Top Midnight Sun Pictures in Northern Norway from 2007

This is my favorite of all of his or her pictures:

The explanation, for those who've never heard of it: the Earth's axis is tilted (~23%), so while we orbit in our ellipse around the sun, parts of the Earth are tilted towards the sun and the opposite parts are tilted away. In the northern hemisphere's winter, the earth is closer to the sun than in summer, but the northern hemisphere is tilted away, meaning that it receives less (amount) and less (downtoner) direct sunlight than the southern hemisphere. This makes days shorter in lower latitudes and causes the polar night event in higher latitudes that there recently was a crazy vampire movie involving that I wanted to see (30 Days of Night). But that would mean that the picture should be dark, no, because Norway is in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, yes? So then the only alternative: these pictures were taken in summer, when the northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun.

Yeah, that's not the best explanation, so here's a link: axial tilt

A quicker way of figuring this out would've been just to read the photographer's description.

I skipped past this the last time I saw it, but I actually paid attention this time and couldn't help but giggle. A man in Britain built a mock-Tudor castle and hid it behind hay bales, but now the gov has found out and wants to tear it down because they broke the law by not going through the proper channels.

Problems began last April when Mr Fidler, thinking he had beaten the planning system, applied for a certificate of lawfulness which is given if a property is erected but nobody objects to it after four years.

But Reigate and Banstead Council says the four-year period after which the building would be allowed to stay is void – because nobody had been given a chance to see it.

Who would want to tear this down, though:

You should see the inside. It really is a beautiful home. I hope they can find some way of getting it checked out structurally and everything so it can be allowed to stand.

For the first time ever, a Beagle has won the best in show at Westminster:

Barking and baying up a storm, Uno lived up to his name Tuesday night by becoming the first beagle to win best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club.

The nation's new top dog was clearly the fan favorite and drew a standing ovation from the sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden when he was picked.

... The only dog consistently listed among America's most popular breeds for nearly 100 years, a beagle had never won in the 100 times Westminster picked a winner.

Look at that cute face!

My family has a pure-bred Beagle that we rescued from the pound, it's actually a rather interesting story:

My brother found her wondering around outside in the street with no tags, so my family took her in. Thinking she might be a lost dog, my family took her to the authorities, where they found out she was heavily infected with heart worms.

The vet also commented that she was pure-bred, no more than 2 years old, and had already had a littler of puppies.

This immediately led us to believe she had been part of a puppy mill operation and had escaped; you see, these puppy mill operations set up shops along the highway near my house, which would explain her wondering around nearby.

However, because we were not her registered owners, and because she was infected with heart worms, they would not release her to us, and told us she would be put down!

We promised to treat the heartworms, we showed them we were already dog owners (we also have a chocolate pure-bred lab) with a large house and yard, and still they refused because of her medical condition.

Obviously, we didn't want her put down, so eventually we found an organisation called Houston Beagle Rescue that was able to get the pound to release her to them, and Beagle Rescue then turned around and released her to us as her new owners.

Since then, she's become a wonderful (and cute!) member of the family. The only minus: as a side effect of the heartworm infection she had (she is now completely heartworm free), she now has a sinus topography that makes her the loudest snorer in the whole house. You can hear her in every room of my family's two story house!

The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives, from homotron.net. I looked through the list and saw a few that I could use. I switched to Firefox a while back and found it much better than the IE of the time (and even the new one, which I really dislike because everything is placed horribly).

At the end of last semester I switched over from Microsoft Office 2000 to OpenOffice, and I just switched my e-mail client from Microsoft Outlook 2000 (I didn't uninstall Office yet) to Mozilla Thunderbird, and, even though I have to learn everything for these kinds of programs all over again, I'm finding them easy enough to use. I've used some other free open-source programs, like NetBeans and Praat, and found them very easy to use, as well as some that weren't that I hated and consequently don't remember. I hope the former true for some of these other popular ones because I'll probably download something for a web editor and a graphics program, mostly because I want to make some mind maps for some things in my field, like language history and typology (though I may end up trying to figure out more Java stuff to make an applet). Thoughts? Criticism?

Polaroid, known for their "instant" developing cameras, is getting out of the instant photography business:

It was a wonder in its time: A camera that spat out photos that developed themselves in a few minutes as you watched. You got to see them where and when you took them, not a week later when the prints came back from the drugstore.

But in a day when nearly every cellphone has a digital camera in it, “instant” photography long ago stopped being instant enough for most people. So today, the inevitable end of an era came: Polaroid is getting out of the Polaroid business.

Polaroid had already stopped production of the cameras last year, and will make enough film to last them through 2009. They are willing to license the technology, if some company wishes to supply the now niche market.

Polaroid will now be focusing on its line of digital cameras and photo printers.

Guess the lyric "shake it like a Polaroid picture" will now soon become an anachronism.

Via kottke.

Despite what the Bush White House may think or say, the technique of waterboarding has been declared as torture and prosecutable as such by the UN Human Rights Chief:

"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.

Arbour made her comment in response to a question about whether U.S. officials could be tried for the use of waterboarding that referred to CIA director Michael Hayden telling Congress on Tuesday his agency had used waterboarding on three detainees captured after the September 11 attacks.

Now if only the UN member countries had the teeth and courage to begin using the principal of universal jurisdiction to begin prosecuting members of the administration for approving and ordering waterboarding to be used on prisoners by the US.

I find the last sentence in the article a nice little finishing touch:

Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s were known to use waterboarding on political prisoners.

Mica Rosenberg, who wrote the article at Reuters: bravo.

A great new technique for creating the illusion of 3D on a 2D display using current console technology has been developed for the Nintendo Wii by the famous Johnny Lee.

The technique uses the infrared sensors in the wii-mote to track the movement of your head (with the help of some infrared LEDs) and adjust the display in real time so that the perspective changes. This creates the illusion of seeing a truly 3D image without the headache inducing stereoscopic techniques used in 3D IMAX theatres.

You can see Johnny Lee demonstrating the technology in the video below. It's very impressive:

Thomas Miller at Sony also was impressed and ported the technique to the PlayStation 3 and has released the code for free to all PS3 developers:

I'm actually excited about these techniques because they require a minimum amount of fuss from a development and materials stand point, and produce very impressive results. I can't wait for a game that uses this!

Found via Digg, a beautiful shot of the Space Shuttle in orbit; click the picture for a large version:

Simply amazing.

Man reduces waste to nothing, cancels trash pick-up, and city sues. from Planetizen

The lawsuit, filed by San Carlos Deputy City Attorney Linda Noeske in San Mateo Superior Court on Jan. 22, seeks a permanent injunction forcing House to maintain garbage service. City officials are also seeking to recoup from House the costs of the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims House broke the city’s municipal code requiring all residential, commercial and industrial properties to contract with Allied Waste for pickup at least once a week — a standard requirement in most cities, San Carlos Deputy City Manager Brian Moura said.

[...]

House recycles paper, metal and plastics, regularly hauling them in his pickup truck to a recycling center and collecting the refund, he said. What little backyard waste he generates is ground into powder by his wood chipper and food scraps are either pulverized by his garbage disposal or eaten by his dog. House’s larger items are either sold or given to people on Craigslist, he said.

“I don’t understand a city ordinance that requires you to fill up a can. That’s downright foolishness,” he said.

His neighbors raised a stink about him raising a stink by burning garbage, but whenever the fire department has come, he was burning firewood. House also says he thinks that the city is getting back at him for complaining about the next door apartment building that causes problems.

I can understand the ordinance for sanitation issues, but why pay for a service you don't use? And the city trying to get the legal costs back out of the man who lives alone with his dog: that's just wrong.

As I listened to a recent podcast of the excellent The Splendid Table from NPR, I heard mention of an interesting new product: the knork.

You've heard of a spork, right? The combination of a spoon and a fork you may have gotten the last time you went for some fast food?

Well, someone's gone and combined a fork with a knife.

How? Basically they taper the edges of the outer teeth of the fork to make them into mini-knives. I might actually order one of these just to try it out!

BBC's TIMEWATCH: Bloody Omaha recreated the D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan using only 3 people, 4 days, and a shoe string budget. The results are amazing:

The whole program is supposed to be airing on the Smithsonian Channel here in the US.

Take note, Hollywood.

This story is apparently being talked about in many of the science blogs out there, and Clarke brought it to my attention, via PZ Myers's blog on Science Blogs:

Narcan is the commercial name for Naloxone, a rapid acting drug used to counteract the effects of opioid overdose by combating the depression of the central nervous and respiratory systems.

It costs only $9.50 per dose and is easily administered via a nasal spray, saving the life of someone who has overdosed on heroin or morphine.

The White House's deputy director of the Office on National Drug Control Policy, Dr. Bertha Madras, opposes the use of the life saving heroin overdose antidote:

"First of all, I don't agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That's No. 1," she says. "I just don't think that's good public health policy."

Madras says drug users aren't likely to be competent to deal with an overdose emergency. More importantly, she says, Narcan kits may actually encourage drug abusers to keep using heroin because they know overdosing isn't as likely.

Madras says the rescue programs might take away the drug user's motivation to get into detoxification and drug treatment.

"Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services," Madras says.

The White House's position is absolutely absurd. These people WILL DIE without the antidote, and you want to deny people in drug treatment and response programs the use of this drug?!

The argument that it will encourage more drug use just because it makes overdose "safer" is absolutely ludicrous coming from a White House that has professed a love for all life, promoting their "Pro-Life" agenda in other issues such as abortion.

The key point is Narcan saves people from dying. A person can't go through drug rehabilitation if they're dead. They can't keep using the drug if they're dead.

Perhaps that the end goal of the White House, to let all those on the bottom rung of the drug war to die in dark, filthy corners basking in their poverty and misfortune. I doubt the White House cares enough about them, and its obvious from many of their policies that they don't.

It's a ridiculous point of view to take when you turn around and profess all life as sacred from the moment a sperm hits an egg.

Hypocrites.

The European Court of Human Rights has overruled a French court and stated that adoption by single, gay individuals is legal in the European Union:

In a 10-7 vote, the Strasbourg-based court ruled Tuesday that a plaintiff identified only as Emmanuelle B. had been the victim of illegal discrimination when successive French authorities denied her request to adopt a child in 1998. The court faulted the French courts for citing "the lack of a paternal referent in the household", and said the woman's homosexuality had been "if not explicit, at least implicit" in France's rejection of her adoption request. The Court judged France had violated the European Convention on Human Rights — to which France and the other 46 Council of Europe members are signatories — by failing to assess adoption by a lesbian the same way it would a single heterosexual.

This decision means that it is no longer legal in the EU to discriminate between gay and straight individuals in regards to adoption applications; however, the decision does not apply to couples, so gay couples can still be denied adoption.

Baby steps.

If you've ever watched a keynote by Steve Jobs, you know he's got charisma, and that his speeches always deliver that bit of "Wow!" and extra special sauce that has led some people to term the effect he has on audiences the "Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field."

Business Week had their communications coach watch the latest keynote by Steve Jobs at Macworld 2008, and came up with 10 tips we can all use when making our own presentations so that we too can have some of that Steve magic:

2. Demonstrate enthusiasm. Jobs shows his passion for computer design. During his presentation he used words like "extraordinary," "amazing," and "cool." When demonstrating a new location feature for the iPhone, Jobs said, "It works pretty doggone well." Most speakers have room to add some flair to their presentations. Remember, your audience wants to be wowed, not put to sleep. Next time you're crafting or delivering a presentation, think about injecting your own personality into it. If you think a particular feature of your product is "awesome," say it. Most speakers get into presentation mode and feel as though they have to strip the talk of any fun. If you are not enthusiastic about your own products or services, how do you expect your audience to be?

Hello folks,

I know ya'll have noticed the dearth of content this month, and I apologise to all of you about that. Those who are still here: I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Some thanks goes out to my guest writer Clarke for his contributions during my vacation.

The excuse? My writing for class ramped up significantly this semester (combined with my writing at Homotron), and so I had to enact a self-imposed hiatus from this blog as it neither A) pays the bills or B) gets me a good grade. I hope you will understand why I had to do it.

However, I've established my rhythm again and so now I'm prepared to make a comeback, and boy do I have a long list of links ready to burst! I may have not been writing here, but my pack rat tendencies still collected interesting things from all over the tubes.

So without further ado: I'm BACK!

Evolution explains why LOLCats control your mind. The basic argument extrapolates on this little bit from a Yale study

Since keeping an eye on predators and prey was important during our evolution, Joshua New and colleagues investigated whether animals, both human and otherwise, are more likely to grab our visual attention. [...] As predicted, subjects were faster and more accurate detecting changes involving animals than inanimate objects. If experience were producing this bias, then people should also be good at detecting changes involving automobiles, which as drivers and pedestrians they have been trained all their lives to monitor for sudden, life-or-death changes in trajectory. Yet subjects were much slower in detecting changes to vehicles than to more rarely experienced animal species, indicating that learning is not the source of this difference. The bias for animals, the authors conclude, is like the appendix: present in modern humans because it was useful for our ancestors, even if useless now.

And the captions are one of these changes that people notice in pictures of cute kitties, which is why they catch our attention. That's the argument, at least.

Why do people think cars will save the world? In the past month, there has been news that the Smart car will be coming out locally, that India is planning to release a small $2.5k car, and that a presidential candidate has promised to revive the domestic automotive industry. Yeah, just what we need: more cars. It's good that the smart car and the new car in India will be more fuel efficient than a lot of the vehicles on the road, but really, how much of an effect will good fuel efficiency have when, in India's case, there are that many more cars on the road? I know that where I live, if people were willing to give up their SUVs and trucks--which at first glance while riding my bike (and avoiding getting hit) seem to make up at least 2/5ths of the vehicles on the road--then there would be a definitive impact on air quality. We're talking about a jump to 40mpg city up from -5--I kid, of course. The number of people who'd drive the Smart car over SUVs won't be that large, though, since they'd only be the people who can actually afford having two vehicles (though I'd be curious to know how many people who own SUVs have another vehicle) unless they trade in their current vehicles towards a Smart Car, and on top of that the cost is prohibitive ($28k was it?).

On the more socially and globally responsible note, Planetizen makes a good point about people like me commenting on developments in "developing" countries:

Of course there is deep hypocrisy in developed countries criticizing the driving habits of the developing world. Developed countries’ environmental critiques and campaigns need to start at home. Politicians, labor unions and environmental activists have a responsibility not to brandish global warming as a stick to bash workers and consumers in India or China. Instead the argument for progressive global warming policy must begin with the acknowledgment of the destructive policies of our home governments and corporations; this includes taking responsibility for developed countries majority contribution to the climate crisis.

*points finger at Texas*

Or you could go the route of AFS Trinity and get 150mpg (and potentially unlimited). According to the Salon article I heard about the company from, it does it with technology that's available to us now (and was available years ago):

Instead of waiting for a battery that can deliver both energy and power cheaply, it uses current lithium-ion batteries for energy, and then adds something called an ultracapacitor for rapid discharge during acceleration.

Ultracaps have 10 to 100 times the power density of typical batteries, but only one-tenth the energy density, so this is a marriage made in heaven, or at least Silicon Valley. The ultracap is the electrical equivalent of the shaken champagne bottle -- although even that analogy is flawed since ultracaps do not just discharge quickly, they also charge quickly. That's another benefit that ultracaps bring to hybrids.

Regular hybrids get much of their efficiency gains from their ability to capture the energy normally lost during braking and convert it to electricity. Current hybrid batteries take up only about half of this electricity, but fast-acting ultracaps can take up much more.

I have written a four part series of articles entitled "The State of the Mac Nation 2008" over on Homotron.net where I reviewed everything Apple related that happened in 2007, complete with my insights and conjectures on how some of the new stuff (like the iPhone) came about. I worked pretty hard on this series of articles and I think they turned out pretty good. A lot of people who've read them have given me kudos for them. Here's the links:

The State of the Mac Nation 2008, Part 1: Desktops, Laptops, & Professional Hardware
The State of the Mac Nation 2008, Part 2: iPod + iPhone
The State of the Mac Nation 2008, Part 3: iTunes + Other Apple Software
The State of the Mac Nation 2008, Part 4: Macworld Keynote Rumours and Predictions

And tomorrow (Tuesday, January 15) I'll be doing a live post with updates and commentary during Steve Jobs's keynote starting at 12PM. Stay tuned at Homotron.net if you want to read my commentary!

I'm so excited!

(Coincidentally, this series of articles is precisely why I've been absent from theInput during the last few days)

Now they've gone and done it: they've messed with linguistics. When they came for the biologists, I fought... so nevermind that train of thought.

Really, the Language Log entry does a good job of describing what's going on with a new wave of the Edenics phenomenon, which I thought was a rather unique or sporadic theological attack on science because of my Southern Baptist upbringing. But there are books, websites, and pages on Creationist Websites. From the book's author's website:

Here you will discover that ALL human words contain forms of the Edenic roots within them. These proto-Semitic or early Biblical Hebrew words were programmed into our common ancestors, Adam and Eve, before the language dispersion, or babble at the Tower of Babel -- which kickstarted multi-national human history. I congratulate you for investigating for yourself if language is an engineered miracle or merely the evolved gesturing of chimps.

Note that this author thinks that Hebrew is the source of English. Hypotheses like Edenics, i.e. the religious versions of the proto-world language theories, are based on two other hypotheses: Young Earth Creationism and the Tower of Babel As Origin of Language Diversity, a.k.a. Wrathful Dispersion. These religious theories of language origin and theories of language based on them are absolute shite for a variety of reasons, one of which is that living, breathing, speaking people have been around for longer than 6,000 years, much longer, and it's poppycock to think that everybody from the origin and spread of H. sapiens to the time of Babylon spoke the same language, especially when you look at extremely old populations like native Australians, who arrived, conservatively, 40,000 years ago, and who were geographically isolated when water covered the land bridge over which they could have traveled about 8,000 years ago. Also, the original, Edenic language would most definitely not be early Biblical Hebrew, which any cursory glance at a good history book's chapters on Mesopotamia and the preceding time would make damn clear (Sumerian, for example, doesn't fit into any language family, really, like Basque).

Just knowing how long Native Australians have lilved there is enough to dismiss Edenics out of hand, so while I want to read the Edenics book, I don't know if I'd have the patience. I should get it so I can address the phonology-type arguments he has, but, like I said, I don't know if I have the patience, and phonetics isn't a subject I get much joy from.

So, like any other politics nut I'm following the results of the New Hampshire primaries, and upon loading CNN's front page to see the current results, I couldn't help but notice one bullet point about the results of an exit poll, pictured at right:

• Exit polls showed issues swayed Democrats but Republicans were moved by personality.

And that, I think, is exactly the difference between Democrats and Republicans right now. Are you serious, Republicans?

I always used to pull a very neat example in Debate Team whenever someone argued that it was better to judge someone by their character and personality in elections. I would describe for them several different personalities, of which I can only remember two of now:

1. One was a womaniser, a drunkard, and adulterer.
2. One was a vegetarian, clean record, etc.

I asked them to choose which they would judge as the better candidate, using their personality guidelines. Invariably, they'd choose the clean cut vegetarian.

It was at that point I told them they had just chosen Adolf Hitler over Winston Churchill. A trap question, to be sure, but it drove the point home.

The Japanese have a traditional wrapping cloth called a 風呂敷 (Furoshiki) that has been used to carry items and clothes for centuries:

Although possibly dating back as far as the Nara period, the name, meaning "bath spread", derives from the Edo period practice of using them to bundle clothes while at the sentō (public baths). Before becoming associated with public baths, furoshiki was known as hiradzutsumi (平包), or flat folded bundle. Eventually, the furoshiki's usage extended to serve as a means for merchants to transport their wares or to protect and decorate a gift.

Usage of furoshiki dropped off after WWII, but has seen renewed interest in place of shopping bags for a greener alternative to carrying goods around. There's many different methods of folding furoshiki to carry different types of objects, and Dr. Vino brings us a video of using a furoshiki to carry wine bottles, which makes for a great presentation:

To see a bunch of different folding techniques for other types of objects, Furoshiki.com has a neat chart of folding techniques.

Via Boing Boing: Bologna flavoured bubble gum. $1 a pack, discovered by Flickr user turncoat tendrils.

As you can no doubt tell, I'm on a week long break as I visit the family in Houston, TX.

My regular posting will resume next week when I get back to Miami, though I will no doubt post the random story here or there as I stumble across it (I can't keep away from the Internet for even a week; I'm so weak!)

Until then, Happy Holidays to everyone!

Benazir Bhutto, chief Pakistani opposition leader, former Prime Minister and vocal critic of General Musharraf's recent actions, was assassinated today:

Ms. Bhutto, 54, was shot in the neck or head, according to differing accounts, as she stood in the open sunroof of a car and waved to crowds. Seconds later a suicide attacker detonated his bomb, damaging one of the cars in her motorcade, killing more than 20 people and wounding 50, the Interior Ministry said.

News of her death sent angry protesters swarming the emergency ward of the nearby hospital, where doctors declared Ms. Bhutto dead at 6:16 p.m. Supporters later jostled to carry her bare wooden coffin as it began its journey to her hometown, Larkana, in southern Pakistan, for burial. In Karachi and other cities, frenzied crowds vented their rage, blocking the streets, burning tires and throwing stones.

A nuclear power has the head of the army declare martial law, oust their Supreme Court Justices, flout democratic rule, and then the opposition leader is assassinated while leaving a political rally... This is what should be getting attention, not Iran.

Oh, that's right, admitting the situation's bad in Pakistan would entail The White House admitting they made a grave error in trusting and aiding Musharraf. Silly me, thinking The White House would admit to their mistakes.

I stumbled upon Janet D. Stemwedel's (of ScienceBlogs) foray into building gingerbread houses using sustainable building design practices. The gingerbread house was for the Bake for a Change contest.

Unfortunately, the Flickr group only has one contestant's entries. I'm really excited to see other contestants' entries, though.

This is wonderfully funny, but the explanation is complex. Ready? Peter Sellers, orating the lyrics to a Hard Day's Night by the Beatles, in the style of Laurence Olivier's "Now is the winter of our discontent" monologue from Shakespeare's Richard III on 1964's TV program entitled Music of Lennon and McCartney. Got it? No? Oh, just watch:

Holy crap that makes for a lot of tags on this post.

Via Kottke.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report will be returning in January, sans writers if the strike isn't over by then, says Comedy Central:

'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart' and 'The Colbert Report' will resume production on January 7 with both shows returning to air that night without their respective writing staffs. The January 7 return follows a scheduled two-week, end-of-year hiatus that was previously built into the shows' production calendars. We continue to hold out hope for a swift resolution to the current stalemate that will enable the shows to be complete again.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert:

We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.

Well, it certainly won't be the same, but dear goodness at least we won't have to entertain thoughts of kidnapping Jon Stewart in order to get our fill of wry, witty campaign commentary.

Many of you out there are getting ready to fly for the holidays (or perhaps have already done so) so this list of "five ways to get an edge over other air travelers" might prove helpful.

I've used #3 myself:

3) Playing contract lawyer can be fun.

Though the rules that govern your ticket aren’t pre-printed on your boarding pass, you’re still bound by them. So bring a copy! Since I usually travel with a laptop, I keep a downloaded copy of the airline’s contract of carriage on the hard drive. The contract includes rules such as compensation for being bumped and the infamous “Rule 240″ that lives on in some contracts, governing the transferabilit