone brought in their laundry, it was easy to determine the general location from which a city map was coded.

While the laundry was indeed being washed, pressed and dry cleaned, it had one additional cycle — every garment, sheet, glove, pair of pants, was first sent through an analyzer, located in the basement, that checked for bomb-making residue. The analyzer was disguised as just another piece of the laundry equipment; good OPSEC [operational security]. Within a few weeks, multiple positives had shown up, indicating the ingredients of bomb residue, and intelligence had determined which areas of the city were involved. To narrow their target list, [the laundry] simply sent out more specific coupons [numbered] to all houses in the area, and before long they had good addresses. After confirming addresses, authorities with the SAS teams swooped down on the multiple homes and arrested multiple personnel and confiscated numerous assembled bombs, weapons and ingredients. During the entire operation, no one was injured or killed.

By the way, the gentleman also told the story of how [the British] also bugged every new car going into Northern Ireland, and thus knew everything [Sinn Fein leader] Gerry Adams was discussing. They did this because Adams always conducted mobile meetings and always used new cars.

- Washington Post: Link.

Via New Shelton Wet/Dry: Link.

News from Azerbaijan about Iranian dam and hydroelectric projects in Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and elsewhere:

Iranian Energy Ministry plans to build dams and hydroelectric power stations in 10 countries in the near future.

Deputy Minister of Energy and Water Resources of Iran Rasul Zargar announced that a dam and an electric station of 220 MW will be built in Tajikistan.

A similar project will also be implemented in Azerbaijan.

According to the Deputy Minister, discussion of the construction of a dam and hydroelectric power station at Araz river in Armenia has already been launched.

- Today.Az: 08 September 2008.

Over at Total Dick-Head, PKD scholar David Gill reports:

My wife works at the library, and occasionally people will donate books that are too old or in such bad shape that the library gives them away rather than shelving them. Look what I got:

Yep, that’s the screenplay for Burrough’s film Blade Runner, the source for the title of [Ridley] Scott’s adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

- David Gill @ Total Dick-Head: Link.

“If it seems wordish, use it. No apologies necessary.”
- Erin McKean

Master lexicographer Erin McKean recently published what Boing Boinger Cory Doctorow calls a “case for a dynamic English language in which speakers are allowed to coin neologisms and new usages without grammar tightasses insisting that language is not a user-modifiable technology.”

Whenever I see “not a real word” used to stigmatize what is (usually) a perfectly cromulent word, I wonder why the writer felt the need to hang a big sign reading “I am not confident about my writing” on it. What do they imagine the penalty is for using an “unreal” word? A ticket from the Dictionary Police? The revocation (as the joke goes) of your poetic license? A public shaming by William Safire? The irony is that most of these words, without the disclaimer, would pass unnoticed by the majority of readers. (In case you noticed cromulent, that was invented in the 1990s for “The Simpsons.”) Writers who hedge their use of unfamiliar, infrequent, or informal words with “I know that’s not a real word,” hoping to distance themselves from criticism, run the risk of creating doubt where perhaps none would have naturally arisen.

- Erin McKean, “Chillax: If it works like a word, just use it”
@ Boston Globe, Aug. 3, 2008: Link.

Via Boing Boing: Link.

I love Cory’s phrase “English is a user-modifiable technology” — it rings true.

“Iraq’s Ministry of Defense is considering buying 140 of the United States’ most advanced tanks, at approximately $4 million to $5 million per tank, plus hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of support equipment to go along with the tanks. “
- USA Today: Link.

You can sell a lot of different weapon systems to foreign militaries, but where exactly do we get off in selling the Iraqi army our top military weapon systems? Do they rank with the Saudis now? We just got done beating these guys a few years ago. Do we want to come back some day and stare down the 120mm tubes of our own “used tanks”? And as we’re growing our Army’s end-strength, is there such a situation where we sell “used tanks” instead of refurbing them and using them ourselves?

This isn’t a smart decision. Give the Iraqis some old APCs or let some other countries sell them tanks. Nothing good will come of this other than profits for the military-industrial complex.

- Jason Sigger @ Armchair Generalist: Link.

“Current oil price shocks are a direct consequence of the destabilizing wars and geopolitical insecurity in the Middle East, not oil shortages.”
- Ismael Hossein-zadeh

The Peak Oil thesis serves as a powerful trap and a clever manipulation in that it lets the real forces of war and militarism (the military-industrial complex and the pro-Israel lobby) off the hook; it is a fabulous redirection. All evils are blamed on a commodity upon which we are all utterly dependent.

The fact, however, is that there is no hard evidence that oil has peaked, or that global oil reserves are shrinking, or that the current skyrocketing price of oil is due to a supply shortage.

… Claims of “peaked and dwindling” oil are refuted by the available facts and figures on global oil supply. Statistical evidence shows that there is absolutely no supply-demand imbalance in global oil markets. Contrary to the claims of the proponents of Peak Oil and champions of war and militarism, the current oil price shocks are a direct consequence of the destabilizing wars and geopolitical insecurity in the Middle East, not oil shortages.

- Ismael Hossein-zadeh @ Counter Punch: Link.

Via The Day They Tried to Kill Me.

Robot 7
Sketch, digital editing
Full size image

My latest graphic design.

“It’s like a permit to spill.”

Twenty years after Exxon Valdez slimed over one thousand miles of Alaskan beaches, the company has yet to pay the $5 billion in punitive damages awarded by the jury. And now they won’t have to. The Supreme Court today cut Exxon’s liability by 90% to half a billion. It’s so cheap, it’s like a permit to spill.”

Supreme Court Justice David Souter wrote that Exxon’s recklessness was ‘’profitless'’ - so the company shouldn’t have to pay punitive damages. Profitless, Mr. Souter? Exxon and its oil shipping partners saved billions - BILLIONS - by operating for sixteen years without the oil spill safety equipment they promised, in writing, under oath and by contract.

The official story is, “Drunken Skipper Hits Reef.” But don’t believe it, Mr. Souter. Alaska’s Native lands and coastline were destroyed by a systematic fraud motivated by profit-crazed penny-pinching.

- Greg Palast: Link.

Philip Zimmermann is the author of ZRTP, a technology for encrypting Internet telephone calls. So far, not even teams of supercomputers and cyberspies at the National Security Agency have cracked ZRTP.

Zimmermann spoke with Forbes recently about the future of internet telephony, also known as Voice Over IP (VoIP):

With traditional telephony, our threat model was mostly government wiretapping. With VoIP, anyone can wiretap us: the Russian mafia, foreign governments, hackers, disgruntled former employees. Anyone.

Historically, there’s been an asymmetry between government wiretapping and everyone else wiretapping that’s been in the government’s favor. As we migrate to VoIP, that differential collapses. The government itself is just as vulnerable. Wiretappers can reveal details of ongoing investigations, names and personal details of informants, conversations between officials and their wives about what time they pick up their kids at school.

… Everyone thinks that VoIP is the future of telephony. It’s cheaper, more versatile, more feature-rich. So technological pressure herds us towards VoIP; we’ll have to encrypt it. Wiretapping will become so easy that the criminals — not just governments — will be able to do it routinely. There will be insider trading, blackmail, organized crime spying on judges and prosecutors, key witnesses killed before they can testify.

- Phillip Zimmermann, interview @ Forbes (03.18.08) : Link.

ZFone Project

“Zfone is a new secure VoIP phone software product which lets you make encrypted phone calls over the Internet. Its principal designer is Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP, the most widely used email encryption software in the world. Zfone uses a new protocol called ZRTP, which has a better architecture than the other approaches to secure VoIP.”

Zfone is open source, and it’s free. Link.

Over at Play This Thing!, game commentator the99th has published some highlights from the Games for Change 2008 Conference.

I find this bit particularly interesting:

I got to meet Paolo Pedercini, he’s working on a new game called Oilgarchy which is about peak oil, and might do another Monsanto* game. Soon, Monsanto* games will reign down in a saturation akin to terminator seeds or social network sites. He also told me something that is probably historic, but it hasn’t gone public yet.

- Patrick Dugan (the99th) @ Play This Thing!: Link.

* I’m pretty sure the99th really means McDonald’s, not Monsanto. No doubt the conference was hectic and the99th had a lot on his mind as he blogged his notes.
See McDonald’s Video Game.

Games for Change Conference 2008: Link.

Paolo Pedercini: Link

Peak Oil: Link.

“… Fuel for international travel and transport of goods, including food, is exempt from taxes, unlike trucks, cars and buses. There is also no tax on fuel used by ocean freighters.”

Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya.

… Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures.

… Proponents say ending these breaks could help ensure that producers and consumers pay the environmental cost of increasingly well-traveled food.

The food and transport industries say the issue is more complicated.

- Elisabeth Rosenthal @ New York Times: April 26, 2008: Link.

Via Jon Taplin’s blog: Link.

Small Is beautiful.

Wired.com recently published some beautiful nanophotography — finalists in the Materials Research Society’s semi-annual collection of images as art:

… This image shows the magnetic domains of a thin iron film sitting atop a crystal made from magnesium and gallium arsenate. Souliman el Moussaoui, a researcher at the ELETTRA Synchrotron Light Laboratory in Italy, used X-ray magnetic circular dichroism with photoelectron-emission microscopy to create the striking picture …. el Moussaoui shot the sample with two oppositely polarized beams of powerful X-rays — and then subtracted the data points in one file from the other.

- Aaron Rowe @ Wired.com: 04.25.08: Link.

Via Slashdot: Link.

ELETTRA

ELETTRA Synchrotron Light Laboratory is a national synchrotron laboratory located in Basovizza on the outskirts of Trieste, Italy.

The facility, available for use by the Italian and international scientific communities, houses several ultrabright light sources, which use the sychrotron and free electron laser (FEL) sources to produce light ranging from ultraviolet to X-rays.

The centre also houses the European Storage Ring FEL Project (EUFELE).

• ELETTRA Synchrotron Light Laboratory website
• Lightsources.org: ELETTRA Synchrotron Light Laboratory

- Wikipedia: Link.

Bus with a systems error message:

Via The Daily WTF: Link.