The complicated history of simple scientific facts

Every now and then, the public gets a glimpse at what goes into the making of scientific consensus on an important question. No, we’re not talking about the infamous climate change emails—we’re talking about how science really comes to its conclusions, a process that involves a few hundred years of work.

By Chris Lee

Sometimes, even as a person pisses you off, they make a point that you can’t ignore. In a recent forum discussion that I was involved in, scientists were accused of making pronouncements from on high. The argument was that scientists jump to a conclusion that seems desirable to them, and then treat it as an infallible truth.

Of course, my initial reaction was to pronounce that I, as a practicing scientist, never make pronouncements. But, looking at my articles from the perspective of someone who really knows absolutely nothing about science—as a practice or as a body of knowledge—I can see how one could see little beyond a list of assertions. The truth is more complicated, of course, but it’s a truth that science writers find challenging to convey. Science is impossibly broad, and the leading edge sits, precariously balanced, on a huge, solid, and above all, old body of knowledge. To illustrate this problem, I am going to tell you the story about how the speed of light came to be the ultimate speed limit for the entire universe.

What I want you to remember from this story is that any new fact or change in our understanding sits upon generations of accumulated knowledge. Most of that knowledge is now trusted as “mostly correct,” though some of it still lies in the “probably not too badly wrong” category. Sitting beneath that is a body of work stretching back some 6,000 years, some of which is still highly relevant.

My overall point is that, even if I were to extend each of my peer-reviewed articles by some 3,000 words—I already get complaints about the length of some of my articles—I still would not have covered the science of an entire subject. By choosing a starting point for the knowledge described in an article, I really am pronouncing from on high that everything beyond that point is established, trusted knowledge, while everything after that point will be explained to some extent.

So, how do we measure stuff anyway?

My arbitrary beginning for this story—and make no mistake, it is a story that leaves out any number of complications—is Galileo. Apart from being a telescope builder extraordinaire, Galileo also had an important insight into the process of measurement. He saw that if he was on a moving boat and fired a cannon forward, he could measure the speed of the cannon ball and come up with a number. But, the poor guy on the receiving end of the cannon ball—giving up his life in the name of science—would, when making the same measurement, come up with a different answer.

Needless to say, a violent disagreement might ensue (provided the target survived the cannonball) over whose measurement was correct. Galileo saw that the difference between the two measurements was the speed of the boat. That is, the person receiving the cannon ball sees that it is moving a bit faster than Galileo because the target sees that the cannon that fired the ball was also moving. Once this extra speed is taken into account, agreement could be reached between different measurements, and Galileo could return to upsetting other people.

The key point that Galileo made clear was that measurements are always relative to some benchmark. We measure the speed of a car relative to the ground, and we measure the speed of stars relative to each other (including the Sun). This principle underlies a lot of modern physics, and it’s so fundamental that we don’t even give it a name when we teach it anymore.

But it turns out that this principle is, in fact, wrong sometimes. Showing how we know it’s wrong and why we found out that it is wrong is what this story is really all about.

Another arbitrary beginning: the story of light

Galileo was not the only person into optics and telescopes. Newton and Huygens both made huge contributions to our understanding of light—Newton demonstrated that white light contained all the colors of the rainbow, while Huygens created a model that explained the structure of the patterns light created after it had passed by a sharp edge.

But these two giants of science disagreed about what light actually was. Newton thought that light was a particle, while Huygens thought that light was a wave. Critically, all observed phenomena could be explained by both models, so both had their adherents and critics. Note, though, that this dispute happened a bit before 1700, but this issue remained unresolved until the middle of the 19th century.

That is not to say that no one cared or did anything about it. On the contrary, evidence for the wave theory of light accumulated and the particle theory of light had to be modified to accommodate the new findings; as it became more complicated, the number of people who supported it shrunk.

The straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to support for light as a particle was Young’s experiment that demonstrated that light, like water waves and sound waves, could be made to interfere—one of the reasons this took so long is that Young needed a relatively modern light source to make his observations. In the meantime, an important question remained unanswered: if light was a wave, what was doing the waving?

Yet another arbitrary beginning: the story of electricity

Off in a disregarded corner, people with names like Faraday and Gauss had begun to get interested in why, after you had rubbed a cat with a bit of amber, bits of paper would stick to both the cat and the amber, but not to each other. Equally interesting was why compass needles pointed north. Although these phenomena had been known for a long long time, no one had really investigated them—or if they had, their findings had been lost. In any case, scientists got interested in static electricity and magnetism.

They discovered that some materials conducted electricity, that magnets could cause an electric current to flow, and that currents could be used to create magnets. The two were linked, but no one really knew how. Empirical laws were derived that allowed electricity and magnetism to be exploited—dynamos, electric motors, and alternators were all in the process of revolutionizing life, though their effects would take a while to percolate through society. But, despite the applications, the underlying principles remained obscure—we had laws, but no theory.

There were two problems with the laws developed for electricity and magnetism: first, they didn’t shed any light on what electricity or magnetism were or why they were linked—the concept of charge had been introduced, but no one knew what a charge might be. Second, they weren’t predictive: that is, whenever anyone found a new magnetic or electrical phenomena, a new law was required.

That’s where things stood until the late 19th century, when Maxwell decided to use some new-fangled math to describe electricity and magnetism. He found a common set of equations that described both phenomena and how they were linked to each other.

Maxwell’s work didn’t win instant acceptance. In the first place, it didn’t do anything about the first problem—Maxwell’s equations offer no insight into the origin of electricity or magnetism, beyond the charge concept, anyway. Meanwhile, there were other theories floating around that were purely mechanistic—they solved the first problem, but failed to be predictive (or at least, accurately predictive). In addition, Maxwell’s work introduced a series of new problems.

http://arstechnica.com/science/guides/2009/11/the-complicated-truth-behind-scientific-findings.ars

Sam Adams Utopia: Rare $150 Beer Is 27 Percent Alcohol

BOSTON — It is banned in 13 states and sure doesn’t come in a six-pack.

The maker of Samuel Adams beer has released an updated version of its biennial beer Utopias – now the highest alcohol content beer on the market. At 27 percent alcohol by volume and $150 a bottle, the limited release of the brandy-colored Utopias comes as more brewers take advantage of improvements in science to boost potency and enhance taste.

“Just part of trying to push the envelope,” said Jim Koch, founder and owner of the Boston Beer Co. the maker of Sam Adams. “I’m pushing it beyond what the laws of these 13 states ever contemplated when they passed those laws decades ago.”

Since the 1990s, craft brewers like the Boston Beer Co. and the Delaware-based Dogfish Head have produced a number of “extreme beers” that challenge old notions of beer and the decades-old laws that have governed them.

By law, these specialty drinks still are classified as beer when they are based on fermented grain. And despite the hefty prices of the high-scale beer, brewers still have to pay the required nickel deposit on bottles.

Paul Gatza, director of the national Brewers Association based in Boulder, Colo., said new yeast research allowed brewers to experiment with the emerging science that pushed the traditional cap of 14 percent alcohol by volume for beer.

“As a result, these new beers, like Utopias, balance sweetness, higher alcohol content and more ingredients,” Gatza said.

A few states also have moved to adapt their laws to allow for the emerging craft brew market. For example, Alabama and West Virginia recently passed laws to allow higher alcohol content in beer. Lawmakers in Iowa and Mississippi are considering similar legislation.

Gatza said consumers are also pushing for the changes.

That’s what sparked a brew battle between the Boston Brewing Co. and Dogfish Head.

In 1993, Koch set a new bar by creating Triple Bock, a beverage with 17.5 percent alcohol by volume. In the early 2000s, Dogfish Head responded with beverages of their own that went to 22 percent.

But the latest Utopias alcohol volume gives Koch and Boston Beer Co. the clear title of having the strongest beer, said Sam Calagione, president and founder of Dogfish Head. “I must bow before him for Utopias,” Calagione said. “I don’t think we’ll be brewing a beer that strong for a while.”

Utopias has reached its unique strength through a 15-year aging process in barrels at the Boston Beer Co.’s brewery in Boston. It’s aged and finished in wooden containers like Scotch whisky barrels and sherry casks. The drink’s yeast strains are regularly used in making malts and champagne.

A quick sip unveils a cognac-like hit combined with vanilla, honey, and maple flavors.

The long production cycle is what limits its availability to once every two years. This holiday season, for example, Koch is only releasing 10,000 bottles with the suggested retail price of $150 apiece.

“It’s like making 21-year-old Scotch,” Koch said. “Yeah, you can make more. You just can’t have it for 21 years.”

The drink comes in a ceramic-and-copper bottle that resembles a tiny brew kettle. Thirteen states prohibit its sale because its alcohol content exceeds the legal limit for beer: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Washington.

Chuck Hurley, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said the group in general doesn’t have a problem with extreme brands of beer like Utopias. However, he hopes the beverage’s higher alcohol content is properly labeled and that it isn’t marketed to minors.

“Right now, we’re reserving judgment,” Hurley said.

Koch said the Boston Beer Co. is presenting Utopias as an exclusive beer for sophisticated drinkers that should be consumed like champagne. He said it’s not a beer for the weekend football game or for a regular dinner.

He would not speculate whether he would try to get more extreme with future brews, but noted that no one ever thought there would be an “insane brewer” who would be making such a strong Utopias.

“We’ll see,” he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/01/sam-adams-utopia-rare-150_n_374997.html

2012 Olympics showpiece unveiled in London

Artist’s rendering of the Cloud structure envisioned for the 2012 Olympics in London.  (Credit: MIT Senseable City Laboratory)

by Candace Lombardi

An extensive team of engineers, designers, and architects from around the world unveiled plans on Monday to create a digitally connected structure to grace the 2012 Olympics in London.

The structure, called the Cloud, is both a physical and digital cloud designed to broadcast real-time data and images on spherical, three-dimensional screens. While the images would float high above the city, the sound would be broadcast at ground level.

Carlo Ratti, head of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a team leader on the project that includes experts from across the world and Google as a partner. Ratti is known for his work on a textualizing waterfall at the Zaragoza World’s Fair in 2008, the Real Time Rome population-tracking project, and the EyeStop bus shelters throughout Florence, Italy.

In a statement, Ratti referred to the Cloud as a “new form of collective expression and experience and an updated symbol of our dawning age: code rather than carbon.”

The Cloud will power itself, using a combination of solar energy from photovoltaic panels installed both on- and off-site.

The team wants to build the Cloud from money donated by individuals and companies through a “cloud raising” effort that will use the digital cloud to solicit donations. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are already on board to support the effort. Google plans to run adds via YouTube and its search results pages, according to MIT.

The structure is flexible enough in design that it can be modestly built for $5 million or be expanded to a $50 million project, depending on how much money is raised.

In addition to the many artists, architects, engineers, and computer scientists collaborating on the project, the team also includes legendary author Umberto Eco among its advisers.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17912_3-10406692-72.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

Sleep success: How to make ZZZs = memory

Get the most from your shut-eye (Image: Susanne Walstrom/Getty)

by Jessica Hamzelou

Sounds played as you sleep can reinforce memories, suggest Ken Paller and his colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

They asked people to memorise which images and their associated sounds – such as a picture of a cat and a miaow – were associated with a certain area on a computer screen and then to take a nap. They played half the group the sounds in their sleep, and these people were better at remembering the associations than the rest when they woke up.

Paller hopes sounds can be used to improve all kinds of memory and next he’ll be figuring out if we can learn languages while we snooze. But before you nod off, New Scientist helps you get the most out of your shut-eye.

How can you boost your sleep learning capacity?

As a rule, hit the hay after learning something new – late-night TV and Xbox marathons are a no-no.

That is, of course, unless the skill you hope to learn is a computer game: when Sidarta Ribeiro of the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience in Natal, Brazil, got people to play shoot-’em-up video game Doom before bed, those who dreamed about the game during their sleep were better players the next day.

Once asleep, playing sound cues (see above) may work for some, but if you like to slumber in silence, try smells instead. A couple of years ago, Björn Rasch and his colleagues at the University of Lübeck in Germany found that people were better at remembering where objects belonged on a computer screen when they were reminded with the scent of a rose, which they had smelled during the learning task, and again during their sleep.

What’s better – one long sleep or lots of short naps?

Take a leaf out of granny’s book – afternoon naps are good for you. Jim Horne, who researches sleep at Loughborough University, UK, thinks that even a 10-minute kip can improve performance, and that this could be lifesaving in the case of overtired drivers and nurses. Such short shut-eye means that you won’t fall into a deep sleep, so you can easily recover without experiencing “sleep inertia” (see below).

In fact, others claim that it is the process of drifting off, rather than the deep sleep itself, that is good for you. Olaf Lahl’s students at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, performed better in memory tests only 5 minutes after falling asleep.

However, don’t give up on long sleep: rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, which occurs later in sleep, is thought to be important for memory processing.

What’s this about people who don’t sleep enough getting fat?

Our hectic modern lifestyles and shorter visits to the land of nod have been linked by some to expanding waistlines. Sanjay Patel (PDF) and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, put the theory to the test in 2006 and found that short-sleeping women were 15 per cent more likely to become obese than their well-rested counterparts.

Jim Horne, on the other hand, reckons such effects might be overblown. In Patel’s study, the average difference in weight gain between the two groups was a measly 700 grams over 10 years. Besides, Horne says, we’re probably getting about the same amount of sleep as we ever did – around seven and a quarter hours.

Why does lack of sleep make you grumpy and groggy?

Even the best of us has woken up confused and disorientated, usually when we’re awoken during a deep sleep, known as “slow-wave sleep”. David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia found that people who were woken up during this deep sleep couldn’t do simple arithmetic, a phenomenon called “sleep inertia”.

But the grumpiness associated with a lack of sleep could be due to a different point in the sleep cycle, REM sleep. This is when we do most of our dreaming, and some think dreams are important for processing the emotions we experience during the day. Matt Walker, a psychologist at the University of Berkeley, California, has even described this process as “overnight therapy”.

How does sleeping improve your memory?

Deszo Nemeth, a psychologist at the University of Szeged in Hungary, suggests that while we sleep, short-term “working memories” are transferred from the hippocampus of the brain to the cortex, where they become more stable, long-term memories.

Meanwhile, Catherine Siengsukon of the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City reviewed the evidence for “offline practice” – practising skills during sleep – earlier this year. She reckons that motor learning – training brain areas that control muscles – during sleep could help rehabilitate young, brain-damaged patients.

When does sleep learning take place?

Different stages in the sleep cycle are important for different types of memory. REM sleep seems to be important for perceptual memory, “like when you’re learning to play darts”, says Paller, while the consolidation of “declarative” memories – facts and events – happens during deep slow-wave sleep.

Article Continues – http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18199-sleep-success-how-to-make-zzzs–memory.html

Thanksgiving Day Facts: Pilgrims, Dinner, Parades, More

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News

November 24, 2009

It may be called Turkey Day, but the U.S. Thanksgiving Day is about more than just the bird. Learn about a holiday myth—the first “real” Thanksgiving wasn’t until the 1800s—and how we celebrate Thanksgiving dinner today.

Thanksgiving Dinner’s Key Ingredients

Key to any Thanksgiving Day menu is a fat turkey and cranberry sauce.

Some 250 million turkeys were raised in the U.S. in 2009 for slaughter, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Those birds were worth about U.S. $4.5 billion.

About 46 million will end up on U.S. dinner tables this Thanksgiving. (See the Green Guide’s suggestions for having a greener—and more grateful—Thanksgiving.)

Minnesota is the United States’s top turkey-producing state, followed by North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia, and California.

These “big six” states produce two of every three U.S.-raised birds, according to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.

U.S. farmers will also produce 709 million pounds of cranberries, which, like turkeys, are native to the Americas. The top producers are Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

The U.S. will also grow 1.8 billion pounds of sweet potatoes—many in North Carolina, California, and Mississippi—and produce 1.1 billion pounds of pumpkins.

Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, and New York are home to most U.S. pumpkins.

But if you overeat at Thanksgiving dinner, there’s a price to be paid for all this plenty: the Thanksgiving “food coma.” The post-meal fatigue may be real, but the condition is giving turkeys a bad rap.

Contrary to legend, the amount of the organic protein tryptophan in most turkeys isn’t responsible for drowsiness.

Instead scientists blame booze, the sheer caloric size of an average feast, or just plain old relaxing after stressful work schedules.

What Was on the First Thanksgiving Menu?

Little is known about the first Thanksgiving dinner in the Plimoth (also spelled Plymouth) Colony in October 1621, attended by some 50 English colonists and about 90 native Wampanoag men in what is now Massachusetts.

We do know that the Wampanoag killed five deer for the feast, and that the colonists shot wild fowl—which may have been geese, ducks, or turkey. Some form, or forms, of Indian corn were also served.

But Jennifer Monac, spokesperson for the living-history museum Plimoth Plantation said the feasters likely supplemented their venison and birds with fish, lobster, clams, nuts, and wheat flour, as well as vegetables such as pumpkin, squash, carrots, and peas.

“They ate seasonally,” Monac said, “and this was the time of the year when they were really feasting. There were lots of vegetables around, because the harvest had been brought in.”

Traditional Thanksgiving fare that certainly wasn’t on the table: potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.

If you want to eat like a Pilgrim yourself, try some of the Plimoth Plantation’s recipes, including stewed pompion (pumpkin) or traditional Wampanoag succotash.

Where Did Thanksgiving Come From?

American Indian peoples, Europeans, and other cultures around the world often celebrated the harvest season with feasts to offer thanks to higher powers for their sustenance and survival.

In 1541 Spaniard Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his troops celebrated a “Thanksgiving” while searching for New World gold in what is now the Texas Panhandle.

Later such feasts were held by French Huguenot colonists in present-day Jacksonville, Florida (1564), by English colonists and Abnaki Indians at Maine’s Kennebec River (1607), and in Jamestown, Virginia (1610), when the arrival of a food-laden ship ended a brutal famine.

(Related: “Four Hundred-Year-Old Seeds, Spear Change Perceptions of Jamestown Colony.”)

But it’s the 1621 Plimoth Thanksgiving that’s linked to the birth of our modern holiday. The truth is the first “real” Thanksgiving happened two centuries later.

Everything we know about the three-day Plimoth gathering comes from a description in a letter wrote by Edward Winslow, leader of the Plimoth Colony, in 1621, Monac said.

It had been lost for 200 years and was rediscovered in the 1800s, she added.

In 1841 Boston publisher Alexander Young printed Winslow’s brief account of the feast and added his own twist, dubbing it the “First Thanksgiving.”

In Winslow’s “short letter, it was clear that [the 1621 feast] was not something that was supposed to be repeated again and again. It wasn’t even a Thanksgiving, which in the 17th century was a day of fasting. It was a harvest celebration.”

But after its mid-1800s century appearance, Young’s designation caught on—to say the least.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving Day a national holiday in 1863. He was probably swayed in part by magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale—the author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—who had suggested Thanksgiving become a holiday, historians say.

In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt established the current date for observance, the fourth Thursday of November.

Thanksgiving Turkey-in-Waiting

Each year at least two lucky turkeys avoid the dinner table, thanks to a presidential pardon—a longstanding Washington tradition believed to have originated with U.S. President Harry Truman.

Since 1947 the National Turkey Federation has presented two live turkeys—and a ready-to-eat turkey—to the President, according to federation spokesperson Sherrie Rosenblatt.

“There are two birds,” Rosenblatt explained, “the presidential turkey and the vice presidential turkey, which is an alternate, in case the presidential turkey is unable to perform its duties.”

Those duties pretty much boil down to not biting the President during the photo opportunity with the press.

In 2008 the vice presidential bird, “Pumpkin,” stepped in for the appearance with President Bush after the presidential bird, “Pecan,” had fallen ill the night before.

After their presidential encounter, the birds share the same happy fate as Super Bowl winning quarterbacks.

“For the last five years,” Rosenblatt said, “They’ve gone to Disneyland”—living out their days at Big Thunder Ranch in the California theme park’s Frontierland.

Talking Turkey

Pilgrims were familiar with turkeys before they landed in the Americas.

That’s because early European explorers of the New World had returned to Europe with turkeys in tow after encountering them at American Indian settlements. Indians had domesticated the birds centuries before European contact.

A century later Ben Franklin famously made known his preference that the turkey, rather than the bald eagle, should be the official U.S. bird.

But Franklin might have been shocked when, by the 1930s, hunting had so decimated North American wild turkey populations that their numbers had dwindled to the tens of thousands from a peak of at least tens of millions.

Today, thanks to reintroduction efforts and hunting regulations, wild turkeys are back.

(Related: “Birder’s Journal: Giving Thanks for Wild Turkey Sightings.”

Some seven million wild turkeys are thriving across the U.S., and many of them have adapted easily to the suburbs.

Wild turkeys, Meleagris gallopavo, can run some 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 kilometers) an hour and fly in bursts at 55 miles (89 kilometers) an hour. Domesticated turkeys can’t fly at all.

Pass the Pigskin

For many U.S. citizens, Thanksgiving without football is as unthinkable as the Fourth of July without fireworks.

NBC Radio broadcast the first national Thanksgiving Day game in 1934, when the Detroit Lions hosted the Chicago Bears.

Except for a respite during World War II, the Lions have played—usually badly—every Thanksgiving Day since.

Consumers Rejoice!

For those who love marching and music, turkey takes a backseat to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, originally called the Macy’s Christmas parade because it kicked off the shopping season.

The tradition began in 1924, when employees recruited animals from the Central Park Zoo to join the parade.

Helium-filled balloons made their debut in the parade in 1927 and, in the early years, were released above the city skyline with the promise of rewards for their finders.

The parade, first televised nationally in 1947, now draws some 44 million viewers—not counting the 3 million people who actually line the 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) Manhattan route.

Thanksgiving weekend also boasts the retail version of the Super Bowl—Black Friday, when massive sales and early opening times attract frugal shoppers.

The National Retail Federation reports that some 130 million Americans, give or take a few million each year, brave the crowds to shop on Black Friday or on the following weekend.

Planes, Trains, and (Lots of) Automobiles

It may seem like everyone in the U.S. is on the road on Thanksgiving Day, keeping you from your turkey and stuffing.

But just 33 million of about 308 million U.S. citizens drive more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home on the holiday, according to the American Automobile Association.

If you include airline and rail passengers, more than 41 million Americans will travel at least that distance.

Thanksgiving North of the Border

Cross-border travelers can celebrate Thanksgiving twice, because Canada celebrates its own Thanksgiving Day the second Monday in October.

As in the U.S., the event is sometimes linked to a historic feast with which it has no real ties—in this case explorer Martin Frobisher’s 1578 ceremony, which gave thanks for his safe arrival in what is now New Brunswick.

Canada’s Thanksgiving, established in 1879, was inspired by the U.S. holiday.

Dates of observance fluctuated, sometimes coinciding with the U.S. Thanksgiving or the Canadian veteran-appreciation holiday, Remembrance Day—and at least once it occurred as late as December.

But Canada’s colder climate eventually led to the 1957 decision that formalized the October date.

SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES

• Plimoth Plantation
• National Turkey Federation

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091123-thanksgiving-dinner-turkey-facts.html

Neptune’s Trident case mod honors the god of liquid cooling

By Tim Stevens

What do you do if your Battlestar Galactica case mod has conquered Earth and space with its awesomeness? Why, you conquer the seas, of course. Brian Carter is back with this Neptune’s Trident mod, a lovely blue thing with three separate cooling loops, one for each of the three EVGA GeForce GTX260 video cards inside. The result? A powerhouse for sure and something that we think would look quite appropriate in Tron Legacy.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/23/neptunes-trident-case-mod-honors-the-god-of-liquid-cooling/

Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened

Photo: Joe Pugliese

By Evan Ratliff

Officially it will be another 24 hours before the manhunt begins. That’s when Wired’s announcement of my disappearance will be posted online. It coincides with the arrival on newsstands of the September issue of the magazine, which contains a page of mugshot-like photos of me, eyes slightly vacant. The premise is simple: I will try to vanish for a month and start over under a new identity. Wired readers, or whoever else happens upon the chase, will try to find me.

1  – August 13, 6:40 PM: I’m driving East out of San Francisco on I-80, fleeing my life under the cover of dusk. Having come to the interstate by a circuitous route, full of quick turns and double backs, I’m reasonably sure that no one is following me. I keep checking the rearview mirror anyway. From this point on, there’s no such thing as sure. Being too sure will get me caught.

I had intended to flee in broad daylight, but when you are going on the lam, there are a surprising number of last-minute errands to run. This morning, I picked up a set of professionally designed business cards for my fake company under my fake name, James Donald Gatz. I drove to a Best Buy, where I bought two prepaid cell phones with cash and then put a USB cord on my credit card — an arbitrary dollar amount I hoped would confuse investigators, who would scan my bill and wonder what gadgetry I had purchased. An oil change for my car was another head fake. Who would think that a guy about to sell his car would spend $60 at Oil Can Henry’s?

I already owned a couple of prepaid phones; I left one of the new ones with my girlfriend and mailed the other to my parents — giving them an untraceable way to contact me in emergencies. I bought some Just for Men beard-and-mustache dye at a drugstore. My final stop was the bank, to draw a $477 cashier’s check. It’s payment for rent on an anonymous office in Las Vegas, which is where I need to deliver the check by midday tomorrow.

Crossing the Bay Bridge, I glance back for a last nostalgic glimpse of the skyline. Then I reach over, slide the back cover off my cell phone, and pop out the battery. A cell phone with a battery inside is a cell phone that’s trackable.

About 25 minutes later, as the California Department of Transportation database will record, my green 1999 Honda Civic, California plates 4MUN509, passes through the tollbooth on the far side of the Carquinez Bridge, setting off the FasTrak toll device, and continues east toward Lake Tahoe.

What the digital trail will not reflect is that a few miles past the bridge I pull off the road, detach the FasTrak, and stuff it into the duffle bag in my trunk, where its signal can’t be detected. Nor will it note that I then double back on rural roads to I-5 and drive south through the night, cutting east at Bakersfield. There will be no digital record that at 4 am I hit Primm, Nevada, a sad little gambling town about 40 minutes from Vegas, where $15 cash gets me a room with a view of a gravel pile.

The Adventure continues, continue reading - http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/

Nov. 23, 1963: Doctor Who Materializes on BBC

By John Scott Lewinski

1963: At 6:15 on a cold, wet night, the BBC premieres its new family science fiction show, Doctor Who, with its first episode, “An Unearthly Child.” The series will become a legendary part of modern British folklore and the longest-running sci-fi series on TV.

Featuring a benevolent traveling alien known only as The Doctor, the series followed the adventures of the heroic Time Lord and his human companions through time and space.

Originally developed by Canadian Sydney Newman, BBC’s head of drama, the day-to-day creation of the show’s first season fell to script department head Donald Wilson, BBC staff writers C. E. Webber and Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker, and producer Verity Lambert. Fans of the show traditionally recognize Lambert as the show’s strongest creative force at the start.

The stories took place in serial form — with each episode lasting about 25 minutes, ending with a cliffhanger that would bring the audience back for the next segment.

Ron Grainer (the composer for many TV themes, including The Prisoner) wrote the series’ unforgettable theme music with its driving bass beat. But experimental composer Delia Derbyshire of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop is credited with choosing the eerie electronic sounds that created the final piece.

The original brief for the character didn’t specify his origin (later identified as Gallifrey), his race or his actual age. Portrayed by veteran character actor William Hartnell, the first Doctor was a dark, often-hostile man of mystery.

Viewers first encountered The Doctor’s ship, the Tardis (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space) in a junkyard as the Doctor headed out in London. The interior of the time-space traveling craft is dimensionally transcendental and exists in its own universe — allowing the ship to be bigger on the inside than its outer shell.

A properly operating Tardis includes a chameleon circuit that changes its exterior appearance to blend in with the surroundings. But The Doctor’s ship malfunctions and remains stuck as a 1960s Metropolitan Police public call box.

Because the show was originally intended for children, the creators cast an appealing, sympathetic actress, Carol Ann Ford, as The Doctor’s teenage granddaughter, Susan. When Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), two of Susan’s teachers, become concerned over the girl’s bizarre behavior, they stumble across The Doctor and Tardis. Once exposed, The Doctor insists on taking the two earthlings with him into time and space.

But, a very real tragedy almost swept the show aside before any audience found it. The assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22 dominated the news and public consciousness that weekend, obviously pushing the premiere of a new TV series off the British TV radar.

BBC program planners decided to re-air the original premiere a week later, along with the series’ second episode. Doctor Who’s first storyline featured time travel back to caveman times and attracted a lukewarm public and critical reaction.

But, the show’s second complete story — a sci-fi piece kicking off with “The Dead Planet” — featured a voyage to the home planet of the Daleks. The metallic monsters became an overnight sensation and established Doctor Who as a British institution.

The series remained in production from 1963 to 1989. Producers invented the convention that The Doctor’s alien physique could regenerate into new forms 12 times — allowing new actors to seamlessly take over the part through the decades. After Hartnell came Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Perter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. And next year we’ll have Matt Smith.

Doctor Who returned to regular BBC production under producer Russell T. Davies in March 2005 and remains one of the network’s top-rated series.

Photos: 1) Left to right: William Russell, Carol Ann Ford, William Hartnell and Jacqueline Hill made up the original Tardis crew on Doctor Who.
2) The Daleks surround the Tardis in the ’60s Doctor Who.
Images courtesy BBC

Sources: BBC; Doctor Who: The Official Site; Doctor Who: The Classic Series Site

See also:

• New Doctor Brings New Doctor Who Logo, Insignia With Him
• Timeless Tom Baker Makes Return Trip to Doctor Who
• Fans Reconstruct Doctor Who’s Trashed Past
• Moffat Leading Doctor Who Into the Future
• Nov. 23, 1889: S.F. Gin Joint Hears the World’s First Jukebox
• March 21, 1963: The Rock
• March 31, 1963: L.A. Streetcars Take Their Last Ride
• June 20, 1963: Cuban Missile Crisis Spurs Moscow-D.C. ‘Hot Line’
• July 19, 1963: Cracking the 100-Kilometer-High Barrier … in a Plane
• Aug. 5, 1963: Finally, a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
• Aug. 28, 1963: Road to Redmond Walks on Water
• Nov. 9, 1963: Dual Disasters Stun Japan

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/11/1123dr-who-debuts

Envisioning a Real-Time Government

By Ellen Miller – Co-founder and Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation

Everyday people are inundated with real time information that makes their lives, even the most mundane parts, more manageable. When I leave the house in the morning I can check weather patterns in real time on my phone. Back when the Red Sox were still alive I could find up to minute scores and stats (That’s both good and bad). If I were into fantasy baseball, I could get up to the minute calculations for my team on my iPhone while games are still being played.

With so much information readily available at the tips of our fingers, the slow pace of information dispersal from the government only engenders distrust. The contrast between government and our real-time real life is simply too stark not to be frustrated by. Campaign contribution reports come out every four months, lobbyists don’t disclose their actual meetings, and Congressional committees only post information online at their discretion. The information that people need to see in order to understand who’s playing the game in Washington — not to mention who’s on first — is not readily available — and in some cases it’s not available at all.

Just think how easy it is to get the history on a car through CarFax. What the public needs is a daily GovFix, an up to the minute, mobile phone accessible, real time accounting for our government leaders. If I can find out that my used car was in a rear collision accident in 2004, why can’t I know that my congressman had a collision with a telecom lobbyist at a fundraiser and left the scene with a $2,300 campaign contribution? If I get a receipt immediately after every single I purchase I make throughout the year, why can’t I get a receipt to see how my single biggest expenditure — my tax dollars — are spent?

Well, I think you should be able to. And I think we can get there.

Imagine a world where the entire influence economy in Washington were available to the public, online and in real time. The coverage of the health care debate would be far different if newspapers featured widgets on their web sites showing the daily “take” for local congressmen and senators from the health insurance and drug companies. A daily updated database of lobbyist contacts would show which special interests were involved in the secretive Baucus Gang of Six meetings over the summer. Imagine a searchable and downloadable database of all Congressional earmarks so in an instant you could see what government is spending our tax dollars on. Imagine having this sort of information across the federal government right now — being able to track who is paying for lobbying whether in Congress or at the regulatory agencies, and what those discussions entail. One could quickly sort or browse all paid lobbying for individual clients or issue areas, and understand what agency actions are up for grabs.

At the Sunlight Foundation we’ve envisioned such a world starting with the executive branch — and true to form, it’s complete with web mock ups.

Picture a single website that would function as a portal for all government agencies’ to file daily reports on lobbying meetings (image 1), and allow the public to examine and search through the disclosures (image 2).

One need only look briefly at the images to get a sense of the types of things we could expect to see. It’s just a start, but it’s the kind of information that would be valuable for citizens, journalists, and even agency heads and employees who are striving to evaluate decisions and understand what kinds of pressure they’re feeling.

In short: this kind of simple disclosure in just one arena of the influence economy — lobbying — would be a game changer that would help us make better decisions and build public trust.

And what’s more, with real-time access given us through the Web, this level of government transparency and accountability is actually possible. And it’s possible in your pocket. That’s something we couldn’t even say as recently as five years ago. Information sharing is now part of the exponential curve that quits curving and just goes straight up. Today, we can present vast amounts of data meaningfully, and almost as fast as it can be created.

What this means for government and the future of citizen engagement is unprecedented.

We are on the cusp of new era of democracy and participation and it will be heralded by online, real-time government. Two hundred thirty-three years after we launched this grandest of experiments, it’s time for us to take it to the next level.

Our founders would have drooled.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-miller/envisioning-a-real-time-g_b_347004.html

ZDNet’s Ultimate Black Friday 2009: Deals, steals & specials guide

From ZDnet

Black Friday is almost here.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again — the time when retailers across the U.S. mark down products to bargain levels to kick off the holiday shopping season, move goods off the shelves and move the year’s profit needle from red to black.

And, you know, force Americans to wake up at ungodly hours after the previous day’s Thanksgiving meal to make financial decisions far too early in the morning.

But fear not. ZDNet’s Ultimate Black Friday guide for 2009 will digest all those rumored sales specials for you by gadget category — so you can find the electronics and gadgets you’re looking for in one spot.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving…until you pass out.

Tips for Black Friday success:

• Check our reviews to see if you’re getting your money’s worth before you go doorbusting.
• Check the Web to make sure you’re getting the best deal Friday morning.
• You’re likely to find better markdowns on HDTVs and GPS navigation devices.
• You’re likely to find smaller deals on digital cameras — but more to choose from.
• Apple fans, don’t forget about that company’s annual Black Friday deals, which are modest discounts but worth it if you’re planning an Apple purchase anyway.

Note: We’ll be updating this guide as more circulars are released, so make sure to come back and check for new listings. We’re striving for accuracy, but if you spot an error, please leave it in the comments.

Without further ado, here’s the guide.

Retailers posted so far: Sears, Sam’s Club, Kmart, Kohl’s, Toys R Us, Staples, Target, Meijer, Best Buy, Walmart, GameStop

Retailers expected soon: Apple Store, Amazon, BJ’s, Buy.com, CompUSA, Dell, Fry’s, J&R, Micro Center, NewEgg, OfficeMax

Important Note: Several retailers are trying out one-day sales leading up to Black Friday this year. Walmart, Amazon, Sears, JC Penney and Kmart all have pre-sales events; many will do so every weekend through Black Friday.

Skip to: Laptops & desktop computers; Televisions & HDTVs; Home theater, music & movies; Digital cameras & camcorders; GPS navigation devices; MP3 players & portable electronics; E-book readers; Printers; Hard drives, flash media & storage; Monitors, peripherals & accessories; Miscellaneous electronics & software; Video game consoles & games; Circular ad scans; Related links & resources

First up: Laptops & Desktops.

Multiple pages of details - http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=9204&tag=content;col1