The first thing Murphy does is to disabuse us of the notion of "the" Inquisition; there were in fact three, the medieval (late 12th, early 13th centuries), the Spanish (beginning in the 15th ) and the Roman (16th-17th centuries). But despite the fact that this part of European history is less monolithic than common wisdom usually portrays it, the Inquisition was a turning-point in information centralization, and that information was centralized with new technologies.

The Medieval Sysadmin

Inquisitors were the first group of transnational actors to need a great deal of information at their fingertips. As Murphy says:

"Conducting countless interrogations and working constantly, they needed records from the past that they could access quickly. Had some defendant come before the Inquisition previously - even 10 or 20 years earlier? Had any immediate family members been identified as heretics - or anyone in the extended family? ... Information on all these matters was essential, and the inquisitors designed record-keeping procedures to meet their needs. They created, in effect, the equivalent in parchment of search engines."

The Inquisition was accompanied by an information explosion, analogous to the 20th century's, if more prolonged. To give one example, Pope Innocent III (who died in the early 13th century) sent out 300 official Church letters in a given year. Less than a century later, Boniface VIII sent out 50,000.

The mere idea that information can be centralized and made widely available, the practice of modifying or creating technology to do so, as well as some of the enduring methods for sharing data, come to us directly from an organization that is best known for burning people alive.

The Dominican Web

The religious order most closely associated with the Inquisition was the Dominican. It arose at the same time as the Franciscan order. What it provided to the Church was the interface to the data, the Web to the Inquisition's Internet.

The change the order represented is hard to overestimate, Murphy wrote.

"In a largely static society - the typical peasant might spend an entire lifetime with a tight radius around his birthplace - the radical character of these aggressively itinerant agents, wielding transcendent power, proved highly advantageous."

"Over a period of years (Fournier) probed into the smallest intimacies of (the villagers') personal lives - not only their beliefs but also their tastes and habits, whom they liked and disliked, their sexual practices, the village gossip. He wanted detail: names, dates, numbers, locations, relationships. To exert control you must nail people down: identify them, count them, deep track of them put them in context."

This extreme, but by not terribly unusual, example of the Inquisitions' activities, and of the informational artifacts it produced, prefigured the shape and consequences of online social network. Like the captured information and activity of a group of Facebook users, say, this data means everything and nothing but can be used for social control.

Imagine the village as a village in China, for instance, full of Falun Gong practitioners. Imagine the Inquisition as the Communist Party and an electronic enforcement chief standing in for Fournier. It doesn't take much effort to do so. The Inquisition, Murphy maintains, provided a model for the gathering and exploitation of information in the service of social control under a small group, a model that persists to this day.

The Sanctity of Private Conscience

The aggregation of information seems to result, almost as a function of its constitution, in an institutional offense at the existence of privacy. Privacy, after all, is a block to complete aggregation and bureaucracy is like a virus: it exists to reproduce itself at the expense of any competitor.

Murphy, however, makes the case that the invasion and destruction of privacy is a result not of information centralization itself but of the certainty powering those behind it.

"In a world of moral certainty, the unthinkable becomes permissable. The sanctity of private conscience was no longer deemed inviolate, and techniques for ensnaring the innocent in scenarious of scripted guilt became increasingly sophisticated and systemic... 'The medieval inquisitors had perfected tecniquest by which the very fabric of reality could be altered.'"

Politicians in the United States have directed their representatives to torture human beings (the ultimate in privacy violation) because "America" is more important than twee sensibility; media companies are attempting to force the closure of websites, in a push for guilt-by-association, in the name of intellectual property rights; and in Saudi Arabia, authorities are calling for the murder of a young man because he aired his religious doubts on Twitter.

The agency behind these present violations is the same "moral certitude" that Murphy describes as powering the transgressions of the Inquisition. We have the Inquisition to thank for the example we follow in connecting the True Believer to the war on privacy; this despite doubt being as integral to the progress of technology, economics and government as it is to the exaltation of faith.

What "God's Jury" reminds us is that this unprecedented centralization and proliferation of information we are currently experiencing, and the liabilities that have resulted from it, do indeed have precedents. If we're attentive and critical, and full of doubt, we may prove able to mitigate its worst excesses and most egregious transgressions.

"Auto da fé? What's an auto da fé?"
"It's what you oughtn't to do but you do anyway!"

"The world population is expected to soar to more than 9 billion people by 2050, with roughly 70% living in cities. At the same time, ICT is extending its reach. These parallel trends are intersecting at a time when the world faces serious economic, environmental, and social challenges in achieving a more sustainable development. "Thinking Cities" explores the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in the Networked Society. To produce this film we interviewed some of the world's leading city thinkers including: Geoffrey West, physicist and professor at Santa Fe Institute; Mathieu Lefevre of New Cities Foundation and Carlo Ratti, Director of MIT Senseable City Lab."

The first documentary, "On the Brink," is available to view on YouTube.

Thanks to social media, the film-makers were able to pull together footage and photos and accounts of the birth and young adulthood of punk in Southern Africa, along with the events, strife and social movements that fueled it (and that it fueled in turn). Some of the footage - including accounts of the tumultuous political and social conflict in the countries - had not been seen in 30 years.

www.punkinafrica.co.za from Punk in Africa on Vimeo.

The film has been screened at theatres and film festivals in South Africa, Holland and Brazil. It will hit the States in March.

I interviewed Jones and Maas via email. The responses came via Jones. First off is the tech. But read beyond that. Believe me, their approach to the technology, as interesting as it is, is far from the most interesting aspect of the project.

"Our First 'Facebook Film'"

How did you research the topic? I understand that you wound up finding footage, photographs and people via social media. Could you expand on that?

This is in many regards our first "Facebook film" as without the help of social networks and new media it would have proven far costlier and more troublesome to make the film, especially from the point of view of research. The first step was to track down all the survivors and begin to construct a story from everyone's first hand accounts, which took several months. Another aspect was tracing all of the archival sources used in the film, which were assembled from literally all over the world: 8mm film of some of the bands from Los Angeles and London, video footage from Australia, DDR newsreels found in Slovak film archives, photographs from Poland, unused excerpts from television shoots in Zimbabwe. The list in endless - and being able to connect to people over the Internet made that not only possible, but effective.

How would making this film have been different if you had made it in the past?

For a start, technology has made it possible to make films in a radically different way than even a few years ago - today filesharing, external hard drives and HD cameras make things easy, fast and second nature that were unthinkable not all that long ago. Africa is also considerably changed from a decade ago which provided us with some necessary distance and perspective in terms of telling a historical narrative. And hopefully we get better at this as we learn more as a result of doing other projects.

What kind of tech was used in shooting and editing the film?

The film was primarily shot on HD using a Vericam P2. We also shot partially on Super-8 film stock to achieve a certain grainy, vintage look for purposes of introducing certain characters and places in the film. We edited on Final Cut by using proxy files to speed things up, and then assembled a full-HD timeline once were roughly finished. We then did the more fine post-production work including grading on the Baselight system and final sound mix in specialised studios in Prague, Czech Republic, where the film was co-produced.

Punk in Africa

What is punk, and how did your understanding of it affect the way you made the film?

Punk is an attitude of showing a middle finger to everything that is deemed important to others. It is about doing things for yourself independently on your own terms. If you put a soundtrack to that approach to life, you have punk.

How did punk reach Africa? For instance it [arguably] reached the UK via the Ramones tour. Any similar event of that nature, or was it more a slow seepage?

There was no single event or incident that caused to punk to reach Africa - the birth of the punk movement was more of a process, a slow build-up against the stifling conformity of the times. In the early 70s, Southern Africa still remained the last bastion of colonialism and censorship and social disapproval of popular culture was rampant. At the time the changing socio-economic situation in the UK caused a last wave of immigration of skilled tradesmen to South Africa, where they were welcomed by the apartheid government of the time due their skin colour. This also brought with it certain cultural influences, including the NME which was sold in South Africa six weeks after publication. Punk provided a necessary release from the imposed boredom of the times.

What kind of venues were found and what kind of ecosystem existed, or developed, to nourish these bands - if any?

Punk developed at first separately in each of the three main South African cities - when the musicians from various places began to meet each other, a network of small venues and later fanzines developed. Most of the scene was rooted in live performances and few records were available. The first attempt to do a punk / New Wave tour took place in December 1979, with Wild Youth from Durban, National Wake from Johannesburg, and Housewife's Choice and Safari Suits from Cape Town. Most of these bands also played in townships and did semi-legal downtown street gigs, as the venues that would host multi-racial gatherings were limited.

Did punks get arrested for the political aspects of either their lyrics or the default politics of two-tone bands existing?

What were the audiences like? Mostly white, mostly black or mixed?

Punk was the second important multi-racial music scene in South Africa apart from jazz. Rock music is generally a mostly white audience everywhere but in Southern Africa racially mixed bands were present from the beginnings of punk. Punk also often takes on local roots and draws on local music forms, and so there was an African identity present in the lyrics, music and visual style in the punk movement in all three of the countries we looked at.

Was African punk political from the get-go - something in the structure of the societies you cover - or did it move that way during its lifespan?

It was totally political from the start. During the 1980s in South Africa, the early 90s in Mozambique or Zimbabwe today, being involved in the punk movement was already a political statement.

Who were the primary opponents of punk in Africa? Were they religious leaders, political leaders, the police?

Definitely the police and the state. The scene was too underground to really have an impact on religious society as a whole. The government were always suspicious of the punk scene in all of the three countries we cover, with security police around gigs and so on.

How was punk regarded by musicians from other genres at the time?

Southern Africa is extremely rich in musical heritage, and even most rock musicians are taken quite seriously. A lot of cross-pollination always took place between jazz, reggae and African bands and the punk scene. More African-oriented musicians such as Mac McKenzie from Cape Town viewed the punk scene of the 1980s as a vehicle to reach broader audiences and different people but retained their musical chops and brought real musical skill to the punk style.

The punk scene in Southern Africa always took a lot of influence from local indigenous music everywhere it appeared, so the bands are instantly recognisable as coming from a specific place due to their sound. The politics and DIY aesthetic of the scene remained fairly intact everywhere.

Are any of the bands in the film still together and performing? Or individuals from the bands?

The film covers a period of time from the early 1970s until today. Apart from the newer contemporary bands in the film, some from the middle stage are still performing, such as Hog Hoggidy Hog or 340ml. Of the older generation, a few individuals are still performing in various formations but most have moved on into other careers, including also most of the originators.

What are the highest regarded punk bands currently performing in the three countries today, if there are any?

The biggest punk bands in South Africa are actually also the best-attended live acts across the country in rock music generally, such as Hog Hoggidy Hog, Fokofpolisiekar, and Fuzigish. In Mozambique, 340ml have a huge audience which transcends the punk scene they originated in, and the female-led band Mona are the most noteworthy of the new acts on the scene. In Zimbabwe both Evicted and the newer Chikwata 263 mix local sounds within a multiracial punk band and are increasingly popular.

Was there a "capitol" of punk rock in Africa in the 70s and 80s? Now?

This was split between Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, each of which had its own scene with its own specific influences. Johannesburg was always more innovative but the other places had strong punk movements in their own right, all with their own unique characteristics. Today the Internet has provided more of a common platform and the conditions are different, so the distinctions are lessened in many regards.

What kind of response did you get - from the musicians you featured, and from others - when you said you were making a documentary on punk in Africa?

In the beginning people were quite resistant as a lot of them were traumatised by their involvement and in some cases had even left the country. But on the whole people were generally supportive and keen to be of help - in the end we were able to speak to almost everyone we wanted to get into touch with, and most were extremely helpful and generous in terms of sharing their stories, lives and archival sources with the project.

How did the musicians you featured react to the finished film?

The reaction has been hugely favourable from all of the musicians featured. One striking comment has been that across the various generations, many have commented that they finally understand their place in the larger history of local music, which is of course very rewarding. Until now much of this was completely undocumented.

DIY

How do you two know each other?

We met at a mutual friend's wedding in Zimbabwe and hit it off immediately. Soon after we started talking about working together and made our first documentary, Durban Poison.

Could you give me a little background on each, especially as regards film making?

Deon grew up in the scene wrote about it and photographed it in the 1980s during its heyday in South Africa. He was a punk from day one and has the earrings and battle scars to prove it. He comes from a journalistic and record company background, started his own company Meerkat Media and do a lot of television work. He's made a few documentary films like My Big Fat Afrikaner Wedding and Who Killed Johannes Kerkorrel. His company specialises in music related subjects. He's involved with Afrikaans hip-hop with the project www.hiphopkop.com, writes newspaper columns and recently published his first travel book Witboy in Africa.

Keith comes from a film school background and has directed numerous documentaries in both Europe and Africa, and was the program director of the Music on Film festival in Prague for several years. Both worked together previously on the documentaries Durban Poison and Flowers of the Revolution.

Can you give me a sketch of the team you assembled to make the film?

We worked with Gary Griffin as our DOP. He was prepared to work without payment as a form of support to the project, so we used someone whose services we wouldn't be able to afford under any circumstances. As editor we used Andy Wills, again someone who was prepared to work for deferred payment with the added bonus that he grew up in Botswana so he easily understood the subject matter, and had a proven record of excellent work with editing and animating still images set to music.

These three countries were the last ones to be liberated in Africa, which forms a common history that is also reflected in the film.

How was it financed?

We received a small grant from the National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa and made a presale to Red Bull Media for Austrian, German and Swiss satellite television rights. We also had managed to acquire lots of favours from friends and colleagues. It was a labour of love project and largely self-financed in stages.

How long did it take between conception and the first shot? Between the first shot and the last edit? Between the last edit and the first showing? Between the first showing and now?

What are the plans for the film going forward. I saw it was shown on TV in Germany and you've had showings in various countries. What about the US? Any film festival plans, single showings or TV possibilities?

We are just releasing the film at the moment. We had an independent cinema distribution run in South Africa in January and have successfully launched the film in Europe at IFF Rotterdam. After our Czech premiere at the One World Humans Rights Film Festival in March, we will immediately also start showing the film in the US. We are currently in discussions with several attractive options for North American festivals. Beyond that, the film is represented for international sales by Rise and Shine Films in Berlin.

How is the film being promoted, marketed and distributed? How intensively are you using social media for that?

The film is represented for sales and distribution by our sales agent in Berlin, who also handles festivals for us. We are about to issue a limited run of DVDs in both South Africa and Czech Republic and continue to pursue numerous options to get the film out there so that people can see it - essentially we are guerrilla filmmakers using the punk DIY approach to distribution, retaining control and going for specific but broadly defined target audiences rather than waiting for something to happen. We use social media extensively for promoting screenings, downloads, premieres and other information about the film. We maintain a regular presence on Facebook and Twitter as well as dedicated Soundcloud and Vimeo pages, and use the Internet daily for promotional activities around the film, sometimes on several continents at once.

Other sources: Okayafrica

So it's no surprise, but it's still awesome, that a wad of nerdlingers has decided to compare a new wax recording (a la Edison) to one of the first songs to be compressed into an MP3, with both versions sung by the same singer, Suzanne Vega.

According to Colin Marshall, on OpenCulture, Vega's a capella song served an important function in the development of that now-ubiquitous soundfile format.

"Karlheinz Brandenburg, a key contributor to the MP3 compression algorithm, did indeed put MP3 technology to the test early in its development by using it to compress Vega's hit. Upon playback, he heard enough distortion in the singing to perform some serious tweaking. Evidently such a 'warm a capella voice,' in Brandenburg's words, doesn't take compression well."

Tweaking the format to allow for a more natural vocal sound was part of the MP3's development, and that was done, in part, via Vega's song.

Below, at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park in New Jersey, the park's curator, John Fabris, John Krivitt of the Audio Engineering Society and a group of Bay State College students record the songwriter singing the same tune into a vintage Edison wax recording device.

My life is interesting enough, even in its dull patches, that I would be mortified if you know where I was at any given time in a day. And plus, no offense, but if you were interesting enough to deserve that knowledge, I would already have given it to you.

I did not come to social consciousness during the build up of self-broadcasting. I was well and truly whole by the time blogging and location tech started to rise above the horizon. What appealed to me most with the advent of social media was the ability to publish. That is to say, the power to register my opinions or achievements in the public sphere without mediation. Also appealing, though somewhat less so, was the ability it gave me to watch what others desired to publish. Finally, the dialogic function of social media has also had its appeal.

Although I am also concerned with issues of privacy - control over my information - I am more distressed by issues of location. Any data I produce, on purpose or unwillingly, is going to give you, at best, an imperfect picture of me. Probably it will give you a largely fictitious picture. That makes me jump up and down and laugh and clap my hands together like a tiny child at Christmastime. But being able to locate me in time and space and assign a valid name to me? That is creepy to the crawliest of degrees. The notion that people are out there allowing that to happen to themselves on purpose makes me want to open a home for abused app-users.

Glassmap and its ilk are like avalanche beacons for the ego, constantly broadcasting a signal to prove its user exists; cheeping incessantly as though, were it to stop, its user would cease to possess any existence at all. It also removes any opportunity to make the single most exciting offer one person can make another, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Foursquare was bad enough, Path and Twitter and their pickpocketing even worse, but Glassmap and its ilk are like the Jim Rose Circus.* I just have to ask, who would do that to themselves?

Photos courtesty Shutterstock.

*Told you I was old.

Kashgari was apprehended at the Kuala Lumpur airport Wednesday by the Malaysian authorities, at the request of Saudi Arabia, with whom Malaysia has no extradition treaty. Sunday morning, Saudi officials took custody of him at the airport and flew him back to Saudi Arabia in a private plane, according to a source close to the situation.

The deportation by Malaysia, whose official religion is Islam, was confirmed by the Malaysian police confirmed .

Kashgari's tweets were identified as blasphemous by members of the country's Wahhabist clerical establishment, including the "weeping cleric," Nasser Al-Omar. Their supporters piled on, racking up 30,000 tweets of their own in the next 24 hours, most calling for his prosecution and execution.

Malaysian newspaper, The Star, reported that a High Court judge "granted an interim order to lawyers representing (Kashgari), to bar his deportation by Malaysian authorities." It is uncertain whether the order was granted before or after Kashgari had left Malaysia. If after, it may have been a way to both assuage Saudi demands and public sentiment.

However Monday morning, Kashgari's lawyers "have filed a habeas corpus application against the Home Minister, Inspector-General of Police and two others to get a declaration that his arrest and deportation were unlawful."

Kashgari's crimes have been defined by Wahhabi religious courts as "apostasy," or rejection of Islam, which, in Saudi Arabia's religiously conservative courts, is punishable by death.

Both defenders of Kashgari and Saudi watchers believe the event was stage-managed by the Wahhabi establishment as a way to regain political ground lost when the head of the Saudi religious police was replaced by a moderate.

Malaysian Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein denied there was any court order delaying Kashgari's deportation. He also called the notion that the Saudi writer would be executed "ridiculous," the minister told a group of reporters on Saturday.

"This is a credible country that they are talking about, and allegations that 'blood is in my hand' and such for sending him back - were baseless," Hussein said.

Given that Saudi religious law is clear about the punishment for apostasy - it is death - and given the country's proven and persistent willingness to execute religious offenders, the fear seems far from ridiculous.

Justifying the return of the 23-year-old to Saudi hands, Hussein said, "The ministry will never let Malaysia to be perceived as a haven for terrorists, criminals and wanted person, who want to seek hiding."

Given his return to his home country, one of Kashgari's friends told us, "expect a very slow update since Saudi is an expert in media blackouts."

Kuala Lumpur and Riyadh photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

On Saturday, the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, Kashgari tweeted three times, expressing his religious beliefs about the founder of Islam. Within hours, he was inundated with violent threats. Despite a full renunciation, a warrant was issued by Kingdom authorities for his arrest and the Kingdom's religious Fatwa Council condemned him as an apostate and an infidel, crimes which are punishable by death.

"Blasphemous" Tweets

According to one of Kashgari's friends, who wishes to remain anonymous, these are the three tweets which were the basis for the Saudi arrest warrant.

• On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you've always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.
• On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.
• On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.

Kashgari's Twitter account, @Hmzmz, has been shut down.

Kashgari's friend points out that these actions have come after a number of reversals for religious conservatives in the Wahhabi-influenced state. These include a law allowing women to work as salespeople in public lingerie stores, the replacement of the head of the religious police with a moderate, who ordered restrictions on how the religious police operate. It also happened within the context of the unrest of the Arab Spring.

Hashtags of Shame

Kashgari's harassment is not out of the blue, nor, apparently, based on these tweets alone. He has been the target of religious twitter users for months. "Public shaming through hashtags is now a common Saudi pressure tactic, especially against public officials and government scandals," said his friend.

A hardcore Saudi cleric used YouTube to post his condemnation of the young man. The cleric, Nasser al-Omar, known as the "weeping cleric" for his tendency to burst into tears at the blasphemy done to the Prophet, called for Kashgari to be hauled before a Sharia court, according to long-time Saudi blogger, Ahmad al-Omran (Saudi Jeans).

"These people [like Kashgari] should be put to trial in Sharia courts. It is known that cursing God and his Prophet is apostasy. And the fact that he has repented with cold words will not probably save him in the court."

Al-Omram's translation

The punishment for apostasy is death.

Saudi Arabia's information minister, has commanded that no one publish any of Kashgari's writings. Prior to this incident, he was a columnist with al-Bilad, a newspaper based in the eastern city of Jeddah.

"I have instructed all newspapers and magazines in the Kingdom not to allow him to write any thing and we will take legal measures against him."

Kashgari was trying to make a connecting flight to New Zealand when he was apprehended and arrested yesterday in Malaysia at the Kuala Lumpur airport. It has been reported that Malaysia, an officially Islamic state, will forcibly repatriate Kashgar to Saudi Arabia.

Building photos courtesy of Shutterstock

Nokia, the world's largest manufacturers of mobile phones, today published its policy on conflict minerals.

Update after the jump.

"Nokia Policy Against Illegal Trade of Natural Resources"

In a post on Nokia's "Conversations" blog, Ian Delaney lays out the company's public policy (PDF), which augments their supplier requirements.

Delaney boils the policy down to these four elements.

• We prohibit human rights abuses associated with the extraction, transport or trade of minerals.
• We also prohibit any direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups or security forces that illegally control or tax mine sites, transport routes, trade points, or any upstream actors in the supply chain.
• We have no tolerance with regard to corruption, money-laundering and bribery.
• We require the parties in our supply chain to agree to follow the same principles.

The policy delves at some length into Nokia's commitment to human rights "in accordance with accepted international conventions and practices, such as those of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ILO Core Conventions on Labor Standards, UN Global Compact, and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises."

Under the sub-heading, "Implementation of the Policy with Regards to Conflict Minerals," the document reads:

"We prohibit human rights abuses associated with the extraction, transport or trade of minerals. We also prohibit any direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups or security forces that illegally control or tax mine sites, transport routes, trade points, or any upstream actors in the supply chain. Similarly, Nokia has a no tolerance policy with respect to corruption, money-laundering and bribery. We require the parties in our supply chain to agree to follow the same principles."

The document outlines some of the company's process for oversight of suppliers, including the EICC-GeSI Conflict Minerals Reporting Template. It would be interesting to know how the suppliers will be reviewed, how often and what will happen to errant suppliers who use conflict minerals. We have asked Mr. Delaney exactly that and will update should we receive a response.

Update: We received a note from Nokia's Anna Bask.

"Nokia follows up the effectiveness of corrective actions and conducts on-site assessments as necessary. However, as stated in the article, the reality is that problems often lie upstream and not with our first tier suppliers. So as well as demanding proper due diligence from our direct suppliers to ensure that the material flows are conflict-free, we ask them to set policies and supplier requirements of their own and pass those on into the supply chain. Continued non-conformance and refusal to address issues of concern will lead to termination of business relationship." (Our bold.)

Conflict Minerals

Although conflict minerals could theoretically crop up anywhere, practically, East Africa is ground zero. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is certainly the worst-affected by conflict mineral mining. There, the Congolese National Army vie against three different rebel groups to extract and refine the valuable ores.

Here is how the various minerals are used in our electronics, including mobile phones, computers and music players.

• Tantalum: stores electricity in cell phones
• Tungsten: creations vibrations in phones
• Tin: circuit boards
• Gold: used to coat wiring

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock

The 30-second clip (after the jump) sweeps from the moon's northern pole to the southern polar region, passing, among other features, the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile wide dry sea that extends onto the side we can see from Earth.

According to the press release NASA released with the footage:

In the video, the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile-wide (900 kilometer) impact basin that straddles both the moon's near and far side.

The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93-mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive star-shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.

The GRAIL program consists of two small spacecraft outfitted with cameras. They reached lunar orbit on New Year's Eve and New Year's day. This footage was taken on Jan. 19.

The moon is "tidally locked," so the same half of its body has always faced away from the Earth and, until now, remained unfilmed. It has, however, been photographed, first by the Russians in 1959. The dark side has experienced far less volcanism, perhaps because the crust is thicker there.

And for bonus awesomeness, here is a freaky photo of the giant Vesta asteroid, shot in September. It is located in the solar asteroid belt lying between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists are reasonably certain it is filled with the souls of the damned. Well, not scientists so much as me. Look at it. Creepy.

Farside moon photo byNASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

His archives include "5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts," according to the New York Times. By the end of February, 17,000 tracks will be available for free download. But today, a collection of 16 field recordings is being released for free download to celebrate what would have been Lomax's 97th birthday.

You can play the offerings on a featured player or download them for free.

Under the Global Jukebox label, Cultural Equity will continue to release more complete tracks and collections for free download.

Tracks are already available on the site for listening, but most are not downloadable, aside from the birthday sampler. Plans are also in the works to release CDs of some of these collections.

Global Jukebox gets its name from Lomax's recording mission, to assemble a global jukebox that allows listeners to understand what we have in common as a species through our musical undertakings, as well as understanding the different solutions we've come up with musically to adapt to our surroundings and answer the big questions of human life.

Lomax began recording on bulky tape machines around the South in the Thirties, visiting locally famous, but nationally unknown, musicians, like Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, to capture the unique vocabulary of American music. He continued his recordings, as well as lectures and writing, until his death in 2002. For a large chunk of his life he was dogged by the F.B.I., who interpreted his devotion to cultural equity as an element of the Communist threat.

Photo of Alan Lomax recording in Dominica, 1962 by Antoinette Marchand from ACE.

Nairobitech reported:

"The Google Mocality saga has drawn its first casualties. Kenya country lead for Google, Olga Arara-Kimani formerly of Safaricom has been let go by the company. Also axed is a technical guy in Zurich... It is not clear how Olga was picked for the fall but as one observer noted, sometimes a sacrificial lamb has to be found for the brand name to weather the storm."

Update after the jump.

Nelson Mattos, who had earlier made a statement expressing the company's mortification over the situation, released a bland, generic statement yesterday.

"We've concluded our investigation into the serious allegations about our use of data from Mocality's website in Kenya. We're very sorry this happened. We've taken appropriate action with the people involved and made changes in our operations to ensure this doesn't occur again."

A Google global PR representative, who insisted on talking to ReadWriteWeb after our first post on the subject, assured us that we would be given a full rundown of the investigation after it was complete. Last night, we were told Mattos's post was Google's only "on-the-record" statement. Not sure, if the comments on Mattos's Google+ page are representative, that this was the right tack to take.

We'll let you know if they reverse course and make a further statement, as some African tech blogs are reporting.

Update: Kenyan newspaper The Nation reports Ms. Arara-Kimani has claimed to have left of her own accord.

"'I confirm I have left Google Kenya. As the leader of the Kenya office, I felt that the buck stopped with me and I decided to leave,' she wrote in a phone message to the Nation on Monday."

Other sources: TechMTAA

It was originally reported that he could receive the death penalty, which is the maximum penalty for his alleged crime of "political terrorism" in the northeast African country.

He and several other defendants were found guilty on January 19th, according to the Ethiopian news website Walta Info, but were not sentenced until Thursday, January 26.

"The charges included conspiring to commit acts of terror, rendering support to terrorism, participating in a terrorist organization (Ginbot 7) and money laundering. Elias is also found guilty of masterminding and providing financial support to the other defendants who remained under police custody since June 2011."

The other defendants, who were sentenced to 14 years in prison and given fines of 33,000 birrs ($1,500.00), were Reeyot Alemu, a columnist for the weekly newspaper Feteh, and Woubshet Taye, who was deputy editor of Awramba Times, which has since closed up shop.

Kifle's higher profile, resulting from his U.S. residency, may have saved him from the death penalty. That may not be the case for another blogger, Eskinder Nega, who was arrested in September, also on "terrorism" charges.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, this is Kifle's second life sentence, following a 2007 decision, also rendered in absentia. The first conviction was on charges of treason and was part of a 2006 crackdown on the press. He was targeted for his publication's coverage of the Ethiopian government's violent clampdown on protests that arose after the 2005 elections in the country.

Photo via CPJ | tip via Scott Baldauf

"Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide," he said, "and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache."

Foxconn has seen multiple suicides and a threat of mass suicide due to working conditions.

According to Want China Time:

"(He added) that he wants to learn from Chin Shih-chien, director of Taipei Zoo, regarding how animals should be managed. Gou not only invited Chin to take part in his company's annual review meeting but also asked all general managers in the group to listen to Chin's lecture... on how to manage different animals according to their individual temperaments."

Said another executive, "It's a tough job to manage a workforce of over one million, young people's hearts in China are hard to get hold of."

Especially when your aspiration is to eventually learn how to treat them as well as animals.

Gou photo by Dilma Roussef

It's latest tweets, posted yesterday on @hsmpress, include photos and descriptions of two Kenyan government officials they've kidnapped, Fredrick Irungu Wainaina and Mule Edward.

The latest two were kidnapped from their government offices in Northern Kenya where Irungu is said to be "Registration Clerk for Kenyan Ministry of Immigration and Registration of Persons" and Edward a "Government District Officer (DO) for Burderi, Wajir South."

The terrorist organization, known in full as Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujahideen, had been accused of kidnapping tourists from coastal Mombasa and other locations in the lead-up to the October invasion. One of the tourists, a French national, died.

Al-Shabaab has been using Twitter since early December.

Kenya-based TechMtaa commented:

"The account seems to be run by someone who is taking lots of caution on how he/she logs in. The language looks so American stoking the fear that some US Islamic extremists are aiding the organisation in its terror activities. The account is mostly active at night and the user does not posts for a long time before abruptly logging off."

The New York Times reported that the U.S. government was considering an attempt to shut the organization's Twitter down. That has not happened. Whether holding off is a function of the ease with which a new account could be started, legal issues with a shut-down or because the account is a source of intelligence is unclear. I think the latter might be most likely.

Dealing with the statistical bureaus of the world's second-largest economy is even less pleasant than it sounds. So the Journal has created this well-organized, graphically effective and easy-to-use site. It organizes data by month-to-month and year-over-year presentations and users can switch from one to the other.

China Econtracker offers outlays of data based on gross domestic product, industrial value added, fixed asset investment, exports, imports, trade balance, foreign exchange reserves, consumer price index and bank credit.

It provides a source for each set of data and allows users to post the results to their Twitter account or Facebook page.

Whether your are among those likely to wind up "fighting it out with journalists at the State Council Information Office or getting lost for hours in the maze of Beijing's Internet" as Tom Orlik writes on China Real Time's post on the Econtracker, or just someone who wishes to be more informed about one of the most important economies on earth, the site looks to provide a real utility.

One commenter on the post, however, said:

"Chinese export statistics originate in individual customs declarations. These declarations include an ever expanding and now very likely statistically material amount of trade 'roundtripped' through Bonded Logistics Parks in China in order to realize export VAT refunds. One of the many reasons that this statistic, like any other in China, is simply not reliable."

Now, if you understand that enough to agree or disagree, you may not need this tool. For the rest of us, though, I still think it will prove useful, however reductive and unreliable statistical collections may be.

Government office photo by Daniel Gao | other sources: China Digital Times

Shortly after GKBO began in September, Mocality "started receiving some odd calls" from customers who were confused by pitches to build them websites that came from Google in apparent partnership with Mocality. There was no such partnership and Mocality claimed to discover it was Google lying to its customers to bring them into GKBO.

Google has released a statement which we have included at the end of the article after the jump.

Mocality did some pretty deep forensics on their traffic and discovered a specific IP, which used a Kenyan ISP and utlized the latest Chrome build, was extensively accessing their business listings. So on December 21, they re-directed a percentage of the inquiries from that IP to a page that gave a different phone number - one that connected to the Mocality call center. The calls that came in were startling.

Here's an example, a call from someone identifying himself as Douglas, from Google Kenya, who tells the person who answered the phone, whom he believes is a business owner using Mocality, that Google and Mocality are collaborating on a new website service. Another call, available here in transcript, has the speaker accusing Mocality itself of fraud. They estimated the team identified as Google Kenya made 20-25 calls per hour to Mocality customers.

After a Christmas break, Magdalinski said there were no more instances of access from that IP. Instead, a new trend started from an Indian IP which belongs to Google. The calls began again, but this time from India. Here's an example, starring a caller named "Deepthi."

"It looks like Google has now outsourced the Getting Kenya Businesses Online operation to India!" wrote Magdalinski. He continued:

"When we started this investigation, I thought that we'd catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.

"I did not expect to find a human-powered, systematic, months-long, fraudulent (falsely claiming to be collaborating with us, and worse) attempt to undermine our business, being perpetrated from call centres on 2 continents."

We contacted Joseph Mucheru, Google's senior lead for Sub-Saharan Africa. We met and interviewed him in October in his office at Google's Nairobi headquarters where we talked, among other things, about the GKBO program. We have yet to hear back from him. We also contacted Magdalinski. If either respond, we will update this article.

Forbes reported that Google's policy manager for Africa, Ory Okholloh, said the company would make a statement by the end of the day. It is the end of the day in Kenya and all we have been able to get is a boilerplate line from Google's corporate PR department.

"These are clearly very serious allegations, and we are doing everything possible to investigate them."

Other publications, including The Register, have carried a different statement.

"We're aware that a company in Kenya has accused us of using some of their publicly available customer data without permission. We are investigating the matter and will have more information as soon as possible."

Clearly, Google is looking to shift the focus onto the fact that the information in Mocality's database was user generated. However, as Magdalinski notes on his Twitter account, "The real issue is not taking 30% of our 'publicly available db' - it's what was said to our customers on the calls."

UPDATE: Here is the statement from Nelson Mattos, Vice-President for Product and Engineering, Europe and Emerging Markets:

"We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality's data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We've already unreservedly apologized to Mocality. We're still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we'll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved."

As Matt McGee notes on Marketing Land:

"The statement doesn't specifically say that Google itself was doing the scraping and attempting to contact Mocality's customers. By saying 'a team of people working on a Google project,' Google keeps open the possibility of placing responsibility for the incident on third party contractors - which is similar to what happened last week when Google said that ad agencies were responsible for a poorly-executed sponsored blog post campaign for Google Chrome."

During my conversation with Mucheru in October, he spoke of GKBO as a Google program, conducted by the Kenya office he oversees, and not by a contracted group. If this was inaccurate, I hope he will correct it in his response to ReadWriteWeb's questions.

The books, art catalogues for major exhibitions at the museum, pop out into a clean, fast virtual book reader. Open Culture points out that the books are also available for download in a number of e-book formats, including ePub and PDF, at Archive.org's Guggenheim page.

The offerings range from the ubiquitous Alexander Calder to Fernand Léger, from Francis Bacon to Wassily Kandinsky.

They also offer theme and anthology-type books, such as 1954's "Younger American Painters" and "Amazons of the Avant-Garde" (which seems to be one of the few offerings to feature women artists).

Guggenheim photo by Randy Pertiet

According to Reuters, the online production, Effi Briest 2.0, "used status updates, photo uploads and wall postings from characters to relate protagonist Effi Briest's descent into disrepute." The Facebook experiment was a way to do a spectacularly different pre-dress dress rehearsal prior to the play's in-the-flesh opening this Saturday.

Over 1,200 people signed up to participate on the production's Facebook page before the virtual doors closed. Those arriving afterward were able to watch the live play but not contribute.

Participants were asked to help with certain aspects of the play, which chronicled the expectations and downfall of the eponymous heroine. They voted, for instance, on her wedding dress and added passages to her love letter. When they chattered too much during the production, the moderator, Theo Von Tain, asked for "silence in the theatre." The audience applauded by typing the word "applause."

A theatre spokesperson told Reuters:

"We were really pleased to try something new and innovative, and have learned a lot about how we can use the internet for our productions.

"We had a large group of people watching and they joined in as we thought they would. They were really attentive but also well-behaved and were quiet when we asked them to be," the spokeswoman said... Facebook can't replace the stage, but it offers some really interesting opportunities to perform theater online."

The theatre has not ruled out additional use of Facebook for its productions.

Photos from the Maxim Gorki Theatre's website | @dw_scitech