Monday Blues

It's Monday and back to the grind.  If you're feeling not-so-good about the weekend being over, you're not alone...

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Unknown, Cheezburger

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Memeguy

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Catasters

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Foller

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theblondekid

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-- Marge

Cartoons: the genie out of the bottle

Gary Varvel, The Week

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The news this week may appear to be about Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader, losing the Virginia primary to a Tea Party candidate, but it's really about what voters will tolerate.  In the Washington Post's Opinion Section E.J. Dionne says:

We’ll never know whether Cantor would have done better if he had held steady on the subject [of immigration reform]. What we do know is that sending out campaign literature bragging about a news story that declared him “the No. 1 guy standing between the American people and immigration reform” did nothing to placate or persuade those who were out to defeat him.

Dionne's article is an excellent look at Republicans, the Tea Party, and the effectiveness of Republican attack ads, presumably backed by Big Money Republicans.

I don't know about you, but to me the Tea Party has become scary. They seemed innocent enough when they started out and their goals looked good, then they shut down the U.S. government and gloated about it.

At least the cartoonists can still evoke a laugh.

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Adam Zyglis, The Week

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Steve Sack, The Week

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Michael Ramirez, US News

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R J Matson, The Week

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Interesting that in this last cartoon Google takes on the role of Supreme Manipulator.

-- Marge

DIY: earth homes

Mankind has been building with earthen materials for ages.  Think adobe, brick, turf, and rock.  Earth houses take a number of forms--above ground, below ground, embedded in an embankment, and so on.  Building materials range from bagged dirt to old tires, concrete to fiberglass composites. 

To get an idea of the organic beauty that can be achieved in building underground, take a look at the article "Beautiful Swiss House is Buried Under the Earth," published by Inhabitat.

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Underground home, Vals, Switzerland, Inhabitat

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The house pictured above is part of a complex designed by Vetsch Architektur.  More about the complex and more images can be found in "Unconventional Earth Homes in Switzerland."  Construction details can be found at Greenroofs.

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Unconventional earth homes in Switzerland, inthralld

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If you prefer to build above ground, here's information about a Superadobe earth home. Cal-Earth (California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture) describes the building process in detail.  It is reported to be low-cost.  Below is the interior of a home built with Superadobe.

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Superadobe earth home interior, Busyboo

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Terminology for underground homes includes earth-sheltered, earth-bermed, earth-covered, earth-bunded,  and subterranean. Prefabricated components for an earth-sheltered house are available, such as the ones manufactured by Colfibrex.

Dragonfly Hill is a blog that chronicles building an earth-sheltered home. Below Michael G. Smith describes his craft--building above ground with earth and straw.

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Since there are no step-by-step project instructions (that I can find) available for underground homes, just notes on what you should keep in mind, I urge you to look at my earth homes playlist.

 -- Marge

Eugene Goostman, the chatbot

Eugene Goostman, PrincetonAI

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Gizmag reports, "Eugene Goostman chatbot passes Turing Test." O.K.  Why does a chatbot have a full name and how did it pass such an important-sounding test?  Here's more on the Turing test.

The entry for Eugene in Wikipedia says:

Eugene Goostman is an artificial intelligence chatterbot. First developed by a group of three programmers; the Russian-born Vladimir Veselov, Ukranian-born Eugene Demchenko, and Russian-born Sergey Ulasen in Saint Petersburg in 2001, Goostman is portrayed as a 13-year old Ukranian boy in an effort to make his personality and knowledge level believable to users.

Time Magazine has published an "Interview with Eugene Goostman," in which the author notes:

Chatbot Eugene Goostman supposedly passed the legendary Turing Test on Sunday, tricking 33% of a panel of judges into believing he was a real boy during the course of a five-minute chat conversation.

The milestone conveniently occurred 60 years to the day after Alan Turing passed away; Turing bet that by the year 2000, computers would be intelligent enough to trick humans into thinking they were real 30% of the time.

You can talk with Eugene yourself by surfing to his homepage at Princeton ai (Artificial Intelligence).

Searching on 'artificial virtual assistant', you'll find a number of companies that offer their services.  IKEA features one, Ask Anna, on its Customer Service Contact Center page.

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Anna, Automated Online Assistant, IKEA

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-- Marge

Cartoons: Canary in a coal mine

Drew Sheneman, The Week

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Big news this week is Big Coal.  The EPA has proposed a rule to cut emissions; read all about it in "Everything you need to know about the EPA’s proposed rule on coal plants." Here's an excerpt:

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed a rule designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal plants by as much as 30 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels. The regulation has prompted heavy lobbying from industry and environmental groups, and the ensuing battle promises to become, as the Natural Resources Defense Council Climate Director Peter Altman put it, “the Super Bowl of climate politics.”

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John Cole, The Week

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Of course, the Republicans have a lot to say about it (and anything the Obama administration proposes or does).  Here are a couple of cartoonists' views.

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Walt Handelsman, The Week

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Jack Ohman, The Week

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Meanwhile, we ordinary folk are left wonderin'.

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Chip Bok, The Week

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-- Marge

DIY: Mosquito repellent

Here an Anopheles stephensi female is gorged with blood and
beginning to pass unwanted liquid fractions of the blood
to make room for more of the solid nutrients in her gut (Wikipedia)

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There are two main reasons to make your own mosquito repellent or buy an herbal one: avoid using products with DEET and keep the damn mosquitoes and whatever off.  This year, here in Alaska, they are particularly voracious and the stings itch for days, if not treated.  You can buy products that are supposed to relieve the itching, but I found one of the best treatments is dabbing on a little witch hazel.

Stories about DEET abound.  I've heard fishermen report that contact with DEET-containing repellent took the varnish off their fishing rods.  The CDC's ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry) site has an article on its Health Effects in Humans. And Wikipedia's article on DEET is very good.

There are many recipes for herbal repellents online.  Most of them use essential oils.  Here's a site, Mountain Rose Herbs, selected at random to illustrate how essential oils may be offered.  Be careful of the term aromatherapy, many products offered are a mixture of oils, blended with a specific purpose such as stress relief, aphrodisiac, purification, and so on. Amazon has a good selection; best to search for the oil specifically by name.  Another thing to keep in mind is that some essential oils should be diluted with a carrier oil, which can be olive or grapeseed oil--so follow the recipe.

Inhabitat has a collection of  "Homemade Insect Repellent Sprays and Lotions." Wellness Mama offers a variety of recipes, including ones that use dried herbs. 

Here's a recipe I found a while ago, but haven't tried yet.

Ingredients:
1/2 liter of alcohol
100 gram of whole cloves
100 ml of baby oil or similar (almond, sesame, chamomile, lavender, fennel, etc)

Preparation:
Leave cloves to marinate in alcohol four days
Stir every morning and evening
After 4 days add the oil
It's now ready to use.

How to use:
Gently rub a few drops into the skin of the arms and legs.
Observe the mosquitoes fleeing the room.
Repels fleas on pets too.

One of my favorite ready-made repellents is Herbal Armor, which can be purchased at Amazon.

I find that these natural repellents last about half-an-hour, then must be refreshed.

Also, I couldn't resist including the Russian sculpture below.

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Valery Chaliy, mosquito sculpture, Laughing Squid

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-- Marge

Alternative fuels: where are they now?

From time to time we hear in the news that a revolutionary new substitute for petroleum-based fuels, termed 'alternative fuels,' is being developed, then hear little more about it.  Here's an update on the current state of alternative energy, especially as related to vehicles.

For a survey of the types of alternative fuels currently considered viable the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), take a look at the Alternative Fuels Data Center. The site has a section called Station Locator for finding alternative fueling station locations.

Algenol, a company that produces algae-based biofuel, states that it can offer its product "for around a mere $1.27 per gallon."  Paul Woods, CEO of Algenol says in a piece at Renewable Energy World that

Converting algae to fuel requires only sunlight, carbon dioxide and saltwater to produce ethanol, gasoline, jet and diesel — four key fuels that have the power to change the way we consume at the pump.

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Algenol, algae bio-fuel production, Renewable Energy World

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To keep up with the latest trends in algae and other biofuels, watch Biofuels Daily.

There's some interesting news in the area of fuel-cell-powered vehicles:

Cars that drive hundreds of miles on a tank of hydrogen and spew nothing from the tailpipe but water will hit the market this month in California. (SFGate).

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Hyundai's first mass-produced Tucson full cell CUVs arrive in Southern California. Photo: Associated Press

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As a side note--remember Doc Brown turning trash into fuel in Back to the Future?  To see a real world application of the idea, take a look at Gizmag's article, "Could this little-known biomass generator start an energy revolution? The Power Pallet described in the article uses a process called gasification. According to Ross Pomeroy at Real Clear Science,

Gasification was actually widely used in Europe during World War II when petroleum became scarce.

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Jim Mason, Power Pallet, Gizmag

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This post just touches the surface.  Many are working on solutions to the expected depletion of oil.

-- Marge

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