This week, in User Friendly, we glimpse the smart fabrics that many of us will soon be sporting, regularly.
“A sensor-covered ‘datalogging’ compression shirt for baseball pitchers, which detects signs of bad mechanics before they lead to torn ligaments, is an example of how e-textiles can support good health.”
More: Northeastern’s smart shirt aims to prevent pitcher’s elbow – The Boston Globe.
Well, make that a month, a week, and a weekend, thanks to a plasma rocket developed by this MIT physicist and former astronaut:
A journey from Earth to Mars could soon take just 39 days, cutting current travel time nearly six times, a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US space agency NASA has said.
via Scientist eyes 39-day voyage to Mars.
Here’s a live view from the “Complete Game-Completion Marathon 2010″ (all proceeds to Partners in Health/Haitian relief):
Live Video streaming by UstreamMore about the event:
“We are marathoning for earthquake relief in Haiti. We have teams of players ready to grind it out for charity, but we need your help! Tune in to the webcam feed on the weekend of February 26th-28th to check it out, and please donate to the cause. Every little bit helps.”
via Complete Game-Completion Marathon 2010.
Targeted; Paul Rosenberg received a bomb in the mail from, police at the time suspected, Amy Bishop. Photo: Children's Hospital.
UAH alleged shooter Amy Bishop may have had a singular way of settling scores — by the bullet, or the bomb.
The Globe reports today that the nutty professor was suspected, too, of sending pipe bombs to a supervisor at Children’s Hospital.
Many great quotes in this story, such as this one:
“We knew she had a beef with Paul Rosenberg. And we really thought it was a really unbelievable coincidence that he would get those bombs.”
From my column, today:
Star Trek Online is far easier to learn than Eve, however. And I like that it encourages avatar-to-avatar interactions off the battlefield, much like World of Warcraft (www.worldofwarcraft.com), which STO more closely resembles, with its use of inventories and its style of play.
(I can see STO becoming a fun place to hold scholarly meetings, as is WoW.)
Wacky, but cool. Kevin Fu (I wrote for the Globe about his research a while back) stays sharp baking bread.
He’ll be sharing such ideas and other insights on how science is done—and perhaps even baking bread on stage—for 800 high school and college students this week at the 2010 “Make A Difference” conference in Hong Kong. His talk is titled “Cooking Up Scientific Discovery.” Organizers say the young participants will “get inspired by changemakers from around the world” and “be empowered through workshops and challenges.”
No divide. (Photo: D Sharon Pruitt/Flickr CC)
Still think I’m wrong about the many pitfalls of municipal, or muni, Wi-Fi, the semi-public scheme that puts city bosses in charge of internet access?
Over the past few years, I’ve noted the corruption, the waste, and the threats to personal privacy and security posed by muni Wi-Fi. And I caught some flak on this blog, and over at Universal Hub, as a result.
Now, from Philly, where the muni Wi-Fi debacle got its wretched start, comes a report that the city is squeezing taxpayers to cover its failed attempt to compete as an ISP:
The city of Philadelphia said Wednesday it intends to purchase, for $2 million, the wireless network constructed by EarthLink Inc. to turn the entire city into a Wifi hotspot. The city said it intends to exercise an option in an agreement signed in August to buy the network from Network Acquisition Co. LLC, which took the network over from Atlanta-based EarthLink (NASDAQ:ELNK) in June 2008.
Philly’s former CIO, meanwhile, has taken-up work with the firm that sold the Philly mayor’s office on muni Wi-Fi in the first place. (Ditto for the deputy CIO in San Francisco.)
Meanwhile, back in the Bean, a similar effort is starting to look like a service badly in need of a market.
That’s because urban dwellers –rich and poor, young and old — are already using their 3G mobile phones and netbooks to grab data from the net. And cable companies are bundling-in internet access with their TV services, for peanuts.
via Reason Magazine: Philadelphia Experiment With Municipal Wi-Fi Not Working Out So Well
Felix Kubin, live at the Goethe-Institut. Photo: Tom Worster/Non Event/Flick CC
The Heretic’s charter from Blast Magazine is to “keep it weird” for the Hub’s esotericists and mad scientists.
But I couldn’t do my job without the inspiration I get listening to the artists associated with Non Event, who — through their live performances — have reached tens of thousands of Bostonians.
Please consider this appeal:
We are now faced with a funding shortfall that calls for a unique solution. Last year, our funding partner shifted its priorities away from live music, and so we no longer receive any outside support. Despite losing this funding, we have strived to maintain the level of performances you have always been accustomed to, but now we have reached the end of our funding cushion.
Interesting cat, this Retribution Body. He’s Boston-area Buddhist with a synthesizer. (The fotos, above are from Susanna Bolle, who hosts the WZBC radio program, Rare Frequency.)
Bolle has published a great interview with the artist (link, below). Check-out one of the artist’s biggest influences:
IRON MAIDEN! Seriously. It was the first concert I saw, my dad took me and my two best friends when I was 12 or 13. It was a life-changing experience.
From a June 04, 2009 "Non-Event." (Photo: Susanna Bolle/Flickr CC
Susan Bolle, Boston’s premiere experimental music journalist and DJ (she hosts Rare Frequency on WZBC), lists ten albums that left an impression on her in 2009.
She calls them, “unexpected pleasures that drifted in like fog or, in one case, blasted through like mortar fire.”
Here’s one of Bolle’s, which is on my list:
Release Date: August 25 | Label: Finders Keepers
The German pair who brought the world “Dracula’s Music Cabinet” in the late 1960s top themselves – and how – with this collection of space rock silliness. Originally released in 1971, the album contains all manner of crazy alien-and-astronaut-themed songs. While it does contain some ferocious Saturnian monsters, ultimately, space is one groovy place.