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WHAT I WANT NEXT

SI readers come up with a few tough assignments for the scientists and inventors

RUFFLE IRONER. If some nice man of science would invent a ruffle ironer, I would gladly mention him in my will. You’ve no idea how much help it would be for ironing curtains, aprons, and dresses. It might be made as an attachment to an ordinary iron, or it could be a special little plug-in gadget. Either would suit me, but if it is hard to operate, I’ll cut the inventor off without a cent!
—Mrs. W. H. Fulker, Colorado Springs, Colo.

OUT, DAMNED SPOT! I would like to see a handy device, small enough to fit in a pocket or purse, that would remove any kind of spot from one’s clothing in a few seconds. This would certainly relieve the embarrassment of spilling gravy or other food on the “best dress” while dining out. With the device I have in mind, it would be possible to retire for a minute to the powder room and return with the dress as fresh and clean as before.
—Harriet Sherman, Atlanta, Ga.

HAT CIRCUMVENTER. What I want next is a motion-picture theater seat that will raise itself at my pushbutton command so that I can view the screen clearly above some lady’s mad hat or hair-do. This might be done in barber-chair fashion. At least persuade the theater owners to supply a pair of shears so that I can snip off whatever is obstructing my vision.
— William A. Berns, New York, N. Y.

LIGHT LITERATURE. I want next: books printed with luminous ink so I can read at night in barracks, after “lights out.”
—Pvt. Thomas Thornhill, Boca Raton, Fla.

EVERLASTING RIBBON. A typewriter ribbon that won’t wear out! This shouldn’t be so difficult as it sounds. Possibly a durable and effective ribbon could be made of glass, plastic, or steel. It should have a constantly renewable ink supply, which might be rolled on by a small absorbent roller attached to an ink cup at one side of the machine. Such a system would be much cleaner and quicker, and far less exasperating, than the present method of wrestling with a yard of smudgy tape. A few drops of ink would probably have to be added at intervals to the supply in the cup.
— Charles Feger, Chicago, Ill.

WHISKER CHASER. I want a cream or similar preparation which, when applied to my face and neck, will remove my daily growth of whiskers without the use of a razor or electric shaver. The cream should effectively remove beard or whisker growth without harming the skin. I realize that for the scientists this is a tough one— but so is my beard. Think of all the man-hours that are wasted every day because men have to fuss with shaving soap, razor blades, or electric shavers.
—Edwin A. Lind, Reading, Pa.

DRAINCOAT. I want a raincoat with a trough or gutter of some sort that will carry the rain to some place other than my trousers legs or into my shoes. Why protect one part at the expense of another?
—J. R. Guinn, Culpeper, Va.

I WANT NEXT: Some way of tuning the radio in my car without taking my eye off the road or my hand off the wheel.—R. Strauss, New York, N. Y.

Reader Strauss doesn’t know it, but a steering-column radio control appeared on a few 1942 Chevrolets, will reappear on 1946 models. It turns the set on and off, controls volume, and—when pushed—gives push-button tuning of selected stations.—Ed.

WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT?

SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED will pay $10 for every suggestion published. Send them to What I Want Next, Science Illustrated, 330 West 42nd Street, New York 18, N. Y. If an acceptable suggestion is duplicated, the first to reach us will be used. No contributions can be returned.

238 presidential scholars: Bush worst president of modern era, fifth worst in US history

It's one thing for a coterie of liberals at a late-night Washington soirée to say that George W. Bush was the worst president in their lifetimes.

It's another thing when the same is said by the nation's 238 leading presidential scholars, who have been polled annually for the last 28 years.

President Bush ranked worst among modern presidents -- and the fifth worst in history, according to the poll by the Siena Research Institute. Ranking first? President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the country from 1933 until his death in 1945.

President Roosevelt served four terms, the longest of any president in history. US presidents became limited to two terms after US states ratified the 22nd Amendment to the US constitution in 1951.

President Barack Obama, who hasn't yet served a full term, rated 15th.

South African Vuvuzela Philharmonic Angered By Soccer Games Breaking Out During Concerts

June 17, 2010 | ISSUE 46•24

JOHANNESBURG—Members of the South Africa Vuvuzela Philharmonic Orchestra, widely considered to be among the best large-scale monotonic wind instrument ensembles in the world, told reporters Friday they were furious over the recent outbreaks of international soccer matches during their traditional outdoor concerts.

"I cannot imagine what is getting into these football teams that they would suddenly begin full-scale international competition just when we are beginning our 2010 concert series," said Dr. Stefan Coetzee, the Philharmonic's program and concert director. "It is disrespectful to the performers, it is disrespectful to the music itself, and by extension, it is disrespectful to the great nation of South Africa."

Spontaneous high-caliber soccer games have thus far plagued every orchestral vuvuzela performance of the season, which opened June 11 at Cape Town Stadium. As musicians took their places in the stands and began warming up for the evening's performance of lighter pieces by post-minimalist composers, they noticed the audience was not sitting in its traditional place in the stadium's central area.

As the Philharmonic learned later, its only spectators were the national football sides of France and Uruguay, who played to a 0-0 tie as the frustrated vuvuzela virtuosi played a full program of concerti written for the distinctive straight plastic horn.

"A virtually empty house is highly unusual in a vuvuzela-mad nation such as South Africa," said first-chair vuvuzela player Moses Mtegume, who is known as the "Father of the Vuvuzela" and considered a national treasure. "And because concerts are held in the round—the better to appreciate the sonorous tonality of the massed instruments—a performer gets a sense of the crowd early."

"It doesn't even seem like these football players are paying attention to us," Mtegume added. "In fact, I would go so far as to say they are trying to ignore us."

The following days, during which a string of large-scale vuvuzela performances were held, saw the unusual events repeat in Johannesburg, Durban, Pretoria, and Port Elizabeth as audience after audience was driven away by FIFA national football teams. As a result, the South Africa Vuvuzela Philharmonic, which is supported solely by money from ticket sales, has suffered staggering losses financially. And the musicians, many of whom trained for years and underwent a harrowing audition process to earn one of the orchestra's 50,000 seats, said the biggest blow was to their professional pride.

"Do you know how difficult it is to get everyone situated, tuned, and focused for a vuvuzela concert?" said Juilliard-trained vuvuzelist Donald Frederick Gordon, a noted soloist and renowned performer whose boyhood dream of playing vuvuzela in every stadium in South Africa is now at risk. "These brash, inconsiderate outbursts of impromptu athletics have made us a laughingstock of the international music community. We have already had cancellations from the Vienna Boy's Choir and guest director Seiji Ozawa, who no doubt fear for their reputation should the Philharmonic continue to be mocked by these incongruous sportsmen."

In order to save its concert season, the orchestra has scheduled a special benefit concert for July 11 at Johannesburg's Soccer City Stadium. The orchestra will be accompanied by 8,000 special guest vuvuzela players from Ghana and the Ivory Coast, and the concert program will include the debut of new single-tone compositions by Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, and vuvuzela fan Mark Mothersbaugh.

The musicians said they are thrilled to be performing in the nation's most prominent stadium, which is capable of holding up to 12,500 standing concertgoers in its grassy central section.

"This will be a vuvuzela tour de force the likes of which the world has never seen," Dr. Coetzee said. "We are very close to an agreement with Placido Domingo, who we're confident will show us how the greatest living tenor sings the B-flat-below-middle-C that makes the vuvuzela so magical. It will truly be a night for the ages, with, we hope, no sign of football rivals battling it out for global supremacy where the audience should be."

"We've already sold a couple dozen tickets to people in Brazil and Argentina," Dr. Coetzee added. "Mark my words, on July 11, the eyes and ears of the world will be on South Africa."

Source: The Onion

A Better Game

As you might have guessed, the character of Ray in "Bring Dice and Chips" is based in part on a real person*, as are most of the characters in the strip. It's important to note, however, that they are all amalgamations of numerous influences, including some purely fictional ideas.

In Ray's case, however, there's a lot about him that I draw on for the character. Ray Greer (who, along with George MacDonald and Steve Peterson, was one of the Original Hero Games Three) was one of my earliest mentors. I learned a great deal from him about running games, both at conventions and elsewhere, and about connecting with players on a level that dramatically enhances their experiences.

Ray once shared a grand secret, one that truly astounded me when I heard it. Now, many years later, I am going to reveal it to all of you. It is a masterful tool for running a game in an improvisational style. Though expressed in terms of solving a mystery, you can use this approach for both short term plots and over-arching storylines.

So, here it is. Ray Greer's Ultimate Mystery Game Off the Top of Your Head System.

(Yeah, I gotta find a better name than that...)

Take a situation that presents a problem to be solved.

The local constable calls upon you to help him figure out who killed local merchant and alleged loan shark, Jonas the Grand. You're shown his body, laying where he was found behind his shop. He's been stabbed multiple times.

Present four random clues. You don't really have to think them out. Just choose four things that the characters can discover.

A nearby resident heard a dog barking furiously for many long minutes.

The letter "R" is scrawled in blood on the wall next to where Jonas lay.

A blue feather is in the alley that runs to the back of the shop.

Jonas was known to be planning a trip.

You don't need to know how any of these clues actually fit or define the story; in fact, it's best if you have no pre-dispositions about them at all. Plan on having one of them be a "red herring," not really impacting the mystery at all. Don't decide which one that is, though - not yet.

Now let the players start conferring about what they've discovered. As they ask questions, figure out answers to them. As they suggest theories, note the ones that most intrigue you and mentally log them as possible solutions to the mystery. Play off their questions and their actions, building the solution to the mystery around their ideas.

Now here's the kicker - whatever their first suggested solution is, it's wrong. Whatever their second resolution is, that's the correct resolution.

So, for example, let's say the players in the situation above begin by looking for someone who's name starts with an "R" as their main thrust, focusing on anyone that Jonas had business dealings with. You decide that there's a dark and nefarious character named Renthro Garr who some folks think Jonas double-dealed in a recent business arrangement. Throw in that he's known to wear a cap with blue feathers in it. Now they will do everything they can to prove that he's the culprit.

He's not. You might decide that he's actually Jonas' cousin, and their constant interactions actually had to do with family matters. This can be why Jonas was planning a trip; to go see family and set some things aright. Now the players are scrambling to figure out what really happened. One of them might throw out "Hey, what about that barking dog?" They start looking around for dogs in the area that might have been the source of the noise.

You decide they don't find one - that the dog in question was with the attacker. One of the players, out of nowhere, asks "Hey, does the constable have a big dog?"

Boom. You like it. "As a matter of fact, he does. A huge mastiff with a deep voice."

The heroes figure the constable must have owed Jonas a great deal of money, and he tried to make Renthro look like the culprit. They surmise that he had no idea Renthro and Jonas were actually family; that by having the heroes pin the crime on Renthro, the constable would get off clean.

You hear this, you like it... and now they've solved the mystery of the murder of Jonas the Grand. The players think you're a genius, and all you did is let them more or less work out the story.

As you think on this, you'll start to see how such "dangling plot threads" can help you really make your campaigns sing with your players.

~ SPF (06/10/2010)

* - Note that the "creator egotism" aspects are drawn from other sources, as are the more bizarre behaviors.

Sumerians Look On In Confusion As Christian God Creates World

December 15, 2009 | Issue 45•51

Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.

According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization.

"I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. "A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass."

"Everything is here already," the pictograph continues. "We do not need more stars."

Historians believe that, immediately following the biblical event, Sumerian witnesses returned to the city of Eridu, a bustling metropolis built 1,500 years before God called for the appearance of dry land, to discuss the new development. According to records, Sumerian farmers, priests, and civic administrators were not only befuddled, but also took issue with the face of God moving across the water, saying that He scared away those who were traveling to Mesopotamia to participate in their vast and intricate trade system.

Moreover, the Sumerians were taken aback by the creation of the same animals and herb-yielding seeds that they had been domesticating and cultivating for hundreds of generations.

"The Sumerian people must have found God's making of heaven and earth in the middle of their well-established society to be more of an annoyance than anything else," said Paul Helund, ancient history professor at Cornell University. "If what the pictographs indicate are true, His loud voice interrupted their ancient prayer rituals for an entire week."

According to the cuneiform tablets, Sumerians found God's most puzzling act to be the creation from dust of the first two human beings.

"These two people made in his image do not know how to communicate, lack skills in both mathematics and farming, and have the intellectual capacity of an infant," one Sumerian philosopher wrote. "They must be the creation of a complete idiot."

Source: The Onion

Sex abuse rife in other religions, says Vatican
Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent, and Anushka Asthana
guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 September 2009 22.41 BST

The Vatican has lashed out at criticism over its handling of its paedophilia crisis by saying the Catholic church was "busy cleaning its own house" and that the problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger.

In a defiant and provocative statement, issued following a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the Holy See said the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not paedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males.

The statement, read out by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to the UN, defended its record by claiming that "available research" showed that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse.

He also quoted statistics from the Christian Scientist Monitor newspaper to show that most US churches being hit by child sex abuse allegations were Protestant and that sexual abuse within Jewish communities was common.

He added that sexual abuse was far more likely to be committed by family members, babysitters, friends, relatives or neighbours, and male children were quite often guilty of sexual molestation of other children.

The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.

"Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."

The statement concluded: "As the Catholic church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it."

The Holy See launched its counter–attack after an international representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, Keith Porteous Wood, accused it of covering up child abuse and being in breach of several articles under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Porteous Wood said the Holy See had not contradicted any of his accusations. "The many thousands of victims of abuse deserve the international community to hold the Vatican to account, something it has been unwilling to do, so far. Both states and children's organisations must unite to pressurise the Vatican to open its files, change its procedures worldwide, and report suspected abusers to civil authorities."

Representatives from other religions were dismayed by the Holy See's attempts to distance itself from controversy by pointing the finger at other faiths.

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, head of the New York Board of Rabbis, said: "Comparative tragedy is a dangerous path on which to travel. All of us need to look within our own communities. Child abuse is sinful and shameful and we must expel them immediately from our midst."

A spokesman for the US Episcopal Church said measures for the prevention of sexual misconduct and the safeguarding of children had been in place for years.

Of all the world religions, Roman Catholicism has been hardest hit by sex abuse scandals. In the US, churches have paid more than $2bn (£1.25bn) in compensation to victims. In Ireland, reports into clerical sexual abuse have rocked both the Catholic hierarchy and the state.

The Ryan Report, published last May, revealed that beatings and humiliation by nuns and priests were common at institutions that held up to 30,000 children. A nine-year investigation found that Catholic priests and nuns for decades terrorised thousands of boys and girls, while government inspectors failed to stop the abuse.

Source: The Guardian

"I have not abandoned my values. I don't think I've abandoned my moral leadership. I am still a communist, I am still committed to the working class," he said.

"Government at the moment is undertaking a process through Cabinet of looking at a whole range of austerity measures that must be taken and once those are done, they must be announced so that they are able to guide all government institutions and government departments," Nzimande said.

"It is very necessary, I support that to the hilt," he added, just minutes before leaving for the airport in his silver-grey BMW 750i.

Huntley case helps Darfur survivors gain perspective

CAPE TOWN. Survivors of the genocide in Darfur have issued a formal apology for overstating their case, saying they were forced to reassess the extent of their plight once confronted with the terrible story of South African refugee Brandon Huntley. "It's like Jerry Springer," said one, "you only realize how fortune has favoured you when they bring out the seriously dysfunctional at the end of the show."

Sudanese refugee, Abdul Wardi, currently living illegally in Mowbray, Cape Town, said he could only imagine how tough things must have been for Hartley. "He spent a whole winter living in a basement in Ottowa. Could anything be worse?"

Wardi, who walked from Khartoum to Cape Town said Huntley's journey must have been significantly more dangerous than his own. "He made it all the way to Canada, I only made it to South Africa. It's hard to imagine the degree of persecution a man must have suffered for him to be driven that far."

Wardi said it was only after Monday's ruling that he was finally able to understand why repeated appeals to the West from humanitarian groups working in Darfur had fallen on deaf ears.

"They are busy assessing important applications like Huntley's," acknowledged Wardi. "They can only do one thing at a time."

He said he was also able to understand why Huntley had chosen Canada as the place to lodge his appeal for refugee status. "The most famous black person in Canada is Leonard Cohen," he said. "It's all so clear now."

Meanwhile responding to Wardi's comments and the furore that greeted the ruling on Huntley's status a spokesman for the Canadian government, Chalky Canuck, expressed regret.

"It saddens us to hear of a second genocide in Africa so soon after the terrible events in South Africa."

Canuck went on to say he hoped his country's decision to grant refugee status to Huntley would be a small silver lining and a tribute to the millions of white people who had suffered during South Africa's worst ever atrocity."

When it was pointed out to him that raced based persecution in South Africa had ended in 1994 and that the country had never experienced the horrors of a genocide, Canuck said the evidence presented by Huntley's attorney's had shown otherwise.

"The tribunal has ruled," he said. "I am sure history will prove them correct."

Source: Hayibo

Bus company offers only 'godly' shows

July 24 2009 at 08:34AM
By Craig McKune

A quarter of Intercape's passengers complain about its "godly", "anti-Darwinian" onboard entertainment, but the long-haul bus operator stands by its message.

"We're a godly company and we believe we need to show Christian-based entertainment," company spokesperson Adre Zandberg said on Thursday.

Peet Louw, director of Humble Pie Entertainment, which manages Intercape's onboard entertainment, said an internal census showed 25 percent of the mainliner's passengers "are not 100 percent happy". But he said they had only heard "about three complaints out of 150 000 customers", and they were catering for the country's 80 percent who claim to be Christian.
'They don't have to travel Intercape if they don't want to'

Louw said Humble Pie manages the content for Intercape's 65 buses, which transport between 60 000 and 100 000 passengers a month.

The entertainment is played on the buses' television screens with the sound broadcast from speakers which passengers cannot control, he said.

Speaking on CapeTalk radio on Thursday, one caller described how, on her trip to Port Elizabeth and back, she was offended by the "gospel" content she was forced to watch. But both Zandberg and Louw stood by what they called "simply good clean 'Intertainment' with a message".

"If we get a few complaints from other religions, we don't care about them. They don't have to travel Intercape if they don't want to," said Louw.

The programming avoided sexually suggestive or violent content and focused on family values, he said.

"We're not forcing anything down anybody's throat in the same way that Nu Metro and Ster Kinekor are; not forcing the occult, sex or witchcraft. You can decide for yourself whether or not you accept it."

He said the programming was "unashamedly" anti-evolution.

"Most of those complaints you mention are from evolutionists, but we of course know there is no proof for evolution. The origin of species is really a lie," he said.

Intercape's programming offered documentary-style content, wildlife features from a creationist standpoint, movies, music videos and advertising.

Intercape passengers arriving in Cape Town on Thursday said they had watched only comedies on the screens and had no complaints.

Two Intercape employees, however, said the DVDs were usually shown "because our boss is Christian".

Although Christian, they did not agree with the programmes. "A lot of our customers are Muslim or Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist. What about them?"

Zandberg said the programming had been shown for about six months, although they used to show Christian DVDs before that.

Source: IOL

Bourne Into Oblivion
2009-07-21
by Mark Bowytz in Feature Articles

Jerry wasn't the sort of guy who would normally vent frustration out loud at work, yet here he was - cursing into the air at two individuals in particular - the first round of explitives being directed at the toolbag, somewhere, who had botched months of server backups by reusing the same set of tapes for months and the other being a long ago departed developer whose name he was continually being subjected to in the comments of the rotten shell script he was now stepping through.

What had started out as a 7:30am ticket from an early-bird user getting a error message when trying to open a spreadsheet test plan from the week before had turned into a full-on, corporate-wide DEFCON 1.

To make matters worse, Jerry had just delivered his two-week notice a few days prior which meant that in every meeting Jerry was getting "thanked" for the company's current nuclear crisis and that he should have set his little "time bomb" to go off AFTER he was gone. Naturally, while his being "blamed" helped to improve the morale of everyone else, it didn't do much to help Jerry's outlook - especially since it appeared as if this was someone else's "parting gift".

Questions? Please Refer to the Scriptonomicon

For as long as anyone could remember, everyone just kind of just coped with the Bourne shell script that was the framework to a test environment. It was originally designed to run automated tests for a single product, but management was so thrilled at how well it worked that they got other projects to adapt the framework.

Over the next few years, it became the de-facto test framework used by applications throughout the corporation. However, in order to make "one size fit all", it had morphed into something... different. It became one of those gnarly applications that everybody acknowledged was a bit sketchy behind the scenes, but it worked. So long as you stuck to the S.O.P. and knew the different locations where the same value had to be defined and accepted that P_OPERATOR_ID was a unique network identifier that is NOT a normal network ID that you had to get from Chuck in the Infrastructure Group, you'd be ok.

However, recently, the developer who had originally created the framework had left the company in search of greener pastures and, rather than handing off the task of running the scripts to a developer, it was given to a co-op student. After all, running the script was like checking off steps on a list, right? The co-op set up the configuration, scheduled it to run over the weekend, and merrily left it to return the following week. As it turned out, he missed a few details.

Cleaning Up

From a high level, the Bourne script would essentially ssh into each target machine, do its thing, and then exit. As part of its "thing", the designer of the framework wanted to make sure the script cleaned up after itself so subsequent runs of the framework would not re-process old data. To accomplish this, one of the enhancements after the initial release was to add two cryptic variables that (redundantly) contained the project name and the version being tested. Utilizing an unpatched flaw in sudo's setup to gain real root access, the script would then do the following as part of the clean up:

rm -rf $var1/$var2

Ordinarily, this worked just fine, but the co-op student was unaware these SPECIFIC variables needed to be set. With them being left blank, the following was the end result upon execution of the script:

rm -rf /

With the script running as root on a setup with NFS (which, in turn, granted access to everything on the entire UNIX/Linux network and a few Windows Servers via SAMBA), the script had a chance to do a good bit of damage... and it did. Home directories, file repositories, customer data, test results, all seemingly evaporated into nothingness.

All told, it took 6 hours to wipe out the entire network. It took 4 hours to figure out what happened (turns out the script ssh'd onto its own server and the rm -rf wiped out the scripts which did the rm -rf and most the evidence of what happened) and it only took 10 seconds to realize that the latest backups were completely SNAFU'd.

So, as his parting gift, while the most critical drives were being sent off for possible forensic recovery, Jerry was asked to review the test framework and look for any possible flaws where something similar could re-occur. After hitting the 10th instance where deviating from the normal routine would result in some degree of disaster, Jerry knew one thing - even though he had less than two weeks to go, this is one script that would be haunting his nightmares for a long time to come.

Source: The Daily WTF