Break the Code — Central Intelligence Agency

Did you know the CIA has games for kids on their web site?  I had fun seeing how fast I could get the answer to all six coded messages on the site. I got all six correct in under 1 minute.  Can you guess how I did it? See: Break the Code — Central Intelligence Agency.

LEFT: This has nothing to do with the answers above, other than the fact that you can get amazing things done if you are creative .... did you ever think of this: Shoelaces can be used to send coded messages.

Vote: Toy of the Year Awards (FBI vs Barbie?)

Vote for Toy of the Year. Great place to get ideas for the kids this season.

Up for a nomination is a controversial Barbie with a built in video camera. Seems like a fun techno gift for girls, no?

Well, the FBI has some concerns about this particular toy... no, they aren't afraid that terrorists will use it to detect our infrastructure...

With a new, high-tech Barbie now on the market, the FBI has issued a warning to parents.

This Barbie has a camera embedded in the iconic doll, with a lens in front and a color, LCD screen on her back. She's getting rave reviews in the toy community, and was even nominated for the 2011 Toy of the Year award.

But the FBI warns that it could become a tool for child pornography production.

The video Barbie doll came out in July and so far there have not been any reported cases of misuse. But the FBI says parents need to keep an eye on what their kids are filming. ...

via TBD

I'd guess that Video Barbie will be popular with kids because  we used to have hours of fun with toys that could record and play back our voices.  As the FBI says, parental supervision is the key.

I wonder if the FBI was involved in getting the Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 Broom that vibrated removed from stores?

Well, this was one way to keep Harry Potter fans interested as they grew up. Modeled after Harry's first broom, Mattel's now discontinued battery-operated Nimbus 2000 featured a grooved stick and handle for kids who wanted to ride it around the house. The dubious part: it vibrated. Some of the (now deleted) comments on Amazon were so good, they had to be written with a wink: "I'm 32 and enjoy riding the broom as much as my 12 yr old and 7 year old," wrote one satisfied customer. We bet. 

Read more: http://www.time.com

A vibrating broom is pretty safe compared to what gave us "the witch on the broom" image in the first place. The little known history of witches flying on broomsticks:  Women used to make bread by stirring it with broomsticks and the mold ergot on the broomsticks caused hallucinations (and flying dreams, and more) when absorbed through the skin. Other things were added to "flying ointments" for broom riding that resulted in wild, wierd and pleasurable experiences. This included seeing monsters and demons, some bad trips, insanity and probably some poisoning deaths.  (More: link, link, link, link)

Paul the Psychic Octopus Available as iPhone App

Paul the Psychic Octopus may be leaving the Sea Life Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, for the Madrid Zoo, but more importantly, he could also be headed right into your iPhone.

Yes, the cephalopod soothsayer who became a media sensation during the World Cup by correctly predicting Germany's seven victories and Spain's win in the championship match has gone digital. And now he's ready to tell you if it's going to rain or shine tomorrow, if the Miami Heat will win the next nine NBA titles, or whatever other critical information you need to know.

Brazilian developers uTouch Labs released "Ask the Octopus" on July 14, an app that allows a cartoon version of Paul to help users make decisions -- be they basic or mind-boggling. Simply enter two possible options, and the eight-legged oracle will make a choice, hopefully guiding your life in the right direction. Like Paul, who picked game winners by choosing a mussel from a container marked with a country's flag, the animated octopus makes his prediction by swimming to the sea floor and selecting one of two boxes.

According to uTouch Labs' marketing and product manager, Leonardo Copello, the idea for the app struck him after reading AOL News Editor Steve Pendlebury's report on the psychic phenom earlier this month.

"Brazilians are soccer lovers, so we are watching the FIFA World Cup and a really curious octopus appears as an oracle in the match games. It caught our attention, and we brainstormed about an application for mobile devices," he said.

It took five days of working around the clock for the company to design the character and program the app.

via Paul the Psychic Octopus Available as iPhone App by uTouch Labs.

Win $50.00: Seeking places to include in a Subterranean Guide to North CA and Oregon

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: December 18, 2009.

My girlfriend and I writing a book: The 2010 Subterranean Guide, Northern CA and Oregon Edition.

We need your ideas for anything interesting below the surface of the Earth in our area...  a club, a bar, a cave, a lava tube, a mine, anything subterranean that we can visit and write about.

Ideas we have so far:

1. Bear Gulch Cave and Balconies Cave at Pinnacles National Monument


2. Black Chasm Cavern, National Natural Landmark


3. Boyden Cavern


4. California Cavern


5. Empire Mine State Historic Park


6. La Jolla Sea Caves


7. Lake Shasta Caverns


8. Lava Beds National Monument


9. Mercer Caverns


10. Moaning Cavern Adventure Park


11. Pluto's Cave, near Weed CA


12. Sutter Gold Mine


13. Subway Cave, Lassen Volcanic National Park

Email your location ideas to xeno735@yahoo.com.

Contest winner will be announced here. Winner is the person or team who gives us the best idea not already on the list above. It has to be in our area so we can visit it between Dec 20 and Dec 30 of 2009. Winner gets $50 and a free copy of the book. If two people make the same suggestion, the first email to arrive in my email inbox with the idea wins.

Good luck and thanks!

Xeno

P. S. Does anyone have a  Leica DISTO D8 I can rent for Dec 20 to Dec 30 trip?

Hear the songs written and recorded in one weekend for NPR

Update:  Nov 27:  Hear the songs that were submitted to NPR: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4.

Here is the entire group on one page.

Wow, some great stuff! I'm definitely learning some new things about recording and mixing by listening to how others did what they did.

Previous Post:

This is my attempt at writing and recording a song in one day (Saturday Nov 14) start to finish for NPR: PLAY or DOWNLOAD: My Dog, Japan (mix 2).mp3. Here is the NPR request for songs written and recorded in one day using certain key words.

.... I think we'd all be willing to admit that technology has made making music a whole lot easier, cheaper and more accessible. We can be more agile, impulsive, nimble, reactionary and spontaneous than ever before. Right? Well, that's the idea anyway.

So let's try!

Here at NPR Music, we could have given you a mere 24 hours to do this, but we'll be generous and allow you the entire weekend in which to record an original song.

Here are the rules:

Your song needs to include one of the following words:  dog, firecracker, lamp shade, Japan, NPR

Your song can be any genre or length.

Please include the name of the song and how you'd like to be credited. Send your songs to:

monitormix@npr.org

All songs are due by this Sunday, Nov. 15, at 8 p.m. ET. We'll feature the songs next week as part of our continuing Decade In Music coverage.

Thanks, and have fun!

via Record A Song This Weekend! - Monitor Mix Blog : NPR.

Okay, Done.   I'm looking forward to hearing the other songs!

Hear him once, you'll be a fan.
I've got a dog I call Japan
He howls in tune with Beethoven.
The dog's going to be a star


My cat named Italy is so cool.
Plays piano from the stool.
Paws of gold no feline fool, he's been on NPR

La la la

My bird named Russia? I can't say.
The window cracked, he flew away
The rat, however, plays the drums and I
Let him out when company comes

I am the manager, the financial backer
I light the proverbial firecracker
Underneath the band to get them going somewhere
If you don't believe my story's true
Some countries want to have a word with you
Japan knows he's going somewhere

He said, "Don't be afraid, put a smile not a lamp shade on."
Dream what you will, you deserve it
You deserve what you'd love to be.

I've got a dog I named Japan
He's the genius in the band
I don't know how he does it, man
He writes these songs that make me want to cry

And he tells me, "If someone's messing
with your dignity, you can talk to me.
You deserve to be, what you want to be.
So be.

My Dog, Japan. My Dog, Japan..."

One man shows how to move stonehenge sized blocks alone

I think I saw this several years ago, but it is still interesting.

One man can build construction like Stonehenge this video shows it.

Wally Wallington has demonstrated that he can lift a Stonehenge-sized pillar weighing 22,000 lbs and moved a barn over 300 ft. What makes this so special is that he does it using only himself, gravity, and his incredible ingenuity.

He is a retired carpenter with 35 years experience in construction. In his work experience, over the years, many times he had to improvise on tools to get the job done. At one of these times, about 12 years ago, He had to remove some 1200 lb. saw cut concrete blocks from an existing floor. The problem was that he did not have a machine that could reach some of the blocks. The only obvious answer was to break the blocks into smaller pieces with a sledgehammer and load them into a wheelbarrow. To him, that seemed to be too much work at the time, so he improvised. Using a few rocks and leverage, He removed the blocks from below the floor to an area that the machine could reach them for removal. After doing this several times, the technique became very easy and quick. This experience make him consider the possibility that people may have used this technique before modern day equipment was available.

Nine years later, after retiring, he decided to explore this on his own. He brought home a one ton block of concrete from a job. Once he got home, he realized that he had to use his techniques to get the block off the truck. After unloading, he found that his technique allowed him to move the block around the yard with very little effort. At that time, his family became very interested in what their "crazy dad" was up to " this time".

via Mysterytopia: Stonehenge - How is it Built !? Answer is here, finaly!.

From the interesting gizapyramid.com site:

Ancient Construction

I have found that ancient legends from around the world are true. Some megaliths could have been set in place by as few as one man. I could build The Great Pyramid of Giza, using my techniques and primitive tools. On a twenty-five year construction schedule, (working forty hours per week at fifty weeks per year, using the input of myself to calculate) I would need a crew of 520 people to move blocks from the main quarry to the site and another 100  to move the blocks on site. For hoisting I need a crew of 120 (40 working and 80 rotating). My crew can raise 7000 lb. 100 ft. per minute. I have found the design of the pyramid is functional in it’s own construction. No external ramp is needed.

The Forgotten Technology

During the time of my projects, I have videotaped myself for demonstrations for my family and friends. In order to pursue my project further, I am offering edited copies of my home videotapes for sale. The plan is to build a replica of Stonehenge with at least 10 ton blocks on end and 2 ton blocks on top. One man, no wheels, no rollers, no metal, using only sticks and stones. In the future, either myself, sons, or grandsons will be able to show this and other forms of The Forgotten Technology to the world. I believe that I have learned to use the laws of physics to my advantage. If you would like a copy of my tape, send $20 to: W.T. Wallington @ 600 South Main Street, Lapeer, Michigan 48446.

While I doubt Zahi Hawass would agree, it is enjoyable to speculate that there is still a lost secret of levitation that was used in building the pyramids:

Let us first look at some historical records.  Masoudi, an Arab historian of the 10th century wrote that the Egyptians used magic spells to move large blocks.  His account is the following:

"In carrying on the work, leaves of papyrus, or paper, inscribed with certain characters, were placed under the stones prepared in the quarries; and upon being struck, the blocks were moved at each time the distance of a bowshot (which would be a little over 200 feet), and so by degrees arrived at the pyramids."

Was this story made up by Masoudi, or is there some truth in it?  Is it possibly that he was reporting on an early legend that the blocks were moved mysteriously and the story of the inscribed papyrus was added to embellish the story?  Or were the blocks placed on some unknown apparatus (mistaken by the historian to be a piece of papyrus) that would levitate them.  If you strip away all the additions and embellishments to a legend, sometimes you are left with a strand of truth. - gizapyramid

How to play chess anywhere

My girlfriend met someone recently who had met two IT guys from India who could play chess against each other in chess boards in their minds.

They would be answering IT calls, helping people, and then suddenly one would turn and say "Nf3".  Her friend said that while this seems amazing to most of us, we can do anything with enough practice.

In case you want to try to learn how to do this, so you can play chess anywhere, here are a few tips. First, you need to know the rules of chess. Next you need to know the numbering system used for the board (see below).  Then you need to know how how to describe a move using the letter names for the pieces along with the board position names.  This is known as Chess Notation and there are several different versions.

Even knowing these things, how do they remember what piece is on which of the sixty-four 1 by 1  squares?   Practice.

This trick seems as amazing as having perfect pitch recall, something I'm attempting to acquire as an adult... with very slow results.

I think, by focused effort that these two individuals were able to create a virtual chess board in their minds.  Certainly no one has evolved yet who is born with a virtual internal chess board. It must therefore be learned. I find this hopeful information in my quest to create a virtual piano in my mind upon which I can then play any notes. (Actually I'm not going for a piano, more an abstraction of musical note structure that can be applied to any instrument.)

Here is an entire game in shorthand notation (PGN):

[Event "F/S Return Match"]
[Site "Belgrade, Serbia Yugoslavia|JUG"]
[Date "1992.11.04"]
[Round "29"]
[White "Fischer, Robert J."]
[Black "Spassky, Boris V."]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 {This opening is called the Ruy Lopez.} 3... a6
4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 O-O 9. h3 Nb8  10. d4 Nbd7
11. c4 c6 12. cxb5 axb5 13. Nc3 Bb7 14. Bg5 b4 15. Nb1 h6 16. Bh4 c5 17. dxe5
Nxe4 18. Bxe7 Qxe7 19. exd6 Qf6 20. Nbd2 Nxd6 21. Nc4 Nxc4 22. Bxc4 Nb6
23. Ne5 Rae8 24. Bxf7+ Rxf7 25. Nxf7 Rxe1+ 26. Qxe1 Kxf7 27. Qe3 Qg5 28. Qxg5
hxg5 29. b3 Ke6 30. a3 Kd6 31. axb4 cxb4 32. Ra5 Nd5 33. f3 Bc8 34. Kf2 Bf5
35. Ra7 g6 36. Ra6+ Kc5 37. Ke1 Nf4 38. g3 Nxh3 39. Kd2 Kb5 40. Rd6 Kc5 41. Ra6
Nf2 42. g4 Bd3 43. Re6 1/2-1/2

How would you decode the game above?

The movetext describes the actual moves of the game. This includes move number indicators (numbers followed by either one or three periods; one if preceding a move by White, three if preceding a move by Black) and movetext Standard Algebraic Notation (SAN).

For most moves the SAN consists of the letter abbreviation for the piece, an "x" if there is a capture, and the two-character algebraic name of the final square the piece moved to. The letter abbreviations are K (King), Q (Queen), R (Rook), B (Bishop), and N (Knight). The pawn is given an empty abbreviation in SAN movetext, but in other contexts the abbreviation "P" is used. The algebraic name of any square is as per usual Algebraic chess notation; from white's perspective, the leftmost square closest to white is a1, the rightmost square closest to white is h1, and the rightmost square closest to black is h8.

In a few cases a more detailed representation is needed to resolve ambiguity; if so, the piece's file letter, numerical rank, or the exact square is inserted after the moving piece's name (in that order of preference). Thus, "Nge2" specifies that the knight originally on the g-file moves to e2.

SAN kingside castling is indicated by the sequence "O-O"; queenside castling is indicated by the sequence "O-O-O" (note that these are capital letter "O"s, not numeral "0"s). Pawn promotions are notated by appending an "=" to the destination square, followed by the piece the pawn is promoted to. For example: "e8=Q". If the move is a checking move, the plus sign "+" is also appended; if the move is a checkmating move, the number sign "#" is appended instead. For example: "e8=Q#". - wiki

As you can see, there is no "#", so the game above had no winner.

A MUCH easier way would be to past the PGN text (be sure to include the headers) into the form here.  Many classic games are re-playable here: http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html

Let them sing it for you

My friend Mark sends this weird little thingy: http://www.sr.se/P1/src/sing/.

I couldn't get it to sing "xeno" or "blog". ;-)

DIY Lucid Dreaming Device Makes Your Dreams Come True, Just Not In Real Life

Lucid dreaming is the ability to realize you're dreaming and then actively control what you do, like flying naked into the president's office or winning the ball game with a nuclear touchdown or whatever crazy crap you people fantasize about. It isn't an easy thing to do, but there are people out there hell-bent on making their dreams enjoyable, I assume because their waking lives aren't that exciting.

The best way to get yourself to lucid dream is to send yourself a signal while you're in a deep sleep, generally via a flashing light of some sort. A dude who goes by "natetrue" went and built himself a mask that does just that, flashing you about 5 hours into your sleep cycle. The best part? He's now selling kits so you can make your own for $30. Get your PJs ready, because I think there are some supermodels that need saving from a volcano… in your mind. –Adam Frucci

via DIY Lucid Dreaming Device Makes Your Dreams Come True, Just Not In Real Life - DIY - Gizmodo.

Best free tools for learning to read music

I've played music professionally for years without actually being able to read music.  Many times, however, I've wished I was able to throw up a page of sheet music and play it on the guitar, piano, and trumpet. I'd also like to be able to sight sing with absolute pitch recall (not having to check a reference tone). If I could download new brain abilities, I'd grab these.

I'm looking for the best free on line tools for learning any of the above. Leave a comment if you know of a site or program that helped you.

Having fun with this one right now:

Here are a few more:

Zebra Keys: Everything You Need on One Site

Zebra Keys is probably one of the best sites for piano lessons. Each of the lessons are professionally written and cleanly laid out so that they’re very easy to follow. Best of all, an interactive piano keyboard is built right into the lesson articles so that you can practice what you’re learning directly on the lesson page.



Each key is clearly laid out, and the letter of each note shows up just underneath the key – making it much easier to learn which note goes with each piano key.  Once you’ve progressed through a few lessons and you want to try your hand at playing a song – Zebra Keys offers Z-Board V1.0, a virtual keyboard with all notes and chords displayed on it. ...

PianoNanny: Better Than the Real Thing

One of the best sites for learning piano online is PianoNanny. This is one of those rare sites that offers the most detailed, expert piano lessons for absolutely free.  Just reading through the lessons, you get the sense that you’re sitting beside an actual piano teacher who really knows their stuff.   Each session includes text, keyboard images to help you visualize what the teacher is talking about, and even mini-apps like a “student note pad” to take notes.

Featuring 13 starter, 11 intermediate and 10 advanced lessons, PianoNanny is the most thorough of all the piano lesson websites listed in this article. ...

Plern Online Piano Teacher and Composer

The Plern Piano is easily one of the most addictive and, believe it or not, fun online tools that you can use to learn how to play piano. The Plern Piano tool has dual uses; music composers can create a song from scratch, or piano students can import music from a MIDI file to learn how to play a song. Plern Piano plays through the song and as it scrolls across the music sheet, it provides you with a graphical representation of which key you need to press as well as the duration of the note. Think Tetris in musical form.

BerkleeShares – Free Piano Lessons From the Berklee College of Music

Starting in 2003, the Berklee College of Music started offering free music lessons online.  The lessons include guitar, brass, bass and even DJ & turntable training. When you click on the “keyboards” section, you’ll find a list of 12 lessons in either YouTube video format or as a PDF document. The videos are about one to two minutes, and the PDF documents are an average of about 2 pages with embedded music clips.



Ricci Adams’ MusicTheory Teaches You… Music Theory

MusicTheory is another very useful (and free) website that can teach you to play the piano. This website has 37 lessons, 10 “trainer” applications and 3 music utilities. The trainer applications on this website are exactly identical to those available at the Zebra Keys website but there are many more of them offered here. Best of all, the lessons are very thorough and offer a small keyboard app so that you can test some of the techniques you learn in each lesson.

The lessons are reminiscent of a Powerpoint presentation and you step through them in much the same way – by clicking an arrow on the screen. The lessons are clearly written by an expert and after going through these 37 piano lessons you’re sure to advance in your piano playing with a very thorough awareness of music theory. - makeuseof

Card counters' days are numbered

GAMBLERS who adopt a well-known probability strategy to beat the house at blackjack beware - UK researchers have developed an automated system that will detect card counters before they can cash in.

Card counting, a strategy made famous by the film Rain Man, involves remembering which cards have been played, and which might be likely to turn up. An abundance of low-value cards in the discard pile can tip the odds slightly in favour of the gambler, and a card counter bets big only then.

The strategy isn't illegal, but casinos will move suspected card counters to a new table, where the counters are forced to start afresh, or simply ban them. Krists Zutis and Jesse Hoey at the University of Dundee, UK, have developed a system to help casinos spot card counters quickly.

A stereo camera mounted above the table records the action. A computer processes the video feed to identify cards as they are dealt, face up, and monitors their value. The camera also records the precise height of betting chip stacks and the computer uses the information to work out betting patterns.

By comparing the cards and gambling patterns, the computer can identify a card counter inside 20 hands - even if the gambler starts off with a run of high bets to confuse the system. The work will be presented at the International Conference on Computer Vision Systems in Liège, Belgium, this month. ...

via Card counters' days are numbered - tech - 09 October 2009 - New Scientist.

Lights out Saturday night!

Remember when you could see stars? Have your kids ever seen the Milky Way? For some reason we have, as a society, decided we need to keep the bulbs burning in our stores and offices when they're empty, and illuminate things that don't really need to be seen at night - like tall buildings.  Too many of our outdoor lights waste energy lighting up dust in the air and the underside of the clouds. That's what causes the skyglow captured in the photo at left, and it erases the stars. It is costing us billions in wasted energy, contributing to climate change and divorcing us from our heritage in the night sky (right).

For one hour beginning at 8:30 local time Saturday night, from Baltimore's City Hall to the Pyramids of Egypt, the lights will go out in a global expression of concern for our planet.

via Maryland Weather: Lights out Saturday night! - Sun reporter Frank Roylance blogs on meteorology - marylandweather.com.

Join in the fun and kill those lights tonight for one hour. Got candles? Birth control? ;-) I'm headed to San Francisco tonight to watch lights out. Seems like the best place, the place with the most lights visible. Hopefully I'll post some before and after pics here from my cell phone in real time as it happens. (Check this site 8:30 PM tonight, west coast time).

My trade experiment: Results

I tried for several months to use this web site to "trade up" in order to get the Taylor guitar I want.

Results:  Although the prospects looked fantastic at first, I conclude that even with 3,000 to 9,000 visitors per day on this blog, my trades  just were not going anywhere. I traded up to a $800 keyboard which no one made an offer on for a long time. I set a deadline and, true to my word to take the best offer, I traded that for a $40 guitar amplifier. I set a week deadline with no minimum bid on the amp and had not a single offer. So, I'm letting the experiment end.

Rather than hog the top of the blog with my spam-like attempt to get a $3,000 guitar, I've decided to seek my perfect guitar in the usual way: sell some of my own equipment on Craigslist, play some gigs to make some cash, and save up the rest.
Meanwhile, I found a Takamine TAN16C with a built in tuner and tube pre-amp, and I was  impressed by the sound and the intonation.  The TAN16C is about 1/2 the price of the Taylor I wanted and it might fit the bill better given the crummy PAs I sometimes have to play through.  I've been playing Takamine 12-strings for over 10 years. I will, however, find a way to compare the two guitars side by side before I buy either one.

It would be less of a problem to have a $1500 lost, damaged or stolen, so that figures into it, ... as long as every note plays in tune within my specs.

Experiment: Let's make California jump 1 hr into the future!

If all readers of this blog concentrate, I am betting we can force most the USA and many other countries and territories to jump 1 hour into the future.

Let's try this tomorrow, March 8 at 2:00 AM.

At exactly 2:00 AM, let's jump it to 3:00 AM.

We can do this, people.

Stay up with me and watch it happen.

There is no try.

There is only do. Or do not do.

Visualize success.

Focus.

Bored? Try the Xeno Web Cam Chat, LIVE Right Now.

Hey, This is Xeno. What's up? Bored? Got a web cam?

I'm on line right now. Come talk about the news, strange creatures, UFOs, politics and stuff.



Free: 16 people max group web cam chat room. No sign up needed. Just turn on your web cam and click the link. Hosted by mebeam.com.

Trade Offer: $40 cash: 0 days left, no minimum bid.

I plan to keep trading to reach my goal of trading up to the Taylor guitar of my dreams. Evolution is sometimes a backward process, so you may get a very valuable item for an inexpensive one if no one else is bidding.

Leave a comment here or email me and let me know what you have to trade.

More details, pictures, trade history.

Almost unheard-of: Boy Scout earns all 121 badges

A Long Island teenager has earned all 121 merit badges offered by the Boy Scouts of America. It's an accomplishment the local arm of the organization calls "an almost unheard-of feat."

Oceanside resident Shawn Goldsmith earned his final badge - for bugling - in time for his 18th birthday in November. He far surpassed the 21 badges required to achieve the elite rank of Eagle Scout.

He said he took about five years to earn his first 62 badges and then nearly doubled that number in a matter of months. He did it with the encouragement of his grandmother, who died shortly before he reached his goal.

The Binghamton University freshman was awarded his final badges on Dec. 19. He said he hopes to become a businessman and politician. - pant

He's prepared.

Mall Trick #46

Physical Strength, Fighting Ability Revealed In Human Faces

For our ancestors, misjudging the physical strength of a would-be opponent might have resulted in painful –– and potentially deadly –– defeat. Now, a study conducted by a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara has found that a mechanism exists within the human brain that enables people to determine with uncanny accuracy the fighting ability of men around them by honing in on their upper body strength. What's more, that assessment can be made even when everything but the men's faces are obscured from view. ... The study consisted of four sections, each of which asked the test subjects to assess the physical strength of individuals based on photographs of their faces, their bodies, or both. Subjects were asked to rank the physical strength or fighting ability of the people in the photographs on a scale of one to seven. When the photographs depicted men whose strength had been measured precisely on weight-lifting machines, the researchers found an almost perfect correlation between perceptions of fighting ability and perceptions of strength. - scidaily

Check out this program (Windows) called FACES 4.0. You can download a demo and create your own mug shots.  See if you can make a guy who would be stronger than this:



Some people think intelligence can also be judged from faces because attractiveness, which is cross-culturally agreed upon, is correlated with intelligence.

US game designer blasts into space with immortality drive

An American computer game designer reached space Sunday, fulfilling a long-deferred childhood dream that began with the flight of his astronaut father.

The Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft carrying Richard Garriott and two crewmates _ and the digitized DNA sequences of some of the world's most famous minds _ hurtled into a clear blue sky from the Baikonur facility on the Kazakh steppe.

Garriott, a 47-year-old multimillionaire from Austin, Texas, is the sixth paying space traveler and the first American to follow a parent into orbit. The Soyuz is due to dock Tuesday with the international space station.. "I'm elated, elated," Owen Garriott said when a loudspeaker announcement confirmed the spacecraft had reached orbit safely about 10 minutes after lift-off.

The younger Garriott said before Sunday's launch that he managed to recoup a significant slice of his trip's price _ a reported $30 million _ through some of his experiments and that he hoped his trip would provide a viable model for financing private space travel.

"What I am trying to do is demonstrate that you can mount a very successful campaign to go into space and beyond because it's good business," Garriott told The Associated Press.

The spacecraft is bearing the digitized DNA sequences of some of the world's greatest thinkers and musicians _ as well as athletes, video game players and others. The eclectic list ranges from famed physicist Stephen Hawking to comedian Stephen Colbert and Matt Morgan, best known as the "Beast" from the U.S. television show "American Gladiators." The digitized DNA is part of "the immortality drive," a kind of time capsule that will also include a list of humanity's greatest achievements and personal messages from Earth. The program will be stored on the space station in case calamity were to one day wipe out the planet. - washpost

The DNA which will be saved if the Earth is destroyed also includes some video game players.

The Immortality Drive is a digital archive of mankind's greatest achievements and a snapshot of humanity itself. This archive will be stored on the International Space Station to serve as a remote "offsite backup" of humanity, should we suffer a disastrous fate. ... Every Monday during August 2008, eight (8) Tabula Rasa players will be selected to have their DNA sequenced, digitized and sent into space. ... Tabula Rasa is an action-packed sci-fi massively multiplayer online (MMO) game that puts players in the middle of a never-ending fight for freedom against the alien race known as the Bane. -operationimmortality

The game download is free for a trial but fills almost 3GB on your hard drive, so I didn't try it.