A digital security reporter for the Washington Post weights in for Popular Mechanics -- with detailed profiles and interviews -- on the Internet's Top 10 Most Controversial Figures of 2008. From hackers to DNA decoders to copyright crackers, each of these elite members of the technorati have caused enough of a stir in the online community...
Thought-controlled robotic limbs were only the beginning.
Scientists have had a string of remarkable successes lately, taking signals from the brains of monkeys and men, and using them to move mechanical arms.
Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research division, now wants to ratchet that work up about ten notches, by developing a "neurally controlled artificial limb that will restore full motor and sensory capability to upper extremity amputee patients. This revolutionary prosthesis will be controlled, feel, look and perform like the native limb."
So, basically, what Luke Skywalker gets in Empire Strikes Back, after Darth chops off his hand. Except, researchers won't have a long, long time to get this limb ready. Darpa wants the robo-arm stat -- in four years or less.
The limb would have to be wired directly into the peripheral nervous system, instead of the brain-controlled arms being demonstrated today, Darpa tells researchers interested in working on this "Revolutionizing Prosthetics" project. Under agency guidelines, the arm will need enough finesse to pick up a raisin or to write in longhand. It needs to be sensitive enough for the wearer to handle day-to-day tasks in the dark. And the limb will have to be strong enough to lift 60 pounds at a time.
These are beyond ambitious goals, and even the even the big thinkers at Darpa acknowledge it. Breakthrough research in "neural control, sensory input, advanced mechanics and actuators, and prosthesis design and integration" will all be needed, the agency says in a call for proposals. Neuroscientists, roboticists, engineers, occupational therapists, and surgeons in the neural, orthopedic, reconstructive subspecialties will have to chip in.
"Revolutionizing Prosthetics" is so far-out that Darpa is taking the unusual step of hedging its bets, and running a parallel, more down-to-earth program.
The vision of the Prosthesis 2007 program is to leverage recent research advances in neural sensing, control systems, actuation, power storage and distribution, freeform manufacturing, neural control, microfabrication, sensory feedback, flexure and transmission design, signal processing, and information science to dramatically improve the capability of upper extremity prosthetic limbs beyond those that are currently available commercially. This vision will be realized by increasing the range of motion, strength, endurance, and dexterity of upper extremity prosthetic devices. The final product [an above-the-elbow prosthetic arm] must be ready for human clinical trials… [and] sufficiently mature to enter the appropriate approval processes for general medical use by the end of 24 months."
Hundreds of penguins have been jet-lifted to their native home in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, after washing up lost and tired on the beaches of Northern Brazil.
At least 1,000 penguins this year to date, have washed up on Brazilian beaches. Though it is normal for penguins to travel North from their South Atlantic home in search of food, it is rare that they swim all the way to northern states of Brazil, and authorities are amazed that the penguins just keep coming.
Some experts have offered that because the migration of penguins is closely related to their food supply, this unusual journey suggests that something has gone awry with their normal fish stocks.
No one knows whether changes in water temperatures and ocean currents are to blame, or man-made pollution.
Some of the birds were found covered in oil. Other birds were found to have been eating fish that are not part of their usual diet.
Hundreds of penguins were flown this week in a Hercules plane down to more southern seas, where they are being released into the ocean. Other birds are catching a ride home on a navy vessel. Still others, tired from their journey, are laying over in the Brazilian state of Bahia until they recover.
As coral reefs around the world continue to disappear, one Florida town has taken the initiative by investing $60,000 to stimulate coral reef growth using electricity. While there is not yet peer-reviewed evidence to suggest that using a low powered electrical current works, scientists are not dismissing the idea. The company that has been hired to make the reefs claims that they have had many prior successes.
The town of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea has hired the company Global Coral Reef Alliance to construct the artificial reefs. The group is licensed to use the technology made by a company known as Biorock. What Biorock makes are steel frames suitable for underwater use that have a strength comparable to concrete. A low power electrical current is run through the frames and helps to stimulate the growth of limestone rock and corals (it does not harm animals). You can see some photos of Biorock’s technology by clicking here.
Lauderdale-by-the-Sea’s plan is to have six of these structures located off of its beach, in close proximity to a reef that has been deteriorating. They will be in the shape of airplane hangers and will be about 6 feet in length. Two buoys that would be placed directly above the water’s surface would collect solar energy using panels, and distribute the low power electricity current below. Corals from nearby areas that are still alive, yet isolated, would be added to the frames to help increase the speed of reef growth.
The plan still needs to be permitted by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers. Several conservationists with ties to the area first proposed the idea, and it is hoped that restored reefs would help generate tourism for the town. It has been known in the past for having easy beach access for viewing coral reefs– a key plus for scuba divers and tour groups.
What is not clear is whether or not the use of an electrical current actually works to stimulate growth of corals. The Sun Sentinelwrites the following:
John McManus, director of the National Center for Coral Reef Research at the University of Miami, said there’s no doubt steel frames will grow coral, if only because they provide a surface off the murky floor of the ocean. But while a mild electric current stimulates coral growth initially, he said it’s unclear whether the benefit continues after the coral has thickened enough to block the current. Most important, he said, there have been no studies comparing electrified steel structures with identical structures without electricity. “There’s not much evidence to say it’s worth putting the electricity through,” he said. “It’s probably not going to do any harm. It might do some good.”
The Global Coral Reef Alliance and Biorock on the other hand, claim that their technology and reefs have been successful. They have built reefs around the world in the waters of countries like Mexico, Panama, Thailand, and Indonesia.
In any case, it’s great to see a Florida community doing their best to help restore coral reefs. Reefs are threatened on a major scale because of global climate change and pollution, among other significant causes.
For whatever reason, Apple decided not to allow “landscape mode” on iPhone email. If you want to turn the phone when the web browser is open and get the larger keyboard that makes two thumb typing realistic, no problem. But the email app is portrait only.
Now a new iPhone application called TouchType (iTunes link) fixes the problem. Open the application and you get a landscape mode keypad. type an email, hit the send button and it auto-populates the email application. Type in the email addresses and you’re all set.
The application, which costs $.99, comes from the same developer, Mike Schneider, who created Direct Line (easy phone tree navigation) and Private-I (loJack for your iPhone). I like how this guy thinks.
The following movies all had budgets under $1 million, some of them reaching as low as $7,000. Let this act as a reminder: you don't need to be backed by studio financing to make a great film.
Everyone loves Bill Murray, but only the die hard fans recognize the majority of his work. The rest, unfortunately, concentrate too much on his greatest films, such as Stripes, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Lost in Translationand all of his collaborations with Wes Anderson. Yet while each of these films, and Murray’s roles and performances in them, are certainly deserving of their preferred and predominant praises, Murray is the kind of actor who is so talented and entertaining that he can be enjoyed in even the worst movies on his resume. In fact, he’s probably the only A-lister who could lend his voice to a bastardized CG version of a beloved cartoon character and get away with barely any contempt from his devotees.
This week, Bill Murray makes an appearance in the new kiddie sci-fi flick City of Emberas the selfish mayor of a doomed underground metropolis. And it’s sure to be one of his less-appreciated roles, whether because it’s in a children’s movie, because it’s a supporting part in an ensemble filled with many talented actors, or because it’s not Ghostbusters 3. But those who really love Murray will likely flock to the movie primarily to see him, just as they did and do for the rest of these movies with underrated Murray roles:
He would later perfect the asshole-turns-saint thing in Groundhog Day, experience an even worse cabbie than David Johansen in Quick Change and find an even more despicable character to play in Kingpin, but there are plenty of reasons why we shouldn’t dismiss Murray’s first real venture into unlikable territory. For one, look at the emotion he shows after visiting his childhood home. Yes, Murray can cry on cue! (see the clip above.) As the evil TV exec Frank Cross, the actor shows great range with some of his best displays of mania, pathos and slurberts (aka stomach raspberries).
The character must be forgiven for hating New York City so much, but otherwise the curmudgeonly bank robbing clown from Quick Change is one of Murray’s best roles ever. As cranky and cynical as he is, he’s never too mean, miserable or unreasonable that you stop rooting for him throughout his long, oft-interrupted getaway scheme. If anything, you like his selfish antihero more and more thanks to quick-witted and big-balled maneuvers such as his accidental yet profitable encounter with a criminal organization (see the clip above). Murray also deserves props for never allowing himself to be upstaged, despite working opposite the most hilarious performances from scene stealers like Randy Quaid, Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci.
Bill Murray performing Shakespeare! Just because Michael Almereyda’s adaptation is modernized and not so well-appreciated doesn’t make the part any less respectable. In fact, Murray’s performance as the wise father of Ophelia and Laertes (respectively played by Julia Stiles and Liev Schrieber, both of whom we more expect to see doing Shakespeare) is one of the things many critics praised about the film. Unfortunately, this version of Hamlet is slipping through the cracks of cinematic memory, probably thanks to people’s discomfort with Ethan Hawke in the lead. But Murray’s part at least deserves some viral recognition on YouTube or something. And if Geoffrey Rush is unable to take his offered part in Julie Taymor’s new film of The Tempest, wouldn’t it be amazing if Murray could be next on the wish list to play Gonzalo?
Another movie that’s not very good and that not a lot of people have seen is Andy Garcia’s labor of love set in Havana during the Cuban revolution. And like most movies featuring a minor appearance from Murray, The Lost City is at least worth watching just for him. In fact, you could easily just fast-forward to each of his scenes and not miss anything since his role and performance is so out of place anyway.
Even when Murray doesn’t speak he makes a movie worth watching simply to see him. Paul Mazursky’s semi-autobiographical film can be a little boring in the scenes lacking Shelley Winters (even the young Christopher Walken can be a little soporific here), but in an uncredited role, Murray gives life into a party scene in which he just hangs out in the background. Sure, the perk you’ll get is mostly from recognizing him, but it’s still a perk.
Mazursky could have worked with Murray again by casting him as the bum in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and then there’d have been no need for What About Bob?, a movie that completely recycles Richard Dreyfuss’ character from that earlier film. But Nick Nolte is perfect in Down and Out, and besides the world is better off for having a movie in which Murray plays an endearing multiphobic who also often seems to be an oblivious idiot.
Murray returned to the oblivious idiot shtick, only more intently and more underratedly, a few years later. This was one of the actor’s last movies before recieving his reinventive “comeback” role in Rushmore, and it’s probably his least popular performance. But as stupid as both the script and the character are, any true Murray fan will find a number of funny and appreciable moments here.
The complete opposite of his role from two years earlier in The Man Who Knew Too Little, Murray’s devoutly anti-communist ventriloquist is one of the actor’s most understated performances and most underappreciated characters ever. There’s not even anything that can be said about the role that would provide more evidence of its worth than would a compilation of his scenes from the film. Fortunately one exists (see the above clip).
With David Doyle dead and therefore unavailable, Murray was the only actor who could do justice to the role of Bosley in the big screen version of TV’s Charlie’s Angels, and this was clear enough to Sony that they didn’t attempt to truly replace him in the sequel, instead going totally different with Bernie Mac.
Now that we’ve seen Johnny Depp’s brilliant portrayal of the Gonzo journalist, it’s clear that Bill Murray wasn’t the only actor who could do justice to Thompson’s quirk, and he certainly isn’t the best man for the task. Yet aside from a number of scenes that now make Murray’s impersonation seem more SNL-worthy than it probably should (see this oft-shown bit), there are times when he’s truly got the real character down, such as in the moment when he speaks at a college (see the clip above). Between this role and his portrayal of actor Bunny Breckinridge in Ed Wood(in which he costars with his fellow Thompson portrayer), it’s clear that Murray should be playing more real people.
The Pandora personalized radio streaming service was already a popular destination before Apple's App Store launched over the summer, but the launch of the Pandora iPhone application has apparently caused the site to really take off. Founder Tim Westergren spoke about the iPhone's effect on Pandora and a variety of other topics during his keynote at the Digital Music Forum West conference and, according to paidContent, revealed that the device has caused a substantial increase in the amount of new Pandora users.
Sure, Pandora may still be stuck between a rock and a hard place if it can't reach a webcasting royalty agreement and gets stuck with a large bill for streaming radio to so many listeners, but the fact that the service is growing rapidly is a good sign for the company. In the case of the iPhone, the Pandora application's availability on the App Store has doubled the amount of new users that Pandora is getting every day, from 20,000 up to 40,000. In terms of the total number of iPhone users, Silicon Alley Insider says that there are just shy of 1.5 million iPhone owners using Pandora, representing a bit less than ten percent of the total number of listeners.
Westergren also spoke a bit about iTunes, saying that he listens to music via iTunes more than he listens to Pandora. He used this to illustrate his point that people won't switch to Pandora and completely stop buying music, since many people don't want to have to fool with Pandora playlists and the like just to listen to some tunes. In fact, the iTunes Store may even benefit from things like the iPhone Pandora client, since the software exposes people to new music that they may later buy from Apple, so it seems to be a mutually beneficial relationship for the two companies.
You'd be surprised at some of the concoctions that people have come up with and have made popular, over the years. Below is a list of some interesting cocktails that have been named after movies, that you may expand your drink knowledge, though we wouldn't recommend ordering a "Star Wars" if there are any ladies within earshot.
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
Scientists have had a string of remarkable successes lately, taking signals from the brains of 
For whatever reason, Apple decided not to allow “landscape mode” on iPhone email. If you want to turn the phone when the web browser is open and get the larger keyboard that makes two thumb typing realistic, no problem. But the email app is portrait only.
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