In case you thought your eyes were deceiving you when the ball seemed to swerve unexpectedly just milliseconds away from the goalposts in several of this year's games, watch NASA's own tests on the highly controversial so-called 'jabulani' ball that Adidas designed especially for the 2010 World Cup, in the name of God knows what interests. Countless football players, goalkeepers, and team managers have already complained about it, and quite rightly too. Here's what NASA aerospace engineer Rabi Mehta found out about the jabulani ball:
"From his research on tennis and cricket balls in wind tunnels, Mehta believes that the Jabulani ball will tend to knuckle at 45 to 50 mph, which coincides with the speed of the ball during free-kick around the goal area. Another point made by Mehta, is that a lot of the stadiums for the World Cup are located at high altitude (Johannesburg is at 5,500 feet) and this will affect the ball aerodynamics as well, since the air density is lower. At this high altitude, the ball will tend to fly faster (less drag) and swerve less (less lift)."
The short video below demonstrates Mehta's points and explains the causes of the ball's faulty aerodynamics:
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
...'Sexual Armor'!
...designed by Ellen E. Perkins, and filed for a patent to the US Patent Office in early 1908, with the explicit aim of saving young people in particular from the deplorable health hazards, as identified below, of playing with one's ding-a-ling-a-ling. Here's an excerpt from the ingenious inventor's application to the US Patent Office:
ELLEN E. PERKINS, OF BEAVER BAY, MINNESOTA. SEXUAL ARMOR.
No. 875,845.
Specification of Letters Patent. Application filed June 24,1907. Serial No. 380,468,
Patented Jan. 7,1908.
"To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, Ellen E. Perkins, a citizen of the United States, residing at Beaver Bay, in the county of Lake and State 5 of Minnesota, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Sexual Armor; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same.
It is a deplorable but well known fact that one of the most common causes of insanity, imbecility and feeble mindedness, especially in youth, is due to masturbation or self abuse. This is about equally true of both sexes."
(You can read the full text, with misspellings from the OCR conversion process, here.)
And here's the full monty (also via Neatorama):
ELLEN E. PERKINS, OF BEAVER BAY, MINNESOTA. SEXUAL ARMOR.
No. 875,845.
Specification of Letters Patent. Application filed June 24,1907. Serial No. 380,468,
Patented Jan. 7,1908.
"To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, Ellen E. Perkins, a citizen of the United States, residing at Beaver Bay, in the county of Lake and State 5 of Minnesota, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Sexual Armor; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same.
It is a deplorable but well known fact that one of the most common causes of insanity, imbecility and feeble mindedness, especially in youth, is due to masturbation or self abuse. This is about equally true of both sexes."
(You can read the full text, with misspellings from the OCR conversion process, here.)
And here's the full monty (also via Neatorama):
Male chastity round-up
And in case you thought that Ellen E. Perkins's noble aspiration to preserve male chastity was a wacky one-off, take a look at equally aspiring inventor Rudy J. Schrock's more circumspectly named 'Preventive Apron', filed for a patent in 1977...
...not to mention Madrid resident Gines Sanchez Gomez's even more innocuously named 'Protective Tube and Harness', filed for a patent to the US Patent Office as late as 2004. In the 21st century, that is, dear boys & girls. This state-of-the-art male chastity device involves bandaging the penis with adhesive tape and securing it with a padlock. Don't know about Madrid, but in my home town, we call this bondage.
Image source
...not to mention Madrid resident Gines Sanchez Gomez's even more innocuously named 'Protective Tube and Harness', filed for a patent to the US Patent Office as late as 2004. In the 21st century, that is, dear boys & girls. This state-of-the-art male chastity device involves bandaging the penis with adhesive tape and securing it with a padlock. Don't know about Madrid, but in my home town, we call this bondage.
Image source.
The three devices featured above were spotted in The Sexist column of the Washingtoncitypaper.com
A last word on the subject: less than a year ago, on 25 August 2009 (I repeat: 2009), A. Frank Miller and Doris L. Miller of Wellington, UT also filed for an 18-page patent with the US Patent Office, for their comprehensive 'Male Chastity Apparatus, Method, and System'. The design says it all. Male chastity is not dead, sisters. And brothers, of course.
Image source
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Boarding pass please
I'd never have guessed that smartphones work in underground hide-outs in the desert, but judging from the boarding pass meant to illustrate British Airways' new mobile-phone boarding system, they must do. On the other hand, it's more likely that some disgruntled BA employees are behind the Photoshopped prank, which slipped unnoticed (or noticed, but slipped anyway) past the editor, copy-editor, and picture editor (assuming that they employ any of those) of British Airways' internal company magazine for Heathrow Airport (London) LHR News.
The photo accompanying the article on how boarding passes can now be printed through a smartphone shows a hand holding such a mobile on which a boarding pass is displayed, issued to frequent flyer Bin Laden, Osama, due to fly on 26 October 2010.
What most reports on the story won't tell you is that the fake pass, issued to that particularly notorious passenger, is not new. In 2006, a bloke called Christopher Soghoian, then a PhD student at Indiana University, published online a fake boarding pass generator, complete with instructions on how to use it to bypass airport security - not to aid terrorists, but to expose weaknesses in airport security. He claimed never to have used such a boarding pass himself, and I couldn't find any information on whether anyone has ever tried it out and boarded a plane undetected. Anyway, rather unsurprisingly, the FBI forced Christopher to take his website offline; however, you can still view the instructions plus a sample mock-boarding pass - issued to Osama Bin Laden, as it happens, for 26 October 2006 - here.
As the generator's author claims, he decided to restore 'the original introduction page for historical and educational purposes'. He also notes that a similar generator had been posted on the 'Slight Paranoia' blog. At the time Christopher last updated his 'educational' page (that was on 21 November 2008), obviously the sister generator was still up, but as you can read here it has been taken down since. The Slight Paranoia blog, however, is still active.
Let's hope that nothing happens on 26 October, of course. And that airport security is more effective than airport magazine copy-editing.
The photo accompanying the article on how boarding passes can now be printed through a smartphone shows a hand holding such a mobile on which a boarding pass is displayed, issued to frequent flyer Bin Laden, Osama, due to fly on 26 October 2010.
Image source
What most reports on the story won't tell you is that the fake pass, issued to that particularly notorious passenger, is not new. In 2006, a bloke called Christopher Soghoian, then a PhD student at Indiana University, published online a fake boarding pass generator, complete with instructions on how to use it to bypass airport security - not to aid terrorists, but to expose weaknesses in airport security. He claimed never to have used such a boarding pass himself, and I couldn't find any information on whether anyone has ever tried it out and boarded a plane undetected. Anyway, rather unsurprisingly, the FBI forced Christopher to take his website offline; however, you can still view the instructions plus a sample mock-boarding pass - issued to Osama Bin Laden, as it happens, for 26 October 2006 - here.
As the generator's author claims, he decided to restore 'the original introduction page for historical and educational purposes'. He also notes that a similar generator had been posted on the 'Slight Paranoia' blog. At the time Christopher last updated his 'educational' page (that was on 21 November 2008), obviously the sister generator was still up, but as you can read here it has been taken down since. The Slight Paranoia blog, however, is still active.
Let's hope that nothing happens on 26 October, of course. And that airport security is more effective than airport magazine copy-editing.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
There's the rub: the Vibra-Finger
Yikes. What a creepy personal gadget. And it isn't even what you think it is (or is it?)
The Vibra-Finger was spotted on Retrospace
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
'Love' won't get you an Oscar
I love Wordle. Not only is it one of the best online toys I've come across, but it also allows you to present word counts as statistical graphs in a fun manner. Take, for instance, the BBC's Wordle experiment with Eurovision winning lyrics (see post below). Now, whereas the biggest winner - so far as words are concerned - in Eurovision is 'love', to win an Oscar for best picture, you need either 'American', 'Man' or 'Men', 'Best', 'One', or 'Godfather' in the title. In fact, if you want an Oscar for best picture, 'love' won't get you anywhere. See for yourself:
'Love': twelve points; 'amour': douze points
All you need is love, especially if you're a Eurovision contestant. The BBC had the brilliant idea to feed the lyrics of all winning songs of the Eurovision contest, from its inception in 1956 till now, into Wordle website - a magic online toy for creating word clouds (think of tag clouds) on the basis of how often a word occurs in a given text. Once common words like 'and', 'I' were removed, the most frequent word in Euroschmaltzy winning songs turned out to be 'Love'.
To be more precise, of the 12,299 different words that make up the BBC's own collection of 54 years' worth of Eurovision's winning lyrics, 'love' accounts for 2%. Not all that surprising, if you think that love is embedded in the Eurovision logo, is it.
To be more precise, of the 12,299 different words that make up the BBC's own collection of 54 years' worth of Eurovision's winning lyrics, 'love' accounts for 2%. Not all that surprising, if you think that love is embedded in the Eurovision logo, is it.
...And in case you're itching to find out what this year's lyrics word-cloud looks like, here it is:
On the basis of word frequency alone, the BBC predicts that this year's German entry, 'Satellite', has pretty decent odds for winning: it features the word 'love' no less than 26 times. Alles Liebe.
(Article and images from the BBC)
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
A toilet article
Life often feels like a cesspool, and indeed it once was just that, very literally. Luckily for millions of us, the classic and to date unsurpassed design of the toilet was invented in the 19th century by a Yorkshire man whose destiny it was to do just that: with a name like Thomas Crapper (1837–1910), his calling must have been obvious from day one. This, as well as many more fascinating facts about modern homes, comes from the excerpt from Bill Bryson's book (At Home: A Short History of Private Life), presented in the Guardian.
Until Crapper's invention, the flush toilet was an unreliable, treacherous contraption, not that much of an improvement to its predecessors. Until the U-bend was incorporated in the design, toilets exuded the smell of hell, not to mention that they were prone to the occasional eruption. Crapper's 'Marlboro Silent Water Waste Preventer', was 'clean, leak-proof, odour-free and wonderfully reliable, and their manufacture made Crapper very rich and so famous that it is often assumed that he gave his name to the slang term "crap" and its many derivatives' (from the Guardian).
In fact, the word 'crap' has evolved from the Dutch 'krappe' from 'krappen', which means 'pluck off or cut off'. In Old French 'crappe' meant 'siftings', while the Anglo-Latin 'crappa' meant 'chaff' (source: Shorter OED). And ultra-modern toilets, such as the ones below, have evolved from Crapper's original design.
Until Crapper's invention, the flush toilet was an unreliable, treacherous contraption, not that much of an improvement to its predecessors. Until the U-bend was incorporated in the design, toilets exuded the smell of hell, not to mention that they were prone to the occasional eruption. Crapper's 'Marlboro Silent Water Waste Preventer', was 'clean, leak-proof, odour-free and wonderfully reliable, and their manufacture made Crapper very rich and so famous that it is often assumed that he gave his name to the slang term "crap" and its many derivatives' (from the Guardian).
In fact, the word 'crap' has evolved from the Dutch 'krappe' from 'krappen', which means 'pluck off or cut off'. In Old French 'crappe' meant 'siftings', while the Anglo-Latin 'crappa' meant 'chaff' (source: Shorter OED). And ultra-modern toilets, such as the ones below, have evolved from Crapper's original design.
Image source
Image source
Image source
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Wired wedding
That the figure officiating at the wedding had flashing eyes, plastic pigtails, and a wreath of flowers is, admittedly, rather unusual, even for Tokyo. But what made the particular wedding official stand out was the tinny voice and the wires: groom Tomohiro Shibata, 42, a professor of robotics at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, and bride Satoko Inoue, 36, an employee with the robot manufacturing company Kokoro were married at a rooftop restaurant in Tokyo - by a robot. Apparently, this is the first wedding ceremony ever to be conducted by a robot.
The officiating robot is a product of Kokoro company, whose corporate goal is to "touch the hearts of the people."
The officiating robot is a product of Kokoro company, whose corporate goal is to "touch the hearts of the people."
Story from BBC and Boston.com, image from Boston.com
Saturday, May 15, 2010
The perfect food processor for every modern cat's kitchen.
The Polytron mouse homogeniser; via Criggo
Friday, May 14, 2010
'Facebook privacy': an oxymoron?
Facebook's 2010 privacy policy is longer than the US Constitution minus the amendments, I read in the New York Times' revealing map on Facebook and privacy issues - one of the hottest topics right now. As the BBC notes, 'the blog SearchEngineLand reported that anyone who typed the query "How to quit..." into Google got as their number eight automated result "how to quit Facebook". It followed results for how to quit smoking, your job and drinking.'
On the, erm, face of it, Facebook appears to care for users' privacy; in fact, however, the 50 privacy settings and a total of about 170 options not only make it hard for many users to ensure that they have not missed something vital, but, crucially, fail to offer users the option to control aspects of their accounts that matter most. Many users have found, to their dismay, that Facebook allows third parties to share information (including posts) from their accounts without the users' knowledge, let alone consent. Despite Facebook's hypocritical claims that privacy is paramount, European data protection officials have deemed the social site's recent privacy changes 'unacceptable' - and they certainly are: as the New York Times points out, the recent changes mean that users have to opt out of certain 'choices' if they wish to keep certain information private, which makes much of the information stored in private accounts public by default.
On the, erm, face of it, Facebook appears to care for users' privacy; in fact, however, the 50 privacy settings and a total of about 170 options not only make it hard for many users to ensure that they have not missed something vital, but, crucially, fail to offer users the option to control aspects of their accounts that matter most. Many users have found, to their dismay, that Facebook allows third parties to share information (including posts) from their accounts without the users' knowledge, let alone consent. Despite Facebook's hypocritical claims that privacy is paramount, European data protection officials have deemed the social site's recent privacy changes 'unacceptable' - and they certainly are: as the New York Times points out, the recent changes mean that users have to opt out of certain 'choices' if they wish to keep certain information private, which makes much of the information stored in private accounts public by default.
Click to enlarge. Image source: the New York Times
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Mephisto says: 'Always read the small print'
It wasn't for nothing that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe studied law. In a most Faustian April Fool's prank, British online video-game retailer Gamestation altered the terms & conditions that buyers are supposed to read thoroughly before ticking the 'agree' box of the contract to make their purchase: Gamestation inserted the 'Immortal Soul clause', which read:
'By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorized minions.'
In addition, Gamestation made it clear that
'we reserve the right to serve such notice in 6 (six) foot high letters of fire, however we can accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by such an act. If you a) do not believe you have an immortal soul, b) have already given it to another party, or c) do not wish to grant Us such a license, please click the link below to nullify this sub-clause and proceed with your transaction.'
Not even the £5 that Gamestation offered customers if they checked the opt-out box enticed buyers to actually read what they legally bound themselves to. And thus, with a mere 12% opting out, Gamestation has found itself the proud owner of around 7,500 immortal souls, which, for the time being are still the property of the respective Gamestation buyers.
As Mephistopheles might have put it, 'Lesen Sie immer den Kleindruck, Herr Faust'.
'By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorized minions.'
In addition, Gamestation made it clear that
'we reserve the right to serve such notice in 6 (six) foot high letters of fire, however we can accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by such an act. If you a) do not believe you have an immortal soul, b) have already given it to another party, or c) do not wish to grant Us such a license, please click the link below to nullify this sub-clause and proceed with your transaction.'
Not even the £5 that Gamestation offered customers if they checked the opt-out box enticed buyers to actually read what they legally bound themselves to. And thus, with a mere 12% opting out, Gamestation has found itself the proud owner of around 7,500 immortal souls, which, for the time being are still the property of the respective Gamestation buyers.
As Mephistopheles might have put it, 'Lesen Sie immer den Kleindruck, Herr Faust'.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Don't let pixels take over the real world
'Pixels', by French animator Patrick Jean. Where Space Invaders pixelise the entire world.
(Thanks, S.)
(Thanks, S.)
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
'Penistone' censored
'The blocking of harmless websites or e-mails by trigger-happy filters is nothing new', reports the BBC. Filters are configured to catch words that are commonly associated with spam, which is a good thing. Too much of that good thing, however, prevented residents of the (fabulously named, I must admit) North Yorkshire town of Penistone from registering with internet providers, because, according to the filters, their town name contained an obscenity.
Even worse, occasionally, such filters are configured not merely to censor real or supposed obscenities, but to replace them with synonyms that won't offend genteel tastes: 'tit' becomes 'breast' and so on. However, in 2008, 'a news website run by the American Family Association censored an Associated Press article on the sprinter Tyson Gay.
A filter decided that "gay" was an offensive word, which should be replaced with "homosexual".
The resulting article began with the memorable headline: "Homosexual eases into 100m final at Olympic trials".'
Story from the BBC
Even worse, occasionally, such filters are configured not merely to censor real or supposed obscenities, but to replace them with synonyms that won't offend genteel tastes: 'tit' becomes 'breast' and so on. However, in 2008, 'a news website run by the American Family Association censored an Associated Press article on the sprinter Tyson Gay.
A filter decided that "gay" was an offensive word, which should be replaced with "homosexual".
The resulting article began with the memorable headline: "Homosexual eases into 100m final at Olympic trials".'
Story from the BBC
Thursday, March 25, 2010
'Who's been using my Gmail account?'
You may be an outspoken activist. Or discuss sensitive information via e-mail. Or forward e-mail messages with subject lines and content that is of interest to a variety of hackers - whether lone operators, scammers, spammers, or state-employed e-spies. In any case, if you happen to do all that on Gmail, there's a way of finding out whether someone's been snooping on your e-mails and possible gleaning data from your e-mails, for whatever dodgy purposes. Here's how:
'log in, go to Settings on the top right, and scroll down to the bottom. There you'll find some text in green telling you how much of your allowance you're using; and below that a line saying "Last account activity: ... minutes ago at this IP.." and a hyperlink to Details. Click that for a view of your account access history. And make sure that your Alert Preference is set for "Show an alert for unusual activity."'
The instructions come from the Guardian's technology blog and you can read what prompted the article here.
It's also a good idea, I may add, to make sure that you always connect to Gmail securely. To do so, go to your account, click on 'Settings', and in the 'General' menu scroll down to 'Browser connection' and select 'Always use https', then click on 'Save' to apply your preferences. The next time you log into Gmail, the URL should begin with 'https://mail.google.com/mail/'. It's not foolproof, but it helps.
'log in, go to Settings on the top right, and scroll down to the bottom. There you'll find some text in green telling you how much of your allowance you're using; and below that a line saying "Last account activity: ... minutes ago at this IP.." and a hyperlink to Details. Click that for a view of your account access history. And make sure that your Alert Preference is set for "Show an alert for unusual activity."'
The instructions come from the Guardian's technology blog and you can read what prompted the article here.
It's also a good idea, I may add, to make sure that you always connect to Gmail securely. To do so, go to your account, click on 'Settings', and in the 'General' menu scroll down to 'Browser connection' and select 'Always use https', then click on 'Save' to apply your preferences. The next time you log into Gmail, the URL should begin with 'https://mail.google.com/mail/'. It's not foolproof, but it helps.
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