Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Space Interview Tonight

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Alan Boyle of MSNBC will be interviewing me in Second Life tonight on Virtually Speaking Science at 6 PM SL time (PDT). Here’s the SLURL for SLers: http://slurl.com/secondlife/StellaNova/228/226/38

This is the promo:

Alan Boyle talks with Rand Simberg

As MSNBC.com’s science editor, Alan runs a virtual curiosity shop of the physical sciences and space exploration, paleontology, archaeology and other ologies that strike his fancy. Alan is the author of “The Case for Pluto,” a contributor to “A Field Guide for Science Writers,” and the blogger behind Cosmic Log, the 2008 recipient of the National Academies
Communication Award.

Rand Simberg describes himself as ‘just a recovering aerospace engineer.’ The Competitive Enterprise Institute describes him as ‘an expert on space technology and policy, particularly with regard to NASA and commercial human spaceflight.’ He writes widely about the politics and economics of space exploration. Read him in Popular Mechanics and Transterrestrial Musings – Biting Commentary about Infinity and Beyond! Watch him on YouTube. | Listen live and later on BTR

And yes, it will probably conflict with the Republican debate.

Humor, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The Obama Transcripts

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So I was looking at this thread from a few months ago, and realized that I hadn’t replied to a few comments. First, my apologies to Joe Triscari — I did indeed mistake his comment for Matula’s. But I’m amused by the people who thought that they’d uncovered a key clue to the fraud:

Just wondering why the paper looks wrinkled while the typed “content” doesn’t appear to follow any of the irregularities.

…the most damning evidence is something called “topical distortion”. All of those odd shadows in the background are from what appears to be crumpled and then smoothed paper. These small folds where the paper was crumpled should cause distortions in the smooth lines of the fonts but there are none … zero! Not on the big curves, not on the bold blocks and not on the thin lines. No distortions of any kind. This can only mean that the wrinkled paper is an image separate from the text. Probably added in separately on another graphic layer or else printed on the paper as an image along with the text.

Anyone can see this simply by simply zooming in on the image … in IE8+ or FireFox3+ just hold the Ctrl key and then press the equals key (=) a few times to zoom in. Press Ctrl and zero (0) to return to normal. They will also see a lot of “artifacts” (white “glows”) around the letters which also strongly suggest layers were used to create the image.

Full disclosure (and this is the first time I’ve ever commented on the genesis of this document). I generated it in Open Office Writer, printed it out, crumpled it, and scanned it.

So much for “digital forensic analysis.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

In fact, in looking at it more closely, I do in fact see a little distortion of the top of the “T” in “Transcript.” So it’s maybe more a fail of the analyst than such analysis in general.