Virtual Museum Going

Pope Benedict's been in the news a lot lately.  And it's deservedly ugly.

But all's not lost.  It never is, and Easter and the Resurrection are good and timely reminders.  Which leads me to . . .

I recall some years ago an argument an environmentalist made against plans to dam a river to produce hydroelectric power and address farm land irrigation needs.  The essence of the argument was that damming the river was the equivalent of flooding the Sistine Chapel to improve the view of Michelangelo's ceiling work, including its iconic image of the hand of God giving life to Adam.

Well, no flooding required. Thanks to the Vatican's web site and virtual web viewer you can explore every square foot of the chapel, floor to ceiling.  It's miraculous.

IRS

Girly Men

Testosterone's in the news again, this time in a WSJ article about how women in developed countries with good careers and health care prefer men with feminine features. 

"After crunching the data—including the women's facial preferences, their country of origin and that country's national health index—the Face Lab researchers proved something remarkable. They could predict how masculine a woman likes her men based on her nation's World Health Organization statistics for mortality rates, life expectancy and the impact of communicable disease. In countries where poor health is particularly a threat to survival, women leaned toward "manlier" men. That is, they preferred their males to have shorter, broader faces and stronger eyebrows, cheekbones and jaw lines. The researchers went on to publish the study in this month's issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences.

"As the social environment shifts, so may women's mate preferences. While Stone Age forces once wired women to associate strong cues of masculinity with their children's chance of survival, times are changing. The promise of improved health care in America could be one example of a shift."

I knew it.  ObamaCare is a sinister plot to wussify American men.  Quick, where's my Kiehl's Facial Fuel Eye De-Puffer cream?

Booby Trap

I guess it was only a matter of time.  Remember Vanessa, the exploding fembot in Austin Powers?

Well, Britain's intelligence service, MI5, reports that terrorists are now using exploding breast implants.  Via The Sun:

 "The shocking new al-Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women's breasts during plastic surgery — making them 'virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines.'

"It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.

"MI5 has also discovered that extremists are inserting the explosives into the buttocks of some male suicide bombers."

Iron Man

There's an interesting and most likely startling sculpture exhibit in NYC, by way of London and artist Antony Gormley.

Called Event Horizon, it involves 31 naked casts of Gormley's body, some of which are on the streets while others are perched high on buildings.

"In Event Horizon, thirty-one life-size body forms of the artist cast in iron and fiberglass will inhabit the pathways and sidewalks of historic Madison Square Park, as well as the rooftops of the many architectural treasures that populate New York’s vibrant Flatiron District. Event Horizon marks Gormley’s United States public art debut — a milestone for an artist whose work has garnered worldwide acclaim over the past 25 years. 

" 'I’m thrilled to be working with New York: people and place,” says artist Antony Gormley. “I don’t know what is going to happen, what it will look and feel like, but I want to play with the city and people’s perceptions. My intention is to get the sculptures as close to the edge of the buildings as possible. The field of the installation should have no defining boundary. The gaze is the principle dynamic of the work; the idea of looking and finding, or looking and seeking, and in the process perhaps re-assessing your own position in the world. So in encountering these peripheral things, perhaps one becomes aware of one’s status of embedment.' "

Lux Aurumque

Eric Whitacre's virtual choral piece, Lux Aurumque, was posted online this week.  So beautiful.

Here's his backstory.

"Last year a friend emailed me a link to this video, the lovely Britlin Losee singing the soprano part to Sleep, an a cappella choral work I wrote in 2000.  I kind of freaked out, because it occurred to me that if 100 people all recorded their respective parts (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass) we could line them all up and create a virtual choir. So I asked everyone to buy the same recording of Sleep from iTunes, a beautiful performance by the superb British choir Polyphony. Singers from around the world posted their individual parts, simply singing along to the recorded piece.

"I was thrilled (it actually sounded like music!), and I wanted to see if we could push the concept to the next level. So this time, I made my own conductor track, filming it in complete silence, hearing the music only in my head. Then I watched the video and played in the piano accompaniment part to my conductor track.

 "Then I offered the sheet music as a free download. As singers began posting their individual tracks, I called for ‘auditions’ for the soprano solo. Melody Meyers from Tennessee posted my favorite entry.

"My goal with this ‘chapter’ of the Virtual Choir was to see if we could not just sing our parts separately and cut them together; I wanted to see if we could actually make music. There is a lot of rubato in my conducting (slowing down, speeding up) and some very specific dynamic gestures, and the singers responded beautifully. Here’s the final product."

 

Mars

Outer space has always fascinated me.  And now with digital mapping we get amazing photographs like this one of the Mojave Crater in the Xanthe Terra region of Mars, taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.  I hope to visit some day.

From nasa.gov . . .

"Mojave Crater is approximately 37 miles in diameter. The portion of its northwestern edge shown here spans about 2.5 miles in width halfway between the bottom and top of the image. Mojave is one of the freshest large craters on Mars. A survey of its features indicates very few overprinting craters on them, and an analysis of that infrequency suggests the crater may be as young as about 10 million years, very young for a crater of this size. The depth of the crater -- about 1.6 miles -- also demonstrates that Mojave has experienced little infilling or erosion.

"Mojave gives us a glimpse of what a very large complex crater looks like on Mars. In a sense, it is a "Rosetta Stone" of craters, given that it's so fresh and most others - especially this size - have been affected by erosion, sedimentary infilling and overprinting by other geologic processes. Such fresh craters give insight into the impact process: ejecta, melt-generation, deposition, etc.

"Mojave's fans and channels are most intriguing. They hint that impacts such as Mojave's may have unleashed water or water-ice from the subsurface to flow across the surface and, perhaps, condense as rain or snow for a brief period of Martian time. This further suggests that early climate on Mars could have been heavily influenced by the intense bombardment about 3.9 billion years ago when impacts creating craters Mojave's size and far larger were more common."

Twitter and Testosterone

Thoughtful post by Jonah Lehrer on the hierarchical nature of social networking at scienceblogs.com.

 "Now that the social web is maturing - the platforms have been winnowed down to a select few (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) - some interesting commonalities are emerging. The one shared feature that I'm most interested in is also a little disturbing: the tendency of the social software to quantify our social life. Facebook doesn't just let us connect with our friends: it counts our friends. Twitter doesn't just allow us to aggregate a stream of chatter: it measures our social reach. LinkedIn has too many damn hierarchies to count. Even the staid blog is all about the metrics, from page views to unique visitors.

"My worry is that our online social platforms both magnify our hierarchies (by measuring our friends, followers, links, etc.) and erase social distance, so that we suddenly find ourselves in the same monkey cage with a far larger number of monkeys. And that's why I wish there was a popular social platform that didn't measure anything."

Alex Chilton, RIP

Alex Chilton, lead singer of Big Star, dead at 59.

Psst, wanna score some Prozac?

What's the world coming to?  A sophisticated burglary last weekend during a nor'easter netted $75 million . . . . in antidepressant pills.  According to Reuters:

"Burglars broke into the Lilly warehouse either late Saturday or early Sunday in the town of Enfield, Connecticut, as violent rain and winds lashed the Eastern seaboard. The thieves disabled a burglar alarm in the building and carted away dozens of pallets loaded with Lilly antidepressants Prozac and Cymbalta, anti-psychotic Zyprexa and other company medicines, according to published reports."

As The Partridge Family used to sing, "C'mon, get happy."

Tesla Roadster

Had my first close encounter with a Telsa Roadster today, in the company parking lot of all places.  Well, bonuses were paid out on March 15.  At any rate, it's a great looking car.  Very low slung profile, narrow, and with a cockpit of an interior.  And 900 pounds of batteries!

Some specs from the Telsa Motors web site:

• 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds
•  375 volt AC induction air-cooled electric motor with variable frequency drive
• Top speed: 125 mph (electronically limited)
•  Output 288 peak horsepower (215kW) and 295 lb-ft (400 Nm) of torque. Redline at 14,000 rpm.
• 236 miles per charge
• Zero emissions

First time I've seen horsepower related to kilowatts!  See more here . . .

The Ungooglable Man

 

Via Roz Chast at The New Yorker.

Googled

I love Google.  I hate Google.  Here's why.

From the article "Before the Job Interview, Google Yourself" in The Wall Street Journal:

"The idea that employers perform Internet searches on job candidates is nothing new -- and the frequency of these searches is climbing. Some experts report that up to 85% of hiring managers "Google" a candidate before or after an interview.

"Stop producing content that has the potential to provoke a negative response, and publish appropriate content at a high volume so that you can push unsavory or irrelevant results off the most frequently viewed top pages."

Here are two more reasons.

The Stanley Cup's Heading to Afghanistan

According to nhl.com, the Stanley Cup is heading to Kandahar this month.

Hockey fans know all about the Stanley Cup and its uniqueness in all of sports. Holding it aloft as champion is the dream of every hockey player. But many fans also have a personal connection to the cup, originally created in 1892 as the Dominion Cup.

My first encounter was in 1969 through a glass display case at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, when I was at summer hockey school.  In 1972, I saw it through tears at ice level as a 14-year-old, watching my beloved New York Rangers lose the sixth game of the finals, 3-0 to the Boston Bruins at Madison Square Garden.  My only solace was that Boston was misspelled "Bqstqn" during the engraving.  Seven years later, I watched the Rangers lose it again, this time to the Montreal Canadiens, at the old Forum.

Unlike any other professional sports trophy, since the 1950s the Stanley Cup is a true team trophy, touched by every player as it's passed from captain to player to player. Many skate along the glass so fans can reach over and touch it. Once in the locker room, champagne fills the cup. 

A team parade with the cup follows, and then the real fun starts. Since the mid-1990s, each player takes the cup home to share with family and friends. Most treat the cup with reverence, but many do some crazy shit.  According to Wikipedia:

"Although many players have unofficially spent a day in personal possession of the Cup, in 1995 a tradition started wherein each member of the Cup-winning team is allowed to retain the Cup for a day. It is always accompanied by at least one representative from the Hockey Hall of Fame. Victors of the Cup have used it to baptize their children. Two players (the New York Islanders' Clark Gillies and the Anaheim Ducks' Sean O'Donnell) even allowed their dogs to eat out of the Cup.

And that's not the half of it. Read "Why is the Stanley Cup in Mario Lemieux's Swimming Pool?" for the rest.

The Rangers' fateful relationship with the cup is rife with curses. Again, according to Wikipedia:

"During the 1940–41 season, the mortgage on the Rangers' home arena, the third Madison Square Garden (built in 1925), was paid off. Hence, the management of the Madison Square Garden Corporation symbolically burned the mortgage in the bowl of the Cup. This led some hockey fans to believe that the Cup, which is regarded almost as a sacred object, had been "desecrated," leading the "hockey gods" to place a curse on the Rangers."

That all changed in 1994. I didn't get to that June's decisive game 7 at Madison Square Garden, but later that summer the cup, the Hart, Vezina and Calder trophies and many more were on display at Grand Central Terminal. It was still a thrill.

Tax Sugar, Fine Salt

More evidence we live in a world gone mad.  Or is just New York that's perfected governmental paternalism as a ruse to raise revenue? How about cutting spending and actually reducing taxes?

NYC Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg are cooking up a new tax on sugar.  Guised as a way to reduce obesity, the new tax will raise $450 million.   If that's not enough, Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a new bill on March 5 that will fine restaurants $1,000 for each violation of using salt in food preparation.

Opposing this nonsense is My Food My Choice - a grassroots coalition of consumers and businesses that promotes the advancement of consumer choice in the marketplace and an environment of economic vitality.

The Legal Zone

Universal Picture's new film, The Green Zone, is catching some deserved pre-release flak over the role of a character based on Judith Miller, the former reporter for The New York Times whose WMD reporting was discredited after the Iraq war.  Later, she served 90 days for contempt of court when she refused to disclose her source in the Valerie Plame show trial where Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were all named as defendents.  Scooter Libby was eventually convicted as the source, only to have Richard Armitage come clean as the initial source to late reporter Robert Novak after the Libby trial political damage was done.

Miller's story was the basis for the 2008 film Nothing But the Truth, which was released on DVD after its theatrical release was scratched. 

So, it's all the more intriguing that the Judith Miller character in The Green Zone, Lawrie Dayne, and played by Amy Ryan, works not for The New York Times, but The Wall Street Journal.

According to The Los Angeles Times, the character's newspaper was changed on the advice of the producers' attorneys:

"In the film's original screenplay, Dayne was identified as a reporter for the New York Times, but the legal departments at Universal Pictures and producing partner Working Title Films changed her affiliation to the Wall Street Journal so that audiences wouldn't confuse the character with an actual journalist. Universal said it was under no legal obligation to inform the Wall Street Journal of the change or the depiction.

"I'm not so sure that the Journal will be flattered that a big studio film is portraying one of their reporters as being duped by government misinformation, especially when it was their arch rival whose reporter was the real dupe, but it seems clear that the studio did it for legal reasons, not political ones. But when conservatives ridicule Hollywood movies for their politics, it's a rarity for anyone to let the facts get in the way of a good rant."

The irony doesn't end there.  The lead role in The Green Zone is played by Matt Damon.  His character is named Roy Miller.

Worse, with unbridled self-promotion, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame have worked overtime to cash in on their 15-minutes of fame.  Plame's spy and tell book, Fair Game, led her to sue her former employer, the CIA, who she accused of  "unconstitutionally interfering with the publication of her memoir."  The judge in the case ruled for the CIA, saying "Valerie Plame's constitutional freedoms were overridden by the Classified Information Act."  No matter,  Fair Game will soon be released by Warner Brothers.  Naomi Watts plays Valerie Plame; Sean Penn plays Joe Wilson.  Yep, you can't make this stuff up.

Star Wars Stuff

This is the advertisement George Lucas placed in Variety after James Cameron's Titanic broke the box office gross record previously held by Star Wars.

Meanwhile, Star Wars continues its 30-year plus cultural influence - here on Lego.

Spring

 

From the Martha's Vineyard Times.

"The excitement builds rapidly in March, as we await the arrivals of not only the first returning osprey (quite likely in about 10 days) but also green-winged teal, killdeer, tree swallows, eastern phoebes, many more blackbirds. In addition, a large increase in bird song accompanied by displays of courtship behavior in resident birds make it clear that spring has slowly started. Never arriving fast enough, it takes its own sweet time.

"Northern cardinals are especially noticeable at this season as the males become vociferous in the extreme. These medium-sized, brilliant red, crested birds with black faces are widespread on the Vineyard and familiar to most. While both males and the much drabber females are easily recognizable when seen, the species song remains a mystery to most. This is one mystery that is easily remedied.

"In most areas of the Vineyard right now, cardinals, along with resident Carolina wrens, are the loudest and most persistent birds singing in the morning and again late in the day. The song is a loud clear whistled two syllable slurred note lowering in pitch. The song variously described as what-cheer, cheer, cheer, etc. or birdie, birdie, birdie, etc."

Trust and Privacy

Dick Cavett and David Brooks take on the weakening nature of trust in the NYT's latest Opinionator column, "In What Can We Trust?"

Cavett cites Peppers & Rogers, always a good source, especially on all things digital.  And Brooks invokes the importance of reciprocity:

"I’d say that trust is about reciprocity. About establishing a pattern of communication and then cooperative volleys that get coated by emotional and moral commitment."

Which leads me to an article from the March issue of Reason - "Facebook Justice."  Noepe readers may recall I abandoned Facebook last year after concluding the cons outweighed the pros, especially where trust and privacy are concerned.   To wit:

"According to the La Crosse Tribune, Adam Bauer and seven other under-21 students at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse were busted after a police officer posing as an attractive student befriended them on Facebook, then documented photos they had posted on their profiles that depicted them consuming alcohol.

"Meanwhile, Facebook proved to be a blessing for 19-year-old Rodney Bradford of New York City. Bradford spent two weeks in jail on a mugging charge in October. He was released after his attorneys were able to trace the IP address of a status update posted to his Facebook account at the time of the robbery. The message that won Bradford his freedom, “ON THE PHONE WITH THIS FAT CHICK......WHERER MY IHOP,” was posted in Harlem, 12 miles from the scene of the mugging."

Busted by fake friends and online pictures.  Exonerated by IP address.  It's a mad online world.

And the Oscar goes to ...

Beards

In the winter I always have a full beard.  And with Spring coming on March 20, I'll shave it off until next winter.

Some people get great joy from their and others' beards, and the more unusual the better.  And, now there's the movie Beardo.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

How many times has a new House Speaker promised us "the most ethical Congress in history?"  As many times as the electorate has fallen for that false promise.

Like a pendulum, the current 111th Congress, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid are poised for a major swing at the hands of independent voters.

The Daily Beast's Peter Beniart has it in the crosshairs:

"To understand why the Rangel scandals are so dangerous for Democrats, you need to understand something about midterm landslides: They’re usually composed of three parts. First, the other party’s activists are highly motivated. Second, your own activists are highly unmotivated. Third, independents want to burn Washington to the ground.

"There’s nothing Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi can do about the first problem.
The stimulus, the bank bailouts, the auto-takeover and the health-care push have convinced large numbers of aging white people that Obama is Mao Zedong, and they’re not going to change their mind anytime soon. The best response to the second problem is to pass health-care reform and give Keith Olbermann something to get excited about. But perhaps most crucial of all is responding to problem No. 3.

"Independents are the most fickle, the most cynical, and the least ideological people in the American electorate. When they’re unhappy with the state of the country, they tend to stampede the party in power—less because they disagree on the issues than because they decide that the folks running government must be malevolent and corrupt. In Washington, congressmen violate ethics rules all the time. But when independents get in one of their sour moods, these infractions become matches on dry tinder. In 1994, the scandals concerning Rostenkowski and the House bank helped sweep the Gingrichites into power. In 2006, according to exit polls, the scandals surrounding mega-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rep. Mark Foley did more to lose the GOP control of Congress than did the Iraq war. Pelosi became speaker, in fact, by running against the GOP’s 'culture of corruption' and promising the 'most ethical Congress in history.' ”

Will the 112th Congress be any better?