Donald Trump and Sarah Palin may be feeling a little sidelined by all the attention paid to this week’s big story. But don’t worry, guys: Jon Stewart hasn’t forgotten about you. The funnyman—dismissing the first GOP debate as a “contest for who will come fourth in the primaries”—checked…
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Leafsnap uses face-recognition software to identify a species of tree. Can it create a new generation of conservationists? To date, the world of mobile phone apps has largely left me cold. Yes, I can see how you can easily lose an hour of your life – or more – to Angry Birds . But the most interesting and potentially useful developments I have seen so far are apps such as Shazam and RedLaser . The power to identify and recognise non-text based things such as images and music points to just how potent and useful mobile phones are becoming. It now appears that we could be about to reach a significant new landmark. An app has just been launched that can identify a species of tree from a photograph of its leaf. Apps exist already that help you identify flora and fauna – the Forestry Commission recently launched an app called ForestXplorer for identifying trees – but they have traditionally relied on the user deducing the species from a list of possible characteristics. Leafsnap promises something different: a joint effort by Columbia University , the University of Maryland , and the Smithsonian Institution in the US, it uses the same technology as face-recognition software to identity the species itself: This free mobile app helps identify tree species from photographs of their leaves and contains beautiful high-resolution images of their flowers, fruit, petiole, seeds, and bark. Leafsnap currently includes the trees of New York City and Washington, D.C., and will soon grow to cover the trees of the entire continental United States. Leafsnap turns users into citizen scientists, automatically sharing images, species identifications, and geo-coded stamps of species locations with a community of scientists who will use the stream of data to map and monitor the ebb and flow of flora nationwide. The Leafsnap family of electronic field guides aims to leverage digital applications and mobile devices to build an ever-greater awareness of and appreciation for biodiversity. Personally, I think this is a tremendously exciting development. Just think what species recognition software could be next: edible fungi; rock-pool inhabitants; butterflies; wild flowers; the list is endless. Couple this with the app’s “geo-coding” potential and it could help to generate some very powerful data. (Please do share below any “nature-spotting” apps you have found particularly useful.) There is a slight lament to note, though. As a child, I used to enjoy flicking through wildlife pocket guides trying to identify species when out on long walks, or on the beach. I wonder what impact this software will have on children today when they know they can identify something within a matter of a few seconds without any real effort or engagement? Will that help to educate and inspire them? Or, conversely, will it tune them into things they might have otherwise simply ignored? Wildlife iPhone Smartphones Mobile phones Leo Hickman guardian.co.uk
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Comedy writer and TV producer John Lloyd is a lifelong fan of all things Mac and of a 15-year-old Porsche 911 What’s your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life? Well, the Mac completely changed my life. I first came across that little boxy square Mac in the 80s – it was a cubic thing. I was taught to use it by Lise Mayer, one of the writers of The Young Ones. It had everything you needed, it was the most exciting thing. I’m a dedicated Apple Mac person. When was the last time you used it, and what for? I use my Mac all the time – more or less 24 hours a day. I’ve got five different computers, and that is the other problem – how do you collate this variety of information, because I use them all for different purposes. What additional features would you add if you could? That’s difficult to say, because all these devices now have many more things than I have time to use – but two things: one, something similar to a Babel Fish, with perfect translatability, because I work in many languages. Instant translation from one language to another. Another thing I would like is perfect speech recognition technology, so that I could speak words into a computer and it would transcribe them perfectly. Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years’ time? Definitely. We will probably have stuff where you will be able to speak to it directly, almost like an implanted chip. We’re almost seeing the demise of the keyboard, such as the way we use the iPhone. What always frustrates you about technology in general? Very banal things. Fifteen years ago, I thought that I’d be smart if I was working in batteries rather than in television – we still haven’t come up with a battery that lasts forever. But my biggest frustration is forgetting to bring the charger. I also get very annoyed that every new iteration of a phone or computer requires a new set of plugs. I’m starting to think that’s how computer and phone companies make most of their money. Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated? I do wonder why they haven’t managed to make a quiet hairdryer yet. My wife uses one every morning and they’re incredibly loud, aren’t they. If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be? Ask your children – unless you are a child. Kids seems to be able to do these things almost intuitively, while adults find them almost impossible. I’ve never read a computer manual in my life, so I always ask my children how these things work. Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd? I think neither, really. I think technology has great advantages, and I’m lost in admiration for the people who create it all. But if you meet a great chef, or great composer, it’s equally as mysterious how they do what they do. What’s the most expensive piece of technology you’ve ever owned? Probably my car – I have an extremely old Porsche 911, it’s about 15 years old. It was second hand when my wife bought it for me, but it was pretty pricey. Mac or PC, and why? I just think everything is better about the mac – the prettiness of the design, the ease of comprehension. It just feels like when you go from a Mac to the PC, if feels like going back to the horse and cart – slow and clunky. Creative people almost always tend to be Mac people. Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase? I still do, and I know I will for a while, but I’m beginning to think I really should have a Kindle. I have thousands of books, and I read an enormous amount, but I think there is no question about the convenience of the Kindle. But I do like buying DVDs and CDs. I bought a lot of spy thrillers on DVD last year when I was scripting Johnny English 2 – from the Bourne Identity right back to The French Connection. Robot butlers – a good idea or not? No. I don’t want a robot. I’m against them – it’s a bit like convenience food, you’re a lot better off preparing your own food, aren’t you? What piece of technology would you most like to own? I’d love to have a helicopter, but I’m going to have to work a bit harder before I can afford one of those. • John Lloyd co-created the BBC series Not the Nine O’Clock News (with Sean Hardie) and ITV’s Spitting Image (with Peter Fluck and Roger Law). He also produced all four Blackadder series and is the brains behind QI. The QI app is available from the App Store. Comedy Television Stuart O’Connor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Oregon native Karen Butler woke up from dental surgery with an accent that’s not from Oregon—or anywhere else in the world. Butler, 56, who experts believe may be a victim of the rare but real condition “foreign accent syndrome,” now speaks with an accent described as part Irish, part…
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Join us for live coverage as the votes are counted in the referendum on the alternative vote 5.00pm: This is what the pollsters were predicting on AV. YouGov (pdf). This is their figure based on those certain to vote. Yes: 40% No: 60% ComRes Yes: 34% No: 66% ICM Yes: 32% No: 68% Angus Reid Yes: 39% No: 61% 4.54pm: The AV results are being counted by “voting area”. In England and Northern Ireland these are local authority areas, and in Wales and Scotland they are parliamentary constituencies. There are 440 of them. Two have counted so far, and the votes are dividing: yes – 39%; no – 61%. 4.51pm: The first AV referendum results are in. And it looks as if the pollsters are not going to have too much to worry about. Here they are, from the Isles of Scilly Yes 288 (34.70%) No 542 (65.30%) No maj 254 (30.60%) Electorate 1,737; Turnout 830 (47.78%) You can see the results as they come in on the Electoral Commission’s website. 4.44pm: Ray Mallon, the former police officer nicknamed Robocop for his tough stance on crime, has won a third term as mayor of Middlesbrough. In other mayoral elections, Gordon Oliver, a Conservative, has been as the new mayor of Torbay. He beat the incumbent Nick Bye, an independent. And in Mansfield Tony Egginton, an independent, was re-elected as mayor. 4.40pm: They’ve been crunching the AV numbers at the BBC and think that the winning side will need 9.8m votes to win. Or to get “first past the post”, as you could put it. 4.30pm: In Northern Ireland the election turnout appears to be lower than usual. My colleague Henry McDonald has sent me a note on this. One Queen’s University Belfast academic Dr Peter Shirlow has interpreted the lower than usual turn out in the Northern Ireland election as a sign that Ulster society is becoming more normal. In the past elections have been tribal contests where voters turned out in large numbers to keep the “other side” out. Thirty years ago more than 80% of the electorate in Fermanagh/South Tyrone turned out to vote in a Westminster by-election when IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected as an MP even though he was dying in the Maze prison. Dr Shirlow may have a point here about these new turn out figures. Arguably the figure of around 55% indicates that Northern Ireland is becoming more like the rest of the UK and the Republic. 4.28pm: Here’s some more on those AV turnout figures. No one was making any firm predictions about turnout in the AV referendum, but these figures are certainly higher than I was expecting. I thought the London turnout could well fall below 30%. The turnout in London was higher than it was when Londoners voted in 1998 in a referendum on whether to have a mayor. The turnout then was 34.1%. But the turnout in the North East was lower than the 47.7% turnout in 2004 in the referendum on whether to have North East Assembly. 4.26pm: Iain Gray has announced that he will resign as Labour’s leader in Scotland in the autumn. Ed Miliband said that he respected Gray’s decision and that he wanted to thank him for everything he had done. 4.02pm: For the last 18 hours officials have been counting the votes cast for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly and almost 300 English councils. But it’s only now that they are starting to count the results in the referendum on the alternative vote. This was the only election open to everyone in the UK and potentially it could change the British constitution in an important way – but only if the pollsters have collectively made the most enormous mistake in British polling history. Assuming they haven’t, the no team will win easily. But this is an important story too, possibly quashing hopes of electoral reform for a generation and producing long-term challenges for the Lib Dems. Here is what the Electoral Commission has been saying about the turnout figures. 4 of the 12 regions have yet to provide figures, and the Commission will announce these shortly. Counting Officers will begin counting the Yes and No votes from 4pm today. The provisional turnout for each referendum region received to date is: Region Turnout As percentage of registered voters London 1.86 million 35.4 % South West 1.80 million 44.6% Eastern 1.84 million 43.1% West Midlands 1.63 million 39.8% Yorkshire and the Humber 1.53 million 39.9% North West 2.05 million 39.1% North East 0.76 million 38.7% Scotland 1.98 million 50.7% I’ll be focusing on the AV results for the rest of the day, although I’ll also be covering elections results as they continue to come in. 4.00pm: For all the election results and reaction to them up until 4pm on Friday, do read our earlier live blog. Alternative vote AV referendum David Cameron Conservatives Nick Clegg Liberal Democrats Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Join us for live coverage as the votes are counted in the referendum on the alternative vote 5.00pm: This is what the pollsters were predicting on AV. YouGov (pdf). This is their figure based on those certain to vote. Yes: 40% No: 60% ComRes Yes: 34% No: 66% ICM Yes: 32% No: 68% Angus Reid Yes: 39% No: 61% 4.54pm: The AV results are being counted by “voting area”. In England and Northern Ireland these are local authority areas, and in Wales and Scotland they are parliamentary constituencies. There are 440 of them. Two have counted so far, and the votes are dividing: yes – 39%; no – 61%. 4.51pm: The first AV referendum results are in. And it looks as if the pollsters are not going to have too much to worry about. Here they are, from the Isles of Scilly Yes 288 (34.70%) No 542 (65.30%) No maj 254 (30.60%) Electorate 1,737; Turnout 830 (47.78%) You can see the results as they come in on the Electoral Commission’s website. 4.44pm: Ray Mallon, the former police officer nicknamed Robocop for his tough stance on crime, has won a third term as mayor of Middlesbrough. In other mayoral elections, Gordon Oliver, a Conservative, has been as the new mayor of Torbay. He beat the incumbent Nick Bye, an independent. And in Mansfield Tony Egginton, an independent, was re-elected as mayor. 4.40pm: They’ve been crunching the AV numbers at the BBC and think that the winning side will need 9.8m votes to win. Or to get “first past the post”, as you could put it. 4.30pm: In Northern Ireland the election turnout appears to be lower than usual. My colleague Henry McDonald has sent me a note on this. One Queen’s University Belfast academic Dr Peter Shirlow has interpreted the lower than usual turn out in the Northern Ireland election as a sign that Ulster society is becoming more normal. In the past elections have been tribal contests where voters turned out in large numbers to keep the “other side” out. Thirty years ago more than 80% of the electorate in Fermanagh/South Tyrone turned out to vote in a Westminster by-election when IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected as an MP even though he was dying in the Maze prison. Dr Shirlow may have a point here about these new turn out figures. Arguably the figure of around 55% indicates that Northern Ireland is becoming more like the rest of the UK and the Republic. 4.28pm: Here’s some more on those AV turnout figures. No one was making any firm predictions about turnout in the AV referendum, but these figures are certainly higher than I was expecting. I thought the London turnout could well fall below 30%. The turnout in London was higher than it was when Londoners voted in 1998 in a referendum on whether to have a mayor. The turnout then was 34.1%. But the turnout in the North East was lower than the 47.7% turnout in 2004 in the referendum on whether to have North East Assembly. 4.26pm: Iain Gray has announced that he will resign as Labour’s leader in Scotland in the autumn. Ed Miliband said that he respected Gray’s decision and that he wanted to thank him for everything he had done. 4.02pm: For the last 18 hours officials have been counting the votes cast for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly and almost 300 English councils. But it’s only now that they are starting to count the results in the referendum on the alternative vote. This was the only election open to everyone in the UK and potentially it could change the British constitution in an important way – but only if the pollsters have collectively made the most enormous mistake in British polling history. Assuming they haven’t, the no team will win easily. But this is an important story too, possibly quashing hopes of electoral reform for a generation and producing long-term challenges for the Lib Dems. Here is what the Electoral Commission has been saying about the turnout figures. 4 of the 12 regions have yet to provide figures, and the Commission will announce these shortly. Counting Officers will begin counting the Yes and No votes from 4pm today. The provisional turnout for each referendum region received to date is: Region Turnout As percentage of registered voters London 1.86 million 35.4 % South West 1.80 million 44.6% Eastern 1.84 million 43.1% West Midlands 1.63 million 39.8% Yorkshire and the Humber 1.53 million 39.9% North West 2.05 million 39.1% North East 0.76 million 38.7% Scotland 1.98 million 50.7% I’ll be focusing on the AV results for the rest of the day, although I’ll also be covering elections results as they continue to come in. 4.00pm: For all the election results and reaction to them up until 4pm on Friday, do read our earlier live blog. Alternative vote AV referendum David Cameron Conservatives Nick Clegg Liberal Democrats Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The leader of the world’s Anglicans and the leader of the world’s Tibetan Buddhists have somewhat different takes on the killing of Osama bin Laden. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the killing has left “a very uncomfortable” feeling, reports the BBC . When faced with a war criminal, “it is…
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Barack Obama ruled out a drone bombing of Osama bin Laden to save civilian life. But such scruples are all too rare Whatever the legality of Osama bin Laden’s apparent execution, he was certainly a murderer, probably a war criminal, and his demise flowed, albeit bloodily, from a carefully planned and targeted attack – the greatest care being taken to avoid the horror of innocent casualties. President Obama himself, it is said, vetoed a bombing raid: the risk that innocents would die in full view of the watching world was too much to contemplate. Predator drones, launched by technicians in California, were too crude a weapon because hearts and minds, the president well understood, matter almost as much as bombs. So it’s a shame that these presidential scruples don’t always translate to other areas of attack in that struggling part of the world. Western television viewers may not always be watching, but in Karachi and Lahore they are glued to their screens. In the four years between 2004 and 2007, there were just nine US drone strikes in north-west Pakistan, with around 25 deaths a year; in 2010, there were 118 , with estimates of up to 1,000 people killed. But how many of these dead were innocent? When President George W Bush announced his experimental policy of neoconservative kidnap in Guantánamo Bay , he reassured an anxious world that the 779 prisoners being held there – many seized from Pakistan’s Afghan border areas – were the “worst of the worst” and deserved no legal rights. Nine years later, just over 600 of those men have been released, each one of them found to pose “no threat to the United States or to its coalition partners”. It seems that tossing a dime would be a better way of identifying a “high value terrorist” than relying on US military intelligence. Guantánamo proves the tragic inability of the US military to differentiate between an enemy and an incidental bystander, and if you live in north west Pakistan, that matters very much. History reflects an unfortunate precedent: when he was asked, during the Albigensian crusade in the 13th century, how to distinguish Cathar heretics from ordinary, decent believers, the pope’s emissary is said to have replied: “Kill them all. God will know his own.” Leaving omniscience tactfully to one side, we can all understand the US point of view, that drone attacks reduce the human cost of military action to the nation that sends them humming out over the horizon and into other people’s houses. Americans may care little for the expense of their technology; but they do, reasonably enough, care a great deal about the deaths of their servicemen. Naturally, this means that Washington is more likely to take violent action where no American lives are at stake. So while no sane person would wish any harm on American soldiers, an obvious danger of drone warfare is that it encourages reckless military activity, risking a high likelihood of innocent civilian death – with the hapless victims, including the very young, remaining faceless with no meaning at all to the military planners pressing their buttons several thousand miles away. Yet, these victims, young and old, have great significance in Pakistan, and their collateral destruction will surely have unintended consequences, coming back to haunt us soon enough. It may be quite true, as the research suggests, that as many as 33 important militant leaders have been killed by American drones over the past seven years, and the value of this is not to be lightly dismissed. But it is equally true that the same research shows what we might have already guessed: several hundred innocent people of all ages have also died most violently in their wake. Yet hypocrisy is a dangerous quality, particularly in a superpower. So in the shadow of Bin Laden’s death, the question for the west may be whether it is time at last for a different kind of campaign: one based less upon the skilful delivery of random and sudden death, and a little more focused on the democratic values on which we lecture our enemies. Otherwise, it seems safe to assume that these horribly unjust killings, limb blasted from damaged limb, and delivered so pitilessly, will set off a rancid hatred, lasting for long, bitter generations. Once again, a strategy designed to make us all safer seems likely to risk, in the long run, a tragically contrary effect. Osama bin Laden US foreign policy al-Qaida Pakistan Obama administration US military Ken Macdonald guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Barack Obama ruled out a drone bombing of Osama bin Laden to save civilian life. But such scruples are all too rare Whatever the legality of Osama bin Laden’s apparent execution, he was certainly a murderer, probably a war criminal, and his demise flowed, albeit bloodily, from a carefully planned and targeted attack – the greatest care being taken to avoid the horror of innocent casualties. President Obama himself, it is said, vetoed a bombing raid: the risk that innocents would die in full view of the watching world was too much to contemplate. Predator drones, launched by technicians in California, were too crude a weapon because hearts and minds, the president well understood, matter almost as much as bombs. So it’s a shame that these presidential scruples don’t always translate to other areas of attack in that struggling part of the world. Western television viewers may not always be watching, but in Karachi and Lahore they are glued to their screens. In the four years between 2004 and 2007, there were just nine US drone strikes in north-west Pakistan, with around 25 deaths a year; in 2010, there were 118 , with estimates of up to 1,000 people killed. But how many of these dead were innocent? When President George W Bush announced his experimental policy of neoconservative kidnap in Guantánamo Bay , he reassured an anxious world that the 779 prisoners being held there – many seized from Pakistan’s Afghan border areas – were the “worst of the worst” and deserved no legal rights. Nine years later, just over 600 of those men have been released, each one of them found to pose “no threat to the United States or to its coalition partners”. It seems that tossing a dime would be a better way of identifying a “high value terrorist” than relying on US military intelligence. Guantánamo proves the tragic inability of the US military to differentiate between an enemy and an incidental bystander, and if you live in north west Pakistan, that matters very much. History reflects an unfortunate precedent: when he was asked, during the Albigensian crusade in the 13th century, how to distinguish Cathar heretics from ordinary, decent believers, the pope’s emissary is said to have replied: “Kill them all. God will know his own.” Leaving omniscience tactfully to one side, we can all understand the US point of view, that drone attacks reduce the human cost of military action to the nation that sends them humming out over the horizon and into other people’s houses. Americans may care little for the expense of their technology; but they do, reasonably enough, care a great deal about the deaths of their servicemen. Naturally, this means that Washington is more likely to take violent action where no American lives are at stake. So while no sane person would wish any harm on American soldiers, an obvious danger of drone warfare is that it encourages reckless military activity, risking a high likelihood of innocent civilian death – with the hapless victims, including the very young, remaining faceless with no meaning at all to the military planners pressing their buttons several thousand miles away. Yet, these victims, young and old, have great significance in Pakistan, and their collateral destruction will surely have unintended consequences, coming back to haunt us soon enough. It may be quite true, as the research suggests, that as many as 33 important militant leaders have been killed by American drones over the past seven years, and the value of this is not to be lightly dismissed. But it is equally true that the same research shows what we might have already guessed: several hundred innocent people of all ages have also died most violently in their wake. Yet hypocrisy is a dangerous quality, particularly in a superpower. So in the shadow of Bin Laden’s death, the question for the west may be whether it is time at last for a different kind of campaign: one based less upon the skilful delivery of random and sudden death, and a little more focused on the democratic values on which we lecture our enemies. Otherwise, it seems safe to assume that these horribly unjust killings, limb blasted from damaged limb, and delivered so pitilessly, will set off a rancid hatred, lasting for long, bitter generations. Once again, a strategy designed to make us all safer seems likely to risk, in the long run, a tragically contrary effect. Osama bin Laden US foreign policy al-Qaida Pakistan Obama administration US military Ken Macdonald guardian.co.uk
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Audio slideshow: May’s best photo shows and books, with works by Bruce Davidson, Lartigue and Herb Ritts Jim Powell Antonio Olmos The Observer
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