Just another dent in the damage…

Hurray it’s almost time for the National Science and Engineering Week again. From March 12th until March 21st the University of Sheffield has once again teamed up with Sheffield Hallam University, local schools, industry, commerce and museums throughout South Yorkshire to celebrate the best in British research and innovation.

This year’s theme is Earth in support of the International Year of Biodiversity and the What on Earth project – an initiative ‘encouraging everyone to get outside into their gardens and local parks and take photos of the wildlife they don’t recognise’. If you come across something unusual (or not so unusual) head over to www.whatonearth.org.uk armed with your image and get it identified by a team of scientific experts. If anyone can help me out with the name of this flower I’d appreciate it:

I’ve also uploaded an image of some flowers to the site, which I grew last year. I’m desperate to know the name of them. If you have any suggestions please add an identification.

The program of events for the NSEW (mostly free and open to the public) includes a David Allen-Booth Memorial Lecture entitled Shapes and Patterns: Crystals, leaves, leopards and zebras by Professor Gillian Gehring, What on Earth… will we do about energy? by staff and students from the Mechanical Engineering Subject Group (Sheffield Hallam) and the return of Rock Around the General Cemetery.

The University Library in collaboration with the National Fairground Archive will also be taking part to celebrate the engineering feats of fairgrounds and roller coasters. I’m really excited about this one because we’ve been trying to think of ways to encourage our students to make use of this amazing resource for ages. Once the display is up I’ll get more details posted up here.

There seems to be a lot of stuff flying around at the moment about what the Noughties will be remembered for. What has happened in the last decade that will make it stand out from other decades? Well…

In general:

9/11?
The ‘War on Terror’ (i.e. two unjustified unending wars)?
America’s first black President?
Iran’s disputed elections?
The Large Hadron Collider?
The horrific Mumbai terror attacks?
The death of Michael Jackson?
Global warming?
Google?
The Indian Ocean tsunami?
Swine flu?

(notice a theme?)

Personally:

A whole load a shit and not so much shit.

Google have been providing their useful Google Translate service for quite a while now but today seems to be a rather special day. They’ve finally released a support for Persian, something I think is much more appropriate than colouring the Google logo green for a day – simply because this is it far more useful to the current online ‘revolution’. It means I can not only translate useful sources such as BBC Persian but also all those Persian blogs I so wanted to read during my dissertation hell.

However, I think it’s important to say that this is a machine translation and of course it’s not perfect. But it’s a start and it means it can be developed and evolve into a practical solution for the spread of information. And, with respect to the theme of my dissertation it may in fact be used as another strategy to overcome online censorship, through enabling Iranians to translate English into Persian.

Facebook are also in on the action and the launch of Apple’s latest iPhone software has introduced support for the Persian script – Read more about this on Is This Ta’arof?.

Last time I got hooked on Monitter was during the Mumbai attacks last November when my need for real time information got so intense that it became difficult to deattach my eyes from the computer screen. This time it’s the Iran elections (#iranelections) that have really got me. Sat here feeling so overwhelmed and helpless I really have found the evidence needed to prove the usefulness of Twitter.

Twitter has in fact been so useful to Iranians tweeting the ‘revolution’ that scheduled maintenance was put back a day to keep communication open. My only criticism over the last couple of days is the difficulty to sieve through the millions of uninformative re-tweets and misinformation to actually get to the heart of what I want to know – what is happening right now!

Below are some links I’ve found useful over the last couple of days:

• For some great Twitter feeds see: persiankiwi/StopAhmadi/mousavi1388 and Change for Iran;
• For good Twitter round-up tools see: Twazzup and PicFog for images;
• For a round up of the larger context of the Iranian elections see: Revolutionary Flowerpot;
• For a collection of some amazing photographs see: Mousavi1388/TheStyx/Boston’s Big Picture and The Guardian;
• For some general Fisking see: Iran Erupts/Ahamdinejad whips crowd/Iran’s day of destiny and Fear has gone;
• For a bit about elections and democracy see: Christopher Hitchens;
• For some rally footage the best place was always going to be YouTube: BBC Persian/a brave female Iranian kicks police and 15th June crowds;
• For some Guardian Analysis see: election statistics and shots fired;
• For some live tweeting I kept up with Andrew Sullivan’s commentary at: The Daily Dish;
• For some expert analysis from Gary Sick and Karim Sadjadpour see: PBS;
• As always Channel 4 News have been right on! See: Lindsey Hilsum’s blog (she is the international editor for Channel 4 News and is currently reporting from Iran) esp. ‘A day in Iran.‘;
• Good blogs include: For a democratic secular Iran (he was also on Channel 4 News and the BBC)/The Huffington Post and The Lede blog;
• And also see the Channel 4 news broadcasts including nation in turmoil and violence at protest.

Unfortunately Craft magazine have printed their last magazine! Volume 10 of Craft is to be the last printed edition and the future of Craft remains in the hands of the online community. I think this is rubbish!

As much as I enjoy the blog I look forward to the print edition hitting the door mat and continually use all back issues for reference and inspiration.

Rubbish rubbish rubbish.

From the Crafters behind Craft:

Two and a half years ago, inspired by the DIY creativity of a growing number of indie crafters, we launched CRAFT Magazine along with its companion website, Craftzine.com. Since then, we’ve become an integral part of the new craft community. We’ve been fully committed to encouraging more people to discover the joy of crafting.

All along, we have noticed that Craftzine.com has been growing steadily. At the same time, we’ve come to realize that there were more and more challenges in publishing CRAFT as a print magazine, especially with the costs of print and distribution rising, and diminishing interest among advertisers in print. So we’ve decided that Volume 10, our Celebrate Like Crazy issue, will be our last print issue and that the future of CRAFT is online.

Creating a print magazine was a great pleasure for all of us on our amazing team, and we’ve appreciated the many readers who told us how much they enjoyed CRAFT. Our print magazine helped to gain recognition that craft is thriving today, more than ever. We’re going online exclusively with CRAFT because that’s where we can best reach and serve our audience.

On Craftzine.com, we have a talented team, led by Natalie Zee Drieu, who is returning from maternity leave. She’s excited to expand our efforts online. We have a lot of work to do to bring the best of the magazine to the website but the team has started to pursue that goal. We will focus on bringing you more craft projects, just as the print magazine did but we’ll be able to do so with greater frequency. We want CRAFT online to be visually appealing and easily accessible; we want it to be fun but also useful. CRAFT will continue to venture into new territory, creating projects that integrate high tech wizardry and high fashion.

I also want to assure you that craft and crafters will continue to be an important part of the program for Maker Faire. We have always regarded crafters as we do makers, a creative vanguard who are remaking the world in ways that are especially vital today. Also, we will continue to publish MAKE magazine in print. The closure of CRAFT in print allows us to focus our limited resources on growing a single DIY magazine instead of two.

As we’ve talked to some of CRAFT’s contributors and advertisers about our decision, we felt that they understood why we made the decision. Nonetheless, the initial reaction is one of disappointment. I suspect many subscribers will feel the same way. However, as we talked about the future with all these stakeholders, they also became as excited as we are about the possibilities. I look forward to exploring what lies ahead. I hope you will join us as we share our deep interest in, and appreciation for, the diverse approaches to CRAFT on craftzine.com.

The United States of America’s 44th President.

News from the New Scientist reports Iranian brothers Kamiar and Arash Alaei, pioneers of treatment for HIV in Iran, have been charged with “communications with an enemy government” to “launch a velvet (sic) overthrow of the Iranian government”. They have been held in detention since June 2008 when they were taken to an undisclosed location pending (at the time) unknown charges.

Read more about them:

I Save Lives;
Facebook Group – Kamiar and Arash Alaei Information Group;
Tackling Iran’s Heroin Habit;
Free the Docs;
Wikipedia.

Channel 4 has opted to end the year on a controversial note by inviting the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to give the broadcaster’s alternative Christmas message tomorrow (The Guardian).

Crazy or what!! Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offering Channel 4’s traditional alternative Christmas message!! It won’t be clashing with good old Queenie though… that’d just be way too controversial. Good on Channel 4. It’s airing at 7:15 pm tomorrow (Christmas Day) but I’ll try and get a clip up asap for those who miss out.

Farhad Hakimzadeh, previous Chief Executive of the UK’s Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF) is a bad man! Last month he pleaded guilty to 14 counts of theft from the British and Bodleian Libraries and is due to be sentenced sometime in January. Over a period of eight years he systematically stole pages from rare book collections, about European engagement in the Middle East, using a scalpel to splice maps, illustrations and leaves of text into his own less valuable books. Of the ten British Library books he admits to vandalising he has caused an estimated £71,000 worth of damage. A single world map taken from a 1537 edition by Hans Holbein the Younger was alone worth £30,000. I agree with Dr Jensen that the worst thing about this case is that because Hakimzadeh has a ‘profound knowledge of the field [...] he actually knew the importance of what he was damaging’ (BBC News). In examinaing the 842 books viewed by Hakimzadeh over this period British Library staff believe 150 texts were multilated and that many of the stolen pages will be lost forever.

His activities only came to light after a library user notified staff of the missing pages and upon investigation Scotland Yard were alerted. In searching his £3m Knightsbridge flat a number of the stolen items were identified by matching bookworm holes with those of the original material. It makes me so angry when students steal widely available text books and as Hakimzadeh knew what he was destroying it just seems beyond belief. I don’t even think a prison sentence is enough punishment! At the very least his extensive personal library should be handed over to the public… seen as it’s every one of us that hes stolen from!

More: The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph.

The Defaced Books include:

Historia de la China From the writings of Father Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit who travelled to China in 1582 and became the first western traveller to settle there. First published in Latin in 1615. This copy was printed in Spain in 1621. Ricci learned to speak and write Chinese and his work was the first important and reliable European description of the country.

Novus Orbis An anthology of works by Simon Grynaeus, professor of Greek at Basle. Hakimzadeh removed an engraving of a world map drawn by Hans Holbein the Younger, court painter to Henry VIII.

Mithridates By the English dramatist Nathaniel Lee. Published in 1693.

Ost-indian-und Persianische Reisen By Johann Gottlieb Worm, the German philosopher who accompanied an envoy of the Dutch East India Company sent to the Safavid court in Persia in 1717. He travelled to Isfahan from India via Bandar. Published in 1745.

I’ve always kinda liked Blink 182 but it was mainly because I thought Travis Barker was hot. The guy is a complete DUDE. He gives kids free drum lessons and everything. So when I heard he’d been in a plane crash I was pretty cut up about it. But then the thing that upsets me more is after being a vegetarian for 25 years (!!!!!!!) hes decided to start eating meat again to ’speed up the recovery process’ saying that he needs more protein than that he gets from his protein supplements. Can you believe this?? I think he suffered a seriously bad bump to the head if he thinks protein is only available to vegetarians in supplement form. I’m one of those ‘extreme’ vegetarians… you know, one of those ‘Vegans’ and I quite happily get more than enough protein from my ’strict’ diet of leafy greens, beans, tofu and those amazing little chunks of TVP (that’s textured vegetable protein). 

I need protein from food rather than just protein supplements. I changed my diet. I would do anything I possibly could if they said like “There’s a possibility you might heal faster if you do eat meat or just change your eating habits” so I did. I don’t regret it at all.

Oh Travis please do some research before you believe everything you’re told.