Mekka

No shoes?

"Bobby Martin, 17 years old, is a noseguard and special teams member for Colonel White High School in Dayton, Ohio.  He also happens to be three feet tall, having been born with no legs.  He was recently removed from a game during halftime because he wasn't wearing shoes, thighpads, or kneepads.  Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed shortly thereafter. "

Wow.

[Found at MetaFilter]

Crazy futuristic floating Sea Orbiter

Crazy futuristic floating Sea Orbiter

   

French marine architect Jacques Rougerie has designed a floating research lab called the Sea Orbiter, intended to  observe ocean life and the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere. The Sea Orbiter will simply be driven by  currents and is designed to have a lifespan of 15 years. And according to the French Musée national de la Marine, the  project seems to be moving along at a rapid pace, with its first missions planned for 2008 or 2009, when it will be  deployed in the Gulf Stream, eventually making it’s way to the Pacific Ocean and then the Indian Ocean. Okay, where can  we sign up?

[Via Engadget]

Childlike wonder good for memory

Childlike wonder good for memory
David Pescovitz: The more you know, the harder it may be to remember some things. In a study conducted by Ohio University researchers, adults had better recall of pictures of imaginary bugs than familiar animals like cats. Why? When we categorize people and objects, it lowers our ability to remember individual differences between them. In the first experiment, adults and children were shown pictures of animals such as cats, bears, and birds, and later asked to identify which pictures they had seen before. The younger the child, the better he or she did. In a second experiment, the real animals were swapped for imaginary creatures. From OSU Research News:

...In this new experiment, adults were shown three different types of imaginary, insect-like creatures that Sloutsky calls "ziblets." In this experiment, adults performed as well as children did in the first study in remembering which ziblets they had seen before without having many "false positives."

The difference here was that the adults had no previous knowledge that allowed them to easily categorize the ziblets without paying close attention to each picture.

"They remembered them because they had to pay close attention," Sloutsky said. "They remembered the details."

Link

[Via Boing Boing]

Bill Moyers on NOW: "We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing"

Sunday the National Conference on Media Reform featured the first public speech by Bill Moyers since he left PBS due to right-wing pressure from Washington. In it he explains why NOW was created and how PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are now failing to live up to Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.

Commenting on todays media knack for just repeating official statements, he says:

"These “rules of the game” permit Washington officials to set the agenda for journalism, leaving the press all too often simply to recount what officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical scrutiny. Instead of acting as filters for readers and viewers, sifting the truth from the propaganda, reporters and anchors attentively transcribe both sides of the spin invariably failing to provide context, background or any sense of which claims hold up and which are misleading."

and...

"I came to believe that objective journalism means describing the object being reported on, including the little fibs and fantasies as well as the Big Lie of the people in power. In no way does this permit journalists to make accusations and allegations. It means, instead, making sure that your reporting and your conclusions can be nailed to the post with confirming evidence."

This is always hard to do, but it has never been harder than today. Without a trace of irony, the powers-that-be have appropriated the newspeak vernacular of George Orwell’s 1984. They give us a program vowing “No Child Left Behind,” while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged kids. They give us legislation cheerily calling for “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forests” that give us neither. And that’s just for starters.

In Orwell’s 1984, the character Syme, one of the writers of that totalitarian society’s dictionary, explains to the protagonist Winston, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

And why did he "retire" six months ago from NOW? He thinks this editorial he did may have done it. :)

“I wore my flag tonight. First time. Until now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see. It was enough to vote, pay my taxes, perform my civic duties, speak my mind, and do my best to raise our kids to be good Americans.



“Sometimes I would offer a small prayer of gratitude that I had been born in a country whose institutions sustained me, whose armed forces protected me, and whose ideals inspired me; I offered my heart’s affections in return. It no more occurred to me to flaunt the flag on my chest than it did to pin my mother’s picture on my lapel to prove her son’s love. Mother knew where I stood; so does my country. I even tuck a valentine in my tax returns on April 15. 



“So what’s this doing here? Well, I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo — the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On those Sunday morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it is the good housekeeping seal of approval. During the State of the Union, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration’s patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s little red book on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread.



“But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapels while writing books and running Web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American. They are people whose ardor for war grows disproportionately to their distance from the fighting. They’re in the same league as those swarms of corporate lobbyists wearing flags and prowling Capitol Hill for tax breaks even as they call for more spending on war.



“So I put this on as a modest riposte to men with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks, or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don’t have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the coalition of the willing (after they first stash the cash). I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what Bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government. And it reminds me that it’s not un-American to think that war — except in self-defense — is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve, and diplomacy. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.”

Please, read the whole transcript here.

[MetaFilter]

NIN offers new single in GarageBand format

NIN offers new single in GarageBand format

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has made available the band's new single, "The Hand That Feeds," as a free download for Apple's GarageBand application. The song, which weighs in at a hefty 70MB, features multiple tracks that you can easily tweak. "For quite some time I've been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks -- to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what's there," Reznor says. "After spending some quality time sitting in hotel rooms on a press tour, it dawned on me that the technology now exists and is already in the hands of some of you. I got to work experimenting and came up with something I think you'll enjoy."

[Via MacMinute.com: Up-to-the-Minute Apple Mac News]

Ghee Happy

Ghee Happy

Xeni Jardin: 

"This lovely, quirky children's book of Hindu gods was created by Pixar animator Sanjay Patel in his spare time.    Link 

(Thanks, Manish Vij) "

[Via Boing Boing]

Dormitory's USB disco dancefloor

Dormitory's USB disco dancefloor

David Pescovitz:

 

A group of MIT students built a 128 square foot light-up dancefloor in their dorm lounge. A total of 1,536 LEDs provide 4,096 colors and 30 frames/second. Of course, the whole display is programmable via USB. And yes, they plan to play Dance Dance Revolution on it. Link (via Slashdot)

[Found via Boing Boing]

The Annotated New York Times

The Annotated New York Times:

The Annotated New York Times: see all the citations from around the web in one place... very nice.

[Via Jeremy Zawodny's linkblog]

Underdogs Underwater

Four high school students -- gold chains, fake diamond rings, patchy, adolescent mustaches and sharp brains -- take on MIT and others in a robot competition.

"They're undocumented Mexican Americans living in trailers and shabby houses in Arizona. They raise only $800 from the community to fund their project, while the MIT team raises $11,000 from corporate donors. They have to scrounge for the "most best tampons" at the last moment to fix a leak in their robot. The other teams snicker at their garishly painted robot when it's unveiled poolside. You know how this is going to end. You know. But it's very satisfying to read nonetheless. (via Amygdala)"

[Via MetaFilter]

Brazilian open microorganism bank

Brazilian open microorganism bank

Cory Doctorow: The Brazilian government is funding an open collection of indigineous microrganisms that will stave off the practice of foreign companies coming to the south, taking what grows there, and locking it away in patents that the countries of origin can't afford to license.

The microbe bank — dubbed the Brazilian Collection of Environmental and Industrial Microorganisms — is housed at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and was inaugurated on 24 February.

''We intend to put this collection at the service of the scientific and industrial community, by preserving, identifying, maintaining and distributing these microorganisms,'' says biologist Lara Sette, the collection's curator...

Specimens in the 'public access deposit' will be available to public and private institutions to use for research or teaching. The 'safety deposit' will house specimens whose identity and related information are kept confidential and to which access will be restricted.

The third section will include specimens deposited to satisfy Brazilian legal requirements, which state that a sample of any biological material moved between public or private institutions, nationally or internationally, must be deposited in an institution accredited by the Ministry of Environment.

Link  (via Worldchanging)

[Via Boing Boing]