Dataman55

A compendium of great sites, a bit of humor, and some intriguing information. Dataman is surfing the web, so you don't have to. I don't ask you to agree with what you read here. These are just my opinions. I could be wrong. This site is only meant to provoke thought and conversation. Feel free to send me your favorite articles and sites to share. (Tell your friends. Let's spread some knowledge)

Monday, August 21, 2006

Tesla, Buffalo, and the First Electric Car


Here is a strange tale. Sometime in 1931, Nikola Tesla the famed scientist and inventor, brought his nephew and 12 tubes to Buffalo, NY. Tesla inserted the tubes into the dashboard of a modified Pierce Arrow. The nephew then drove the car around the city, at speeds of up to 90 MPH. After the experiment, Tesla removed the tubes, parked the car in a barn outside of Buffalo and left. What became of the car is not known. Was this truly an electric car? Or was it something else entirely? Tesla claimed that the car was powered "from the aether", meaning out of forces surrounding us. He claimed that this force could be harnessed for cars, boats, and households.

What a cool story. And a Buffalo link to boot!

http://www.keelynet.com/energy/teslcar.htm



Here's an interesting page related to Nikola Tesla:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/tesla/tesla.htm

Want to learn a Foreign Language?

Or maybe brush up on one you learned in school? Well, the federal government (and my tax dollars) wants to help. Visit fsi-language-courses.com, the home for language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute. These courses were developed by the United States government and are in the public domain.

This site is dedicated to making these language courses freely available in an electronic format. It is an independent effort to foster the learning of worldwide languages.


http://fsi-language-courses.com/default.aspx

How to Be a Leader in Your Field:

How to Be a Leader in Your Field:
A Guide for Students in Professional Schools

Here is a real thought provoking article. It describes a plan to become a thought leader in a field. While ostensibly written for students, it is a valuable guide for anyone in a professional field.

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/leader.html

Scrape Torrent

How many of you use torrents? Here is a torrent search engine called Scrape Torrent. According to the site:

Scrape Torrent Search is a torrent search engine that scans all the major torrent search sites and returns the torrent search results cleanly onto a single page. You can also set several filters within preferences to display search results to your taste. Torrent search results can also be sorted by newest, alphabetically, and by most seeds. Also, to make your torrent search experience even greater, you can perform a search through the FireFox search plugin. Scrape Torrent: THE torrent search engine.

http://www.scrapetorrent.com/index.php

QuackWatch

QuackWatch is a junk science monitor, working mainly with health sciences and medicine. Look here for information on fad diets, miracle cures, the wonders of juicing and macrobiotic diets. Lots of interesting stuff in here. I hope this doesn't burst and sacred balloons for you (boy is that a mixed analogy!)

http://www.quackwatch.org/index.html

Where is Gandhi's Peace Prize?


Have you ever wondered why Mohandas Gandhi, the Mahatma, was never awarded a Nobel Peace Prize? Here is a little of the backstory, from the Nobel site itself. In it they lament his never receiving a prize. They hint at subtle, or not so subtle racism that might have kept him from winning. He was nominated five times in his life.

It is absolutely a tarnishing of the image of the prize itself to believe that this amazing man never won this prize. The cheapening of the prize continued with the awarding of it to Jimmy Carter, but that is another article.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/articles/gandhi/index.html

Higgs Bosons

While Stephen Hawking contemplates the future of our existence, other scientists are taking some concrete steps toward ensuring it--such as creating another universe.

Arstechnica notes that Japanese physicists are apparently serious about an experiment to create a "baby universe" in the lab. As nutty as it may sound, the project is based in part on an established phenomenon known as the Higgs field--which, as everyone knows, involves such elements as false vacuums and Z bosons.

Needless to say, all of this is well beyond the reach of our puny intellect. But it still makes for some interesting reading.


http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2006/8/18/5027

Hat Tip nod to
http://news.com.com/2061-11200_3-6107507.html?part=rss&tag=6107507&subj=news

Keep out of Children


This is an actual warning on a knife. Fun stuff called Engrish. Ok, it is culturally insensitive, but it is funny stuff.

http://www.engrish.com/detail.php?imagename=olfa_knife.jpg&category=Household%20Items&date=2002-05-14

World's First Photograph


The first successful permanent photograph created by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. This photograph was made by an all-day exposure.

That's pretty cool. It's about 70 years earlier than I had thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:View_from_the_Window_at_Le_Gras%2C_Joseph_Nic%C3%A9phore_Ni%C3%A9pce%2C_uncompressed_UMN_source.png

Friday, August 18, 2006

More from the Onion:

New Oliver Stone 9/11 Film Introduces 'Single Plane' Theory

NEW YORK—Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone said Monday that his new film World Trade Center unveils "compelling and controversial" new evidence that a single plane was responsible for all four collisions in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

Is it too soon to be making fun of Oliver Stone?

"Back and to the Left, Back and to the Left, ..."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/51367

Military Headstones

Arlington National Cemetary, as everyone knows, is the honored resting place for our nation's warriors. A simple headstone is placed, toped by a symbol of the soldier's religion. Ever Wonder what symbol they use on an atheist Headstone? It turns out there are over 30 different symbols.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.org/funeral_information/authorized_emblems.html

http://www.cem.va.gov/cem/hm/hmemb.asp

Even with that, there is no symbol yet available for Wiccans, as this article notes:

First US Military Wiccan dies in Combat.....

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77070

The WorldTV Internet TV Charts

The Internet TV charts tracks the most popular online video clips each week from four leading Internet TV sites. All the best video clips, on one page. (Some video clips NSFW).

http://www.worldtv.com/charts/

Another Wave of the Future

PodGuides

Here is a wave of the future item. Podguides are downloadable audio walking guides to cities, combined with matching JPG's showing maps and sites. This is a terrific use of a new technology that will become very popular in the future. Imagine walking through Venice, guided by a map and a recorded lecture by a world famous historian, or by my father. Very cool idea.

http://www.podguides.net/podguides/podguides.html

Old Time Radio

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, your parents, and more likely, your grandparents, used their imaginations as entertainment. They listened to the radio and visualized the action in their own minds. Now kids, you can experience this same sensory delight. Here are a couple of sites that share old time (1930's - 1950's) radio programs as downloadable MP3 files. OK, so a lot of it was hokey. You just might find some gems in here. Isn't this just why you turn to Dataman? Who else is going to find stuff like this for you ?

http://www.related-pages.com/oldtimeradio/

http://www.radiolovers.com

The Weird Web

Joe DeRouen's Weird Websites was a weekly online column. And what qualifies a website to be weird? Why just about anything unusual, of course! If it's unique and makes you think or laugh, it'll be reviewed in Weird Websites.

http://www.weirdwebbed.com/2003_05_11_weird-archives.html

Waterfalls of Ontario



Get out of the house and visit something beautiful this weekend. Here is a great site that explains the science behind waterfalls and introduces you to the waterfalls of Ontario (like Moon Falls Above). If you live nearby, get out and see one of these. If you are nowhere near Ontario, you can at least look at the site and envy those of us who have Canada as our great big beautiful back yard.

http://www.start.ca/users/mharris/waterfalls/

Waves of the Future

MTV Produces TV Series for Mobile Phones

I have seen the future. It will be delivered to a cell phone near you.

Its influential, tech-savvy audience have made MTV's productions -- Beavis and Butt-Head, Jackass and The Osbournes -- trendsetters. If its latest TV series, Sway's Hip-Hop Owner's Manual, is a similar trailblazer, it'll be with a difference -- the series is being produced especially for video-capable cell phones.
http://futurewire.blogspot.com/2006/06/mtv-produces-tv-series-for-mobile.html

Panic for the Rolling Stones

Mick Jagger and his bandmates will never have to worry about where the next paycheque is coming from.

And that is, perhaps, something they should be grateful for judging by the apparent apathy surrounding tickets sales for the Rolling Stones's homecoming concerts in Britain this weekend.

But perhaps most embarrassing of all for the band who have a combined age of 249 is that cut-price tickets are also being sold to pensioners through the company Saga.

Imagine cut-rate tickets for a Stones concert available through AARP.

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" OK, it's from a Beatles tune, but you get the idea.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=401097&in_page_id=1773

How come scientists are famous in Asia, and we get Kevin Federline?

Heisuke Hironaka, Fields Medal-winner for some of the most difficult mathematical proofs of all time, has appeared in advertisements and on billboards in his native country.

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/05/big_in_japan.php

I have a lot of difficulty with a supposed Science magazine that can't look beyond the hype and hysteria about Global Warming, but the rest of the site looks pretty nice.

Blogwatch

Add this to the Blogwatch:

FutureWire - futurism and emerging technology

http://futurewire.blogspot.com/

The World Future Society

The World Future Society is an excellent Futurist site. It includes their magazine, The Futurist.

http://www.wfs.org/

Meet the Onion

Have you been to The Onion?

Fake news. Kind of like The Daily Show, only funny.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/44690

Live Every Day As If You're Dying Of A Contagious Disease That Turns People You Bite Into Zombies

HardDiskOgg

An OggVorbis freeware sound recording program. It allows me to copy from analog input (like a turntable) into either an OggVorbis or MP3 formatted file.

http://www.fridgesoft.de/harddiskogg.php

Tor



The Onion Router is an open source proxy system that helps to facilitate anonymous browsing. I'm not sure why would want your browsing to be anonymous. You're not going anywhere you shouldn't, are you ?

http://tor.eff.org/

Wridea

Wridea is an idea management tool.


http://wridea.com/

The Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qa'ida and the Nazis

Al-Qa'ida is the product of an Arab fascist group that was set up in the 1920s, funded by Adolf Hitler, used by British, French and American Intelligence after WWII, and later was supported by the Saudis and reactivated by the CIA.

More conspiracy stories from Nexus Magazine:


http://nexusmagazine.com/articles/Fascist%20Roots%20of%20Al-Qaeda.html

The OnHollywood 100

New space, new players—these companies are redefining the way entertainment is created, distributed, and experienced.
AlwaysOn is proud to introduce the first annual OnHollywood 100 list, which features the top private companies in the developing digital media entertainment sector. These organizations are redefining the way entertainment is created, distributed, and experienced. Digital entertainment, information, and communication are shifting from a provider- to a consumer-driven paradigm, and the digital media entertainment space is teeming with opportunity and innovation. Consumer demand for new products and services like digital video recorders (DVRs) has taken off, as have new trends like podcasting, videoblogging, and mobile and user-generated content. Digital media in the home was just the beginning. Consumers now expect to control all aspects of their experience, by gaining anywhere, anytime access to all their digital media.


http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=14608_0_1_0_C

Accidental Discoveries in Medicine

Accidents in medicine: The idea sends chills down your spine as you conjure up thoughts of misdiagnoses, mistakenly prescribed drugs, and wrongly amputated limbs. Yet while accidents in the examining room or on the operating table can be regrettable, even tragic, those that occur in the laboratory can sometimes lead to spectacular advances, life-saving treatments, and Nobel Prizes.

A seemingly insignificant finding by one researcher leads to a breakthrough discovery by another; a physician methodically pursuing the answer to a medical conundrum over many years suddenly has a "Eureka" moment; a scientist who chooses to study a contaminant in his culture rather than tossing it out stumbles upon something entirely new. Here we examine seven of medical history's most fortuitous couplings of great minds and great luck.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/cancer/discoveries.html

Here is similar article from the Discovery Channel:

http://www.exn.ca/Stories/2004/04/19/51.asp

Nexus Magazine

NEXUS is an international bi-monthly alternative news magazine, covering the fields of: Health Alternatives; Suppressed Science; Earth's Ancient Past; UFOs & the Unexplained; and Government Cover-Ups.


Alternative news from a decidedly conspiratorial perspective. But hey, it's fun to read conspiracy theories, isn't it?


http://www.nexusmagazine.com/

HandHeld Items

HHI is an online store just chock full of accessories for your iPod. Lots of cool stuff you haven't even thought about yet. Beat the Christmas rush!

http://www.handhelditems.com/

WikiSource

This is a companion to the Wikipedia. Wikisource is an Open Source, public domain library. It contains fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biographies from ancient, medieval, and modern times. Consider it a more in-depth version of the Wikipedia.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page

Consider also Wikibooks, an open content collection of textbooks.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Pandora

Pandora is a customized internet radio station. Using the Music Genome Project as a start, Pandora takes a song or artist, plays it, then finds similar music from the same or other artists. It is interesting and enlightening to hear what they come up with. Some of the relations can be very subtle. Give it a try.

http://www.pandora.com/

These are the Best of Times


This article asks the question:

whether it was better to be a super-wealthy American in 1920 (like John Rockefeller here), a moderately wealthy American in 1960, or an average American in 2006. Which would you choose?

http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/03/these_are_the_b.html

Live Plasma

Find out how things relate to other things. You have to see this site to believe it. Think of a sort of six degrees of separation that works for Actors, Bands, Movies, and other things. Put in a name and find relations to other things, visually. This is a very cool site. I think it is currently only used for Music and Movies, but there are lots of other possibilities out there.

http://www.liveplasma.com/

Ultrasonic Tourniquet


An Ultrasonic Tourniquet to Stop Battlefield Bleeding
The Pentagon is committing $51 million to creating a tool for acoustic cauterization.

The U.S. military has begun developing an ultrasonic tourniquet in an effort to stop life-threatening bleeding during combat.

Called the Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation (DBAC) program, it aims to create a cuff-like device that wraps around a wounded limb. Rather than applying pressure to the wound to stem the flow of blood, the device would use focused beams of ultrasound (sound waves above the audible frequencies) to non-invasively clot vessels no matter how deep they are.


http://www.techreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17215&ch=biotech

Quote of the Day:

"We know what we are, but we know not what we may become"
- William Shakespeare

Genealogy

Interested in Genealogy? I am. Here is the website for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormon Church is pre-eminent in the field of genealogy. The site has lots of tools and ideas for tracing your family tree. Because it is a part of the Mormon tradition, it is all presented freely to the public, Mormon and non-Mormon. What nice people.

http://www.familysearch.org/

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Am I just Getting Lazy?

I apologize to my many readers. I have been away on vacation for a bit. I truly enjoyed myself. In the meantime, I dug up a few sites worth looking in to. Have some fun with these. I'll be back in regular form before you know it.

Dataman

The Futurist Blog

A pretty heavy blog that is devoted to future studies. Stay away from this unless you are prepared for some heavy duty thinking.

http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/

Book Crossing

Book Crossing is a unique book club. People register a book, then leave it in a public place for someone else to find, read, enjoy, and re-register. This allows a book's travels to be recorded over its life. It also allows books to flow around society freely. What a nice idea.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/home

iPod mods

http://www.ipodmods.com/index.html

ZuluPad

Zulupad is a notepad on crack, or at least that's what the authors say. It is a nifty combination of a notepad and a personal Wiki. It automatically builds links between notes, allowing you to hyperlink in between your thoughts. This might be a very cool application for students or writers.

http://www.gersic.com/zulupad/

Bolt

Then there is Bolt. Bolt looks like a mashup of MySpace, Youtube, and some other well known sites. It is a social networking/sharing sort of thing. Check it out. Tell me what you think about this one.

http://www.bolt.com

Happy Birthday to MTV

Did you know that August 1, 2006 was the 25th anniversary of MTV?

25 Years Down the Tube

MTV turns 25 today, which is still a few months younger than Justin Timberlake.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/31/AR2006073101296.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV

Dumb Criminal Story:

A bar waitress checking to see if a woman was legally old enough to drink was handed her own stolen driver's license, which was reported missing weeks earlier, police said.

"The odds of this waitress recovering her own license defy calculation," police Capt. Guy Turner said Monday.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/01/national/main1853610.shtml?source=RSS&attr=U.S._1853610

Add this to blogwatch:

http://www.omninerd.com/

WikiCars

A Wiki about Car information. Let's see just how useful a subject oriented wiki can be.

http://wikicars.org/en/Main_Page

Stickam Video

Another YouTube clone? or maybe something better?

http://www.stickam.com/

Daily Comedy Fix

http://www.DailyComedy.com

Know Your Stuff Home Inventory Program

http://www.knowyourstuff.org

Blogwatch:

http://www.tipmonkies.com/

http://www.readwriteweb.com

http://techcrunch.com/

Next Generation Search Engines

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/search_20_vs_tr.php

Meet your Money

Here is an interesting personal finance site that has some tips for saving, for retirement planning, and other wise uses for your money. Hey, it's your money, you might as well get it to work hard for you.

http://www.hellodollar.com/

The Cover Dude

Do you search high and low for those Music CD, ALBUMS, DVD or even VIDEO sleeves?
Look no further - In one search you can download all you find - No signups - No memberships - No fuss! - Simply Free Downloads MP3 - DVD - Music - Top 100 - VIDEO - CDs illustrations, covers, CD sleeves

http://www.coverdude.com/

ExxonSecrets

A site dedicated toferreting out the "secret" money used to promulgate the anti-global warming discussion. It is the thesis of some on the left that any discussion of Global warming is useless, since the science is settled. Anyone disagreeing with this idea is regarded as a heretic or a luddite. The only reason that any organization would get involved with anti-global warming is that they must have been bought off by big oil, big coal, or some other corporate interest with global domination aspirations. This site lists many well known organizations and counts the money handed out by Exxon. I kind of like the site. I use it as a quick and easy guide to many organizations that are doing good work on the right. Here you can find a description of many organizations and think tanks that are worth pursuing. I am sure this is not a use that the site owners would agree with.

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/listorganizations.php

Personal Development for Smart People

A personal development site that is just chock full of good ideas for a better life. Steve covers health, finances, motivation, and many other topics on a regular basis.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/index.htm

The Humor Power Blog

Finding the uses for humor in everyday life: in dealing with your boss, your spouse, your kids/parents. You get the idea. Generally, this is about how to be a funnier person, and couldn't we all do with that?

http://www.humorpower.com/blog/

Another Top Sites Article

25 top sites from Time inc. Check out television without pity and factcheck.org.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222769,00.html

Happy Birthday to the PC


August 12, 2006 marked 25 years since the launch of the IBM PC. I just thought you might want to know.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc/pc_1.html

Watching America

Keeping a watchful eye on news from around the world and just what everyone else thinks about America. It's not easy being the world's only superpower. No one like us. Everyone wants us to shut up and go home, but leave our money on the table. I heard our reputation explained this way: If a major asteroid was heading towards Earth, which country would you want most to help? Which country would you expect to help first? Which country would give the most towards the effort to save the planet? Yeah, I thought so.


http://www.watchingamerica.com/index.shtml

The Berlin Wall


The 45th anniversary of the raising of the Berlin Wall was last Sunday, August 13.

http://www.cs.utah.edu/~hatch/berlin_wall.html

Customize your own start page

Check out PageFlakes for your very own Web2.0 customized start page. Very neat stuff.

http://www.pageflakes.com

Also

www.start.com



Did you know that you can also customize the google page as your own start page?

www.google.com

Greatest 15 websites

Written from a UK point of view, but it is still thought provoking.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1843263,00.html



Also check out the comments about the article:



http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observer/archives/2006/08/12/which_websites.html#more

What's The Greatest Software Ever Written?

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=191901844

Mammoths may roam again after 27,000 years




http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2312860,00.html

Free Online Learning Resources Roundup from LifeHacker

http://lifehacker.com/software/learning/

Also, free classes are available from MIT:

http://lifehacker.com/software/education/free-classes-from-mit-155699.php

Nine no longer: Panel declares 12 planets

The solar system has 12 planets.

That is the conclusion, to be announced today, of an international panel formed to devise a scientific definition of a planet and settle an increasingly intense dispute over whether Pluto qualifies. The panel suggests retaining Pluto and immediately adding three new planets to the nine that are familiar to any schoolchild: Ceres, currently considered a large asteroid; Charon, now considered a moon of Pluto; and Xena, a recently discovered object that is larger than Pluto.

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2006/08/16/nine_no_longer_panel_declares_12_planets/

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