Archive for the 'Science' Category

Waiting for Tsunami Politiku

Published
by
s000z
 on February 28, 2010
. 1 Comment

politiku background

“Waiting for Tsunami”

The message was posted on my Siberian-Angelino friend Sasha’s Facebook wall. My Exurbian-Malibu cousin, Jennifer’s, posted Tsunami watch updates on her Facebook wall, as well.

My anti-social-media dad left me a concerned voicemail warning yesterday. Uncertain, due to my transient existence, which coast I would actually be on when the anticipated Tsunami hits, he also warned of the foot of snow on the ground, waiting to greet me in NYC.

How are residents of California –the state hit hardest, first by the recession and now the upcoming 40% health insurance hike– bracing up for the supposed seismic sea wave headed their way?

Is it concern for our own shorelines or is it a sense of connectedness to the recent Chilean tragedy that has us hovering in anticipation or is it anxiety or the upcoming Health Care Reform legislation?

Waiting for Tsunami Politiku

You don’t have to answer all those questions I just asked in your Politiku. I’d like you to respond to at least one of them, however, to ensure the posts have a sense of consistency. Also, if you do not currently reside in Cali, Hawaii or any other Tsunami-watch state, feel free to colonize the metaphor.

Politiku FAQ

What exactly is “Politiku”?
Remember those 17 syllable, un rhymed poems that your 8th grade teacher taught you to write? Well, Politiku combines that traditional Haiku structure with the sort of concise, tweet-length, political commentary you might use when responding to a Huffington Post, DailyBeast or Slate.com story that inspires you.

Do I need to be a writer in order to Politiku?
It helps. It’s not required, though.

How do I write a “Politiku”?
First line has 5 syllables; second line has 7 syllables; third line has 5 syllables. As traditional haiku tends to provide an unexpected twist, reversal or surprising resolution at the end.

Because it is so short, punctuation, space and rhythmic tempo will have heightened resonance.

How many?
Up to you. Please only send me one. Feel free to post as many as you like on the “Politiku” Facebook page, though.

What do I Politiku about?
I assign topics based on current events. The topic I’m having people haiku about right now is “Waiting for Tsunami.”

What do I do with the completed Politiku?
Please submit Politiku via the commentary section of this post. Also, be sure that I have (a) your first and last name (b) your website (if its something you want me to include a link to)

If you have questions, please send an email to susanna (at) susannaspeier (dot) com

Is this a paid gig?
Unfortunately, no. If I even end up publishing what you wrote in a Politiku anthology, however, I’ll comp you a copy.

Where do you publish the Politiku?
My Politiku column on The Huffington Post.

Will the Politiku be published anywhere other than The Huffington Post?
Very likely. My posts get well syndicated. Previous Politiku posts have ended up as syndicated selections for the New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal websites. Politiku will also be posted on my blog and twitter pages, subsequent to launching on Huffington. Sometimes unpublished Politiku get Tweeted out and thus, might appear elsewhere on the internet as well.

Where can I reach you if I have additional questions?
email - susanna (at) susannaspeier (dot) com
What’s the deadline?

February 29th 2009 at 6:00p.m. Pacific Time/ 9:00p.m. Eastern Time

I look forward to reading your 17 syllables

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Sustaining Exurbia

Published
by
s000z
 on January 8, 2010
. 0 Comments

Nick Roberts just responded to yesterday’s Exurbia post saying how impressed he is with Max, Hannah, and Lily’s grasp of Exurbia and then challenged them with the following questions:

How sustainable is it?
What happens after the end of oil? and…
What if the internet doesn’t work?

From Exurbia

Max: I don’t care about the end of oil but without internet I’d die.

Hannah: We’d be completely alone in the world.

Lily: And we’d never, ever be able to meet anybody.  We couldn’t even call anybody.

Hannah: We wouldn’t be able to get out of Exurbia.

Lily: No, we wouldn’t be able to get out of Exurbia in our lives.

Max: We have seven Macs.

Jason: Eight Macs, with Max. 
(Jason is the dad, btw)

Max: Any my iPod Touch.

Jennifer: Who left the door opened?  We don’t want to leave the door opened because of snakes.  Rattlesnakes.  Saw a four foot long one the other day.
(Jennifer, is the mom)

And thanks to yours truly, you can now (as of yesterday) discuss Nick’s questions with each individual family member on his and/or her respective personal blog.  Here are their urls:

lilypiette.blogspot.com
hannahpiette.blogspot.com
outoftheboxorganics.blogspot.com
slowlifeadventure.blogspot.com
jasonpiette.blogspot.com

From Exurbia

Photo of Jason and Lily, blogging in Exurbia.

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Neuroeconomics Politiku

Published
by
s000z
 on November 17, 2009
. 6 Comments

politiku background

The topic of the December Politiku was Neuroeconomics -or- the science of what happens to our brains when we shop.  I ended

If you’d like to read my Huffington Post Politiku Neuroeconomics for New Years click here.

What is Neuroeconomics?

To really get something of a sense of what this is about, I suggest you read what others have to say about it:

Tim Hartford’s Slate.com article on Neuroeconomics

Sharon Begley’s Newsweek article on Neuroeconomics

Elizabeth Eaves’ Forbes article on Neuroeconomics

Paul B. Farrell’s Market Watch article on Neuroeconomics

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Why Googletrends Hates Screensavers and What the Declining Numbers Indicate You Might be Missing Out on

Published
by
s000z
 on November 9, 2009
. 1 Comment

I asked my friend, Cathy, to tell me why Googletrends reports a steady drop in screensaver searches.  The decline dates from 2004 to the present.  Cathy,  a friend I’ve known since Hampshire College days,  is a Screensaver Auteur.

Idle Time Software

In 2008, Cathy’s company produced “Holding Pattern” a screensaver that simulates the experience of intermittently  gazing out of an airplane window and snoozing.  Apple praised  the work for its creativity and lauded Idle Time Software for its programming integrity.  Eventually David Byrne bought a copy from Cathy’s website and invited her collaborate with him on a photography project using the original software she developed to create Holding Pattern.

Cathy1
Cathy Creating Idletime’s Sunset 23
Photo by, Susanna Speier

Deluge of the Anti-gadget

The reason people hate screensavers, Cathy explained, is because skanky software scumbags load them with spyware, adware and viruses.  Screensavers –especially those free screensaver downloads people get online — are often the epitome of skank.

The Great Google Has Spoken

I went to GoogleAdWords to figure out what screensaver keywords have surged over the internet  last month.

1,220,000 users  trawled the internet using the word “screensaver” and the same number searched for the plural form.   “Free screensavers,” came in third, and “Halloween screensavers” was right after at 135,000.

There was no data available for look-ups of “search engine scam,” and fewer than 1,000 were savvy enough to specifically search  for “screensaver spyware.”  Legit as the fear of bogus downloads may be, the search patterns indicate that the fear is based more on conjecture than research and analyses.

Figuring Out Whether or Not Screensaver = Oxymoron

Cathy takes pride in Idle Time’s technical integrity.  She does not sell ad space or generate income through site referral, and she even posts a personal disclaimer officiating the fact she does that she does not add spyware.

And in case you’ve been wondering, the reason Cathy  could spend a year developing a technically, creatively and conceptually sophisticated screensaver  is revenue generated from the deluxe versions of her free software enables her to do so.  Cubicle Flood was therefore made possible by Holding Pattern’s success.

Despite Cathy’s disclaimers, getting people to trust a free screensaver  download  is increasingly challenging.  Could the Googletrends be winning?

Cubicle Flood - The Waters are Rising

The generic grey cubicle office where Cathy used to work inspired the brand new screensaver, “Cubicle Flood.” “It was an emotional response to the deadening work environment,” she says.  “You see a workspace that’s been generated for you by a Human Resources Department.”

Cathy’s Katrina survivor friends do not like the feeling that the  new screensaver evokes.  “Water is incredibly strong and it creeps in,” Cathy says.  The office depicted in Cubicle Flood, however, “isn’t affected the way a real space would be. Cubicle Flood is a dream of a flood and not a real flood.”

Daniel Alcheh’s Soundtrack

Daniel Alcheh, masterfully composed the original soundtrack of Cubicle Flood.  His music complements the flood’s progression over time without overpowering the visual elements.

One wouldn’t think that a disasterscape like a hurricane, tsunami or flood– with rising waters and rising music– would have a tranquil and meditative effect, but in Cubicle Flood, that peacefulness prevails as water and music gradually fills an otherwise sterile and impersonal office environment.

IMG_0942_2

Composer, Daniel Alcheh in His Studio
Photo by, Susanna Speier

The music and the water move through time together.  The collaborative success is evident in the  fact that sound and image inform one another without imposing narrative and context.

Transcendance

“Its a really transcendent environment, but I see it as a beautiful state, a transcendence over what the office looked like previously,” Cathy says.

The soon to be released deluxe version of this production will fill your screen at different speeds and in different office environments.  You can flood an office several times a day or spend an entire day, flooding one.

Talk to Me - Fodder for Your Commentary

What sort of screensaver do you use?
Where did it come from?
How do you know whether or not a screensaver is safe?

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Daylight Savings Time 2009 optimized

Published
by
s000z
 on October 18, 2009
. 0 Comments

Last spring’s Daylight Savings Time post is increasing my current daily blog traffic over 500%.  Reason?  Three of them, actually:

1.) Daylight savings time is near an end

2.) Everyone is googling the term to figure out which exact day that end is gonna fall on.

3.) The search engines aren’t differentiating between beginning and end when discussing Daylight Saving Time.

There’s another reason, too.  Kind of an accidental one.  Rather than titling this post with the correct, yet under utilized, singular form of the word, “saving,” I deliberately and incorrectly pluralized it.  Here is why:

Search Engine Optimization -
According to Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool, the global monthly search volume for “Daylight Savings” is 1,000,000.  The grammatically correct “Daylight Saving” global monthly search volume, on the other hand, is a mere 368,000.

From Blog Archive

The Economy -
Were this a boom economy, I might well have chosen to use the phrase consistent with the National Institute of Standards and Time in my title.

Given the ubiquitously strained job market everyone is dealing with, however, it is in my best interest to revert to the inaccurate yet optimized Googleadwords.com degeneration of Daylight Saving because it will increase web traffic thereby optimizing my chances of my attracting a potential client or employer during this edge of the close of yet another end of Daylight Saving cycle.

In other words: this is me compromising my grammatical integrity in order to appeal to the larger, inaccurate, populous because I need a job.
From Blog Archive

Spring Forward / Fall Back -
“Spring Forward / Fall Back” is the best –not to mention, most accurate– colloquial way I know of to remember this stuff.  Unfortunately it is limited to the direction in which you need to move your clock and provides nothing about how to remember the actual day of the year that this switch falls on.

The Day That Daylight Saving Time 2009 Ends -
Last spring’s title phrase, “Why Daylight Savings Time Makes Me Miss My Atomic Clock” post not only falls short grammatically; it fails to provide the day and time that daylight saving time 2009 is scheduled to end: November 1st at 2:00a.m.

Because I used the accurate term, “Daylight Saving” (rather than “Daylight Savings”) chances are that this section, though most relevant to the majority of the readers of this post, will attract less attention from those long legged google spiders who will eventually crawl it.

Google’s Long Legged Spiders -
Doubtful as it is that the phrase, “November 1st at 2:00a.m.” will prompt those long legged spiders to unravel and reweave but at least now the peops who googled, “Daylight Savings” –the majority, in other words– will get the information they came here to find.

From Blog Archive

Not a computer geek? That’s okay.  You can read my history geek Daylight Saving post, then.

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Original 1984 Apple Macintosh M0001 Computer Revisiting

Published
by
s000z
 on September 20, 2009
. 0 Comments

Crazy but true, Mom actually hung on to the very same 128K M0001 Macintosh that Dad purchased shortly after the-most-expensive-commercial-to-date launched said iconic prototype in the midst of the 1984 Superbowl. Directed by Ridley Scott and perhaps the most prophetic commercial in television history, it only aired once and once was enough. Enter: the dawn of the digital happy face.

And so here it is, 25 years later and here I am, Marsha Collier’s “eBay for Dummies” by my side, running this eBay auction. This German guy, Lars who I met through Retromaccast has been with me every step of the way, even going so far as to create customized diagrams, to help me on my way towards a working computer again.  While it may not be the Gene Roddenberry’s Mac (which, coincidentally, just went up for auction this week as well) it’s got an archival integrity that is hard to match, thanks to my mom, a retired librarian, who kept almost all of the fliers, documentation and even a couple of the original boxes.

From Vintage Macs

Simply Shameless Ebay Shop Shill: So, as my goal is to get it to a worthy new owner, if you’re a collector and wanna check it out and perhaps even place a bid, here’s the link.

The names of the original creators are etched into the inside shell of the original M0001 models. Folklore.org has the entire story of the signing party and an image of the original signature sheet created February 1982. According to Andy Hertzfeld who wrote the post, this was a very conscious effort on Steve Jobs’ part.
From The Macintosh M0001 Turned Inside Out

He thought of himself as an artist and encouraged his team to think of themselves that way, too. Of course that’s all obvious now, in retrospect. When I think about the promethean spirit driving those signatures in a world still dominated by “Basic” and “Pilot” and “IBM” is has to have been one of the fiercest humanistic moments in the history of personal computing. It also makes Ridley Scott’s stream fusing and metaphoric layering all the most dazzling and the experience of uncovering it, last week when picking the computer up after an internal hard drive repair, that much more satisfying.

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Henry Hudson did this 400 years ago…

Published
by
s000z
 on September 8, 2009
. 0 Comments

And here’s what it looked like, according to National Geo:

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Isn’t displaying DNA 11 wall art kinda like wearing your social security number on your sleeve?

Published
by
s000z
 on September 4, 2009
. 1 Comment

DNA portraits are available through a company called DNA 11 for prices starting as low as $199 USD.  Granted, it’s a prohibitively expensive luxury that I would never consider in this kinda economy but at the same time, despite being a sucker for this kinda stuff and despite the fact its a prohibitively expensive luxury

From Blog Archive

in this kinda economy, the real reason I believe people outta think twice before endeavoring to embark on one of these –point of no return– DNA reads is because if someone is not too paranoid to wear his or her DNA on his or her sleeve, then perhaps he or she should be.  And if confused by what it is I’m saying everyone outta be paranoid about, have you ever seen that movie, Gattaca?

Not that I’m not still deep-deep-down, secretly wishing I was one of those happy few.  And if you happen to be, one of those happy few who saw the movie, Gattaca in 1997 and twelve years later are able to look back and reflect upon it as though it were something as dated as, say, retro-futurist-revisionist nostalgia is (when executed poorly, at any rate) then I envy you.  I envy you for living your life unencumbered by Andrew Niccol’s doom and gloom prophetic dystopia that bodes will all one day find ourselves in a Prada clad, dystopia starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law but —okay— back to my original point.  My original point here is that, I have neither the stupidity nor the faith in humanity to invest a three to fourdiget sum in customized wall art, screen savers, Facebook avatars and business cards that will publicize the my genetic info to anyone who bookmarks the permalink.  Fact is, you couldn’t pay to publicize something so utterly, personal, fatalistic and inalterable!  And lest you think I’m making a mountain outta a mole here, lemme re clarify the context, again:  if the sickest team of glypheratti wanted to transform your social security digits into visually and conceptually fly wall art, would you comply?

From Blog Archive
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Jerome Bixby’s Man from Earth

Published
by
s000z
 on August 4, 2009
. 2 Comments

When I was told I was about to watch a movie about a college professor from the late Paleolithic Era I rolled my eyes, anticipating some new Geico commercial spin-off.  The opening had me chucking at it as opposed to with it. The script was way hokie.  Plot points seemed planted and contrived and dialog silly.  Then somewhere along the way, whoosh—sucked through the wormhole—there I was loving it.  Was like the ultimate ‘what if’ fantasy for History Channel (without the annoying flashbacks), National Geographic and Scientific American junkies all swirled.  Brought me back to those exhilarating brainstorming session I’d have with Brian Greene while writing Calabi-Yau.  Anything was possible.  Was using Aristotleian clues and formulas to speculate on how it’d end and got the rug pulled out from under, anyway.  Thinking back through the craftsmanship, nothing was arbitraty, though I couldn’t have possible anticipated the outcome.  Senses greater forces at play, I researched the writer, Jerome Bixby after watching it and discovered he’d work on numerous Twilight Zone and Star Trek Episodes during his lifetime.  A TV show Bixby created in the 60s even inspired an Asimov story…whoa!

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Discovering Da Ali G Show

Published
by
s000z
 on July 25, 2009
. 1 Comment

Watched, like, 15-20 back-to-back clips of Da Ali G show on Funny or Die last night and can’t believe how hard I laughed-laughed, laaaaa-gasp-gh, laughed.  OMG, have you seen it?  You totally should.

It’s like this x btween candid camera and journo.  Kinda. Well, more than that, tho. He’s created this neologistic, grammatically ticked vernacular that just causes me to totally lose it whenever I watch.

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