Eideard

 
Two short videos of a person dressed as a chicken chasing a lookalike of Boris Johnson, the incumbent Mayor, have been released on YouTube by the London Labour Party.

One shows the Mayor, sporting a blonde wig, on a Barclays hire bike in front of City Hall, the seat of local Government in London, while the other sees him being pursued down a street. The stunt, dubbed Boris Johns-hen, seeks to highlight how Mr Johnson “has chickened out of debating his opponents and defending his policies”.

The campaign to elect Ken Livingstone says Mr Johnson has in recent months declined to attend hustings with the candidates for the mayoralty hosted by UK Feminista, a womens equality campaign, and the Federation of Small Business.Mr Livingstone has asked Mr Johnson to take part in a televised debate on his proposals to cut Tube fares. A spokesman for the Mayor said he saw “no merit” in the event because Mr Livingstones figures were not credible.

Har.

 
NASA astronaut Dan Burbank shared a matchless view of Comet Lovejoy from the International Space Station, showing the comet’s magnificent tail from a vantage point high above the atmosphere.

“I probably saw the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space, and that’s saying an awful lot, because every day is filled with amazing things,” he told Detroit’s WDIV-TV in an interview.

Hundreds of photos, captured from an altitude of 240 miles, were assembled into the video you see here. You can see the comet rise from the horizon, shining through the green line of atmospheric airglow, and then fade away as the sunrise breaks out in brilliance. It’s a view only three people can see with their own eyes — although that little list will rise to six on Friday when three more crewmates arrive on a Russian Soyuz craft.

Breathtaking. I’m happy I’m alive in a time where at least I can watch something like this secondhand.

Hop was one of the inside editors here at Eideard. And as you can see from the tribute above by John C. Dvorak, one of the leading figures among a larger group of editors at Dvorak Uncensored and the Cagematch.

He will be sorely missed.

 
A new video from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft takes us on a flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.

The data obtained by Dawn’s framing camera, used to produce the visualizations, will help scientists determine the processes that formed Vesta’s striking features. It will also help Dawn mission fans all over the world visualize this mysterious world, which is the second most massive object in the main asteroid belt.

You’ll notice in the video that Vesta is not entirely lit up. There is no light in the high northern latitudes because, like Earth, Vesta has seasons. Currently it is northern winter on Vesta, and the northern polar region is in perpetual darkness. When we view Vesta’s rotation from above the south pole, half is in darkness simply because half of Vesta is in daylight and half is in the darkness of night .

Another distinct feature seen in the video is a massive circular structure in the south pole region. Scientists were particularly eager to see this area close-up, since NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope first detected it years ago. The circular structure, or depression, is several hundreds of kilometers wide, with cliffs that are also several miles high. One impressive mountain in the center of the depression rises approximately 15 kilometers above the base of this depression, making it one of the highest elevations on all known bodies with solid surfaces in the solar system.

Enjoy. Who knows? Your children or grandchildren may visit someday.

A Delaware pediatrician accused of molesting more than 100 of his patients was sentenced Friday to serve his lifetime in prison.

Earl Bradley, whose practice was in Lewes, was given the maximum sentence of 14 life terms, plus 164 years in prison without the possibility of parole, according to a statement from the office of state Attorney General Beau Biden.

He originally had faced 529 counts of rape, sexual exploitation of a child, unlawful sexual contact and other charges. In June, he was found guilty of 24 counts.

The charges include first-degree rape, forcing girls to perform oral sex on him and filming dozens of children engaging in sex acts.

Police officers and detectives, but none of the alleged victims, testified in June at a bench trial, which is held before a judge without a jury. Bradley’s attorneys did not call any witnesses, nor did they make closing arguments.

The evidence against Bradley is based on video seized from his home and office, Biden has said. Public defenders in April challenged the scope of a search warrant used to acquire these tapes, but the judge ruled against them.

Throwing away the key is an unnecessary suggestion, I guess. But, I have to wonder if any of those kids complained to mom and dad and were ignored because the doctor must know best?

This went on, after all, for eleven years.

 
The headline is just an amusing excuse to post this. This wasn’t a banner tournament for Vassily Ivanchuk, but it’s a delight to see him talk about his game. He says that he didn’t do any special preparation for this game, and that his opening move was inspired by the suggestion of “a girl” via Skype. Simple enough, right?

O.K., Eid likes me to post chess stuff once in a while, based on what I find interesting. This is what I find interesting today.

——————————
Play over the moves to Ivanchuk-Nakamura here: Ivanchuk vs Nakamura
Read coverage of the tournament here: Magnus Carlsen wins Medias 2011

The prince of coffee table books believes paper books are dead. Now he wants to be king of the app.

Since 1980, Nicholas Callaway has made the finest of design-driven books, building a publishing house and his fortune on memorable children’s stories and on volumes known for the fidelity of their reproductions of great art. But the quality of paper, ink and binding mean nothing to him now.

For Callaway, it’s all about apps — small applications sold in Apple’s App Store where books are enhanced beyond the mere text of e-books. In this cutting-edge new medium, cooks can clap hands to turn pages of an interactive recipe, a book about Richard Nixon can include footage of him sweating during presidential debates, a Sesame Street character can read a story out loud and, should your child get bored, the app can turn the tale into a jigsaw puzzle or a computerized finger-painting set.

“I have bet the whole ranch on this,” Callaway told Reuters. “This kind of juncture happens maybe once in a century.”

Publishers from New York to London agree this as a moment of huge change. They are adapting to rising sales of e-books, and the popularity of smart phones and tablets such as the iPad. The retail landscape has changed with Amazon becoming the dominant seller of books while countless book stores go the way of video rental stores. America’s No. 2 book store chain, Borders, is bankrupt. Some authors have dropped their publishers entirely, self-publishing online and using social media to connect with readers. Others have become adept at using Facebook and Twitter to reach readers or have attracted fans by becoming popular reviewers of books on Amazon and then publishing their own book.

Callaway is among those who believe the change is just beginning and, in the years to come, the app will change things utterly.

RTFA. Several pages of history, analysis and commentary – decision and the courage to follow that decision to its logical new beginning.

Everything a book can offer and more. All the rest is cultural accommodation.

The U.S. Army could be streaming surveillance video images from unmanned planes to solders’ cellphones in about two years…

The Army remains committed to the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) as the main means for disseminating video images to the battlefield, a big program that is still under development and should be fielded in 2014, said Tim Owings, deputy program manager for Army unmanned aerial systems.

But technology developments and rapid advances in encryption software mean smaller-scale self-contained 4G networks could also be an option for allowing troops to see video images in about two years, Owings told reporters at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference…

“We’re probably going to look at that. We’d be somewhat short-sighted not to,” Owings said about streaming to smart phones, although he noted that the Army does not have a formal requirement for such a system.

Owings said new encryption advances mean that such systems would allow “pretty darn secure” transmission of data in a very limited area, and they would be fairly inexpensive since they could be used with commercially available smart phones…

Army equipment often requires extensive training for troops, but most recruits are already familiar with so-called smart phones, cell phones that can receive video images and photographs, which could reduce training costs, Owings said.

Part of such implementation is getting the officer corps to be as technically hip as the incoming grunts. And, I suppose, keeping the bean counters from offering more than 600% markups to their favorite military-industrial supermarkets.

It’s beginning to feel like this has been with us forever.

And harder for us to believe that one of these days, or months, or years, it will be gone.

It’s the live video feed from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. When BP engineers lowered those cameras in the first place, you can bet they never imagined that the resulting pictures would be watched by hundreds of millions of infuriated people around the world.

They were for in-house use — to monitor the well, a well that was intended to be an uncontroversial source of enormous profit for the oil company. The cameras were like the security cameras that most corporations install around their office buildings. Just a little something so the bosses can keep their eye on things…

The ceaseless image of the oil spewing has become like an international night light — except without the comfort. It’s always there. We can count on it, even though we’d prefer not to.

It has become the logo of the disaster. It is a ghastly portrait in perpetual motion. Every time there is a dash of hope that the oil will stop gushing, something newly bad happens. In recent days, it was the temporary removal of the containment cap deep in the Gulf. The oil surged harder. And we, in our spare moments, watched.

The television feed is like a heartbreaking mutation of those lava lamps from the 1960s and 1970s — those oddly shaped doodads with the colorful churn of liquid trapped inside, an undulating mixture hypnotic in its incessant and random kinetic swirl. The terrible difference, of course, is that the frantic churn from the oil pipe is not trapped. It is freely headed toward unwelcoming shores.

In my neck of the prairie, folks who maintain a fascination with that live feed are as demented as rubberneckers who hit their brakes and slow down to peer at carnage on the opposite side of the freeway after an accident.

Reality TV for truly stupid TV producers.