Café del Nightmare / Awesomeasaurus

YouTube 3D – “yt3d:enable=true” test

Simon Hilton — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 22:34:06 +0000

3D version here

YouTube are testing a stereoscopic player for watching videos in 3D. You’ll notice a drop-down that includes some options for red/cyan and amber/blue 3D glasses and some options that don’t require glasses.

To enable the 3D player, you need to add the following tag to one of your videos: yt3d:enable=true.

Pete, a Google employee, has more information about this experimental feature:

I’m the developer working on the stereoscopic player as a 20% project. It’s currently very early, hence the silly bugs like swapping the eyes for the anaglyph modes. A fix for this is in the works.

The current tags are provisional and may change or expand. They are:

yt3d:enable=true Enables the view mode.
yt3d:aspect=3:4 Sets the aspect of the encoded video.
yt3d:swap=true Swaps the left and right sources.
You may need to add this to videos when the player with fixed anaglyph modes ships.

You can try the new feature by searching for yt3d:enable=true.

from Google OS blog

How YouTube 3D Came to Be

3D version here

About a year ago, YouTube made a quiet upgrade—it began to support 3D content. But the even neater thing? The work was essentially that of one employee who worked on the project in his spare “20%” time.

It’s just so Google, isn’t it? Pete Bradshaw, YouTube software engineer, playing around in 3D in his allotted dabbling time, sparks an update in the world’s most popular video sharing service.

You may not have even noticed the YouTube was supporting 3D—frankly, before this interview, I had no idea either. But from red and blue anaglyph to eyes-crossing Magic-Eye-style, the service now supports the uploading of stereoscopic footage (two video streams) that it will mix, in real time, right within your browser in a manner of the viewer’s choosing.

(Note: To toggle the different ways you can view these embedded videos in 3D, you’ll need to view them on YouTube, where they’ll be equipped with a 3D pulldown menu.)

I chatted with Pete, along with spokesman Chris Dale, about how YouTube 3D came about and where YouTube will take 3D into the future.

Why did you begin the project?

Pete: The germ of the idea came about with the Superbowl a couple of years ago when there was a promotion with Monsters vs Aliens, and they were giving away red and blue glasses out in the supermarkets. And I got those glasses since they were supposed to work with YouTube.

So I went digging for 3D content on the site. And there was a lot, but the issue was that sometimes it was mixed with different colors (because you can get different colored glasses). There’s red/green and yellow/blue and all these other things. So if you were uploading 3D video, you basically planned for one specific kind of glasses you wanted to support. If you didn’t have just the right pair, you were out of luck.

We were just kind of sitting around talking about this, and we came up with the idea that, well, we could mix the left and right views inside the player and give an experience that works on any of the different-colored 3D glasses.

This just started as like a random lunch discussion, and afterward, I hacked up a simple little demo that worked on its own machine. I showed it to a few people and they were very surprised. They were like, “We should launch it! When does it launch?”

And so 3D was integrated into the player in a way users could actually use. The shooter uploads two videos side by side, and then we do the mix in the player. Then the viewer tells us the color of their glasses, or if they’d rather do some of the crazy, cross eyed things. (We actually added some support for a few more display systems after launch.)

How long was it between the germ of the idea and actually having something running and actually launching?

Pete: From the first demo, I probably spent 3 weeks of actual work—not all of it continuous because, given my background, I’m more on the backend server side of stuff here at YouTube than the player side. So there was a bit of a learning curve for me coming into that, meaning I grabbed people at lunch, asking them, “Hey, how did you guys build this stuff?”

It seems like Nvidia is making a huge push with all their shutter glasses. Do you guys think that shutter is the next big step?

Pete: Well I don’t know if you saw the demo at CES where Nvidia had their big 3D press event—at the end of it, they worked with Adobe and us to actually get the shot of us working with YouTube to get a YouTube video to play with the shutter glasses, and it just works.

3D version here

It’s not actually launched yet, but most of the hard work is on their side, and getting Adobe to talk to the shutter people. But once that’s done, it’s definitely something we are interested in supporting.

Do you really see 3D glasses taking off?

Pete: I definitely think 3D is coming, and it’s going to be a standard feature. But adoption rates and exact technologies, if I knew that stuff, I would be investing.

YouTube can be difficult enough to run in HD. It feel like by adding 3D, you’re basically doubling the information were you to compete with, say, 60fps Blu-ray 3D.

Pete: I take the point that it is a heavier burden for the machine to show. We’ve got some player changes to come and plans that will help with that, but there’s also a lot of interest from Adobe and also HTML5 guys in making this kind of stuff work.

Chris: Occasionally people say, “god, how do you guy support the infrastructure cost and this other kind of stuff?” I don’t think it’s really something we worry about too much, but as far as 3D, I think it really depends on the users computer to a great degree in like computing power catching up to where video is evolving to.

What’s the endgame of where you’re going with this in terms of this 3D adoption?

Pete: It’s been used a lot from the start, but I’m not sure where it’s going because users have done all sorts of crazy stuff—like there was the craze where people were getting a bunch of LEDs and doing long exposures. There were also a lot of videos with those Fuji FinePix REAL 3D W1 cameras, along with a lot of users just uploading random stuff with that.

3D version here

It’s kind of fun with because a lot of the current stuff is more YouTube-y. Instead of being this blockbuster or some guy working a CGI animation, it’s just like, “hey, here is my garden,” as some guy in Japan films his garden in 3D.

Another thing that happened that was just a complete surprise—these guys were using the stereo video technology for surgery—a kind of keyhole surgery. And until now, one surgeon would perform a procedure with a stereo microscope, and all the students just watched the back of this guy’s head. Now, they’ve got all the cameras and the HD video. We just have one super short, 30 second clip of brain surgery, and it’s kind of gross…but it’s great.

3D version here

Is it right to say you guys aren’t really trying to know where this is going other just kind of saying that we’re going to support 3D? Like we don’t know where exactly this is going to go, how the camera and stuff are going to work out but YouTube is going to support it.

Pete: We do think about it and maintain an interest, but every time we do the users have started doing something crazy and different. I actually remember one interesting example at the launch was a guy whose doing his pHD in some kind of visualization and he started asking these great questions about how we are actually mixing them together. Even after the feature has launched now there is still a feed back loop by users, coming to us about it and shoot us some ideas we could improve.

Chris: We also have content partners with many of the major Hollywood studios, television networks and content creators around the world. A lot of them have seen this and they want to tackle it and they want to think of ways of showcasing their movie trailers in 3D. We’ve even been asking, could we even live stream something in 3D?

However, I can’t get into specifics about what movie studios or what trailers you could conceivably see.

What portion of YouTube uploaders are really doing stuff with 3D?

Chris: It could be probably be pretty small, I mean we’re talking—we have thousands of 3D videos on the site, but we have 24 hours of video uploaded every minute.

So it’s essentially thousands vs countless.

Chris: Exactly. I think, it is still very small but it’s growing and it’s growing fast. Like when we first did mobile uploads, they started to trickle in, but when the iPhone 3GS came out, it grew by, I think 500% in the weeks following the 3Gs release. Over the course of 2009 mobile uploads were up by 2000%.

Is there any interest taking this 3D tech beyond video at this point—like maybe Picasa?

Chris: One of the things we’ve both learned at YouTube is that never say never, and the truth is that the cross-pollination across different Google services and properties have accelerated significantly over the last year…We are really in the amazing stage of 3D right now and i think you can expect more cool things from a lot of different companies including Google when it comes to 3D.

BLADE RUNNER revisited >3.6 gigapixels by François Vautier

Simon Hilton — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:14:41 +0000

An experimental film by François Vautier in tribute to Ridley Scott’s legendary film “Blade Runner” (1982)
This film was made as a unique picture with a resolution of 60.000 x 60.000 pixels (3.6 gigapixels)
It was made with 167,819 frames from ‘Blade Runner’.

1>first step : the “picture” of the film
Vautier extracted the 167,819 frames from ‘Blade Runner’ (final cut version,1h51mn52s19i)
then assembled all these images to obtain one gigantic image of colossal dimensions : a square of approximately 60,000 pixels on one side alone, 3.5 gigapixels (3500 million pixels)

2> second step : an illusion
A virtual camera is placed above this big picture. So what you see is like an illusion, because contrary to appearances there is only one image. It is in fact the relative movement of the virtual camera flying over this massive image which creates the animated film, like a film in front of a projector.

source : Blade Runner de Ridley Scott (the final cut)
durée : 1h51mn52s19i > 167819 frames >>
one picture / format psb : 60 000 X 60 000 : 3 540 250 000 pixels >> 3,5 gigapixels
compositing> logiciel : Combustion. Mac pro 2X 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon. nombre de layers : 1!

35mm – Can you find 35 movies in this 2 minute clip?

Simon Hilton — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:39:20 +0000

This animation named “35mm” by artist Pascal Monaco represents a set of 35 movies in an unusual but fun way.
The German artist has managed to make the video last only 2 minutes with minimum representation of each film.

Concept / Layout: Sarah Biermann, Torsten Strer, Felix Meyer, Pascal Monaco
Animation: Felix Meyer, Pascal Monaco
Sound: Torsten Strer
Check out the animation and see if you can recognize some of the movies.

Rocky and Balls: Girls Like Boys With Skills

Simon Hilton — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:20:50 +0000

http://www.facebook.com/rockyandballs
http://www.twitter.com/rockyandballs
http://www.myspace.com/rockyandballs
http://rockyandballs.bandcamp.com

More from the very lovely Miss Sophie Madeleine here

Apple Store Covent Garden opening Sat 7 Aug

Simon Hilton — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:29:39 +0000

1-7 The Piazza, London, WC2E 8HA
Driving Directions & Map

Mon – Sat: 9:00 am – 9:00 pm
Sun: Noon – 6:00 pm

American Museum of Natural History Explorer app

Simon Hilton — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:55:13 +0000

The American Museum of Natural History today launched the American Museum of Natural History Explorer, a groundbreaking mobile app designed as an enhanced navigation tool for indoor use.

Funded with a grant from Bloomberg, the Explorer App, available from the App Store, works with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and uses WiFi to function as an “indoor GPS” within the Museum, pinpointing a user’s location and offering turn-by-turn directions through more than 500,000 square feet of public space that encompasses 45 permanent exhibition halls, theaters, restrooms, cafés, and Museum shops. The new wireless network established for the Explorer system allows visitors to connect to the internet, effectively transforming the Museum into a single enormous WiFi hotspot.

In addition to serving as a guide, the Explorer is also an educational resource that provides visitors with additional information on more than 140 specimens and objects on display, including such iconic exhibits as the blue whale and the Tyrannosaurus rex. The Explorer features customized tours, a fossil treasure hunt, and social media links for posting to Facebook and Twitter-a dramatic advance over standard audio and handheld guides that provides a next-generation museum experience.

Explorer is the latest offering of the American Museum of Natural History’s expanding digital platform that enables the Museum to connect the public-whether they are visiting on site or online-to the Museum’s extensive resources in science, education, and exhibition in new and engaging ways and to re-define what it means to be a museum in the 21st century. By anticipating the ways that people access, learn, and share information today, the new digital platform integrates the experience of visiting the Museum with a variety of online and mobile offerings that extend the Museum’s impact past its walls, drawing the public into the wonder and excitement of discovery from anywhere they carry their mobile device.

Earlier this year the Museum launched its first iPhone app-Dinosaurs: The American Museum of Natural History Collections-which showcases the Museum’s world-class fossil collection through more than 800 images and stories about eight popular specimens’ discoveries. An astronomy app, which highlights the research and exhibits of the Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space, will be launched in the fall. Early in 2011, the Museum will also launch a new website featuring more content about the Museum’s research, collections, programs, and exhibitions as well as comprehensive search functions to help visitors navigate the wealth of the Museum’s resources online.

“Throughout its history, the American Museum of Natural History has been a pioneer in presenting science and culture to people in ever-new ways that are accessible, engaging, informative, and inspiring,” said Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History. “Now, the trail-blazing Explorer applies cutting-edge technology to animate and enrich the museum-going experience. Reflecting the multi-dimensional ways that we discover, absorb, personalize, bookmark, and share information today, Explorer connects visitors to the Museum and its content in new ways that, we hope, will encourage a deeper connection to science and nature.”

The Explorer runs on the Museum’s free wireless network, which will debut in conjunction with the app’s launch. Visitors will be able to download the free app to their own iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or to borrow one of more than 350 devices the Museum is making available at no charge. The App Support Team, a group of 25 New York City high school students trained by the Museum volunteer office and wearing distinctive blue t-shirts, will be on hand to assist visitors with this new technology during the summer.

“This system will enhance the visitors’ appreciation for the Museum’s world-renowned collections by combining the traditional audio guide interpretive tour with navigational GPS functionality to provide a new generation of visitors with an unparalleled self-guided Museum experience,” says Erana Stennett of Bloomberg. Bloomberg has previously sponsored the Rose Center for Earth and Space audio tours and the popular Moveable Museums, interactive exhibits that travel to schools, libraries, and community organizations within New York City’s five boroughs.

“We wanted to put the latest mobile technology in visitors’ hands and provide them with an app that works not only as a personal navigation system but also gives an exciting look at our collections from anywhere in the world, connecting to social networks through email, Twitter, and Facebook,” said Linda Perry-Lube, senior vice president and chief digital officer at the Museum. “The task of building a system capable of mapping visitors’ locations inside of the Museum was monumental and has laid the groundwork for future development. Explorer sets the standard for a new type of Museum experience in the digital age.”

American Museum of Natural History Explorer features include:

· “Indoor GPS”: You can use the Explorer to find your real-time location within the Museum and receive turn-by-turn directions to get to an exhibit, restroom, café, or shop using the quickest route possible.

· Customized Tours: Plan a tour before your visit or on the spot. Choose from Museum highlights or existing tours of over 140 Museum exhibits featuring iconic displays such as the blue whale, T. rex, and the Great Canoe.

· Fossil Treasure Hunt: Use clues to find specimens and exhibits in the Museum’s renowned fossil halls.

· Sharing the Experience: Share an interesting exhibit through email, Facebook, or Twitter.

· Bookmark: Bookmark an item and receive a link to more information from amnh.org that you can explore after your visit.

· Visitor Information: See opening times and directions to the Museum plus information about key events.

Approximately 300 wireless access points are distributed throughout the Museum and provide the network’s connectivity to the Explorer in addition to acting as sensors to determine a visitor’s location. Based on the signal strength from a given handheld device, which is determined by its proximity to nearby access points, the network maps the user’s location in the Museum. The location analysis is performed by a Cisco Systems Mobility Services Engine (MSE), which is capable of simultaneously tracking thousands of wireless devices. The Explorer App constantly polls the MSE for location changes and updates the map display on the handheld device accordingly. Using this system, visitors can chart a unique course through the various halls and exhibits of the Museum. The network of access points also allows visitors to wirelessly connect to the internet. Thousands of visitors can take advantage of the Museum’s public network every day.

Spotlight Mobile, a Webby Award-winning software development firm that was founded in 2002 by researchers at the Human Computer Interaction Lab at Cornell University, worked with the American Museum of Natural history to build the app. Spotlight Mobile specializes in mobile and web technologies, and its Meridian platform provides both interpretation and indispensable way-finding and navigation tools. Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company, assisted in installing the new wireless network throughout the Museum. Cisco Systems worked with the Museum to install the wireless infrastructure as part of the Explorer project. Approximately 300 access points throughout the Museum are controlled by a series of Cisco Systems 4400 Series Wireless LAN Controllers.

About Bloomberg

Bloomberg is the world’s most trusted source of information for businesses and professionals. Bloomberg combines innovative technology with unmatched analytic, data, news, display, and distribution capabilities to deliver critical information via the BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONAL® service and multimedia platforms. Bloomberg’s media services cover the world with more than 2,300 news and multimedia professionals at 146 bureaus in 72 countries. The BLOOMBERG TELEVISION® 24-hour network delivers smart television to more than 240 million homes. BLOOMBERG RADIO® services broadcast via SIRIUS XM Radio and 1worldspace^TM satellite radio globally and on WBBR 1130AM in New York. The award-winning monthly BLOOMBERG MARKETS® magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, and the BLOOMBERG.COM® financial news and information website provide news and insight to business decision-makers. For more information, please visit http://www.bloomberg.com.The BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONAL service and data products are owned and distributed by Bloomberg Finance L.P. (BFLP) except that Bloomberg L.P. and its subsidiaries (BLP) distribute these products in Argentina, Bermuda, China, India, Japan and Korea. BLOOMBERG and BLOOMBERG NEWS are trademarks and service marks of Bloomberg Finance L.P., a Delaware limited partnership, or its subsidiaries. All rights reserved.
American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to explore and interpret human cultures, the natural world, and the universe through a wide-reaching program of scientific research, education, and exhibitions. The Museum accomplishes this ambitious goal through its extensive facilities and resources. The Museum houses 45 permanent exhibition halls, state-of-the-art research laboratories, one of the largest natural history libraries in the Western Hemisphere, and a Permanent Collection of more than 32 million specimens and cultural artifacts. With a scientific staff of more than 200, the Museum supports research divisions in Anthropology, Paleontology, Invertebrate and Vertebrate Zoology, and the Physical Sciences. In 2006, with the launch of the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the Museum, it became the first American museum with the authority to grant the Ph.D. degree. The Museum shares its treasures and discoveries with approximately 5 million on-site visitors from around the world each year. Museum-produced exhibitions and Space Shows can currently be seen in venues on five continents, reaching an audience of millions. In addition, the Museum’s website, amnh.org, extends its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions more beyond the Museum’s walls.

The American Museum of Natural History Explorer App and the Dinosaurs: The American Museum of Natural History Collections App are available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.iTunes.com/appstore/.

American Museum of Natural History Explorer App and the American Museum of Natural History Collections App require iOS 2.2.1 or later with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone4, and iPod touch (second generation) and iPod touch (third generation).

Find the Museum on Facebook at facebook.com/naturalhistory or visit twitter.com/AMNH to follow us on Twitter.

The Black Crowes: ’20 years of Tall Tales’ web series & new double album Croweology – Aug 3rd

Simon Hilton — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:32:19 +0000

“20 Years of Tall Tales” is the title of the web series THE BLACK CROWES will roll out starting Tuesday, August 3, the street date for CROWEOLOGY (Silver Arrow/Megaforce Records), their first-ever double album of all-acoustic material with new arrangements of their best-loved songs and deep cuts.

In a wide-ranging and freewheeling interview marking the 20th anniversary of their landmark multi-platinum debut, 1990′s Shake Your Moneymaker, frontman CHRIS ROBINSON talks about where THE BLACK CROWES –arguably one of the most misunderstood rock bands of all time–have been and where they are now.

Throughout the month of August, the band will release one webisode per day via their website, www.blackcrowes.com. It’s all here: the highs, the lows, controversies, the arrests, feuds and more. “20 Years of Tall Tales”was directed and produced by John Vanover and filmed earlier this month at Robinson’s Los Angeles home.

- Did THE BLACK CROWES – a band that has never played it musically or commercially safe and at times been crucified for it–really spend $1,000,000 recording an album (Tall) that went unreleased for more than a decade?

- What really happened in that Denver convenience store that led to Chris’ arrest?

- Why was the band really fired from theAerosmith tourbefore being reinstated?

- What really went on in the studio the night the band held a bacchanalia for the amorica album?

- What really drives the relationship between Chris and his brother, guitarist RICH ROBINSON?

- How did the union of THE BLACK CROWES and Oasis on the “Tour of Brotherly Love” actually cancel out the feuds of both bands’ brothers?

- And what about the band’s recently announced lengthy hiatus that will begin when their upcoming “SAY GOODNIGHT TO THE BAD GUYS 2010″ tour ends this year with an epic six-night stand in San Francisco at The Fillmore December 12-19?

Fasten your seat belts as THE BLACK CROWES – Chris Robinson (vocals/guitar), Rich Robinson (guitar), Steve Gorman (drums), Sven Pipien (bass), Luther Dickinson (guitar) and Adam McDougall (keyboards) – share the ride in “20 Years of Tall Tales.”

The Black Crowes: Croweology – Track Listing

CD 1
Jealous Again
Share The Ride
Remedy
Non-Fiction
Hotel Illness
Soul Singing
Ballad In Urgency
Wiser Time
Cold Boy Smile
Under A Mountain

CD 2
She Talks To Angels
My Morning Song
Downtown Money Waster
Good Friday
Thorn In My Pride
Welcome To The Good Times
Girl From A Pawnshop
Sister Luck
She
Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye

www.blackcrowes.com

Infographic: Where Did the Money to Rebuild Iraq Go?

Simon Hilton — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:39:46 +0000

The Department of Defense is unable to account for the use of $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion it spent on reconstruction in Iraq.

Source: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (PDF).

From: GOOD blog

Lost in Translation

Simon Hilton — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:47:38 +0000

The Tower of Babel' by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1563

by Lera Boroditsky (professor of psychology at Stanford University and editor in chief of Frontiers in Cultural Psychology), Wall Street Journal

New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world; a different sense of blame in Japanese and Spanish

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense.

In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the wall for the entire time he was meant to, it would be a different form of the verb than if, say, he had a great fall.

In Turkish, you would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information. For example, if you saw the chubby fellow on the wall with your own eyes, you’d use one form of the verb, but if you had simply read or heard about it, you’d use a different form.

Do English, Indonesian, Russian and Turkish speakers end up attending to, understanding, and remembering their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?

These questions touch on all the major controversies in the study of mind, with important implications for politics, law and religion. Yet very little empirical work had been done on these questions until recently. The idea that language might shape thought was for a long time considered untestable at best and more often simply crazy and wrong. Now, a flurry of new cognitive science research is showing that in fact, language does profoundly influence how we see the world.

The question of whether languages shape the way we think goes back centuries; Charlemagne proclaimed that “to have a second language is to have a second soul.” But the idea went out of favor with scientists when Noam Chomsky’s theories of language gained popularity in the 1960s and ’70s. Dr. Chomsky proposed that there is a universal grammar for all human languages—essentially, that languages don’t really differ from one another in significant ways. And because languages didn’t differ from one another, the theory went, it made no sense to ask whether linguistic differences led to differences in thinking.

The search for linguistic universals yielded interesting data on languages, but after decades of work, not a single proposed universal has withstood scrutiny. Instead, as linguists probed deeper into the world’s languages (7,000 or so, only a fraction of them analyzed), innumerable unpredictable differences emerged.

Of course, just because people talk differently doesn’t necessarily mean they think differently. In the past decade, cognitive scientists have begun to measure not just how people talk, but also how they think, asking whether our understanding of even such fundamental domains of experience as space, time and causality could be constructed by language.

For example, in Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia, the indigenous languages don’t use terms like “left” and “right.” Instead, everything is talked about in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), which means you say things like, “There’s an ant on your southwest leg.” To say hello in Pormpuraaw, one asks, “Where are you going?”, and an appropriate response might be, “A long way to the south-southwest. How about you?” If you don’t know which way is which, you literally can’t get past hello.

About a third of the world’s languages (spoken in all kinds of physical environments) rely on absolute directions for space. As a result of this constant linguistic training, speakers of such languages are remarkably good at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes. They perform navigational feats scientists once thought were beyond human capabilities. This is a big difference, a fundamentally different way of conceptualizing space, trained by language.

Differences in how people think about space don’t end there. People rely on their spatial knowledge to build many other more complex or abstract representations including time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality and emotions. So if Pormpuraawans think differently about space, do they also think differently about other things, like time?

To find out, my colleague Alice Gaby and I traveled to Australia and gave Pormpuraawans sets of pictures that showed temporal progressions (for example, pictures of a man at different ages, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the correct temporal order. We tested each person in two separate sittings, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. When asked to do this, English speakers arrange time from left to right. Hebrew speakers do it from right to left (because Hebrew is written from right to left).

Pormpuraawans, we found, arranged time from east to west. That is, seated facing south, time went left to right. When facing north, right to left. When facing east, toward the body, and so on. Of course, we never told any of our participants which direction they faced. The Pormpuraawans not only knew that already, but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time. And many other ways to organize time exist in the world’s languages. In Mandarin, the future can be below and the past above. In Aymara, spoken in South America, the future is behind and the past in front.

In addition to space and time, languages also shape how we understand causality. For example, English likes to describe events in terms of agents doing things. English speakers tend to say things like “John broke the vase” even for accidents. Speakers of Spanish or Japanese would be more likely to say “the vase broke itself.” Such differences between languages have profound consequences for how their speakers understand events, construct notions of causality and agency, what they remember as eyewitnesses and how much they blame and punish others.

In studies conducted by Caitlin Fausey at Stanford, speakers of English, Spanish and Japanese watched videos of two people popping balloons, breaking eggs and spilling drinks either intentionally or accidentally. Later everyone got a surprise memory test: For each event, can you remember who did it? She discovered a striking cross-linguistic difference in eyewitness memory. Spanish and Japanese speakers did not remember the agents of accidental events as well as did English speakers. Mind you, they remembered the agents of intentional events (for which their language would mention the agent) just fine. But for accidental events, when one wouldn’t normally mention the agent in Spanish or Japanese, they didn’t encode or remember the agent as well.

In another study, English speakers watched the video of Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” (a wonderful nonagentive coinage introduced into the English language by Justin Timberlake), accompanied by one of two written reports. The reports were identical except in the last sentence where one used the agentive phrase “ripped the costume” while the other said “the costume ripped.” Even though everyone watched the same video and witnessed the ripping with their own eyes, language mattered. Not only did people who read “ripped the costume” blame Justin Timberlake more, they also levied a whopping 53% more in fines.

Beyond space, time and causality, patterns in language have been shown to shape many other domains of thought. Russian speakers, who make an extra distinction between light and dark blues in their language, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue. The Piraha, a tribe in the Amazon in Brazil, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities. And Shakespeare, it turns out, was wrong about roses: Roses by many other names (as told to blindfolded subjects) do not smell as sweet.

Patterns in language offer a window on a culture’s dispositions and priorities. For example, English sentence structures focus on agents, and in our criminal-justice system, justice has been done when we’ve found the transgressor and punished him or her accordingly (rather than finding the victims and restituting appropriately, an alternative approach to justice). So does the language shape cultural values, or does the influence go the other way, or both?

Languages, of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our needs. Simply showing that speakers of different languages think differently doesn’t tell us whether it’s language that shapes thought or the other way around. To demonstrate the causal role of language, what’s needed are studies that directly manipulate language and look for effects in cognition.

One of the key advances in recent years has been the demonstration of precisely this causal link. It turns out that if you change how people talk, that changes how they think. If people learn another language, they inadvertently also learn a new way of looking at the world. When bilingual people switch from one language to another, they start thinking differently, too. And if you take away people’s ability to use language in what should be a simple nonlinguistic task, their performance can change dramatically, sometimes making them look no smarter than rats or infants. (For example, in recent studies, MIT students were shown dots on a screen and asked to say how many there were. If they were allowed to count normally, they did great. If they simultaneously did a nonlinguistic task—like banging out rhythms—they still did great. But if they did a verbal task when shown the dots—like repeating the words spoken in a news report—their counting fell apart. In other words, they needed their language skills to count.)

All this new research shows us that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are.

Language is a uniquely human gift. When we study language, we are uncovering in part what makes us human, getting a peek at the very nature of human nature. As we uncover how languages and their speakers differ from one another, we discover that human natures too can differ dramatically, depending on the languages we speak. The next steps are to understand the mechanisms through which languages help us construct the incredibly complex knowledge systems we have. Understanding how knowledge is built will allow us to create ideas that go beyond the currently thinkable. This research cuts right to the fundamental questions we all ask about ourselves. How do we come to be the way we are? Why do we think the way we do? An important part of the answer, it turns out, is in the languages we speak.

Details of 100,000,000 Facebook users – collected and leaked

Simon Hilton — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:18:19 +0000

The personal details of more than 100 million Facebook users have been harvested and published on the net.

Ron Bowles, an online security consultant, used a simple piece of code to collect the data from Facebook. He said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook said it was already available.

The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user’s profile, their name and unique ID and has spread rapidly across the net. On the Pirate Bay, the world’s biggest file-sharing website, the list was being distributed and downloaded by more than 1,000 users. One user, going by the name of lusifer69, described the list as “awesome and a little terrifying”

NB- it doesn’t give away any personal details, though.

Ron Bowles blog
Ron’s Facebook Data Torrent
BBC report