Stuff YOU Should Know
Clip Art Gets Cut
Do you use graphics to make things like digital presentations for school projects? How about plain old emoticons? Back in the early days of computers, before anyone could do an “image search” on the Internet, there was something called Clip Art (a collection of pre-made, royalty-free images) as a part of the Microsoft Word program. Earlier this month, Microsoft corporation announced that it would be discontinuing its image library. Instead, users will be encouraged to use Microsoft’s search engine to find acceptable images.
Access to royalty free images began at the dawn of desktop publishing in the early 1980s. Early Apple Macintosh computers allowed users to make their own images through a program called MacPaint. By the early 1990s, many companies offering clip art cropped up. In 1996, Microsoft offered 82 images as part of its Word 6.0 program. Over the years, it increased that number to 140,000. The official end of Clip Art just might create a nostalgic longing for the early days of personal computing (along with Clippy, the virtual “office assistant” included in Office 98 through 2003).
What Do You Think? Should Microsoft have kept its catalog of Clip Art available to its users? Why or why not? List some pros and cons for both sides.
Lack of Indictment in Brown and Garner Cases Sparks Controversy
If you watch or read the news at all, you’ve probably heard about two recent incidents where the police action of a white officer action resulted in the death of an African American citizen. Both cases went before a grand jury, where each failed to indict the police officer in question.
The first incident took place in Ferguson, Missouri (near St. Louis) on August 9. The exact details of what happened have not yet been agreed upon. Generally, a police officer named Darren Wilson was responding to the radio call of a robbery and came into contact with a young man named Michael Brown and friend Dorian Johnson walking in the street. An altercation lead to Wilson firing his gun at Brown (who was unarmed). Brown died of the gunshot wounds.
The second incident (which happened before Ferguson but was reported later) took place on Staten Island (a borough of New York City) on July 17. A man named Eric Garner was stopped by police officer Daniel Pantaleo for illegally selling loose cigarettes on the street. After a verbal confrontation, Pantaleo wrestled Garner to the ground and held him in a chokehold (a maneuver that has been banned from police use since 1993). This act caused act caused Garner to stop breathing and die.
Dig Deeper See btw’s Year in Review on more information about the public’s reaction. Find out what protestors across the country are hoping to accomplish by speaking up.
President Obama in 3D
Back in the summer, Smithsonian Institute (our national museum and research center) commissioned a three-dimensional sculpture bust of President Obama. Using cameras, scanners and a special printer, this “3D portrait” is the first of its kind ever to be made of a U.S. president. It is now on display in Washington, DC and will become a part of the permanent collection in the National Portrait Gallery. Presidential portraiture has a long history, but that doesn’t mean that all of it is traditional. Images of our country’s leaders have been affixed to sewing box lids and cotton handkerchiefs.
The Smithsonian’s Digitation Program recently released a behind-the-scenes look at how they created the 3D portrait. First, they set up a “mobile light stage” inside the White House. It contained 50 custom-made LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights, 14 cameras (both high-res sport models and ones with wide-angle lenses). A hand-held 3D scanner was also used as President Obama sat inside the configuration. In just over a minute, millions of details were collected as data and transferred to a computer and then onto a 3D laser.
Dig Deeper Check out this video of the behind-the-scenes footage of President’s 3D portrait. Do some research and find out what other kinds of things are being made out of 3D printers. A White House spokesman called this “the beginning of the Third Industrial Revolution.” Find out what he meant by this.
NASA’s New Era of Exploration?
Orion is the latest spacecraft created by our nation’s space agency passed its first test flight earlier this month. The 19,000-pound Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) was designed as the major focus of NASA’s human space travel initiative. Missions to land on asteroids (much like ESA’s recent landing on a comet), Mars, and a return to the Moon are all in the planning stages. The “unscrewed” Orion was launched in Florida on December 5 and splashed down four hours later into the Pacific Ocean 600 miles southwest of San Diego.
Completing a successful first test flight is a big deal. The space industry has experienced two recent disasters. The first was the explosion of a commercial cargo rocket in October that exploded shortly after liftoff. Its intended destination was the International Space Station. The second happened just a few days later. In California, a privately-funded rocket being developed to carrying citizens into space disintegrated during a test flight. The pilot was killed.