Meet Juan Manuel "Bebi" Chavez, 19-year-old cellist with the Lanfillharmonic Orchestra, Cateura, Paraguay: This cello was made from an oil can, and wood that was thrown away in the garbage. The pegs are made out of an old tool used to tenderize beef. This was used to make gnocchi. Like the Facebook group here. A longer version is here. H/T: Jenn Power....

09 December, 2012

After just 17 days on Mars, NASA's Curiosity Rover has detected strong indications of life—and confirmed a familiar adage at the same time. Photo credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Photo-enhancement credit: Peter Barss...

23 August, 2012

Tense video of mission control scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, California, as they receive word of the Curiosity rover's descent and landing on the surface of Mars, interspersed with a beautiful animated simulation of the landing. [Video link] And here is the first color photo Curiosity transmitted after landing, showing the landscape to the north of the rover: The image, which shows the north wall and rim of Gale Crater, has been tilted to level the horizon. It's blurry because the camera that took it still bears a transparent lens cap that is covered with dust kicked up during landing....

07 August, 2012

In just nine days, NASA will attempt to place its Martian Science Laboratory on Mars. It's an operation so fraught with extreme technological challenges, the space agency calls it seven mintes of terror. By the time radio signals reach Earth and alert scientists that Curiosity Rover's perilous descent has begun, it will actually have been over for seven minutes, and rover will be dead or alive on the surface of the red planet. H/T: Alexis Madrigal...

27 July, 2012

The Sydney Tar Ponds cleanup is proceeding apace. The final section of the North Pond is now undergoing solidification and stabilization, a process that increases the bearing capacity of the sediments, and reduces their (already low) water solubility. Capping has been completed in the South Pond and large sections of the North Pond. Seeding and sodding are underway. Here's how the South Pond looks from soon-to-be-reopened Ferry Street: Here's the North Pond, viewed from the Ferry Street Bridge, with the former Sysco crane, now operated by Provincial Energy Ventures, in the background, and Muggah Creek meandering gracefully through the property: When it reopens...

20 July, 2012

Phishers aren't just Nigerian schoolboys any more. They're getting reasonably sophisticated: Three factors almost hooked me: I actually am a CIBC (credit card) customer. Always delete any "security message" from a financial institution where you don't have an account. The URL (in dark blue text) looks like a genuine CIBC website (www.cibconline.cibc.com/...

14 July, 2012

In Who Killed American Unions, on the Atlantic's website, Derek Thompson speculates about a connection between technological change and the rise and fall of union membership, which has shrunk to just 12 percent of the US workforce. I was struck by this graph, comparing the rate of union membership with the middle class share of aggregare income: Writes Thompson: The apogee of the unions was also the apogee of the middle class, when it commanded more than half of total income. As the union membership rate dropped, middle class share of income fell, too....

09 June, 2012

Brendan Chilcutt has created the Museum of Endangered Sounds, where you can revisit technological sounds of yesteryear: PacMan, a dot matrix printer, a dial telephone, and a 56K modem connecting over a phone line. It was that last example that caught the fancy of Atlantic Technology columnist Alexis Madrigal: Of all the noises that my children will not understand, the one that is nearest to my heart is not from a song or a television show or a jingle. It's the sound of a modem connecting with another modem across the repurposed telephone infrastructure. It was the noise of being part...

06 June, 2012

Early in 1229, Johannes Myronas, a monk working in Jerusalem, wrote a prayer book. He constructed the book on parchment he recycled from several documents, including a manuscript by the Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse (287–212 BC). Myronas erased Archimedes' words, separated the pages of his manuscript, cut the pages in half, turned them sideways, shuffled them, and transcribed his own prayers onto them. In the years since, the prayer book was drizzled with wax and repaired with various types of glue. Some its pages were covered again with forged paintings. In this way, a unique work by one of humankind's seminal...

29 May, 2012
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