Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.
It's even more disgusting than we heard yesterday. According to the Wall Street Journal, AIG, the financial giant that has taken more than $170 billion of our money to save it from extinction -- and given lots of it to other financial companies -- is paying almost half a billion dollars in bonuses (my emphasis in first quoted paragraph)
to employees in its financial products unit. That division was at the heart of AIG's collapse last fall, which compelled the U.S. government to provide $173.3 billion in aid to keep it running....
Those payments are in addition to $121.5 million in incentive bonuses for 2008 that AIG will start making this month to about 6,400 of its roughly 116,000 employees. AIG, which was rescued in September as it faced potential bankruptcy, is also making over $600 million in retention payments to over 4,000 employees.
Together, the three programs could result in roughly $1.2 billion in retention and bonus payments to AIG employees.
Who's worse? The legislators and executive-branch people who let this happen, or the AIG executives who are showing themselves to be supremely greedy, and who must be laughing at the rest of us by now. Close call...
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
W. Neil Berrett quit his job by presenting his boss with a resignation letter on a sheet cake.
Youtube user petesteg has a great cabin fever project. It is an interesting/stupid/noble project for the winter months: put a hard drive in a plastic bag, put some rocks on it to hold it down at the bottom of your ice rink and make a video of it throughout the winter. When the thaw comes in the spring, you get to find out if the drive is a formerly frozen paper weight or a happy storage medium.
Keep in mind that I am a trained storage professional, this drive is not intended to be frozen in ice. Please do not try this at home.
It seems to be holding up well, but what can you tell, it's in the ice, I guess...It's hard to tell how it's doing...we'll find out in the Spring..."
Then on the coldest day in years:
So the drive's out there. I'm not going to go out there, I'm just going to show you.
100 days of sub zero Celcius weather. This is kind of a maker version of the 365 projects on Flickr.
What were your winter projects? Are you keeping good documentation of them? Do you think the drive will survive the winter? Have you tried an experiment like this? Have you made a backyard ice rink? Post up your ideas in the comments, and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Computers | Digg this!
Here are some of my favorite posts from the CRAFT blog this week:
And in this week's video, I show you how to make a QR code scarf!
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
There's still time to start making or just watch this week's Weekend Project: Spider Rifle . You can view the video here, or subscribe in iTunes to get all our Weekend Projects and PDFs delivered each week.
Whilst outstanding derivatives are notional amounts until they are crystallised, actual exposure is measured by the net credit equivalent. This is normally a lower figure unless many variables plot a locus in the wrong direction simultaneously. This could be because of catastrophic unpredictable events, ie, "Black Swans", such as cascades of bankruptcies and nationalisations, when the net exposure can balloon and become considerably larger or indeed because some extremely dislocating geo-political or geo-physical events take place simultaneously. Also, the notional value becomes real value when either counterparty to the OTC derivative goes bankrupt. This means that no large OTC derivative house can be allowed to go broke without falling into the arms of another. Whatever funds within reason are required to rescue failing international investment banks, deposit banks and financial entities ought to be provided on a case by case basis. This is the asymmetric nature of derivatives and here lies the potential for systemic risk to the global economic system and financial markets if nothing is done.The Size of Derivatives Bubble = $190K Per Person on Planet (Thanks @staceyhebert!)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Rees's minimalist, clip-art graphics combined with his profane (top marks for inspired and expressive use of the word 'fuck' -- next time an English teacher tells you cursing isn't an effective way of expressing yourself, produce this book and win the day) torrent of raging, pitiless, vicious, relentless attacks on the stupidity of the War on Terror made GET YOUR WAR ON the single consistently credible voice during the Bush Years.
It's easy to forget all the screw-ups that took place over that time -- massive, fatal screw-ups, from Harriet Meier to Tom DeLay linking abortion to illegal immigration. But who can forget Bionic Abu-Ghraib Man, or the vicious beating that Rees doled out to liberals who let themselves be cowed by "9/11 changed everything" rhetoric?
Rees's gift for Bill-Hicks-like rhetoric set his strip apart from every other political cartoon I've read -- it's like Doonesbury with Tourette's:
On US forces losing 380 tons of explosives to insurgents in Iraq: "Do you think Mohamed ElBaradei is currently running around with 380 tons of Schadenfreude? The worst thing about working at the IAEA is that nobody can hear you say 'I told you so.' On account of all the explosions. God, wouldn't it be ironing if the Iraq war somehow increased terrorism? Who could have predicted such irony? Maybe ninety percent of the world or something?"
On Condoleeza Rice's appointment to Secretary of State: "How can you not love our new Secretary of State? Have you ever heard her PLAY THE PIANO? Seriously, dude, she's really good...But I think her wonderful talent is best when applied to Chopin's later works. She draws out his whimsical melodies without over emphasizing the subharmonics of dead people and billions of dollars flushed down the fucking toilet."
Terry Schvaio's feeding tube speaks: "'Culture of Life?' You're going to start legislating based on phrases stolen from herbal tea packaging? Why not 'Sleepytime Lemon Traditions?' Fuckin' hold midnight congressional sessions about that you dumb fucks!
On Pat Robertson claiming that federal judges are a more serious threat to America than Al Qaeda, the 9/11 terrorists, Nazi Germany, Japan and the civil war: "So here's my offer: I'll spend a year in the company of federal judges if Pat Robertson will spend just a year in a Nazi concentration camp. No, wait -- I'll actually fly on a 747 with federal judges if Pat Robertson will fly on a 747 with Islamic terrorists..." "Stop making fun! If you don't...the federal judges have won!"
On the White House's response to the crisis in Darfur: "Come on, be fair. Bush has sent tons of humanitarian aid over there." "Well, that's a relief -- nobody wants to be gang-raped on an empty stomach."
On security theater: "How come the terror plots that lead to the worst airport inconveniences are the fuckin' B-list, retarded terror plots that would never work? If I'm gonna have to surrender my shoes or shampoo or whatever, at least let is be because people have actually been killed! Enough of this theoretical bubblegum-missile bullshit!" "I wish someone would try to blow up a plan using New Age music, so I wouldn't have to sit and listen to that shit while people are boarding." "Do you think we could pay a terrorist to try to kill infidels using some kind of 'lack of legroom in coach' bomb?"
On Hurricane Katrina: "How did you celebrate the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina?" "I floated face-down in my pool for a couple days, contemplating all the people who don't give a shit about me." "I went into 'White House Crisis Mode:' I rolled up my sleeves and stuck my thumb up my ass."
On Blackwater: "Who would've thought we'd see an accusation of too much deadly force from a firm called 'Blackwater?' The fuckin' name only sounds like an evil wizard's military compound." "Why not just call themselves Deathfang's Midnight Posse of Merciless Skull Warriors?"
Get Your War On: The Definitive Account of the War on Terror, 2001-2008
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This week in the Maker Shed we introduced the new Arduino Duemilanove and the Doomsday Sound kit. Also, we posted our first Maker Shed survey so we can better understand our audience. It's a great way to let us know what you like, and you can even enter to win 1 of 5 Maker's Notebooks just by filling out our 5-minute survey. We have a lot going on in the Maker Shed so keep an eye out for more how-to's, cool projects, and new products.
The new Arduino Duemilanove is available in the Maker Shed. It's a big bump in memory, which will allow for even more amazing code. I know I can always use a little more room for storing variables, and the new ATmega328 is the perfect solution.
In the Maker Shed: New Arduino Duemilanove
Maker Shed video: Doomsday Sound Kit
We want to learn more about you. Yes, you! So if you have 5 minutes, and like the idea of contest, take a look at this survey. You could win 1 of 5 Maker's Notebooks that we are giving away, at random, to people who take the Maker Shed survey.
We ask for your email information at the conclusion of this survey for one reason: to allow you to enter yourself in a random drawing for gifts. Providing your email is strictly optional. Other than that, we do not ask any personally identifiable information, nor will we sell, rent or share your email address to third parties.
Want to make us really happy? If you win one of the Maker's Notebooks be sure to mod it up a bit and send us a link. We love to post about customized Maker's Notebooks.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Maker Shed Store | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For the past couple of decades, Val has been using this knot to tie down everything from canoes, tarps and other implements of camping and boating. Last summer, I captured it on camera as he showed it to me and Mark. Whenever I see somebody driving down the road holding a mattress on the roof of the car with their left hand, I think of how knots like this are a lost knowledge.
How do you tie things to the top of your vehicle? What is your magic, all purpose knot? How did you learn the ropes? Have you taught your kids to tie things other than their shoes? Join the conversation in the comments and please add your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.
Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!
Buy your copy in the Maker Shed Subscribe to MAKE Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!
I had the pleasure of assisting Leah Buechley with her LilyPad Electronic Fashion workshop at ETech. A couple of the participants wrote up their experiences. Writing at The Daily ACK, Alasdair Allan had this to say:
The aim for the workshop was to produce a "soundie", a garment which produes a sound when touched in a certain place, or different sounds when touched in different ways. Issued with a SparkFun LilyPad Pro Kit, some conductive thread, conductive material for the touch sensors, and of course a needle, we set to work. Well after the obligatory jokes about how this was going to look on our expense reports obviously...
And Tish Shute of UgoTrade (whose photo from the workshop is shown above) had fun as well (in both Arduino workshops):
I think I'm hooked on Maker culture. I can't wait to check out the Etech Maker Shed that opens today. I got a feel for the excitement of rapid prototyping in the morning doing the LilyPad Electronic Fashion workshop with Leah Buechley, a brilliant and patient teacher.
Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.
On an NPR newscast the other day, a reporter pronounced the year 2012 as "two-thousand-twelve" while someone he interviewed called it "twenty-twelve." I'd have gone for the latter, but the different choices made me wonder when we're going to give up what we've been doing this entire decade, clumsily calling everything "two thousand something," and move to the style we used during most if not all of the last century.
I'm going with the twenties starting next year: twenty-ten, twenty-eleven and so on. YMMV.
There hasn't been much consistency in this area, as far as I can tell. Did anyone pronounce 1907 as anything but nineteen-oh-seven? Did anyone actually say nineteen-hundred-seven? (I'd wager a (UPDATE) week's day's pay -- the money goes to charity if I lose -- that nobody used one-thousand-nine-hundred-seven.)
Wait, it gets more complicated. We have to think about the names we use for centuries, too. The 20th Century was also the nineteen-hundreds. But in the 21st Century, are we in the two-thousands? That sounds off, but the twenty-hundreds sounds totally wrong.
Am I spelling these years wrong, too? Should there be hyphens between the numbers? Calling the grammar police.
No big deal. Still, it's pleasant to contemplate a benign problem for once.
(Flickr poto by hyperspace328)
Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.
The recession is leading lots of out-of-work folks to try new things, reports the Times:
Economists say that when the economy takes a dive, it is common for people to turn to their inner entrepreneur to try to make their own work. But they say that it takes months for that mentality to sink in, and that this is about the time in the economic cycle when it really starts to happen — when the formerly employed realize that traditional job searches are not working, and that they are running out of time and money.
Mark V. Cannice, executive director of the entrepreneurship program at the University of San Francisco, calls the phenomenon “forced entrepreneurship.”
“If there is a silver lining, the large-scale downsizing from major companies will release a lot of new entrepreneurial talent and ideas — scientists, engineers, business folks now looking to do other things,” Mr. Cannice said. “It’s a Darwinian unleashing of talent into the entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
That's great. Except for one thing, which the article completely misses: You won't find too many people in their middle ages or older in this category. Why? Because they can't get health insurance. America's health-care system makes it all but impossible for an older worker to try something new.
Even younger startup owners who are relatively healthy and have insurance are just a half-step from disaster. The insurance industry is in the business of not paying claims whenever possible, after all, and health insurers are working hardest to find ways not to cover people who might get sick even as they deny as many claims as possible from people who've been paying premiums.
The day we have national health care is the day that we unleash a wave of entrepreneurship the likes of which we've never seen before. That's one of the best reasons for moving toward such a system.
Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.
In the get-out-the-torches-and-pitchforks category comes this news:
Despite receiving $170 billion in federal aid and recording a staggering loss for the last quarter, insurance giant American International Group is doling out tens of million of dollars in bonuses this week to senior employees.
While AIG agreed to pay the bonuses months before the government's rescue of the company began, the matter still is a source of anger for government officials. In a phone call on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told AIG Chairman and chief executive Edward M. Liddy that the payments were unacceptable and needed to be renegotiated, according to an administration source.
The company has since agreed to change the terms of some of these payments. But in a letter to Geithner, Liddy wrote that the bonuses could not be cancelled altogether because the firm would risk a lawsuit for breaching employment contracts. Liddy also expressed concerns about whether changing the bonuses would lead to an exodus of talented employees who are needed to turn the company around.
"We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses -- which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers -- if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. treasury," Liddy wrote.
That would be the "best and brightest" sleazeballs who created this train wreck of a company, who were principal culprits in the tanking of the global economy? These people should be drawing unemployment checks, not stealing taxpayers' money.
I started a #pitchforks Twitter hashtag a while back, and this is precisely why.
(Photo by blhphotography)
Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.
Some books and longer articles I've recently been reading or re-reading:
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick's masterpiece (IMO). Chilling alternate history, set in an America that lost World War II to Germany and Japan.
The Snowball, by Alice Schroeder, a warts-and-all biography of investor Warren Buffett. His Nebraska-kid schtick hasn't fooled anybody for a long time, but he's even more complicated than we suspected.
What Would Google Do, Jeff Jarvis' thought-provoking look at our changing world from a "life is beta" perspective. I don't agree with all of his arguments, some of which strike me as throwing out the proverbial babies with the bathwater, but this book is well worth a read.
Severance Package, a noir-squared novel by Duane Swierczynski, about a memorable last day at work. Violent, mordant and an absolutely compulsive read.
"The Gatekeeper," a New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza about Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emannuel. Hugely detailed, but has a more suck-up-to-power story ever been published in a magazine that prides itself on serious journalism? Yuck.
The current periodical press, whether ephemeral or other, is a vehicle for advertisements. This is its raison d'etre as a business proposition and this decides the lines of its management without material qualification. Exceptions to the rule are official and minor propagandist periodicals, and in an uncertain measure, scientific journals. The profits of publication come from the sale of advertising space. The direct returns from sales and subscriptions are now a matter of wholly secondary consequence. Publishers of periodicals, of all grades of transiency, aim to make their product as salable as may be, in order to pass their advertising pages under the eyes of as many readers as may be. The larger the circulation the greater, other things equal, the market value of the advertising space. The highest product of this development is the class of American newspapers called "independent." These in particular -- and they are followed at no great interval by the rest -- edit all items of news comment or gossip with a view to what the news ought to be and what opinions ought to be expressed on passing events.
The first duty of an editor is to gauge the sentiments of his readers and then tell them what they like to believe. By this means he maintains or increases the circulation. His second duty is to see that nothing is said in the news items or editorials which may discountenance any claims or announcements made by his advertisers, discredit their standing or good faith, or expose any weakness or deception in any business venture that is or may become a valuable advertiser. By this means he increases the advertising value of his circulation. The net result is that both the news columns and the editorial columns are commonly meretricious in a high degree.
Systematic insincerity on the part of the ostensible purveyors of information and leaders of opinion may be deplored by persons who stickle for truth and pin their hopes of social salvation on the spread of accurate information. But the ulterior cultural effect of the insincerity which is in this way required by the business situation, may of course, as well be salutary as the reverse. Indeed the effect is quite as likely to be salutary, if "salutary" be taken to mean favorable to the maintenance of the established order, since the insincerity is guided by a wish to avoid any lesion of the received preconceptions and prejudices. The insincerity of the newspapers and magazines seems on the whole to be of a conservative trend.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Photo from Museum of Retro Technology
Years ago I fell upon The Victorian Internet by Tom Stangadge. It is a fascinating read, telling the tale of how the world was girdled by copper wires carrying text messages to far flung places. The Victorian Age's instant messaging system allowed geography and time to be compressed through the mysterious and seeming magical telegraph system. I grew up down the street from the Western terminus of the First French Atlantic Cable, not to be confused (as it was) from the First Transatlantic Cable. The cable was possible to lay across floor of the North Atlantic only because of the outsized steamship the Great Eastern, which was so unusually configured that its' owners had a habit of going bankrupt.
From Tom Standage, Author of The Victorian Internet
During Queen Victoria's reign, a new communications technology was developed that allowed people to communicate almost instantly across great distances, in effect shrinking the world faster and further than ever before. A world-wide communications network whose cables spanned continents and oceans, it revolutionised business practice, gave rise to new forms of crime, and inundated its users with a deluge of information. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates, and dismissed by the sceptics. Governments and regulators tried and failed to control the new medium. Attitudes to everything from newsgathering to diplomacy had to be completely rethought. Meanwhile, out on the wires, a technological subculture with its own customs and vocabulary was establishing itself.
In London and Paris, there were so many messages, that they had to invent a new, more effective way to physically carry the messages, pneumatic tubes. The vacuum pressure needed to suck the message containers through the tubes was achieved through steam power.
Photo from American Museum of Photography
Telegraphers were the alpha geeks of their age. With specialized technical know-how and their skill at code, they helped to transform their cultures and language. While the technologies are still evident in online galleries, brick and mortar museums, the technologies of telegraphy and the Victorian Internet are in many ways lost knowledge.
Photo from Tom Perera
Telegraph keys ranged from rudimentary affairs to carefully machined metal instruments. Often the operator placed a metal snuff tin over the sounder to make it easier to hear.
The Once and Future Web has some great resources, pictures, definitions and more on the teletype. There you can find classroom activities, such as a project where students can compare the telegraph to the internet.
Picture from OfficeMuseum.com
There is a rich maker history of the telegraph, photos, devices made for and by telegraph operators, station offices, buildings, and the messages themselves. Everything about the telegraph system had to be made, telegraph keys and sounders, code for communication, batteries, cable between towns, undersea cables and all the tools to make and install the equipment. Telegraphy and its' communications advances was possible only because of the steam age's makers.
Have you learned to send or receive messages over the telegraph? How did you learn Morse Code? Can you send a message with code faster than a teenager with a cellphone? Where do you see pneumatic message delivery systems in this modern age? Have you taught or taken a class where the telegraph systems were built or used? Have you built a telegraph key or sounder? How has telegraphy affected your life? What does the telegraph have to teach us about the internet, technology, history or the future of communication? Join the conversation in the comments, and add your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.
Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!
Buy your copy in the Maker Shed Subscribe to MAKE Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Retro | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Photo from Scot Frank on Flickr
A few weeks ago I met up with Scot Frank at an event held by Amy Smith's D-Lab group at MIT.
Scot told me of his project One Earth Designs, and their work to help create effective engineering solutions for people in the developing world.
Via email, Scot shared a bit about his work creating energy and testing technologies:
Solar:
It's a light-weight, portable solar cooker/heater/electric generator made from local materials in high altitude areas of the world. Villagers came to use needing an alternative to spending 5-hours per day collecting fuel, and then suffering from the indoor air pollution effects of its usage.Right now, we're working the Himalayas using yak wool for the canvas (used traditionally for tents) and bamboo for structure. When we begin roll-out this summer, the device will be produced locally by villagers themselves as a means of income generation and ensuring future repair and maintenance.
Photo from Scot Frank on Flickr
The rural population of the Himalayan region relies heavily on dung and wood for fuel. Problems surrounding the collection of these fuels include gender inequality, the transmission of pathogens, income depression, environmental degradation, and land conflict. Problems surrounding the combustion of these fuels include high levels of indoor air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.Residents of our six partner villages in the eastern Himalayas have asked for improved energy options to address these problems. In response, we have designed the SolSource, a 3-in-1 solar device that harnesses the sun's energy for portable cooking, household heating, and low-cost thermoelectricity generation. The SolSource directly improves indoor air quality, reduces regional climate change impact, and increases women's access to education. Indirectly, its manufacture from traditional knowledge and materials has the potential to facilitate sustainable income generation and promote community self-efficacy in rural communities of the Himalayan region.
Photo from Scot Frank on Flickr
We're also starting up a water testing/treatment/awareness project. Currently we are having NGOs in the Himalayas and Ghana, along with children from two schools (one in San Fran, the other in China) learning the simple water testing method and taking data from their home areas to be contributed online (aka citizen science). Not only will this provide information for people about the water they are drinking (and how to treat it), but we think it can be a wonderful learning activity for hands-on science and awareness. The abstract for this project from a recent conference submission is below.
Photo from Scot Frank on Flickr
Here are some more on the NGOs associated with One Earth Designs:
One Earth Designs is doing fascinating work to help improve the living conditions of people who do not have access to the resources that Westerners do. By leveraging the experience and needs of rural villagers and academics, new technologies are being developed that can save lives and create opportunities. By photographing and posting the shots of these important projects, Scot and his collaborators help keep people aware of the real issues that people face in faraway lands.
What are you doing to make the world a better place? How can you harness the energy around us to do the work we need done? Have you helped design a device that will save lives? Have you seen a great water testing system in use in a rural community? Join the conversation in the comments and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Remake | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
(Thanks, Gregr!)
Happy Birthday Al! On this day, in the year 1879, a person was born whose name would become synonymous with our popular concept of genius. When we take a closer look at Albert Einstein's contributions to science, it's plain to see why. Within a single year, working at a Swiss patent office, Einstein wrote a series of papers explaining several key ideas that would revolutionize Physics -
When published in 1905, Einstein's theories garnered little response from the scientific community. It wasn't until 1921 that he received the Nobel prize for defining the law of the photoelectric effect - surprisingly not for either of his theories of relativity. Einstein's special theory of relativity is best known for equating mass to energy with
- His paper on the particulate nature of light put forward the idea that certain experimental results, notably the photoelectric effect, could be simply understood from the postulate that light interacts with matter as discrete "packets" (quanta) of energy, an idea that had been introduced by Max Planck in 1900 as a purely mathematical manipulation, and which seemed to contradict contemporary wave theories of light.
- His paper on Brownian motion explained the random movement of very small objects as direct evidence of molecular action, thus supporting the atomic theory.
- His paper on the electrodynamics of moving bodies introduced the radical theory of special relativity, which showed that the observed independence of the speed of light on the observer's state of motion required fundamental changes to the notion of simultaneity. Consequences of this include the time-space frame of a moving body slowing down and contracting (in the direction of motion) relative to the frame of the observer. This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aether--one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time--was superfluous.
- In his paper on mass-energy equivalence (previously considered to be distinct concepts), Einstein deduced from his equations of special relativity what has been called the twentieth century's most well known equation: E = mc2. This suggests that tiny amounts of mass could be converted into huge amounts of energy and presaged the development of nuclear power.
E=MC² and describes the relationship between space and time. Developed later, his general theory of relativity redefines the concept of gravity. Einstein spent much of the rest of his life attempting to unify this general theory with electromagnetism, and many others continue that work today.
Einstein was an accomplished daydreamer - many of his ideas were born from simply observing everyday life and re-imagining those situations with unusual variations in motion and perspective. So the next time you catch yourself 'spacing out', consider jotting down some of those wandering ideas - they may be the building blocks of something much greater.
As Gareth points out, the History Channel has a good documentary on Mr. Einstein, currently available for viewing online. And of course the all-encompassing Wikipedia has a ton of great info as well, including Albert's individual theories and life in general.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
• We took apart the new iPod Shuffle's headphones in search of the rumored "DRM" chip. We found something.
• Last-gen inline headphone controls won't work with the new Shuffle, either.
• An elderly gent travels in style atop his Z-001.
• Don Relyea makes strange art that resembles cities or circuit boards, but is in fact inspired by food,
• Behold! A Victorian DeLorean
• The HULC Exoskeleton lets soldiers lift more than 200 pounds with relative ease.
• The ABL industrial apple peeler has a mean theme tune.
• Pick your reference: Pip-Boy, Leela, Dick Tracy. However you slice it, it's an honest-to-god wrist computer. At last!
Make: Talk Show Notes, Episode #002, March 13, 2009
Mark, Dale, and I had fun this past Friday on our second episode of Make: Talk. We're still working out some of the technical bugs and tweaking the format, but we're excited to have this opportunity to touch base every week, with each other, our contributors, and the maker community. See details below about next week's show. Here are the links we promised for topics discussed during the program.
Host Tips, Tricks, and Tools
We introduced a new segment where we share our favorite new discoveries for the week:
Mark's Picks:
Dale's Picks:
Gareth's Picks:
Our Guest: Heather McDougal
Heather McDougal was our guest, talking about her article in the latest MAKE, "Your Own Wunderkammer," a how-to on building a "Wunderkammer," or "cabinet of wonders."
Build Notes: Your Own Wunderkammer
MAKE Volume 17, Lost Knowledge issue
Cabinet of Wonders, Heather McDougal's blog.
You can listen to Episode #002 here:
Next Episode of Make: Talk (Friday, March 20th, 12:00pm PT, 3:00pm ET)
This coming Friday, we're very excited that our guest will be Forrest W. Mims, the amateur scientist and electronics guru, who wrote the iconic Getting Started in Electronics and the Engineer's Mini-Notebook series for Radio Shack. Forrest also has a new column in MAKE, The Country Scientist, which premiered in Volume 17. Also, we'll be sharing our favorite tricks, tips, and tools for the week, and giving away prizes!
And don't forget, this is live, call-in radio. The show runs for 45 minutes. Call in during showtime (12-12:45pm PT) and ask questions. The number is: (646) 915-8698. We hope you'll join us this Friday!
More:
Make: Talk episode 1 show notes and next episode
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Make: Talk Show Notes, Episode #002, March 13, 2009
Mark, Dale and I had fun this past Friday with our second episode of Make: Talk radio. We're still working some of the technical bugs out and tweaking the format, but we're excited to have this opportunity to touch base every week with each other, our contributors, and the maker community. See details below about next week's show. Here are the links we promised for topics discussed during the program.
Host Tips, Tricks and Tools
We introduced a new segment where we share our favorite new discoveries for the week:
Mark's Picks:
Dale's Picks:
Gareth's Picks:
Our Guest: Heather McDougal
Heather McDougal was our guest, talking about her article in the latest MAKE, "Your Own Wunderkammer," a how-to on building your own "Wunderkammer," or "cabinet of wonders."
Build Notes: Your Own Wunderkammer
MAKE Volume 17, Lost Knowledge issue
Cabinet of Wonders, Heather McDougal's blog.
You can listen to Episode #002 here:
Next Episode of Make: Talk
Make: Talk, Friday, March 20th, 12:00pm PT, 3:00pm ET
This coming Friday, we're extremely excited that our guest will be Forrest W. Mims, the amateur scientist and electronics guru, who wrote the iconic Getting Started in Electronics and the Engineer's Mini-Notebook series for Radio Shack. Forrest also has a new column in MAKE, The Country Scientist, which premiered in Volume 17. Also, we'll be sharing our favorite tricks, tips, and tools for the week, and giving away prizes!
And don't forget, this is live, call-in radio. The show runs for 45 minutes. Call in during showtime (12-12:45pm PT) and ask questions. The number is: (646) 915-8698. We hope you'll join us this Friday!
More:
Make: Talk episode 1 show notes and next episode
Apple Adds Still More DRM to iPod Shuffle
Update 2: We took one apart and found a mysterious chip inside the new Shuffle's headphones. Have no idea if it's DRM or not -- Rob.
Update: We did a quick test in the gadget dungeon: existing inline headphone control adapters for the iPhone and other iPods won't work in the new Shuffle. -- Rob.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
51 queries. 2.810 seconds