Salon.com > Liz Fields

X-ray vision, coming soon

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 22:20:00 +0000

Aspiring burglars and perverts, you're in luck. Thanks to MIT professor Dina Katabi and her graduate student Fadel Adlib, X-ray vision may no longer be the exclusive domain of comic books. The pair have devised a new low-cost technology that uses reflections of wireless radio signals to track a person's movements in an adjoining room. An MIT news release explains:

The system, called “Wi-Vi,” is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.

As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. “So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body,” Katabi says.

The X-ray vision device uses the same wireless antenna that helps connect your laptop to the Internet at Starbucks, so it could potentially be built into your mobile phone in the future. This means it probably will, so enjoy your baths in private while you can.

Via Tech News Daily

Must do’s: What we like this week

Sat, 29 Jun 2013 14:00:00 +0000

BOOKS

Two outsiders to the world of Shakespeare criticism have penned “Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine,” a slim volume on that well-known dark prince of Danes. Laura Miller deems it as "such a treat:"

The authors — a philosophy professor and a psychoanalyst who are married to each other — claim no special expertise and argue no ironclad theory. They investigate, speculate and propose. “We are outsiders to the world of Shakespeare criticism,” they write, and the thinkers they have chosen to respond to (Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Hegel, Freud, Jacques Lacan and Nietzsche) are (arguably) peripheral to the field as well. The result is a slim volume on “Hamlet” that this reader found more invigorating than many a more rigorous work. All you need to engage with it is a modest acquaintance with the play and an open mind. Each of the short chapters in “Stay, Illusion!” is a springy diving board poised over a deep pool of thought. Find one you like the looks of, bounce a bit, then plunge in.

Michael Bay casts white guy in Japanese role

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 23:57:00 +0000

Apparently there aren't enough Asian actors around -- or at least none that wanted to sign on to be the newest nemesis to those lovable reptilian warriors, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. None? Apparently not, because the producer of the 2014 Ninja Turtles flick has now been forced to whitewash the part of Shredder (aka Oruku Saki.) After weeks of speculation, it's been confirmed that the part will be filled by William Fichtner, whom by now we've established as a serial villainous role-grabber.

A.V. Club reports:

Having apparently determined that no Japanese actors would dare be a part of the Jonathan Liebesman-directed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, presumably given the original text’s importance to the Shinto religion, producer Michael Bay has been forced to make a decision regarding the reboot of a nostalgia property that will potentially upset people, just this one time.

Must do’s: What we like this week

Sat, 22 Jun 2013 14:00:00 +0000

BOOKS

Neil Gaiman's novels are covers between which mythical creatures and beleaguered protagonists live and interact amid supernatural plots often dealing with youth and struggle. The fairy tale-esque character of his modern adult fantasies lightly masks "the intelligible message that can be derived from it," writes Laura Miller.

Gaiman’s first novel for adults in eight years, “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” would seem to follow this pattern; most of the action, recounted in the first person, describes the experiences of a nameless 7-year-old boy. But “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” does feel different, and not only because of its framing device. The novel begins and ends with the narrator, now an adult, returning to the English village where he grew up, for a family funeral. (The deceased is never identified, but there are hints it is the man’s father.) We learn that he’s been married and separated, that he is a working artist, that he has grown children. When he looks back on the strange events of his childhood, it is through the mellowed and slightly melancholy lens of middle-age. What the story sacrifices of the sweet, glassy purity of a child’s view, it compensates for with the complex sepia of maturity; it’s the difference between a bright young white wine and a well-aged burgundy.

Cafe noise boosts productivity

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 21:32:00 +0000

There's a reason your favorite coffeehouse is packed with patrons wielding laptop computers, and it has nothing to do with free wi-fi. Studies suggest that working amid clinking cups and light crowd-chatter increases productivity and enables us to think outside the box. But for those who can't afford to languish all day over $5 cups of joe, one web start-up is bringing the coffee-shop experience to your kitchen (or cubicle) with a free digital soundtrack that simulates café noise.

From the New York Times:

Must do’s: What we like this week

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 14:00:00 +0000

BOOKS

Following the trail of the coquettish Lillian Leitzel, the "World’s Most Marvelous Gymnast,” and her gravity-defying partner, Alfredo Codona, "Queen of the Air" is an irresistible romantic biography of the Brad and Angelina of the Big Top, writes Laura Miller.

Jensen knows how to tell this story, with just the right degree of old-timey melodrama. Here’s how he describes an argument during the long years when Codona drove himself to perfect the Triple: His father and brother “begged him to abandon his quest for the feat before it killed him or, worse, left him such a pathetic cripple that he would be belted into a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Codona could not be persuaded.” In counterpoint, he pulls back the curtains concealing the brutality of the performer’s lot: celebrated and fawned over one year, forced by an accident to work as an auto mechanic the next. Leitzel was surrounded by admirers and showered with gifts, but before going to bed every night she injected caffeine into her shoulder socket to tame the “pulsating, and some nights, hammering pain.” Unlike even the most battered professional athletes, she performed twice a day, every day during the circus’ season, and on off-season gigs in Europe.

The week in 10 pics

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

From chemical gas explosions to explosive protests in São Paulo, a look at the week's most enduring images

New York restaurant bans tips — for wait staff’s own good

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 21:28:00 +0000

If you've ever worked in a restaurant -- and nearly half of all adults have at least once during their life -- you're probably familiar with stingy bosses who pay less per hour than the price of the subway ride to work. But in a volatile industry, where servers experience triple the poverty rate of the whole workforce, one restaurant in New York seeks to stamp out unlivable wages and exploitation -- by getting rid of tips.

This may sound counterintuitive until you learn that Sushi Yasuda, an upscale joint in midtown Manhattan, has opted to provide its staff with a decent salary and benefits package that includes vacation days, sick leave and health insurance. Instead of a tip line, the restaurant notifies their patrons at the bottom of the check:

"Following the custom in Japan, Sushi Yasuda’s service staff are fully compensated by their salary. Therefore gratuities are not accepted."

Cyborg cockroaches are coming

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 22:15:00 +0000

A wise bard once said: "You're afraid of bugs? Get a bug." Now thanks to a Kickstarter program from Backyard Brains, the mad neuroscientists that brought you a Twitter-manipulated cockroach last year, you may be able to control that bug's mind. Their latest "educational" experiment is called RoboRoach — an electric nerve-controlling mechanism that allows you to steer roaches around your kitchen floor with an iPhone. From its Kickstarter page, launched this morning:

Must do’s: What we like this week

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 14:00:00 +0000

BOOKS

Rachel Kushner has simultaneously stunned and scared male critics with her "virtuosic" new novel about a young woman named Reno navigating the 1970s New York art scene. "The Flamethrowers" is a bold contender for the Great American Novel, writes Laura Miller:

But the boldness of this novel has more to do with its voice than its subject matter; you get a heaping serving of Kushner’s virtuosity in the opening chapters, which describe Reno’s journey back west by motorcycle, as part of a nebulous art project. I could present samples of her writing here, but better yet, just see James Wood’s nearly gobstruck review of “The Flamethrowers” in the New Yorker; he is the maestro of the representative quote, after all. He does a good job of what may be an impossible task. It is fiendishly hard to nail down and demonstrate the quality that most distinguishes the work of a remarkable author — that is, her authority. Kushner has authority in spades, seemingly without reaching for it, as if she were just born that way.