If you read this article’s headline and were expecting the greatest B movie ever made, I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re in for a dissapointment. It’s in fact a reference to a discussion on a technical solution to the problems of copyright law for those who support filesharing without restrictions.
The discussion comes from Pirates Parties International, which formally brings together the respective political parties from 22 countries. (There are also non-member parties from another couple of dozen countries.) As well as copyright reform issues, the parties stand on a platform of wider online rights.
One of the main problems such parties and their supporters encounter is that most national copyright laws mean there’s at least some dispute about whether sites linking to torrent files used by filesharing software to transfer copyrighted material are themselves committing a crime or civil violation.
Over the years there have been several proposed solutions to this. Sweden’s Pirate Party had hoped to win a seat in the country’s most recent national elections and use that position to host sites on parliamentary computers that are beyond the reaches of the law. However, it failed to recreate its previous success in European Parliament elections.
The most advanced plan was an attempt to buy out Sealand, a fort off the British coast owned by a former British army officer who claims it is an independent sovereign state, a claim that is legally disputed at best. Despite fundraising efforts, such a deal has never gone ahead.
The big problem — beyond the cost and logistics — is that to connect the server in space to the Internet, there still needs to be an IP address, a domain name, and some form of connection to the net, all of which would bring some form of national jurisdiction back into play.
Realistically it’s almost never going to happen (though a suggestion to put a server on a small ship and send it out into international waters might be more feasible), but you certainly can’t argue that pirates suffer from a lack of imagination.
In the world of action figures, you can’t get much more exciting than this awesome 2001: A Space Odyssey Monolith, unless you’re talking about a Han Solo in carbonite piece, of course!
Sure, Damien Walters’ acrobatic showreels are pretty epic, but when it comes to parkour, this dog just pwns the poor man out of existance. Ok, I may be exagerating just a bit, but you have to admit that what this dog is doing is pretty amazing.
Even though I don’t particularly like Fox as a corporate entity, I have to admit that this clip from FOX 4 KDFW poking fun at the use of social media during news reports made me chuckle. Check it out:
So clearly I’m a Halloween geek. I’ve spent the last couple of days contemplating all sorts of Halloween mayhem that I can share with you all. I’m still working on perfecting a chocolate spider egg concoction, but in the mean time I wanted to share another creepy, easy recipe for your Halloween party. It’s on the sweet side, you could say, but I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. (I also have some mean Halloween-themed cocktails coming up next week, including my favorite: the Bloody Squid.)
I don’t know about you, but I get a little tired of seeing the same Halloween eyeball recipes. You know what I’m talking about–many of them use one similar ingredient: olives. And while savory eyeballs are all well and good, if you’re into that, I wanted something that could compliment the sweeter side of the season.
I recommend getting real white chocolate, the stuff made with actual cocoa butter, and not the white melty stuff that’s made of partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Not only does the real stuff taste better—the white brick of meltable sugar and oil burns my throat—but it seems to hold up better to heat. Last year, I destroyed two of those bricks in the microwave, following instructions to the letter. They charred and went brown and stunk up the whole house. After that debacle, I far prefer the ability to maintain the right heat over a double-boiler.
If you decide to use fondant instead of marzipan, I recommend making it yourself. The stuff at the store is insanely expensive, and in my experience doesn’t taste nearly as good as the stuff you can make yourself (read: the stuff I once used tasted like sweet paper and, while pretty on the cake, was not a hit). Since I’m going on a fondant binge tomorrow (preparing a geeky cake for my husband’s birthday) I thought I’d cut corners and get some marzipan paste in a tube. It only has a few ingredients, and holds up pretty well. But honestly, if I was going to do this again I’d probably go with my own fondant; fondant is much more pliable, and easier to get smooth. The marzipan was very off-white and far grainier. (My favorite fondant recipe is here, if you’re feeling adventurous.)
So, step one: melt a few ounces of your chocolate in a double boiler. Don’t have a double boiler? You don’t need to go out and purchase an expensive one. Take a metal bowl, and set it over a pan of simmering hot water. Voila! Take care not to overheat the chocolate, as it’ll start to separate and get pretty nasty.
Have prepared: parchment paper (your best friend in chocolate making); a frosting bag with tip; a cloth.
Once the chocolate is melted, add a few drops of food coloring of your choice. I wanted blue eyes, so I used aquamarine I had from a Duff Goldman food coloring kit. But if you want brown, you can always use regular chocolate.
Fill the frosting bag with chocolate, use the aforementioned cloth as a barrier between your hands and the bag because it’s going to be hot. Be careful. If you’ve overheated the chocolate, it might melt the bag. So let the chocolate cool slightly, by removing the double boiler from the burner, and stirring it.
Pipe little circles onto the parchment paper, smaller than an inch in diameter (but depending on your eyes, you can do whatever size you want). For more lizardine eyes, go for ovals. Leave a hole in the middle. (The letter o’s in the picture up top are the top sides of the irises I made.)
Cool the irises. Once they’re brittle (I usually leave them over night) you can handle them better—but keep in mind they can break, and melt. Parchment paper really is the best way to ensure a safe retrieval of the chocolate. Wax paper might melt, and anything else requires lots of greasing.
Start molding your marzipan. It’s basically sugar dough, and once it warms a little you can easily make little balls out of it. Think Play-Doh and you’re good to go
Cut an indented hole in the top by positioning a knife in the middle and sawing away at an angle in a circle. Sort of like you might if you’re coring a tomato.
Put one chocolate chip in the deepest indentation, then press the iris down around it. Gentle, now. It’ll mold together pretty well.
Cut food coloring (blue and red) with high proof alcohol. This is important to remember. If you use water, you’ll end up melting the sugar and the end result will be rather ugly.
With a very small paint brush, use the blue food coloring to accent the irises, the red to make veins. Get as detailed as you like. Use some red vines to make nerves behind the eyes, if you like!
And there you go! These work great on cakes, cupcakes, or just alone. Sure, they’re sweet enough to knock your teeth out, but we are talking about Halloween here: the holiday of candy! I wanted them to look as biologically correct as possible, so they’re a little glossy. If you really wanted to go hard core, you could use a gelatin glaze over them for a lens. For a frightening presentation, consider skewering them on stakes or using them to decorate cocktails.
Stay tuned for more Halloween wackiness, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Halloween geek!
Do you have any ghastly recipes to share? Do you like mixing science with your scary? Let us know!
Exactly five years from today we will all be using hovercrafts. And that’s a documented fact.
That’s because October 21, 2015 is the date upon which Marty McFly arrives in Hill Valley in Back to the Future 2.
(This is the real date mentioned in the movie. Back in July a rumor went around the internet that it was actually July 5, 2010. Although in the 1985 present of the first movie Doc Brown mentions going “25 years into the future”, this never happens. A supposed screenshot of the DeLorean’s time settings showing the 2010 date was soon confirmed as a Photoshopped hoax.)
With that in mind, it’s time to check through some of the technological innovations the film promises, courtesy of Futurepedia, a site dedicated to the trilogy, and see how likely they are to be a reality.
A telescopic baseball bat that could extend to twice its length. I’ve never seen one, but I can’t see any reason why it couldn’t be made.
A jacket that automatically adjusts to fit the wearer and then dries itself. No sign yet, but we have previously reported on efforts to develop clothing that monitors the wearer’s heartrate and alerts medical staff in case of problems.
Holographic movies including Jaws 19. James Cameron must surely be on to it.
Mr Fusion, a home device that uses nuclear fusion to produce 1.21 gigawatts from a banana peel and a discarded beer can. Erm, no.
A video screen that can show up to nine channels at once from a selection of more than 300. Three hundred? Is that all?
Portable thumb units to allow people to make cashless payments. We’re not quite there, but credit card payments via an RFID chip in a mobile phone are currently being tested in New York and Los Angeles.
The Scenery Channel. Well, apparently this is “coming soon.”
Videophones. That would be a yes. And in your pocket, too.
As for the cultural events of 2015, the Chicago Cubs winning the world series was clearly intended to be a joke, Princess Diana becoming British queen is looking unlikely, and we don’t yet have a female president of the United States. For that to come true, a woman would have to run and win in 2012, and when it comes to the most likely candidate for that to happen, I should probably shut up now and attempt to maintain some degree of journalist objectivity.
As for the hoverboard, keep it under your hat, but we’re already there:
A blueshift is any decrease in wavelength (increase in frequency); the opposite effect is referred to as redshift. In visible light, this shifts the color from the red end of the spectrum to the blue end. The term also applies when photons outside the visible spectrum (e.g. x-rays and radio waves) are shifted toward shorter wavelengths, as well as to shifts in the de Broglie wavelength of particles. Blueshift is most commonly caused by relative motion toward the observer, described by the Doppler effect. An observer in a gravity well will also see infalling radiation gravitationally blueshifted, described by General Relativity in the same way as gravitational redshift. In a contracting universe, cosmological blueshift would be observed; the expanding universe gives a cosmological redshift, and the expansion is observed to be accelerating. [Source]
Two condoms are used (one inside the other) to create the bag for this bagpipe. The chanter and drone are aluminium tubes with a membrane reed at the top of each.
