The Daily Drift

It's Xmas Eve

Some of our readers today have been in:

Phuket, Thailand

Aguadilla, Puerto Rico

Kangar, Malaysia

Cainta, Philippines

Waterloo, Canada

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Cairo, Egypt

Cape Town, South Africa

Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia

San Jose, Costa Rica

Izmit, Turkey

George Town, Malaysia

Lahore, Pakistan

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Puchong, Malaysia

Sampaloc, Philippines

Belgrade, Serbia

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Doha, Qatar

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Bangkok, Thailand

Bangi, Malaysia

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei

Bekasi, Indonesia

Ampang, Malaysia

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Minsk, Belarus

Bayan Lepas, Malaysia

Ankara, Turkey

Hanoi, Vietnam

Today is Xmas Eve

 We are posting a minimum number of posts over the next few days so that the editors and staff can celebrate the various holidays and festivals occurring right now.  

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

Today in History

1638		The Ottomans under Murad IV recapture Baghdad from Safavid Persia.
1812		Joel Barlow, aged 58, American poet and lawyer, dies from exposure near Vilna, Poland, during Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Barlow was on a diplomatic mission to the emperor for President Madison.
1814		A treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, ending the War of 1812, is signed at Ghent, Belgium. The news does not reach the United States until two weeks later (after the decisive American victory at New Orleans).
1861		The USS Gem of the Sea destroys the British blockade runner Prince of Wales off the coast at Georgetown, S.C.
1862		A Christmas present arrives a day early for the Federal troops at Columbus, Kentucky, in the way of artillery on board the USS New Era.
1914		Over 577,000 Allied soldiers are to spend Christmas as prisoners in Germany.
1917		The Kaiser warns Russia that he will use "iron fist" and "shining sword" if peace is spurned.
1943		General Dwight D. Eisenhower is appointed the Allied Supreme Commander, even though almost everyone believed the position would go to American Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.
1947		An estimated 20,000 communists, led by guerrilla General Markos Vafthiades proclaim the Free Greek Government in northern Greece. They issue a call to arms to establish the regime throughout the nation.
1956		African Americans defy a city law in Tallahassee, Florida, and occupy front bus seats.
1963		New York's Idlewild Airport is renamed JFK Airport in honor of the murdered President Kennedy.
1964		The U.S. headquarters in Saigon is hit by a bomb killing two officers.
1966		A Soviet research vehicle soft-lands on the moon.
1967		The Greek Junta frees ex-Premier Papandreou.
1968		The first pictures of an Earth-rise over the moon are seen as the crew of Apollo 8 orbits the moon.
1970		Nine GIs are killed and nine are wounded by friendly fire in Vietnam.
1972		Hanoi bars all peace talks with the United States until U.S. air raids over North Vietnam stop.
1974		An oil tanker's spill pollutes 1,600 square miles of Japan's Inland Sea.

Non Sequitur

Oxlajuj Baktun

 "End of an Era, More of the Same," photo essay by James Rodriguez

James Rodriguez, a brave and talented photojournalist in Guatemala, has a striking photo-essay up on his blog.

On this occasion I share a photo essay documenting events in the Guatemalan northern city of Huehuetenango during the much-awaited end of the Mayan Oxlajuj Baktun. These provide a clear reflection of the divisions and challenges faced by Mayan communities today. The media exploited erroneous apocalyptic rumors, the government and business sectors viewed it as an opportunity to gain economically through tourism, and progressive groups seized the opportunity “to strengthen ancestral wisdom and never-ending search for balance” while vindicating what seem never-ending struggles for justice, inclusion, and self-determination.

View the full essay here. Photo editors, you can license the pics (and support his work) here. Below, Anselma states: “I think it was the foreigners who invented this whole end-of-the-world scenario so they could make movies and profit from it.”

Mayan Priests denied access to Guatemala ceremonial sites

The Guatemalan gov't. Tourism board's "official" Oxlajuj Baktun celebration(with modification).

At Global Voices, Renata Avila writes about how indigenous practitioners of traditional Maya spiritual practices were once again marginalized on the day where it seemed everyone in the world was talking about "ancient Mayan beliefs." What a crock and an outrage.

Guatemala, the heart of Mayan culture, has started their festivities for the 13 Baktun - the last cycle of the Mayan calendar, due to end on Friday, December 21, 2012. But sadly the celebrations were dominated by staged government shows which were neither led nor shared by indigenous communities or spiritual leaders.
On stage, non-indigenous peoples were wearing indigenous clothes in a folklore show while non-indigenous attendees from the Guatemalan elites were in the most important ceremonial Mayan center, Tikal, waiting for the new era to arrive. Indigenous peoples were left outside, were they were demonstrating, playing the traditional instrument marimba.

Racism against the indigenous population is rampant in Guatemala, where previous governments waged what was effectively a 36-year civil war against rural Maya. Current president Otto Pérez Molina is a former military officer charged with genocide and torture during that war.
"Institutional, interpersonal, and structural racism" are reflected in the exclusions reflected in the new Mayan era celebrations, Renata continues.
"Let's hope the Mayan priests will be allowed in and celebrate according their traditions and beliefs on the following days, as the festivities end on December 30 and that their voices and demands are finally heard by the international community."

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Telepresence robots let employees 'beam' into work

Engineer Dallas Goecker attends meetings, jokes with colleagues and roams the office building just like other employees at his company in Silicon Valley.

But Goecker isn't in California. He's more than 2,300 miles away, working at home in Seymour, Indiana.

It's all made possible by the Beam — a mobile video-conferencing machine that he can drive around his company's offices and workshops in Palo Alto. The five-foot-tall device, topped with a large video screen, gives him a physical presence that makes him and his colleagues feel like he's actually there.

"This gives you that casual interaction that you're used to at work," Goecker said, speaking on a Beam. "I'm sitting in my desk area with everybody else. I'm part of their conversations and their socializing."

Suitable Technologies, which makes the Beam, is now one of more than a dozen companies that sell so-called telepresence robots. These remote-controlled machines are equipped with video cameras, speakers, microphones and wheels that allow users to see, hear, talk and "walk" in faraway locations.

More and more employees are working remotely, thanks to computers, smartphones, email, instant messaging and video-conferencing. But those technologies are no substitute for actually being in the office, where casual face-to-face conversations allow for easy collaboration and camaraderie.

Telepresence-robot makers are trying to bridge that gap with wheeled machines — controlled over wireless Internet connections — that give remote workers a physical presence in the workplace.
These robotic stand-ins are still a long way from going mainstream, with only a small number of organizations starting to use them. The machines can be expensive, difficult to navigate or even get stuck if they venture into areas with poor Internet connectivity. Stairs can be lethal, and non-techies might find them too strange to use regularly.
"There are still a lot of questions, but I think the potential is really great," said Pamela Hinds, co-director of Stanford University's Center on Work, Technology, & Organization. "I don't think face-to-face is going away, but the question is, how much face-to-face can be replaced by this technology?"
Technology watchers say these machines — sometimes called remote presence devices — could be used for many purposes. They could let managers inspect overseas factories, salespeople greet store customers, family members check on elderly relatives or art lovers to tour foreign museums.
Some physicians are already seeing patients in remote hospitals with the RP-VITA robot co-developed by Santa-Barbara, Calif.,-based InTouch Health and iRobot, the Bedford, Mass.,-based maker of the Roomba vacuum.
The global market for telepresence robots is projected to reach $13 billion by 2017, said Philip Solis, research director for emerging technologies at ABI Research.
The robots have attracted the attention of Russian venture capitalist Dimitry Grishin, who runs a $25 million fund that invests in early-stage robotics companies.
"It's difficult to predict how big it will be, but I definitely see a lot of opportunity," Grishin said. "Eventually it can be in each home and each office."

His Grishin Robotics fund recently invested $250,000 in a startup called Double Robotics. The Sunnyvale, Calif.,-company started selling a Segway-like device called the Double that holds an Apple iPad, which has a built-in video-conferencing system called FaceTime. The Double can be controlled remotely from an iPad or iPhone.

So far, Double Robotics has sold more than 800 units that cost $1,999 each, said co-founder Mark DeVidts.
The Beam got its start as a side project at Willow Garage, a robotics company in Menlo Park where Goecker worked as an engineer.
A few years ago, he moved back to his native Indiana to raise his family, but he found it difficult to collaborate with engineering colleagues using existing video-conferencing systems.
"I was struggling with really being part of the team," Goecker said. "They were doing all sorts of wonderful things with robotics. It was hard for me to participate."
So Goecker and his colleagues created their own telepresence robot. The result: the Beam and a new company to develop and market it.
At $16,000 each, the Beam isn't cheap. But Suitable Technologies says it was designed with features that make "pilots" and "locals" feel the remote worker is physically in the room: powerful speakers, highly sensitive microphones and robust wireless connectivity.
The company began shipping Beams last month, mostly to tech companies with widely dispersed engineering teams, officials said.

"Being there in person is really complicated — commuting there, flying there, all the different ways people have to get there. Beam allows you to be there without all that hassle," said CEO Scott Hassan, beaming in from his office at Willow Garage in nearby Menlo Park.

Not surprisingly, Suitable Technologies has fully embraced the Beam as a workplace tool. On any given day, up to half of its 25 employees "beam" into work, with employees on Beams sitting next to their flesh-and-blood colleagues and even joining them for lunch in the cafeteria.

Software engineer Josh Faust beams in daily from Hawaii, where he moved to surf, and plans to spend the winter hitting the slopes in Lake Tahoe. He can't play ping-pong or eat the free, catered lunches in Palo Alto, but he otherwise feels like he's part of the team.

"I'm trying to figure out where exactly I want to live. This allows me to do that without any of the instability of trying to find a different job," Faust said, speaking on a Beam from Kaanapali, Hawaii. "It's pretty amazing."

Boeing engineers use spuds to improve in-air Wi-Fi

 If the wireless Internet connection during your holiday flight seems more reliable than it used to, you could have the humble potato to thank.

While major airlines offer in-flight Wi-Fi on many flights, the signal strength can be spotty. Airlines and aircraft makers have been striving to improve this with the growing use of wireless devices and the number of people who don't want to be disconnected, even 35,000 feet up.

Engineers at Chicago-based Boeing Co. used sacks of potatoes as stand-ins for passengers as they worked to eliminate weak spots in in-flight wireless signals. They needed full planes to get accurate results during signal testing, but they couldn't ask people to sit motionless for days while data was gathered.

"That's where potatoes come into the picture," Boeing spokesman Adam Tischler said.

It turns out that potatoes — because of their water content and chemistry — absorb and reflect radio wave signals much the same way as the human body does, making them suitable substitutes for airline passengers.
"It's a testament to the ingenuity of these engineers. They didn't go in with potatoes as the plan," Tischler said.
Recapping the serendipitous path that led to better onboard wireless, Tischler said a member of the research team stumbled across an article in the Journal of Food Science describing research in which 15 vegetables and fruits were evaluated for their dielectric properties, or the way they transmit electric force without conduction.
Its conclusions led the Boeing researchers to wonder if potatoes might serve just as well as humans during their own signal testing. Despite some skepticism, they ended up buying 20,000 pounds of them.
Video and photos of the work, which started in 2006, show a decommissioned airplane loaded with row upon row of potato sacks that look like large, lumpy passengers. The sacks sit eerily still in the seats as the engineers collect data on the strength of wireless signals in various spots.

The Boeing engineers added some complicated statistical analysis and the result was a proprietary system for fine tuning Internet signals so they would be strong and reliable wherever a laptop was used on a plane.

Boeing says the system also ensures Wi-Fi signals won't interfere with the plane's sensitive navigation and communications equipment.

"From a safety standpoint, you want to know what the peak signals are, what's the strongest signal one of our communications and navigation systems might see from a laptop or 150 laptops or 350 laptops," Boeing engineer Dennis Lewis explains in a video.

In a nod to the humor in using a tuber to solve a high-tech problem, researchers dubbed the project Synthetic Personnel Using Dialectic Substitution, or SPUDS.

The company says better Wi-Fi signals can be found already on three Boeing aircraft models flown by major airlines: 777, 747-8 and the 787 Dreamliner.

Animal Pictures