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How Biology and Technology Shape Sex and War [Wired News]

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The authors of the new book "Sex and War" talk with Wired Science how biology and technology have shaped violence and war in the past and likely will in the future.

Excerpt: Science Defines Future of War [Wired News]

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The future of war is filled with poison gas, germ warfare and nuclear weapons. Each technological change shapes the risk calculations of our primate brains.

Gallery: The First Decades of Seeing the Unseen [Wired News]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:00:00 -0500

: Photo courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

What are the social consequences when science allows us to see things that had previously been invisible?

Scientists have revealed microscopic life, nanoscale molecules and galaxies billions of light-years away. These images have revolutionized the disciplines in which they were made, but they also transformed the public's imagination, giving common people new things to think and dream about.

The intertwined social, scientific and artistic impacts of 19th century photography is the subject of a new exhibit, Brought to Light Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900, at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art.

This gallery looks at some of the more astounding images and stories from the exhibit.

Left:
Hermann Schnauss, Electrograph of a brass wire gauge, 1900 As the men of industry attempted to harness electricity for profit, the public ? which knew electricity primarily as lightning ? had to be persuaded that this powerful, invisible force was something to invite into their homes. Electrographs like this one, produced by exposing a photographic negative with electricity, helped the public visualize and understand the mysterious electromagnetic waves that scientists were discovered populating the air.

"This is a moment where [scientists] are trying to harness electricity for practical purposes, but the general public was kind of skeptical," said Corey Keller, curator of the Brought to Light exhibit. "Their experiences with electricity were generally through lighting, which they knew could burn things down and kill you, if you weren't careful. So a great deal of time and money was spent trying to make electricity understandable and approachable."

: Photo courtesy SFMOMA

In the early history of photography, capturing motion was out of the question. The photographic negatives of the time were not sensitive enough to light to be exposed over the short time periods required to capture fast action.

"If you look at 19th century cityscapes, you would think that Armageddon had taken place. You don't see any people," Keller said. "It's not that they aren't there, it's just that they don't show up because they walked through too quickly."

But by the end of the 1870s, more sensitive negatives brought motion within reach. Edward Muybridge was one of the first photographers to take advantage of the new abilities.

In this photo, we see one of Muybridge's motion studies: two men boxing in jock straps. Historians note that despite the scientific trappings, Muybridge's work was just art; it did not produce good scientific evidence about bodies' movements.

: Photo courtesy SFMOMA

The ability to capture motion in photography opened up a previously invisible source of scientific data. Etienne-Jules Marey was a scientist trying to understand biomechanics, or the motion of the body, and he used photography to acquire information he couldn't get any other way, as in this photograph of a man on a stationary bicycle.

"What happens in this picture is that each split second exposure is layered on top of each other, so you get the sense of the full arc of the motion," Keller said. "And he's put a piece of tape down the arm and torso and the leg where the joints articulated, so as the leg went around and around the whole pedal stroke is outlined."

This wasn't just to create beautiful pictures; Marey was on a committee in France to improve the ergonomics of the newly popular bicycle.

"So by studying the motion of the leg, he would have been able to improve the engineering of the bicycle," Keller concluded.

: Photo courtesy SFMOMA

While forward-looking scientists like Marey were using photography to understand, for example, how animals moved, as in this photo, others were less enthused about this new technology.

In particular, photographers' ability to capture images beyond what the human eye could perceive called into question an important tenet of 19th century science.

"What's amazing is that this is a moment where empirical observation in science is the most important thing, that idea of objective observation. And this kind of photography proved how completely useless a human observer was," said Keller. "So you end up with this photographic data that cant' be corroborated in any other way. It exists independently of any kind of perceptual experience."

Technology's ability to capture detail and motion more accurately than our eyes has only accelerated, of course, as anyone who has seen incredible ultra-slow-motion YouTube videos can attest.

: Photo courtesy SFMOMA

When William Roentgen announced his discovery of X-rays, a photo of his wife's hand accompanied his paper as it made its way into the scientific community.

Over the next few years, images like this one of a skeletal hand with the ring came to symbolize X-rays. Practically, the hand is relatively flat and therefore easy to X-ray, but it was the aesthetics and grim-reaper symbolism that Keller said hit a nerve with the upper classes.

"It became fashionable to have an X-ray portrait taken of your hand," she said, calling attention to x-ray hand portraits of the last tsar of Russia and his wife.

: Photo courtesy SFMOMA

The discovery of X-rays also touched off a lower-brow commercial craze. Within three months, DIY X-ray kits were available on the market. Photographers, who had access to most of the tools needed to make the images, began to train this new form of light on just about anything that might be beautiful.

"They were X-raying everything just to see what it looked like," Keller said.

One stunning example is this X-ray of a foot in a shoe from 1897. In fact, the connection between X-rays and extremities has remained strong. Even into the 1960s, shoe stores kept X-ray machines in their lobbies, both as marketing tools and to help their salesmen fit their patrons' feet correctly.

: Photo courtesy SFMOMA

Throughout the second-half of the 19th century, photographers strived to unite the camera with the telescope. The moon, in particular, held a lasting fascination for astronomers and artists alike.

Imaging the moon, after all, was an immensely difficult task. The Earth rotates and the moon is actually a relatively faint object. It wasn't until John Adams Whipple and George Phillips Bond figured out how to rotate their camera ever so slightly to cancel out Earth's movement that simple images of our only satellite became possible.

What's interesting is that despite the fascination with creating pictures of the moon, like this striking image created in Spain, the images didn't add much for science beyond what detailed drawings could already do.

: Photo courtesy SFMOMA

If you wanted close-up photos of the moon any time before the Apollo missions, you were pretty much out of luck. Unless, of course, you built incredibly detailed plaster models of lunar craters and then snapped carefully lit pictures of them. And that's exactly what an engineer and astronomer did in 1874 to tremendous acclaim.

James Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, and James Carpenter, then at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, released a hugely successful book, The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite, illustrated by their incredible moon mock-ups. The august journal Nature gave the book a rapturous review.

"No more truthful or striking representations of natural objects than those here presented have ever been laid before his readers by any student of Science," the reviewer wrote.

But what's really appealing about the images isn't their "truthfulness" but their "truthiness."

"Astronomers were perfectly aware of what they were looking at," Keller said. "But they felt that because they were photographed, it added a layer of authenticity to the undertaking that simple drawings didn't have."

: Photo courtesy SFMOMA

At the other end of the scale of size from the moon, other photographers were pushing their discipline into the microscopic realm. They had to devise new emulsion chemistries and types of equipment to capture clear images of tiny things.

Leading the charge was Auguste-Adolphe Bertsch, who worked to overcome any challenge that scientists threw at him. Unfortunately, he died during social unrest in France in 1871, and his images lay in a photographic archive until Keller brought them to the US for the exhibition.

: Photo courtesy SFMOMA

Even as they solved technical challenges, the photomicrographers faced social resistance. The idea of representing a specific living thing instead of a generalized abstraction of an organism forced scientists to let go of long-held notions about their discipline.

"Prior to the 19th century, the scientific illustrations tend to represent a type, an ideal. So if you were going to do a picture of a flower, for example, the illustrator would look at 20 flowers and then take the common features and make an ideal flower," said Keller. "So, if that particular one happens to have a defective petal or something peculiar to it, you never really know: Does that photograph substitute then for that type of flower in general, or does it only represent that one specimen?"

While it may have posed a challenge for scientists of the 19th century, it's the unique nature of each photograph taken during this early period that wows us, even now.

This Week's Most Popular Posts [Highlights] [Lifehacker]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:06:24 -0500

When there's too much Lifehacker and too little time, switch to our trimmed-down top stories feed to skip the extras and get right to the good stuff. Don't care about Windows-only downloads or the iPhone? Customize our URLs to see only the posts you want. This week's most popular posts include:

Customize Your Own Killer "Enigma" Desktop
"Windows desktop tweaker extraordinaire and Lifehacker reader Kaelri?who brought us the gorgeous Lightning at Sunset desktop and then showed us how to do it ourselves?is back, this time with a fresh new desktop he calls "Enigma.""
Gmail Updates Its Look, Adds Themes
"Google's beloved web-based email client has always been ripe for third-party design customization (we've always been partial to the Gmail Redesigned skin in Better Gmail, for example), but now Gmail is officially riding the interface customization train by offering 30-some new themes to spice up your inbox."
Thirty Cliches You Should Avoid (Going Forward)
"Using a data analysis tool that monitors new books, research papers, broadcast transcripts and news sources, Oxford University came up with a list of the top 10 most irritating phrases."
Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Web Browsing
"Even in a world where high-speed internet is just a tall house blend away, anyone can get stuck with a slow or uncertain connection at home, in the office, or at the worst possible time while traveling."
Five Best Video Chat Applications
"When you really want to stay in touch over a long distance, a simple phone call or voice chat pales in comparison to a face-to-face video chat."
Liberate Yourself from Old Email Addresses
"If you've been on the internet for any substantial amount of time you've likely accumulated your fair share of email addresses..."

Murder-For-Hire Plot Unfolds in Text Messages [Wired News]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:41:00 -0500

When Tonia Mullins decided to hire a hit man to kidnap and murder her lover's wife, she didn't scour the local underworld dives. She texted.

Create Holiday Art at Google Docs [Friday Fun] [Lifehacker]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:33:38 -0500

Four Googlers show off their artistic skills as well as Google Docs' collaboration capabilities in the time-lapse video above of a spreadsheet holiday art project. Hit the play button to watch them fill in an 100 row by 186 column spreadsheet with 18 colors to make a detailed holiday snowflake pattern. (The eagle-eyed will notice that at least one of the authors was not using Google's own browser, Chrome—it looks like Firefox on the Mac.) Hit the link below to grab the template and make your own. Spreadsheet Art Template [Google Docs]

LittleShoot Adds P2P File-Sharing to the Browser [File Sharing] [Lifehacker]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:39:15 -0500

New peer-to-peer file sharing web service LittleShoot finds and downloads files right inside your web browser. LittleShoot founder (and former LimeWire engineer) Adam Fisk says he created LittleShoot to overcome LimeWire's shortcomings. To get started, you can search for a keyword at the LittleShoot web site without installing a thing and you'll get dozens of results from YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo, and LittleShoot users. (See the results for a search on "Twilight" above.) To play or download a file, you will have to download and install a small LittleShoot add-on. To publish a file on LittleShoot, hit the Publish tab and add a file on your local computer. The Mashable web site reports that LittleShoot is optimized to find nearby computers that host the file you need as well as defaulting to computers on the same ISP to increase download speeds and responsiveness. All in all, LittleShoot is looking very promising for P2P-ers who don't want to run full-fledged BitTorrent or other clients. What's your favorite way to P2P? Let us know in the comments. Thanks, Sangraal!

LittleShoot [via Mashable]

Judge Considers Throwing Out Lori Drew Case [Wired News]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:20:00 -0500

A federal judge will rule Monday on whether the case against a 39-year-old woman accused in a deadly MySpace hoax can go to the jury, after testimony shows the defendant never saw the MySpace terms-of-service she's accused of criminally violating.

Is Beta Culture a Bad Thing? [Snap Judgment] [Lifehacker]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:35:08 -0500

At our brother site Gizmodo, Jesus Diaz posts a ripping rant against what he calls "beta culture," and consumers' tolerance for half-baked software and hardware that breaks more often than it should. Diaz writes:
We have surrendered in the name of progress and marketing and product cycles and consumerism. Maybe those are good reasons, I don't know, but looking at the past, it feels like we are being conned. Deceived because the manufacturers of electronic products have taken our desire to progress faster and even embrace the web beta culture as an excuse to rush things to market, to blatantly admit bugs and the rushed features sets and sell the patches as upgrades.

While I see where he's coming from—especially in regards to hardware you spend your hard-earned cash on—we're fans of testing beta software (the key word being "testing") because it's often where the best new features are. What about you?
Is "beta culture" a good or bad thing? ( polls) Tell us more in the comments. Bad Technology: A Call for Revolution Against Beta Culture [Gizmodo]

Eye Flicker Explains Optical Illusion [Wired News]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:20:00 -0500

The flicker of your eye explains why some static images appear to move, and scientists think this quirk may help us perceive things in our peripheral vision.

Wonderware FTP Download [Weblog of Titus Barik]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:08:42 -0500

The FTP site containing downloads to the Wonderware installers is a little difficult to find, but it is publicly available. You can download the full InTouch HMI, Industrial Application Server, and other related packages here: ftp://ftp.west.wonderware.com/Wonderware/ Alternatively, you can download files from their PACWest website, although these downloads require a login and password. Either way, you can [...]

QuoteURLText Copies Highlighted Text and Source URL [Featured Firefox Extension] [Lifehacker]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:00:00 -0500

Firefox only: If you like to copy and paste snippets of web pages—but want to include the source URL and date and time in one shot—the QuoteURLText add-on's for you. Once installed, just select the relevant quote from a web page and press Ctrl+Shift+C (Win) or Command+Shift+C (Mac) and the selection will be copied along with the URL of the source page. Additional options allow you to include the time browsed and title of the page, as well. Advanced options let you refine the metadata added to the selection in the clipboard further. QuoteURLText is a free add-on download for Firefox browsers. QuoteURLText [via gHacks]

Review: 'Left 4 Dead' Delivers Definitive Team Zombie War [Wired News]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:58:00 -0500

It's you and your buddies against a massive onslaught of the undead. Which of your comrades in arms will you turn your back on, coward?

'Guitar Hero' Robot Takes on Videogamers [Wired News]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:58:00 -0500

A robotic system using vision recognition and pneumatic fingers can play the blockbuster Guitar Hero game with accuracy going up to 98 percent.

Review: 'Colbert Christmas' Defends Santa, Beheads Heretics [Wired News]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:23:00 -0500

Jon Stewart, Elvis Costello and others join the "truthy" newsman for a comedy-packed holiday special.

Tap the Hive in Today's Open Thread [Open Thread] [Lifehacker]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:01:00 -0500

We spend all day typing at you, so now it's your turn to type back at us. This comment thread is officially open: post your cries for tech help, reader surveys, questions about the meaning of life, favorite screenshots, video clips, site feedback, rants, and raves below. Don't forget to respond to a specific comment by a fellow reader by hitting the arrow on the bottom right hand side of it. Anything goes here (within reason, of course—play nice, my kittens), so let's start cocktail hour early and chat it up. We'll round up the best threads that appear here over the weekend so they don't fall off the page into oblivion before the night is done. Have fun! Photo by Soffia S.

Poll: Internet, Fox News Are Most Trusted News Sources [Wired News]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:47:00 -0500

A new IFC Zogby poll shows that the internet is today's most trusted news source, but that Americans overwhelmingly distrust the news media.

NASA Test-Fires Next-Gen Ejector Seat [Wired News]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:33:00 -0500

NASA test-fires its next-generation ejector seat, sending flames shooting into the Utah desert. Designed to get the crew of the space shuttle's replacement as far away from the launch vehicle as possible in case of an emergency, the motor delivers half a million pounds of thrust, expelling nearly all its fuel in just three seconds.

Happy People Watch Less TV, Study Shows [Happiness] [Lifehacker]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:00:52 -0500

Researchers at the University of Maryland found the one activity unhappy people do more than happy people is watch TV. The New York Times reports:
"We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more ? visiting others, going to church, all those things ? were more happy,? Dr. [John] Robinson said. ?TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.?

The study doesn't indicate whether TV-watching is a symptom or a cause of unhappiness, so turning off the TV won't necessarily make you happier. Have unhappier times in your life involved more TV-watching, less, or the same as happy times? Let us know in the comments. What Happy People Don't Do [NYTimes.com]

talent show 2008 debrief [Graham's LJ]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:00:06 -0500