Toon: Gonna have problems later in life

Toon: Graham's Cracked

Gesture Control System Uses Sound Alone

Uses Sound Alone
SoundWave lets an ordinary laptop function like a Kinect sensor.
MONDAY, MAY 7, 2012BY RACHEL METZ

When you learned about the Doppler Effect in high school physics class—the wave frequency shift that occurs when the source of the wave is moving, easily illustrated by a passing ambulance—you probably didn't envision it helping control your computer one day.

But that's exactly what a group of researchers are doing at Microsoft Research, the software giant's Redmond, Washington-based lab. Gesture control is becoming increasingly common and is even built into some TVs. While other motion-sensing technologies such as Microsoft's own Kinect device use cameras to sense and interpret movement and gestures, SoundWave does this using only sound—thanks to the Doppler Effect, some clever software, and the built-in speakers and microphone on a laptop.

Desney Tan, a Microsoft Research principal researcher and member of the SoundWave team, says the technology can already be used to sense a number of simple gestures, and with smart phones and laptops starting to include multiple speakers and microphones, the technology could become even more sensitive. SoundWave—a collaboration between Microsoft Research and the University of Washington—will be presented this week in a paper at the 2012 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing in Austin, Texas.

The idea for SoundWave emerged last summer, when Desney and others were working on a project that involved the use of ultrasonic transducers to create haptic effects, and one researcher noticed a sound wave changing in a surprising way as he moved his body around. The transducers were emitting an ultrasonic sound wave that was bouncing off researchers' bodies, and their movements changed the tone of the sound that was picked up, and the sound wave they viewed on the back end.

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/40368/?p1=MstRcnt
It's amusing that they use a mac in the image example...

FAA warns man who took video of bird strike with iPad

A flock of birds flew into a plane’s engine, a frightening incident with shadows of the 2009 Hudson River landing, but the FAA is more worried about … a guy who didn’t properly stow his electronics for takeoff.

Delta passenger Grant Cardone says he has received a strongly worded letter from the FAA over his video of the bird strike on a New York-Los Angeles flight on April 19. Cardone was filming the plane’s ascent from John F. Kennedy airport when a flock of geese flew into the plane’s engine, causing an emergency landing back at JFK.

Boing Boing equates the letter to “double secret probation.” James Giles, FAA supervisory principal operations inspector, warns that Cardone’s actions “could have affected the safe outcome of the flight,” and:

Display of 100,000 Floating LED Lights on a River in Tokyo

Fox News has finally figured out that low gas prices are bad

By Jess Zimmerman


We’ve been saying for a while that expensive gas is good news — not just because the expense of filling a tank could drive people into the arms of bikes and subways, but because affordable gas is a sign of a weak economy. But Fox News has continued to cling to the conviction that lower gas prices are best — probably because Obama was president and gas prices were on the rise.

Well, now gas prices are dipping a bit, but Obama is still president, so it’s time for their views to “evolve.” Media Matters caught various Foxers claiming that lower gas prices are now a sign of Obama ruining the economy.



Of course, Fox is only giving Obama credit for lower gas costs as a harbinger of a ruined economy. When it comes to the fact that gas, you know, costs less, he should by no means get credit, according to Fox host Stuart Varney:

Monsanto WISHES it could make corn this cool

By Jess Zimmerman


“Glass Gem” corn looks almost CGI, but it actually comes out of the ground that way. It’s the product of a small farm and a retro, handcrafted approach to agriculture — “genetic modification” from back when genetic modification meant painstaking generations of selective breeding.

The corn was grown at Seeds Trust, a small family-owned Arizona seed company that’s committed to sustainable agriculture. Seeds Trust’s seeds are mostly open-pollinated, non-hybrid crops (thoroughly checked for contamination by GMO pollen), which they say is better for sustainable agriculture. The Glass Gem seeds were just brought in for babysitting, according to Seeds Trust president Bill McDorman:

Seedsman Greg Schoen got the seed from Carl Barnes, a part-Cherokee man, now in his 80s, in Oklahoma. He was Greg’s “corn-teacher”. Greg was in the process of moving last year and wanted someone else to store and protect some of his seeds. He left samples of several corn varieties, including glass gem. I grew out a small handful this past summer just to see. The rest, as they say is history. I got so excited, I posted a picture on Facebook. We have never seen anything like this.

Of course, like most of us, Glass Gem corn looks better when moodily lit, but in the light of day it’s still pretty fly:

Finland’s brilliant plan for dealing with nuclear waste: pulling a Keyser Söze

After decades of planning and $12 billions of investment, the United States grand plan to dispose of the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada's remote Yucca Mountain melted down in political rancor like... well, kind of like a nuclear plant melting down. The Obama Administration pulled the plug on funding the project without specifying any technical problems, leaving the Government Accountability Office to conclude it was done for purely political reasons.

A great article in Popular Mechanics suggests that our problems with nuclear waste aren't just political but philosophical. Where the American plan is grandiose, overblown, and overbuilt, the Finnish one—the Onkalo facility currently being built on Olkiluoto Island—is clever, simple, and realistic.

Crayon Dragon-This student film carries more of an emotional punch than most movies

Bass player Donald 'Duck' Dunn dies in Tokyo

(05-13) 01:40 PDT TOKYO, Japan (AP) --

Bass player and songwriter Donald "Duck" Dunn, a member of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame band Booker T. and the MGs and the Blues Brothers band, has died in Tokyo. He was 70.

Dunn was in Tokyo for a series of shows. News of his death was posted on the Facebook site of his friend and fellow musician Steve Cropper, who was on the same tour. Cropper said Dunn died in his sleep.

Miho Harasawa, a spokeswoman for Tokyo Blue Note, the last venue Dunn played, confirmed he died alone early Sunday. She had no further details.

Dunn, who was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1941, performed on recordings with Eric Clapton, Neil Young and many others, and specialized in blues, gospel and soul. He played himself in the 1980 hit movie "The Blues Brothers."



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/05/13/international/i013114D54.DTL