Luminism
In the New World of Luminism, video paints and repaints the ocean;
everywhere turmoil occurs and everywhere the sky is a deeper trouble.
Luminism of the cataract of Niagara and the eye, sublime mists, mists
transformed into the commonplace of video texturing, virtual worlds!
For they are manifold and of a Spirit unbounded by code's compression,
the weak evanescence of code, the languor of clouds and rainbows.
Suns, suns!
http://www.alansondheim.org/thenewworld.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/thenewworld.mp4
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i03/03a01501.htm
From the issue dated September 12, 2008
Data Deluge From Collider Prompts Next Big Information Revolution
By RICHARD MONASTERSKY
When the Large Hadron Collider revs up to full capacity near Geneva, it will
generate about 15 million gigabytes of data each year — enough to fill a stack
of DVDs more than two miles high.
So much information will be pouring out that it will equal about 1 percent of
the total data produced each year throughout the world, says François Grey,
head of communications for information technology at CERN, the European
particle-physics laboratory where the collider is located.
The collider project will need to sort and store every single bit and then
make them available for physicists on every continent except Antarctica.
To meet this grand challenge, CERN has built up the LHC Computing Grid to
handle the data and provide access for the 7,000 scientists from 500 universities
and laboratories around the world who are participating in the experiment.
Often called the Grid, the distributed computing network will eventually link
up 100,000 processors. About 20 percent of those CPU's sit in long rows of
racks at CERN, with the rest spread around the globe at national labs and
universities.
The computing facilities are distributed like the branches of a tree, with
CERN as the main trunk, or Tier 0. It sends copies of all of the collider data
to 11 major limbs called Tier 1 facilities.
The United States has two of these, at Brookhaven National Laboratory and at
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which each serve one of the major teams
of researchers involved in the collider project.
The bulk of the computing power is spread out beyond these limbs, among 250
smaller branches called Tier 2 centers.
The University of Texas at Arlington is the lead institution for one of the
Tier 2 centers in the United States. The university has devoted 1,000
processors and 500,000 gigabytes of storage to the project, says Kaushik De, a
professor of physics there and the center's coordinator.
When a physicist at a university wants to analyze some collider data, she
submits her job through her computer at her institution. The LHC Grid software
then goes out looking for the data, the programs, and the computing power she
needs for the job.
The request might land at a local Tier 2 facility or it might travel to a
Tier 1 halfway around the world. Once the available processors have finished the
analysis, the Grid sends back the results to her own computer. "The best
analogy for the Grid is a farming cooperative," says Mr. Grey. "By sharing
resources, we can use them more efficiently."
Unlike the World Wide Web, which was developed at CERN, the idea of a grid
for distributed computing was conceived by researchers in the United States in
the 1990s. The fields of astronomy, biomedicine, and earth sciences are already
using computing grids, as are companies like IBM and Hewlett Packard.
But the LHC Grid will be the biggest test of this strategy yet, says Mr.
Grey. "It's really putting the grid into practice."
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Faculty
Volume 55, Issue 3, Page A15
Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Psssst...Have you heard the news? There's a new fashion blog,
plus the latest fall trends and hair styles at StyleList.com.
(http://www.stylelist.com/trends?ncid=aolsty00050000000014
Memorial and care of animals
Beams of light that don't kill birds: 9/11 and fictitious towering
of prims universes skyspheres from one end of the site to the other; the
building completed, tottering, holding fast.
http://www.alansondheim.org/ tower jpgs
http://www.alansondheim.org/tower.mp4
probably the highest construction in Second Life but who knows?
these things last a very short time.
The memorial searchlights modeling the World Trade Center in downtown
Manhattan kill thousands of birds; they interrupt migration routes and
bird-flight in general. And they're back.
Whatever we do, rots from within.
