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Thursday, May 22, 2003
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Ashleigh Banfield's Anti-War Coverage Diatribe
Alternet.org has an article on Ashleigh Banfield's anti-war coverage stance. It's quite an eye opener. Read about it here
I can't tell you how bad the civilian casualties were. I saw a couple of pictures. I saw French television pictures, I saw a few things here and there, but to truly understand what war is all about you've got to be on both sides. You've got to be a unilateral, someone who's able to cover from outside of both front lines, which, by the way, is the most dangerous way to cover a war, which is the way most of us covered Afghanistan. There were no front lines, they were all over the place. They were caves, they were mountains, they were cobbled, they were everything. But we really don't know from this latest adventure from the American military what this thing looked like and why perhaps we should never do it again. The other thing is that so many voices were silent in this war. We all know what happened to Susan Sarandon for speaking out, and her husband, and we all know that this is not the way Americans truly want to be. Free speech is a wonderful thing, it's what we fight for, but the minute it's unpalatable we fight against it for some reason.
That just seems to be a trend of late, and l am worried that it may be a reflection of what the news was and how the news coverage was coming across. This was a success, it was a charge it took only three weeks. We did wonderful things and we freed the Iraqi people, many of them by the way, who are quite thankless about this. There's got to be a reason for that. And the reason for it is because we don't have a very good image right now overseas, and a lot of Americans aren't quite sure why, given the fact that we sacrificed over a hundred soldiers to give them freedom.
6:24:41 PM ;;
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Alchemy With Light Shocks Physicists. In this article, the New Scientist tells us about an amazing discovery about the control of light.
You don't often see claims of "unexpected and stunning new physical phenomena" in the abstract of a reputable scientific paper. But the latest report by photonics crystal pioneer John Joannopoulos and his group at MIT, soon to be published in Physical Review Letters, does not disappoint. The researchers document the ultimate control over light: a way to shift the frequency of light beams to any desired colour, with near 100 per cent efficiency.
Here is how it works.
When Joannopoulos and his colleagues Evan Reed and Marin Soljacic investigated what happens when shock waves pass through a device called a photonic crystal, they discovered a completely unexpected effect. Photonic crystals, which are made by sandwiching together layers of material that bend light in different ways, can be designed to reflect some frequencies while letting others through.
After 10,000 or so reflections, taking a total of around 0.1 nanoseconds, the light can shift dramatically in frequency- from red up to blue, for example, or from visible light down to infrared. By changing the way the crystal is built up, it is possible to control exactly which frequencies can go into the crystal and which come out. "We ought to be able to do things that have never been possible before," Joannopoulos told New Scientist.
What can we expect from this breakthrough?
Besides making devices such as light bulbs and solar cells more efficient, the method would also help to keep optical telecommunications networks moving. At the moment, many light frequencies are bounced down optical fibres simultaneously. If a particular frequency is being used to capacity, then optical switches could shift light beams to a frequency where there is still capacity to spare.
Another benefit of pushing the frequency of light downwards would be the ability to make terahertz radiation. Terahertz rays, in the range between microwaves and infrared, hold great promise for medical imaging, as they are easier to focus and less damaging than X-rays. But they're not yet widely used as they have been too difficult to produce.
Those of you interested by this subject can read a former column, "Is the Photonic Revolution Coming?"
Source: Charles Choi, New Scientist, May 21, 2003 [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]
5:59:54 PM ;;
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TypePad - We Already Have That
Looks Like Moveable is introducing a Radio type program. Movable Type's new TypePad service is unveiled. It appears to be what UserLand had working (for free) in 1999. Hosting is a tricky business, as we found out, there are ISPs who now host MT sites that must somehow be included in their plans, yet there seems to be no mention of them in the FAQ. [Scripting News]
5:57:22 PM ;;
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© Copyright
2003
Karis.
Last update:
8/17/03; 9:52:53 PM.
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