~ 12 May 2003 :: Dust

[Obsession: WTC] From William Gibson's blog, an analysis of the World Trade Center dust:

> Microscopic analysis of WTC dust by Nicholas Petraco, BS, MS, DABC,
> FAAFS, FNYMS
> at The New York Microscopic Society lecture held at AMNH 28 May 2003
>
> 45.1% Fiberglass, rock wool (insulation, fireproofing)
> 31.8% Plaster (gypsum), concrete products (calcium sulfate, selenite,
> muscodite)
> 7.1% Charred wood and debris
> 2.1% Paper fibers
> 2.1% Mica flakes
> 2.0% Ceiling tiles (fiberglass component)
> 2.0% Synthetic fibers
> 1.4% Glass fragments
> 1.3% Human remains
> 1.4% Natural fibers
> trace asbestos (it became illegal to use during the construction of
> the WTC)
>
> Other trace elements: aluminum, paint pigments, blood, hair, glass
> wool with resin, and prescription drugs were found.
>
> NOTES:
> Particles found were 1-4 micrometers in size. (In general, particles
> that are 5-8 microns are irritants, and those that are 104 microns are
> small enough to be airborne and ingested into the lungs.)
>
> Fiberglass particles are smaller than asbestos and lodge deeper into
> lungs creating more serious long-term health hazards than asbestos
> like white lung disease which will become more evident 5, 10, 20 years
> from 11 Sep 2001.

"Other trace elements: [...] prescription drugs were found. "

I suppose prescription drugs are so ubiquitous that traces of them would be found after the catastrophic destruction of any segment of an urban nexus, but this still surprised me.

I would have thought "blood" and "hair" would have gone under "human remains". Many animals in the WTC?

~ 28 May 2003 :: Photogenic Starbucks?

[Obsession: Starbucks]A post on Larry Lessig's blog told a lovely story about some people trying to take photos in Starbucks cafés, only to have the manager tell them not to as it infringed Starbuck's copyright! This has inspired the site www.starbucksphotos.com, which is inviting people to submit their happy-snaps of the coffee house.

~ 27 May 2003 :: Free the Mouse!

[Profession: Copyright]Consider this scenario: a media company uses freely available fairy stories to make very popular movies. This same media company also has its own creations, which are coming out of the 70 year copyright law, and will become part of the public domain.

Now swap "media company" with Disney. Mickey Mouse is about to slip into the public domain, and Disney is trying its best to stop this (for obvious reasons for itself). In fact, in 1998 Congress of USA extended copyright in the "Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act": life of the artist plus 70 years, and 90 years for corporations. Mickey is still safe...

...for how long? Notably, Lawrence Lessig (who formulated the case against Microsoft) has been working to have the Sonny Bono Act overturned. Also, another group collecting material to challenge of the act have started pushing their own: The Eric Eldred Act (where I got the natty graphic pictured here.) They are putting forth the suggestion that a new tax should be instituted such that a fee should be paid if someone wants to keep the copyright on their material after a certain time. As such, materials can slip into the public domain, instead of the blanket copyright extension to everything published after 1923.

From their FAQ:

The public domain is important because it frees creators to build upon and cultivate our past without unnecessary or harmful restrictions. When work is protected by copyright law, anyone desiring to distribute or build upon that work must get the permission of the copyright holder. That usually means hiring a lawyer to locate and secure permission. Lawyers are expensive, and depending upon the use, permission is often not granted.

~ 26 May 2003 :: Plagiarism Dot Com

[Profession: Plagiarism]This post was inspired by two stories. The first I heard some weeks ago from a Learning Technologies Coordinator at a lecture on eLearning:

A teacher approached me last week with an assignment submitted by one of her students. "I think this may have been taken from the Internet," she said. I looked over the assignment, and in the top left hand corner of the first page were the words: "Click here if you would like this in Español!"

The second was an email from a friend this week:

I wanted to keep some pictures of paintings from the Manet lecture I attended last week at Melbourne Uni with the visiting Professor and look what came up:
 

CheatHouse.com - A study of Edouard Manet's painting, Note! The sentences in this essay are shuffled, making this essay unusable
www.cheathouse.com/eview/36_a_study_of_edouard_manet_s_p
Manet painting Direct Essays.com - Over 101,000 essays, term Manet painting (This is only the first few sentences of this paper.)
www.directessays.com/viewpaper.php?request=8230
 
This is terrible!

There are hundreds of essay websites on the net, with some proclaiming their goal to be simply "to provide free essays for entertainment, education, and publishing" (see The Essay Organization "about" page.) Others, such as Cheathouse.com unashamedly advertise themselves for students to copy and submit "top ranking" essays for class.

I find the essay collecting is a pretty resourceful use of the Internet, so Leyden's Jar will now start documenting some of these sites, and can be found in the Plagiarism section of eLearning. The reason is two-fold: teachers need to realise that these sites do exist and how easy it is to access them. Also, if students can find these sites easily, it will force teachers to rethink how they should test and assess their classes.

Consider this essay question (from an actual secondary school science class): Research a medical condition related to the topics covered in this subject - ie, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease, muscular dystrophy. Very easy to jump onto your modem and CTRL-C, CTRL-P slabs of text into a Word document. However, if the question was reposed: Research a medical condition, then imagine that you are a patient suffering from the condition. Describe a day in your life. A little more thinking involved?

~ 13 May 2003 :: Moon Hoax...Right, I've had a bloody gut-full of this!

[Profession: Conspiracies] As many of may readers know, to make ends meet I do science shows at a local science museum. It is in one of these shows ("Earth, Moon, Sun") that I discuss the moon landing, and often hear the comment "...but it was a hoax, wasn't it?" When it comes from a primary student, I often pause the show to flesh out some of their ideas (usually picked up from the latest Fox special on conspiracies). However, I have noticed an increasing number of teachers uttering the above line, which has disturbed me.

As a consequence, I am now launching the Leyden's Jar "Did NASA fake the Moon Landing?" page to help provide some good sound thinking to the issues raised by skeptics of the Apollo Missions. It is split into two sections: The Conspiracy Theories, and Apollo Mission details as stated by NASA. Then, applying Ockham's Razor, visitors can decide for themselves which is the more correct theory.

And this is where I need your help, dear reader. I need sites, books and articles detailing arguments for and against the Moon Hoax; I'll even reference you if I use your submission.

Already, though, things may not bode well for the conspiracy theorists considering Ockham's thus far. Consider which is easier to do: put three men on the top of a tower of rocket fuel, light the blue touch paper and retire; or construct an elaborate hoax to fool the entire world for some thirty-odd years?

~ 14 April 2003 :: Plundered Museums

[Profession: Current Events] It sort of funny that with all of the images of the Iraq War, it was the ones of the pillaged museum with the distressed staff that got to me the most. Reminds me of when the Taliban destroyed the ancient statues of Buddah in Afghanistan.
 
Check it out:
The Age: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/13/1050172475704.html
http://www.gvnews.net/demo/html/DailyNews/alert15.html

~ 4 March 2003 :: Judas Goats on Darwin's Island

[Profession: Science Communication] In Wired this month: GPS technology is being employed to help rid the Galápagos Islands. The Charles Darwin Foundation, a group responsible for the conservation of the Islands, use GPS coordinates and satellite images to record the location of goat kills. Hunters can then use this information to track any movements of the remaining goats in the herd. Once the population becomes harder to trace, a goat equipped with a radio collar is released. This Judas goat then leads the hunters to what remains of the herd.

The goats are an introduced species on the islands and have caused large amounts of devistation to the local ecosystem. However, they are just one in a total of 500 invasive species found through the islands.

(Feel uncomfortable killing a species, even though it could mean rebalancing an ecosystem? Have your say in the LJ forum.)

The Charles Darwin Foundation: http://www.darwinfoundation.org/
Also, check out the Wired: http://www.wired.com

~ 3 March 2003 :: 03.03.03

[Obsession: Distractions] Did everyone notice today's date?

~ 30 January 2003 :: MoveOn.org

[Profession: Education and Debate] When I arrived at Uni this morning there were the ubiquitous anti-war posters adorning the poster column around the Union building. However, I noticed a newcomer today, pastered between the anti-US voices; a picture of Saddam Hussein with the words "Congratulations for supporting Saddam's policies against the Iraqi populations."

I was gladdened to see that we still live in a society that allows debate such as this. Unfortuantely, the mainstream media seems to be low on such debate, which is leading to a rise of independent movments pushing alternative ideas. The Internet has been a wonderful tool for the promotion and disemination of these ideas.

One such group that has risen within the past months is MoveOn.org who have released a remake of LBJ's "girl counting petals" ad. Their line is the avoidance of war through other means:

As weapons inspections in Iraq kick into high gear, most of us are breathing a sigh of relief. But some elements of the Bush Administration are still dead set on war, even if the inspections are working. President Bush has agreed that war should be the very last resort. Let's hold him and his administration to those words.

~ 29 January 2003 :: The Truth is finally revealed?

[Obsession: The X Files] (Warning: a few spoilers) 9 years, and it's finally over. I just watched the 'final' X Files, and as poor as it was, coming about three seasons too late, I do feel a sense of closure. Ah.

Okay, it wasn't great, and many of the loose threads were not entirely shaken free. This was really due to the fact that the show creators were really just making it up as they went along. To be completely honest, I lost interest in a big way after the movie, which didn't answer anything and was really just a big-buget episode.

A few comments on this last episode: X-files meets Seinfeld, with Fox Mulder up in court to defend himself and the Truth...or something. The Truth, it seems, was a date of total alien invasion, thus rendering Mulder unable to "fight the future" and accept the inevitable. Personally, perhaps the Truth should have remained undiscovered, and Mulder in revealing it takes on the role of the Cigarette Smoking Man in order to ensure the conspiracy. As it is, Mulder's character comes full circle, from finding truth to finding solace in faith.

Speaking of the Cigarette Smoking Man; nice death scene. We can be sure he's dead, as the director allowed us to see every moment of the explosion, skin burning, peeling, melting. I don't think he's coming back this time.

The "I Want To Believe" poster rolled up by John Doggett. Nice.

A few other comment: although I lost my obsession for this show quite some time ago, it's often been the source of inspiration, and still is at times. I'm not an obsessive fan, demanding all of the plot lines to be nicely ironed out, as this is an impossible task due to the massive entropy that has been created. And besides, once we see the funny little man behind the curtain, the mystery tends to loose its shine. Thanks, Mr. Carter. It's been fun!

~ 28 January 2003 :: Globalisation's next wave

[Profession: Business] From Business Week:

It's globalization's next wave--and one of the biggest trends reshaping the global economy. The first wave started two decades ago.... Now, all kinds of knowledge work can be done almost anywhere.... The rise of a globally integrated knowledge economy is a blessing for developing nations. What it means for the U.S. skilled labor force is less clear.

[snip]

What happens if all those displaced white-collar workers can't find greener pastures? Sure, tech specialists, payroll administrators, and Wall Street analysts will land new jobs. But will they be able to make the same money as before? It's possible that lower salaries for skilled work will outweigh the gains in corporate efficiency. 'If foreign countries specialize in high-skilled areas where we have an advantage, we could be worse off,' says Harvard University economist Robert Z. Lawrence, a prominent free-trade advocate. 'I still have faith that globalization will make us better off, but it's no more than faith.'

Will the rich getting poorer, the poor getting richer...?

~ 17 January 2003 :: Megafauna and Mabo

[Profession: HPS] Today I began an intensive summer subject at Uni Melb: The Environmental History of Australia. Over the next ten days we will be covering Australian land-use from the earily Aboriginies through to modern times.

An interesting point was raised today with respect to Aboriginal usage of the land pre-1788. Currently, according to the Mabo native title act, Aboriginal are to demonstrate a continued connection with their land to be able to claim native title. In some cases this has come to mean a continued cultural style of living. However, the orginal Aboriginies seemed to have made a large cultural shift from the hunting of Megafauna to the technological agriculture of "firestick farming" when the large animals became extinct. If anything, this seems to demonstrate the plasticity of the Aboriginal culture, and begs whether it is possible that it could remain static for two hundred years, let along thousands. The question was raised as to whether it was impossible to ask that a people living on the land show that they have kept the same cultural practices for the whole of white occupation when even "white culture" (ie, British culture) has certainly changed in that time.

Some cluttered thoughts there. If you have a comment, post it on the forum.

~ 16 January 2003 :: Science Communicator Spotlight: Joanne Nova

[Profession: Science Communication] Among other news, last night I met Joanne Nova (as in the presenter of the first series of Y? on the Nine Network) who was in Melbourne as a guest speaker at an AMP conference. Check out this science communicator's site at www.joannenova.com.au

~ 10 January 2003 :: Send in the Clones

[Profession: Science Communication] The past few weeks have added yet another entery to my Alternative (ie, Freaky) Belief File. The Raëlian cult from Europe have claimed to cloned not one, but two human beings. And to top it all off, they have a few more popping out before the end of the month. Their cloning powerhouse is called Clonaid whose website offer cloning services primarily to sterile and homosexual couples, but also to anyone else who may have the desire for a mini-me running around.

Maybe my dream of having some freerange Sean's handy for spare parts is coming closer...or not. They have yet to show some sort of evidence, like, say, a BABY! The whole thing has the air of the Cold Fusion breakthrough by Pons and Fleischmann, where the scientific process of journal review was subverted with a press conference.

The Australian :: Clone may not be the Rael thing
...and going back in time (don't say we weren't warned):
WebMD :: Group Plans To Clone Human Within 18 Months

~ 7 January 2003 :: Meltdown!

[Profession: Science Communication] Eek! The past week and a bit my computer suffered a slow and painful death, my harddrive now beyond any physical and spiritual help. However, I've been able to save the ever important "My Documents" directory, including future pages for this site, though finishing and uploading them has been pushed back again...

Among other meltdowns; it was 40°C today in Melbourne, but I braved the sun to go and visit the nicely air-conditioned Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (the giant rusty building near the Malthouse Theatre, Southbank.) Currently exhibiting are works by Patricia Piccinini, whose theme seems to include society's relationships with technoscientific objects. There are some very interesting and bizarre works, like Still Life with Stem Cells (pictured here) which features a life-size model of a young girl happily hugging and playing with organic blobs.

(Review of Exhibition will follow.)

~ 25 December 2002 :: A retrospective for 2002

[Confession: Me!] This is one of the last entries for 2002. It has been a truly extraordinary year for change. Gone is the Engineering studies, finished is my Computer Science degree, and, next year, beginning Honours in History and Philosophy of Science. Thank you for your input and support; particularly thanks to Dr Andi, and the team at Scienceworks. I hope Santa was kind to you today, and all the best for the New Year.

~ 23 December 2002 :: Greek gaming ban.

[Obsession: Interactive Media] (From November issue of Game Developer) In an effort to restrict illegal gambling in Greece, the Greek government decreed a law to ban the use of all electronic and electromechanical game devices in public places. In September, a case was brought against three Internet café owners who were arrested after police found customers playing online chess in their establishments.

The Court of First Instance in Thessaloniki has since abolished the law, ruling that it contravened constitutional provisions on the free movement of ideas.

BBC News :: Greek gaming ban courts legal action
Geek Life :: Greek Courts Don't Like the Gaming Ban

~ 22 December 2002 :: Rock-hopping in Warrnambool.

[Obsession: Books] Spent the weekend rock-hopping in Warrnambool and taking shots for a personal holiday project. I'm putting together a "photo guide" to Innsmouth from H.P. Lovecraft's short story The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and though Warrnambool is not the place of horror described by Lovecraft, it did have a few features that reminded me of the story. Watch this space.

~ 20 December 2002 :: NASA Engineers do some lateral thinking.

[Profession: Science Communication] From New Scientist news:

A damaged data recorder aboard NASA's Galileo space probe has finally been reactivated, allowing scientists to retrieve the secrets of the craft's final mission. [snip]

Engineers traced the problem to a light-emitting diode (LED) within the electronics that control the tape player's motor drive. They suspect that protons from Jupiter's radiation belt may have disrupted the crystalline lattice of the semiconductor material from which the diode is made.

To correct the problem, the Galileo engineers repeatedly directed an electrical current though the diode for an hour at a time. This prompted the atoms to shift back to their lattice positions. This annealing treatment lasted for a total of 83 hours.

It's the sort of problem solving that I love in engineering. Reverse the polarity!

~ 16 December 2002 :: A new push for space.

[Profession: Science Communication] I have recently come across a new push for space. Called the XPRIZE, it is a competition set up to "jumpstart" the space tourism industry. A US$10 million dollar prize will be awarded to the first team that privately builds and launches a spaceship able to carry 3 people to 100 kilometers altitude, safely land, and then repeat the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks. Among their philosophies is to shift the idea of Space as a government-only domain. They have a very interesting site, if a little heavy to load at times. There are even projects and competitions for university and school students.

One of the teams to enter the XPRIZE this year is Armadillo Aerospace, a team founded by John Carmack of id Software fame (ie, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake). Having made millions of dollars from computer game 3D engines, Carmack can now fund what has been a lifetime interest. [see also Obsession: Interactive Media]

~ 15 December 2002 :: A New Hope: Australia Japan Pacific (?) back in Space.

[Profession: Science Communication] Jubilation in both Australia and Japan with the launch of a space mission from the Tanegashima spaceport (southwest of Tokyo). It was Japan's rocket with Australia's satellite (the FedSat program which was supposed to be launched last year in time for the Centenary of Federation.) Interesting to compare the different reports from around the world. Check out the following headlines. (Thanks to Peter Stokes)

The Age :: We're Back In Space
BBC News :: Japan's Rocket Hopes Take Off

~ 9 December 2002 :: Are classics and bestsellers mutually exclusive?

[Obsession: Books] From Newsday.com: A new survey has found that a book must sell 12 times as many copies as it did 20 years ago to become a bestseller. As a consequence, fewer and fewer critically acclaimed books are making the bestseller list. Article.

~ 8 December 2002 :: Virtual voyeurism bestseller to move online...

[Obsession: Interactive Media] ...and I'm not referring to webcams and the web's number one trade. The other day I played The Sims and was completely flumoxed to understand how something so inane could be so popular. The Sims lets the player direct the 'day-to-day' lives of simulated people inside what could be described as a virtual dollhouse. What attracted me to the game was that it had moved 18 million copies, making it the best-selling computer game in history. But after several hours of play I couldn't shake the feeling that it was all rather pointless and started to look for ways that my simulated people could, say, gas themselves, set the place on fire, or puchase a length of rope and put an end to the whole sorry business in their basement.

However, I'm very interested in the idea of The Sims Online, a massively multiplayer game that has just gone live. The game play is more-or-less the same with each Sim pursuing food, sleep and a social life. However, they are now controlled by real people (ie, us) instead of AI. Initially, it could be just as insipid as the original, but I can see people (at some point) socialising online in a world similar to the Metaverse imagined by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash [see also Obsession: Books].

One last comment I'll leave people with: is this also another example of homogenisation of the world's culture to good ol' American Pie...?

Futher info :: The Sims Online website | Gamespot.com | TIME magazine
Alternative views :: The promotion of American materialism and deeply boring!