The Little Hacker's Room

WTF Stamp (Thanks, Alice!)

• WTF?!, a Flash-based World of Warcraft parody
• Raygun: WTF 2000
• WTF: "Kids' lingerie" photos featuring Miley Cyrus' 9-year-old ...
• Web Zen: WTF? zen
• Wisconsin Tourism Federation loses to WTF, changes name
• WTF is "Dairy Drink?"
• Cellphones and Cancer: OMG + FUD + WTF
• WtF Magazine (Welcome to Finland)

LITTLEFLY (Thanks, Irene Delse via Submitterator!)

• Apartment made out of books
• Font made of stacked books
• Furniture made out of used books
• A House of Books
• Xmas tree made from books
• Chair made from discarded paperbacks
• Furniture made from books
• Blank books made from discarded vintage hardcovers

East meets west (via Craft)

• Sofa turns into a punching bag
• Sofa/bookcase
• Coffin sofa
• Sofa modelled on brainwaves
• Accordioning sofa - mindblowing video
• Sofa that lets you float in the clouds
• Doc sofa bed converts into a bunk bed within seconds ...

Nagoya COP10 Primer #1: with references to Star Wars Nagoya COP10

Primer #2: with a reference to Kevin Bacon Nagoya COP10 sidebar: UNFCCC YOU!

Nagoya COP10 Primer #3: with a small reference to LOL cats

So what should be done at Nagoya? This is the 20 million species plus question. And for all of the criticism that I've (and others) have proffered, we should appreciate that the task at hand is going to be quite the challenge. If nothing else, this is immediately clear from the often anthrocentric (humans rule the Earth and are just playing our role on the evolutionary front, so deal with it!) commentary left on biodiversity pieces throughout the internet.

There is a somewhat official Strategic Plan document out there, one that (with a remarkable lack of brevity) highlights 2020 goals and attempts to identify the process and partners to be involved. It's worth a look, although probably best absorbed by taking in the tables shown on page 19 on. It involves a list of some 20 different target statements. Some of which are short, bouncy, although still vague like a twitter tweet: 1. By 2020, everyone is aware of the value of biodiversity and what steps they can take to protect it.

Others are more to the point: 11. By 2020, At least 15% of land and sea areas, including the most critical terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats, have been protected through effectively managed protected areas and/or other means, and integrated into the wider land- and seascape.

A few establish direct talking points for individual COP members: 16. By 2020, Each Party has an appropriate, up-to-date, effective and operational national biodiversity strategy, consistent with this Strategic Plan, based on adequate assessment of biodiversity, its value and threats, with responsibilities allocated among sectors, levels of government, and other stakeholders, and coordination mechanisms are in place to ensure implementation of the actions needed.

And this one, almost works as a haiku: 3. By 2020 Subsidies harmful

to biodiversity

are eliminat...

Well, maybe not a 5-7-5 haiku. Still, the 20 targets make for a good, if detailed, read. I'm actually tempted to see how they might fare as a poem: if I stack them one by one, and then giving it the title, "By 2020."

The purpose of this long and comprehensive list of targets, of course, is to address the vagueness discussed before. This is a good thing: but how wieldy these discussions will be, especially in the context of 190+ COP members needing to reach an agreement remains to be seen. In light of this, maybe structuring this discussion around a more simple list is better.

I quite like the suggestions laid out in this recent paper, "Biodiversity targets after 2010" by Mace et al. (pdf). For starters, it's written in a pretty readable fashion, but more importantly, it tries to break the targets into three defined categories, as described in this box.

This seems pretty clever to me. Let's break up the priorities depending on: (1) whether the loss in biodiversity is directly "bad" for you (as well as anthrocentric commenters); (2) whether the loss in biodiversity results in a loss of sociological and/or cultural value (i.e. makes you "sad"); and (3) what kind of things are needed in order to tackle the previous two. If viewed in this manner, the hope is that everyone can find something of value in this process. In fact, I think an important part of 3 (or the blue target) is to also showcase how closely tied 1 and 2 are to each other (things that make you "sad" are often things with a direct "bad" effect - often an effect you're not necessarily prepared for).

In any event, let's end with a list of priorities, whittled from our "By 2020" poem, and worded explicitly for those of you who don't wish to read the strategic document outlined earlier. In fact, let's borrow from a great list seen at the IYB UK website. Here they suggest that at the very least, Nagoya COP10 can provide the following: 1. A new set of targets to protect our natural resources that are achievable and measurable.

2. A protocol for fair access to, and sharing the benefits from, the world's genetic resources. This is called the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) protocol.

3. The need to put a fair economic value on nature's services that are currently used for free, such as fertile soil, pollination of our crops, and flood defences. This will be based on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) report.

4. Support for establishing a single source for access to reliable scientific evidence which can be used to inform policy decisions on biodiversity issues. This is called the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and will operate in a similar way that the IPCC informs climate change policy.

My favourite is the first one, which in a sort of grant-proposal-speak, is basically asking for a strong and kick ass Nagoya agreement.

Now, what can you do to help move this along? Well, on the high effort scale, you can obviously get involved in various biodiversity outreach programs. I'm sure there are many in your local neck of the woods. However, at the lower end of the effort scale, just being vocal about such things is a good star (even if you disagree heartily about everything I've written). Dialogue generates more dialogue which then generates debate which then generates noise which then, if you're lucky, might generate notice from the government players, which is what you hope for.

The timing is also interesting politically. For the US, biodiversity has inadvertently been pushed into the public's consciousness by the horrible Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The images and stories presented have been visceral and gut wrenching, and tragically informative in providing a look at how a locale is closely tied to its ecosystem. In the UK, Nagoya COP10 is Prime Minister Cameron's first real test on the environmental front - so there's lots of eyeballs monitoring his government's action. And in Canada, where my home is... well... Stephen Harper should be well aware that the sweater vests he loves so dearly are very much a product of biodiversity.

Anyway, since this is my last Nagoya COP10 primer, I'm hoping you can just go on and make some online noise. For example, those four priorities above seemed primed for a twitter rework. Or maybe just come up with any creative/witty/funny/deep Nagoya related tweet. You can even stick a #nagoyaCOP10 hashtag in there. It would be interesting to see what great lines people can come up with.

Repurposed Antique Tabriz Wool Rug (via Make)

• Monster skin rug
• Relief map rug
• World's biggest handmade rug

Here's a timeline:

On August 10 this year I received an e-mail from an employee of People Magazine requesting permission to use my cake resignation photo in an article. This is shortly after the Jet Blue Steward event, prompting many 'Weird ways people have quit their jobs' news stories.

I replied to People and said they needed a license to use my photo - meaning they have to pay me to use it. I did not receive a reply.

On August 11 my image was used without authorization and without payment on People.com, in an article titled "Take This Job and Shove It! 8 Memorable Quitters".

I sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding my image be removed from their website. Six days later I receive an e-mail stating my image had been removed from their website. I received an offer at that time of $75 for the use of my image. That may have been reasonable if my photo's copyright had not been willfully infringed and used for six days.

So, today I sent the photo director an invoice for a usage license of my cake resignation photo. This cake was delivered today, September 3rd.
Invoice Cake to People.com (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Information designer Jess Bachman has a new piece out which isn't so much an info-graphic as a graphic article. Jess explains: It deals with the nightmare that has become student loans. Default rates on student loans are worse than sub-prime mortgages, and the total debt is bigger than all our credit card debts combined. It's a huge issue than many people are keeping quiet about. College students are a hugely under-represented and unadvocated group in Washington, and what we and the government are doing to them is just wrong. Link to the full-sized graphic on CollegeScholarships.org.

• Poster: 389 Years Ago (updated).
• Infographic: The History of Search
• Glenn Beck's gold-investment scam/scheme: an explanatory ...
• One terabuck, visualized
• Death and Taxes, the 2010 edition
• Infographic: The history of Google's acquisitions

I drove south last weekend to a predominantly Indian suburb of Los Angeles to catch Peepli Live (Wikipedia) at a movie theater that plays only films from India.

Its was terrific, a poignant and LOL-filled commentary on the state of Indian news media, and the injustice and tragedy that rural communities face. Unsurprisingly, the soundtrack was full of great tunes. My favorite was the song embeded above, "Chola Maati Ke Ram," performed live here by Nageen Tanvir at a launch event for the film.

The lyrics of this song are about human mortality. Loosely and imperfectly: Time spares no one... death spares no one... our bodies are clay robes that will eventually disintegrate, so it is best to dedicate our lives to honoring Lord Ram, and all that is eternal.

Incidentally: Today, Kamla Bhatt will be interviewing the Indo-fusion rock band Indian Ocean, who performed several songs in the Peepli Live Soundtrack, at 12.30 pm PST on Stanford radio station KZSU. Listen online here.

Axe is for wimps. Hai Karate: "Be careful how you use it." (Thanks, Mark!)

iO9 recently ran a story on how martial artists are able to break boards and cement blocks, using their hands rather than mystical powers. I thought it was pretty neat, but then I read an interesting counter-analysis by science journalist (and, significantly, martial arts practitioner) John Rennie.

iO9 is right about the lack of magic powers, he says. But they got the physics wrong. Key slip-up: Assuming martial artists strike like a cobra—fast punch, with a quick pull back at the end—when they have their smashing fun times. iO9's theory was that that movement caused the boards to bend and snap. But that's not how it works, Rennie says. In fact, martial artists are taught to follow through with their punches, aiming not at the board-to-be-broken, but at a point beyond it.

So how's the breaking really done? Rennie quotes an episode of the awesome old PBS show Newton's Apple:

One key to understanding brick breaking is a basic principle of motion: The more momentum an object has, the more force it can generate. When it hit the brick, [karateka Ron] McNair's hand had reached a speed of 11 meters per second (24 miles per hour). At this speed, his hand exerted a whopping force of 3,000 Newton's -or 675 pounds-on the concrete. A slab of concrete could likely support the weight of a few people weighing a total of 675 pounds (306 kilograms). But apply that amount of force concentrated into an area as small as a fist and the concrete slab will break.

The fact that martial artists also pick their materials very carefully doesn't hurt, either.

When breaking wooden boards, you use pine (not oak, not mahogany) that isn't marred by dense knots, cut ¾ inch thick and about 12 inches on the diagonal; you hit them to break along the wood's natural grain. (It's not playing by Hoyle but some breakers have been known to bake their boards in ovens before demonstrations to make them more brittle.) One good board, if held securely so that it won't move on impact, is so easy to break that even those with no training at all can be taught to do it in under five minutes.

• Slow motion video of things being destroyed
• Science of Scams: Derren Brown and Kat the Scientist debunk the ...
• The Kung Fu Kid (and why it's OK the new movie isn't called that ...