Lunar Echo Experiment looking for Amateur Radio Participants
Topic: Science
4:26 pm EST, Jan 17, 2008
he HF Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Alaska and the Long Wavelength Array (LWA) in New Mexico are planning an additional lunar echo experiment for January 18-19.
Interested radio amateurs are invited to participate in this experiment by listening for the lunar echoes and submitting reports.
On January 19, listen on 6.7925 MHz from 0500-0600z, and on 7.4075 MHz from 0600-0700z. On January 20, listen on 6.7925 MHz from 0630-0730z and on 7.4075 MHz from 0730-0830z (depending on frequency occupancy at the time of operation, it may be necessary to adjust the frequency slightly).
Based on previous experiments, investigators believe it should be possible to hear the lunar echoes with a standard communications receiver and a simple 40 meter dipole antenna. The format for the transmissions will follow a five second cycle beginning on the hour and repeating continuously.
The HAARP transmitter will transmit for the first two seconds. The next three seconds will be quiet to listen for the lunar echo. Then HAARP will transmit again for two seconds, repeating the cycle for one hour. In the second hour, this five second repetitive cycle will be repeated at a different frequency. All transmissions from HAARP will be CW (no modulation).
Depending on ionospheric conditions, it may or may not be possible to hear the HAARP transmission directly via skywave propagation. Since HAARP will not be using any modulation, set your receiver on to CW mode to hear HAARP and the lunar echo. Investigators are interested in receiving signal reports from radio amateurs who may be able to detect -- or not detect-- the lunar echo or the transmitted skywave pulse from HAARP.
Submit reports via e-mail to mbreport@haarp.alaska.edu and list your call sign and the type and location of your receiving equipment and antennas.
EcoMotors is working on a futuristic diesel engine that's similar in concept to something Charles Lindbergh may have once used.
The company, which came out of stealth mode over the weekend, wants to bring what is called an opposed piston/opposed cylinder diesel engine to market. In ordinary engines, pistons pop up and down (or back and forth if laying down) inside an individual cylinder capped by a cylinder head. Gas is injected into the chamber and gets combusted by the action of the piston, among other factors.
In EcoMotors' engine, there is a double-length cylinder with a piston at each end. (There are no cylinder heads in-between.) A single-engine module consists of four pistons and two cylinders, said COO John Coletti. The pistons and cylinders are horizontal too, so car and engine manufacturers can stack them.
The unusual configuration results in several advantages. Mileage can be boosted by 40 percent to 50 percent, when a two-module engine is compared with a standard diesel. The engine also can be made 30 percent lighter. Because the engine modules are horizontal, cars can be more aerodynamic.
Coletti predicted that a 2.5-liter engine from his company will provide the same power as one of the 6.5-liter engines used by truck manufacturers today, but weigh 300 pounds less.
he U.S. Department of Justice won't say when it believes an American citizen should be forced to divulge his or her PGP passphrase.
We've been trying for the last two days to get the DOJ to answer this question, which became an important one after last week's news about a judge ruling a criminal defendant can't be forced to divulge his passphrase on Fifth Amendment grounds.
The Fifth Amendment, of course, protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.
In the case of U.S. v. Sebastien Boucher, federal prosecutors think that the defendant has child pornography encrypted with PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) on his Alienware laptop. They sent him a grand jury subpoena demanding the passphrase--which is what a judge rejected on Fifth Amendment grounds.
"I won't be able to provide anyone for an interview," said DOJ spokesman Jaclyn Lesch. "The point you raise is one that we would want to address in court. I hope you understand."
We had asked the DOJ this: "In the DOJ's view, under what circumstances can a person be legally compelled to turn over an encryption passphrase?"
In one view, which prosecutors tend to share, a passphrase is like a document or key that must be forcibly turned over. The civil libertarian view treats a passphrase as the contents of someone's mind, which a defendant cannot be compelled to divulge.
The distinctions between these views are important to Americans' privacy rights and law enforcement needs. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for future legal filings to find out what our public servants actually think.
A Tale of Two Pencils: Charles R. Keeran's Eversharp and Hayakawa Tokuji's Ever-Ready Sharp
Topic: Miscellaneous
12:35 am EST, Jan 17, 2008
This is the tale of two pencils, each the brainchild of a pioneering inventor. One came from America; the other, from Japan. Twenty years ago, the stories of these two pencils got confused and ended up conflated into a single account, which has been repeated in every book and article on pen collecting published since.[1] According to this thoroughly scrambled history, the Eversharp pencil was invented in Japan by Hayakawa Tokuji, who later went on to found the Sharp Electronics company; rights to this pencil were purchased by the Wahl Company of Chicago, which moved production to the United States.
Sharp Electronics started with pencils... Good Read.... :)
A Tale of Two Pencils: Charles R. Keeran's Eversharp and Hayakawa Tokuji's Ever-Ready Sharp
Topic: Miscellaneous
12:35 am EST, Jan 17, 2008
This is the tale of two pencils, each the brainchild of a pioneering inventor. One came from America; the other, from Japan. Twenty years ago, the stories of these two pencils got confused and ended up conflated into a single account, which has been repeated in every book and article on pen collecting published since.[1] According to this thoroughly scrambled history, the Eversharp pencil was invented in Japan by Hayakawa Tokuji, who later went on to found the Sharp Electronics company; rights to this pencil were purchased by the Wahl Company of Chicago, which moved production to the United States.
Sharp Electronics started with pencils... Good Read.... :)
A top Homeland Security official indicated Wednesday that the answer may be yes.
In a presentation aimed at promoting the final identification requirements released Friday, Stewart Baker, the Homeland Security Department's assistant secretary for policy, suggested the controversial system could help federal agents combat methamphetamine production and abuse in the United States.
Baker cited a 2005 federal law, which requires pharmacies to keep tabs on how often people buy certain drugs, such as cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, that can be used to concoct the drug. The key to that process, naturally, is verifying the customer's identity through some sort of document.
"If you have a good ID...it would make it much harder for meth labs to function in this country," Baker said in a morning presentation here at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that supports Real ID.
Under the final Real ID rule, starting on May 11 (unless states request waivers, which many are expected to do), Americans will be expected to present compliant licenses for "federal purposes," which have so far focused on boarding a commercial aircraft and entering a federal building or nuclear facility. If granted extensions, states will have until 2017 to begin issuing the cards to all their residents.
Baker's comments on Wednesday hinted that the government envisions other uses for the documents. In addition to the methamphetamine issue, he also suggested Real ID could be valuable for employers trying to avoid hiring illegal immigrants who present falsified identification cards.
Read on... Do you really want the gov. to know what you buy?
Perhaps Nintendo has a point when it refused Lucas Arts' permission to develop a bat-like lightsaber attachment for the Wiimote. After all, when you place the controller inside stuff like the 10 insane Wii weapons or a sword and a shield or a billiard cue or a boxing glove, it makes it hard to attach the safety strap to your wrist. And when you have no safety strap, you have what we see above.null
Steve Jobs: "People Don't Read Anymore," Android Is Going Down
Topic: Technology
10:59 pm EST, Jan 16, 2008
I love Steve Jobs. Why? Because when he speaks, he doesn't deal with details or nuance—everything is a sweeping proclamation. I like that. His take on Amazon Kindle, for instance, makes it pretty clear Apple won't be making the actual "iPod of reading":
"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore... The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."
Of course, if it's anything like his past declarations that Apple wasn't making a phone, they're totally cooking up a Kindle-killer in the lab at this very moment. It'll be the thinnest one ever and have AT&T 3G, but not a built-in antenna.
Also on his "give up now, fools" list: Android."Having created a phone, it's a lot harder than it looks. We'll see how good their software is and we'll see how consumers like it and how quickly it is adopted." Besides,
"I actually think Google has achieved their goal without Android, and I now think Android hurts them more than it helps them. It's just going to divide them and people who want to be their partners."
Is that a thinly veiled threat? I mean, Google and Apple are pretty tight right now. Like, partners even. Oh shits, it's on.
But he did have something nice to say to our man Bill Gates, though John Markoff doesn't know whether his eye was twitching as he spoke. "Bill's retiring from Microsoft is a big deal," he said. "It's a significant event, and I think he should be honored for the contributions he's made." Implied dig: I'm still gonna be running Apple, bitches—my "contributions" are far from over.null
A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.”
The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant’s Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford University in England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.
But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed say they are surprised — and in some cases, angered — to find themselves not in “Crossroads” but in a film with a new name and one that makes the case for intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. The film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” also has a different producer, Premise Media.
The film is described in its online trailer as “a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions.” According to its Web site, the film asserts that people in academia who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes have unfairly lost their jobs, been denied tenure or suffered other penalties as part of a scientific conspiracy to keep God out of the nation’s laboratories and classrooms.
Mr. Stein appears in the film’s trailer, backed by the rock anthem “Bad to the Bone,” declaring that he wants to unmask “people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can’t possibly touch God.”
If he had known the film’s premise, Dr. Dawkins said in an e-mail message, he would never have appeared in it. “At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front,” he said.
Bait and switch ... Bad movie people.. no cookie for you...
