Our final project for our Tangible User Interface course (Fall 08) is a musical gear toy. Each gear is mapped to the sound of an instrument playing a bit of music. You can listen to this music by spinning a gear. If you connect multiple gears and spin them together, the sounds from all of [...]
A Popular Science article (http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-03/who-protects-intrnet?page=1) describing some of the physical infrastructure of the internet, the network of cables through which information flows. This has a graphic illustrating the sequence of events involved in you surfing the web and a graphic illustrating the relative amounts of connectivity between regions.
Trace your own route along the cables! (http://www.popsci.com/content/trace-your-route)
a [...]
Recently, I’ve been researching theremins for a backup-singing-friend who wants to include this instrument in her schtick. The theremin is the sound of spooky. It’s the instrument of the “woo wooooo wooo” noise in old-time horror movies. In the fall, I made a theremin using an Arduino board, a couple of photoresistors, and a piezo [...]
Greener Gadgets Conference, is “a chance for gadget geeks and electronic companies alike to think about the role of gadgets in our lives and how we can engage in more sustainable solutions for the future. Topics of discussion ranged from personal responsibility for energy consumption to how companies can track their carbon footprint to the [...]
Blackle.com (http://www.blackle.com), a mostly black webpage with a Google search box, is a project made by an Australian design firm, Heap Media (link: http://www.heapmedia.com/) that claims that displaying black pixels consumes less energy than displaying white pixels. The notion is that if we change our homepages to a mostly black page, we will be saving [...]
Op-Ed Contributor
Workers Without Borders
By JENNIFER GORDON
Published: March 10, 2009
The current immigration system hurts wages and working conditions — for everyone. The solution lies in greater mobility for migrants and a new emphasis on workers’ rights.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/opinion/10gordon.html
News from the past about undocumented immigrants’ rights.
archives
Judge Upholds Job Rights of Undocumented Aliens
By KATHERINE BISHOP, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: March 6, 1991
A Federal judge has ruled that undocumented aliens can bring lawsuits under the 1964 Civil Rights Act maintaining that they are the victims of racial or sexual discrimination at work. The [...]
Editorial
Helping Workers in Hard Times
Published: February 15, 2009
Forcing companies that are receiving money from the stimulus package to file employment verification for all workers lacks common sense.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/opinion/15sun1.html