NASA Sends Image of the Mona Lisa to the Moon and Back

in Astronomy, Science, Technology | January 24th, 2013

The same super-fast laser tech­nol­o­gy that sent clear images of Mars back to Earth just cleared anoth­er hur­dle clos­er to home by send­ing an image of the Mona Lisa to the sur­face of the moon and back again.

Sci­en­tists at NASA want­ed to know whether they could use laser puls­es to “com­mu­ni­cate” with the lunar sur­face using the same tool that tracks the posi­tion of the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter.

The team sent a dig­i­tized ver­sion of Leonardo’s famous­ly inscrutable sig­no­ra from the God­dard Space Cen­ter in Mary­land 240,000 miles up to a laser trans­mit­ter aboard the orbit­ing space­craft. Pix­els trav­eled one at a time and were adjust­ed for bright­ness by con­trolled delays in their arrival time. The team cor­rect­ed errors in the image using com­mon DVD and CD tech­niques.

Pret­ty much every­body knows what the Mona Lisa looks like, so maybe that’s why they picked her face, instead of, well, mine. Maybe NASA is hop­ing her name will be changed to Moona Lisa.

The Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (explained above) began its lunar orbit near­ly four years ago. Laser puls­es beam down to the moon and then bounce back to form images of the sur­face. Like those star­tling pic­tures of Mars, laser tech­nol­o­gy is help­ing devel­op a crys­tal clear topo­graph­i­cal map of the moon, includ­ing the tracks of two astro­nauts’ unsuc­cess­ful trek to the top of a crater and the site of a lost Russ­ian rover.

The Mona Lisa’s trip to the moon is impor­tant because the image was sent at the same time as laser puls­es that track the craft’s position—the first out­er space con­fer­ence call—and it sets the stage for future high-data trans­mis­sions between Earth and its satel­lite explor­ers.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent

NASA Presents “The Earth as Art” in a Free eBook and Free iPad App

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

NASA’s “Spot the Sta­tion” Will Text or Email You When the Space Sta­tion Pass­es Over Your Home

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her at .

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“Moon Hoax Not”: Short Film Explains Why It Was Impossible to Fake the Moon Landing

in Film, Technology | January 24th, 2013

S.G. Collins does­n’t trust the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment. They “lie all the time, about all kinds of things,” he insists, “and if they haven’t lied to you today, maybe they haven’t had cof­fee yet.” Like some of those who express a sim­i­lar dis­trust, he claims he has no way to ver­i­fy that NASA land­ed on the moon in 1969. But unlike most of that sub­set, he does­n’t think the gov­ern­ment could have pulled off a con­vinc­ing hoax about it. In oth­er words, Amer­i­ca “did have the tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty, not to men­tion the req­ui­site mad­ness, to send three guys to the moon and back. They did not have the tech­nol­o­gy to fake it on video.” Calm­ly, method­i­cal­ly, with a dead­pan wit, Collins uses the thir­teen min­utes of Moon Hoax Not to explain exact­ly why, as improb­a­ble as the real moon land­ing sounds, a fake moon land­ing would have been down­right impos­si­ble.

“The lat­er you were born,” Collins says, “the more all-pow­er­ful movie mag­ic seems.” Hol­ly­wood could now fake dozens of moon land­ings every day, but they did­n’t always have that abil­i­ty. Mar­shal­ing knowl­edge accrued over thir­ty years as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, he address­es each of the points that moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists com­mon­ly cite as visu­al evi­dence of the sup­posed fraud. He also brings to bear facts from the his­to­ry of video tech­nol­o­gy, such as 1969’s com­plete lack of the high-speed video cam­eras, need­ed to shoot the sort of slow motion nec­es­sary to cre­ate the illu­sion of low grav­i­ty. And what if they’d shot the entire Apol­lo 11 tele­cast on film instead? Collins also knows, and names, exact­ly the prob­lems even the most ambi­tious, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced char­la­tans would have encoun­tered, even—as in moon-land­ing hoax mock­u­men­tary Dark Side of the Moon—with Stan­ley Kubrick on their side.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Michio Kaku Schools Takes on Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

The Moon Dis­as­ter That Wasn’t: Nixon’s Speech In Case Apol­lo 11 Failed to Return

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Bill Murray Perform a Satirical Anti-Technology Rant (1982)

in Comedy, Technology, Television | January 23rd, 2013

Above you’ll find find a clip from Wired In, a tele­vi­sion show pro­duced in the ear­ly eight­ies meant to ori­ent view­ers in the midst of that heady era of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. Alas, the pro­gram nev­er aired; only a demo reel and some raw footage sur­vive. But those remains fea­ture no less a comedic lumi­nary than Bill Mur­ray, who even 32 years ago must have been quite a catch for a pilot like this. Though not known for his tech savvy, he has built a rep­u­ta­tion for mak­ing any­thing sound hilar­i­ous by virtue of his per­sona alone. This skill he applies to a par­o­dy of the every­man’s anti-tech­nol­o­gy dia­tribe, as com­mon­ly heard then as it is today — or as it no doubt was 32 years before the shoot, or will be 32 years from now. “Who thinks up all this high-tech stuff any­way?” Mur­ray demands. “They start with the dig­i­tal watch­es. Tells you the time in num­bers, the exact time to the sec­ond. 3:12 and 42 sec­onds. Who needs to know that stuff? I don’t!”

Keep watch­ing, and that Wired In clip heads to Las Vegas to demon­strate for us the won­der of sol­id-state car­tridge soft­ware for the Texas Instru­ments Home Com­put­er. But if you’d rather mar­vel at more of Mur­ray’s par­tic­u­lar kind of craft, watch the full sev­en min­utes of rant takes above. His riffs, seem­ing­ly script­ed as well as impro­vised, of vary­ing moods and pitched at vary­ing ener­gy lev­els, take him from those dig­i­tal watch­es to auto­mat­ed car fac­to­ries to R2-D2 to talk­ing dash­boards to the one idea he does like, robots that ride along­side you in your car’s pas­sen­ger’s seat. “You know what?” he con­cludes, “They’ll nev­er do it — because it makes too much sense.” The mak­ers of Wired In clear­ly had a pre­scient­ly sar­don­ic atti­tude about the com­ing waves of tech-relat­ed anx­i­ety; the pilot also includes a jab at the notion of video game addic­tion from “Pac-Man freak” Lily Tom­lin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads Wal­lace Stevens Poems — “The Plan­et on The Table” and “A Rab­bit as King of the Ghosts”

Fact Check­ing Bill Mur­ray: A Short, Com­ic Film from Sun­dance 2008

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at a Con­struc­tion Site

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The First Pizza Ordered by Computer, 1974

in Technology | January 22nd, 2013

By the late 1960s, tech­nol­o­gists were already invent­ing the future we now inhab­it. Arthur C. Clarke peered into the future and saw a wired world where infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion would be imme­di­ate and bor­der­less. Mar­shall McLuhan fore­saw the rough out­lines of what we now call “social media.” And oth­ers pre­dict­ed that email and ecom­merce were on the not-so-dis­tant hori­zon. It should per­haps then come as no sur­prise that, just a few years lat­er, The Arti­fi­cial Lan­guage Lab­o­ra­to­ry at Michi­gan State devel­oped a way for the com­put­er to start doing some every­day com­merce — like order­ing piz­za.

In 1974 Don­ald Sher­man, whose speech was lim­it­ed by a neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der called Moe­bius Syn­drome, used a new-fan­gled device designed by John Eulen­berg to dial up a pizze­ria. The first call went to Domi­nos, which hung up. They were appar­ent­ly too busy becom­ing a behe­moth. Mer­ci­ful­ly, a humane pizze­ria — Mr. Mike’s — took the call, and his­to­ry was made. It all plays out above, and we hope that Mr. Mike’s is still thriv­ing all these years lat­er.…

via Coudal

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Stanford Makes Open Source Platform, Class2Go, Available to All; Launches MOOC on Platform Today

in Online Courses, Stanford, Technology | January 15th, 2013

Are you on the hunt for a free, open source plat­form that will let you deliv­er free online cours­es? We’ve already told you about one option: Google Course Builder. Now here’s anoth­er: Stan­ford’s Class2Go. The plat­form is open, mean­ing that you can grab the code base for free and run it on your very own serv­er. Class2Go is also portable, giv­ing schools the abil­i­ty to move doc­u­ments and media to oth­er plat­forms if they so choose. The Stan­ford plat­form is inter­op­er­a­ble in the sense that it builds on exist­ing soft­ware (MySQL, Github, Piaz­za, MySQL, Python Djan­go, etc.). And, unlike some oth­er plat­forms, Class2Go gives edu­ca­tors imme­di­ate access to valu­able data, allow­ing them to make refine­ments to the edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence.

Although still under devel­op­ment, Class2Go is ready for action. In the fall, Stan­ford offered two MOOCs through Class2Go (Com­put­er Net­work­ing and Solar Cells, Fuel Cells, & Bat­ter­ies). And it has a new MOOC get­ting start­ed today: Intro­duc­tion to Data­bas­es taught by Jen­nifer Widom, the Chair of Stan­ford’s famed Com­put­er Sci­ence depart­ment. (Watch her intro above.) You can take the course for free and learn all about data­base devel­op­ment. Or you can use it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see Class2Go up close.

In the com­ing months, Class2Go will be deployed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Aus­tralia. If you’re tempt­ed to do the same at your own uni­ver­si­ty, you can get the Class2Go code here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete list of MOOCs and Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties

650 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties (a huge trove of video/audio lec­tures)

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Introducing KA Lite: An Offline Version of the Khan Academy That Runs on Almost Anything

in Education, K-12, Online Courses, Technology | December 19th, 2012

Salman Khan’s mod­el for free online edu­ca­tion hinges on the micro lecture—brief tuto­ri­als on near­ly every sub­ject under the sun—delivered through YouTube. Launched in 2006, the Khan Acad­e­my now has a library of 3000 videos. That’s not bad, espe­cial­ly for a site with the ele­vat­ed goal of pro­vid­ing a “free world-class edu­ca­tion for any­one any­where.” With the help of hun­dreds of vol­un­teers, the site’s con­tent is acces­si­ble in 18 lan­guages. But even with all of that effort, Khan does­n’t achieve the glob­al reach that it promis­es. The fact is that only 35 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion has access to the inter­net, which puts the idea of online learn­ing behind a vir­tu­al fire­wall for many peo­ple.

Enter Khan Acad­e­my Lite, oth­er­wise called KA Lite. This new ser­vice tries to work around that fire­wall. Soft­ware devel­op­er Jamie Alexan­dre and a team from UCSD devel­oped an offline ver­sion of Khan’s learn­ing mod­el that can run on just about any­thing. Once you down­load the KA Lite soft­ware and install it on a Lin­ux or Win­dows serv­er, stu­dents can start watch­ing Khan videos and exer­cis­es on computers/devices as tiny and cheap as the $35 Rasp­ber­ry Pi. Actu­al­ly, the whole serv­er can be run on the Rasp­ber­ry Pi!

You can down­load the soft­ware here and find instal­la­tion instruc­tions here. Jamie Alexan­dre offers his own intro­duc­tion to KA Lite here.

Khan Acad­e­my Lite sits nice­ly along­side the free apps released for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch ear­li­er this year. Be sure to check them out.

Find more K‑12 Resources in our col­lec­tion of 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Watch a Cool and Creepy Visualization of U.S. Births & Deaths in Real-Time

in Life, Technology | December 6th, 2012

As one Metafil­ter com­menter put it, this visu­al­iza­tion is cool and creepy at once. Assem­bled by Brad Fly­on, the visu­al­iza­tion gives you a feel for the qual­i­ta­tive rhythm of births and deaths in the U.S.. (For­tu­nate­ly the births exceed deaths by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin.) When you enter the visu­al­iza­tion, you’ll want to give things a few moments to get going. And you can mouse over parts of the map to get more data.

The visu­al­iza­tion itself was cre­at­ed with the fol­low­ing (and I’m quot­ing Fly­on ver­ba­tim here):

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Self-Taught African Teenager Wows M.I.T. (and Other Innovators Changing Africa’s Fate)

in Life, MIT, Technology | December 3rd, 2012

The news the world receives from the con­ti­nent of Africa is almost uni­form­ly bad, and this is cer­tain­ly an unjust sit­u­a­tion. A recent par­o­dy ad cam­paign by Nor­we­gian Erik Schrein­er Evans attempts to say as much; Evans’ Africa for Nor­way spoof intends to send the mes­sage to “stop treat­ing Africans like pas­sive recip­i­ents of aid, and rec­og­nize that the con­ti­nent is more than the sum of its prob­lems.” This mes­sage may have some effect on the ten­den­cy of major news and aid orga­ni­za­tions to cap­i­tal­ize on the suf­fer­ing of African peo­ple, but recent sto­ries high­light­ing the inge­nu­ity and self-suf­fi­cien­cy of African teenagers may do more to change per­cep­tions. First, there is the sto­ry of four Niger­ian teenagers who debuted their “urine-pow­ered gen­er­a­tor” at the 2012 “Mak­er Faire Africa” in Lagos, a sto­ry that made head­lines in inter­na­tion­al news. Anoth­er prodi­gy, from Sier­ra Leone, has made a splash with his abil­i­ty to turn garbage into use­able tech­nol­o­gy. Fif­teen-year-old Kelvin Doe—a.k.a. D.J. Focus—has wowed engi­neers by build­ing his own bat­ter­ies, gen­er­a­tors, and trans­mit­ters with scrounged-up spare parts and youth­ful resource­ful­ness.

The above THINKR video pro­files Kelvin, with inter­views from engi­neers like MIT doc­tor­al stu­dent David Sen­geh, also from Sier­ra Leone, who has used his con­nec­tions to help young peo­ple like Kelvin devel­op their tal­ents for the ben­e­fit of their war-torn and impov­er­ished coun­try. Kelvin’s a pret­ty amaz­ing young guy. He explains his alter-ego “D.J. Focus” as part of his per­son­al ethos: “I believe if you focus, you can do an inven­tion per­fect­ly.” Kelvin hosts his own radio show, which pro­vid­ed the impe­tus for his tech inno­va­tions. Kelv­in’s sto­ry struck a chord: the short video gar­nered over three-mil­lion views in just ten days.

A more recent episode of THINKR’s “Prodi­gies” series pro­files Kelvin’s men­tor, David Sen­gah, whose research focus­es on design­ing com­fort­able pros­thet­ic limbs, an inter­est he devel­oped through his own expe­ri­ence of the ten-year Sier­ra Leone Civ­il War, dur­ing which rebel forces ampu­tat­ed limbs to intim­i­date their oppo­si­tion.

Kelvin Doe and David Sen­gah are extra­or­di­nary inven­tors, but they are only two exam­ples of a steady stream of African tech inno­va­tors, artists, writ­ers, and entre­pre­neurs ded­i­cat­ed to chang­ing their coun­tries’ fates and there­by chang­ing the offi­cial nar­ra­tive of Africans as help­less vic­tims.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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