MOTHERBOARD

What Were Middle Eastern Generals Buying at the World's Largest Weapons Expo?

Brian_Anderson — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:50:00 +0000

VICE is no stranger to the Special Operations Force Exhibition, the annual meeting of military brass and weapons slingsmen in Jordan. Correspondent Shane Smith checked out SOFEX 2010 and saw firsthand all the insanity of the business of war. But that was before the Arab Spring. In the wake of so many ousted tin-pots, then, is the market in the people-killing business changing? Matt Yoka recently dove into SOFEX 2012 to size up the demand for weapons in a moment of uneasy transition for so much of the Middle East.

Is CGI Software Poised to Kill Photography? It's Close

Derek_Mead — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Despite public craving for ridiculous Photoshop failures and public shaming of horrific photographers, the perpetual myth that a fancy-ass camera and technical wizardry is the way to get rich off photos still remains. But outside of the hyper-competitive world of fashion shooters and international photojournalists, the path to working success for a young photographer tends to involve grinding out a thick portfolio of stock images and product shots.

Stock photos may not be super exciting, but they certainly help pay the bills. They’re also becoming increasingly easy to replace. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the next two images and tell me which one’s fake.

A Richer China Isn't Happier, and That Spells Trouble

Alex_Pasternack — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:00:00 +0000

In the early 80s, Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who set China on the path to capitalism, may or may not have said “to get rich is glorious.”. But he didn’t say anything about happiness.

A new study, led by Richard Easterlin, a professor of economics at the University of Southern California, shows that despite a rate of
economic growth that is unmatched in human history, Chinese people are less happy overall than they were two decades ago.

Why is the Waning War on Drugs So Focused on Fake Weed?

Michael_Arria — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:10:00 +0000

A couple months ago Pat Roberston, the infamous televangelist generally making headlines for blaming catastrophic events on gays and abortions, confused the general public by blurting out something entirely sensible: “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded. It’s completely out of control. Prisons are being overcrowded with juvenile offenders having to do with drugs. And the penalties, the maximums, some of them could get 10 years for possession of a joint of marijuana. It makes no sense at all."

Shiri Is the Robo-Butt That 2 Live Crew Dreamed Of

Derek_Mead — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Shiri was developed by grad student Nobuhiro Takahashi, who made headlines last year for his internet kissing simulator. Now he’s taken things to the next level by replicating the fine muscle movements of our derrieres, which he argues will help cyborgs express emotions by being capable of more organic movements. Of course, when I look at that pulsing, jiggling artificial ass, I wonder what emotions he’s talking about.

The Accidental Highs and Lows of the FAA's Drone Act

Brian_Anderson — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:53:00 +0000

Drop whatever it is you’re pretending to work on right now. Stagger outside and look at the sky – once you’re back, I’ll tell you what you likely did and did not see. Go on. I’ll wait.

Welcome back. OK. Taking into general account all times and locations, I can say with relative certainty that you saw at least one of the following: the sun, the moon, clouds, stars, tree limbs, signage of some sort, a structure of some sort, passenger planes, jet trails. Some birds, maybe. And I’ll hazard to guess that you saw no unmanned reconnaissance aircraft figure-eighting persistently as it gazed downward, potentially tracking your every move. Unless you’re out in central New Mexico, you probably weren’t caught staring back at a surveillance drone that if commanded could collect gobs of video of you being awkward.

But that doesn’t mean a decent number of surveillance drones haven’t already taken to skies over the United States. And if the Federal Aviation Administration is good to its word that by Monday it will release some sort of template for streamlining the process by which various government agencies are cleared to operate unmanned aircraft in domestic airspace, that also shouldn’t give off the impression that there maybe aren’t droves more drones on the way.

That’s a big If. This is the U.S. government we’re talking about. This is where almost all decent, well-meaning proposals go to be either python’d in red tape, or torpedoed entirely. But it’s also where almost all questionable, illogical and outright shitty proposals pass only after grinding bureaucratic slogs. Any delay on the first major milestone of the FAA’s Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 (.pdf), which says that within 90 days of passage (President Obama signed the $63 billion funding bill Feb. 14) the agency has to permit “local government and public safety agencies” to fly drones that exceed neither 4.4 pounds nor 400-foot altitudes, will come to no surprise. So maybe don’t hold your breath.

But hey, so-called civilian drones are becoming big, big business. After all, it was the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a drone industry lobbying group that boasts over 500 corporate members in 55 countries, that took credit for language responsible for the FAA’s expedited approval of agencies that are eager to build up drone fleets beginning this year. So this is all unfolding at near-breakneck pace. The FAA act runs through 2016; Congress, meanwhile, is pressing the agency to have remotely piloted unmanned aircraft fully integrated into U.S. airspace by fall 2015.

It’s high times for droned-out American robotics firms, really. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that nearly 50 companies are tinkering on some 150 different civilian unmanned systems, from micro drones to airliner-sized giants, all specifically designed to carry surveillance gear, not explosives. Some estimates have the American drone market in 2016 pulling down $6 billion in sales. So, too, will it come as no great shock to hear the FAA got it together for today’s deadline.

What’s certain, though, is that widespread aerial surveillance will be greenlit for local law and safety agencies whenever the FAA hits this first modernization milestone. There’s no telling how effective the streamlining efforts will prove over time, of course. But Amie Stepanovich, associate litigation counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public-interest research center in Washington, D.C, tells me that drone authorization for cops, first responders and the like will only get “simpler, easier, and faster.”

How fast? Stepanovich, who deals primarily with issues of government surveillance and digital and national security, says that under existing laws some 30,000 drones will take to American skies over the next decade.

And it’s not only this prospect of tens of thousands of airborne surveillance drones that, viewed purely as a matter of public safety, has Stepanovich concerned about the near future. The FAA seems to have put no restrictions on what can be done with drones, she explains, so long as it’s done in a “safe manner.” The agency has set no surveillance restrictions for unmanned aerials, she adds, and no parameters on their data collection. So what’s deeply troubling to her and other privacy advocates is how a blind, hasty push to swell the drone ranks could compromise the rights of average American citizens who simply do not want to be watched. Should the FAA not act on these fundamental concerns as it begins establishing drone regulations, Stepanovich argues, the door to unchecked, warrantless, “accidental” spying of domestic civilians through unmanned aircraft could be kicked open.

That’s not to say this sort of thing isn’t already going on. The Air Force calls it “non-consensual surveillance,” and “like the rest of the military and CIA” the flying service supposedly forbids the practice, according to Wired ’s Spencer Ackerman, who cites an ace find by Steven Aftergood, a secrecy scholar with the Federation of American Scientists. That said, an already heavy moment in Attack of the Drones, a new short documentary, just got a whole lot thicker.

Dark Tourism, In Which People Vacation with Death, Just Got Academic

Sam_McDougle — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Dark Tourism…it’s like rubbernecking with a hotel.

Track Every Species on Earth with the Map of Life

Derek_Mead — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:20:00 +0000

There are nearly two million described species of animal and plant life in the world, with estimates of the total number of species ranging from a few to many multiples of those described. On top of the mammoth zoological task of cataloging all that life, those sheer numbers offer a more profound problem: There is a wealth of life sitting right under our very noses, and every day species go extinct that most of us never even knew about.

Enter the Map of Life, a newly-released online tool for tracking and cataloging the world’s biodiversity. Led by Walter Jetz and Robert Guralnick, a pair of biodiversity scientists, the Map of Life project aims to solve a real issue in zoology: techniques for measuring biodiversity in geographic terms — tracking the fluctuating territories of species as populations and habitats decline — is terribly outdated.

Struggling To Survive in the 21st Century, the Postal Service Kicks Out Electronics?

Daniel_Stuckey — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:02:00 +0000

“Neither snow nor rain nor Kindle fire nor plume of iPad smoke stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”

Despite its declining first-class mail volume, fresh legislative mandates to pre-pay its retirees, and a 3.2 billion dollar loss in its second quarter, the United States Postal Service has just steepened the incline it faces in trying to financially recover anytime soon. The national mail service has announced that while it won’t shut rural post offices, as originally planned, it will cease shipment of lithium-ion batteries internationally come May 16th. This prohibition means no more international smartphones and tablets, which mostly contain non-removable batteries. The long list includes other ordinary electronics that ship with components that have caused at least 121 incidents since 1991, and are speculated to have fatally brought down two planes since 2006. Constitutionally, it all makes sense: “The postal powers of Congress embrace all measures necessary to insure the safe and speedy transit and prompt delivery of the mails.”

The prohibition may seem harsh to the widespread touchscreen generation, but not to worry: angry bloggers say they will simply divert their business to FedEx and UPS, likely forcing the Postal Service to rethink their ban. Remember that expat friend from Saudi Arabia who told you he could make an easy 300 to 500 dollars for buying an iPhone at the Apple Store in New York and sending it home to his brother in Riyadh? Try 200 to 400 dollars, pal. Bootleggers and price gougers like him are soon to become disenchanted by lower profits as they are forced to turn toward commercial shippers. Could Apple possibly stand to see increased international revenues?

More enraged are the spouses and families of armed service members overseas. Those obligatory Facebook petitions have already popped up, urging fellow troop supporters to join in appealing the ban. The linked petition has received 17 likes since the USPS reported its policy change. Steve, the group’s admin explains, "While in some instances they could use their local, ‘in country’ address to receive the item via FedEx/UPS/DHL, they would then be subject to paying duty to the import country. When shipped via the USPS to an APO/FPO address they do not have to pay duty on any package.”

USPS has other strategies to save their bottom line, with plans this summer to scale down the 6-8 typical operating hours of 13,000 rural offices to a mere 2-4 hours. Additionally, piloting of a new product has begun in northern Virginia. Enter “GoPost”:http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_046.htm, a parcel locker that allows for, “today’s on-the-go lifestyle.” These giant PO Boxes are described as, “The next great innovation from the U.S. Postal Service. It’s based on a simple, yet novel idea: Why wait for your package when your package can wait for you?”

Yippee! An exciting new way to reel consumers back toward the epitome of obsolescence — 24-hour cubbyholes at the mall. Say goodbye to one-click buy, saved addresses, and saved payment methods: The time I’ve been dying to save was the time I spent in all those damn post office lines. Now I can go shopping in person, interact with people, buy some products sans lithium-ion for some expats and enlistees (penis straws from Spencer’s?). I’ll only have to wait for the mall to open – perfect, I’ve been aching to sit down with that Sears circular that came in the mail last week.

Connections:

The Queen of England Is an Incredible Corgi Whisperer, Says Royal Cowboy

Derek_Mead — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:40:00 +0000

A Stetson-wearing cowboy from California and an animal-loving queen cross paths in the late 80s thanks to his prodigious reputation as a full-on horse whisperer, a guy with the ability to tame wild horses with words and gestures. It sounds like an a movie because, yeah, it is, but it also happens to be one of those flicks based on real life.

Monty Roberts — could he have any other name? — was first invited to Windsor Palace by the Queen of England in 1989 after she heard about his talents with horses. He’s remained at her behest ever since, taking care of the Royal horses, ponies, and (yes!) corgis.

Hot Links: Teens Sue Feds over Climate Change, Iran Bans Gmail, 170 Year Old Beer

Derek_Mead — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:11:00 +0000

The hottest weekend link that you need to read.

The U.S. Government Interviews Isaac Asimov in 1975

Michael_Byrne — Sun, 13 May 2012 19:34:00 +0000

Quoth the U.S. Information Agency (RIP):

ARC Identifier 54491 / Local Identifier 306.9415. SY BOURGIN INTERVIEWS ISAAC ASIMOV, BIOCHEMIST AND SCIENCE FICTION WRITER. MR. ASIMOV MAY BE THE MOST WIDELY READ OF ALL SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS, HAVING WRITTEN 155 BOOKS AND HUNDREDS OF MAGAZINE ARTICLES AND SHORT STORIES. A CLIP OF “FANTASTIC VOYAGE,” BASED ON HIS BOOK, IS INSERTED IN THE PROGRAM. VIEWERS WILL FIND THIS INTERVIEW PROVOCATIVE IN REGARD TO WHAT MR. ASIMOV HAS TO SAY ABOUT WRITING AND THE FUTURE OF THIS EARTH.

Connections:

via Archive.org

A New Commercial Rocket Means the Space Race Is Back On

Amy_Teitel — Sat, 12 May 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Alliant Techsystems is poised to take first prize in the commercial space game.

In a Field of '90s Barbieland Wreckage, Chop Suey Got Gaming for Girls Totally Right

Jenn_Frank — Sat, 12 May 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Developed in 1994 and published the following year, Chop Suey was a cunning piece of multimedia edutainment, suited just as well to grown-ups — smirking hipsters and punk rockers, probably — as it was to the prescribed “girls 7 to 12” crowd.

But it wasn’t a computer game. It was something else: a loosely-strung system of vignettes; a psychedelic exercise in “let’s-pretend”; a daydream in which the mundanity of smalltown Ohio collides with the interior lives of its two young protagonists.

As the game opens, the Bugg sisters are idling on a grassy knoll, counting clouds and recalling the day’s events. Lily and June Bugg, we are informed, have spent the afternoon with Aunt Vera. The narrator — a yet-unknown <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sedaris">David Sedaris</a> — sets the scene in nasally twee, occasionally grating reeds.

“They didn’t know the names of the flowers in which they lay — pollen dusty daisies, wild violets, cornflowers — so June Bugg named them herself, touching a finger to the soft center of each.”

When Sedaris concludes his opening narration, our player immediately regains control of her cursor. From here she can survey Cortland’s landmarks in any order she chooses, repeating anything she likes. She might revisit lunch at the Ping Ping Palace, where the food is so exotic, it’s often tinted cyan or hot pink. She might play dress-up with Aunt Vera — whom, we suspect, is something of a lush and a man-eater.

. . . Lily and June’s own imaginations illustrate those stories in happier, more magical idioms

The player might go to the carnival to have her fortune read; she might play Bingo. Perhaps she might visit Aunt Vera’s second husband, Bob, or else she could visit Vera’s third husband, also Bob. (Tragically, it is impossible to visit Bob #1, except through occasional flashbacks.)

“‘A broken heart for every light,’ she said, and sighed, rearranging her pink flowered bathrobe.”

Most in-game stories are delivered secondhand from a reminiscing grown-up, while Lily and June’s own imaginations illustrate those stories in happier, more magical idioms. The game never oversteps, never makes “regret” its central concern; after all, this is a children’s game. But an adult player might be surprised at how wistful the game actually is.

Wry flourishes give Chop Suey its teeth: Dooner, an unemployed Gen-X slob, hides his girly mag in the dresser’s top drawer. And if our player puts on a pair of X-Ray Spex, Aunt Vera and boyfriend Ned are both reduced, tastefully, to their undergarments.

Were Chop Suey a literal, physical picturebook, it might resemble Richard Scarry’s Busytown as revised by Bratmobile. Alternatively, we might go along with Entertainment Weekly‘s description: “a little like Alice in Wonderland as performed by the B-52s for NPR.” (The magazine went on to name Chop Suey 1995’s <a href="http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,300154,00.html">CD-ROM of the Year</a>.)

Chop Suey‘s nearest analog, though, is a very different edutainment title, <a href="http://hardcoregaming101.net/cosmologyofkyoto/cosmologyofkyoto.htm">Cosmology of Kyoto</a>. Released the same year as Chop Suey, Kyoto is another interactive storybook designed to make good on the early-’90s’ promise of CD-based “multimedia.” But Kyoto is technically limited by Macromedia: the game itself feels strangely static, and while there’s lots to explore, there’s little to do.

Chop Suey suffers these failings and worse. All told, it takes only an hour to see everything in the game once, and then there is little incentive to play again, except to remember how the game went. The player can’t “save” her “progress,” because there is no such thing as progress. In 1995 at least one reviewer worried Chop Suey might frustrate children with its circular narrative.

Every moment in the game, however connected, is also suspended in time

But the game’s perpetual loop of story is deliberate: “It works the same way that Alice in Wonderland does, where she leaves home and then she has adventures,” designer Theresa Duncan <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=3929&ttype=2">explained in 1998</a>, “but if you took everything in between the beginning and the end of Alice in Wonderland and scrambled up every chapter, it would make no difference to the development of the story.” Every moment in the game, however connected, is also suspended in time.

In an industry glutted by worthless “games” for “girls” — the mid ‘90s begat a tide of titles like McKenzie & Co., Let’s Talk About Me!, and Barbie Fashion Designer — Chop Suey really did get it right.

Wired‘s Greg Beato was <a href="http://www.readability.com/articles/8pfhydkt">certainly impressed</a>. “With its sly whimsy and tactile, folk-art imagery,” Beato writes, "Chop Suey brings a whole new sensibility — quirky, poetic, almost bittersweet — to a medium that’s often lacking in such nuance."

The game’s visual charm owes no small debt to collaborator Monica Lynn Gesue, whose handmade art is at once childlike and sophisticated. Every screen is a frenetic hodgepodge; every animated painting, all squiggles and loop-de-loops.

Nevertheless, Chop Suey‘s main star was Theresa Duncan, whose competence as a game designer inspired a flurry of magazine profiles. But Duncan was celebrated as much for her audacious wardrobe as she was for her intellect. Salon, in 1998, called her <a href="http://www.salon.com/1998/09/24/feature_276/">“a predatory businesswoman,”</a> taking extra care to note how well-dressed she was. In a 2000 issue of Shift Magazine she was heralded "Silicon Valley’s It Girl"; this proclamation was accompanied by a photo spread. Paper <a href="http://www.papermag.com/arts_and_style/1999/04/theresa-duncan.php">profiled Duncan</a> as well: “Theresa wears a top by Ashley Pearce.”

In a 1997 issue of Bitch Magazine, Doreen Hinton — who presumably had never seen a glamor shot of Duncan — succeeded in praising Chop Suey itself, saying, “This is the least gender-specific game of all the ones labeled ‘for girls’ by marketers and writers.”

Indeed, where many developers were briefly, madly obsessed with giving pre-teen girls their own tier of games, Chop Suey‘s real accomplishment was that it seemingly targeted nobody. It’s “feminist,” albeit in a 1990s way: subtly, subversively. Not so long ago, girls’ books, girls’ music, and girls’ games demanded to be taken as seriously as the boys’, simply by being better than the boys’ stuff. A ’90s kid could opt to trade Sweet Valley High for Weetzie Bat or a Blake Nelson novel, say.

“[Duncan is] clearly the one to watch among developers of any gender,” Hinton’s article continued. “I can’t wait to see and hear and play her next offering.”

But Theresa Duncan managed only two more games. Smarty (1997) starred an eponymous heroine, Mimi Smartypants, and garnered a fast cult-like following. Zero Zero was released the very same year (“It’s good,” <a href="http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/1997/11/02/tec_216945.shtml">conceded the Associated Press</a>, “but it’s no Chop Suey”).

The Internet has been an unkind documentarian, slowly turning Chop Suey from a “has-been” into a “never-was.”

Why isn’t Chop Suey better remembered?

Even as Duncan struggled to market her next two games independently, the 1990s edutainment craze had staggered to a halt.

Despite all its critical acclaim, it’s tough to say whether Chop Suey ever sold well. Anyway, how could it have? By 1997, when I first started searching for a copy, the disc was completely out of production. (I did eventually find the game, in its original box, eight years later.) Tech journalist Sam Machkovech explains that contemporary educational software has no shelf life: “Edutainment sellers quickly realized families would pass CD-ROMs along to friends once their kids had grown out of them,” he told me, “like used baby clothes.”

Computer gamers, too, had lost patience for so-called interactive fiction. The genre was quaint at best; at worst, adventure games were boring.

In the end, though, the Internet’s memory is not too long. A search for Chop Suey uncovers almost nothing, redirecting instead to endless, looping coverage of Theresa Duncan’s 2007 death — a suicide, and a <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2007/12/how_well_did_jeremy_blake.html">salacious one</a> at that. Circular narratives really are frustrating, it turns out.

By 2007, 40-year-old Duncan had reinvented herself as a blogger and filmmaker. As a result, most obituaries blithely skim Duncan’s contributions to children’s edutainment. <a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/36091/">New York Magazine remembers</a> the erstwhile visionary as a “woman spurned by success.” Another article, this one <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/01/suicides200801?currentPage=all">from Vanity Fair</a>, describes a party at which Duncan “dragged out of a closet her old CD-ROMs”: the writer recasts Duncan’s computer games as some ancient football trophy the woman ought to have been embarrassed about. (The article continues, “‘Everybody kind of looked at each other like, Oh no, what is she doing?’”)

When Duncan reappeared in the news cycle, I thought Chop Suey might finally elicit more attention. I was wrong. A terrible, titillating death is far, far more interesting than an author or artist’s creative output.

Theresa Duncan’s death was assuredly a tragedy. But Chop Suey, like Duncan herself, was a critical darling of its time. The slow retcon of Chop Suey into anything less than a towering achievement is, in itself, tragic. The Internet has been an unkind documentarian, slowly turning Chop Suey from a “has-been” into a “never-was.”

In some ways, Chop Suey is very much a product of the ‘90s. It banked on that decade’s “girl game” boom. Its soundtrack screams alternative radio. Ornate scribbles and doodles glow as if they were lifted from MTV.

In other ways, Chop Suey is timeless. The technology holds up: the disc runs well, even on the latest computers. Duncan’s writing is still fresh, and Gesue’s artwork seems so alive. I’d venture to say that the game has aged “gracefully,” except that it has barely aged at all. Chop Suey is several perfect moments, suspended — “like shiny-dull pearls on a long, long necklace.”

Above all, Chop Suey was brave. It dared to represent the criminally underrepresented: that is, the wild imagination of some girl aged 7 to 12.

Connections:

Perfect: Lower Dens + Apollo 11

Michael_Byrne — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:18:00 +0000

Video producer David Dean Burkhart edited clips of the Apollo 11 launch together and set it to Lower Dens’ “Nova Anthem,” off the band’s gorgeous just-out Nootropics. Pretty sure it’s not an “authorized” music video or even legit song upload, but it was the band itself that brought it to my attention via Twitter. So they’re presumably not too ripped about the whole thing. I’m pretty glad about that because this is perfect.

Also: watch our own Apollo 11 fan video, and check this space over the next few days for an interview with Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter, who has a lot of good thoughts about being human in the post-human future and civilization’s “brains without a name.”

Connections:

Turning it Up to Apollo 11":http://motherboard.vice.com/2011/7/21/turn-it-up-to-apollo-11-an-epic-video-reminder-of-our-trip-to-the-moon
Video: Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter Looks Into the AI Soul and It’s Us
Apollo 11’s Engines Will Not Be Sold on Amazon.com

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.

Original Lower Dens image by Shawn Brackbill

Here is an Entire Rap Video About Rooftop Solar Power

Brian_Merchant — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:10:00 +0000

By and large, the hip hop community has remained curiously silent on the topic of rooftop solar installation. This is a shame. Fortunately, that coal-powered silence is about to be broken. I give you Sustainable John, and his new eco-rap video Occupy Rooftops,

Boom. The trail has been blazed, ladies and gentlemen. As we speak, Kanye West is thumbing through his thesaurus looking for words that rhyme with ‘photovoltaic.’

Sustainable John, who is kind of awesome and clearly doesn’t take himself too seriously even if he is very serious about renewable energy, has considerable green street cred: he’s a senior research associate at the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The video is in part a promotion for Solar Mosaic, a Berkeley-based company that helps regular folks invest in local solar power installations, and then allows them to earn returns from the plant’s revenue when it’s up and running. The process looks like this:

The brainchild of tireless solar advocate Billy Parish, it’s an excellent idea, as is the Occupy Rooftops campaign. Expect to see the company all over the place this summer, when Solar Mosaic it launches in full. Learn more here. The company may prove integral in facilitating the rise of distributed power generation—that is, helping us rely less on a handful of mega-plants like nuclear or coal-fired power plants, and instead on smaller, community-based power like solar arrays.

There are a number of reasons this is a really good idea:

-The grid is aging and fragile, so it’d be nice to have access to local power,
-Distributed power helps democratize energy production; as of now we pay what the utility tells us too
-Small solar and wind projects are obviously much cleaner than big dirty coal or gas plants, and safer than nuclear

I just hope the next eco-rap can work that stuff in. I also hope that Sustainable John kickstarts a clean energy rap meme, because I want to hear Jay-Z rap about offshore wind farms.

Image: Flickr, 0H08

Connections:

Buzz Kill: The World Is Not Gonna End This Year

Sam_McDougle — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:50:00 +0000

Newly uncovered hieroglyphs support the idea that the Mayans had a recycling calendar, rather than an apocalyptic one.

Motherboard GIFs Internet Week a New One

Sean_Yeaton — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:27:00 +0000

I know what you’re thinking and yes, every week is Internet Week at Motherboard, but that doesn’t mean we can hang our hats and stare down the business end of a glass of scotch when the actual Internet Week happens. Quite the contrary. In fact, this year they’re giving Motherboard 45 minutes to blow your ever-loving minds on stage and we’re going HAM talking about animated gifs with a few of our favorite Internet people. Trust us, this isn’t going to be some fluffy marketing biz-talk. We’re getting intellectual on one of the Internet’s most lasting cultural touchstones, the GIF.

Party!

It all goes down Tuesday, May 15th at noon. Check out the Internet Week website for more details. I’m anticipating that it’ll be the closest thing to a GG Allin performance Internet Week has ever seen. We’ll be announcing our guests over the weekend so keep your eyes and ears peeled for that. Oh, and the rest of the VICE family will be present throughout the week as well, so be sure to stay tuned to The Creators Project, Noisey and VICE for updates.

Follow Motherboard on Twitter and Facebook if you don’t already and, you know, let’s have fun and stuff.

Check out the flyer below for even more information and see you next week!

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ONES + ZEROS: Lying is OK, Stealing Too

Alec_Liu — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:31:00 +0000

Ones and Zeros is Motherboard’s weekly investigation into the particle accelerator that is the internet.

Want to Solve the Obesity Epidemic? Stop Blaming the Obese

Derek_Mead — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:19:00 +0000

America is ridiculously fat. That’s not even been a surprise for years; 36 percent of the adult U.S. population is obese, a proportion that’s expected to rise to 42 percent by 2030, according to new reports out this week. There’s at least a bright side to the bad news: after 30 years of record growth in the number of obese Americans, the pace is beginning to slow. (If we stayed at our old pace, more than half the country would be obese by 2030.) So while it seems that healthier offerings from restaurants, education campaigns, and maybe even high gas prices forcing people to walk have helped, we’re still having a lot of trouble stemming the tide of our growing waistlines.

Finding the solution is the trillion dollar question, considering that obesity-related health complications promise to increasingly burden our cash-strapped healthcare system. Sharon Begley, writing an excellent report for Reuters, suggests that one of the things we need most to change is our collective perception of the overweight.

How to Change Your Gender

Kelly_Bourdet — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:15:00 +0000

Tom Gabel, lead singer of Against Me!, announced this week that he will transition to living as a woman, and will change his name to Laura Jane Grace. Today, Argentina passed a Gender Identity law that will allow adults seeking sex-reassignment surgery and hormone therapy to have their expenses covered by private or public health insurance plans without approval from a doctor or a judge. With all this talk about transgender people in the news, one might wonder how people actually change their gender.

First, people identify with their biological sex in various ways. Transgender individuals can usually be broken down into one or more of these following categories. Crossdressers, who have previously been called “transvestites," are individuals who are content with their birth gender, but who enjoy dressing up in clothing typically worn by the opposite sex. They are often distinct from drag performers, and they are not necessarily gay and they do not necessarily want to undergo sex reassignment surgery (SRS). Drag performers are individuals who dress up and use the mannerisms of the opposite sex for entertainment purposes. Some identify as transgender; some do not.

Forcibly Chopping Long Hair is Perfectly Normal: A Visual History

Jonathan_Liu — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:45:00 +0000

How fair is it to hold 17-year-old Mitt’s actions against today’s candidate? After all, the current president has admitted to both eating dog meat and doing “a little blow when [he] could afford it” in his youth. And really, is forcibly removing a part of another person’s body that grows back anyway so terrible? Surely the involuntary haircut is just boyish hijinks on the level of short-sheeting a bed. What deeper malice could it possibly imply?

Abraham Lincoln Was an Internet Nerd

Martin_Connelly — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:15:00 +0000

Abraham Lincoln did not invent Facebook. But he did rely on the Internet to win the Civil War.

Just ask Tom Wheeler, a civil war historian who also happens to be the President and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, the industry’s leading trade association (the LA Times called him “the rock star of telecom”). His most recent book is a blend of both sides of his brain. Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War makes the case that Lincoln was not only tall, not only honest, but also a master of this radical new technology. Many have claimed the title before, but Lincoln, Wheeler says, was the first “technology president.”

The argument is elegant and compelling and crazy-sounding and completely reasonable: Lincoln’s adoption of technology – he received the country’s first transcontinental telegraph, from Stephen J. Field, chief justice of California, 151 years ago – was crucial in organizing his generals, and eventually for beating the Confederate army.

A “Dutch Uncle” telegram reminding General Grant that he needs to excersise vigilance if he’s going to win

The First Great Communicator

Over the course of the nearly 1,000 telegrams he sent, Lincoln re-defined a leader’s relationship with his forces in the field, and with information in general. While the other side slept, Lincoln checked the nearly instantaneous updates that were trickling in from the South, and turned the White House telegraph office into what historian Eliot Cohen has called “the first White House Situation Room.”

Throughout the entire history of warfare, a virtually instantaneous exchange between a national leader at the seat of government and his forces in the field had been impossible. Unlike any leader before – think Henry V or Napoleon Bonaparte – Lincoln could be in almost real time communication with his generals while at the same time holding strategic discussions with his advisors.

Lincoln wasn’t just a geek for near instant communication. His nerd credentials were bolstered by his obsession with surveying, geometry and astronomy (he had a telescope in his office), and his fascination with weapons tech (he once tested an early version of a hand-cranked machine gun on the White House lawn). Lincoln is also the only U.S. president to hold a patent (No. 6469, granted May 22, 1849), for a device to lift riverboats over shoals.

Despite being one of the earliest adopters of cutting-edge communication technology, Lincoln handled his telegrams with the same aplomb and will he brought to all of his writing. When Lincoln read a telegraph between General Grant and his chief of staff expressing concern that quelling the draft riots of 1864 might impact efforts on the war front, Lincoln fired off a classic T-mail to Grant, succinct and clear:

“I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold on where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke, as much as possible. – A. Lincoln, President”

As Wheeler writes, “It was as good as walking into Grant’s headquarters, sizing up the general’s state of mind, and responding through conversation… [Grant] held in his hands the tool Lincoln used for reinforcing his resolve and making sure that neither distance nor intermediaries diffused his leadership.” It’s a style that every President since, especially Obama, has had to master.

Lincoln’s Logs

Lincoln used the more informal communication medium to manage and receive updates about the tense election of 1864, and, in some cases, to be humorous too.

During the spring of 1864, while Lincoln’s wife and son Tad were in New York, she sent a telegram that “perfunctorily inquired as to how he was, asked for $50 to be sent immediately, and in an afterthought added Tad’s inquiry about his pet goats.” Lincoln, under significant wartime pressure, responded that the check was in the mail, and that she should tell Tad, “the goats and father are well—especially the goats.”

“Through this experience, Lincoln crafted the best way to guide, reprimand, praise, reward, and encourage his commanders in the field.”

In the spring of 1865, when Lincoln was stationed outside Richmond with Gen. Grant, he telegraphed Secretary Edwin Stanton with news that the city would soon fall into Union hands. Stanton immediately wired back his congratulations, but expressed concern for the President’s safety. Lincoln quickly wrote back, “I will take care of myself.”

Twelve days later, news of his assassination in Washington would spread across the country and around the world, by telegram of course.

Connections:

Image from LINCOLN IN THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE by David Bates published 1907.

Saudi Arabia to Become the Saudi Arabia of Solar

Brian_Merchant — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

When the nation that has so much damn oil that it became a ubiquitous metaphor for rampant abundance—massive natural gas reserves make America the Saudi Arabia of gas! The North Sea could be the Saudi Arabia of wind!—starts emptying its piggybank into solar power, maybe it’s finally time to start accepting that the age of crude is over.

The oil-richest nation in the world, Saudi Arabia is planning on spending $109 billion on clean energy projects, in an effort to become one of the world’s largest solar markets.

The Potentially-Alien F-22 Raptor Wasn't Designed for Oxygen-Breathers

Jonathan_Liu — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:30:00 +0000

Notice a pattern? The weak link in the next gen of manned military aircraft is invariably the man (or nowadays, woman). Pilots need oxygen. They need information fed to eyes that never stay in one place, in heads that come in a maddening array of shapes and sizes. People get upset when they die.

Did Obama's Opinion on Gay Marriage Actually "Evolve"?

Derek_Mead — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:20:00 +0000

I don’t think President Obama suddenly had some kind of epiphany before his interview with ABC News yesterday, in which he affirmed his support for gay marriage. I obviously can’t know for sure, but I’m in the camp that thinks he’s been pro-gay marriage for some time, and was forced into tipping his hand by Roarin’ Joe Biden. Still, what’s interesting to me is how Obama has long said he’s “evolving” on this issue. To say his views were “evolving” was an obvious evasion, but it’s his use of that specific word that always seemed to be a calculated wink at the left; he wasn’t waiting for divine intervention to strike him with a lightning bolt of gay marriage clarity. He was “evolving” methodically, like that Darwin guy all the liberals like! It was like his thinly-coded plea to stick with him while we waited for the survival of the fittest cultural mores.

Chimp Nut-Smashing Techniques Explain Our Proto-Culture

Sam_McDougle — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Conventional wisdom makes a big deal about the cultural gap that sets humans apart from apes – that giant chasm between nut-smashing and Beethoven.

The Idiocy of Demonizing Bradley Manning: An Interview with Civil Rights Lawyer Chase Madar

Michael_Arria — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Bradley Manning has now spent close to 700 days in jail without trial. Chase Madar’s The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History is being published this month by OR Books. It’s an instructive and necessary text that should be read by anyone trying to make sense of our current foreign policy dilemmas, as well as the obsession with secrecy championed by our ruling class.

Madar writes, “If there’s one thing to learn from the last ten years, it’s that government secrecy and lies come at a very high price in blood and money. And though information is powerless on its own, it is still a necessary precondition for any democratic state to function. Thanks to the whistleblowing revelations attributed to Bradley Manning, we have a far clearer picture of what our own country is doing.”

Madar was nice enough to answer some questions about Manning, Wikileaks, and the disturbing silence of liberals through the whole ordeal.

One Laptop Per Child and Epic Screens: 8.5 Questions with Pixel Qi's Mary Lou Jepsen

Trevor_Macomber — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Mary Lou Jepsen is the founder and CEO of Pixel Qi Corporation, a manufacturer of low-cost, low-power LCD screens for laptops. She has also been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine for her work in creating One Laptop per Child (OLPC), where, as chief technology officer, she led the engineering and architected the design of the $100 XO laptop, now used by more than 2.5 million children and teachers in 42 countries around the world.

I recently sat down with Mary Lou (by which I mean, we each sat down at different computers at different times) to pick her brain about the future of LCD screen technology and how she feels about 80’s-era gymnasts with similar names.

The 1-Bit Camera App Is Cool, But Here's a Whole Movie Made With the Game Boy Camera

Michael_Byrne — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:56:00 +0000

About a month ago an app called the 1-Bit Camera arrived, promising images with fidelity low enough to make Instagram look like HDR. The nostalgia it delivers is a bit more recent than Instagram’s film love, however, recalling the Game Boy Camera, an add-on that came out in 1998 promising to Game Boyify reality. Which it did really well. And the Game Boy Camera had some fairly serious fans too, judging by the the wave of excitement over the 2012 app, and this video, “15 Things You Hope Never Happen To You In A Urinal.” Done in 2001, it’s the product of only Game Boy software and hardware, and also happens to be pretty funny. Thank Ben Claassen, Josh Sisk (disclosure: both friends of this writer), and Loren Cox for the masterpiece.

Connections:

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.

Mark Zuckerberg is Immature: So What?

Alec_Liu — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:30:00 +0000

Investors this week have been chattering about what they’ve deemed to be “marks of immaturity” for the traveling CEO during Facebook’s pre-IPO roadshow.

The guy wore a hoodie?! How crass.

Why It's Now Legal to Look at Child Porn Online in New York

Brian_Merchant — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

An appeals judge has just ruled that it’s legal to view child pornography online in New York, and the internet is blowing up. James D. Kent, an assistant prof at a college in upstate New York, was convicted after his “work computer was found to have stored more than a hundred illegal images its Web cache,” MSNBC reports. Kent claims he didn’t know they were there, someone must have duped him, they were for research, etc. Yet the appeals court found that images sticking around in your cache are different than images you purposefully save or keep in a drawer or otherwise “own.”

Science Can't Be Trusted and We Don't Know How to Talk About It

Derek_Mead — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

If science can’t trust itself, how can researchers expect the already-fickle public to care about their work? That’s the massive question flying around the science web right now, the result of one issue that’s steadily becoming glaring: bias is becoming increasingly prevalent in scientific research. It’s a real problem for science journalists as well: How can we engage a public that has no faith in science itself?

In a great look at the bias question in Nature, Daniel Sarewitz observes that bias has been a particular issue in the biomedicine world, and points to early-90s clinical drug trials as the tipping point where obvious biases started becoming prevalent. Perhaps unfortunately, the problem then found easy blame: pharmaceutical companies footing the bill for research that will, they hope, proves that their drugs work.

This led to what seemed like an easy fix: stricter rules about declaring where research funding came from, and attempts by more prestigious journals to chase out work that had questionable backers. But it’s become clear that funding-related biases weren’t the issue. Research selected for publication has increasingly trended towards false positives. Sarewitz explains that the bias problem is not just about getting funding for your research, but the larger social pressure on scientists, who spend much of their lives pursuing the minutiae of cells or brains or climate, to make research that pays off, and produces Important Contributions.

Like a magnetic field that pulls iron filings into alignment, a powerful cultural belief is aligning multiple sources of scientific bias in the same direction. The belief is that progress in science means the continual production of positive findings. All involved benefit from positive results, and from the appearance of progress. Scientists are rewarded both intellectually and professionally, science administrators are empowered and the public desire for a better world is answered. The lack of incentives to report negative results, replicate experiments or recognize inconsistencies, ambiguities and uncertainties is widely appreciated — but the necessary cultural change is incredibly difficult to achieve.

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Even as more people acknowledge the problem, and suggest fixes (like creating journals dedicated to null results), it’s extremely difficult to get the establishment to change. The system should be simple, with novel, well-reasoned hypotheses and thoughtful recreations of past research getting support. The results, positive or negative, should have nothing to do with whether work is published. But that’s not the case.

Science journals want the latest, craziest, most incredible research to help their own circulation, and it’s helpful on the journal side for those results to be positive. Let me offer a rather extreme example: If a journal ran a paper titled “The potential for Mars rock to cure cancer,” it would certainly get coverage. But readers are going to cry foul if the results are false; of course space rocks don’t cure cancer, right? In this situation, an attention-getting paper somehow feels more credible if its results are positive.

There’s also the feeling of finality when researchers can state that, for example, a certain chemical imbalance is the cause of a mental disorder, as opposed to saying that results are inconclusive. And, with evidence mounting that new research isn’t ever referencing the old, and that science essentially isn’t building on itself, there’s no support structure for methodical further investigation when results turn out false. In all those cases, there’s pressure for positive results, even if they’re actually false.

But let’s take this way back to the beginning. The one-directional bias isn’t just bad for the world of science: it’s very bad for the larger world, where science literacy is already pretty scarce.

Everything presented by humans is biased in some way, even if we’re trying our damnedest to be objective. That’s why it’s so important for journalists to work both sides of the story, to gather enough sources to present a well-balanced picture to readers. That’s doubly true when talking about science, where it’s impossible to expect that reporters will be experts in cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines.

Because of that, bias should be relatively easy to deal with; talk with enough people about the surprising results of some new paper, and eventually sources’ varying viewpoints are going to pull towards a bias-free middle ground. But that approach only works if bias is random. With the tide turning in one direction, it gets harder to find people that can reliably act as a counter-balance. And how’s this for a thought: If a balancing viewpoint is harder to find, then those people are likely to get more press, which increases the reward for some folks to be needlessly contrarian.

Of course, it’s easy to spiral down a rabbit hole of paranoia in a discussion like this, and I hope that it doesn’t spawn a whole lot of tinfoil-hattery. Writers have to trust that doing thorough reporting – and restraining from making the kind of blanket, definitive “here’s the cure!” statements that make for good headlines – will pay off in accuracy just the same as it always has. Still, the question looms: if one-directional bias in science makes reporting increasingly difficult, what’s a public that’s already being pandered to with sensationalist monkey business to do? Well, we’ll probably need more research.

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @drderekmead.

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Nature Adapts to the Most Awful Shit, Including "Traumatic Insemination"

Michael_Byrne — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:13:00 +0000

Motherboard covered fairly recently the evolved mating strategy of male bed bugs, which involves said creeps literally stabbing female bed bugs with their horrible bed bug dick lances. As if you needed more evidence that bed bugs are just the worst things evolution ever spawned. Well, some new research into the mating habits of bugs — warehouse pirate bugs specifically, which do the same traumatic insemination thing — reveals that female bed bugs are up to their own evolutionary race to, you know, survive the attacks of the males.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t involve the female bed bugs acquiring a sheen of acid and melting the male’s unit as it goes for the stab. But it’s a pretty interesting illustration of how awesome and weird and stupid evolution is. The males evolved into this new method to have better chances at reproduction by taking more control, removing the female’s decision power. So the females have evolved in return to have new organs that help prevent infection, which helps them survive the attacks. And, since so many of them die young because of mating, the females have evolved to lay more eggs, upping their reproductive potential.

And that’s your nature-is-a—bad-dream news of the day. You can find all the details in the new issue of Biology Letters.

Connection:

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.

Ouch: Humans Were Performing Brain Surgery 10,000 Years Ago

Derek_Mead — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:36:00 +0000

Our brains are a real mystery. Ignoring the Terminal Man era quandary of whether or not our brains are powerful enough to understand how they themselves work (yes, I’m name-checking Michael Crichton here), what’s really absurd is that everything we do is controlled by a fragile blob of grey jelly. The thing is, our brains apparently aren’t all that frail, as evidenced by arcane ridiculousness like the story of Phineas Gage.

Okay, so this is cool, but I know you’re wondering what this brainy talk has to do with anything. Well, I just found out something absolutely astonishing: We oh-so-resourceful humans have been performing brain surgery — successfully, mind you — for up to 10,000 years. In fact, the act of cutting open the skull is likely the oldest surgical procedure humans have ever performed.

In a 2007 paper published in Italian medical journal ACTA Otorhinolaryngologica Italica, Dr. Giorgio Sperati undertakes the massive task of tracking craniotomies throughout history. According to Sperati, evidence suggests that craniotomies — surgeries involving removing a section of the skull in order to access the brain — were first being performed in the Neolithic Age, which lasted from 8000-5000 BC. (The paper was revealed to me today by Memorial Hermann hospital’s Twitter stream, where the first live-tweeting of a brain surgery happened today.)

Of course, such an incredible finding didn’t come about without contention. Medical historian Henry E. Sigerist wrote that prehistoric skulls with surgical perforation were found in France as early as 1685. But for nearly a hundred years those holes, which were mostly found in the parietal or occipital bones, were attributed to trauma, not surgery. It wasn’t until the late 1700s that anthropologists M. Prunières and Paul Broca suggested that the marks were the result of surgery, although they originally argued that such surgery was inspired by mystic, rather than medical, causes.

However, the procedure eventually was used for treatment purposes. Opening the skull can relieve brain pressure, which, according to Sperati, can “lead to an improvement in certain pre-existing neurological symptoms, such as headache, paresis, [and] convulsive states.” Whatever the original reason for cutting open skulls, these positive effects likely increased the surgery’s popularity. Sperati notes that nearly half of patients survived ancient craniotomies — and with evidence of regrown bone around the incisions on some skulls, some of those patients must have lived for years. That’s a stunning fact considering neolithic surgeons didn’t have operating rooms, antibiotics, anything resembling sterile conditions — or even metal tools.

Sperati thus delves into the nitty-gritty details:

The medicine men of neolithic times had thus reached an incredible technical ability in performing this type of surgical procedure despite the fact that they only had primitive tools such as pointed or sharp cutting tools derived from silica or obsidian.

Only much later were metallic instruments used, made of copper or bronze, such as gouges, curettes, scalpels, knives of various forms, some of which very special, such as the “tumi”, or scalpel, in ancient Perù. It is worthwhile taking a closer look at the drill, one of the very oldest tools known. Originally, it was probably derived from a technique used by early man to produce fire, by rapidly rubbing, between the palms of their hands, a rod hammered into a piece of wood that with an inflammable agent would catch fire. If the rod was of hard material, it would make the pre-existing hole larger or even create a new one and the observation of this peculiarity probably led to the birth of the early drill. It consisted in a small sharp rod made of hard stone or metal which was swivelled rapidly between the hands; to obtain greater speed, a cord could be passed around it, the ends of which were pulled alternately with a very rapid “to and fro” movement. Another improvement was made by fixing the perforating rod to the strings of a bow thus making it possible for this manoeuvre to be performed by one person alone.

Here’s an example of an Egyptian bow drill being used for beads. Imagine that drilling into your head.

Sperati traces skull surgery up until it spawned the modern disciple of neurosurgery, and it’s quite a read. But I can’t get past the idea of an ancient shaman boring slowly into my dome to cure a headache. The fact that such surgery was relatively successful is a testament to the resilience of our own brains. (Although, of course, it’s impossible to tell that, even if the patients survived for a few years, whether poking around their heads with stone tools actually produced improvements.)

But I think what’s fascinating about Sperati’s paper in a broader sense is its demonstration of how stumble-bumble the scientific (if we can call it that) process in prehistoric times, and even more recently. For just about as far back as we can tell, discoveries in science and medicine have been thanks to a mix of curiosity, luck, and brazen action. (It takes a bold person to convince someone else to submit to stone-age surgery.) I mean, the FDA has only been around since 1906, and even then people were getting prescribed opium and amphetamines.

So these days, even as clinical drug trials drag on forever and the slow approval process for medical procedures has athletes flying around the world, I guess we’re pretty lucky to be living in an age of careful research where the majority of us aren’t stuck being guinea pigs. I’ll tell you one thing though: after hearing about Neolithic craniotomies, I’m now going to feel even worse when I let loose with a string of horrific expletives next time I stub my toe.

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter.

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Obama's an Environmental Failure: An Interview with Journalist Joshua Frank

Michael_Arria — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:35:00 +0000

Shortly after BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling ring exploded, killing 11 men and ultimately dumping 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope was quick to rush to the defense of the President. “President Obama is the best environmental president we’ve had since Teddy Roosevelt,” he declared, a strange statement, not only because Obama had only been at the helm for only two years, but also because the green lights for excessive offshore drilling had been established through the predictable methods of contemporary American democracy: the candidates were flooded with money. The Obama campaign accepted more from British Petroleum than any politician over the last twenty years.

Motherboard TV: Impossible is Something: An Interview with Aleksey Vayner

Alex_Pasternack — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:15:00 +0000

In 2006, a Yale undergraduate named Aleksey Vayner was looking for a finance job after college. So he made a video about his rules for success, featuring footage of assorted athletic achievements. He then sent the video, along with his resume, to UBS. A copy-paste later, and the video was on its way to bankers across Wall Street. Days later, it landed on YouTube, and turned Vayner’s over-the-top vanity film into a meme, “Impossible is Nothing.” Coupled with Vayner’s Wall Street ambitions and his dry, studied delivery, the video and Aleksey’s koan became a cultural marker for male braggadocio, a symbol for the gladiatorial hunger of America’s best and brightest, and, well, unintentional hilarity.

Vayner, a driven athlete who emigrated from Uzbekistan and settled in New York City at a young age, was just being himself. In a matter of days, he had gone from being an ambitious college kid with a penchant for tennis and weightlifting and martial arts to the laughing stock of the web – the target of endless barbs, parodies (including one by Michael Cera, and many questions about credibility – on the giant playground of the Internet.

“I felt kind of like that Star Wars Kid,” he says, referring to Ghyslain Raza, the Canadian boy who had to seek therapy after classmates began spreading a mocking (but also admittedly hilarious) video of him across P2P services. “I hit rock bottom,” says Vayner.

What the Internet giveth it also taketh away, sometimes in the cruelest ways. Vayner and Raza are only two of the most prominent victims of the Internet’s bullying tendency, but there’s a lot more viciousness where that came from. After Kony 2012, the most viral video of all time, got kicked around by skeptics also posing questions about credibility, the video’s creator lost his nerve on a San Diego street corner. That led to another, different kind of viral video; Russell ended up seeing psychological help. That same week, we had another reminder of the vicious power of the web, when a jury in New Jersey delivered the guilty verdict in the spy-cam-suicide case of Tyler Clementi. Sometimes the lulz aren’t very funny.

“We grew up with the Internet, but that doesn’t mean the Internet’s grown up,” the digital anthropologist Sherry Turkle says. We’re learning to cope with the era of YouTube and Facebook bullying much as we’re learning to cope with everything else that’s digital. Stringent defamation and cyber-bullying laws might help, but so will learning to parse the digital version of ourselves from the in-real-life versions.

It’s not easy. “You’re going to be in shock for a while, when you see what people have written,” Scumbag Steve wrote in an open letter to Annoying Facebook Girl last year (those names given to them by the Internet, of course). “But the most important and self-preserving thing you can do is know that it’s not you. You can’t take this personally. I’ll say that again, you can’t take this personally. Hell if I did… well let’s not go there.”

“The part that will suck though is that there will always be those people that somehow think YOU did this, that you made the meme, and that you could stop it if you wanted to,” writes Scumbag, aka Blake Boston. “The internet birthed you and they’ll decide when you (the meme) will die.”

Six years after his video leaked, Aleksey lives with his wife in New York City, where he’s started his own company, worked in financial analysis, philanthropy, and, yes, internet marketing. When I interviewed him at ROFLcon in 2010, a few years after the whole fiasco, Aleksey said he’d been humbled by the experience, and learned valuable lessons about Internet culture, and how it takes to big egos, self-promotion, and inauthenticity. Aleksey’s best advice for those who actually want to achieve Internet fame: “Take what is useful, discard what is useless, and make it essentially your own.” It’s a paraphrase of Bruce Lee’s, but what works for excelling at martial arts is also the foundation of all meme-making. (To me, “Impossible is Nothing” was a pretty good IRL remix of Max Fischer’s inspiring yearbook montage in Rushmore.)

The great irony of the Internet’s “Impossible is Nothing” ridicule is that, just a few years later, self-promotion has become one of the cornerstones of social media. Of course, the Internet can also be good at spotting fakes and calling out duds. “You need some solid ground and performance before you try to become famous,” says Vayner. “You can talk all you want, but if you don’t have the substance, if you don’t have the performance behind your words, then it’s meaningless.”

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European Exploration of Jupiter is About to Get JUICE-y

Amy_Teitel — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:40:00 +0000

A new ESA mission to Jupiter has some ambitious plans to study the gas giant and three of its more interesting moons.

Future Sex: Zombie Love and My Forty-Eight Facebook Exes

Kelly_Bourdet — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:20:00 +0000

The other night I was reading Lorrie Moore’s excellent short story, Wings, in the current spring issue of the Paris Review and came across this quote: “You could lose someone a little but they would still roam the earth. The end of love was one big zombie movie.” This idea arrested me, mostly because I like zombies, but then I thought, “Yeah, she’s right.” All our past loves are out there somewhere, lost to us but still roaming around. The relationships are over, but we’re never quite free of our feelings for them; they persist, undead, these weird figments from our past.

The Truth about America's Highway Killers: An Interview with Author Ginger Strand

Michael_Arria — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:20:00 +0000

In the special Bicentennial Issue of Life, the nation’s interstate system was described as, “The most grandiose and indelible signature that Americans have ever scratched across the face of their land.” This statement remains truer than the magazine’s editors knew. While the country’s sprawling network of roads can conjure up the most positive of our cultural touchstones (ambition, hope, freedom, The Pursuit of Happiness), the construction and use of the interstates are caught in the same contradictions that define America’s legacy.

Thoroughly impressed by the Autobahn while leading the Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight Eisenhower envisioned transport routes that would impair a hypothetical foreign invasion. As President he authorized the system via the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, with planning help from Charles Erwin Wilson, the man who was appointed Secretary of Defense while still of General Motors and famously declared, “For years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa."

Motherboard TV: Behind the Scenes of Where the Wild Things Are

Derek_Mead — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:39:00 +0000

On assignment for Motherboard, Vice co-founder Shane Smith traveled to London to meet with Spike Jonze during the production of Where the Wild Things Are. It took 300 artists and specialists to develop an innovative and heavily work-intensive way of animating – using CGI on top of giant puppets and costumes – to reproduce the Wild Things of Sendak’s book. Despite the fact that Sendak was vehemently anti-tech when it came to books (see the following interview with Stephen Colbert), the film required a ton of innovative technology to get off the ground. In honor of one of our favorite dream-makers, enjoy this video from our vaults, get ahold of Spike Jonze’s and Lance Bangs’ 2009 Sendak documentary Tell Them Anything You Want (or watch the Vice version) and take the chance to dig through Sendak’s excellent bibliography. Just don’t look for his books online.

The Best Clock In the Universe Is Made of Pure Light

Michael_Byrne — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:18:00 +0000

What is a second? You could do the whole “one one thousand” thing and not be terribly far off, and that might be OK for calculating things like how fast you’re driving on the highway or how much you should get paid for a certain amount of time worked, but having time down to the accuracy of many, many zeros is important for a lot of other things, like doing measurements at the quantum level and using GPS to find very precise locations. And, just generally speaking, as humans in 21st century, we like to know as much as possible about everything, and that means having a whole lot of zeros to the right of the decimal point.

So we come up with clocks that base their measurements off of the most fundamental thing: light. Time flexible after all — or, better, stretchable. This is because the speed of light in a vacuum is not flexible. That’s Einstein’s relativity, or a quick sniff of it anyhow. If you go really, really fast you will be able to slow down time for yourself because of this. If you’re racing a beam of light, then, from your perspective, the speed of that light will be the same at the starting line as it is in the middle of the race, if you’re not moving or moving very fast. “Your” time will be different, however, for everything to work out right. The point is that you don’t measure the speed of light based on time, you measure time based on the speed of light. OK? Good.

So, a group of scientists led by Dr. Stefan Droste from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and the Federal Institute of Physical and Technical Affairs in South and North Germany has been working on a new super-clock that, uh, does that. It uses optical wavelengths of light. We have clocks that use microwave frequencies to tell time (microwaves are the same stuff, photons, as optical light waves; light is a broad spectrum that includes some stuff we don’t normally think of as light), and we have clocks that use light — OK, electromagnetic radiation, correctly — in the ultraviolet spectrum.

We’ve been working on clocks on that use electromagnetic radiation in the optical frequency range — between ultraviolet and microwave — for a while, but it’s only with Dr. Droste and company’s work that we’ve been able to transmit that signal undistorted. It might seem like an easy thing, like just sending a number. But think about what that number is and how you’re sending it. The number is a very fine measurement of extraordinarily stable electromagnetic waves, and you’re sending it via more electromagnetic waves along fiber optic cables very long distances. Disruptions that wouldn’t make a difference in most any other thing being transmitted can make a time signal this precise worthless.

Over at Motherboard’s big sister Vice, Ben Majoy has a piece on the new work and talked with Dr. Droste.

“We do not question the accuracy of time,” Dr. Droste says. “We know that it’s only accurate to a certain extent. Time, as we know it, is based on cesium atomic clocks. These kinds of clocks have accuracies to the order of 1e-15. The confidence in the time that clocks show is increased by comparing hundreds of clocks around the world with one another, and this is important since with only one single clock, you cannot know whether your clock is showing the correct time or not.”

He explained that modern celcium clocks have tiny oscillating quartz crystals built in that make for a “fairly accurate clock signal.” Conversely, atomic clocks have atoms that get excited and return a less excited, very stable frequency in the microwave region. Now the optical clock, which is the crux of this experiment, is basically the same as the atomic clock, but instead of microwaves, it generates optical frequencies that have about 50,000 to 100,000 times higher frequencies. Oh OK. Gotcha. So those are clocks.

“The accuracy is a property of a clock and can therefore not be off,” Dr. Droste continues. “The clock itself can be off and the degree of how far off it is defines its accuracy. State-of-the-art optical clocks reach uncertainties of 1e-18. This is the relative accuracy, and from this you can calculate how many nanoseconds the clock will be off after a day, or how many seconds it will be off after a million years.”

However, Dr. Droste also made it clear that optical clocks are currently in an experimental state and “cannot be transported.” The principle idea behind what they tested then, was the ability to get the stable frequencies out of the lab where the clock lives, sending them with accuracy over distance.

Dr. Droste and his crew “won,” so to speak. They transferred a signal 10 times as accurate as needed 920 km using 10 signal amplifiers. And now you can all go back to pretending time is anything more than an illusion that has no real basis in physical laws outside of probability. But we’ll talk about that later.

Connections:

At Fermilab, Imagining Neutrinos As Light-Speed Carrier Pigeons
Sorry Einstein, Neutrinos Are Still Going Faster Than Light At OPERA
“Poking Holes In Einstein With Horava Gravity”http://motherboard.vice.com/2010/8/10/poking-holes-in-einstein-with-horava-gravity

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.

Tumblr Invaded the New York Times' Underground Morgue

Alex_Pasternack — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Not far from the paper’s shiny headquarters, the Times still keeps its morgue, the clippings archive that in the olden days was Google before Google, and where now newspaper clippings and photos – actual, physical things – go to die. Or to get resurrected on the Times photo blog, or on the morgue’s Tumblr site, http://livelymorgue.tumblr.com. Tumblr’s pretty new storytelling blog, Storyboard, went down there with a video camera to meet the man who runs it, one Jeffery Roth, who has fought off dust, cockroaches, and the newspaper’s business division. In 2009, the number crunchers tried to sell the 3,300 square-foot space, until Roth staved them off with a forceful letter to a managing editor.

There’s no computer, no Internet, no cell reception, nothing but filing cabinets full of head-spinning serendipitous discoveries (Diane Arbus’s engagement pic, lost photos of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, the only known images of the Stonewall Riot’s finale). In the age of digital, the arguments for keeping a place like this can be hard to see, but they’re much easier to touch and smell. Lexi Mainland, the Times social media editor, offers Karp and co. a tip, if they really want to help save print: “If only Tumblrs could have a smell.”

Connections:

How Titanoboa, History's Largest Snake, Is a Paleo-Thermometer

Ryan_Haupt — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Several years ago a coal mine in Columbia turned up some fossils, which is quite common for industrial digging sites, and they sometimes even let paleontologists play with their finds. This particular dig included a good bit of vertebrate material, including some really big crocs and turtles.

This was packaged and sent up to the Florida Natural History Museum where, one day, a grad student named Alex got to a sample labeled as “croc vertebrae” while unpacking the fossils. Alex, who is something of a crocodile expert, said something along the lines of “This is definitely not a crocodile.”

Alex and Professor Jonathan Bloch eventually figured out that what they had on their hands must have come from a snake. A snake that dwarfed their collection’s 17 foot anaconda.

At this point they decided to include fossil snake expert Dr. Jason Head, who quickly realized that they had found the largest snake ever known to science: a 42-foot giant they named Titanoboa. I believe I should now have your complete attention.

Why Psychiatry Embraced Drugs: An Interview with Author Robert Whitaker

Kelly_Bourdet — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Recently, the biopsychiatric take on depression and many other mental disorders has come under attack. We’ve been told that many psychiatric illnesses are caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brains of the affected and that common antidepressants and antipsychotics work to correct it. The only problem? That whole concept was known to be wrong 25 years ago. Why, then, are so many people handed prescriptions that purport to fix their imbalances?

Robert Whitaker began researching for a series on abuses of psychiatric patients for the Boston Globe with a self-professed conventional understanding of psychiatry. But as he delved deeper into the scientific literature, he found surprising results. Where was the proof of the chemical imbalance? Why did short-term outcome studies show improvement with drug treatment, but long-term outcome studies showed medicated patients faring worse than their unmediated counterparts?

Whitaker’s research eventually became Anatomy of an Epidemic, a detailed work of scientific journalism that questions our current psychiatric paradigm. I had the chance to speak with him recently to discuss how there’s such a broad disconnect between psychiatric research and the common perception of how psychiatric issues are solved.

Sorry Zynga, Draw Something Is a Disaster

Alec_Liu — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:30:00 +0000

A month after Zynga plopped $200 million down for gaming startup Omgpop so it could swallow up overnight sensation Draw Something, the pictionary game is already bleeding users, down 5 million from its peak, confirming many of the critics that figured the company had seriously overpaid.

With a Few Billion Dollars, You Could Change the World's Weather Patterns

Brian_Merchant — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Geoengineering might save the world, but geoengineering might also destroy the world. Geoengineering should strike terror into the heart of every self-respecting humanist, but geoengineering might just be necessary. Geoengineering may avert catastrophic climate change, but geoengineering may also unleash a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences that forever alters the planet’s climatic system.

You get the picture. The concept of artificially tampering with the world’s climate—say, by injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere or seeding clouds with salt—is as controversial as anything scientists are currently considering doing. The idea is to reflect light back into space to offset the warming caused by the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Few ideas are as contentious.

And Out of the Syrup Haze Stumbled Kitty Pryde, Finally Getting the Tumblr-Wave Joke

Michael_Byrne — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Imagine Kreayshawn or, really, any other internet-famous rapper popular among the internet cool kids of 2012, and it’s an image not so much startled by the spotlight, but stupefied by it. Your latest rap meme is Kitty Pryde and the Florida rapper’s maybe something different than a lot of things you’re already forgetting about, maybe something smarter and more-self-aware. Kitty Pryde gets it, at least. Over at Motherboard’s big sister Vice, Luke O’Neil has some good thoughts.

Of course it doesn’t hurt her impending online lovefest, already well underway, that her subject matter is all so internetty. It’s not hashtag rap, but reblog rap, ideas dragged and clicked over from one page to the next, assembled in incongruous collage—like an unfolding Tumblr of seizure-inducing gifs and the contradiction of a cute animal pic followed by a porn gif followed by a violent film still broadcast from within the frame of a teenager’s messy bedroom. “I don’t do it on purpose,” she says of that meme-style. “Maybe I just think in internet. Oh my god, that’s horrible.”

Dubstep Dumbass Laser Cat: This Is the Most YouTube Video of All Time

Derek_Mead — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:23:00 +0000

I just happened to be searching for “dumb cat” on YouTube when I came across this video. If YouTube ever becomes a member of the UN, this video would be its representative delegate. Let’s just check off all the overused tropes it touches on:

Where Google Meets Giggle: The Weirdest Search Engines Online

Trevor_Macomber — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Last week, we entered the realm of the subversive recursive to see what happens when you use search engines to search for search engines. This week, we’re bypassing the mirror-house madness to bring you a truly off-kilter collection of search engines that just could change the way you browse the Internet. Or kill five minutes here or there. You know — big picture stuff.

MOTHERBOARD

What Were Middle Eastern Generals Buying at the World's Largest Weapons Expo?

Is CGI Software Poised to Kill Photography? It's Close

A Richer China Isn't Happier, and That Spells Trouble

Why is the Waning War on Drugs So Focused on Fake Weed?

Shiri Is the Robo-Butt That 2 Live Crew Dreamed Of

The Accidental Highs and Lows of the FAA's Drone Act

Dark Tourism, In Which People Vacation with Death, Just Got Academic

Track Every Species on Earth with the Map of Life

Struggling To Survive in the 21st Century, the Postal Service Kicks Out Electronics?

Connections:

The Queen of England Is an Incredible Corgi Whisperer, Says Royal Cowboy

Hot Links: Teens Sue Feds over Climate Change, Iran Bans Gmail, 170 Year Old Beer

The U.S. Government Interviews Isaac Asimov in 1975

Connections:

via Archive.org

A New Commercial Rocket Means the Space Race Is Back On

In a Field of '90s Barbieland Wreckage, Chop Suey Got Gaming for Girls Totally Right

. . . Lily and June’s own imaginations illustrate those stories in happier, more magical idioms

Every moment in the game, however connected, is also suspended in time

The Internet has been an unkind documentarian, slowly turning <em>Chop Suey</em> from a “has-been” into a “never-was.”

Connections:

Perfect: Lower Dens + Apollo 11

Connections:

Original Lower Dens image by Shawn Brackbill

Here is an Entire Rap Video About Rooftop Solar Power

Connections:

Buzz Kill: The World Is Not Gonna End This Year

Motherboard GIFs Internet Week a New One

Party!

Connections:

ONES + ZEROS: Lying is OK, Stealing Too

Want to Solve the Obesity Epidemic? Stop Blaming the Obese

How to Change Your Gender

Forcibly Chopping Long Hair is Perfectly Normal: A Visual History

Abraham Lincoln Was an Internet Nerd

A “Dutch Uncle” telegram reminding General Grant that he needs to excersise vigilance if he’s going to win

The First Great Communicator

Lincoln’s Logs

“Through this experience, Lincoln crafted the best way to guide, reprimand, praise, reward, and encourage his commanders in the field.”

Connections:

Saudi Arabia to Become the Saudi Arabia of Solar

The Potentially-Alien F-22 Raptor Wasn't Designed for Oxygen-Breathers

Did Obama's Opinion on Gay Marriage Actually "Evolve"?

Chimp Nut-Smashing Techniques Explain Our Proto-Culture

The Idiocy of Demonizing Bradley Manning: An Interview with Civil Rights Lawyer Chase Madar

One Laptop Per Child and Epic Screens: 8.5 Questions with Pixel Qi's Mary Lou Jepsen

The 1-Bit Camera App Is Cool, But Here's a Whole Movie Made With the Game Boy Camera

Connections:

Mark Zuckerberg is Immature: So What?

Why It's Now Legal to Look at Child Porn Online in New York

Science Can't Be Trusted and We Don't Know How to Talk About It

Connections:

Nature Adapts to the Most Awful Shit, Including "Traumatic Insemination"

Connection:

Ouch: Humans Were Performing Brain Surgery 10,000 Years Ago

Here’s an example of an Egyptian bow drill being used for beads. Imagine that drilling into your head.

Connections:

Obama's an Environmental Failure: An Interview with Journalist Joshua Frank

Motherboard TV: Impossible is Something: An Interview with Aleksey Vayner

Connections:

European Exploration of Jupiter is About to Get JUICE-y

Future Sex: Zombie Love and My Forty-Eight Facebook Exes

The Truth about America's Highway Killers: An Interview with Author Ginger Strand

Motherboard TV: Behind the Scenes of Where the Wild Things Are

The Best Clock In the Universe Is Made of Pure Light

Connections:

Tumblr Invaded the New York Times' Underground Morgue

Connections:

How Titanoboa, History's Largest Snake, Is a Paleo-Thermometer

Why Psychiatry Embraced Drugs: An Interview with Author Robert Whitaker

Sorry Zynga, Draw Something Is a Disaster

With a Few Billion Dollars, You Could Change the World's Weather Patterns

And Out of the Syrup Haze Stumbled Kitty Pryde, Finally Getting the Tumblr-Wave Joke

Dubstep Dumbass Laser Cat: This Is the Most YouTube Video of All Time

Where Google Meets Giggle: The Weirdest Search Engines Online