US government displays growing appetite for Twitter users' personal data

 

On the heels of reports that Google and Yahoo require probable-cause warrants to give authorities e-mail and cloud-stored content belonging to users, "despite federal law not always demanding that," Twitter said today that only 19 percent of federal and state government requests for user data were accompanied by probable-cause search warrants during the six months ending in December 2012. David Kravets at Wired News has more. During that period, there were 815 demands for Twitter account-holder data.
"Twitter did not say what type of user data was sought in those 815 requests," explains Kravets, "but it likely includes a mixture of e-mail addresses associated with accounts, IP logs, tweets and direct messages."

Talking to Reporters Is Not A Crime: new leak investigation threatens press freedom in US

At the The Freedom of the Press Foundation blog, Trevor Timm digs deeper into disturbing news (covered here in Saturday’s Washington Post) of an FBI investigation of a large number of government officials suspected of leaking classified information to the press, which "engulfs an unknown group of reporters," along the way. Trevor writes, "The investigation includes data-mining officials’ personal and professional communications to find any contact with journalists. Just to be clear: It seems officials are being targeted for just talking to the press."

Why Do Our Voices Sound Different To Us Than To Other People?

For many of us, there are few things more painful than hearing a recording of our own voices. They don't sound like we think they should. They're tinnier, higher and just not right. The tape doesn't lie, though, and the way we think we sound isn't how we really sound to everyone else. This is a cruel trick that happens because of the ways that sounds can travel to our inner ear.

Twenty-Seven Of History's Strangest Inventions

'If at first an idea is not absurd,' Albert Einstein famously said, 'then there is no hope for it.' Sometimes, however, absurd is just absurd - yet, even so, it's a fascinating slice of history's collective direction of curiosity and experimental innovation.

After those vintage versions of modern social media and yesteryear's visions for the future of technology, here come some of history's most weird and wonderful inventions, from wooden swimwear to spectacles for reading in bed, captured in archival public domain images by the Netherland's National Archive.

The Earliest Seal of the President of the United States

When you watch a President of the United States give a formal speech, you'll probably see a plaque bearing the Presidential seal on the podium. This was not always so. In 1850, President Millard Fillmore thought that the office of the President should have its own seal, so he sketched out this design and sent it to Edward Stabler, a sealmaker:

The heavy lifting was definitely done by Stabler. Born in Maryland in 1794, Edward Stabler was self-taught and began his career engraving jewelry at the age of 16.  By the time he retired in 1863, Stabler had designed seals for nearly every department in the Federal Government, several states, cities, and many businesses.

Read more about the history of the Presidential seal here.

Humble nickel from 1913 likely to fetch millions

 

A humble 5-cent coin with a storied past is headed to auction and bidding expected to top $2 million a century after it was mysteriously minted.

The 1913 Liberty Head nickel is one of only five known to exist, but it's the coin's back story that adds to its cachet: It was surreptitiously and illegally cast, discovered in a car wreck that killed its owner, declared a fake, forgotten in a closet for decades and then found to be the real deal.

It all adds up to an expected sale of $2.5 million or more when it goes on the auction block April 25 in suburban Chicago.

"Basically a coin with a story and a rarity will trump everything else," said Douglas Mudd, curator of the American Numismatic Association Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colo., which has held the coin for most of the past 10 years. He expects it could fetch more than Heritage Auction's estimate, perhaps $4 million and even up to $5 million.

"A lot of this is ego," he said of collectors who could bid for it. "I have one of these and nobody else does."
The sellers who will split the money equally are four Virginia siblings who never let the coin slip from their hands, even when it was deemed a fake.
The nickel made its debut in a most unusual way. It was struck at the Philadelphia mint in late 1912, the final year of its issue, but with the year 1913 cast on its face — the same year the beloved Buffalo Head nickel was introduced.

Mudd said a mint worker named Samuel W. Brown is suspected of producing the coin and altering the die to add the bogus date.

The coins' existence weren't known until Brown offered them for sale at the American Numismatic Association Convention in Chicago in 1920, beyond the statute of limitations. The five remained together under various owners until the set was broken up in 1942.

A North Carolina collector, George O. Walton, purchased one of the coins in the mid-1940s for a reported $3,750. The coin was with him when he was killed in a car crash on March 9, 1962, and it was found among hundreds of coins scattered at the crash site.

One of Walton's heirs, his sister Melva Givens of Salem, Va., was given the 1913 Liberty nickel after experts declared the coin a fake because of suspicions the date had been altered. The flaw probably happened because of Brown's imprecise work casting the planchet — the copper and nickel blank disc used to create the coin.

"For whatever reason, she ended up with the coin," her daughter, Cheryl Myers, said.

Melva Givens put the coin in an envelope and stuck it in a closet, where it stayed for the next 30 years until her death in 1992.

The coin caught the curiosity of Cheryl Myers' brother, Ryan, the executor of his mother's estate. "He'd take it out and look at it for long periods of time," she said.
Ryan Myers said a family attorney had heard of the famous 1913 Liberty nickels and asked if he could see the Walton. "He looked at it and he told me he'd give me $5,000 for it right there," he said, declining an offer he could not accept without his siblings' approval.
Finally, they brought the coin to the 2003 American Numismatic Association World's Fair of Money in Baltimore, where the four surviving 1913 Liberty nickels were being exhibited. A team of rare coin experts concluded it was the long-missing fifth coin. Each shared a small imperfection under the date.
"The sad part is my mother had it for 30 years and she didn't know it," Cheryl Myers said. "Knowing our mother, she probably would have invested it for us. She always put her children first."
Since its authentication, the Walton nickel has been on loan to the Colorado Springs museum and has been publicly exhibited nationwide.
The coin will be up for grabs at a rare coin and currency auction.

Todd Imhof, executive vice president of Heritage, said the nickel is likely to attract lofty bids that only a handful of coins have achieved at auction. A 1933 double eagle, a $20 gold coin, holds the U.S. record: $8 million.

Imhof expects the Walton nickel to generate some buzz.

"This is a trophy item that sort of transcends the hobby," he said. "It's an interesting part of American history and there are collectors who look for something like this."

Ryan Myers said he's not keen on selling the nickel.

"First of all, it had been in the family for so long," he said. "It's not like something you found in a flea market or something you just found."

Cheryl Myers said they're often asked why they held on to the coin for a decade after they learned it was authentic instead of immediately cashing it in.

"It was righting a 40-year-old wrong," she wrote in an email. By allowing the American Numismatic Museum to display it for the past decade, it was honoring Walton's wishes.

"It has been quite a ride," she said.

Experts find new evidence in submarine mystery

 

Researchers say they may have the final clues needed to solve the mystery of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, which never resurfaced after it became the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship, taking its eight-man crew to a watery grave.

Scientists said Monday that the Hunley apparently was less than 20 feet away from the Housatonic when the crew ignited a torpedo that sank the Union blockade ship off South Carolina in 1864. That means it may have been close enough for the crew to be knocked unconscious by the explosion, long enough that they may have died before awakening.

For years, historians thought the Hunley was much farther away and had speculated the crew ran out of air before they were able to return to shore.

The discovery was based on a recent examination of the spar — the iron pole in front of the hand-cranked sub that held the torpedo.

The Hunley, built in Mobile, Ala., and deployed off Charleston in an attempt to break the Union blockade during the Civil War, was finally found in 1995. It was raised five years later and brought to a lab in North Charleston, where it is being conserved.

Conservator Paul Mardikian had to remove material crusted onto one end of the spar after 150 years at the bottom of the ocean. Beneath the muck he found evidence of a cooper sleeve. The sleeve is in keeping with a diagram of the purported design of a Hunley torpedo that a Union general acquired after the war and is in the National Archives in Washington.

"The sleeve is an indication the torpedo was attached to the end of the spar," Mardikian said. He said the rest of the 16-foot spar shows deformities in keeping with it being bent during an explosion.

Now it may be that the crew, found at their seats when the sub was raised with no evidence of an attempt to abandon ship, may have been knocked out by the concussion of an explosion so close by, said Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell, a member of the South Carolina Hunley Commission.

"I think the focus now goes down to the seconds and minutes around the attack on the Housatonic," he said. "Did the crew get knocked out? Did some of them get knocked out? Did it cause rivets to come loose and the water rush into the hull?"

The final answers will come when scientists begin to remove encrustations from the outer hull, a process that will begin later this year. McConnell said scientists will also arrange to have a computer simulation of the attack created based on the new information. The simulation might be able to tell what effect the explosion would have on the nearby sub.

Maria Jacobsen, the senior archaeologist on the project, said small models might also be used to recreate the attack.

Ironically, the crucial information was literally at the feet of scientists for years.
The spar has long been on display to the public in a case at Clemson University's Warren Lasch Conservation Lab where the Hunley is being conserved. With other priorities on the sub itself, it wasn't until last fall that Mardikian began the slow work of removing encrustations from the spar.
Scientists X-rayed the spar early on and found the denser material that proved to be the cooper sleeve. But Jacobsen said it had long been thought it was some sort of device to release the torpedo itself.
Finding evidence of the attached torpedo is "not only extremely unexpected, it's extremely critical," she said. "What we know now is the weapons system exploded at the end of the spar. That is very, very significant."

Library hopes to encourage more people to borrow books by holding pole dancing class

A pole dancing class is being held in a library in a bid to get more people to borrow books. The idea is aimed at encouraging people to visit their local library as part of “Love your Library Day” on Saturday February 2. Pole dance instructor Nikki Clark will offer a free, 90-minute pole fitness session on the day at Mayfield Library in Dalkeith, Midlothian.
Nikki, 33, said:  “I go to the library quite a lot and the library manager asked me about a month ago if I would be interested in doing a pole dancing lesson there – I thought it was quite funny 
to start with and I wondered how they were going to put 
it into the Love your Library Day.

“But they just want to promote the library so it’s not just for reading books – they already do small music classes for kids and arts and crafts.” Nikki, who has been pole dancing for five years, will take one pole along to the library to demonstrate moves and allow residents to have a go. And from beginners right up to the more experienced pole dancer, she said there is “a move for everyone”.

Midlothian Council said the lesson would be a one-off to capture imaginations and encourage residents to use their local libraries and borrow books. Councillor Bob Constable, Cabinet Member for Public Services and Leisure, said: “The pole fitness session is a fun and interesting way of encouraging more people into our libraries, trying out all the services on offer and ultimately borrowing more books.”

Is Bullying Cool?

Is Bullying Cool? Middle Schoolers Think So

Popular kids start rumors and fights, and they receive social rewards for doing it.

Are You Carrying the Redhead Gene?

Are You Carrying the Redhead Gene?

The recessive gene can remain hidden for generations.

Fifty Incredible Facts About Skin

Skin is not only the human body's largest organ but it's also one of the most important parts of the body because it interfaces with the environment and is the first line of defense from external factors.

And the Stupidification of America continues

Anti-Science Bills Weighed in Four States

Proposed bills could disrupt the teaching of evolution and climate change. 

Einstein Also Studied This Obscure Geological Law

Einstein Also Studied This Obscure Geological Law

Einstein also studied Baer's Law, the law that governs the erosion of rivers, and gave us his version of its mechanics.

How Much Will It Cost to Live on Mars?

How Much Will It Cost to Live on Mars?

What would it actually cost to set up a long-term home on the Red Planet? Browse this infographic to find out.

Hubble's Latest Mind Blowing Cosmic Pictures

Hubble's Latest Mind Blowing Cosmic Pictures

The aging space telescope has captured over a million views of the Universe. Here are some of our recent favorites from Hubble.

Monster Magnetic Lobes Blow From Galactic Core

Monster Magnetic Lobes Blow From Galactic Core

A previously unknown magnetic field appears to be polarizing radio emissions from two vast lobes projecting from the Milky Way's core. 

Random Photo

Lion-headed Figurine

This carved mammoth tusk, from Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany, was crafted 32,000 years ago.  It is presently among the holdings of the Ulmer Museum, with copies in four other museums in Europe and the U.S.

[It is] the oldest known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world and one of the oldest known sculptures in general. The sculpture has also been interpreted as anthropomorphic, giving human characteristics to an animal, although it may have represented a deity...

Originally, the figure was classified as male by Joachim Hahn. From examination of some additional parts of the sculpture found later, Elisabeth Schmid decided that the figure was a woman with the head of a "Höhlenlöwin" (female cave lion). Both interpretations lack scientific evidence. European cave lions, male and female, lacked the distinctive manes of the African male lion, and so its absence here cannot lead to an interpretation as a 'lioness'. Recently the ancient figurine has more often been called a lion-headed figurine, rather than a 'lion man'. The name currently used in German, Löwenmensch—meaning "lion-human"—similarly, is neutral.

The Wolf fish

The ferocious-looking wolf fish gets its name from the sharp, protruding teeth.

The wolf fish are a family, Anarhichadidae, of perciform fish. They are native to cold waters of the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, where they live on the continental shelf and slope, to depths of about 600 m (2,000 ft). They are bottom-feeders, eating hard-shelled invertebrates such as clams, echinoderms and crustaceans, which they crush with strong canine and molar teeth. The longest species, Anarrhichthys ocellatus, grows to more than 2 m (6.6 ft) in length.

There are four species in the Anarhichas family: the Northern wolf fish, the Atlantic wolf fish or sea wolf, the Spotted wolf fish, and the Bering wolf fish.

The wolf fish has a ferocious look. It can live for more than twenty years and when you meet one while diving it's very normal to get a little bit nervous.

Animal Pictures