I spoke recently with an old friend who is a bandwidth broker. He buys and sells bandwidth on fiber-optic networks around the world. And he told me something that I found not completely surprising, but I certainly hadn't known: Google controls more network fiber than any other organization. This is not to say that Google OWNS all that fiber, just that they control it through agreements with network operators. I find two very interesting aspects to this story: 1) that Google has acquired -- or even needs to acquire -- so much bandwidth, and; 2) that they don't own it, since probably the cheapest way to pick up that volume of fiber would be to simply buy out any number of backbone providers like Level 3 Communications.
Google loves secrecy. That they've been acquiring fiber assets hasn't been a secret, but the sheer volume of these acquisitions HAS been. Why? One thought is that it kept down the price since people didn't really know it was Google snatching up this stuff (they've done it under a number of different corporate names). But if price was the issue, then why hasn't Google just bought the companies that own the fiber? It made no sense until I scratched my head and thought a bit further, at which point it became obvious that Google wants to -- in its own way -- control the Internet. In fact, they probably control it already and we just haven't noticed.
Read the rest.
Desert Places
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
THE CONCEPT OF BLOOM
In response to seeing, exploring, and photographing the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, I developed Bloom as a site-specific installation to commemorate the life and history of the building and its people, as well as to mark the transition of MMHC into a new place and architecture. Bloom is an idea for creating a tribute to the historic building of Mass Mental -- that is, an entity of a creative work, guided by the fact that Mass Mental itself is a whole with connected limbs, busy centers, quiet ends, wings, nooks and crannies, and nonetheless a living, moving whole.
In November of 2003, all spaces at the Mass Mental Health Center will be raised out of the uniform fabric of the building into individual fields of color: thousands of flowers will be placed in the old hallways, rooms, and staircases to mark the many memories connected to this site. Each hallway will have a different type of flower. Each will be a different stretch of color. The axes of the building, its layout and scope, will be recognized individually.
All of the flowers will be in bloom at the same time, creating a continuous, unbroken composition of color and scent throughout the building.
Here are some pictures:
"Double Helix"
"Window Seat"
"Repairing My Farmhouse"
| Introverted | Intuitive | Thinking | Judging |
| Strength of the preferences % | |||
| 67 | 50 | 12 | 11 |
This seems to be a pretty major breakthrough from what I understand of it. Very cool.Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image's worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.
While the initial test image consists of only a few hundred pixels, a tremendous amount of information can be stored with the new technique.
First image stored and retrieved from a single photon (Credit University of Rochester) Download hi-res photon image The image, a "UR" for the University of Rochester, was made using a single pulse of light and the team can fit as many as a hundred of these pulses at once into a tiny, four-inch cell. Squeezing that much information into so small a space and retrieving it intact opens the door to optical buffering—storing information as light.
"It sort of sounds impossible, but instead of storing just ones and zeros, we're storing an entire image," says John Howell, associate professor of physics and leader of the team that created the device, which is revealed in today's online issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. "It's analogous to the difference between snapping a picture with a single pixel and doing it with a camera—this is like a 6-megapixel camera."
"You can have a tremendous amount of information in a pulse of light, but normally if you try to buffer it, you can lose much of that information," says Ryan Camacho, Howell's graduate student and lead author on the article. "We're showing it's possible to pull out an enormous amount of information with an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio even with very low light levels."
Optical buffering is a particularly hot field right now because engineers are trying to speed up computer processing and network speeds using light, but their systems bog down when they have to convert light signals to electronic signals to store information, even for a short while.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton jumped into the 2008 presidential race on Saturday, immediately squaring off against Senator Barack Obama and the rest of the Democratic field in what is effectively the party’s first primary, the competition for campaign donations.Read the rest of the article.“I’m in,” Mrs. Clinton said in an e-mail message to supporters early Saturday. “And I’m in to win.”
If successful, Mrs. Clinton, 59, would be the first female nominee of a major American political party, and she would become the first spouse of a former president to seek a return to the White House.
Her entrance into the race followed Mr. Obama’s by less than a week, and highlighted the urgency for her of not falling behind in the competition for money, especially in New York, her home turf, where the battle has already reached a fever pitch. It also set off rounds of e-mail messages and conference calls among both her allies and opponents.
George Soros, the billionaire New York philanthropist, has made maximum donations in the past to both candidates, for instance, and last week he faced a choice: support Mr. Obama, who created his committee on Tuesday, or stay neutral and see what Mrs. Clinton and others had to say. In his case, the upstart won.
Mr. Soros sent the maximum contribution, $2,100, to Mr. Obama, the first-term senator from Illinois, just hours after he declared his plans to run.
“Soros believes that Senator Obama brings a new energy to the political system and has the potential to be a transformational leader,” said Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Mr. Soros.
Mrs. Clinton’s presidential operation is only one day old, but she already finds herself in a breakneck competition against Mr. Obama for fund-raising supremacy in two towns that she and her husband have mined heavily for political gold: New York and Hollywood. Mr. Obama’s entrance into the race has also put up for grabs other groups that are primary targets for Mrs. Clinton, including African-Americans and women.
At this early stage in the nomination fight, securing donations and signing up fund-raisers are among the best ways of showing political strength in a crowded field (seven Democrats and counting). And Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are looking to raise at least $75 million this year alone.
24. (ASKED OF LEANED DEMOCRATS) If the 2008 Democratic presidential primary or caucus in your state were being held today, and the candidates were: (Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, Wesley Clark, Tom Vilsack, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, or Mike Gravel), for whom would you vote?
NET LEANED VOTE:
1/19/07 12/11/06
Hillary Clinton 41 39
Barack Obama 17 17
John Edwards 11 12
John Kerry 8 7
Al Gore 10 10
Wesley Clark 1 1
Tom Vilsack * 1
Evan Bayh NA 1
Bill Richardson 1 2
Joe Biden 3 2
Chris Dodd * *
Dennis Kucinich 1 NA
Mike Gravel * NA
Other (vol.) 1 *
None of these (vol.) 2 2
Would not vote (vol.) * 1
No opinion 3 4
Total Clinton | Total McCain | Undec./Other | |
Current Total | 48% | 47% | 5% |
Republicans | 9% | 87% | 4% |
Democrats | 81% | 17% | 1% |
Independents | 43% | 49% | 8% |
Total Obama | Total McCain | Undec./Other | |
Current Total | 46% | 44% | 10% |
Republicans | 11% | 83% | 6% |
Democrats | 79% | 16% | 5% |
Independents | 40% | 44% | 16% |
Total Edwards | Total McCain | Undec./Other | |
Current Total | 48% | 43% | 9% |
Republicans | 7% | 86% | 7% |
Democrats | 84% | 14% | 2% |
Independents | 44% | 42% | 14% |
Total Clinton | Total Giuliani | Undec./Other | |
Current Total | 47% | 48% | 5% |
Republicans | 5% | 92% | 3% |
Democrats | 84% | 15%% | 1% |
Independents | 42% | 50% | 8% |
Total Obama | Total Giuliani | Undec./Other | |
Current Total | 45% | 47% | 8% |
Republicans | 10% | 84% | 6% |
Democrats | 76% | 20% | 4% |
Independents | 39% | 49% | 12% |
Total Edwards | Total Giuliani | Undec./Other | |
Current Total | 48% | 45% | 7% |
Republicans | 8% | 88% | 4% |
Democrats | 82% | 17% | 1% |
Independents | 43% | 43% | 14% |
