DAVID CARR, The New York Times, (via BoingBoing) reports:
When the 40,000 subscribers to Reason, the monthly libertarian magazine, receive a copy of the June issue, they will see on the cover a satellite photo of a neighborhood - their own neighborhood. And their house will be graphically circled.
On one level, the project, sort of the ultimate in customized publishing, is unsurprising: of course a magazine knows where its subscribers live. But it is still a remarkable demonstration of the growing number of ways databases can be harnessed. Apart from the cover image, several advertisements are customized to reflect the recipient’s particulars.
Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason, said the magazine, with an editorial mission of “Free Minds, Free Markets,'’ used the stunt to illustrate the cover article about the power and importance of databases.
“Our story is man bites dog,” Mr. Gillespie said. “Everybody, including our magazine, has been harping on the erosion of privacy and the fears of a database nation. It is a totally legit fear. But they make our lives unbelievably easier as well, in terms of commercial transactions, credit, you name it.”
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Radio Free Asia (via Snow Lion Publications) reports:
KATHMANDU, March 31, 2004–Chinese police in a county near the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, have arrested a young monk for keeping in his quarters a photograph of the Dalai Lama and a Tibetan national flag, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.
“A team of Public Security Bureau officials of Taktse County, Lhasa City, secretly raided the room of Choeden Rinzen, a monk at Gaden Monastery located in the vicinity of Lhasa city, on Feb. 12, 2004,” a Tibetan source who recently arrived in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, told RFA’s Tibetan service.
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The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. The Aioi Works of Japan’s Diesel United, Ltd built the first engines and is where some of these pictures were taken.
It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. (The photo above is a 10 cylinder version.) These engines were designed primarily for very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them.
Even at it’s most efficient power setting, the big 14 consumes 1,660 gallons of heavy fuel oil per hour.
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