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Limit Telephotography

Dugway by Trevor Paglen

Trevor Paglen has created some beautiful photos of remote military installations using a process he called limit telephotography.

Limit-telephotography involves photographing landscapes that cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The technique employs high powered telescopes whose focal lengths range between 1300mm and 7000mm. At this level of magnification, hidden aspects of the landscape become apparent.

The image at right shows the US Army’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground at Dugway, Utah, from a distance of 22 miles.

Paglen was also involved in the project Terminal Air, which explores the interconnections between government agencies and private contractors involved with the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.

Hat tip to 3 Quarks Daily.

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Colossus reborn! And the race is on…

Photograph of Colossus computer

Colossus, the world’s first programmable digital computer that Alan Turing and the team at Bletchley Park used to crack the German Enigma code in WWII, is being rebuilt.

And what’s even more cool, it’s going to be used in a race against a modern PC to crack codes!

Tony Sale and his team of British vintage computer enthusiasts have a job a head of them, as the original Colossus machines were destroyed at the end of WWII. However the surviving Colossus engineers have been found, and they’re on the case.

Hat tip to Boing Boing.

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Greens to support computer games industry

Today The Greens are launching a policy to support the computer games industry in Australia.

There was a story earlier this year that the gaming industry is now bigger than the film industry. That’s only true if you compare the whole gaming industry with just film box-office sales and ignore DVD sales and rentals, exports and other non-cinema income. Still, it does make a point: gaming is a lot bigger than most people realise.

The gaming industry wants the same tax breaks as the film industry. I figure that to be consistent, yes, either they both get these breaks or they both don’t.