Archive for February, 2009
Drink Pee: A Urine-to-Fertilizer Kit
David Pescovitz | BoingBoing: drinkpeedrinkpeedrinkpee is an art installation based on converting urine into houseplant fertilizer or even drinking water. Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray created it last year and offered a Urine-to-Fertilizer DIY Kit. From their project page:
We all think of human pee as gross and something that ought to be vigorously “cleaned up” or sanitized. However, human urine is actually sterile (unlike faeces, urine is bacteria-free). This liquid by product of our daily lives can be a rich food source if it gets into the RIGHT part of the right ecosystem. Now, most human urine travels untreated into the waterways and is a significant cause of eutrophication, a toxic condition caused by harmful algae blooms, in the oceans. The excess Nitrogen and Phosphorus in our urine overfeeds algae (like Red Tide) and effectively suffocates fish. However, a pioneering biological waste treament process being used in Switzerland can extract this…
President Obama Reads 10 Letters Per Day from the Public
ABC News: Every day President Barack Obama is handed a special purple folder. The folder contains ten letters, and every day President Obama takes time to read them.
Are they from world leaders? From members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Members of the intelligence community? No, these letters have been culled from the thousands the White House Correspondence Office receives each day from Americans who have taken the time to sit down and write to their president.
“They help him focus on the real problems people are facing,” says Axelrod.” He really a absorbs these letters, and often shares then with us.”
In his first week in office, President Obama requested that he see 10 letters a day “representative of people’s concerns, from people writing into the president,” recalls [White House Spokesman] Gibbs, “to help get him outside of the bubble, to get more than just the information you get as an…
Israel Deploys ‘James Bond’ Gadgets in War with Hamas
Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post:
Some gadgets look like they came straight out of a James Bond movie. One is a softball-sized camera that can be thrown into a suspect house and transmit images to soldiers outside. Another is a special door-buster that is connected to an M-16 and can blow open booby-trapped portals.
On February 18, the IDF Ground Forces Command put these weapon systems and others — most of them used during last month’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip — on display in a military base in the South.
Called the Eyeball, the spherical camera was developed by the Tel Aviv-based company ODF Optronics. An advanced, audio-visual surveillance sensor, the Eyeball was used by IDF troops during the Gaza offensive to survey homes and suspicious areas before entering them.
Each unit is only slightly larger than a baseball and can be simply thrown into the area that needs to be checked…
To Believe or Not … Continued
Hopefully I’ve picqued your level of interest enough with my previous post for you to follow me again here. My aim, simply to compel you to think critically, so that you may disconnect from the mentality of the herd, fore the “king” is wearing no clothes and seeks to lead you over the cliff to your ultimate
Girlfriend Tries to Run Over Beau for Wanting to Skip Church
A Georgia woman tried to run over her boyfriend with her car after she thought he wanted to skip church to be with another woman.
BoingBoing’s Xeni Jardin Interviews ‘Watchmen’ Director Zack Snyder and VFX Director Des Jardin
This BoingBoing Video, director Zack Snyder and visual effects supervisor John “DJ” Des Jardin give us a preview of the forthcoming movie Watchmen. On March 6, the hallowed graphic novel deemed “unfilmable” will hit theaters.
Will the long-awaited adaptation of writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons’ dark eighties comic soar, or stink? The more intense the fandom around a classic, the more intense the fear that a filmmaker will screw it up, and few titles are as revered as this one. From what we saw during this preview with fans at the Apple store in Santa Monica, I am inclined to be very optimistic.
Natural Explanation Found for UFOs
Mysterious UFO sightings may go hand in hand with a puzzling natural phenomenon known as sprites — flashes high in the atmosphere triggered by thunderstorms. The dancing lights have appeared above most thunderstorms throughout history, but researchers did not start studying them until one accidentally recorded a sighting on camera in 1989.
“Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite,” said Colin Price, a geophysicist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft.”
Researchers have detected the flashes between 35 and 80 miles (56–129 km) from the ground, far above the 7 to 10 miles (11–16 km) where usual lightning occurs. Sprites can take the form of fast-paced balls of electricity, although previous footage has suggested streaks or tendrils.
The cause or function of the flashes remains murky, but…
Sun-Powered Device Converts CO2 Into Fuel
Powered only by natural sunlight, an array of nanotubes is able to convert a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapour into natural gas at unprecedented rates.
Such devices offer a new way to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into fuel or other chemicals to cut the effect of fossil fuel emissions on global climate, says Craig Grimes, from Pennsylvania State University, whose team came up with the device.
Although other research groups have developed methods for converting carbon dioxide into organic compounds like methane, often using titanium-dioxide nanoparticles as catalysts, they have needed ultraviolet light to power the reactions.
The researchers’ breakthrough has been to develop a method that works with the wider range of visible frequencies within sunlight.
In Support of Obama’s Search for Hip-Hop with a Positive Message: Real Thing, Hip-Hop at its Best
There has been a lot of talk lately regarding one of the main elements of Hip-Hop, Rap: “the rhythmic spoken delivery of rhymes, wordplay, and poetry.” This discussion has even reached the presidential palace. In 2008 Obama stated that:
“Art can’t just be a rear view mirror, it should have a headlight out there, you know, pointing towards where we need to go. [So Hip-Hop needs to have] the audacity of hope.”
Obama’s search is admirable. One of the best ways to disseminate information and help improve our society is by sharing a positive message through music. After all, it is not just change that we want, but positive change.
Below you will find some amazing hip-hop that you will most likely never hear on commercial corporate mainstream media: the real thing, hip-hop at its best sharing a positive message that has the “audacity of hope” (excerpts from the lyrics have been included):
Mom Sells Newborn to Pay Hospital Bill
Police are investigating an Indian hospital that allowed a single mother to sell her newborn baby for $180 so she could pay her medical bill.
Review of Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
For Matthew Fox, the spirituality of men is hidden largely due to self-preservation. Society expects certain things from men, and anything that does not align with those expectations must be hidden and silenced. Spirituality, so often perceived as feminine, is one such element that men must hide and silence, both from other men and women, and even themselves. The Hidden Spirituality of Men seeks to shed light on that hidden spirituality and is divided into two parts: “ten archetypes of authentic masculinity” and “sacred marriages”.
Sean Penn ‘Milks’ His Oscar Acceptance Speech
Sean Penn: ‘You Commie, Homo-Loving Sons-of-Guns…”
The Youngest Corporal In The Nazi Army
How A Young Jewish Boy Escaped Death And Became A Mascot For Nazi Soldiers
60 Minutes: This is a story of survival — the incredible story of how a six-year-old Jewish boy survived the Nazis’ final solution and kept how he survived a secret for more than 50 years.
It’s the story of Alex Kurzem, who at the age of six watched his family being shot by the Nazis. He escaped and wandered alone for months until he was captured by Nazi soldiers. But instead of killing him, they made him their mascot.
Alex was so young, he quickly forgot his family name, his age, and the name of his village. But he did remember that the Nazis had fenced the Jews into a ghetto, and on his last night there Nazi soldiers burst into his house and began beating his mother.
Alexandra Pelosi’s ‘Right America: Feeling Wronged’
On the day Barack Obama was elected the 44th President, more than 58 million voters cast their ballots for John McCain. In the months leading up to this historic election, filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi took a road trip to meet some of the conservative Americans who waited in line for hours to support the GOP ticket, and saw their hopes and dreams evaporate in the wake of that Democratic victory. These voters share their feelings about the changing America in which they live.
Biden To The Rescue…
FOX News: President Obama has turned to his own vice president to oversee implementation of the $787 billion economic stimulus package, part of which will be available this week for state Medicaid programs.
Obama announced his decision before the National Governors Association in Washington on Monday, saying Vice President Joe Biden will help ensure the distribution of the money is not just swift, “but also efficient and effective.”
“The fact that I’m asking my vice president to personally lead this effort shows how important it is for our country and future to get this right,” he said.
Biden, in his new role, would meet regularly with key members of the Cabinet, governors and mayor to make sure their efforts are speedy and effective. He is expected to make regular reports to the president that will be posted online at www.recovery.gov.
See A Fish With A Transparent Head
Discovery’s Born Animal: Today there’s a new addition to the “real life is stranger than fiction” category. Check out the fish Macropinna microstoma. It has tubular eyes and a see-through head.
The common name for the fish is “barreleyes.” Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute investigators recently figured out why this species has such an unusual head. Its eyes can actually rotate within its “skull,” so the transparency allows the wary swimmer to keep a literal eye on happenings above it, as well as to the sides and directly in front.
Using video cameras, MBARI researchers Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler revealed the fish’s eye movements. When remotely operated vehicles approached the fish, its eyes glowed a vivid green shade in the bright lights of the ROVs.
American Express Paying Card Holders to Close their Accounts
Is this a first or what?!? Reuters: American Express Co, battered by mounting credit card losses, is offering $300 to a limited number of U.S. card holders who pay off their balances and close their accounts, the company said on Monday.
“We sent the offer out to a select number of card members,” said Molly Faust, a company spokeswoman. “We are looking at different ways that we can manage credit risk based on the costumers overall credit profile.”
The company did not say how many card holders would receive the offer and did not disclose the total of their card balances. Card holders have until the end of February to accept the offer and must close their accounts in March or April. Each card holder will receive a $300 pre-paid American Express card.
American Express, often seen as catering to relatively wealthy customers and companies, has been expanding its credit card business in recent…
Hidden Cameras in DTV Converters? YouTube Hoax Fans Conspiracy Fears
Kevin Poulsen, Wired: Ever wonder what the government is really up to paying for all those digital TV converter boxes? Last week a Spokane, Washington man claimed he’d discovered the horrifying truth, and he produced a YouTube video to prove it.
In a 90-second video, 28-year-old software engineer Adam Chronister is seen cracking open his government-subsidized Magnavox converter, and revealing to the world the tiny video camera and microphone hidden inside.
“I had a friend who was trying to tell me that they put cameras in these things,” Chronister narrates in a deadly-serious monotone. “So what I did was open it up to prove them wrong, and lo and behold … this thing does in fact have both a camera and a microphone. ” His finger points at a small lens attached to a transformer in the guts of the unit.
The video instantly went viral, tapping into a current of DTV conspiracy…
Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Even Google Can’t Reach
ALEX WRIGHT, NY Times:
One day last summer, Google’s search engine trundled quietly past a milestone. It added the one trillionth address to the list of Web pages it knows about. But as impossibly big as that number may seem, it represents only a fraction of the entire Web.
Beyond those trillion pages lies an even vaster Web of hidden data: financial information, shopping catalogs, flight schedules, medical research and all kinds of other material stored in databases that remain largely invisible to search engines.
The challenges that the major search engines face in penetrating this so-called Deep Web go a long way toward explaining why they still can’t provide satisfying answers to questions like “What’s the best fare from New York to London next Thursday?” The answers are readily available — if only the search engines knew how to find them.
At the University of Utah, Prof. Juliana Freire is working on DeepPeep,…
