It was Aug. 24, 2005, and New Orleans was still charming. Tropical Depression 12 was spinning from the Bahamas toward Florida, but the chances of an American city’s being destroyed by nature were remote, even for one below sea level. An entire industry of weather bookies — scientists who calculate the likelihood of various natural disasters — had in effect set the odds: a storm that destroys $70 billion of insured property should strike the United States only once every 100 years. New Orleanians had made an art form of ignoring threats far more likely than this; indeed, their carelessness was a big reason they were supposedly more charming than other Americans. And it was true: New Orleanians found pleasure even in oblivion. But in their blindness to certain threats, they could not have been more typically American. From Miami to San Francisco, the nation’s priciest real estate now faced beaches and straddled fault lines; its most vibrant cities occupied its most hazardous land. If, after World War II, you had set out to redistribute wealth to maximize the sums that might be lost to nature, you couldn’t have done much better than Americans had done. And virtually no one — not even the weather bookies — fully understood the true odds.

[NYTIMES]

East Germans successfully defected by a variety of methods: digging long tunnels under the wall, waiting for favorable winds and taking a hot air balloon, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultralights, and in one instance, simply driving a sports car at full speed through the basic, initial fortifications. When a metal beam was placed at checkpoints to prevent this kind of defection, up to four people (two in the front seats and possibly two in the boot) drove under the bar in a sports car that had been modified to allow the roof and wind screen to come away when it made contact with the beam. They lay flat and kept driving forward. The East Germans then built zig-zagging roads at checkpoints. The sewer system predated the wall, and some people escaped through the sewers, in a number of cases with assistance from the Girmann student group.

4 videos documenting civil unrest in baghdad in 2008-2009

Shewanella bacteria has been found to produce semiconducting nanotubes produced, which is a huge step in the way to nanoelectroc devices.  The process  they follow is biological rather than chemical, which indicates a more  environmentally friendly manufacturing process for electronic materials.

-yb

via WIRED

U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency is creating a tool to bore through the earth to reach underground facilities. The Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP) can bore through up to 60 feet of concrete (depending on the type).  But it is rumored that Iran is developing an ultra-hard concrete, challenging the Pentagon to develope a stronger tool.

The BLU-122 (replacing the 1991 Gulf War's BLU-113) could bust through about 30 feet of concrete.

Using some German engineering, these tools are able to detect voids and soil densities. Additionally, the Strategic Technology Office of DARPA is investing in sensor technologies “that find, characterize and identify facility function, pace of activity, and activities in conjunction with their pre and post attack status.”

-le

Another file catalogs the notebooks of a Dr. Fakhouri, one of which is esplained as such:

“Each of the notebook pages includes a cutout photograph of a car that matches the make, model, and color of a car that was used as a car bomb, as well as text written in Arabic that details the place, time, and date of the explosion, the number of casualties, the perimeter of destruction, the exploded car’s engine and axle numbers, and the weight and type of the explosives used.”

While some of the documents are related directly to the war others are more tangential, such as another notebook of Dr. Fakhouri, which provides detailed accounts of a gambling scheme set up by historians of the Lebanese wars involving a racetrack. From the files:

“It is a little known fact that the major historians of the Lebanese wars were avid gamblers. It is said that they met every Sunday at the race track — Marxists and Islamists bet on races one through seven, Maronite nationalists and socialists on races eight through fifteen.

Race after race, the historians stood behind the track photographer, whose job was to image the winning horse as it crossed the finish line, to record the photo-finish. It is also said that they convinced (some say bribed) the photographer to snap only one picture as the winning horse arrived. Each historian wagered on precisely when — how many fractions of a second before or after the horse crossed the finish line — the photographer would expose his frame.”

The documents presented by Raad serve to show the different aspects of the wars, and how they affected the city of Beirut and the national psyche. Although not at first apparent, all the documents are completely fake. Raad’s explanation is that the wars, now 20 years past, are still completely denied by the government, and no official accounts exist of what actually happened. Thus, a fictional archive such as that of the Atlas Group is actually a more realistic portrayal of the wars than the official history.

This is very interesting for our project because it shows how fiction can serve to create a deeper understanding of a situation, especially when dealing with sensitive issues like war. It also uses formats typically reserved for factual accounts to create alternate scenarios of the past. We can use similar techniques of fictional documents, news reports, documentaries, etc., to produce a vision or representation of our scenarios for the future. It would also be interesting to use the same tools to critically examine the past and highlight those aspects that have an affect on our future scenarios.

I highly recommend checking out the complete archives online or checking out the show if it comes around.

-dn

This pavilion was made by 3D scanning a termite mound and enlarging it to fit humans before being milled and assembled.  I think such analogies will be useful, especially in ideas of reconstruction, memory, and such.

-yb

The beginning is great architecturally, then go to about 4:20 to see the size of the queen and how she operates. Around 6, the narrator discusses the strategies in the architecture and complexity of its spaces.

is there hierarchy in our swarm?

-le