Another Pale Blue Dot: 09/09/07

An animated tribute to the internet people of the world, wherever you may be. Animated by Dan Meth, with music by Dan Meth and Micah Frank.

Emergency in Darfur, vid

"Darfur, Sudan is being called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. Tens of thousands of people have died. Two million more have been forced to flee their homes and livelihoods. For these innocent civilians, living on the edge of survival, their only hope is the dwindling number of humanitarian organizations willing to risk the dangers on the ground in Darfur to provide relief. International Medical Corps was one of the first relief organizations to arrive on the scene in Darfur, and remains there to this day. "

Pangea Day

On May 10, 2008 -- Pangea Day -- sites in New York City, Rio, London, Dharamsala, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Kigali will be videoconferenced live to the world in a 4-hour program of powerful films, visionary speakers, and uplifting music.

YouTube - Pangea Day Needs Your Videos!: ""

Send fake email

Learn how to send your own fake email
So, you want to learn how to send your own fake mail? It's extraordinarily easy to do, and requires no extra software installed on your PC at all. It can be done with Windows, Macintosh, Linux - any modern PC that has an internet connection will do it.
There are a just a few simple steps. First, you'll need to decide on the FROM and the TO email addresses. If the FROM address that you're choosing isn't a real one, make sure that the domain name (the bit after the @ sign) is a real one. If it's not a real one, it almost certainly won't work.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we'll be sending from bush@whitehouse.gov to dummy@deadfake.com.
Second, you'll need to find out the mail server that your recipient is using.
Click Start, Run, enter "CMD", then presss OK. In the window that comes up, type nslookup -q=MX deadfake.com
Go to Applications, Utilities, and choose Terminal. In the window that comes up, type nslookup -q=MX deadfake.com
Bring up your favourite shell, and type nslookup -q=MX deadfake.com
There will be a lot of information on the screen - all you need to look for is a line that talks about a mail exchanger. If there are several, pick the one with the lowest "preference number". deadfake.com MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail.deadfake.com
Now, you'll need to connect to this mail exchanger using telnet. This is the same for any PC, but Vista users may not have it installed by default - see this note about getting telnet on Vista before you continue. When you're ready, type: telnet mail.deadfake.com 25

Press enter, and after a short pause, you should see a welcome message from the server.

Send your own fake mail - part 2
Ok, so now you're connected. You need to enter the following information - press ENTER at each new line. You won't be able to press backspace to delete a mistake, so you'll need to type everything correctly first time!HELO whitehouse.govThis tells the mail server that we are "whitehouse.gov". MAIL FROM: This tells the server who is sending the mail. RCPT TO: This tells the server who to deliver the mail to. At this point, if the recipient doesn't exist, you may see a warning message (but not always). DATAThis tells the server that we're ready to start writing our message. It should acknowledge, telling you to end your message with a full stop (period) on a single line. All we need to do now, is write our message and don't forget that full stop at the end. Hello dummy@deadfake, I managed to send a fake mail all by myself!
.
Dont forget that last dot. When you've done that, and pressed enter, simply enter QUIT and your mail should be delivered.
There's a little bit more to it, of course. You'll need to enter proper "headers" if you want the mail to look more believable. After doing the DATA command, I'd recommend pasting in the following "headers" to make sure it looks realistic when viewed in Outlook, Hotmail, etc.

Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2007 12:49:13 +0100 (BST)
From: George W Bush
To: Poor Sod
Subject: Fake mail
Hello dummy@deadfake, I managed to send a fake mail all by myself!
.
And that's all there is to it.

Frequently Asked Questions
Does the email really look anonymous
Is this traceable?
Will it always work?
Couldn't spammers use this?
This is so easy, I could do it myself
How can I link directly to the send form?
Who made that wicked template?
Does the email really look anonymous?Absolutely! The easiest way to check of course is to send a fake mail to yourself! Send one right now and see how real it looks! Update: Due to some naughty people, I've now added a footer at the bottom of each message specifying that the message was actually a prank. Sorry.
Is this traceable?Sort of. Nothing on the internet is really anonymous. If you do something that you really shouldn't, there are probably going to be ways and means of finding you. So be good, and use it for mischief, not malice.
For you geeks out there: just to let you know that the mailer adds an X-Mailer attribute to the message header indicating the message origin, and an X-Originating-Ip (a real one). I could leave both out, or falsify them, but it's hard enough to get mail delivered without doing that too!
Will it always work?Almost always. But some mail servers are more strict than others, and do checks to get around this sort of thing. In this case, you'll need to find a more sophisticated way to play your prank!
Couldn't spammers use this?No! The email sending page is protected by a CAPTCHA. This is an image that spammers' software can't understand, but humans can. It's used all over the internet and is very effective. Nevertheless, if you have any reason to suspect that spam is being sent through this service, get in touch ASAP!
This is so easy, I could do it myselfSure - anyone can, it's pretty easy. But if you're not technically minded, do you really want to learn about MX lookups, SMTP commands, etc? Of course not. That's why this site is here.
How can I link directly to the send form?Just use the following link. Note that you can't use the @ sign directly - you have to change it to %40 for it to work in a link. Also, any spaces should be changed into %20 Then, all you need to do is change the to, from, and subject lines to whatever you'd like!:http://deadfake.com/Send.aspx?to=bob%40example.com&from=alice%40example.com&subject=Hello&body=This%20is%20the%20body Be sure to change the addresses, subject and body to the values that you want to use.

Send fake email

Sun Tzu - The Art of War

(ebook - pdf - military history) sun tzu - the art of war: " "

Art Of Deception - Kevin Mitnick

Kevin Mitnick - Art Of Deception: " "

A Short History of Nearly Everything-Bill Bryson

"Description: As the title suggests, bestselling author Bryson sets out to put his irrepressible stamp on all things under the sun. As he states, this is a book about life, the universe and everything, from the Big Bang to the ascendancy of Homo sapiens. 'This is a book about how it happened,' the author writes."

A Short History of Nearly Everything-Bill Bryson:

Stephen Hawking - A Brief History Of Time

Da Vinci's Artwork

Da Vinci\'s Artwork: " "

On Quantum Mechanics & Consciousness

"Description: How the quantum system affects our everyday reality; addresses psychology, neurophysiology, history, physics, intellectual trends in the past 400 years, eastern religions, dreams, synchronicities, & much more. This paper sheds light on the big questions, & leaves you to decide for yourself... "

On Quantum Mechanics & Consciousness:

The Machinery of the Mind - Dion Fortune

Dion Fortune - The Machinery of the Mind

The Control Book

Psychology - How To Control Your Brain At Will

Psychology - How To Control Your Brain At Will: " "

Relationships - Intuitive Sex, Andrew Levitt-Jackson

Relationships - Andrew Levitt-Jackson - Intuitive Sex - The Subtle Art Of No Pressure Seduction: " "

Pictures Twin Towers on 9-11

Who has the oil ?

Iceberg Collision - rare footage

Unexpected collision with an iceberg in Antarctica - rare footage

Iceberg Collapsing off Battle Harbour, Labrador

Iceberg collapses off the National Historic District of Battle Harbour, Labrador. Filmed by Mike Earle of the Battle Harbour Historic Trust.

2004, 9.1 Sumatra earthquake

Footage of the 9.1 earthquake of Dec. 26, 2004 off the coast of Northern Sumatra and the ensuing tsunami.

San Francisco 1905 footage

In 1905, an unknown cameraman filmed a streetcar trip along San Francisco's Market Street. The following year, the Great Earthquake struck, and he filmed the trip again. This is a five-minute silent film that edits together excerpts of his two films. Footage from the Prelinger Archives, edited by Matt Lake.

San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906 footage

The California earthquake of April 18, 1906 ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time. Today, its importance comes more from the wealth of scientific knowledge derived from it than from its sheer size. Rupturing the northernmost 296 miles (477 kilometers) of the San Andreas fault from northwest of San Juan Bautista to the triple junction at Cape Mendocino, the earthquake confounded contemporary geologists with its large, horizontal displacements and great rupture length. Indeed, the significance of the fault and recognition of its large cumulative offset would not be fully appreciated until the advent of plate tectonics more than half a century later. Analysis of the 1906 displacements and strain in the surrounding crust led Reid (1910) to formulate his elastic-rebound theory of the earthquake source, which remains today the principal model of the earthquake cycle.

This footage is some of the earliest known from a natural disaster. Edison newsreels of San Francisco earthquake / falling buildings / taking away the hurt / troops marching along Van Ness Avenue with relief supplies / pan views of the destruction 1906 Earthquake.

Earth and Future Earth, Animation

An orbital view of Planet Earth and a hypothetical view of what the planet surface may look like in years to come.

Moon video. Planes crossing field of view

This video shows the moon crossing the telescope's field of view and then suddenly, at the 2:05 mark, a jet plane crosses.

Foucault's pendulum

COSI Science Center. The pendulum at COSI is a visitor favorite. It demonstrates that the Earth rotates at 790 mph! Science shows that as the Earth moves, it carries COSI with it, and COSI carries the pendulum, giving the illusion that the pendulum is moving in a circle.

Last year when scientists mounted a pendulum above the South Pole and watched it swing, they were replicating a celebrated demonstration performed in Paris in 1851. Using a steel wire 220 feet long, the French scientist Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault suspended a 62-pound iron ball from the dome of the Panthéon and set it in motion, rocking back and forth. To mark its progress he attached a stylus to the ball and placed a ring of damp sand on the floor below.
The audience watched in awe as the pendulum inexplicably appeared to rotate, leaving a slightly different trace with each swing. Actually it was the floor of the Panthéon that was slowly moving, and Foucault had shown, more convincingly than ever, that the earth revolves on its axis. At the latitude of Paris, the pendulum's path would complete a full clockwise rotation every 30 hours; on the Southern Hemisphere it would rotate counterclockwise, and on the Equator it wouldn't revolve at all. At the South Pole, as the modern-day scientists confirmed, the period of rotation is 24 hours.
The swing of Foucault's pendulum depends on the way we set it into the motion. If we set the pendulum in motion by a short push at the position of equilibrium it will swing as it is shown in animation. Actually the speed of the pendulum in the extreme positions is the speed of the earth rotation in the point of observation.

De slinger van Foucault in het Panthéon te Paris

Google Privacy Rules - Google's explanation

Google talks about what information we collect when you use our search engine and the steps we've taken to protect it. In future videos, we'll talk about why Google keeps logs, what information we record when you're signed into a Google account and steps you can take to increase your privacy when surfing online.

Search engines and personal privacy - invading our space?

Big controversy over personal privacy using code on your computer to track search requests, and enable a personal profile to be built up. This means that search results and advertising can be targeted to the individual person using a web browser. Search engine cookies from engines like Google had been set in the past to remain active for more than a decade. Under pressure from the EU, Google recently announced that the two years of user history they keep would be reduced to 18 months. Expect pressure to continue for personal opt out boxes enabling search engine users to block personal data from being stored. Expect search engines to push back perhaps by only allowing the fullest search results for those who give personal data to be stored. As it is they will claim (correctly) that personal history is vital to make the results as relevant as possible. Expect big civil rights debates and worries about invasion of personal life by security agencies. Comment by Dr Patrick Dixon, futurist, leading authority on global trends and conference speaker.

Search Google In Privacy

First Movies ever made, Late 1800

These are some of the very first movies ever made. These came from the Library of Congress. "I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion ...."
--Thomas A. Edison, 1888
Edison's laboratory was responsible for the invention of the Kinetograph (a motion picture camera) and the Kinetoscope (a peep-hole motion picture viewer). Motion pictures became a successful entertainment industry in less than a decade, with single-viewer Kinetoscopes giving way to films projected for mass audiences.

Picture Shuttle Plume Shadow Points to Moon

Shuttle Plume Shadow Points to Moon APOD: 2007 June 3 -
Credit: Pat McCracken, NASA
Explanation: Why would the shadow of a space shuttle launch plume point toward the Moon? In early 2001 during a launch of Atlantis, the Sun, Earth, Moon, and rocket were all properly aligned for this photogenic coincidence. First, for the space shuttle's plume to cast a long shadow, the time of day must be either near sunrise or sunset. Next, just at sunset, the shadow is the longest and extends all the way to the horizon. Finally, during a Full Moon, the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the sky. Just after sunset, for example, the Sun is slightly below the horizon, and, in the other direction, the Moon is slightly above the horizon. Therefore, as Atlantis blasted off, just after sunset, its shadow projected away from the Sun toward the opposite horizon, where the Full Moon just happened to be.

APOD: 2007 June 3 - Shuttle Plume Shadow Points to Moon

David Deutsch: What is our place in the cosmos?

Legendary physicist David Deutsch back-burners the work for which he's best known -- quantum physics, quantum computing, the many-worlds theory -- to discuss a more basic topic: how to think about our species' significance in the universe. Far from being simply "chemical scum," we have the ability to gain knowledge, the importance of which he illustrates in spectacular manner. As a result, he says, we are always equipped to solve problems (including global warming). The brain contains the tools we need: knowledge, reason and creativity. It's a thrilling, and profoundly optimistic argument.

Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence

Linguist Steven Pinker questions the very nature of our thoughts -- the way we use words, how we learn, and how we relate to others. In his best-selling books, he has brought sophisticated language analysis to bear on topics of wide general interest.
In a preview of his next book, Steven Pinker takes on violence. We live in violent times, an era of heightened warfare, genocide and senseless crime. Or so we've come to believe. Pinker charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and says modern society has a little less to feel guilty about.

Landing in Honduras

What A Pilot!! - The best home videos are here

Lucy (Australopithecus)

Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton discovered on November 30, 1974 by the International Afar Research Expedition (IARE; director: Maurice Taieb, co-directors: Donald Johanson and Yves Coppens) in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression. Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago.

2060: Sir Isaac Newton’s doomsday date

Cambridge University calls him “one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time” and “the founding examplar of modern physical science”. Therefore, when Sir Issac Newton calculates the date on which the world will end, one is inclined to trust his math. (He was, after all, the incumbent of Cambridge’s Lucasian Chair of Mathematics.) Newton mentioned his calculated doomsday date, 2060, in a letter recently put on display in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, Fate magazine reported in its August issue.
The letter, however, is not the work of Newton as a scientist, but rather an expample of his theological scholarship. He arrived at the 2060 date by working from verses in the Bible’s Book of Daniel, arguing the world would end 1,260 years after the AD 800 foundation of the Holy Roman Empire in Western Europe.
He was apparently as confident of his predictions in this realm as he was in the rational world of science. As reported in This Is London, Newton’s letter states the “Bible proved the world would end in 2060.” Adding a helpful note of eqivocation, “It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner.”
Apparently the reason he set to solve the problem was to debunk various end-timers during his own era. He wrote: “This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.”
Despite his genius, Newton did not have the final word on the apocalypse. At least not yet. The Interactive Bible offers a list of 220 past, present and future end-of-the-world prophecies, most of which have turned out to be “rash conjectures of fanciful men.”
We’ll find out if Newton was as good at religious prophecy as he was at physics in 53 years. Unless, of course, the Mayans were right all along and we only make it to 2012.
The exhibition entitled “Newton’s Secrets,” is part of an array of papers of the British scientist bequeathed to the Jerusalem University by a wealthy collector of scientific manuscripts. The Newton letter has been in the possession of Israel’s National library since 1969. This is the letter’s first public display.

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