Crazy Russian scientist, Kirill Eskov posted up a free English translation of his LOTR re-work, this time from the perspective of Orcs living in Mordor. This retelling casts Gandalf as an overly-spiritualist war-monger, intent on destroying the scientific and industrial innovations Mordor and Sauron have established.
This isn’t some flash-in-the-pan slashfiction, this is serious stuff. Eskov is a HUGE fantasy author in Russian language fantasy circles. I’ve been hearing about this guy for the last couple of years, one of my ex-girlfriends tried to get me to read a fan translation but it had the prose and subtlety of, well, a Russian language fan translation of a Russian trying to write in the prose of Tolkien. (It takes balls of a distinct Soviet/Russian variety to re-tell LOTR with an emphasis on technology as opposed to magic.)
This is an authorized translation, and its pretty interesting (at least to LOTR fans.) Tolkien had a huge mythology made for the Middle-Earth series, one of which is the map of Middle-Earth. Its basically Europe, turned 90 degrees, with the Shire being England and the Soviet/Balkan states representing Mordor. I can’t help but think that Eskov is trying to turn the tables at this perceived slight.
Are web 2.0 services like GMail, Facebook, and bit-torrent really making it harder for the FBI to wiretap people doing illegal things? Do they need congress to pass a set of laws to aid them in capturing someone who uses Facebook? As someone who works computer forensics with law enforcement agencies, I’d say no. Its not enough for them to get your data after a wiretap, they want it now!
Sure, if data lies on Facebook’s servers and not your local hard drive, the feds will have to get a separate warrant/subpoena for those locations. The government already can wiretap your e-mail using the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).
CALEA requires telcos and ISPs to turn over real-time monitoring to the feds if they are presented with a wiretap order. If the FBI had it their way, when those providers get the wiretap order authorities would not only have access to your real-time data, but also everything stored remotely.
So you might not be updating your pics on Facebook, but since you logged in anyway, they’d have access. Its a scary thought that everything online would be this accessible. Compound that with the risk of warrantless wiretaps and it’s enough for normal people to be concerned about their privacy online.
The feds know how much they can push, though. They’ve decided that the best way for them to address real-time wiretaps is through a shady program known as “Going Dark.” It’s shady enough that the Electronic Frontier Foundation had to file a freedom of information act request to find out any info on it.
This program aims to offer “incentives” to software developers to join their program. What incentives they’re offering, they don’t say. This week a software security company was hacked and it was revealed that the government was paying them to write backdoors into software for them. Microsoft has long been accused of having a backdoor in all of their products for the NSA.
I’m guessing that the FBI is asking, politely, for similar things. I don’t know what incentives the feds could offer a company, but since the “Going Dark” program is multi-agency and spans defense, law enforcement, and the Department of Justice, they could offer all kinds of under-the-table deals that we’d never hear about.
One of the problems we’re going to face in the future is that the government has no real standards in terms of computing. One agency will run one piece of software, another will run a completely different piece, on a different platform. The government also gets bilked by IT companies. I’ve seen broke school districts paying $2,000 for a Dell workstation because that’s what their contract says they’ll do.
I’m sure the different federal agencies work in a similar fashion. I’ve given presentations at law enforcement seminars where the previous speakers were standing up and teaching computer crime units on how to use Google. (As in, “put what you want to search for in the text box, click “search!”) And while I’ve given presentations where people actually know what they’re doing, the majority however have no clue. The people who are dreaming up these projects are trying to win support from people who have absolutely no clue when it comes to technology.
Privacy might not be a major concern for you now, but if programs like “Going Dark” get slipped under the radar its going to be too late for any of us to have privacy online ever again.
If you’ve been on the Internet for more than five minutes, chances are you’ve received a link to or have been told about The Oatmeal from a friend or colleague. Created by Matthew Inman, The Oatmeal is a site that not only shows you how many Justin Biebers you could take on in a fight, but also serves as a place to see some of the funniest webcomics available on a variety of topics.
Inman and I chatted via non-Internet means (the phone) on February 22 about his popular webcomic, his creative process, his upcoming book tour, (bad) website redesigns, and what’s next for The Oatmeal.
When he started the site, Inman mentioned that he didn’t have a specific audience in mind, but “wanted to make comics I thought were funny…and things tech people would find funny.”
Inman noted that the stories he tells on his site are 100% true, but the names are changed and he may exaggerate the situations for comedic purposes. One of his recent blog articles gained attention in his hometown newspaper, the Spokesman-Review. Which story, you ask? Why, the one about riding the bus to school past a Neo-Nazi compound.
So, how do all of those hilarious comics and quizzes start? “I keep a notebook and will write down zany ideas whenever,” he said. He then reviews them from time to time. “All of my drawing is done on computer, never on paper,” he said. He uses Adobe Fireworks to create the vector artwork and from there, can slice up the graphics to post online in a matter of minutes.
Inman sees his webcomics in the same light as blogging in that it’s “informal and fast…there’s no editor, so things can go up quickly.”
On his site, Inman notes that he’s a “one-man business.” Well, sort of, he does have three employees who manage The Oatmeal’s merchandise and customer service needs, but beyond that, the rest of the site is maintained and managed by just one guy.
That said, he admitted that he isn’t managing his life too well at the moment. I don’t want to get him in trouble in case the issue hasn’t been resolved, but I’ll just say he mentioned the need to check his snail mail more often to ensure some key bills are paid.
Inman said some of the challenges is that he has to do the mundane tasks such as pay bills and taxes when he just wants to “draw and be funny.” He mentioned possibly hiring someone to help him manage that area of his life down the road. This is when I not-so-subtly dropped that I have a project management background.
Managing his own affairs may get a bit trickier as he embarks on his first-ever book tour in support of 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin (And Other Useful Guides). “Having a book was part of my plan from the start,” he said. When he started the site, Inman had a self-published book available as a way to have some merch to sell.
“Then a real publisher approached me about creating a new book,” he said. Thanks to his webcomics on an editor’s favorite topics — grammar and punctuation — he made a lot of waves in the publishing community.
When his publisher proposed the book tour, Inman admitted he was worried that he would be awkwardly sitting at a table with a bunch of books while people walked by wondering who he was. That is definitely not the case. Through the RSVPs received from Facebook so far, there are at least 200 people per event planning to attend the stops along the tour, which begins March 2 in Seattle.
And, he’s looking forward to meeting his readers face to face. “It’s a different experience than just seeing a tweet that says, ‘LOL’” he said.
Although, fans take heed on what not to do…
Inman mentioned that he recently had lunch with Farside creator Gary Larson, who recalled his first — and only — book tour. While some of Larson’s fans dressed up as cows, pigs, or chickens, one woman took it a step too, er, far, and dressed up in a bunny suit and launched a cream pie at the artist.
While it would be nice to receive gifts that don’t involve a cleaning crew, Inman is definitely worried that he’ll receive a lot of oatmeal. For those who don’t know, he actually hates oatmeal. Perhaps he could team up with a food pantry in each city on the tour and donate the oatmeal to those in need?
So, what’s next for The Oatmeal after the book tour? He’s already making plans for another book that will feature more comics not posted on the Web.
He’s also planning to start creating animated shorts that would be posted online. “This will be a tricky process [changing the comics to animation]…I have to be very careful because if the voice, narration, or timing are off, it can change the overall tone,” he said.
As for advice on those who are hoping for their own Oatmeal-like success? Inman said to pick a passion/hobby that you love. He spends 12-16 hours a day on his comics and loves what he does. He said that now is a great time to get into the game thanks to the “power of social media.” “What I’m doing now couldn’t have been done without sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Facebook,” he said. Most importantly, he said to “have fun!”
***
For information on the upcoming book tour, be sure to visit “The Oatmeal” to see if and when he’s coming to your area and to RSVP.
Like yours truly, Inman has given a talk as part of the O’Reilly Ignite program. Check out his Ignite Seattle presentation on “How to get 5 million people to read your website.”
Astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette believe they may have discovered a new planet in our solar system. Nicknamed Tyche, the object is believed to be the size of four Jupiters, comprised of helium and hydrogen, and orbits our sun at a distance of 15,000AU (one AU, or Astronomical Unit, is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, 15,000AU is roughly 1/4th of a light year). This orbit puts it well within the boundaries of the Oort Cloud — a cloud of debris orbiting our sun with a radius of one light year — where long-term comets (those with an orbit greater than 200 years) originate.
Matese and Whitmire first proposed the existence of Tyche in 1999 as a result of studying the origins of long-term comets. It was discovered that their orbits originated in a cluster that was roughly the same angle from the ecliptic, or the path of the Sun through space. An object at least the size of Jupiter in the Oort cloud could explain the disruption of debris along this plane, which could in turn account for the pattern of mass extinctions on Earth.
In 1984, paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski found a pattern of mass extinctions in the fossil record dating back 250 million years. They discovered that every 26 million years, a mass extinction occurred. The lack of any Earth-based evidence of any sort of change led the team to believe that the cause was extra-terrestrial. The existence of Tyche could explain this pattern due to the orbit of Tyche disrupting Oort Cloud objects and send them towards the inner Solar System, thereby increasing Earth’s chances of an impact like the one that is believed to have killed the dinosaurs.
NASA’s WISE Telescope (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer) may have already discovered Tyche. In April, the first batch of data from the telescope is set to be released. Matese and Whitmire think that it will reveal the existence of Tyche within two years. The object they are looking for is believed to have cloud bands much like Jupiter, and have a temperature of -73C, or five times warmer than Pluto. The heat would be left over from its formation, and would take longer to cool off due to its size.
If Tyche is found to exist, though, it would not add to the number of planets in our Solar System, as it most likely formed around another star and then captured by the Sun’s gravitational field. The International Astronomical Union would most likely create a new category for this planet.
Well hello there, cuties! Welcome to the Crasstalk writing clusterfuck. If you have an author’s account or are planning to write in the near future, you are in the right place. Tonight we are going to try to get everybody ready to post or to improve your posts if you already are. I am going to try and cover some basic issues about the mechanics of posting, but I also want people to kick around some ideas and coordinate with one and other if you are working on related topics. I will be around for the next few hours and will occasionally add to the post, so refresh your screen now and again for new announcements. I will be in the thread so feel free to asks questions, but since I am drinking some delicious beer tonight look for the last 20 minutes or so to consist of my sending you bunny pictures and typing I love you guys in all caps through my drunken sobs.
All right, let’s get to work. First, everyone of you need to go and read this now. Yes, you! I don’t care if you read it yesterday, take 5 minutes and look it over again. I’ll wait.
Ok, so now I want to post something for those of you who are new to Word Press. First, click on this link and bookmark it. This will answer 99% of your questions about creating a post. Also, if you have never posted watch this video to help get you started.
Ready? Great! Now that you have Word Press mastered you are set. Now, let’s move to the next issue. What the hell are we going to write about? There are no content limitations for the most part and there are no assigned beats. Write whatever you are passionate about. Don’t feel like you have to have some amazing topic to get started. Write about what you find interesting and your enthusiasm will probably spread to your readers. Don’t be afraid to take the plunge. We are all pretty nice over here. Also, the beauty of Word Press is that if you really hate it you can just take it down. Take a deep breathe, you are going to be good at this.
So let’s go ahead and throw out a few ideas for each other and try to give each other some feedback so everyone can develop their ideas. Please post ideas if you have them, or if you want to see what people think about a topic. Also, I know several of you have similar interests, so maybe you can work together to come up with some stuff. I know there are a lot of TV fans out there, so we can try to come up with what shows you guys want to cover.
Here are a few things that myself, Dogs, and Meat want to stress:
Please try to take the time to write up good material. You don’t have to write a novel, but you are making this for our community, so give them something good.
Please don’t over post. Everyone who is taking the time to write here deserves to have their stuff seen.
Don’t be a jerk commenter to people who are just getting the hang of this. I should not have to add any more to this.
Let us choose the categories for the posts. It is necessary to keep the front page looking orderly.
Make sure you have a thumbnail image for every post. You must load the image into the media library and link it from there. You can not just copy the link from the internet.
Ask of if you have any questions are need help. The admin types here are doing this because we really enjoy all of you guys, we are here to help.
I am going to post a few links to some good stories that have been posted in the past. Please take a look at them because I think they will really help you.
Ok, let’s get to it. Post your questions, ideas, irrational fears below and we will all try to make sense of this.
Quick note: If you are interested in a certain topic, put that word first in your reply so others can find you. Second, please thank Coffee and Cigs for being our sexy secretary this evening.
New Update:
I am putting some topic threads below. If you are interested in those topics, put a reply in the disscusion so I can see who is who. Also, I noticed no one said thank you to Coffee and Cigs for taking notes. Don’t make me take the cute bunny pics away.
OK. I am going to take a break for a minute. Please take a brief dance break.
Also, I could really use a few news items for tonight’s overnight open thread. Send ’em if you got ’em.
Update: I think we have had a productive night. If you are reading this late still feel free to add comments and sign up under a topic section. I will check this post in the next couple of days to see what people are thinking and what they are interested in. I think the next step will be to have some posts for each section so we can help each other develop our posts. I will try to get that started in the next week. In the meantime, please feel free to put up posts and get started if you haven’t already. Let us know if you need help.
It has been an honor to serve with you all. Together, we will win the internet.
My name is LeftCoastLady and I’m a slut…on e-mail…and have no intention of stopping.
Sending someone – whether they’re a potential mate, your significant other, or just an “other” – a carefully crafted erotic e-mail takes practice. Not to be cliché, but it truly is a delicate balance. Just because you’re sending a note via e-mail doesn’t mean you should slack off on the creativity.
While you don’t want to be too vulgar, you also don’t want to be so subtle the inference goes flying over their cranium. Leave lots of clues, but also allow them to fill in the blanks using their imagination. This is key if you want the e-mail exchange to go beyond one round.
Get descriptive. Tell them how you smell, what you’re wearing/not wearing, or even what you’re eating. Describing the eating of an especially juicy piece of fruit in combination of how it tastes – and, oops, some just dribbled down your chin – can send some over the top. Once the correspondence has gone a couple of rounds, start to get into the specifics of what you like as well as what you want to do or to have done to you. Make sure your responses feed off one another. If they want to talk about kissing, then your response should tell them where you want to be kissed and how (soft, hard, lots of tongue, etc.).
It should go without saying, but accurate spelling and grammar is key. Don’t send a message so riddled with errors your object of affection spends more time deciphering your intention than actually enjoying the thought of you and all the naughty things they want to do.
Like a knowing wink or an inviting smile, an erotic e-mail message can provide both the sender and the recipient with pleasure and a sense of anticipation for what will happen later on when they meet in person and are able to act out what was written.
If successful, the message will make them cross or shift their legs, make their body temperature rise, and change their breathing patterns.
Music is highly valued across all human societies. The specific sounds vary widely, even within cultures. My mom loves to listen to Gregorian chanting; I’d rather be involved in an automobile accident, but I do love The Strokes. The concept is the same, though: an abstract stimulus invokes a pleasurable response.
So is music a drug? New research published last month in Nature Neuroscience(1) indicates a strong similarity. Drugs, sex, and eating have long been known to produce pleasure by releasing dopamine in the mesolimbic system, commonly thought of as the “reward pathway.” These are tangible stimuli that promote (or, our bodies think they promote) survival. Music, though, is abstract. It feels good to listen, but it doesn’t provide us with safety, nutrition, or reproduction.
To test what neural pathways are engaged during musical enjoyment, researchers first had their test group select their favorite music. A “musical frisson” test was used to identify moments of peak pleasure – if you get “chills” on hearing “DON’T STOP – BELIEVING,” you’re actually experiencing a measurable physiological response.
Brain activity was then measured as subjects listened to their chosen piece. Two types of brain imaging were used: PET scans were used for their precision over time, while fMRIs were used for their neural precision. The results were combined to accurately determine exactly what the brain was doing at what point in the listening experience.
Two different neurochemical responses were discovered. In the anticipatory stage – leading up to the subject’s favorite part of the song – dopamine was released in the dorsal striatum. In previous studies(2), the dorsal striatum has been linked to learning and action selection. Researchers at UPenn have specifically linked it to cocaine cravings in addicts.
During the peak pleasure stages (measured by the musical frission response), dopamine was released in the ventral striatum. A previous study(3) strongly linked the ventral striatum to sensations of euphoria associated with amphetamine use in non-addicted individuals .
This biological parallel between drug use and listening to music makes sense, especially if you’ve ever tried to turn off someone’s favorite song “right at the good part.” Only an addict could respond so violently to a 60-second pleasure delay.
1. Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Et. al. (2011, January 9). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music [Electronic version]. Nature Neuroscience.
2. Volkow, N. D., Wang, G., Et. al. (2006, June 14). Cocaine cues and dopamine in dorsal striatum: Mechanism of craving in cocaine addiction [Electronic version]. The Journal of Neuroscience, 26(24), 6583-6588.
3. Drevets, W. C., Gautier, C., & Et. al. (2001). Amphetamine-induced dopamine release in human ventral striatum correlates with euphoria. Biol Psychiatry, 81-96.
Welcome to the first installment of the feature Creative Juicer. The intent is to give the self aggrandized an opportunity to create wonderful and hilarious things from a given exploitable. Enjoy.
Ever been so pissed off you wrapped bread around your head and went to battle with The Man? No? Really? But you still find this guy inspiring, right? Then show it. Let us gather together to memorialize Bread Helmet Guy, the man from Yemen that inspired a nation and caused untold millions to spray coffee on their monitors.
Your mission, should you accept it, is to fill this thread with related captions, one-liners, photo-shops, roflbottage and other worthy expressions of wit. Bring down the house, people. Do not let the Gluten Warrior to pass into the night without a glorious tribute.
Need inspiration? Check out the gallery at Know Your Meme. This guy is blowing up. Here is a sampler, and a raw exploitable to get you started:
For better or worse, my life is tied to the Internet. It is my work, my play, and how I communicate with the rest of the world.
Thanks to all that time spent in front of a computer, I’ve discovered a lot of great podcasts that allow me to put on the headphones to either laugh or learn something.
“Um, LeftCoastLady, what’s a podcast?”
Essentially, a podcast is a digital file — either audio or video — that can either be streamed online or downloaded. The content of the podcast is recorded by various hosts on a range of topics from history to sports to comedy to sex advice and everything in between and then uploaded to a site for users to access. There’s practically something for just about everyone.
The best part about podcasts is the ability to download them and place them on your portable audio device or even on your phone. Have an upcoming flight? Grab a few podcasts and drown out the lame movie, if there is a movie.
While many podcasts can be found on various sites across the Web, I prefer using the iTunes directory for easy searching and for recommendations based on my current listening habits.
So, if you’ve never listened to a podcast or are looking for a few new ones to add to your roster, here are a few of my favorites. I have tons more, but figured highlighting eight was enough.
Comedy:
“WTF with Marc Maron“: This very not-safe-for-work podcast is part-therapeutic and part-entertainment. Maron tends to interview his fellow comedians and the ensuing discussions give the listener insight into just the amount of damage needed to be a good or great comedian. You know, “tears of a clown,” and such. In addition to interviews with comedians, Maron has interviewed authors, film directors and, well, Gallagher. A favorite episode: “Henry Rollins.”
“Monday Morning Podcast with Bill Burr“: Bill Burr is an angry, angry man. And for that, I love him. He rages on topics that drive me up the wall as well, yet my blood pressure stays low thanks to the ability to listen to his rants. If you’re not a big sports fan, you may find some of his chatter boring, but stick around. His weekly show — posted on, you guessed it, Monday — also includes discussion on recent events, race relations, and the occasional “appearance” of his girlfriend as a co-host. This is definitely a podcast to listen to with your headphones on unless you’re in the comforts of your own home.
Economics:
“Marketplace“: I have a not-so-secret interest in understanding economics and how world events can impact my wallet. Fortunately, American Public Media’s Marketplace podcast provides you with a daily (Monday – Friday) glimpse of the world markets in addition to more in-depth stories on how economics impact us in less than 30 minutes. Plus, Kai Ryssdal’s voice is very, very nice.
“Planet Money“: Like “Marketplace,” the Planet Money team is all about economics and how it impacts us, but they take it a step further by breaking it down in a way that’s understandable to just about anyone. Whether it’s buying a toxic asset or multiple trips to Haiti post-earthquake, the team gives vague economic terms a human face and emotion.
Technology/Internet:
“Tech News Today“: Warning! This is for geeks only. Okay, not really, but it is necessary to understand some of the basics to fully appreciate all the information being thrown at you. The Tech News team offers a daily (Monday – Friday) podcast that runs down the latest in tech news from across the various blogs, tech company press events, and much more. If you want to know what’s going on in under an hour, this podcast is a must-listen.
Life:
“This American Life“: TAL is probably the most popular podcast available. Each week, Ira Glass comes into your ears with random tales that will make you laugh, cry, cringe, and sometimes go, “Meh.” Regardless, listening to this podcast is part of my Sunday evening wind-down routine as I prepare for the workweek. A favorite episode: “Georgia Rambler.”
Music:
“Deep House Cat“: I’m all about having a dance party in my head via my headphones. The Deep House Cat Show produces about five podcasts a month ranging from 60 minutes to two hours of delicious house music. There have been many times where I’ve hit pause to look up a song and download it. Because the length of the podcast varies, it’s great for throwing on while doing chores, working out, or simply sitting on the sofa with a vodka drink (aka how LCL spends her Sunday afternoons).
“Hed Kandi“: Best known for their Ibiza parties, the UK-based Hed Kandi label offers a monthly (or so) podcast highlighting music from their recent album releases. Thanks to last month’s “Twisted Disco” podcast, I bought the album tout de suite and proceeded to dance around the house.
The above chart is fun to look at. All the commenters leave and site traffic drops to 10% of what it was. It’s tempting to greet this with cheers and celebrations. However, as my personal hero once observed, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.” There’s another explanation which, honestly, makes a bit more sense.
The redesign broke a lot of things. It broke the comments, readability, good will, and it appears to have broken the ability of Sitemeter to accurately monitor site traffic. According to Remy Stern in a rather lengthy catfight with Gabriel Snyder, “Sitemeter hasn’t been working since the redesign took effect.” According to Remy, “the ajax is making it difficult for the counters to track traffic properly.” This results in the dramatic dropoffs. Of course, that doesn’t stop the spat from being fun too read (if you like reading inside baseball).
Still, my money is on the codemonkeys breaking the trackers rather than 90% of pageviews being gone after the redesign.
Update: The more accurate numbers for the Gawker Media Empire are said to be found on Quantcast.
The above chart is fun to look at. All the commenters leave and site traffic drops to 10% of what it was. It’s tempting to greet this with cheers and celebrations. However, as my personal hero once observed, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.” There’s another explanation which, honestly, makes a bit more sense.
