This project was motivated by two things: my almost complete inability to get out of bed in the morning, and my fondness for recording data from routine activities and making graphs with that data.

The length of the sleep cycle varies for each person, and averages about 90 minutes. I wanted to try to measure the length of mine, without having to wake up and check a clock. I also wanted to get an idea of how much I naturally move around during the night, and what patterns I might find therein.

To investigate this, I outfitted myself with sensors that would help me determine how my position changes over the course of a night's sleep. I used three accelerometers as tilt sensors, placed on three different places on my body: my forehead, my forearm, and my upper leg.

Anita Lillie's Sleep Tracker

This probably makes for a poor quality (read: weak) captcha, but it's a neat idea.

reCaptcha seeks to block spam while handling the challenge of digitally scanning old books and making them available in Web search engines.

When character recognition software fails to decipher a word scanned in a book — when the page is yellowed or the letters are smudged, for example — reCaptcha makes it part of a captcha. After the mystery word has been verified by several people, it is fed back into the digital copy of the book.

(Description from NYT article)

reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books

“We are clearly at the point where captchas have hit diminishing returns.”

Have captchas become too hard for humans?

Drug-free, kid-friendly goats for hire! Want some? Get in line.

Craig Madsen's rentable herd of 270 Boer and Spanish goats has never been more in demand.

They're cheaper than manual laborers, chemical-free and popular with parents and children.

"It's common as sin," said Frank Pinkerton.

Madsen's goats are now booked months in advance.

Neat Factoid: A goat's pupils are rectangular.

Rent a goat lately?

Twenty years ago, who could have guessed that the most widely deployed application of computational linguistics and computational learning theory would be fending off nuisance e-mail?

... If we can't have less spam, we really need better spam.

How Many Ways Can You Spell V1@gra?

The independent Senator reports on his latest trip to Iraq.

I conclude from my visit that victory is still possible in Iraq--thanks to the Iraqi majority that desperately wants a better life, and because of the courage, compassion and competence of the extraordinary soldiers and statesmen who are carrying the fight there, starting with Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.

The question now is, will we politicians in Washington rise to match their leadership, sacrifices and understanding of what is on the line for us in Iraq--or will we betray them, and along with them, America's future security?

Joe Lieberman: What I Saw in Iraq

This post is about MIT biologist Drew Endy. But first, a spot of news:

Kiwi scientists have bred a herd of "green-top" cows that produce skim milk from the teat.

If you think sex is kinky, wait till you see the alternatives.

Life 2.0:

One of synthetic biology's most radical spirits is Drew Endy. Dr Endy, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to the subject from engineering, not biology. As an engineer, he can recognise a kludge when he sees one. And in his opinion, life is a kludge.

In coming years, Endy says, we'll begin to see the first custom-crafted biomachines: cells that can keep track of how old they are or bacteria engineered to hunt down and kill tumor cells. These "devices" will guard against disease, create new fuels, manufacture chemicals and, in the wrong hands, produce horrific bioweapons. These are still the very early days; scientists do not know how to build such devices right now. They are just beginning to know how to build the tools that would build the biological micromachines.

"Drew just does it and doesn't have a big ego."

One roadblock to synthbio's future is the messed-up patent environment in biotech, where every tiny protein pathway and gene sequence has an owner wanting to get paid.

The bigger fear is that synthetic biology could be the end of us all.

"It's immediately obvious when you encounter a DNA sequence that this is a program, and that you could change it."

"The biological systems that we find in nature are not themselves designed by nature to be easy to understand. And so if I wanted to have biology that I understand, I'd be better off building it myself."

The Implications of Synthetic Biology:

“I like to make things -- that’s what I do.”

"We’re going from looking at the living world as only coming from nature, to a subset of the living world being produced by engineers who design and build hopefully useful living artifacts according to our specifications."

Open Source Biology:

Drew Endy describes three major issues: how to develop biological systems when the basic building blocks have been patented, how to assure the quality of constructed DNA code and how to establish rights to reuse and reengineer new genetic products. He sees a solution in an open-source approach to DNA whereby, just as with open-sourc... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

The United States is now prosecuting suspected terrorists on the basis of their intentions, not just their actions. But in the case of Islamic extremists, how can American jurors fairly weigh words and beliefs when Muslims themselves can’t agree on what they mean?

...

In the wake of 9/11, many Americans will accept, if not applaud, this approach. For us, terrorism possesses unrivaled destructive power, both in the scale of damage it inflicts and the fear and vulnerability it creates. After all, if stopping inner-city or gang violence were as important to us as thwarting terrorism, we could start preemptive prosecutions of young men, based on their race, their familiarity with firearms, and their possession of music that glorifies or encourages violence.

It is "absolutely" better to run the risk of convicting an innocent man than to let a guilty one go. "Too many lives are changed" by terrorism. "So shall one man pay to save fifty? It’s not a debatable question."

Prophetic Justice | Amy Waldman | The Atlantic

Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude celebrates its 40th birthday this year.

Ours is the age of mediated kitsch. A single episode of a Mexican telenovela today is watched by far more people than all the readers of Garcia Marquez's novel, maybe of his entire oeuvre. But like the firefly, the soap opera perishes almost the second it stirs up its audience's passion. One Hundred Years of Solitude is imperishable.

It seems to me that, like Cervantes's Don Quixote, it decodes the DNA of Hispanic civilization. It's a "total" novel, designed by a demiurge capable of creating a universe as comprehensive as ours. One Hundred Years of Solitude has done something astonishing: It has survived, accumulating disparate, at times conflicting, rereadings. Isn't that what a classic is, a mirror in which readers see what they are looking for?

Garcia Marquez's 'Total' Novel

Houston ...

Russian and NASA engineers worked into the evening yesterday to figure out why two computer systems essential to the operation of the international space station crashed, and the agency began making contingency plans that include potentially abandoning the $100 billion facility if they should fail.

Computers on Space Station Crash; NASA Weighs Options