http://feeds.infosthetics.com/~r/infosthetics/~3/FRsBjWp5ovM/willem_besselink.html

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/11/willem_besselink.html

Dutch artist Willem Besselink has an impressive collection of physical data art pieces. The biggest might be the 10mx6m RE:ID [willembesselink.nl], which represented the locations of about 12,000 visitors during a Museum Night in Rotterdam. The large-scale visualization installation was spread out like a building site on a public square: building workers literally piled up concrete slabs at certain designated spots on the pavement to indicate the different venues, and their actual amount of visitors. Physical walls were then built out of bricks and cement, to indicate the most popular routes walked by the visitors through the city.

While you visit Willem's website, be sure have a look around for other data sculptures. Timelines visualizes the use of a specific house during the 1950's and the way it is going to be used in the future, by marking the routes that all persons of each of 2 families took through their apartments during 1 day, using 2 distinct colours of tape: yellow for the elderly couple, green for the big family. The lay-out of the future apartment was marked using red tape, and according the routes of the future family with blue tape.

Step Counter conveys the amount of people using a stairs during 1 hour on a regular day. Each time a person used a certain step of the stairs, a wooden plank in a certain color was glued on the step. As a second person using the step, a second plank in another color was glued on top of the first, and so on.

16 Days compares a heart rate with the temperatures in Sarajevo by a cubic grid of 16 x 16 nylon wires that were stretched between the ceiling and the floor.

PICTURA visualizes the positions of visitors in 2 different museum spaces by way of suspended, colored LED lights.

And so on and so on. Physical data art sculptures at its best.

See also Tim Schwartz, Loren Madsen, Joshua Callaghan, Nicolas Lobo, Sylvia Eckermann, Peter Dykhuis, and Christina Ray.

http://feeds.infosthetics.com/~r/infosthetics/~3/EoZxVbUrqDM/recent_nytimes_infographics_jobless_rate_and_berlin_wall.html

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/11/recent_nytimes_infographics_jobless_rate_and_berlin_wall.html

The NYTimes (info)graphics department has released two stunning pieces recently.

The Berlin Wall: 20 Years Later - A Division Through Time [nytimes.com] consists of a small collection of photos that show Berlin now and 'then', or the city without or with the Berlin wall, while allowing the user to slide one picture or the other to the foreground.

The Jobless Rate for People Like You [nytimes.com] is a revealing animated line graph that allows the comparison of how the economic crisis has affected different groups of people, in terms of race, gender, age and education level. It is a beautiful example of how animation can be used as an informative visual cue, even (and maybe especially) when the line moves temporarily 'out of bounds' for specific categories (try "Not a high school graduate", for instance).

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091108.html

M7 is one of the most prominent

http://xkcd.com/660/

http://dataisnature.com/?p=542

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091107.html

Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos,

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091106.html

A familiar sight to sky enthusiasts with even a small telescope,

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/CyKN/~3/EYOBR7YlrNs/friday_random_ten_1106.php

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/11/friday_random_ten_1106.php

1. Porcupine Tree, "Kneel and Disconnect": New Porcupine Tree! It's
   always great to get new stuff from these guys. It's good, but it's not
   up to the quality of their last two albums. (But given that their last two
   were utterly amazing, that's not much of a criticism.)


2. Mind Games, "Royalty in Jeopardy": Some prog that I recently found
   via eMusic. They've got a sound that I describe as being sort of like a
   mix between Yes and Marillion. They're very good - I wouldn't put them
   in the top ranks of neo-prog, but they're not at the bottom either.
   
3. Riverside, "Cybernetic Pillow": Now, these guys, I would
   definitely put in the top ranks of neo-prog. Riverside is a
   Polish prog-rock band, formed by members of a couple of other
   heavy metal bands. They're absolutely brilliant. This track
   is off their album "Rapid Eye Movement", which I'd recommend as a first
   Riverside album.


4. Marillion, "Hard as Love (acoustic)": This is the version of "Hard as
   Love"" from their recent acoustic album. HaL was one of their louder,
   poppier, catchier tunes - a Marillion rocker. To call this just an acoustic
   mix doesn't do it justice. They took the basic bones of the song,
   and completely rebuilt it. It's an amazing change. The acoustic
   version swaps the bridge and the chorus, completely changing the fell
   of the structure, and turning it into something that's almost a ballad.
   Amazing, and much better than the original version of the song.


5. Thinking Plague, "This Weird Wind": Thinking Plague is a group
   that I have a hard time describing. To me, they sound like a very out-there
   post-rock group with classical influences, but I've been told that
   they call themselves a "Rock in Opposition" band. What they are is
   a distinctly peculiar ensemble. They've got vocals, but they use
   the singers voice like it's just another instrument in the mix - it's
   not leading the song in any way, it's just part of the music. The music
   itself is frequently atonal, with a very peculiar sound. The guitarist
   sounds very much like one of Robert Fripp's GuitarCraft students - but
   when I mentioned that in the past, he showed up in the comments saying
   "Who's Robert Fripp?" I love Thinking Plague, but I have a hard time
   recommending them - they're so strange that most people won't like
   them. If you're a big fan of both neo-progressive rock and 20th
   century classical, then definitely give them a listen.


6. EQ, "Closer": IQ is back! IQ is a progressive band that
   got started around the same time as Marillion. Also like Marillion, they
   started off sounding like a Peter Gabriel-era Genesis rip-off, but
   they've evolved their own very distinct sound over the years. They're
   absolutely fantastic - I'd put them up in the top of neo-progressive
   bands with Marillion and the Flower Kings. And they just released a new
   album, which is absolutely fantastic.


7. Sonic Youth, "Rain King (live)": Very typical Sonic Youth - strange
   tonality. Loud. Tons of hidden complexity. Brilliant. And performed
   live! No studio tricks here.


8. Kayo Dot, "The Useless Ladder": Another very hard-to-describe
   band. Roughly, they're what you get when a progressive metal band
   decides to start writing 21st century classical chamber music. Very,
   very highly recommended.



9. Red Sparrowes, "And By Our Own Hand Did Every Last Bird Lie Silent In
   Their Puddles, The Air Barren Of Songs As The Clouds Drifted Away. For Killing
   Their Greatest Enemy, The Locusts Noisily Thanked Us And Turned Their Jaws
   Toward Our Crops, Swallowing Our Greed Whole": It took me longer to type
   the title of that than it did to listen to it. Red Sparrowes is a really
   excellent post-rock band. But frankly, this track just annoys be because
   of the damn title.


10. Rachel's, "A French Gallease": A beautiful track by my favorite
    of the classically-leaning post-rock ensembles.

http://bit-player.org/2009/a-comment-on-comment-spam

http://bit-player.org/?p=504

Someone out there is being paid to post comments on bit-player.org–and doubtless on tens of thousands of other blogs as well. The comments are mostly bland and inoffensive, sometimes effusive, always hastily composed. “Thanks for article..good work,” they say. “Amazing!!” “i like your article and i will be wating your net article….”

The payload attached to each of these comments is a link to a web site that someone wants to promote. Some of the sites are selling goods or services; others are billboards full of pay-per-view ads; a fair number are mysterious to me, being written in languages I don’t understand. I would not be astonished to learn that some of the sites are distributing malware.

Years ago, the first wave of comment spam was powered by scripts that flooded blogs and wikis and forums with hundreds of postings full of program-generated gibberish and long lists of links. That abuse was stopped by captchas and other simple filters, like the one I’ve been using here on bit-player. Another important defense is the “nofollow” tag, which instructs search engines to ignore links in comments, thereby eliminating the incentive of gaining PageRank points.

The comment spam arriving now is not generated by a Perl script. Somewhere in the world a person is being paid to read these very sentences, then to prove his or her humanity to the Turing-test filter, and finally to write a few words in response and sneak in a paid link. I’m both fascinated and appalled to learn that the Internet economy can support this activity. What’s the going rate for writing comment spam? Is it worth a penny to get your link briefly exposed to the vast daily readership of bit-player.org? How about a tenth of a penny?

I have a sinking feeling that the people doing this work are themselves victims of a scam, and that they’ll never see even the tenth of a penny. They have probably succumbed to a 21st-century version of the ads I used to see on matchbook covers: “Work at home! Make $500 a week stuffing envelopes in your spare time!”

Of all the ways that poor and desperate people are exploited, this is not the worst. Presumably the work is safe and sanitary, and it even rewards literacy. Some of my comment spammers would surely have interesting ideas to contribute if only they had the luxury of time.

All the same, this kind of commercial graffiti is not something I want to encourage. The available countermeasures include prohibiting all links in comments, holding all comments until a moderator approves them, or requiring commenters to register with a verifiable email address. None of these options appeals to me, but I may have to consider them if the problem persists. For now, though, I’m going to continue the human approach–manually deleting spammy comments as quickly as I can get to them. I am also closing comments on all but the 10 most-recent items on bit-player; the spammers seem to favor older posts.

I have to add that spotting comment spam is not always as easy as you might think. Consider this comment, which came in response to a story about editorial changes at Scientific American magazine:

Many times, when i read your American Scientist columns, I have asked myself that is any other country’s scientist didn’t give anything to the world?

The text of the comment is pertinent to the topic; it raises a question that’s entirely appropriate in this context; and there’s clear evidence that the author has actually been reading bit-player (and even my American Scientist columns) rather than merely spewing comments at random. This is someone I would like to be able to welcome into the community. But the link associated with the comment was an ad for a web-hosting service, and another comment from the same IP number advertised a different service. Was I wrong to hit the delete button?

You’re welcome to comment below, but without spammy links, please.

http://xkcd.com/659/

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091105.html

Halloween s Moon