Obsidian Wings

April What? An Open Thread

by Gary Farber

It's still April 1st on the Left Coast for another two hours and five minutes (when I started this post; an hour and ten minutes when I finished), no matter what date you read above this post. 

Some foolish links are in order!

So, out of order!

Japan is on everyone's mind, but we need to remember than it's not all doom and gloom, and yet in the spirit of helping:

The Tactical Philanthropy Haiku Contest:

Donors want data
Nonprofits measure impact
Experts watch and smile

Hai, ku!  Can you write techie Haiku?  Win $50!

Some past winners I like include:

Chekov in the bay
searching hard for some space fuel
Nuclear wessels
-- Jay in Murfreesboro, Tennessee

I bit a zombie.
it was ironic but the
taste was terrible.
-- Blake in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Learn from the Jedi.
Discipline, control, respect.
Dangerous muppet.
-- Patrick in Anaheim, California

Packets of photons
Streaming by our planet's sky
their address divine
-- Michaline in Chicago Illinois

Eat Theobromine.
Drink methyltheobromine.
Heliophobe, I.
--Zach in Tyler, Texas

Why kill Wash and Book?
Are they thinking what I am?
Firefly Zombies!
--Barak from East Brunswick, New Jersey

Advice for commenters arguing with bloggers:  

Don't argue with a
Mobius strip because it
Will be one-sided
--Jimmy from Poughquag, New York

Let there be peace:

Take me to the black
I am a leaf on the wind
My Serenity
--Jennifer in Dallas, Texas

And this speaks to, for, and sometimes it seems to be me:

I am all around,
Yet some can't seem to find me.
I am Internet.
--Terry in San Francisco, California

Read the rest!  Funny!

Did I say "geeks"?  Not yet! Let's read Henry Jenkins talk about gender and game design with James Paul Gee!

There's nothing bloggers like better than catching out the New York Times in embarrassing goofs! 

do as I say, not as I do

by fiddler

(not an April Fool's post, despite the date)

Richard A. Clarke, former counter-terrorism czar for both the Clinton and Bush administrations, had some strong words about the US Chamber of Commerce's aborted plans for discrediting its critics, which included spying on families, using malware to steal information, faking documents to embarrass its liberal opponents, and creating and using 'sock puppet' personas to infiltrate their targets.*

Clarke said of the US Chamber's plans to hack, impersonate, spy upon and steal from its perceived opponents:

"I think it’s a violation of 10USC. I think it’s a felony, and I think they should go to jail. You call them a large trade association, I call them a large political action group that took foreign money in the last election. But be that as it may, if you in the United States, if any American citizen anywhere in the world, because this is an extraterritorial law, so don’t think you can go to Bermuda and do it, if any American citizen anywhere in the world engages in unauthorized penetration, or identity theft, accessing a number through identity theft purposes, that’s a felony and if the Chamber of Commerce wants to try that, that’s fine with me because the FBI will be on their doorstep in a matter of hours."

till the landslide brings it down

by fiddler

Following up on previous posts (here, here, here, here, and here):

HBGary Federal, Team Themis, Hunton & Williams and the US Chamber of Commerce:

• Aaron Barr, HBGary Federal CEO, who spearheaded the company's attempts to discover the identity of members of Anonymous and whose emails were exposed by Anonymous in return, resigned on Feb. 28. Barr said he wanted to spend more time with his family and recover his reputation. The article linked also points out poor security practices within the company, including a general disregard of the importance of using distinct and complex passwords -- perhaps something else Barr could work on in his spare time, now.

Snog In The Fog: Science Fiction And Weekend Open Thread

by Gary Farber

If you happen to be in the environs of the San Francisco Bay Area from March 11th through 13th, I'll be here:

FOGcon: March 11-13, 2011, at the Holiday Inn Golden Gateway Hotel

Fogcon is this (links mine):

The Friends of Genre Convention (FOGcon) is a literary-themed San Francisco SF/F con in the tradition of Wiscon and Readercon. Each year we’ll focus on a new theme in speculative fiction and invite Honored Guests ranging from writers to scientists to artists. We will build community, exchange ideas, and share our love for the literature of imagination.

Theme for 2011: The City in SF/F

Honored Guests: Pat Murphy and Jeff VanderMeer; Honored Editorial Guest, Ann VanderMeer; Honored Guest (Posthumous) Fritz Leiber

“There is more than one road to the City.”—Ursula K. Le Guin

The theme of this, the first FOGCon is:

Whether a glass-edged utopia or a steampunk hell, the city plays a central role in many works of speculative fiction. It can be an arena for conflicts between cultures, a center of learning or vice, a court of power and corruption. In its gutters and government buildings, the city reveals the values a society claims and those it actually honors. Because the city is open to everyone, it’s a place where new things can happen. No wonder it is such a rich topic for so many writers.

Lots of other kewl people will be there.  There will be programming!

I'm particularly, given the time-change, and our ability as science fiction people to slipstream, looking forward to these bits of programming:

Newton's Third Law #4, the continuing story, with update

by fiddler

(Previous Newton's Third Law posts are here, here and here.)

Benjamin Spock de Vries says he is not Commander X, one of the 'leaders' of Anonymous whom Aaron Barr of HBGary supposedly found online. Apparently, Barr wrote several memos in which he connected Commander X's identity to de Vries, all of which are included among the memos leaked by Anonymous. This mistaken identification led to an oddly amusing exchange, when Barr contacted him during the attack on HBGary by Anonymous:

Newton's Third Law #1, 2nd UPDATE , 5:30 p.m. EST

by fiddler

Last Saturday, an article in the Financial Times featured Aaron Barr of cybersecurity firm HB Gary Federal, boasting that he had discovered the identities of key members of the hacking collective that calls itself Anonymous.

Any cybersecurity firm worth its salt should realize that this action would result in a reaction, and should create protocols and take precautions to avoid them.

Hmm. Apparently not.

In short order, Anonymous hacked them, printed "Fail" across Barr's photo, wrote him a scathing letter to accompany it, and released a compilation of 40,000+ of the company's files and memos to the public. Some of these concerned a presentation prepared for Bank of America last December on how the bank could protect itself against Wikileaks.

One of HB Gary Federal's bright ideas? Target Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, who is also a New York Times best-selling author and attorney. Why? On the grounds that because Greenwald wants to make sure Bradley Manning isn't being mistreated and Manning is accused of leaking files to Anonymous, Greenwald therefore must be part of Anonymous.

Wrong.

 

 

Don't Listen To The Douchebags

by Gary Farber

This is my sign-off post for at least three weeks or so, as a front-pager, as I'm in the final stages of my move to Oakland. (Any help, as described, much appreciated.)

But before I go, some quick parting links, and words from others.  George Takei on Clint McCance:

 

Meanwhile, the Texas Supreme Court has been only logical: Texas Supreme Court Cites The Wisdom Of Spock On Star Trek. 

A Periodic Table of Blog Commenters

By guest poster Gary Farber.

I don't have one of those.  Sorry. 

But, hey, it's Labor Day weekend, and so a post of silly or unusual links, and open-threadedness for all!

This first one you just have to trust me on: A Periodic Table Of Visualization Methods.  This sounds incredibly dull, but is immensely cool.  Check out the interactivity that a screen shot could barely hint at.

Don't like that one?  Use The Periodic Table Of Swearing.  (Should not be viewed by anyone offended by naughty words.  Really.)

(UPDATE: link fixed. Originally from Modern Toss.)

How about an actually useful Table Of Condiments and their spoilage?

The Periodic Table Of Candy.  The Periodic Table Of Awesoments.  (Hey, it's not my title.)  The Periodic Table Of Rejected Elements.  And finally, The Wooden Periodic Table Table. 

But we need more visualizations! A metrocontextual science map (original here), which is to say, in the form of a London Underground map.

The Big Bang Theory

Guest post by Gary Farber.  Gary's home blog is Amygdala, and he invites you to read him there. 

For my final guest post at Obsidian Wings, something completely different: a roundup of some recent science, or tech, or just downright weird, sci-tech news, or that's at least news to me, as well as an item or two of the fantastic.

Green your factories with electron beam particle accelerators:

[...] While environmental applications of particle accelerators have made little progress commercially in the United States in the last 40 years, a number of countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East are actively pursuing the technology.

In Daegu, Korea, an electron-beam accelerator in a textile factory removes toxic dyes from 10,000 cubic meters of wastewater per day. In Szczecin, Poland, the Pomorzany power station installed an electron-beam accelerator in its coal plant to simultaneously remove sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides from roughly 270,000 cubic meters of flue gas per hour. China has started to use electron beams to control air pollution, and a facility in Bulgaria is under construction. Saudi Arabia may soon follow.

All you have to do for more widespread use is ensmall them. 

[...] "We have proven that the technology works," says Andrzej Chmielewski, director of the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology in Warsaw, Poland. "The size of the accelerators can be huge, though. We need a technological breakthrough" to make accelerators smaller and easier to maintain.

But they're working on that!  With plasma wakefield acceleration and laser wakefield acceleration! 

Oh, and who do you have to thank for that?

[...] Thanks in great part to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the stimulus package,

Pwned!

by hilzoy

A couple of days ago, Michael Goldfarb wrote on the John McCain blog:

"It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others."

No one could quite figure out what D&D had to do with anything. Today, Bob Mackey (LTC-ret.; currently a consultant at the National Counterterrorism Center) replies, in a post called "Cloak of Stupidity +5, or the Art of the False Political Assumption":

"It seems Mr. Goldfarb, with the blessings of his employer, has decided that anyone who plays Dungeons and Dragons is some sort of anti-social uber nerd, incapable of manly activities, such as political blogging or being shot down over Hanoi.

Well, as anyone with half a brain should know, not all D&D players live in their parents' basement. Some live upstairs.

And others, the vast majority of them, became doctors, lawyers, excelled in business, the arts, and even politics. And a more than a few of them put on the uniform and stand by the colors. And more than a few of them have come back from the very wars that men like Mr. Goldfarb have sent them covered in the colors, the same colors that are given to grieving mothers, wives, and girlfriends.

Yes, Mr. Goldfarb, I play Dungeons and Dragons. And I have, in my home, a very large box filled with medals and decorations that prove my service to this nation. Where were you, sir, when your country called? Oh yes, writing for the Weekly Standard.

While gaming geeks rallied around the flag."

Heh. Indeed.