Science Addiction

Threat Level blogger Ryan Singel writes about Dr. Sargur Srihari, a computer science professor at Buffalo University, who is building a search engine to allow police to search shoe prints.

It would work by allowing forensic units to submit a photographs of a print and have the system figure out the gender, size and brand. No, CSI: Boise, that problem hasn’t been solved yet.

Of course, says Srihari:

Still Srihari says any would-be criminals would be smart to avoid sneakers. “Go in a suit if you commit a crime—there are no prints on dress shoes,” Srihari said.

I was in Vegas in April of this year and saw Cirque du Soleil’s Love- a truly magnificent tribute to The Beatles through their music and Cirque’s visual extravagance.



The show opens with one of the last songs The Beatles recorded- “Because” for Let it Be. John Lennon is quoted as having said that the song is based on Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. Listen to both, and you know he’s right.

(Video of Moonlight Sonata on YouTube)


This got me to thinking about fair use. Would Lennon (or his lawyers) have risked it if the Sonata was still under copyright? There were “only” about 170 years between Moonlight Sonata and Let it Be, so in modern copyright terms, they were cutting it a little close.



Think that’s a stretch? Remember, Rep. Mary Bono channeling Jack Valenti once asked Congress for “forever less one day” copyright terms.

Note: I know that Lennon’s use would probably be ruled as fair use in a reasonable court of law. That is not the issue. The issue is that fear of litigation may have prevented Lennon (or his producers) from ever releasing “Because” in to the wild and ours would have been a poorer culture for that.

Via Schneier, here’s a funny little photo that sums up many thoughts I have about Airport security. I wish there was a button to click to fix the problem…

Here are a few photographs of a recent trip to DC. I took hundreds of photographs, but these are some of my favorite.

Dharmesh Thakker is one of my favorite photographers on Flickr and this is his best yet. He has an eye for using shadows and light to give the old mills and temples of India a very Noir look.

Take a look at Dharmesh Thakker’s other photographs and leave him a few comments of praise.

Some cool things to check out regarding the total solar eclipse on the 29th of March.

• Some interesting information from Scientific American:

  Such a total eclipse is relatively rare—the next one for observers in the U.S. will not happen until August 21, 2017—because the moon must cross our planet’s orbital plane exactly when it, Earth and the sun are aligned, and its nighttime side faces us.

• And then a lot of stuff from NASA- pictures, information, videos, audio.
• And finally, some spectacular photographs of this (and past) solar eclipse at Flickr.

Some links via Accidental Blogger.

Spent the afternoon in south Boston at the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Take a look at the pictures I took at Flickr.