Cartoons: airport security, national security, and the VA waiting list

If you're a traveler and have been cleared by security, don't walk back through the exit lane or you'll be arrested.  The Washington Times tells the whole story, here's part:

Thousands of travelers were left in delayed mode when a passenger walked into a secured area of Detroit Metropolitan Airport without first receiving a proper security check.

The passenger, who was taking a connecting flight, had already been cleared in the departure area of the airport, NBC News reported. But he then walked back through an exit lane and returned to the secured side without going through the security check again, airport agents said, NBC News reported.

Here's a cartoon riff on airport security.

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John Trevor, Cagle

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Daryl Cagle, Cagle

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David Horsey, US News

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Also in the news is this, "White House mistakenly identifies CIA chief in Afghanistan."

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John Cole, The Week

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Lastly, here's a copy of the VA waiting list:

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Gary Varvel, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: Seedbombing and guerilla gardening

My thought was to offer a few ideas for indoor gardening (more about that later), then I discovered Greenaid. Quoting the introduction at the sponsoring organization's site Commonstudio,

As cities become the pre-eminent human habitat, new questions are emerging about how we can better empower urban dwellers to feel more connected to their everyday surroundings.A growing movement known as “guerilla gardening” hopes to spark these larger shifts in consciousness and action, and a tiny but powerful tool known as the “seedbomb” has been used by guerilla gardeners for decades to transform the forgotten niches of the urban landscape.  Made from a mixture of clay, compost and seeds, these green “pixels” can be thrown or planted virtually anywhere, creating more vibrant places worth caring for.  Greenaid is Commonstudio’s multi-year initiative focused on making seedbombs more accessible to the general public by channeling the power of social enterprise.

A couple of their projects are seedbomb vending and D3 (Dream it, Design it, Do it).  To offer seedbombs to consumers and potential bombers, they put up some prototype vending machines in the Los Angeles area.

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Greenaid, SeedbombVending, The Commonstudio

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With the D3 project, a program for K-12 students, Commonstudio asked: "How might we build creative confidence in young people by channeling their interests through the lens of design?"

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D3 methodology, The Commonstudio

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If bombing and other green guerilla offensives are not your thing, how about a vertical green garden in your apartment or flat?

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Flora Grubb, Vertical Garden, Inhabitat

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If you like avocados and want to make use of the seeds, here's how:

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AlissaSueK, Growing Avocado Plants From Seed, Instructables

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-- Marge

Memorial Day: remembering Vietnam

Remembering Vietnam, Barien P.

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Of the wars and military actions the U.S. has engaged in, Vietnam stands out most in my mind.

According to an excellent article, History: Vietnam War, found at the City of Albuquerque site

2,709,918 Americans served in Viêt Nam. This number represents 9.7% of their generation.

The subtitle of the article and authors credited are

Viêt Nam War Narrative and Analysis – A New Mexican Perspective. Compiled and edited by Lou Hoffman with material reliance on "The U.S. Army in Vietnam," by Vincent H. Demma, Center of Military History, United States Army, and "On Strategy – A critical Analysis of the Vietnam War," by Col. Harry G. Summers, Jr.

A student at Brunswick High School in Glynn County, Georgia, included the image above in her/his junior project.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial honors those who served during the war.

-- Marge

Cartoons: oceans rising, bandwidth falling, and A-or-B

Today I'm offering a mixture of cartoon topics.

Carl Safina says the "Rising oceans will be unstoppable."  He's talking about the Antarctic ice melt.

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David Fitzsimmons, The Week

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Dan Wasserman, The Week

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Chan Lowe, The Week

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Joseph A. Palermo talks about "The FCC, Net Neutrality, and Corporate Power."

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Dean Obeidallah insists that "The Boko Haram Terrorists Are Not 'Islamic'." That said, I'm sure that Mike Luckovich in the cartoon below is referring to the Taliban.

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: Brain:computer interaction

This is a follow-up on last Monday's post reporting research and development activity on brain-computer interaction.  Here is a repeat of the video shown there:

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At Neuroscape Labs' page about the Glass Brain Project this video is described as

... a Unity3D brain visualization that displays source activity and connectivity, inferred in real-time from high-density EEG using methods implemented in SIFT and BCILAB.

If you're interested in following along with current efforts to visualize brain activity and maybe break new ground, tools are available.

SIFT, which is open source and can be downloaded at the SIFT site, is an EEGLAB-compatible application and

 ...toolbox for analysis and visualization of multivariate causality and information flow between sources of electrophysiological (EEG/ECoG/MEG) activity. It consists of a suite of command-line functions with an integrated Graphical User Interface for easy access to multiple features. There are currently four modules: data preprocessing, model fitting and connectivity estimation, statistical analysis, and visualization

BCILAB is an open source "Matlab Toolbox for Brain-Computer Interface research."

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For the visualization part (video that can be uploaded to YouTube, for example) Unity3D, a game engine, offers a free version for Windows and can be downloaded via the download page.

Now for the data collection.  A number of sites offer a variety of headsets.  You can find a comparison of consumer brain–computer interfaces, both devices and projects, at Wikipedia.  Here's an example of one of the devices available (Emotiv, $299).

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May the Force be with you.

 -- Marge

Heads up, folks: the Glass Brain

It appears our brains are about to be hacked, which is not necessarily a bad thing...

"Second Life founder creates Glass Brain, a system that lets you explore your brain in real-time" is a headline from Neurogadget.  According to the article,

[Philip] Rosedale made his wife a cap studded with electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes that measure differences in electric potential in order to record brain activity, while he wore a virtual reality headset to explore her brain in 3D, as flashes of light displayed her brain activity from the EEG.

For an idea of what he saw, here's a Glass Brain flythrough:

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This visualization was done in Unity3D; it allows the user to fly around and through the brain with a game pad while seeing real-time live brain activity from someone wearing an EEG cap. Rosedale collaborated with the Neuroscape Lab in San Francisco to produce the Glass Brain.  However, his main project at present is High Fidelity, which is:

...building a new virtual world enabling rich avatar interactions driven by sensor-equipped hardware, simulated and served by devices (phones, tablets and laptops/desktops) contributed by end-users.

Surf on over to the page to see what he means by "contributed by end-users." You're invited by Rosedale and his team to sign up for alpha and will be notified when it's available.

A related article found at Neurogadget is Brain-Machine-Brain Interface (BMBI).

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Miguel Nicolelis, monkey brain-machine brain (BMBI)

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Credit goes to Wagner James Au at New World Notes for his introductory post on the Glass Brain topic (Note: the site is currently offline, as of 11:50 AM AKDT).

More on the topic of brain-computer interfacing Wednesday.

 -- Marge

Cartoons: Benghazi 2.0

It seems the Republicans just can't let the Benghazi attack go and are launching another investigation.  However, according to the Daily Beast, "New Benghazi Investigation Spooks GOP Leaders."  The article begins:

It’s not just the Democrats who are opposed to a new select committee looking into the Benghazi attacks. Many top Republicans are uneasy, too.

A number of editorial cartoonists have something to say about this and the previous investigation.  Cartoonist Daryl Cagle describes the situation as beating a dead camel.

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Daryl Cagle, Cagle

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Pat Bagley, Cagle

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Steve Breen, US News

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Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

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Daryl Cagle, Cagle

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-- Marge

DIY: more about 2D animation

At Animation and Video you can find an article with videos demonstrating "Six D.I.Y. Video Animation Tools."  Two of them are most interesting--GoAnimate and Moovly.

GoAnimate emphasizes creating videos for business presentations online and is fairly pricy, beginning at $39/month with more expensive plans available.  Here's one of their introductory videos:

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You can sign up for free at Moovly, also an online application.  Here are some of your creative options:

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Moovly creative options

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The interesting features in Moovly are being able to manipulate the timeline, as in a full-blown animation program and to add images, sound, and snippets from other videos.  Here's one their introductory videos:

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Moovly has a channel on YouTube. Searching on the term Moovly at YouTube you'll find a lot of users who are working with it.

That aside, if you really want to do animation, nothing beats a full-blown animation program like Toon Boom Studio (currently on sale for $149) or Animate.  KTooN is open source and has good reviews at Sourceforge, where it's available for download.  There's a list of 2D animation software at Wikipedia, but I suspect it's fairly old.

Animator Adam Phillips does some interesting work and offers tutorials on his site Bitey.com.

 -- Marge

Photography: charting the coral fields

Google's Ocean Street Views give you a good idea of what the Seaview SVII underwater camera can do. If you want to know why the Catlin Seaview team is doing it, here's an article by Bryan Walsh at Time Magazine, titled "The Last Coral Reefs."

In addition to Ocean Street Views, Google sponsors the Google Cultural Institute which presents art, culture, wonders of the world, and more.  Here's a view of the Great Barrier Reef:

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Heron Bommie, Heron Island, Catlin Seaview Survey, Google Cultural Institute

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Below are two scenes from Ocean Street Views.  These are just still shots, taken by screen capture.  To see a full 3D panorama--looking up, down, and rotating 360 degrees laterally--mosey on over to the link above. 
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Emily's Pinnacles, Google's Ocean Street View

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Mary Celeste Wreck, Google's Ocean Street View

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And, Google Earth is available online, in case you didn't know.  You can "go anywhere, on any device for free."

-- Marge

Cartoons: Is it just weather or climate change?

And if it is climate change, do humans have anything to do with it?  Here's a collection of surveys of scientists' views on climate change.  The summary from the Doran and Kendall Zimmerman survey (2009) states:

It seems that the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.

The cartoonists also weigh in.

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Michael Ramirez, US News

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Mike Luckovich, The Week

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David Horsey, The Week

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Paul Combs, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: cement

It seems cement (and concrete) offer a wealth of do-it-yourself projects from the small to the very large, such a walkways, even houses.

There is a difference between cement and concrete--as JDM Materials Company puts it, "Cement is to concrete as flour is to a cake."  Still, as you'll see later in this post, many hobbyists use concrete, especially ones are plasticized. You can buy premixed, plasticized concrete or mix the plasticizer in yourself.  Before you begin working, be aware of the safety issues and protect yourself.

Two small projects that look interesting are a minimalist cement clock by South Korean blogger Design Hobby (reference and photo found at Trendhunter).  Design Hobby's site is written entirely in Korean, but you can follow the process by means of the photos, which are gorgeous.

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blog.naver, minimalist clock, Trendhunter

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The second project is a cement hand tealight holder by Valerie at Nikitaland.  This blog's in English.

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Valerie, cement hand tealight holder, Nikitaland

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Fu-Tung Cheng designs with concrete. While showing some of his products, this video also shows the process of working with larger amounts of cement:

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In YouTube's VolunteerGardener channel these two gardeners work together to show Leaf Casting (well worth watching).

 -- Marge

Selling sheep by instagram

Yiibu at Slideshare has posted some fascinating information about global mobile commerce, especially in places where there are no department stores and most buying and selling is done at the local bazaar, if there is one. His presentation is titled "The Emerging Global Web" and it contains a wealth of information.

M-commerce, meaning mobile commerce, is one of the buzzwords that apply to this phenomena.  Some of the retailing is conducted via Instagram, such as selling sheep in Kuwait. This article at Nitrogram tells how to sell products on Instagram.

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yiibu, slideshare

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If you check Alexa's topsites page, many of the top 20 are emerging economies:

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yiibu, slideshare

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And informal economy (read on-the-street retail) is moving into the mobile frontier.

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yiibu, slideshare

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In places where banking is difficult, virtual banking has become the answer.

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yiibu, slideshare

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Some of the sites mentioned in the slideshow are TaoBao, Alibaba (also see Alibaba Group), Jumia, and La Moda (Russia).  Besides Instagram, technologies important to m-commerce are WeChat (Chinese), Alipay (Chinese), and the QR code (first designed in Japan).

Note: the original reference for this post was found at New World Notes.

-- Marge

Cartoons: We the *rich* People...

Senate Republicans have once again asserted their right to be naysayers: "Senate Republicans block Obama bid to hike minimum wage." The debate about raising the minimum wage pushes the point that an increase in the wage will cost jobs.  The North Carolina Policy Watch (NC Policy Watch) has published a comparison of changes in employment levels between states that have increased the minimum wage and those that have not. Generally "...States that raised minimum wage experiencing faster job growth."

These cartoonists have some valuable insights into Republicans, Obama, and the minimum wage controversy.

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Chan Lowe, US News

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Milt Priggee, Cagle

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Milt Priggee, Cagle

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Steve Sack, Cagle

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-- Marge