Category: News

from riseup, 26 December 2009: “Two riseup birds recently did a presentation at the People’s Summit celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests. We discussed the dangers of using corporate tools to do organizing work, in particular, the fact that you don’t know what they do with your data. Thanks to some anonymous comments in a blogger’s post about his research regarding a U.S. mobile phone company’s release to law enforcement of its customers’ geographic location information, we now have some answers…” more

from riseup, 26 December 2009: “Two riseup birds recently did a presentation at the People’s Summit celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests. We discussed the dangers of using corporate tools to do organizing work, in particular, the fact that you don’t know what they do with your data. Thanks to some anonymous comments in a blogger’s post about his research regarding a U.S. mobile phone company’s release to law enforcement of its customers’ geographic location information, we now have some answers…” more

Telegram.com (Aaron Nicodemus)

With photo.

A Worcester librarian and researcher believes she has found definitive proof that an urban legend — that American paper manufacturers once made paper from the linen wrappings of Egyptian mummies — is indeed true.

S.J. Wolfe of Worcester, a senior cataloger and serials specialist at the American Antiquarian Society, spent the last 10 years tracing the whereabouts of all the mummies that were imported to the United States.

She recently published a book, “Mummies in Nineteenth Century America,” in which she tells the stories of what happened to some of them.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Ah, yes, Y2K…remember the good old days?  ATM’s weren’t going to recognize your bank card, servers were going to spontaneously combust, and elevators would have no idea where the second floor was. For those of you who look back with nostalgia at the Y2K hysteria, there is a new, albeit much smaller, Y2 “something” glitch to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside again. WMExperts is reporting that some mobile users are seeing text messages sent after 1/1/2010 dated as 1/1/2016.  The most widely affected group seems to be those on Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.5 although some non-Windows Mobile users are also reporting this behavior. WMExperts has a home grown .cab file posted with a fix, however we haven’t seen anything official from Microsoft or other major manufacturers. How about it? Any of you out there getting text messages from the future?

[Via PocketNow]

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Thanks to Jim for the heads up!

Tim Reid’s Egyptians blog

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Heritage Key (Gary Shaw)

With photos.

At first glance the remains of Fustat are more like an abandoned opencast mine than a medieval capital city – an impression created at its edges where the grey sloping ground enters the great depression of the excavated area. Palm trees, weeds, cacti, and tall grass are evenly dispersed across the site, and the remains of small fired clay and mud-brick buildings are scattered around. The bricks are held together with thick mortar made from recycled limestone – probably re-used from ancient pharaonic buildings. One house still has its window – three thick slats sitting on top of its mud-brick wall. Columns, lying toppled on their sides, speak of better times; some are made from Aswan red granite, and probably started their lives as elements of pharaonic period temples from the Memphite area, before being adapted for Roman temples and then Christian churches until finally being reworked in medieval times. Intricate columns capitals also lie about on the surface.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Review by Lun Yee Too)

Stephen Bertman, Lois Parker (ed.),
The Healing Power of Ancient Literature.
Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

The Healing Power of Ancient Literature edited by Stephen Bertman and Lois Parker is a small book that crucially hinges on an anachronism, the reading of ancient literatures — for they are several — through the lens of classics and the sciences or arts dealing with the healing of the soul, a more contemporary concern. It is accordingly edited by a classics professor emeritus, Stephen Bertman, and by Lois Parker, the emerita director of Counseling Services at the University of Nevada, Reno. The book attempts a daring feat, namely to show that literature has a healing power, and I argue that it fails in an equally spectacular manner.

The book begins with a one page prologue, entitled ‘Medicine for the Soul’, where we are told quite definitively that ‘literature, especially ancient literature, possesses a profound power to heal our souls, a power that is especially needed today when the rapidity of change and the force of world events combine to make peace of mind an ever more distant and seemingly unreachable goal.’ (p. vii). Lois Parker briefly weighs in next by outlining the scope of the book, which reaches from Egypt to Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece, Rome and China. All of antiquity is somehow read as being equivalent — I assume because it is ancient — and as standing as a counterpoint to our ravaged and ravaging present.

The first chapter, ‘The Wisdom Tradition of Egypt’, by John L. Foster considers long chunks of Egyptian poetry to demonstrate their wisdom. He suggests that the authors and their writings are very much like us: ‘they are so much like us’ and ‘Not so much different from eulogies of today’ (p. 11). Foster does not reveal any further on what basis these comparisons lie but he insists later on in the chapter, ‘I have chosen to emphasize the common threads uniting our culture with the ancient Egyptians — especially by hearing their actual words and their voices speaking’ (p. 21). But I ask if these ‘voices’ are not rather fictional voices and therefore functioning as masks for the author whose intentions might otherwise be quite distinct from his characters?

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Expedition, Volume 51 (Review by Praveena Gullapalli)

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Concord Monitor (Victoria Shouldis)

Thanks to Tony Marson for sending this link.

With photo.

Like the privileged folk in any society, the noblemen in ancient Egypt expected and had the best of everything: superior housing, superb food and spirits, and tireless servants. So it only makes sense that they wanted to ensure the same treatment in the afterlife.

The fascinating story of just how they set about preparing for that afterlife is the focus of The Secrets of Tomb 10A, an exhibit running through May at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

The show actually tells two stories in one: the story of governor Djehutynakht and his preparation for life after death, and the 1915 archeological dig – sponsored by the MFA and Harvard University – that first found the tomb site.

The archeological find was somewhat grisly: accessing a hidden, vertical shaft at a known burial site, the team found a huge amount of broken, pillaged items, and a mummified human head.

The broken items, all painstakingly researched and reassembled in this flawless show, were the result of visits by centuries worth of grave robbers. And the head? Well, nobody knows exactly who that is. It could be the head of governor Djehutynakht, it could be Mrs. Djehutynakht, or it could be a particularly faithful servant, sent along to serve and honor the governor right into the next world.

That head is at once the most grim and star exhibit of the show: It gets its own small room in the exhibit, along with CT-scan images and X-rays. The room gives you a sense of the size of the actual tomb; it also gives you an opportunity to keep the younger kids from viewing a disturbing piece in what is, otherwise, an all-age appealing and all-age appropriate exhibit.

The ancient Egyptians – the tombs here date back to about 2,000 BC – took planning for the life after this one most seriously, and those who could afford preparation left nothing to chance. Among the literally thousands of broken and disassembled pieces found in Djehutynakht’s tomb, researchers have been able to offer this incredibly comprehensive look at the care and thought that went into that planning.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Please consider spending part of your Sunday right here, chatting with strangers about the NFL. We offer a full buffet and open bar beginning at kickoff. Day care services available as needed. Cocktail attire, please. No pets, no smoking.

If you require pregame consultation with accredited fantasy gurus, stop by Fantasy Football Live at noon ET. We’re not promising useful advice or insight in the chat below, but you might take away a few life lessons. We’ll just be watching games, taking notes in the margins.

The Yahoo! fantasy staff is contractually obligated to participate in Sunday’s chat. Several members of the extended family will stop in, too. At some point, we expect to be joined by Chris Liss and Dalton Del Don from RotoWire, Chet Gresham from Razzball, Michael Salfino from Comcast SportsNet and Paul Bourdett from Roto Experts. (Unless Paul is fighting crime. He’s also a costumed vigilante).  

Make yourself at home, gamers. Please mingle…

Steve Cuno is a skeptic as well as man who knows his marketing — he’s a professional. He’s spoken at two TAMs, both times about how better to market and brand skepticism. His points have hit home with me, because what he says about how we behave as skeptics is something I have seen countless times to be true. He thinks — and I agree — that we need to be more positive about what we know to be true. Instead of only saying “the antivax movement is baloney,” (which we know to be a correct statement) we need to promote actual medicine and talk about why vaccinations are important. I try to do that here on the blog, because I know full well how skeptics are seen outside our own circles: naysayers, pointy-headed ivory tower academics, and so on. By being positive, we promote ourselves much better to the public.

Steve Cuno wrote an article for the JREF’s Swift blog which has many excellent points about how we as skeptics need to think about ourselves and our behavior. I think everyone who has ever sat next to an astrology buff at a dinner party or written anything on the web dealing with skeptical topics should read what Steve wrote, and pay attention to it. We could do a lot worse than to follow the lead he’s laid out.

We’ve seen plenty of far-fetched EMG-based input methods, like the concentration-demanding, head-based NeuroSky controller, but Microsoft Research is asking for a patent that involves much simpler gestures — and might actually make a bit of sense. As demonstrated in the video after the break, Microsoft’s connecting EMG sensors to arm muscles and then detecting finger gestures based on the muscle movement picked up by those sensors. It does away for the need of a pesky camera (or Power Glove) to read complicated hand gestures, and can even sense modified versions of the gestures to be performed while your hands are full. Microsoft’s developing a wireless EMG sensor module that could be placed all over the body, and while like all Microsoft Research projects this seems pretty far from market, there’s a small, optimistic part of us that could see some of the benefits here for controlling mobile devices. And boy do we love controlling mobile devices.

Continue reading Microsoft Research patents controller-free computer input via EMG muscle sensors

Microsoft Research patents controller-free computer input via EMG muscle sensors originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ready or not, 3D HDTV is going to take the television scene by storm in the coming decade, at least according to our buddies over at HDGuru. Here’s why they think the future is more Avatar than anything else:

First, even though manufacturers might be rushing things, considering their last lovechild, Blu-Ray discs, hasn’t really taken anything by a storm, let alone a slight tropical depression, there are some consumer-friendly caveats to consider before grinding those teeth in anger.

Take price, for example. HDGuru predicts set prices will be largely in line with current HDTV offerings. Initial pricing for a 40-inch 3D-ready 240Hz LED LCD will check in at about $1300, whereas a similar non-3D set from Samsung is currently for sale is $1,250.

The other elephant in the room, as least when it came to HD, is programming. While full-time HD programming has been around since HD Net launched in September 2001, it took until the end of the decade before this particular TV watcher could safely say all he watches on TV anymore are HD-only channels. Luckily—if you like where 3D is going anyway—that shouldn’t be a problem for 3D in the 2010s. HDGuru assures us that the influx of PS3s on the market, coupled with 50 DirectTV 3D channels before the end of 2010, will ensure there’s ample 3D TV available for the new sets that Sony, et al, will demand you buy for the best viewing experience. Sports, the original driver of HD content, will also come into play here, no pun intended.

As for HDTVs, 3D aside, the future is unsurprisingly cheaper, thinner and more portable. That’s kind of how tech works, and beyond 2010 you can expect to see an influx of thin, LED edge-lit TVs that go larger than 60-inches. On the opposite end of the spectrum, expect more Zunes. That is, “Zune” in the sense that portables sporting HD visuals will become ubiquitous—who knows what fate will befall Microsoft’s shiny player.

Lastly, this one’s for Mark Wilson, who got headaches watching a great Avatar flick in 3D: HD glasses might eventually become unnecessary. At an expected $70 a pair, they won’t be missed, but this prediction may take a while and will arrive first in the form of a single-viewer laptop at the end of 2010.

Again, predictions all. Nothing firm, but nothing too unbelievable either. There are more at HDGuru to parse and dissect and flame. Why don’t you leave a few of your own in the comments? [HDGuru]

The holiday splurge may have left our wallets begging for mercy, but there’s another tempting offer coming along to bid for your buck. Coming soon to hobby shops and gamer hubs in the UK are deluxe 12″