Computers, Society, and Nature

My favourite author as a child has died. Madeleine L’Engle’s sweet novel, A Wrinkle in Time, combined science fiction and the power of love with a strong female lead. It buoyed me through many a hard time as a science-inclined geeky girl. Even for adults, the book, or at least the book’s path, holds some insights:

What turned out to be her masterpiece was rejected by 26 publishers. Editors at Farrar, Straus and Giroux loved it enough to publish it, but told her that she should not be disappointed if it failed.
…
“A Wrinkle in Time,” … won the John Newbery Award as the best children’s book of 1963. By 2004, it had sold more than 6 million copies, was in its 67th printing and was still selling 15,000 copies a year.

According to the article A Wrinkle in Time is one of the most banned books in the US for its treatment of the deity. Sounds like I made a good choice.

I reread it a few years ago and it didn’t retain the power it once held. Few childhood books do, I suppose. However, it remains a classic that should be read by all girls just a little bit on the geeky side.

Are you taking care of your plants? If not they’ll call you and tell you. Such is the project of Botanicalls. Not only will they call you and tell you about their light and soil conditions but you can call them back and ask about their status.

via Treehugger,

The system currently involves a soil moisture sensor, hardware and software to interpret that data, and a call to a lounge phone; phase [two] will include a bunch of new features including a light sensor, display, ambient sensors, output to the web and email, as well as calls to your personal cell phone (not just the one connected to the plant).

Of course, the plants could talk to the watering hose directly but that would loosen the connection between nature and human, so I applaud the goals of the company to:

1. Keep the plants alive by translating the communication protocols of the plants (leaf habit, color of foliage, droop, etc) to more common human communication protocols (email, voice phone calls, digital visualizations, etc).
2. Make a connection between people and plants. Explore/enhance/create/visualize people’s emotional connection to plants, the ways plants help humans, how caring for a shared resource can create sense of community, how natural life is a valuable counterpoint to our technical environment.

In phase three, I’d like to see the plants talking to each other, coupled with some AI software to see if any behaviours emerge (“Hey, I see you like your fancy orchids better than me, your ficus. What gives?” or “We’re using craigslist to scrape the phone numbers of some more considerate plant owners so we can call them!”). There’s all sorts of ways that plants could conspire against their owners.

In the meantime, listen to to Scotch Moss complain that it hasn’t received enough water.

The two latest posts at ecoshopper offer keyboards and mouses made from bamboo and ipod nano cases made from 100% recycled materials.

Environment Canada has just approved a Swedish toilet for use in Canada.

The Multoa, imported from Sweden, is a waterless composting toilet. More on the toilet from EcoEthic.

Update: If you need computational power, then try the eToilet, a joint venture between Microsoft and Mulltoa. Or if you require more efficient processing power, then I’d suggest the Mulltoa NE, which allows for batch composting.

The Google TiSP. Another in a long line (here, here, and here for most recent) of our toilet-related posts.

An interesting application of simple economics is present on every corner in Buenos Aires and many other South American cities. A computer (‘machina’, they call them) with internet service is often too expensive for the average family to purchase. So, over the last decade, the stores that host a handfull of telephone booths, or ‘locutorios’, have also introduced pay-by-the-quarter-hour computers.

Children are the most frequent patrons of these locations by far and away. Chatting is exceedingly popular; videogames, less so. In my estimation, some kids are blowing half of their weekly allowances on internet hours. Still, it is not likely that they would save enough to buy a computer by setting all of their internet pesos aside and opting for soccer instead.

Plus, the social currency of chatting is irresistible to many, judging by the glazed eyeballs.

Attending a convention, workshop, or conference? Here is some information on reducing the environmental impacts.

In reportedly the first effort of its kind, a US Indian tribe is using 3D animations to pass along their oral traditions.

Until now, members of the Oneida Indian Nation had passed down through oral tradition the story of “The Raccoon and the Crayfish,” a morality lesson about the consequences of lying. Now, the Oneidas plan to share the tale with the public with the same 3-D technology used by Pixar Animation Studios to make hits like “Toy Story.”

“There’s always been a sense of urgency that comes with the fear that we’re losing not only our stories but a lot of other aspects of Oneida tradition,” said Dale Rood, an Oneida who heads the tribe’s four-year-old multimedia studio. “It’s not until recently, with this type of technology, that we’ve had a chance to see how we can preserve them.”

I’ve had significant downtime in the last month with my servers (it may have been a mistake to host it myself). Only a few minor problems remain and the server/virtual machine problems are largely fixed. Even if the server is down, it doesn’t mean I’ve stopped blogging or shut down the blog. You have us for the duration.

Renee

It’s not computers but it is the return of polyester as an environmental statement. Put down your hemp shirts and don a leisure suit!

The New York Times once again shows it’s capable of producing some very interesting flash content, today’s culprit: The State of the Union in Words which lets you find how often and in what context words or phrases were used in the last six state of the union addresses and one ‘state of the union’ in early 2001 by the benevolent Mr. Bush.

The word “terror” has been been a frequent guest, between 20 and 34 mentions per address post September 11th. “Health care” peaked in 2004 with 9 mentions, but has remained scant since then. The word “surplus” appeared seven times in his first speech, but has shockingly disappeared from the horizon since then.

“Climate change” got a mention in 2007, its first.

Courtesy of David Roberts at Grist Magazine.

Okay, it’s just about computers but it’s about ancient computers.

a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.

The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers was able to decipher many inscriptions and reconstruct the gear functions, revealing, they said, “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.”

Here’s a picture I took in Groningen, Netherlands of a sundial in the Prince’s Garden, which shows the time in the city and in Rome. The Latin at the top of the clock reads something like:

“Time flies … The future is uncertain, the present is unstable/changing, take care of … (do not waste it)”

(h/t Frederic for the translation)

courtesy of the Mac-O-Lantern

Who doesn’t like Samuel L. Jackson? That’s something of a rhetorical question. After all, with unforgettable and overly-quotable scenes such as this:

the recently opened film, “Snakes on a Plane” was touted by all as a sure-fire hit. Only, few people went to see it.

From the NY Times:

“The tepid opening dashed the hopes of Hollywood and especially of New Line Cinema, which released the movie, that vigorous marketing on the Internet would be a powerful new way to propel fans into the theater at a time when movies are working hard to hold their own against other forms of entertainment.”

In short, the movie made half of what was expected in opening days, $15.2 instead of $20-30 million.

“We see that Internet interest in a movie doesn’t necessarily translate to good box office,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, a company that tracks the box office. “To some, the marketing was more exciting than the movie. Everyone was talking about the movie. But you have to convert that talk into moviegoing, otherwise it’s just talk.”

thus…

the wildly hyped high-concept movie, turned out to be a Web-only phenomenon this weekend

Don’t know about the implication for the environment but it is intriguing technology:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. is taking impulse shopping one step farther with technology that allows passersby to purchase clothing they see in the windows of one of its New York stores by tapping on the glass.
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Customers attracted to the sporty tennis clothes they see can purchase them using a credit card swiper mounted to the outside of the window.

A projector beams the images onto the window pane from the inside of the shop, while a thin touch foil mounted on the glass powers the touch screen. The store plans to keep the display up through September 10, though if it succeeds in boosting sales or buzz significantly, Polo Ralph Lauren will roll out the window displays to other stores, a spokesman said.