Challis Hodge’s UXblog

So my suspicions are confirmed. The government did create Halo as a pre-draft training tool. ;-)

Darpa, the Pentagon’s wide-eyed research arm, is betting big on “metamaterials” — composites that can seemingly-impossible new properties, thanks to their molecular structure. But even for Darpa, and even for metamaterials, this seems like a long shot: a $15 million program to build shoot-through, one-way-invisible, self-healing shields for soldiers in urban battlefields.

Metamaterials are already showing promise, as the building blocks to real-life invisibility cloaks; that’s because the composites let electromagnetic waves flow around them, instead of reflecting ‘em back. Darpa’s “Asymmetric Materials for the Urban Battlespace” program goes way, way beyond mere invisibility, however.

from wired

Satellite images captured under a pioneering program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) provide powerful evidence that the government of Zimbabwe has destroyed an entire settlement and relocated thousands of residents as part of a campaign against political opponents.

The images, analyzed by the AAAS staff, show two views of the settlement of Porta Farm, located just west of the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. The first, an archived image from June 2002, shows an intact settlement with more than 850 homes and other buildings; an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people lived in Porta Farm at the time.

The second photo, taken by satellite on 6 April this year, shows that the settlement has been leveled.

I’ve been using www.electoral-vote.com as a primary reference site heading up to this year’s election. It was only today, the day before the election, that the person behind the site was brought to my attention. Below is an exerpt from The Votemaster FAQ at electoral-vote.com:

Why Did You Do This?
In a nutshell, because living abroad I know first hand what the world thinks of America and it is not a pretty picture at the moment. I want people to think of America as the land of freedom and democracy, not the land of arrogance and blind revenge. I want to be proud of America again. The U.S. media do a spectacularly bad job of informing Americans about what is going on in rest of the world. After Sept. 11, the U.S. could do no wrong. The entire world was on America’s side. The invasion of Afghanistan was seen as completely justified. After all, the Al-Qaida leadership had to be decapitated. No one questioned that.

But Iraq was a completely different matter. Bush, Cheney, and Powell said they had conclusive proof that Saddam had WMD and could attack at any instant. The rest of the world wanted to see the proof. No proof was forthcoming. The answer was “trust us.” We now know there were no WMD. There weren’t even factories or labs to produce them. Saddam was an evil dictator with evil fantasies but he was no threat to America. Yet former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said that the planning to invade Iraq began the day Bush was inaugurated. The administration simply misused the horror of Sept. 11 as a convenient excuse for doing something that was already in the works.

Let me tell you a short story. When I was in elementary school, the school was plagued by a bully. He was the biggest, strongest kid around and would beat up anyone he didn’t like. We were all exceedingly polite to his face, but hated his guts behind his back. One day he was chasing some poor kid and he tripped and skidded a considerable distance, scraping his face on the rough asphalt of the playground. He was bleeding and in pain, screaming for help. But nobody came to help him. We all just walked away. George Bush is the world’s playground bully. The world sees him–and by inference, America–as arrogant, self-centered, and mean. I spoke to Americans from dozens of countries at the DA caucus. Everyone told the same story–the world hates America. When talking to foreigners, I can tell them about the Bill of Rights or freedom or World War II, or whatever I want, but all they see is this big, stupid, arrogant, playground bully and a stolen election in Florida last time. I think America deserves better. I want America to be respected in the world again, and John Kerry can restore the respect America deserves.

Don’t believe me that the world hates us? The Guardian, one of Britain’s most respected newspapers, ran a column by Charlie Brooker last week ending with this paragaph: “On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed …” Then it gets so bad that I refuse to quote it. Maybe Brooker is a nut and maybe it was a joke, but the fact that a serious newspaper would publish this piece shows how deep the hatred of George Bush runs. And this comes from our closest ally. Imagine what people in Spain or Indonesia or the Arab world think.

Now you might be thinking: Who the hell cares if America is the world’s pariah, along with, say, North Korea and Zimbabwe? Well, I care, for one, and I think most Americans want to be respected for being a democracy rather than simply being feared because we have more nuclear weapons than anybody else. You can’t make the world love you by running commercials full of snarling wolves on worldwide TV.

But there are some practical matters to consider as well. If you look at British and Canadian publications, such as The BBC, The Guardian, The Economist, and The Globe and Mail, you get a picture not colored by partisan electoral considerations. You sometimes wonder if they are reporting the same war as the U.S. media. The situation in Iraq has deteriorated very badly. Over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the war, mostly women and children. Well over 1000 American soldiers–many of them just kids who signed up for the National Guard and never expected to go to war–have been killed there and thousands more have been maimed for life. Americans are being killed daily in increasing numbers and unless there is a radical change, this will go on for years. Reenlistment rates are way down and manpower needs are way up. With a President Kerry, there is hope that other countries might contribute serious numbers of troops to help stabilize Iraq. With a second Bush administration they will just say: “You broke it, you fix it.”

If other countries won’t help out, Bush is going to be faced with an unpleasant choice: accept another Vietnam-type quagmire lasting for years or reinstitute the draft. There is no way we can win in Iraq with current troop levels. Something has to change. More of the same won’t work. And it is an open secret that after the election, Bush is going to ask Congress for another $70 billion down payment on Iraq. Who is going to pay for it? We are.

In addition, the U.S. needs the help of other countries to gather intelligence about terrorists, cut off their funding, and track them down. Trouble is, when the playground bully comes asking for help, everyone just walks away. A new president who shows respect for the world instead of arrogance will get a lot more help. And we need help, believe me.

It really is amazing how obsessed we’ve become with up to the minute poll data. We spend time perusing individual polls and poll aggegators. One has to wonder what the real affects of this are. Are we influencing the polls or are the polls influencing us? Does a slight shift in a poll push a voter into a decisive posture?

If they are influencing us, are they accurate? Have you ever been polled? How many twenty-somethings out there don’t even have a landline? How many people pickup calls without a recognizable caller id?

Assuming there is such a thing, electoral vote predictor at electoral-vote.com seems to be one of the best out there and they have a nice RSS feed.

Electoral Vote Predictor [RSS]

A few others you may wish to visit:
Zogby
Gallup
American Research Group
Mason-Dixon
Rasmussen
Research 2000
Strategic Vision
Survey USA

I received a spam email today touting Harry Braun for President. Here is the banner image and accompanying quote:

Harry Braun’s Vision for America & Spaceship Earth
The Windship images were painted by Artist William Bond for
The National Geographic Society

Braun, a so called Analyst and author is running as an Independent Candidate for President based on his Phoenix Project plan to employ millions of Americans and supercharge the economy by making America energy independent of all fossil and nuclear fuels by 2010. He will accomplish this by mass-producing wind-powered hydrogen production systems, including sea-based ‘Windships’ like the ones pictured above. The tugboat in the picture shuttlinging the crew that will live and work in the submerged spherical hull. The hulls also contain the electrolytic hydrogen production systems that will make hydrogen from the seawater with the electricity generated by the mast of wind turbines. Braun claims that the equipment located under the water will create a “vast sanctuary for the fish and other marine organisms that will otherwise be driven into extinction by 2010, if business and ‘politics as usual’ is allowed to continue.”

Spaceship Earth!! You go Harry!! Phoenix Project is awesome but it’s not going to propell you to the Whitehouse!

Tens of thousands put on the streets by opponents of President Joseph Estrada in minutes using Web-linked phones and mass mailings. Read the full story here.