Catch the WildCam while you can!

National Geographic's well-done website is currently featuring an amazing experience: A 24-hour webcam which monitors a water hole in Africa: The WildCam.

Pete's Pond is a large watering hole in Botswana, which is frequented by all kinds of wildlife. I've spent hours and hours working at my computer while the streaming, real-time video from the pond plays on my desktop.

Geographic only plans to keep the live stream active on their site until December 8th, so please take a look while you can. They use an ordinary color camera during the day, and use an infrared camera at night.

The site tells you what time it is in Botswana, and they have some wonderful archive footage available.

I've snapped a few photos from the live feed when it was particularly interesting, and included a few here.

Visit the Wild Cam.

Elephants at night

Baboon

Zebras

more Elephants

WriteBoard: a new web-hosted collaboration tool

I've been a big fan of Backpack since the day it launched, and I'm currently managing 8 or 9 personal projects with it as I type.

When 37Signals announced yet another cool web app for creating collaborative online documents, I was excited! Then, I started reading about Writeboard, and I lost some of my enthusiasm. Couldn't you just do this in Backpack?

Then I read more, and discovered it's core capability: Version control. It's basic (no merging, for example), but it'll do. And it also integrates with a BackPack account. I'm excited again!

I've been wanting to write about web-based writing tools for some time, but every week someone comes out with a new one (see Writely). Now 37Signals has jumped into the fray, and they are updating the product continually.

Give it a try! You can create a free account with two current writeboards. Backpack has a free option, too.

Link

Einstein Centennial

September 27th marks 100 years since Albert Einstein submitted a paper which introduced his famous equation: E = mc².

I heard about it on NPR today, and thought I would include a link to their coverage of Einstein.

Even better is some major coverage on the NOVA site from PBS. The site is a companion to their series: Einstein's Big Idea. One of the articles on the PBS site lets you listen to 10 top physicists explain the equation.

Google Mail, Anyone?

I recently extended two GMail invitations to friends, taking me down to 4 remaining invitations to use Google's very cool Web Mail service.

I was surprised to notice today that I now have 100 remaining invitations! Is this true for Everyone? Is this Google's way of rapidly expanding the user base?

No matter what the reason, I now have a LOT of GMail invitations available. If you want one, please drop me a note.

Paul

Rescue Workers Distance Themselves From FEMA

photo by Joel Johnson (click through for entire Flickr set)

I was listening to NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday morning, and heard a story that I just had to share.

Martin Kaste filed a story from New Orleans, describing attempts by rescue workers to convince remaining residents to leave.

He is speaking to Paul Goodman, a firefighter from Georgetown, Kentucky, when he notes that forcing residents to leave isn't the only thing rescue workers are reluctant about:

Kaste: "They're also reluctant to advertise the fact that they work for the much-maligned Federal Emergency Management Agency. Goodman and his unit of firefighters are here working for the agency, but they've hidden their FEMA ID tags under their shirts."

Goodman: "They still wanted us to wear it, um, we were advised by the U.S. Marshals not to wear it."

Listen to the entire story at NPR.org.

Web Surfers Can Help, Too

Have you been surfing the web for days, wishing you could do more to help with Katrina relief than just sending cash? Well, they have a job for you over at the Katrina Help Wiki.

they are looking for people to volunteer their time sitting right in front of their computer by helping out with the Katrina PeopleFinder project:

Several dozen sites have been established to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina find their loved ones, and to allow people to report missing people. This creates a difficulty for people trying to locate missing persons - they need to search dozens of separate databases and message forums.

So we've decided to create a centralized database, where you can search the data from all of these at one time.

You can help in two ways, depending on just how deep your geekdom goes:

1. Enter lost/found info from various non-scrapable websites into a web form at the PeopleFinder project. Go here and follow the instructions.
2. Write code to scrape existing datasets and integrate them into the PeopleFinder database. Go here and sign up to help.
   

I decided that since my scraping skills are pretty beginner-like, I would just dive in on the volunteer side. I have already claimed and entered three datasets of postings from the Katrina Connections site, where people were posting photos of lost loved ones.

Help out if you can.

Progress?

36 years before Apollo 11

Wow. 36 years since Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon. It got me think about the pace of human technological progress, and I decided to do a little research.

36 years before Apollo, humans were already flying, but they had a long way to go in just 36 short years to be standing on the Moon.

So what about 36 years later? In 1969, most people assumed that by the turn of the millenium, humans would be permanently working and

36 years after Apollo 11

living in space-- both in orbit and on the Moon. Instead, our only space-going vehicle has been grounded for over two years, and until today, our only spacecraft in the U.S. cleared to fly was a sub-orbital craft built by an entrepreneur in Mojave, California.

Progress, indeed.

Google Maps on the Moon

Yep, today is the 36th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's famous first step on the Moon. I can't believe that almost 40 years later, the U.S. has no functioning craft to even get us into Low Earth Orbit... oh well.

It's a cool day to commemorate, and Google has gone a step further than their usual special logo: They've created a special version of Google Maps for the Moon! It shows you the landing sites for the Apollo missions, and a special surprise if you zoom in all the way.

Enjoy.

moon.google.com


p.s. Google Moon is part of the Google Copernicus Project. These guys are forward-thinking!

Biodiesel: Not the answer, either?

A new study from Cornell and California-Berkeley says that it takes more fossil fuel to make ethanol than the ethanol itself will yield.

Supporters of ethanol as a renewable energy source have claimed in the past that only 60% of the yielded energy is needed to produce ethanol, but the new study challenges that number.

"The researchers included such factors as the energy used in producing the crop, costs that were not used in other studies that supported ethanol production, said Pimentel" [one of the study's authors].

Not wasting any time, the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association issued a press release refuting the results, stating:

"Over the past decade, only two studies, both of which were conducted by Cornell University entomologist David Pimentel, have found the net energy balance of ethanol to be negative. The overwhelming majority of scientists... have argued Pimentel's studies use outdated data and a flawed methodology."

One thing that had not occurred to me before was this: How much fossil fuel energy is expended to produce petroleum fuels? Is it a productive formula?

Direct Link Between Lack of Exercise and Cancer Risk?

George sent me a clipping from Dr. Gabe Merkin's E-Zine on Health in which he describes the ways in which not exercising shortens your life:

How Lack of Exercise Shortens Lives

Many recent studies show that people die from inactivity, not just from aging. We know that as people age, they lose muscle, their immunities weaken and because of their weakened immunity, they are more likely to die of cancer and infectious
diseases. As you age, you lose your ability to kill germs because of lack of muscle. When germs get into your body, you must make white blood cells and proteins called antibodies to kill them. Antibodies and cells are made from protein and the only place that you can store extra protein is in your muscles. When you have
large muscles, you have a ready source of protein to make antibodies and cells. When you have small muscles, you have a very limited source of amino acids to make protein, so your immunity may be inadequate to kill germs.

You need antibodies to control cancer cells also. Each day, every healthy body makes millions of cancer cells. Your white blood cells and protein antibodies are necessary to ferret out and kill these cancer cells. You develop cancer when these
cancer cells survive and start growing. Having large muscles gives you the source of protein to make antibodies that kill cancer cells as well as germs. Furthermore, when your skeletal muscles are small, so is your heart muscle. A strong heart can withstand arteriosclerosis and infections that can kill a weak heart.

Lack of exercise causes muscles to get smaller. With aging, it takes increasingly longer to recover from exercise. When older people get injured or get tired too soon or feel sore too early, they do less and less or they stop exercising altogether. Instead, they should be exercising more intelligently so they can retain their muscles.

A major advantage of competing in sports at any age is that you can learn good training techniques and how to avoid injuries. If you can exercise into your nineties and beyond without quitting or getting injured, you can retain muscle mass, keep up your immunity and live longer and healthier.

Dr. Mirkin has a very informative website, and once hosted a wonderful radio program on health (you can still download over 200 hours of the programs in mp3 format). Unfortunately, he gave up the radio program to dedicate more time to bicycle racing. He has completed the Boston Marathon 6 times, has practiced medicine for over 40 years, and still is accepting new patients. Oh-- he's 70 years old.