Monday Links from the Science Park vol. CXIV

Lunchtime!

Here's some stuff to read as you munch your tepid Ginsters pastie:

Against Big Bird, The Gods Themselves Contend In Vain - "I was a hard-core Sesame Street viewer from about 1979 to 1984, and my memories of the show are the sort of deep nostalgic tangle you'd expect, with a great deal of idiosyncratic noise blended into the signal. So, for many years, I carried around a vague but emotionally vivid recollection of a Sesame Street episode in which Big Bird and Snuffleupagus had witnessed the the passage of a soul to the ancient Egyptian afterlife, complete with the weighing of the human heart against a feather." Scott Lynch discovered that his memory was, in fact, correct:

"There are too many Sesame Street specials to count, and most of them have climactic revelations along the lines of, 'Oscar learns that not everyone likes a grouch' or 'Elmo learns the real value of sharing.' Yet once, just once, a bunch of writers at the Children's Television Workshop actually decided to run with 'Big Bird overpowers the will of gods and demons in a quest for celestial justice.'

"Gods bless them, every one."
In a Flood Tide of Digital Data, an Ark Full of Books - "As society embraces all forms of digital entertainment, this latter-day Noah is looking the other way. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur who made his fortune selling a data-mining company to Amazon.com in 1999, Mr. Kahle founded and runs the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving Web pages — 150 billion so far — and making texts more widely available... But even though he started his archiving in the digital realm, he now wants to save physical texts, too." The very best people of the Internet are working to preserve material reality. I, for one, welcome our new virtual-and-physical archivist-overlords
The idea for a 'super-bomb': first steps to the Atomic Bomb - "Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls were physicists working at the University of Birmingham. After making new calculations about the critical mass needed for an atomic explosion, they realised it amounted to pounds rather than the tons they had previously assumed. They then calculated how long it would take to separate the necessary uranium-235, and realised that a ‘super-bomb’ was a practical proposition." The Frisch-Peierls Memorandum led to the Manhattan Project. They were both of Germanic origin and Jewish descent; if the war in Europe had lasted longer, it would truly have been a case of the biter bit, for it cannot be doubted that the first Atomic Bomb would in that case have been directed against Germany.
Postcards Then and Now - "Old postcards from the early 20th century, compared to the same view shown on Google Street View today. The postcards come from my own collection. Almost all of them are from England, mainly showing West London, Middlesex, Surrey, Berks and Bucks. Click on the postcards to see enlarged versions. There are also links to the modern equivalent on Street View." As embedded StreetView relies on Adobe Flash, you'll just get the Google street map if you look at this site on a Flash-free device like an iPad; sadly, following the link to a larger map also won't give the StreetView version, even though all the necessary information is encoded in the URL, so you'll have to drop a pin on the relevant spot (press and hold to do that) then tap the little human figure to the left of the popup tab thingy on the pin to enter StreetView. If, like my mate who's used Apple products exclusively for the last 25 years, you don't know how to get back out of StreetView on iP[hone|ad]: tap the little circular map in the bottom right-hand corner. (I secretly gloat every time I show him something he didn't know how to do on his iPhone. That one was on Saturday night in the pub )
Castles and Fortifications of England and Wales - "This site contains information on over 830 English and Welsh castles, fortified manor houses, Bishop's palaces and Pele towers constructed over the last twenty centuries. These range from the most impressive and powerful of structures like Dover Castle to worn earthworks that are all that are now left of sites such as Elmley Castle. There is also information on 250 of the mainly 18th and 19th century coastal forts and gun batteries that can still be seen, mainly around the south coast of England." That's your next Bank Holiday trip sorted (unless you're in Scotland or Northern Ireland, but you probably know where your local castles and fortifications are anyway, in case the English try to come back).
Kon Boot: Getting into a Client’s Computer without using a Portal Gun - "Okay, here you are again. Another computer from another (self-proclaimed) client for you to fix. So, let’s boot this thing and see what’s wrong with it this time. Okay, first obstacle; logging into the client’s user account." Introduction to a quite awesome and rather scary Windows cracking tool, along with a good video explaining password hashing. There are limitations on what you can do once you're in, but if you're using it for good not evil it should do what you need. Oh, and if you do sysadmin stuff, you need to know about it.
Call of Apathy: Violent Young Men and Our Place in War - Combat veteran W explains how modern war games aren't like modern war:

"You never see the enemy, just fire at the long grass in front of you as you crawl slowly to some cover. If you get up, you will be cut down within seconds, so this process takes hours. When you reach the enemy compound... you will kill them in the most horrible way imaginable. That is your incentive.

"Only a violent sociopath would play this game.

"We do it for real, time and time again, with no other motivation but pay, leave, and the chance to brutalise whomever we deem the “enemy”. This is the lot of the combat soldier."
The Greatest Grid: How Manhattan’s Famous Street Map Came to Be - "What Edgar Allan Poe, the Dead Rabbits, and Charles Dickens have to do with New York’s defining feature." Good overview of the eponymous book; if you're in New York between now and July 15, you should go to see the exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. (Note that if everybody follows the advice as to the best times to visit to avoid crowds, the crowds will be at those times instead )
How to rob a bank: A social engineering walkthrough - "Professional social engineer Jim Stickley walks through the steps he typically takes to fool clients into thinking he's there for fire safety, while he's really proving they are an easy target for a data breach." Of course you shouldn't actually do this unless, like Jim, you're being paid to
this isn't happiness - e.g.

The King in exile