Huntsville Strikes Back

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Huntsville space community form task force to fight NASA change

"A group of North Alabama leaders concerned over proposed White House changes to Marshall Space Flight Center-managed rocket programs have come together to form a task force in an effort to restore funding cuts. The "Second to None Initiative" brings together 25 community leaders, led by former Huntsville U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, to fight the Obama White House proposal that would shift NASA's focus from returning to the moon to technology development and seeding small, private space companies."

Huntsville Mayor Unveils Task Force To Fight For NASA's Constellation Program, WHNT

"The "Second to None Initiative" will include the following community leaders: Bud Cramer - Task Force Chairman, Joe Alexander - Camber Corporation, Rose Allen - Booz, Allen, Hamilton, Bruce Anderson - Alabama Development Office, Ed Buckbee, former director of U.S. Space & Rocket Center, Angie Calvert, Davidson Technologies, Jim Chilton, Boeing, Steve Cook, Dynetics, Tommy Dillard, ATK, Kim Doering, United Space Alliance, Mike Griffin, UAHuntsville, John Gully, SAIC, Shar Hendrick, The Hendrick Group, John Horack, UAHuntsville, Andrew Hugenie, Alabama A & M University, Dave King, Dynetics, Don Nalley, Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce, Elizabeth Newton, UAHuntsville, Ed Pruitt, Lockheed Martin, Joe Ritch, Tennessee Valley BRAC Task Force, Dennis Smith, MEI, Irma Tuder, Analytical Services, Joe Vallely, City of Huntsville, Mike Ward, Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce, Tom Young, Kord Technologies"

The Steam-Powered Vibrator and Other Terrifying Early Sex Machines [Sex Toys]

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As long as humans have had genitals, we've found artificial ways to stimulate them. But it took the repressed Victorian era to create the vibrator, a device aimed at curing a disease that doesn't exist.

It's Valentine's Day weekend, a time where those without honeybears to take out to dinner are probably feeling a little lonely. And you know what happens when people get lonely: they go to town on themselves. According to Pamela Doan of Babeland, one of the biggest sex toy shops around, sales were up 22% overall last February, with Valentine's Day itself being the highest single retail sales day they ever had. In fact, they were so high that they accounted for 19% of Babeland's sales for the entire year. That's a lot of vibrators.

I talked about the earliest vibrators with Dr. Rachel Maines, author of The Technology of Orgasm, the definitive history of vibrators and the repressed era that spawned them. I had no problem talking to Dr. Maines about vibrators, but back in the 19th century, talking about masturbation was very taboo. So the first vibrators weren't marketed as such. Instead, they were sold as medical devices used to treat "hysteria," hysteria being something that ladies came down with when they hadn't gotten their rocks off in a while.

According to the 2nd century anatomist Galen, hysteria was caused by the retention of "female semen," which could get into the blood and corrupt it. So clearly, it had to be periodically let loose.

So doctors took to "curing" hysteric single women who didn't have a husband to cure them of their ailments the normal way. They would stimulate the vagina until "parosysm" (read: orgasm) was achieved. But their hands got tired so quickly, what with all the vigorous rubbing required. And so the vibrator came into existence.

Vibrators have been around longer than electricity has—the first model came out in 1734 and used a crank like some sort of hedonistic egg beater—but it took electricity to really bring them to the mainstream.

According to Dr. Maines, all vibrators are just inefficient motors. "All motors vibrate. If you make a motor that's especially sloppy, it'll vibrate more. That's the principle behind the vibrator: a very sloppy motor that's designed to vibrate." An efficient motor, such as the one that runs your fridge, would make for a seriously crappy vibrator. But the Manipulator, which was essentially an inefficient steam engine with a dildo attached to it, did the job swimmingly.

One of the first mechanical vibrators was the steam-powered Manipulator (pictured up top), invented by Dr. George Taylor in 1869. This monster machine hid its engine in another room with the apparatus sticking through the wall. Terrifying!

Today, vibrators have come a long way. First of all, they don't require an entire room to run properly. Secondly, they can be purchased for their intended use instead of pretending like they're curing whatever disease it is that makes women horny. Add onto that the advancements made in plastics and moulding makes them feel less like cold appliances. It's the golden age of vibrators, everyone!

To make you truly thankful for the era we live in, here's a selection of some of the weirdest and most uncomfortable-looking vibrators to ever see the light of day, with descriptions courtesy of Dr. Maines. The Manipulator is scary, sure. But then there's the Electro-Spatteur, which spiced up its vibrations with electric shocks. You can't make this stuff up.

For more information on the history of sex toys, be sure to check out The Technology of Orgasm by Dr. Rachel P. Maines and Passion and Power, a documentary on the subject.


Crowbot Puts An Army of Crows At Your Command [Robots]

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If this Crowbot, which can attract and repel crows by playing different recordings, isn't quite weird enough for you, wait until you hear about Crowbot Jenny, the elusive superhero babe who uses it to command her crow army.

What do you get when the worlds of superheroes, manga, technology and crows collide? Crowbot Jenny and her Crowbot, a character and project conceived by Hiromi Ozaki to explore animals and our interactions with them.

To do so, Ozaki consulted two leading crow experts at the University of Cambridge and came up with the Crowbot, a device that can communicate with the birds via a variety of crow calls. That would be enough, you'd think, but Ozaki thought the Crowbot needed a shoulder to perch upon. Enter Crowbot Jenny, "a reclusive girl who prefers to spend time surrounded by technology and animals rather than with humans." Right.

When she's not off doing bizarro superhero stuff, Crowbot Jenny is helping out with bird-related research at University of Cambridge.

OK, so its not exactly a crow army she's dealing with quite yet. But it's nice to see some imagination going into this research and the technology that's behind it. [We Make Money Not Art via Bot Junkie]


Google Might Pull Buzz Out of Gmail—That’s Why ↓ [Google]

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Given the populist sentiment about the way it launched Buzz, by merging it with Gmail, resulting in a million-and-one privacy kerfluffles, Google's now thinking about going beyond the tweaks it made the other day by cutting the cord between Buzz and Gmail entirely. People might get to claim completely different usernames for Buzz too. A fresh start might be for the best, though the damage is already done. Update: Or maybe it's just getting a separate app. Hahaha. [Search Engine Land]


F*ck You, Google [Rant]

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I use my private Gmail account to email my boyfriend and my mother. There's a BIG drop-off between them and my other "most frequent" contacts. You know who my third most frequent contact is. My abusive ex-husband.

Which is why it's SO EXCITING, Google, that you AUTOMATICALLY allowed all my most frequent contacts access to my Reader, including all the comments I've made on Reader items, usually shared with my boyfriend, who I had NO REASON to hide my current location or workplace from, and never did.

My other most frequent contacts? Other friends of Flint's.

Oh, also, people who email my ANONYMOUS blog account, which gets forwarded to my personal account. They are frequent contacts as well. Most of them, they are nice people. Some of them are probably nice but a little unbalanced and scary. A minority of them - but the minority that emails me the most, thus becoming FREQUENT - are psychotic men who think I deserve to be raped because I keep a blog about how I do not deserve to be raped, and this apparently causes the Hulk rage.

I can't block these people, because I never made a Google profile or Buzz profile, due to privacy concerns (apparently and resoundingly founded!). Which doesn't matter anyway, because every time I do block them, they are following me again in an hour. I'm hoping that they, like me, do not realize and are not intentionally following me, but that's the optimistic half of the glass. My pessimistic half is of the abyss, and it is staring back at you with a redolent stink-eye.

Oh, yes, I suppose I could opt out of Buzz - which I did when it was introduced, though that apparently has no effect on whether or not I am now using Buzz - but as soon as I did that, all sorts of new people were following me on my Reader! People I couldn't block, because I am not on Buzz!

Fuck you, Google. My privacy concerns are not trite. They are linked to my actual physical safety, and I will now have to spend the next few days maintaining that safety by continually knocking down followers as they pop up. A few days is how long I expect it will take before you either knock this shit off, or I delete every Google account I have ever had and use Bing out of fucking spite.

Fuck you, Google. You have destroyed over ten years of my goodwill and adoration, just so you could try and out-MySpace MySpace.

Harriet Jacobs is the nom de plume of the author of Fugitivus. She's a mid-twenties white girl living in the Midwest, working at a non-profit that assists families and deals with a lot of racial politics. Harriet has had a fucked-up life, and Fugitivus
—fugitive—is her space to talk, where the fucked-up people who did the fucked-up things couldn't find her and be creepy.

Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.


Bill Gates’ New Calling: Zero CO2 Emissions [Ted]

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At the TED Conference last year Bill Gates unleashed a swarm of mosquitoes to demonstrate a point about malaria. This year, he's taking on CO2 in a big way. And he brought fireflies.

The bugs were Gates' example of a living "energy miracle"—the kind we'll need to solve the enormous energy problems that face mankind. Some perspective, from his speech: even if we were to maximize energy efficiency and limit the impact of population size, we'd still be emitting 13 billion tons of carbon annually from energy production.

So what's his solution? First: excluding coal and natural gas altogether from our energy future. Instead, the focus needs to be on carbon capture, nuclear, wind, and solar power. In particular, Gates singled out depleted uranium supplies as having the potential to power the US for centuries. The technology is possible; it's just not being funded.

Despite advances in nuclear power—and particularly the regulation thereof—the idea of nuclear energy still makes Americans skittish. So if Gates is serious about wanting this to happen, he's going to have to do more than open up his wallet. He's going to have to change our perception entirely.

Gates has been posting his thoughts on his TED talk at The Gates Notes, so be sure to look for updates on more specifics around feasibility, implementation, and what insects he's got planned for TED 2011. [TED via CNN Tech]


TRAKR RC Car Lets You Spy With the Power of Apps [Rc]

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Apps are here to to stay, so we might as well get our kids on board early. That's the thinking behind Wild Planet's Spy Video TRAKR, a video-enabled RC car that can be loaded up with free, kid-created programs.

Making its debut at this weekend's Toy Fair, the TRAKR sports a camera that beams video back to a small color LCD screen on the controller. That video, or still shots from it, can be saved to an SD card for later perusal.

But the real twenty-first century touch here is the TRAKR's ability to run kid- (or kid at heart-) programmed routines that will be available as free downloads from the Wild Planet website. Out of the box, the kit will include an app for using the TRAKR as a motion-sensing alarm system, sounding a warning to intruders with its built-in speaker, as well as one for recording night vision video.

The TRAKR will be available for $120, though you'll have to wait until October to link up with other app-writing spies (and to download the Girls Locker Room routine). [Wild Planet]


XP1-Power USB iPhone Charger Packs a Back Up Battery Just In Case [Cables]

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The XP1-Power is a little bulkier than your average USB cable, but it has good reason: it packs a back-up battery in-line. XMultiple have improved on their older version, now boasting 20 hours of extra juice and surge protection.

In addition to the surge protection, the XP1 is now compatible with several adapters that allow for the charging (and back-up juicing) of a variety of smartphones, MP3 players, GPS devices and the like. The adapters come at $4.99 a pop and the cable itself is $49.99. [XMultiple]


Radeon HD 5870 Gloriously Abused By Asus, Made Super Overclocking-Friendly [Guts]

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The Radeon HD 5870, as shipped, is a very powerful graphics card—more than most people need, even, and at the very least, enough for anyone. Except, apparently, Asus.

Asus' plans for their newest Republic of Gamers (ROG) Radeon HD 5870-based card cater to a specific breed—the overclock-everything-for-the-sake-of-it PC tweakers, who are dwindling along with their gaming platform—but really, anyone can appreciate them: by default, the card's GPU is cranked from 850 to 900MHz, and doubles the RAM to RAM to 2GB of DDR5 memory.

If that's not enough, you can dial your frequencies up using included overclocking software, which saves new settings directly to the card. And if you start to notice that delicious, telltale smell of melting silicon, you don't even have to navigate software to fix things: mashing a physical button on the back of the card reverts it to stock settings. Brilliant.

The ROG 5870 doesn't have a price or North America release date yet, but word is it's already hitting the streets in China, so full release details shouldn't be far off. [Zol via Techreport via SlashGear]


Fear and Loathing On a Tech Support Call [TechSupport]

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A lot of people incurred the wrath of Hunter S. Thompson over his long career, and we can now add the "fools," "bastards," and "idiots" who worked at his local electronics shop to that list.

Warning, the video is NSFW if you work with old people or humorless prudes.

Take your average septuagenarian's frustration with technology and add Thompson's well-documented volatility. That will only offer a hint of how amusing this call—an expletive-ridden threat to the people who set up his new JVC DVD player—really is.

It's also reassuring to know that Thompson, who wrote a weekly column for ESPN.com at the end of his career, employs the same "do-what-I-want-or-else-I'll-write-about-it!" tactic we here at Gizmodo routinely use to keep tech support jockeys in line. Just kidding! Hilariously NSFW. [DVICE]


Apple Finally Puts out sRAW Compatibility Update [Raw]

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The latest Digital Camera Raw Compatibility 3.0 update for OS X update finally adds Canon sRAW, which until now has been pretty difficult to manipulate on Macs (without third party programs).

This update extends RAW image compatibility for Aperture 3 and iPhoto '09 for the following cameras and formats:

Canon PowerShot S90
Canon sRAW
Canon mRAW
Leica D-LUX 4
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3

Grab it now from Software Update.


Who Are Our ‘Celebrity Doppelgangers’? | The Intersection

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We’re still laughing at the photo sent by Melody Hensley in honor of the recent Celebrity Doppelganger Week on Facebook. She writes, “Do these two remind you of anyone?”

wonderyears

Hmmm… They do look kind of familiar. What do you think?

The suggestion sparked a discussion on who else our look-a-likes might be.

SK picked for Chris.

CM chose for Sheril.

So now we open the floor to readers… who might you suggest for our doppelgangers?


Spurring Real Economic Activity in Space

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Prepare for Liftoff, Esther Dyson, Foreign Policy

"The U.S. Defense Department may have created the Internet, but had it kept control of the technology, it's unlikely the Web would have become the vibrant public resource it is today. That credit goes to the investment and activity of private citizens and private companies, starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. With Barack Obama's new spending proposals, the same sort of thing could happen to space travel and exploration."

Space: The Final Frontier of Profit?, Peter Diamandis, Wall Street Journal

"Government agencies have dominated space exploration for three decades. But in a new plan unveiled in President Barack Obama's 2011 budget earlier this month, a new player has taken center stage: American capitalism and entrepreneurship. The plan lays the foundation for the future Google, Cisco and Apple of space to be born, drive job creation and open the cosmos for the rest of us."

Google Continues Damage Control With More Buzz Security Updates [Google]

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Though the dust has hardly started to settle after the privacy shitstorm that immediately followed the launch of Google Buzz—Google claiming it was going to untangle Buzz from Gmail and then denying that it had any such intentions didn't help matters—the Don't Be Evildoers have in fact made some tweaks to the system. Here's what's changed so far:

As of this morning, private e-mail addresses that were left out there naked for all to see in @replies are now covered up by asterisks.

Starting this week, Google will switch its auto-follow function to a suggestion-based system.

Those fixes are a good start, but at this point it's possible that Buzz's bad vibes are so pervasive that people won't be able to forgive and forget. At least not until Facebook's next privacy blunder. [TechCrunch and Business Insider]


8 Excellent Ways To Use Technology…To Break Up With Someone [Badvalentine]

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Planning on dumping your dame (or dude) anytime soon? Make every future Valentine's Day extra special for your ex by giving them a breakup memory they'll never forget! Here are a few high tech ways to get the message across.









Based in New York City, Shane Snow is a graduate student in Digital Media at Columbia University and founder of Scordit.com. He's fascinated with all things geeky, particularly social media and shiny gadgets he'll never afford.

Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.


Addonics Bite-Sized NAS 2.0 Reviewed: Lightweight Contender [Nas]

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The good people at MobileMag got a chance to review the new Addonics pocket NAS 2.0 NAS2XU2, and they report that for the price and the size, it's worthy of your attention.

You guys showed some interest when we got our first look at the NAS2XU2 back in November, and MobileMag reports that by and large it lives up to its promise. The pocketable device sports 2 USB ports and now has gigabit ethernet, improving the slow transfer speeds that plagued the first model.

MobileMag had some trouble getting the built-in media sharing system to work, but the unit supports SMB and Samba so with some tinkering it will likely do fine as a media server. As a mini FTP server, a hub for USB devices, and Bit Torrent server, however, it worked like a charm.

The NAS 2.0 NAS2XU2 is available for $59.99 from Addonics. [MobileMag]


Ask Giz: How Do I Bring Up the Subject of Video Sex? [Badvalentine]

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The old videophone sci-fi concept is now portable wireless reality, and it's not just politicians and celebrities who are doing naughty things in front of cameras. Our resident love doctor explains if and when it's okay to bring it up.

Far too many people have had their sex lives exposed thanks to sex tapes—and not just the kind stored on digital cameras. Remember the Clay Aiken video chat sex-ish scandal? I do and it wasn't pretty, pasty white chest and all.

Many women and men are appropriately cautious about exposing themselves online. For your sake as well as that of your partner, I'd suggest holding off on video chat sex until you trust each other—and then some. Get to know each other well enough so that you can tell whether or not they're likely to be dishonest or if they have a strong temper. Have they tried to embarrass or shame past partners in any way? Have they tried to take revenge on former friends or exes? If so, you might want to keep your clothes on and vibrator in the drawer for the time being. Or get the Safer Sexting app for your iPhone and sext with photos for the time being.

Aside from possibly having your video chat sex on public display, there's a more personal reason to be thoughtful about your online sex. People attach different levels of meaning to being nude or sexual with others—even if just virtually. Some people will drop their pants on or off screen for just about anyone, regardless of how close they feel. Others will only do so with people they feel close to and with whom they feel safe and connected.

Should a hot and heavy game of online Scrabble tempt you to strip away your clothes and then the next day you change your mind and stop chatting or you start dating someone else and broadcasting it on your blog, it could break that person's heart. As such, I would suggest that you only suggest video chat sex when you have a sense that you can trust each other to be honest and private and when you can trust yourselves to be kind.

If both of those are true, then bring up video chat in the larger context of what turns each of you on. Dirty talk? Sultry texts? Lingerie? Vibrators? The Frucci Fleshlight video? By saying that video chat sex turns you on, you have the opportunity to ask the other person how they feel about it, whether they've ever tried it and whether they'd be open to trying it with you and under what circumstances. Oh, and whether they'd consider using the iChat roller coaster effect, which is crazy hot for sex chats.

For example, you might agree to not show faces or to promise not to take screen shots or to do some things on video (like show off your penis or vulva) but not others (like do naughty things with your iPhone). It's all about communication, boundaries and making sure your computer settings allow you to keep your screen bright even if your hands are busy doing other things.

Read more of Dr. Debby's love advice here during Gizmodo's Bad Valentine celebration.

Debby Herbenick, PhD is a Research Scientist and Associate Director of The Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, a sexual health educator at The Kinsey Institute and author of Because It Feels Good: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction. She blogs at MySexProfessor.com.

Webcam shot from mofetos/Flickr under CC license

Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.


Celio Redfly Dock Supersizes Your Smartphone Experience [Docks]

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Not a day goes by that I don't lament my inability to hook up my Blackberry to a full-size monitor and keyboard. OK, I've never actually thought that, but the REDFLY dock from Celio can pull it off regardless.

In a new demonstration video, Celio shows off their REDFLY Moab, a small box that gives you some room to stretch out in your smartphone's OS. "Why wouldn't you just send an e-mail in webmail?" you ask, and I wonder the same thing myself. But seeing the familiar Blackberry OS on a big screen is actually sort of amusing, like seeing an elephant balance on its hind legs.

It doesn't look like the REDFLY supports mouses yet, so if you were excited at the prospect of inflating your Brickbreaker high score you can forget about it. No word on when Celio will be rolling out the dock, so for the time being your smartphone input is limited to your two innermost digits. [Engadget]