How to Identify Where a Driver is From

How to Identify Where a Driver is From

1. One hand on wheel, one hand on horn: Chicago.

2. One hand on wheel, one finger out window: New York.

3. One hand on wheel, one finger out window, cutting across all lanes of traffic: New Jersey.

4. One hand on wheel, one hand on newspaper, foot solidly on accelerator: Boston.

5. One hand on wheel, one hand on nonfat double decaf cappuccino, cradling cell phone, brick on accelerator, with gun in lap: Los Angeles.

6. Both hands on wheel, eyes shut, both feet on brake, quivering in terror: Ohio, but driving in California.

7. Both hands in air, gesturing, both feet on accelerator, head turned to talk to someone in back seat: Italy.

8. One hand on latte, one knee on wheel, cradling cell phone, foot on brake, mind on radio game: Seattle.

9. One hand on wheel, one hand on hunting rifle, alternating between both feet being on the accelerator and both feet on brake, throwing McDonald's bag out the window: Texas.

10. Four-wheel drive pick-up truck, shotgun mounted in rear window, beer cans on floor, squirrel tails attached to antenna: West Virginia.

11. Two hands gripping wheel, blue hair barely visible above windshield, driving 35 on the Interstate in the left lane with the left blinker on: Florida.  

Thanks to the Big Bog for this one!

Best Jersey Pizza

This place "Nellie's Eats" in Waldwick, N.J. used to be called Stasney's, a place we went to in the 1950's.  It's simple bar & grill that had fantastic thin crust pizza.  

More here:

http://www.tommyeats.com/tommyeats/2006/06/nellies_place_w-1.html

2001: A Space Odyssey - Film Review by James Berardinelli

United States/United Kingdom, 1968
U.S. Release Date: 4/3/68 (re-release scheduled 1/1/01)
Running Length: 2:19
MPAA Classification: PG (Mild violence, mild profanity)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Douglas Rain (voice)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Producer: Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke, based on "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke
Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth
U.S. Distributor: MGM

Perhaps it takes the passage of time to gain the perspective to call some films great. Certain movies, despite being ridiculed upon their initial release, have been "re-discovered" years later and labeled as forgotten classics. It's a universal truth that art isn't always immediately recognized as such - this is why so many revered painters, authors, and composers have died in poverty and relative obscurity. 

Filmmakers face some of the same challenges - in a business climate, courage is the number one characteristic needed by anyone with the goal of fashioning a work that is deliberately thought-provoking but lacking in mass appeal. Such idealistic intentions won't inflate any director's bank account, but they may make an enduring statement. 

That brings us to the subject of this review: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Despite gaining additional adherents and growing more respected with each passing day, 2001 would likely be a failure if shown to a typical, MTV-weaned group of multiplex patrons. 

Watching this film demands two qualities that are sadly lacking in all but the most mature and sophisticated audiences: patience and a willingness to ponder the meaning of what's transpiring on screen. 2001 is awe inspiring, but it is most definitely not a "thrill ride." It is art, it is a statement, and it is indisputably a cinematic classic. 

I was around in 1968 when 2001 was first released, but I wasn't old enough to be concerned with anything more substantive than bottles and sleep. However, in the intervening years, I have spoken to several individuals who attended premieres of the film. The level of anticipation surrounding 2001 was as high as that to accompany any cinematic event before or after. Not only had Kubrick developed the project in complete secrecy, but, with the space race in its final laps, the world was ready to inhale any whiff of science fiction. 

But 2001 did not satisfy everyone. In fact, the initial reaction could charitably be called mixed. While a minority of those in early audiences recognized that they had witnessed the birth of a masterpiece, many movie-goers were nonplused and confused. Several influential mainstream publications panned the film, and, while it was successful at the box office, it was not the blockbuster some had expected it to be. Yet 2001 did not die. Instead, its reputation grew, and, by the mid-'70s, it had become a Goliath.


I remember the first time I saw the movie. The year was 1981, and this country was in the post-Star Wars, early VCR era. Because of the rampant success of George Lucas' space opera, science fiction was once again in vogue. However, with home video still in its infancy, the opportunity did not exist for the average American to go to the nearest movie store, rent a few tapes, and pop them into the VCR. But many schools, striving to be on the cusp of technology in the name of education, owned video players, albeit of the bulky, unwieldy sort. 

My eighth grade teachers took advantage of the middle school's lone Betamax machine and arranged a showing of 2001 in an auditorium on an elevated 28" TV set. Their intentions were good, but the experience was anemic. Nevertheless, even under less-than-ideal circumstances, I recognized that there was something amazing about the movie. It was unlike anything I had previously seen on any screen, big or small. It was slow-moving, but there was a hypnotic quality to the proceedings. It would take the passage of three-quarters of a decade and another viewing (this time in a theatrical setting) before I began to qualify and quantify my impressions of 2001. 

It's questionable which element of 2001 stands out the most clearly: the pacing, the music, or the visuals. In truth, the three are inseparable. Like a skilled chef, Kubrick blended them together to form a dish of incomparable excellence. They are unique ingredients, yet, once mixed, they can no longer be reconstituted into their original forms. For most movies, this is not the case, but that's one of many areas in which 2001 is an exception. 

Listening to a soundtrack of this film provokes an avalanche of images in the mind's eye. Can anyone who has seen 2001 listen to the Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube Waltz" and not think of the shuttle docking at the space station? And Richard Strauss' rousing, unforgettable "Also Spoke Zarathustra" has become synonymous with this picture. (In fact, "Zaruathustra" is often referred to as the "Theme from 2001".) 

In terms of its approach to the science fiction genre, 2001 stands alone. This is a space-based movie without zooming spaceships, laser shootouts, or explosions. The action, to the degree that there is action, is viewed from a detached perspective. Spacecraft move (relatively) slowly, they do not zip around at the speed of light. The result is a cold, majestic motion picture, a movie that seeks to remind us of the vastness of space and our relatively insignificant place in it. 

Kubrick's intention with 2001 was not to thrill us with battles and pyrotechnics, but to daunt us with the realization of how much there is that we do not understand. The movie's slowness (and it is slow) not only allows us to absorb the images, music, and atmosphere, but provides the opportunity to think about the implications of what Kubrick is saying. As enjoyable as Star Wars is, it does not encourage deep introspection. 2001 demands it. 

I can think of two other movies that have consciously borrowed aspects of Kubrick's 2001 style. (There may be others, but either I have forgotten them or I never knew about them to forget.) They are Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Contact. Both slowed their pace to awe the viewer with a cavalcade of visual images. It worked in the latter case but not in the former. In Contact, as in 2001, there are deep philosophical issues involved. Star Trek, however, was designed to be an action/adventure film. The movie's attempts at grandeur are ineffective because the special effects represent little more than a series of colorful images. The docking of the shuttle with the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture was said to have been directly inspired by the "Blue Danube Waltz" section of 2001, yet the experience is not the same. The reason? In 2001, this sequence exists on its own. It is powerful and important in its own right. In Star Trek, it's a nicely-scored, impressive-looking, overlong transition sequence to get Admiral Kirk from Earth to his beloved ship. 

2001 opens memorably in prehistoric times or during "The Dawn of Man", as the on-screen caption states. The sequence, which runs about 15 minutes, shows how ape-like creatures, after encountering an imposing black monolith (obviously the product of an alien technology), discover how to use the bones of an animal as a tool or a weapon. Like the Fruit of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, this leads to a spurt of change and a fall from grace. Armed, primitive man becomes a danger not only to potential sources of food, but to himself. 

There is a jump cut as a bone thrown high into the air becomes a orbiting nuclear device, pushing the movie's time frame ahead thousands of years. Now, the human race has evolved. No longer Earthbound, they have ventured into the nearby Solar System. Kubrick's depiction of space travel is far more believable, albeit less romantic, than the visions presented in Star Trek and countless other futuristic projects. Of course, things in the movie are ahead of where they are in reality circa 2001. But, having worked on the picture during the height of space mania, Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke can be forgiven mistaking the transient space enthusiasm of the '60s for a trend that would last the rest of the century. If it had, the "science fiction" of 2001 might be "science fact" today. 

We encounter Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester), who is on his way to the moon to explore a strange, black monolith that has been discovered beneath the lunar surface. The object is broadcasting a signal in the direction of Jupiter, but no one understands why. The monolith's existence has become a matter of national security, and the reason for Dr. Floyd's arrival is a closely guarded secret. Accompanied by a group of respected scientists, he travels to the excavation site to examine the alien object. 

2001's third and lengthiest segment takes us aboard the space ship Discovery, which is bound for Jupiter to determine the reason why the monolith is sending signals out there. On board are two human crewmen, David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), three cryogenically suspended scientists, and the "brain" of the craft, the HAL 9000 computer (voice of Douglas Rain), one of moviedom's famously insane electronic entities. 

Once the crew recognizes that HAL may be unstable, they plan to deactivate the machine. However, HAL fights back, and the duel of minds between Bowman and the computer makes for the film's most dramatically tense situation. It is also during this portion of the movie that 2001 offers its frankest moments of humor (of the gallows variety, as a doomed HAL questions Bowman about his intentions) and pathos (as Bowman shuts the computer down -- HAL's rendition of "Daisy", coupled with his refrain of "I'm scared, Dave," is touching). 

The fourth and final portion of 2001, "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite," generates the most questions. During these 20 minutes, Kubrick suggests man's place in the cosmos - that, although we think of ourselves as possessing godlike powers, we are actually low in the universal pecking order. The Discovery finds another monolith - only this one is much larger than its lunar counterpart and is floating in space. 

When Bowman takes a pod through it, he is catapulted into a space/time tunnel to a mysterious locale where he spends the rest of his life, reaching a ripe old age before expiring. At the time of his death, however, he is reborn as the "star child" - either the next stage in man's evolution or an entirely new life form. 

Many viewers who understand 2001 through the first two hours leave the theater confused because the movie raises new questions during the last reel, when a conventional film would be providing solutions. However, for someone who enjoys the opportunity to ponder a filmmaker's intentions and delve deeply into a movie's subtext, the final act of 2001 is a godsend. 

Anyone desperate for concrete answers to some of the unresolved issues can check out 2010. Produced in 1984, 16 years after Kubrick's original reached theaters, 2010 is a conventional sequel. However, while it rehabilitates HAL and solves the riddle of the monoliths, it doesn't wrap everything into a neat package. 2010 is a decent continuation of 2001 (and is well worth a rental) - just don't expect it to have the Kubrickian depth or grandeur. In fact, viewing 2010 is a good way to appreciate how much Kubrick contributed to 2001.

As is true of every Kubrick film, the meticulous attention to detail is evident. Working in close concert with co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke and other scientific advisors, Kubrick made sure that every aspect of the film conformed to known scientific fact. His vision is eerily accurate, and, even though we have not attained Clarke's prophesied advancements, we are on the same track. 

Additionally, there isn't a moment in 2001 that seems dated. The film could just as easily have been made in the '90s as in the '60s.

The Academy Award-winning special effects represent some of the most impressive model work ever committed to screen. They are at least the equal, if not superior to, George Lucas' efforts in Star Wars. Today, visual effects are all about pushing the digital envelope, but there are times when it's worth looking back to how things were done in a simpler era, when technological limitations demanded greater creativity. Douglas Trumbull's accomplishments in 2001 represent an innovative pinnacle.


The tag line for Alien, which was released about a decade after 2001, was "In space, no one can hear you scream." In truth, however, nearly every space movie (including Alien) has ignored the fact that sound waves cannot travel through the vacuum between stars and planets. Consequently, Kubrick opted for silence, and the result is eerie and memorable. Every time there's a space sequence, no sound can be heard - except for the occasional strains of the classical compositions used on the soundtrack. 

Music is critical to every aspect of the movie's success - even when the story has been told. The "Blue Danube Waltz" plays over the end credits, which last about four minutes. However, the piece is more than eight minutes in length, so the director allows it to continue after the credits have concluded. This gives audience members an opportunity to mull over what they have just seen before returning to the bustle of everyday life. 

From time-to-time, Kubrick worked with "name" actors (Peter Sellers in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, Jack Nicholson in The Shining), but the entire cast of 2001 is comprised of lesser-known performers. The reason is that this is not a character-based story. It's about experiences and ideas. 


The actors do competent jobs, but there are no true standouts. Douglas Rain, who provides the voice of HAL, is in many ways the most memorable, since his words and tone humanize the machine, transforming it into a tragic figure. 

HAL is the villain, but we can't help feeling a surge of sorrow for him, and his redemption in 2010 is welcome. Of the human performers, the one with the most screen time is Keir Dullea, whose Dave Bowman represents the focus of the third and fourth segments. Dullea's performance is non-emotive and mechanical, and it's interesting to note that HAL often seems more "human" than Dave. Following 2001, Dullea was offered a lot of work, much of it on television, but nothing high-profile. Similar statements can be made about Gary Lockwood (who is most recognizable for the starring role in the TV series, "The Lieutenant", which predated 2001 by five years) and William Sylvester (whose best roles were behind him). 

2001 needs to be experienced to be appreciated. It loses something on a TV screen; even the best home video setup can't replicate what it's like to see the movie in a theater.  

2001 does not build bonds between the viewers and the characters or set up a straightforward, linear storyline. Instead, it challenges the audience and inspires wonder. Proponents argue that this is Kubrick's best film; regardless of whether or not that is true, there's no doubting that this movie represents the product of a great director at the height of his powers. 

32 years after its release, 2001 has lost none of the qualities that make it an acknowledged masterwork. 

http://www.reelviews.net/movies/t/2001.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P95NWAHWLrc

© 2000 James Berardinelli 

---

Back Up

One of Katie Couric's Better Interviews

Sarah Palin is asked what do you read?" by Katie Couric

The Really Smart Phone

Researchers are harvesting a wealth of intimate detail from our cellphone data, uncovering the hidden patterns of our social lives, travels, risk of disease—even our political views.

'Phones can know,' says an MIT researcher. 'People can get this god's-eye view of human behavior.'


Apple and Google may be intensifying privacy concerns by tracking where and when people use their mobile phones—but the true future of consumer surveillance is taking shape inside the cellphones at a weather-stained apartment complex in Cambridge, Mass.


For almost two years, Alex Pentland at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has tracked 60 families living in campus quarters via sensors and software on their smartphones—recording their movements, relationships, moods, health, calling habits and spending. In this wealth of intimate detail, he is finding patterns of human behavior that could reveal how millions of people interact at home, work and play.


Through these and other cellphone research projects, scientists are able to pinpoint "influencers," the people most likely to make others change their minds. The data can predict with uncanny accuracy where people are likely to be at any given time in the future. Cellphone companies are already using these techniques to predict—based on a customer's social circle of friends—which people are most likely to defect to other carriers.


A wave of ambitious social-network experiments is underway in the U.S. and Europe to track our movements, probe our relationships and, ultimately, affect the individual choices we all make. WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz reports.


The data can reveal subtle symptoms of mental illness, foretell movements in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and chart the spread of political ideas as they move through a community much like a contagious virus, research shows. In Belgium, researchers say, cellphone data exposed a cultural split that is driving a historic political crisis there.


And back at MIT, scientists who tracked student cellphones during the latest presidential election were able to deduce that two people were talking about politics, even though the researchers didn't know the content of the conversation. By analyzing changes in movement and communication patterns, researchers could also detect flu symptoms before the students themselves realized they were getting sick.


"Phones can know," said Dr. Pentland, director of MIT's Human Dynamics Laboratory, who helped pioneer the research. "People can get this god's-eye view of human behavior."


So far, these studies only scratch the surface of human complexity. Researchers are already exploring ways that the information gleaned from mobile phones can improve public health, urban planning and marketing. At the same time, researchers believe their findings hint at basic rules of human interaction, and that poses new challenges to notions of privacy.


"We have always thought of individuals as being unpredictable," said Johan Bollen, an expert in complex networks at Indiana University. "These regularities [in behavior] allow systems to learn much more about us as individuals than we would care for."


Today, almost three-quarters of the world's people carry a wireless phone. That activity generates immense commercial databases that reveal the ways we arrange ourselves into networks of power, money, love and trust. The patterns allow researchers to see past our individual differences to forms of behavior that shape us in common.


As a tool for field research, the cellphone is unique. Unlike a conventional land-line telephone, a mobile phone usually is used by only one person, and it stays with that person everywhere, throughout the day. Phone companies routinely track a handset's location (in part to connect it to the nearest cellphone tower) along with the timing and duration of phone calls and the user's billing address.


Typically, the handset logs calling data, messaging activity, search requests and online activities. Many smartphones also come equipped with sensors to record movements, sense its proximity to other people with phones, detect light levels, and take pictures or video. It usually also has a compass, a gyroscope and an accelerometer to sense rotation and direction.




Advances in statistics, psychology and the science of social networks are giving researchers the tools to find patterns of human dynamics too subtle to detect by other means. At Northeastern University in Boston, network physicists discovered just how predictable people could be by studying the travel routines of 100,000 European mobile-phone users.


After analyzing more than 16 million records of call date, time and position, the researchers determined that, taken together, people's movements appeared to follow a mathematical pattern. The scientists said that, with enough information about past movements, they could forecast someone's future whereabouts with 93.6% accuracy.


The pattern held true whether people stayed close to home or traveled widely, and wasn't affected by the phone user's age or gender.


"For us, people look like little particles that move in space and that occasionally communicate with each other," said Northeastern physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, who led the experiment. "We have turned society into a laboratory where behavior can be objectively followed."


Only recently have academics had the opportunity to study commercial cellphone data. Until recently, most cellphone providers saw little value in mining their own data for social relationships, researchers say. That's now changing, although privacy laws restrict how the companies can share their records.


Several cellphone companies in Europe and Africa lately have donated large blocks of calling records for research use, with people's names and personal details stripped out.


"For the scientific purpose, we don't care who the people are," said medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis at Harvard University, who is using phone data to study how diseases, behavior and ideas spread through social networks, and how companies can use these webs of relationships to influence drug marketing and health-care decisions.


His work focuses on "social contagion"—the idea that our relationships with people around us, which are readily mapped through cellphone usage, shape our behavior in sometimes unexpected ways. By his calculation, for instance, obesity is contagious. So is loneliness.


Even though the cellphone databases are described as anonymous, they can contain revealing personal details when paired with other data. A recent lawsuit in Germany offered a rare glimpse of routine phone tracking. Malte Spitz, a Green party politician, sued Deutsche Telekom to see his own records as part of an effort by Mr. Spitz to highlight privacy issues.


In a six-month period, the phone company had recorded Mr. Spitz's location more than 35,000 times, according to data Mr. Spitz released in March. By combining the phone data with public records, the news site Zeit Online reconstructed his daily travels for months.


In recent days, Apple Inc. triggered privacy alarms with the news that its iPhones automatically keep a database of the phone's location stretching back for months. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that both Apple and Google Inc. (maker of the Android phone operating system) go further than that and in fact collect location information from their smartphones. A test of one Android phone showed that it recorded location data every few seconds and transmitted it back to Google several times an hour.


Google and Apple have said the data transmitted by their phones is anonymous and users can turn off location sharing.


"We can quantify human movement on a scale that wasn't possible before," said Nathan Eagle, a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico who works with 220 mobile-phone companies in 80 countries. "I don't think anyone has a handle on all the ramifications." His largest single research data set encompasses 500 million people in Latin America, Africa and Europe.


Among other things, Mr. Eagle has used the data to determine how slums can be a catalyst for a city's economic vitality. In short, slums provide more opportunities for entrepreneurial activity than previously thought. Slums "are economic springboards," he said.


Cellphone providers are openly exploring other possibilities. By mining their calling records for social relationships among customers, several European telephone companies discovered that people were five times more likely to switch carriers if a friend had already switched, said Mr. Eagle, who works with the firms. The companies now selectively target people for special advertising based on friendships with people who dropped the service.


At AT&T, a research team led by Ramon Caceres recently amassed millions of anonymous call records from hundreds of thousands of mobile-phone subscribers in New York and Los Angeles to compare commuting habits in the two metropolitan areas.


Dr. Caceres, a lead scientist at AT&T Labs in Florham Park, N.J., wanted to gauge the potential for energy conservation and urban planning. "If we can prove the worth of this work, you can think of doing it for all the world's billions of phones," he said.


Thousands of smartphone applications, or "apps," already take advantage of a user's location data to forecast traffic congestion, rate restaurants, share experiences and pictures, or localize radio channels. Atlanta-based AirSage Inc. routinely tracks the movements of millions of cellphones to generate live traffic reports in 127 U.S. cities, processing billions of anonymous data points about location every day.


One study found that the U.K.'s happiest time is 8 p.m. Saturday; its unhappiest day is Tuesday.  European phone companies discovered their customers were five times more likely to switch carriers if friends had switched, allowing the companies to target their ads.
Another study was able to determine that two people were talking about politics—without the researchers hearing the call


As more people access the Internet through their phones, the digital universe of personal detail funneled through these handsets is expanding rapidly, and so are ways researchers can use the information to gauge behavior. Dr. Bollen and his colleagues, for example, found that the millions of Twitter messages sent via mobile phones and computers every day captured swings in national mood that presaged changes in the Dow Jones index up to six days in advance with 87.6% accuracy.


The researchers analyzed the emotional content of words used in 9.7 million of the terse 140-character text messages posted by 2.7 million tweeters between March and December 2008. As Twitter goes, so goes the stock market, the scientists found.


"It is not just about observing what is happening; it is about shaping what is happening," said Dr. Bollen. "The patterns are allowing us to learn how to better manipulate trends, opinions and mass psychology."


Some scientists are taking advantage of the smartphone's expanding capabilities to design Android and iPhone apps, which they give away, to gather personal data. In this way, environmental economist George MacKerron at the London School of Economics recruited 40,000 volunteers through an iPhone app he designed, called Mappiness, to measure emotions in the U.K.


At random moments every day, his iPhone app prompts the users to report their moods, activities, and surroundings. The phone also automatically relays the GPS coordinates of the user's location and rates nearby noise levels by using the unit's microphone. It asks permission to photograph the locale.


By early April, volunteers had filed over two million mood reports and 200,000 photographs.


Publicly, Mr. MacKerron uses their data to chart the hour-by-hour happiness level of London and other U.K. cities on his website. By his measure, the U.K.'s happiest time is 8 p.m. Saturday; its unhappiest day is Tuesday.


Perhaps less surprisingly, people are happiest when they are making love and most miserable when sick in bed. The most despondent place in the U.K. is an hour or so west of London, in a town called Slough.


On a more scholarly level, Mr. MacKerron is collecting the information to study the relationship between moods, communities and the places people spend time. To that end, Mr. MacKerron expects to link the information to weather reports, online mapping systems and demographics databases.


Several marketing companies have contacted him to learn whether his cellphone software could help them find out how people feel when they are, for instance, near advertising billboards or listening to commercial radio, he said.


Mr. MacKerron said he's tempted—but has promised his users that their personal information will be used only for scholarly research. "There is a phenomenal amount of data we can collect with very little effort," he said.


Some university researchers have begun trolling anonymous billing records encompassing entire countries. When mathematician Vincent Blondel studied the location and billing data from one billion cellphone calls in Belgium, he found himself documenting a divide that has threatened his country's ability to govern itself.


Split by linguistic differences between a Flemish-speaking north and a French-speaking south, voters in Belgium set a world record this year, by being unable to agree on a formal government since holding elections last June. Belgium's political deadlock broke a record previously held by Iraq.


The calling patterns from 600 towns revealed that the two groups almost never talked to each other, even when they were neighbors.


This social impasse, as reflected in relationships documented by calling records, "had an impact on the political life and the discussions about forming a government," said Dr. Blondel at the Catholic University of Louvain near Brussels, who led the research effort.


The MIT smartphone experiment is designed to delve as deeply as possible into daily life. For his work, Dr. Pentland gave volunteers free Android smartphones equipped with software that automatically logged their activities and their proximity to other people. The participants also filed reports on their health, weight, eating habits, opinions, purchases and other personal information, so the researchers could match the phone data to relationships and behavior.




The current work builds on his earlier experiments, beginning in 2004, conducted in an MIT dormitory that explored how relationships influence behavior, health, eating habits and political views. Dr. Pentland and his colleagues used smartphones equipped with research software and sensors to track face-to-face encounters among 78 college students in a dorm during the final three months of the 2008 presidential election.


Every six minutes, each student's phone scanned for any other phone within 10 feet, as a way to identify face-to-face meetings. Among other things, each phone also reported its location and compiled an anonymous log of calls and text messages every 20 minutes. All told, the researchers compiled 320,000 hours of data about the students' behavior and relationships, buttressed by detailed surveys.


"Just by watching where you spend time, I can say a lot about the music you like, the car you drive, your financial risk, your risk for diabetes. If you add financial data, you get an even greater insight," said Dr. Pentland. "We are trying to understand the molecules of behavior in this really complete way."


Almost a third of the students changed their political opinions during the three months. Their changing political ideas were related to face-to-face contact with project participants of differing views, rather than to friends or traditional campaign advertising, the analysis showed.


"We can measure their daily exposure to political opinions," said project scientist Anmol Madan at MIT's Media Lab. "Maybe one day, you would be able to download a phone app to measure how much Republican or Democratic exposure you are getting and, depending on what side you're on, give you a warning."


As a reward when the experiment was done, the students were allowed to keep the smartphones used to monitor them.


Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com

Early U.S. Rocket Launches and Explosions !

Early U.S. rocket and space launch failures and explosion- spacearium



Uploaded by Daxonova12 on Oct 31, 2008 - A compilation of rockets that have exploded on take off and in mid-flight.

Cartoons for Dog People

Many thanks to Rabea for these gems !

Senior Humor

Bob came home drunk one night, slid into bed beside his sleeping wife, and fell into a deep slumber.

He awoke before the Pearly Gates, where St. Peter said, 'You died in your sleep, Bob.'

Bob was stunned. 'I'm dead? No, I can't be! I've got too much to live for.

Send me back!'

St. Peter said, 'I'm sorry, but there's only one way you can go back, and that is as a chicken.'

Bob was devastated, but begged St. Peter to send him to a farm near his home....

The next thing he knew, he was covered with feathers, clucking and pecking the ground.

A rooster strolled past. 'So, you're the new hen, huh? How's your first day here?'

'Not bad,' replied Bob the hen, 'but I have this strange feeling inside.

Like I'm gonna explode!'

'You're ovulating,' explained the rooster.

'Don't tell me you've never laid an egg before?'

'Never,' said Bob.

'Well, just relax and let it happen,' says the rooster.

'It's no big deal.'

He did, and a few uncomfortable seconds later, out popped an egg!

He was overcome with emotion as he experienced motherhood.

He soon laid another egg -- his joy was overwhelming.

As he was about to lay his third egg, he felt a smack on the back of his head, and heard.....

"BOB, wake up! You shit the bed!"

Getting OLD just ain't what they said it would be!

Vintage Personal Computer Ads

more here:


http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/vintage-computer-advertisements-from-the-late-1970s/6213154?seq=4&tag=content;thumbnail-view-selector

Dog Wisdom

Dog Definitions LEASH: A strap which attaches to your collar, enabling you to lead your person where you want him/her to go. DOG BED: Any soft, clean surface, such as the white bedspread in the guest room or the newly upholstered couch in the living room. DROOL: is what you do when your persons have food and you don't. To do this properly you must sit as close as you can and look sad and let the drool fall to the floor, or better yet, on their laps. SNIFF: A social custom to use when you greet other dogs. Place your nose as close as you can to the other dog's rear end and inhale deeply, repeat several times, or until your person makes you stop. This can also be done to human's crotches. GARBAGE CAN: A container which your neighbors put out once a week to test your ingenuity. You must stand on your hind legs and try to push the lid off with your nose. If you do it right you are rewarded with margarine wrappers to shred, beef bones to consume and moldy crusts of bread. BICYCLES: Two-wheeled exercise machines, invented for dogs to control body fat. To get maximum aerobic benefit, you must hide behind a bush and dash out, bark loudly and run alongside for a few yards; the person then swerves and falls into the bushes, and you prance away. DEAFNESS: This is a malady which affects dogs when their person want them in and they want to stay out. Symptoms include staring blankly at the person, then running in the opposite direction, or lying down. THUNDER: This is a signal that the world is coming to an end. Humans remain amazingly calm during thunderstorms, so it is necessary to warn them of the danger by trembling uncontrollably, panting, rolling your eyes wildly, and following at their heels. WASTEBASKET: This is a dog toy filled with paper, envelopes, and old candy wrappers. When you get bored, turn over the basket and strew the papers all over the house until your person comes home SOFAS: Are to dogs like napkins are to people. After eating it is polite to run up and down the front of the sofa and wipe your whiskers clean. BATH: This is a process by which the humans drench the floor, walls and themselves. You can help by shaking vigorously and frequently. BUMP: The best way to get your human's attention when they are drinking a fresh cup of coffee or tea. GOOSE BUMP: A maneuver to use as a last resort when the Regular Bump doesn't get the attention you require..... especially effective when combined with The Sniff. See above. LOVE: Is a feeling of intense affection, given freely and without restriction. The best way you can show your love is to wag your tail. If you're lucky, a human will love you in return. If not, you can always sniff their crotches. Why a Dog is Better Than a Woman A dog's parents never visit you.  A dog loves you when you leave your clothes on the floor.   A dog limits its time in the bathroom to a quick drink.    A dog never expects you to phone.     A dog will not get mad if you forget its birthday.   A dog does not care about the previous dogs in your life.  A dog does not get mad at you if you pet another dog.   A dog never expects flowers on Valentine's Day.    The later you are, the happier a dog is to see you.  A dog does not shop. http://www.petsplace.co.za/humour.htm

Can You Identify These?

 (eggplant)

   (whole milk)

 (the King of Pop)

   (tap dancers)

(pool table)

(Gator-aide)

(iPod)

  (Nightmare)

(Light beer)

 (Dr. Pepper)

      (card shark)

Thanks to Rabea for these gems !