Because I just signed up for membership at Daryl Cagle's The Cagle Post, "cartoons and commentary," that's where these cartoons about Easter were found. One of the features of premium membership is "support the art form of political cartooning;" I certainly hope my $2.95/month supports more than Daryl Cagle alone. So far I find the sign-in function sadly lacking, but maybe the servers are slow to recognize new subscribers. Without further ado, here is today's selection.
If you built your own drone, what would you do with it? Here's are some suggestions -- and warnings -- from the masked narrator at Danger Info, a YouTube subscription channel, in a video titled, "Citizen Drone Warfare."
According to the TIME Magazine (February 11, 2013 issue) cover story, "Drone Home," by staff writer Lev Grossman,
Businesswise, the Parrot [a drone] is still a product looking for a market beyond well-heeled dronophiles. Unless you find aerial photography extremely personally gratifying (which, granted, a lot of people do), the Parrot doesn't have a lot of immediate practical applications. Which raises the question: What are drones good for, aside from hunting people? The answer, it turns out, is a lot, and more all the time.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been using Predators to monitor the Mexican border since 2005. It currently fields a fleet of 10 and has put in for 14 more. Last fall, NASA used a Global Hawk to study Hurricane Nadine. But flying a drone for purposes other than recreation requires a certificate from the FAA, and those certificates are hard to come by. The government is working to correct that: last Valentine's Day Obama signed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which among other things ordered the FAA to establish six drone-testing ranges, fast-track requests for permission to use drones and figure out a scheme for their integration into U.S. airspace by 2015.
With respect to aerial photography it's a valid question to ask what a drone can see. It turns out a lot:
The GAO report also mentioned "privacy concerns over the collection and use of UAS-acquired data." A lot of people share those concerns. Drones are the most powerful surveillance tool ever devised, on- or offline. A Reaper drone equipped with the Air Force's appropriately named Gorgon Stare sensor package, for example, can surveil an area 2½ miles across from 12 angles at once. Its field of view swallows entire cities. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has produced an imaging system called ARGUS that can pick out an object 6 in. long from 20,000 ft. in the air. In a story worthy of the Onion, USA Today reported in December that Air Force officials were so swamped with the 327,384 hours of drone footage taken last year, they consulted with ESPN about how to edit it down to the highlights, à la SportsCenter. (Grossman, Drone Home)
And what about personal privacy (if such a thing still exists)? Here's one last quote from Grossman's fine article:
Until actual legislation is passed, it won't be completely clear what information the government can and cannot gather using drones. There are certainly precedents: the Supreme Court has ruled that the police can, under the Fourth Amendment, fly an airplane over your fenced backyard and check out whether you're growing pot back there. It's not a giant leap to imagine them flying a drone instead. But where does it stop? The framers didn't anticipate technology that could hover for days, keeping an eye on exposed backyards and porches, that could work in networked swarms, see through walls with thermal imaging, recognize faces and gaits and track license plates. "If we have a bad guy named Waldo," Singer says, "and we have to find Waldo somewhere in that city, we will naturally gather information about all the people around Waldo, not out of malice but just because that's the way it is. What happens to that information? Who owns it? Who stores it? Who shares it? Big questions."
I guess what I'm trying to say is -- if you're going to build your own drone, be aware of the ramifications. And don't fly it anywhere near my backyard.
Also, please take a look at this TIME article -- it also talks about what can go wrong when flying a drone, the psychological toll of being surveilled, and how drones are, even now, being made semi-autonomous (shade of SkyNet!).
Ever wonder if the banner ads that you carefully avoid clicking on really work for the advertiser? Or are they just another example of the visual pollution that comes with life on the web? A number of writers say banner ads aren't particularly effective, for example Andrew K Kirk at FaceTheBuzz in his article, "Ultimate Banner Ad Stats #Infographic." Here's an excerpt:
For a cross-section of how marketers/advertisers spend their dollars, take a look at Marketing Land's library page titled, "Statistics: online advertising." There's also Wikipedia's definition of online advertising.
Of the many avenues open to online advertisers, two stand out right now -- social media and mobile. The site Black Box Social Media talks about social media psychology in advertising in this blog article. I particularly like the example about P.T.Barnum, possibly the world's best marketer:
It’s said that P.T. Barnum would hire a man to stand in the middle of a road and drag a large block back and forth across it all day the week before the circus opened. People would come in droves and ask what he was doing and why? He wouldn’t say a word but on the day the circus opened and with the largest crowd watching, he would drag the block into a tent. Many would follow. Others would run off and tell their friends where he had finally gone and they too would follow.
For more insight into social media, here's a collection of articles on the psychology of social networking from Psychology Today. Which brings me to my original starting point, social psychology, a somewhat scary field of research. Take a look at some of the original experiments.
Digiday has published information on a new type of advertising termed "Native advertising (Jack Marshall)." What catches my eye are the links to articles on the right side of the page.
Since the GOP's loss to Obama, many are pronouncing the party dead; Mike Luckovich takes the analogy one step further in "An honest reflection."
There's a fair amount of discussion lately about Americans' love of guns and the American gun culture. Bill Day's image below, titled "Build-in," pretty much sums it up.
Returning to the combination of science (or more accurately mathematics) and cartoon, here's Tom Toles' combination of asymtote, train, and budget in "Chugging along.". For a less geeky explanation of this word, try this reference at Wordnik.
Talk about found objects! Here's an eclectic collection of items and thingamajigz found on the web about found objects, art, and even a do-it-yourself project on block-printing fabric. Also, before I go much further, let me urge you to check out the Wikipedia article on Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, a friend of Marcel Duchamp and a truly eccentric character.
To get a better idea of what found object art is here's a short description and some examples by Associate Professor Thomas Sakoulas at State University of New York at Oneonta. One of his examples is a sculpture by Man Ray.
Trend Hunter art and design has an article on "DIY Found Object Decor." The sample here is Industrial Pipe Bookshelves by Stella Blue Design (commercial).
A Pinterest-like site called Oobject has a collection of chandeliers made from found objects that is pretty unforgettable. The objects used range from tampons to gummy bears to human bones. The tampon one by Guerilla Girls is shown below. An article with close-up photos is available at Neatorama.
As promised, a DIY project for block-printing fabic is available at Design Sponge, another site that reminds me of Pinterest. (Maybe it's the glitzy ads that bring Pinterest to mind??) The article is by Kate Pruitt and a photo is below; the design is by Jaime Morrison Curtis at Prudent Baby. Jaime is quite an artist.
As for me, I like to find my found objects at the hardware store -- a treasure trove of shapes and promising possibilities.
Another form of artistic expression that caught my attention the other day is fiber art, which can include spinning, weaving, sewing, and quilting. A large portion of the quilt art being done today isn't the same as that done by ladies at a quilting bee in the 1950s. But the idea of getting together still stands with many quilters, who form guilds or associations local to their area. Anchorage Log Cabin Quilters is an example.
The site Studio Art Quilt Associates features galleries of a large number of artists. Use the pull-down on the left side of the page to see an individual artist's work. (Note that you may have to join SAQA to show your work.) Here is just a sampling of the pieces found there.
Another artist doing interesting work is Barbara J. West at Radiolaria.org. This work is titled "Mandalas of Science I: Thalassicolla pelagica."
There are many sites on the web dedicated to quilting and quilter's supplies. A particularly nice one is the Art of Quilting by PBS.
A final note on techniques currently used: while one often thinks of quilting as stitched patterns, modern quilts often use photographic elements, found objects, stamping and a wide variety of focal elements.
Today being the Ides of March, here's some history from the History Orb and a few cartoons (the 5th of March has funnier cartoons at TheWeek; why it that?).
Yesterday a new Pope, who will be known as Pope Francis, was elected. Here's Daryl Cagle's image of "His Argentinean Holiness:"
David Horsey may or may not have actually taken a survey of gun owners, but he makes an interesting point in "Weapon Hoarders."
The remainder of my selection for today is, of course, about the budget/sequester.
In recent history engineering colleges around the world have sponsored robot competitions, often where robots battle each other and the last robot standing wins. Now ordinary citizens, and their robots, can take part in one (not necessarily a fight to the death). Here's a list of competitions from NASA's, Robotics Alliance Project, last updated today. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, read I-Triple-E) Spectrum has a page reporting DIY robots news.
Kits and parts are available for purchase in building your own robot. A sampling of retailers is dfRobot, "drive the future;" Machine Science Inc., which offers parts and tutotials for all types of electronics projects; and, of course LEGO. Just take a look at LEGO's latest product, Mindstorms EV3.
It seems to me that as wealth inequality increases, so does homelessness. To get an idea of how deep the inequality is in the U.S., take a look at this video, featured at the New Economics Institute.
Believe it or not some people choose to be homeless. This quote and more facts about being homeless are posted on Anawim Christian Community's page of Myths and Facts about Homelessness:
Homelessness is almost no one’s choice. In one estimate, approximately 6% of the homeless chose that as a lifestyle. But the point of fact is that it is not so much that people choose homelessness, as some refuse the demands made upon them to maintain a house or apartment. To live in a house or an apartment requires on to work for 40 or more hours a week at minimum wage, just to pay for housing, food and utilities. Those who are excellent at keeping a budget might be able to also afford a car. But most of those on the street suffer from some kind of limitation on their ability to do that kind of labor. It could be mental illness or addiction, or it could be a social limitation, or it could be an inherent refusal to do that much work for so little gained.
Me, I'm haunted by the vision of the future depicted in Max Headroom. From The Pop History Dig comes this image of the streets and the following quote:
But the “big evil” at the center of this world and throughout the series is corporate domination through television. The setting is not pretty. Satellites monitor all activity. At every street corner “securi-cams” monitor the population. “Electro-democracy” has arrived, but it is controlled by the networks which rig “instant tele-elections.” Still, the world has 4,000 TV channels, and that’s what the corporations are fighting about. Among their battle techniques – and those also used occasionally by the underground – is “zipping,” or computer hi-jacking/interrupting of satellite signals. But mostly the networks are just greedy; primarily interested in controlling viewers for commercial gain and power. Ratings and advertising are monitored minute-to-minute in real time, and executives are called on the carpet immediately for any slippage. Television sets, in any case, can’t be turned off — and they’re everywhere, even built into the sides of trash cans.
It was the middle of 2012 when the news exploded with reports that the Higgs boson had been discovered. Now, more than half-a-year later, does the discovery still stand valid?
An update posted at Engadget by Sharif Sakr states "it's cool, it exists, it's not necessarily so 'exotic'." So what was all the fuss about anyway? A really cool video by PHD Comics (I watched it twice; you may want to watch it on YouTube.) explains it all:
This update, uploaded by 1veritasium gives even more info --
And what would Friday be here without a few cartoons?
"Perspective is Everything" by David Horsey:
Not meaning to incite war, insurrection, revolution or anything like that, today I humbly offer simple do-it-yourself, prankish tools. What you do with them may incite office mayhem, so choose your target carefully.
All of the ideas below come from Instructables, where there are several more in this collection by scoochmaroo. You'll notice that a number of the ideas require malice aforethought.
After years of eight to twelve hours a day of using a mouse my right wrist is complaining a lot. I know I could switch to my left hand, but haven't. (And don't want to.)
There's a new product being offered at Kickstarter that may relieve the effects of excessive mouse usage, known as repetitive strain injuries (RSIs). Many people refer to such effects as carpal tunnel syndrome. Called the Mycestro, it's a 3D mouse that is worn on the index finger and can be operated while your hands are in position for typing. It could also be called a wearable wireless air mouse. Here's a video:
While checking to see if there are similar products, I came across several mice and some very good videos about them. Three are shown below.
3DConnexion's 3D mouse is well-received by members of the CAD/3D software community. You can read reviews at Newegg.com. It seems you still have to use a regular mouse as well, though. There's an excellent video at 3DConnexion's site and here's one from YouTube. Note that the SpacePilot costs about $340; the SpaceNavigator averages $90.
Contour Design's ShuttleXpress and ShuttlePro are particularly useful for video editing. At their site you will also see a new device called the Roller Mouse, which you can try out for free (didn't check it out, but you can). Here's an excellent video about video editing and the ShuttlePro:
Lastly, here's a demo video for Gyration's Wireless Air Mouse. It appears to operate like a Wii Nunchuk. The demo video below is flawed, but gets the idea across.
