Technobabble

Sony angers God
The C of E, or the Church of England as it prefers to be known, is flexing its holy muscle in the face of Sony Entertainment. Seems the ministry is not too fond of the PlayStation 3 game Resistance: Fall of Man. The video game pits humans against aliens as the space creatures come to Earth in an attempt to cleanse the galaxies of the human scourge. The clergy objects to a photo-realistic reproduction of the historic Manchester Cathedral being used for gun battles, and claims it was reproduced without permission. The British city of Manchester, following U.S. trends, has a rising gun problem, and the cathedral is a place where memorials for gun crime victims are held. The pissed-off padres want a sizable offering from the entertainment giant as well as an apology.

Mary Poppins goes hi-tech
If you borrow one of the “public” umbrellas dispersed throughout the city of Philadelphia, you should know that you are being watched. The foul-weather paraphernalia is bugged. The company Dutch Umbrella sells advertising space on the umbrellas and then tracks the route each of these pop-up precipitation protection devices with implanted RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips. I think I am more scared of advertising agencies than the Central Intelligence Agency.

What’s a power cord, Daddy?
The geekometer is peaking. I’m getting giddy about the prospect of a wireless electricity future. My excitement has less to do with the techno-geek side of me than my photography/cinematography endeavors. There always seems to be an electricity or phone line in my lens’ way. A researcher over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was continually hassled by the persistent low-battery alert of his cell phone and thought, “It would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging.” When people at MIT have these thoughts, their process doesn’t stop at the cerebral stage. They take action. Professor Marin Soljacic and his team developed WiTricity—wireless electricity that uses a non-radiative magnetic field (I’m only pretending to know what that means), which supposedly has little negative affect on living organisms and can illuminate a light bulb seven feet from its power source. Batteries as well as power cords may go the way of eight-track tapes and laser discs with further development.

Flickr flack
Add Flickr to the list of banned Web sites in China, which includes Wikipedia and BBC.com. The most recent blockage involves an amateur photojournalist’s images of the anti-PX chemical factory protests taking place in Xiamen. It’s ironic that left-leaning sites such as Democracy Now and Alternet that have published less than complimentary news pieces on the world’s largest country are not censored. Chinese bloggers have not been silent over their displeasure with “The Great Firewall of China,” posting comments online such as “Let’s go to Tiananmen and protest. Let them bring out the tanks again” and, “Fuck 18 generations of their ancestors!”

Digital Destination of the Fortnight: http://uglymailboxes.blogspot.com/