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Archive for November, 2010

Amazing Electron Microscope Shots…

25 Nov



Amazing Scanning Electron Microscope Pictures

All these pictures are from the book ' Microcosmos', created by Brandon Brill from London. This book includes many scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of insects, human body parts and household items. 
These are the most amazing images of what is too small to see with the naked eye.

01 - A wood or heathland Ant, Formica fusca, holding a microchip


02 - The surface of an Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory silicon microchip


03 - Eyelash hairs growing from the surface of human skin


04 - The surface of a strawberry


05 - Bacteria on the surface of a human tongue


06 - Human sperm (spermatozoa), the male sex cells


07 - The nylon hooks and loops of velcro


08 - Household dust which includes long hairs such as cat fur, twisted synthetic and woolen fibers, serrated insect scales, a pollen grain, plant and insect remains


09 -The weave of a nylon stocking


10 - The end of the tongue (proboscis) of a hummingbird hawkmoth


11 - The head of a mosquito


12 - A human head louse clinging to a hair


13 - The eight eyes (two groups of four) on the head of a Mexican red-kneed tarantula


14 - Cut hairs and shaving foam between two razor blades


15 - Cigarette paper


16 - The corroded surface of a rusty metal nail


17 - The head of a Romanesco cauliflower


18 - The fungus Aspergillus fumigatus


19 - Mushrooms spores


20 - A clutch of unidentified butterfly eggs on a raspberry plant


21 - Fimbriae of a Fallopian tube


22 - A daisy bud


23 - Calcium phosphate crystal


24 - The shell of a Foraminiferan


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Palin: America’s “gotta stand with our North Korean allies”

24 Nov
Transcript snip from Glenn Beck's radio show:

CO-HOST: How would you handle a situation like the one that just developed in North Korea?
PALIN: But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies. We're bound to by treaty—
CO-HOST: South Korean.
PALIN: Eh, Yeah. And we're also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes.

More at ThinkProgress.

 
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TSA ‘Demonstration’ Of Gropings Backfires In Congress

24 Nov
Apparently the TSA went to Capitol Hill this week to "demonstrate" the new groping pat downs to prove to folks in Congress that they're really not so bad. The only problem? Those watching the gropings seemed to get exactly the opposite sense:
He said that several House staffers were uncomfortable and averted their eyes when the TSA demonstrated an enhanced pat-down in the room of 200 people.

"The dumbest part: they did two pat-down demonstrations -- male on male, and female on female," the House staffer said. And they used a young female TSA volunteer "and in front of a room of 200 people, they touched her breasts and her buttocks. People were averting their eyes. The TSA was trying to demonstrate 'this is not so bad,' but it made people so uncomfortable to watch, that people were averting their eyes."

"They shot themselves in the foot," the staffer continued.
Now, will those in Congress actually do anything about all this? It's really amazing how frequently the TSA and its supporters insist that the gropings "aren't so bad." It really suggests a huge disconnect between what they're doing and what people consider "bad" to be.

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Google Wave to become Apache project

24 Nov
According to a proposal submitted by Google, Novell employees and several independent developers, some of the code base of Google's existing communication platform is to be migrated to the Apache Software Foundation


 
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What is Data Visualization?

24 Nov

what_is_visualization.jpg
What is Data Visualization? How can it be explained through a visual diagram? Can data visualization be... visualized?

David McCandless answered this recursive issue on his impressive blog Information is Beautiful already a while ago, with a 4-layered vendiagram graph that combines the concepts of "Interestingness", "Function", "Form" and "Integrity".

More recently, FFunction attempted to simplify the depiction of data visualization further by proposing a classic 3-layered vendiagram that mash the areas: "Information" , "Design" and "Communication", with its many intermediate steps.

It actually does not necessarily stop there: we proposed back in 2007 (PDF), the combination of "Aesthetics", "Data" and "Interaction".

You can compare the three approaches below.

Are there more models around? Do you have any preferences?

 
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Facebook Offers All Page Owners Deeper Analytics

23 Nov

Facebook is expanding analytics once reserved for Pages with more than ten thousand fans.

All Page admins will now be able to see impressions for each of their posts. They’ll also see the feedback rate, or what percentage of time fans “like” or interact with their posts.

Facebook is also making some changes to how monthly active users or MAUs are counted. Instead of users that actively “like” or comment on content, all unique users that see posts will get counted into a Page’s MAUs, which will drive overall numbers up.

Facebook originally introduced these feedback analytics in January to Pages with more than 10,000 fans; they help Page owners understand how much exposure their content is receiving. Impressions are how often a post is rendered in a news feed; it is not how many unique users have seen a post.

 
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Give Me Something To Read Best of 2010

23 Nov

This was my first full year at the helm of Give Me Something To Read, and to mark it, I’ve compiled this list of the best articles and essays I posted through 2010 (limited to those that were actually published in 2010). Best, obviously, is subjective, and what this list comprises is a selection of my favourites and reader favourites (as judged by the number of notes they got on Tumblr). Enjoy! (Hint: Open this in your browser, each link has a read later button next to it.)

What Makes a Great Teacher?

Amanda Ripley, The Atlantic

For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication. But for more than a decade, one organization has been tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and looking at why some teachers can move them three grade levels ahead in a year and others can’t. Now, as the Obama administration offers states more than $4 billion to identify and cultivate effective teachers, Teach for America is ready to release its data.

Can You Disappear in Surveillance Britain?

Jean-Paul Flintoff, The Times

David Bond wanted to see if it’s possible to vanish so one day he packed his bag, got into his car and kissed his wife goodbye.

No Angel, No Devil

Brantley Hargrove, Nashville Scene

Once a wife and mother in a deceptively perfect home, Gaile Owens is now the first woman sentenced to die in Tennessee in nearly 200 years.

What Happened When I Went Undercover at a Christian Gay-to-Straight Conversion Camp

Ted Cox, Alternet

What I saw and experienced at JiM both enraged and disturbed me. I had trouble staying in character as I watched one man, as part of his therapy, act out beating his father to death with a baseball bat — just one of several “Are you kidding?” moments. How anyone could believe that a JiM weekend could turn a man straight still baffles me.

The Wrong Man

David Freed, The Atlantic

In the fall of 2001, a nation reeling from the horror of 9/11 was rocked by a series of deadly anthrax attacks. As the pressure to find a culprit mounted, the FBI, abetted by the media, found one. The wrong one. This is the story of how federal authorities blew the biggest anti-terror investigation of the past decade.

Whodunnit?

Jon Ronson, The Guardian

Criminal profilers were once the heroes of police work, nailing offenders with their astonishing psychological insights. So why did it all fall apart?

Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works

Brendan I. Koerner, Wired

AA and its steps have become ubiquitous despite the fact that no one is quite sure how—or, for that matter, how well—they work. The organization is notoriously difficult to study, thanks to its insistence on anonymity and its fluid membership. And AA’s method, which requires “surrender” to a vaguely defined “higher power,” involves the kind of spiritual revelations that neuroscientists have only begun to explore.

Boom

Sean Flynn, GQ

Lost in the catastrophic aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the gripping tale of the rig workers and the Coast Guard crewmen who rescued them.

The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High

Jay Caspian Kang, The Morning News

Gambling addiction is a simple disease. Living the addiction is a bit more complicated. A chronicle of dependency in seven parts, by Jay Caspian King, about poker, Lolita, and how to lose $18,000 in 36 hours.

Dog Beat Dog

Keegan Hamilton, Phoenix New Times

To pull off the biggest pit bull fighting bust in U.S. history, investigators and their dogs went undercover.

Washington, We Have a Problem

Todd Purdum, Vanity Fair

A day in the life of the president reveals that Barack Obama’s job would be almost unrecognizable to most of his predecessors—thanks to the enormous bureaucracy, congressional paralysis, systemic corruption (with lobbyists spending $3.5 billion last year), and disintegrating media.

The Deadly Corruption of Clinical Trials

Carl Elliott, Mother Jones

When you risk life and limb to help test a drug, are you helping science—or Big Pharma? One patient’s tragic, and telling, story.

The Brain That Changed Everything

Luke Dittrich, Esquire

When a surgeon cut into Henry Molaison’s skull to treat him for epilepsy, he inadvertently created the most important brain-research subject of our time — a man who could no longer remember, who taught us everything we know about memory. Six decades later, another daring researcher is cutting into Henry’s brain. Another revolution in brain science is about to begin.

What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?

Charlie LeDuff, Mother Jones

A nighttime raid. A reality TV crew. A sleeping seven-year-old. What one tragedy can teach us about the unraveling of America’s middle class.

If you feel like I missed anything, or have a nomination of your own, or indeed disagree with any of my selections, please feel free to send me an e-mail or tweet at me; I’m not averse to updating the list a little.

 
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A sign for dogs that destroy packages

23 Nov

After loosing books, clothes, credit cards, and boxes of every shape and description I finally made this sign for my front gate. Here is the pdf if you need one yourself: my dog eats packages.pdf

A sign for the dog that eats everything.

 
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Oversecured America

23 Nov

I suppose I agree with Kevin Drum about one aspect of the Transportation Security Administration namely that public outrage about the indignities it imposes seems to me to be 80 percent middle class white people not liking the idea of being placed in the subordinate position of a dominance hierarchy, 19 percent about yearning for America to adopt institutionalized racism as the lodestar of our transportation security policy, and maybe one percent about liberty.

That said, I think everything else Drum says is wrong. I think American air travel security was too tight even before 9/11. I think the main lessons of 9/11 should be that keeping weapons off planes is largely futile and that training of flight crews is highly effective. As of the morning of September 11, 2001 the standing doctrine was to allow hijackers to take control of planes and that’s what happened. As quickly as later that morning doctrine shifted and the passengers and crew of United Flight 93 brought their own plane down, preventing its use as a projectile.

Not just airlines, but America as a whole is, I think, over-secured against terrorist by this kind of weapon screening. One should back up and consider the baseline. If you assume the existence of a person willing to die for Osama bin Laden’s war on America, located within the United States of America, and in possession of a working explosive or firearm, there’s basically nothing stopping him from blowing up the 4/5/6 platform at Union Square or the 54 bus in DC or the Mall of America or even the security line at DFW airport. And yet it doesn’t happen. Does that mean we could get by with no security anywhere? I say: no. But we should start with the idea that the main point of security is simply to push attacks around. The bank has security guards to encourage you to rob the liquor store down the street. Personal security for a handfull of high-ranking government officials makes sense. Better that some madman take a shot at me than take a shot at the President or try to seriously alter the course of American politics by blowing up a restaurant where John Roberts and Sam Alito are having lunch.

But there are real limits to this. Is the life of the Secretary of Agriculture or the Mayor of Indianapolis really that much more valuable than you or me? We should be skeptical. The public choice argument that the government will over-invest in the security of its own facilities and personnel is strong. Airplanes, in this spirit, seem more vulnerable to attack than buses and deserve tougher security. But don’t ask yourself “what amount of hassle and expenditure is worth paying to prevent terrorist attacks,” ask yourself “what amount of hassle and expenditure is worth paying to shift terrorist attacks off airplanes and onto buses”? Much of the resources currently spent on “security” measures would be much better spent on having more police officers. Ordinary violent crime continues to be a very serious problem in America, and reducing its incidence would vastly improve people’s physical security and free up investigatory resources to make serious plots harder to pull off.

 
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But who’s going to set up their own email server?

23 Nov

Many many years ago, back in the days when Microsoft's email address had exclamation points, an internal tool was developed to permit Microsoft employees to view and update their Benefits information from the comfort of their very own offices. Welcome to the paperless office!

One of my friends noticed an odd sentence in the instructions for using the tool: "Before running the program, make sure you are logged onto your email server."

"That's strange," my friend thought. "Why does it matter that you're logged onto your email server? This tool doesn't use email."

Since my friend happened at the time to be a tester for Microsoft's email product, he tried a little experiment. He created a brand new email server on one of his test machines and created an account on it called billg. He then signed onto that email server and then ran the tool.

Welcome, Bill Gates. Here are your current Benefits selections...

"Uh-oh," my friend thought. "This is a pretty bad security hole." The tool apparently performed authentication by asking your email server, "Hey, who are you logged in as?" The answer that came back was assumed to be an accurate representation of the user who is running the tool. The back-end server itself was not secured at all; it relied on the client application to do the security checks.

My friend sent email to the vice president of Human Resources informing him of this problem. "You need to shut down this tool immediately. I have found a security hole that allows anybody to see anybody else's Benefits information."

The response from the vice president of Human Resources was calm and reassuring. "My developers tell me that the tool is secure. Just enjoy the convenience of updating your Benefits information electronically."

Frustrated by this, my friend decided to create another account on his test email server, namely one corresponding to the vice president of Human Resources. He then sent the vice president another email message.

"Please reconsider your previous decision. Your base salary is $xxx and your wife's name is Yyyy. Would you like me to remind you one week before your son's tenth birthday? It's coming up next month."

A reply was quickly received. "We're looking into this."

Shortly thereafter, the tool was taken offline "for maintenance."

Bonus reading: JenK shares her experience with the same incident.

 
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