Archive for the ‘science’ Category

The Aquaduct

The Aquaduct is pedal powered vehicle that transports, filters, and stores water for the developing world. A peristaltic pump attached to the pedal crank draws water from a large tank, through a filter, to a smaller clean tank. The clean tank is removable and closed for contamination-free home storage and use. A clutch engages and disengages the drive belt from the pedal crank, enabling the rider to filter the water while traveling or while stationary.

The Aquaduct is the winning entry in the Innovate or Die contest put on by Google and Specialized. The contest challenge was to build a pedal powered machine that has environmental impact. Please visit our blog ( http://theaquaduct.blogspot.com/ ) or email team.aquaduct@gmail.com for more details.

This is cool and innovative and all but… this joint is kinnnnda just a a glorified Brita.AA It’s a tad bit old but… it’s new to you!

Underwater Sculpture Reef

Even though we’ve been majorly slacking off on our ART DAY! representation - you all already should know how we feel about art. Right? Just checking.

That being said, this project by Jason de Caires Taylor was lifted from the pages of Modern Design - a European freeware mag in which MNP was recently featured.

Words cannot describe how beautiful and absolutely haunting these statues are. The most astute and learned of our readers will even notice the allusion to Mt. Vesuvius tossed in there for fun.

The best thing about these sculptures is that they are there to help produce a natural (naturally man made, anyway) reef for all the pretty fishies. Preserving the ecosystem is paramount for Taylor, and the big draw for artificial reef is that it alleviates pressure from the naturally occurring and rapidly disappearing counterparts.

This project is also a study of and a metaphor for "change over time." As our original source says, Jason’s sculptures gradually give way to their sea environments, changing, changing and changing, and likely even disappearing over time - all to promote ocean awareness. These sculptures are visitable by glass-bottomed boat and/or underwater scuba tour.

Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech

VANCOUVER, British Columbia a€" A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The articlea€™s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Macleana€™s, Canadaa€™s leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their a€oedignity, feelings and self-respect.a€A

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which held five days of hearings on those questions here last week, will soon rule on whether Macleana€™s violated the law. As spectators lined up for the afternoon session last week, an argument broke out.

a€oeIta€™s hate speech!a€A yelled one man.

a€oeIta€™s free speech!a€A yelled another.

In the United States, that debate has been settled. Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions a€" even false, provocative or hateful things a€" without legal consequence.

The Macleana€™s article, a€oeThe Future Belongs to Islam,a€A was an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn called a€oeAmerica Alonea€A (Regnery, 2006). The title was fitting: The United States, in its treatment of hate speech, as in so many other areas of the law, takes a distinctive legal path.

a€oeIn much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at onea€™s legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment,a€A Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called a€oeThe Exceptional First Amendment.a€A

a€oeBut in the United States,a€A Professor Schauer continued, a€oeall such speech remains constitutionally protected.a€A

Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.

Earlier this month, the actress Brigitte Bardot, an animal rights activist, was fined $23,000 in France for provoking racial hatred by criticizing a Muslim ceremony involving the slaughter of sheep.

By contrast, American courts would not stop a planned march by the American Nazi Party in Skokie, Ill., in 1977, though a march would have been deeply distressing to the many Holocaust survivors there.

Six years later, a state court judge in New York dismissed a libel case brought by several Puerto Rican groups against a business executive who had called food stamps a€oebasically a Puerto Rican program.a€A The First Amendment, Justice Eve M. Preminger wrote, does not allow even false statements about racial or ethnic groups to be suppressed or punished just because they may increase a€oethe general level of prejudice.a€A

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

a€oeIt is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken,a€A Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, a€oewhen they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.a€A

Professor Waldron was reviewing a€oeFreedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendmenta€A by Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times columnist. Mr. Lewis has been critical of efforts to use the law to limit hate speech.

But even Mr. Lewis, a liberal, wrote in his book that he was inclined to relax some of the most stringent First Amendment protections a€oein an age when words have inspired acts of mass murder and terrorism.a€A In particular, he called for a re-examination of the Supreme Courta€™s insistence that there is only one justification for making incitement a criminal offense: the likelihood of imminent violence.

The imminence requirement sets a high hurdle. Mere advocacy of violence, terrorism or the overthrow of the government is not enough; the words must be meant to and be likely to produce violence or lawlessness right away. A fiery speech urging an angry mob to immediately assault a black man in its midst probably qualifies as incitement under the First Amendment. A magazine article a€" or any publication a€" intended to stir up racial hatred surely does not.

Mr. Lewis wrote that there was a€oegenuinely dangerousa€A speech that did not meet the imminence requirement.

the remainder of this article can be found at nytimes

Autoworld - MatA©ria: Aquada, o anfAAbio mais rA¡pido do mundo

The Ninja Gap

David Weinberger somehow manages to find time to write books, write thoughtful blog posts, AND produce a periodic newsletter - Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization - thata€™s one of he best reads on the a€net. Ia€™m deeply flattered that the current issue features Davida€™s thoughts on some of the topics Ia€™m obsessed with: media attention, caring, international understanding. More generously, he gives me the chance to react to his essay within the essaya€¦

Davida€™s generosity isna€™t the main reason Ia€™m linking to his piece - ita€™s that hea€™s broken some important theoretical ground with his important new concept in media criticism: The Ninja Gap. It takes a moment or two to explain - bear with me.

Almost anyone whoa€™s heard me give a public talk has heard me observe that Japan and Nigeria have roughly the same populations, but vastly different media representation: youa€™re roughly 8-12 times more likely to find an article focused on Japan in an American newspaper than an article on Nigeria. There are a lot of possible explanations for this phenomenon, from racism to comparative economic power. David offers a new one: Japana€™s got ninjas, and Nigeria doesna€™t.

Ita€™s a brilliant observation because ita€™s funny, true and highly relevant to conversations about media attention. Johan Galtung, in his seminal a€oeThe Structure of Foreign Newsa€oe, draws a persuasive metaphor between a radio receivera€™s ability to tune in one of many radio stations, and a listenera€™s likelihood to a€oereceivea€A a piece of news:

F4: The more meaningful the signal, the more probable that it will be recorded as worth listening to.

F5: The more consonant the signal is with the mental image of what one expects to find, the more probable that it will be recorded as worth listening to.

F7: The more a signal has been tuned in to the more likely it will continue to be tuned in to as worth listening to.

Context matters, Galtung argues. If wea€™ve got a mental image of Africa as a backwards and technically retrograde place, wea€™re likely to miss stories about innovation in mobile commerce (see the lead story in issue 407a€¦) or success in venture capital. Galtunga€™s fifth maxim is closely linked to the idea of cognitive dissonance - ita€™s uncomfortable to attempt to resolve new information that conflicts with existing perceptions, beliefs and behaviors.

Context doesna€™t just come from hard news - we all consume far more entertainment and advertising content than we consume of hard news. This information helps shape our views of these countries, and likely helps us unconsciously decide what sort of information to accept or reject. These perceptions construct something over time that might be thought of as a a€oenation branda€A - as the man who coined that term,marketer Simon Anholt, observed, a€oeEthiopia is well branded to receive aid, but poorly branded as a tourism destination.a€A

In this context, Japan is a place branded in many of our minds as a place thata€™s innovative, high-tech, and more than a little strange. Whether or not wea€™ve been to Japan, wea€™ve encountered anime, monster movies, martial arts flicks, SONY tva€™s and Toyota trucks. Whether or not our ideas about Japan are well-founded, reflect the reality on the ground, are rich in stereotypes, etc., wea€™ve got preconceptions about Japan. On some level, the fact that we know that a€oeJapan = Ninjasa€A means that wea€™ve got receptivity for a story about Japan that we might not have for Nigeria.

And so, Nigeria needs ninja. Or as David explains:

One reason we care about Japan more than Nigeria (generally) is that Japan has a cool culture. Wea€™ve heard about that culture because some Westerners wrote bestselling books about ninjas, and then Hollywood made ninja movies. Love them ninjas! Nigeria undoubtedly has something as cool as ninjas. Ok, something almost as cool as ninjas. If we had some blockblusters about the Nigerian equivalent of ninjas, wea€™d start to be interested Nigeria.

In other words, wea€™re more inclined to pay attention to Japan because wea€™ve got some context - a weird, non-representative context, for sure - while we have almost no context for stories about Nigeria. The context we do have for Nigeria - 419 scams - tends to be pretty corrosive, and may make us likelier to pick up only the stories that portray Nigeria as wildly corrupt and criminal.

Davida€™s observation leads him to some concrete advice for those of us trying to inspire xenophilia: write better: a€oeGood writing can make anything interesting. We will read the story about the Nigerian peddler and his neighborhood if there is a writer able to tell that story in a compelling way.a€A

Thata€™s harder than it sounds. But ita€™s also one of the best pieces of constructive advice Ia€™ve seen on cultivating xenophilia: tell good stories in a compelling way. And it wouldna€™t hurt to throw a ninja or two in there while youa€™re at it.

This post originally ran on Ethan’s excellent personal blog, My Heart’s in Accra.

via worldchanging

Project Vulcan : Emissions

Project Vulcan via lawprofessors

MNP Geospatial : O’Reilly Where 2.0 2008 Conference

Where to start and where to begin?

We would like to say happy trails to all of the attendees, speakers, and Brady Forrest, Conference Chair, for enabling a spectacular culmination of ideas and of course people.

I was happy to partake in most of the tutorials and listen amongst the speakers while experiencing the bounds of the various "heat" maps that were located throughout the conference quarters. Apparently by the end of the conference like-minds had been appointed none other than a grossly giddy quite title. [see the O’Reilly photo at the end of this leaf]

In accordance with the final speaker of the assembly, Erik Hersman, it would be ignorant not to capstone anterior surprises: the activist mapping that was prevalent throughout caught the most of my attention. Eduardo Jezierski spoke passionately about the unique relationships of choice presented when definition arrives at the corner of life and death.

Are maps accessible enough for general consumption? George Demmy and TerraGo Technologies have solved this quandary by paralleling the PDF format with GIS.

MNP asks eight (8) questions concerning the future of the geospatial web

What kind of ramifications does the radius creep of related map stock pose for accurate data?

Are humans inherently familiar with maps?

How do people look for local information?

Are neighborhoods redundant or sequential in the quest to better understand city framework?

What is the proper form of a map?

How do we accurately report "data"?

What are movement signatures?

Which industries will be impacted the most by GIS?

The most creative application of map wizardry? Bar none, Andrea Vaccari, team member of the NYTE project really pressed the steam for an instant boil of how paired maps are with the visual.

Chimp geniuses would have had fun with all of the possibilities that DIY drones set forth. That being said do NOT sleep on Light42.

How does this all relate to the real/city world approach to progressive geospatial understanding? According to the crowd theory of Paul Torrens, these value packages can only be evaluated within the boundaries of understanding the nuances of exception as well the opponents of acceptance.

Who will rule the map world? A grand question that ESRI, Google Earth, and Virtual Earth would love to answer. If I was wearing the right hat, it would probably be a toss-up between the capabilities, the level of interaction, and the information….. until Where 2.0 2009!
Read the rest of this entry »

PC in the UK: Cops Bust Teen For Calling Scientology a Cult

If therea€™s any doubt that the enforcement of political correctness in the U.K. is turning ordinary citizens into criminals, a 15-yr-old youth was issued a criminal summons after he had written on a sign that Scientology was a cult.

Police confiscated his protest sign at a demonstration against the Church of Scientology at their headquarters in London and then issued him a criminal summons. According to the British newspaper the Guardian, the 15-yr-old had written on a sign: a€oeScientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous culta€A. The police called it a€oeabusive and insultinga€A. dbkp

Mysterious Hexagon Shape Discovered on Saturn

Okay, have you seen that weird hexagon thing on Saturn that was released last week?AA It has got to be one of the strangest things wea€™ve seen on another planet since the famous Face on Mars.AA A giant, nearly perfect hexagon formation has been spotted at the ringed planeta€™s northern pole.AA The entire object is rotating with the winds at the pole in a circular pattern and measures nearly 15,000 miles across.AA Four entire Eartha€™s could fit inside the shape!AA Perhaps the strangest thing about it is that this isna€™t the first time it has been seen.AA The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts that were launched in 1977 both captured pictures of the hexagonal shape in their visits to Saturn in 1980 and 1981 respectively.AA While the images were thought odd at that time, they certainly didna€™t think it was anything that would last more than a quarter of a century later, but it has.AA The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft captured the most recent photographs and video of this bizarre rotating shape when it passed over Saturna€™s northern pole in October 2006.

Consider the recent release of the previously secret French UFO files.AA Why exactly are these records kept secret from the public in the first place?AA Last I checked, my tax dollars paid for the resources that gather and investigate these sorts of unknown phenomenon.AA Why are our UFO files kept secret?AA Sure, therea€™s the Freedom of Information Act that supposedly allows anyone to request these reports, but they usually come marked out in black ink or unavailable when you do request them.AA If therea€™s nothing to hide, why are they going so out of their way to make it look like theya€™re hiding something?AA Just like everything else theya€™re seemingly hiding from us!AA All Ia€™m saying is that something like this, while it could have a perfectly logical explanation, will probably end up being buried under a pile of bureaucratic nonsense just like all the other things the government seems to want to hide from the public for a€oeour own good.a€AAA Keep an eye on this story and see if it ever sees the light of day again because ita€™s just too weird to ignore!

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