United States copyright law protects “original works of authorship” for 70 years after the creator’s death. After that, the work enters the public domain and may be reproduced freely. Instead of waiting for the whole 70 years to expire, the art blog ni9e is encouraging copyright owners to donate their intellectual property to the public domain immediately after their death. “Why let all of your ideas die with you? Live on in collaboration with others. Make an intellectual property donation,” the blog declares. The site has created a public domain donor sticker to place on the back of your driver’s license that says “in the event of death, please donate all intellectual property to the public domain.”

Questioning the legitimacy of the sticker, I called the U.S. Copyright Office and spoke with Steve Withers, a copyright information specialist. Withers hadn’t heard of the movement to encourage intellectual property donation, and said the sticker might not be legally recognized.  However, he told me that if you want to ensure your intellectual property is donated to the public domain following death, you can send a letter of statement to the U.S. Copyright Office or include it in your will.

(Thanks, The Art Law Blog.)

—Sarah Pumroy

Image from Tombstone Generator.

The scholarly article reads like an art review: “A grid of red, yellow, and green spots glows against a glassy black backdrop in an abstract composition no larger than a microscope slide.” In fact, Kathleen M. Wong of ScienceMatters@Berkeley is describing DNA microarrays, collections of genetic material that provide biologists with data-rich “snapshots” of complex interactions among genes and proteins. Microarry experiments are being applied to improve public health, aiding in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The problem is that each artistic snapshot provides far too much information for modern researchers to handle.

—Jason Ericson

To ensure good weather for the 2008 Olympics, the Chinese national Weather Modification Office (yes, it does exist) is preparing for war with the weather. An immense military array is being deployed to fire silver iodide at the atmosphere, MIT’s Technology Review reports, to prevent rain from falling on Beijing during the Olympic games. According to the article, China’s national weather modification program has some “1,500 weather modification professionals directing 30 aircraft and their crews, as well as 37,000 part-time workers—mostly peasant farmers—who are on call to blast away at clouds with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers.”

For more on cloud seeding and weather modification, read “Climate Changers” from the September/October issue of Utne Reader.

—Bennett Gordon

Men exert nearly triple the energy that women do during courtship, according to a recent study from Javeriana Pontifical University in Colombia, reported in the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required). Using student volunteers armed with heart monitors and journals, undergraduate Lina María Ángel Jaramillo found that men use far more energy than women while eating, dancing, and even watching television in the presence of the opposite sex. Ms. Jaramillo told the Chronicle of Higher Education, “I never imagined that they tried so hard.”

—Bennett Gordon

Mental Floss recently released its list of “Ten Trailblazing Scientists About to Change Your Future.” Beyond the predictable robotics experts and a string theorist, the list includes thinkers from some less expected fields of study. There’s Emily Oster, studying the AIDS epidemic in Africa from an economic perspective, and alien hunter Margaret Turnbull, whose work in astrobiology inspired NASA to launch its own extraterrestrial-seeking program, Terrestrial Planet Finder, using data gathered by Turnbull. If either of these trailblazing scientists achieve their ultimate goal (defeat AIDS, find aliens), the future will look very different indeed.

—Morgan Winters

The idea that women can be both mommies and daddies has caused disapproving clucking lately among bioethicists. The Daily Telegraph reports on the horrified imaginings of some ethics experts that a woman could simply snatch the shed skin of an illustrious man or create sperm from her own bone marrow to engineer her kids. Even if this type of assisted reproduction was acceptable for infertile couples, some bioethicists find it reprehensible that same-sex couples or single people would partake. Sounds like they not realize that the definition of family has expanded in the last half-century to include more models than the heteronormative, nuclear one.

—Lisa Gulya

Xbox Live: bringing youth together with hours of gaming and racist rants. That’s according to Youth Today, the Washington-based “newspaper on youth work,” which reports in its March 2008 issue (subscription required) that racist flare-ups are plaguing the online, multiplayer gaming system. Joseph Moreno, a 28-year-old law student who plays under the screen name Joeblackisback, says he’s been buffeted by comments such as “That nigger must still be in here, it smells like shit,” and “I love it when niggers play. I love killing them.” Similar complaints—though not systematically documented—abound in the online gaming community. 

Some players and gaming bloggers argue that Xbox creator Microsoft needs to take a firmer hand in addressing users’ complaints of racist harassment. After 10 complaints, the company can ban an offending player or silence the player’s ability to speak online. If that’s too slow a reaction time, there is another option: Go on “Dr. Phil.” That’s what Terry, an African American father of three, did in January after his complaints were rebuffed with the “need 10 examples” threshold. The nation’s telepsychologist couldn’t get anyone from Microsoft to come on his show, but the company agreed to assign a “security team member” to Terry’s case “so,” Dr. Phil explained,” they can sit down and start this ball rolling.” 

—Hannah Lobel

The jumbled mess that is the internet has a certain charm. Masses of confusing information and useless web pages sit neatly along side important sites, with Google standing as one of the only ways to tell them apart. Google is still the top dog in organizing the web, but the internet has evolved since the company began 12 years ago (that’s about 90 in web years). In fact, Tim Berners-Lee, who’s credited with inventing the World Wide Web, told the Times Online that he believes Google will be “superseded” by the Semantic Web.

Instead of simply focusing on web pages, the Semantic Web would, in theory, organize all kinds of information from bank statements to maps to photos to medical research studies. In a video for Technology Review, Berners-Lee talks about how Semantic Web technology could help doctors compare different kinds of medical data, combining the information with nutrition data or seemingly unrelated data like air travel patterns, illuminating trends and information that could literally save lives.

For now, much of the promise of the Semantic Web has yet to be realized, but companies are busy preparing to take advantage of the new technology. The latest incarnation is a website called Twine, created by Radar Networks, currently in private beta testing. CNet News reports that the company has raised $18 million in two stages to implement the technology.

Right now, Twine looks a lot like Facebook, MySpace, or other social networking sites. Users create a profile, upload a picture, and connect with other users on the site. The company hopes that users will soon begin dumping massive amounts of emails, research data, and other work-related information into the site, so that people will begin to make sense of the information in new ways.

The difference between Twine and MySpace, Facebook, or other social networking sites is that “a social network that is about who you know, Twine is more about what you know,” Radar Networks founder Nova Spivack told CNet News. If the Semantic Web works as well as Spivack and Berners-Lee hope it will, people will soon start to know a lot more.

—Bennett Gordon

Image by Noah Sussman, licensed under Creative Commons.

Just for fun, here’s a very cool video about organizing the web:

Today is a boom time for maps. With the advent of Google Earth and the proliferation of GPS technology, mapmaking has become an art of political and personal expression, according to a recent article for In These Times. Maps today depict more than simple topography: One imagines a melding of the U.S. east and west coasts, while others visualize the interconnections between political bloggers (marked as red and blue for their political affiliations) and trace the movements of planes involved in the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program.

There are also numerous scientific efforts to chart the natural world, Science and Spirit reports, influenced in part by the far-reaching Human Genome Project. These include the Allen Brain Atlas, which maps genes in the brains of mice, and the Encyclopedia of Life, an attempt to document Earth’s biodiversity. Both of these projects offer massive amounts of information online for free.

Although these cartographic efforts are impressive, there is, I think, a towering mapmaking achievement that stands above them all. Based on rapper Ludacris’s 2001 single, “Area Codes,” which cites his many “hos in different area codes,” a skilled cartographer has tendered a map of those very same locales. Now we know where Ludacris’ ladies at.

—Michael Rowe

Abandoned tree houses don’t disappear when kids grow up. Many still exist, not far from residential areas, left as artifacts of youth. Dr. Martin Rundkvist, an archaeologist who writes the blog Aardvarchaeology (part of the ScienceBlogs network) ruminates on the “ruins of childhood” that can be found simply by walking through the woods near people’s homes. Originally posted in 2006, his recent re-post was prompted by another abandoned tree house discovery. In a beautiful blend of science and nostalgia, Rundkvist writes about how the relics now live on as modern-day archaeological discoveries.

(Thanks, BoingBoing.)

—Erik Helin

Image by Chris Darling, licensed under Creative Commons.

One of the legacies being left by the Bush administration is a combative and regressive relationship between science and the government. This falling out has led concerned citizens and members of the scientific community to demand a public debate on science and technology in the 2008 presidential race.

The people behind Sciencedebate2008.com are spearheading a petition to make this debate a reality. Signatories include Nobel Prize winners, university presidents, and a bi-partisan group of politicians. Their mission statement reads:

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.

(Thanks, Commonweal Institute.)

—Erik Helin

Chris Soghoian, voice of the excellent CNet.com blog Surveillance State, explained last month the various methods citizens can employ to beat warrantless wiretapping and other forms of invasive surveillance. It’s an interesting, practical article if you’re a terrorist, a drug dealer, or just plain suspicious of the NSA and its shady practices.

—Morgan Winters

Image by David Drexler, licensed under Creative Commons.

Like fish and chips, cell phones and cameras, James Bond’s Aston Martin and stinger missiles, if something works in Great Britain, it might work even better paired with something else. Zoo animals are the same way. Sure, they’re cute, but they’re often desperate-looking and covered in feces. Thermal cameras can help, turning spiders and lions into the Predator-style pictures, featured recently in the British newspaper Telegraph. The critters have a hyper-colored shimmer, and there isn’t a single visible clump of mussed hair. The pictures were taken by an amateur photographer, and can help the zoo’s staff understand how their animals regulate body temperature, but more importantly, they look really cool.

—Morgan Winters

Expensive pills are more effective than cheap ones, even when they’re both identical placebos, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and reported on the website Science a Go Go. Participants in the study were given light electric shocks and were asked to report on pain levels before and after taking the placebos. Half of the participants were told they received pills that cost $2.50 and half were told the pills cost 10 cents. Of the patients given the “cheap” pills, 60 percent reported a reduction in pain, while an overwhelming 85 percent reported less pain after taking the “expensive” pills.

—Bennett Gordon

Tech-savvy men often bathe in the media limelight, from Rolling Stone and New Yorker profiles to the reality TV show Beauty and the Geek, where male nerds fraternize with plastic-looking women. Girl geeks, on the other hand, tend to receive little more media attention than the glow from their monitors. Last month, the New York Times briefly disrupted the media stagnation by reporting on the predominance of female bloggers and Web page designers. That abundance of female representation may be a positive sign, but the article also points out that women hold only 27 percent of computer- and math-related jobs . Even if girls are creating more online content, experts stress “the profound distinction between using existing software and a desire to invent new technology.”

All of the blog posts and online profiles made by women don’t amount to much, according to Nicole Cohen in Shameless magazine, so long as the creators of Web 2.0 continue to be young men like the founders of YouTube, Google, and Facebook. “Access to information and tech knowledge carries with it great political, economic and social weight,” Cohen writes. “If women are left out of the discourse about information technology and new media, you can bet we’re left out of the production and sharing of social and economic power, too.”

One of the problems with encouraging women’s participation in tech fields is the invisibility of tech-savvy women in mainstream media. Geeky guys on Beauty and the Geek and in Judd Apatow films (The 40-Year Old Virgin, Superbad) are celebrated for their nerdiness. Even if they’re not making billions of dollars, the geeky guys are visible, lovable, and have a shot at beautiful women. Meanwhile, their celebrated girl-geek counterparts are nowhere to be found.

The affirmation of IT boys has begun to irk geeky girls, many who want some acceptance—sans make-overs—of their own. In the Winter issue of Bitch (article not available online) Sarah Seltzer writes that Beauty and the Geek encourages beautiful women to “look for the inner worth of all the men around them—not just the beefcake—and value them appropriately.” Men, however, are not encouraged to do the same.

—Lisa Gulya

Image by Mary-Frances Main, licensed under Creative Commons.