LocalWiki's Philip Neustrom says,

My non-profit, LocalWiki, has been working on this really incredible project to help document the continent of Antarctica. Most notable, at least right now, is this custom map we've pieced together from very-hard-to-find NASA aerial imagery and coastline datasets. It's probably the most beautiful thing I've ever worked on.

Check out the LocalWiki for Antarctica. The project "aims to document the full extent of human involvement on the continent," and for now is focused on a two-mile region surrounding Palmer Station.

A funny moment from Disney kids' sitcom Shake it up:

Nerd: Did you use open-source code to save time, and the virus was hidden in it?

Stupid: Maybe?

Nerd: Rookie mistake.

Disney sitcom says open source is insecure [The Register]

Performed by Kimiko Ishizaka on a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial in Berlin's Teldex Studio, there's already plenty to love about a new cut of Bach's Goldberg Variations. But this one is also the first fan-funded, open source, and completely free recording of it.

"Every part of it is free for you to use, share, and copy," said Robert Douglass, who launched the successful Kickstarter project behind Werner Schweer's new version of the classic score and its production.

Schweer's modernized and digitized score was itself created with free and open source software from MuseScore.com.

The producers said their goal was to be "precise to Bach’s instruction, yet full of personality and character".

"To help make this recording truly timeless, we need your help. Share it. Give it away. Introduce others to its beauty, and explain to them why you love it," Douglass wrote. "Make yourself responsible for converting another person to being a Bach fan."

The production's website is at opengoldbergvariations.org. Five double CDs of the recording will be given away to listeners who sign up for a promotion. There's also a facebook page for the project and a twitter account to follow.

Wisconsin Public Radio also developed a website to accompany its broadcast of the Open Goldberg Variations, opengoldberg.wpr.org, which will display the score in real-time so listeners can "see" the music there as it plays: "a first-ever event, proving bleeding edge technologies," says Douglass.

Download Page [Open Goldberg Variations]
Open Goldberg Variations [Soundcloud (enbeddable)]
Sheet Music [Musescore]

This is what the wind over the United States looked like on March 27th, 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time. It's beautiful. And it's even better if you go to the project page, where you can watch real-time wind currents move around the map.

The National Digital Forecast Database is a weather forecasting system that provides open access to weather data collected all over the United States. The National Weather Service has field centers all across the country, that collect information about things like wind speed/direction, precipitation, and barometric pressure. They combine this data with big-picture satellite tracking and algorithms that are based on what we know about how weather patterns work, and that's how you get the kind of daily forecast we rely on to plan our days.

In the process, the National Weather Service generates a lot of data—data that has not, traditionally, been accessible to just anybody. We saw the forecasts, but it wasn't as easy to see the measurements the forecasts were based on. The NDFD changes that. It's a really great example of publicly funded research being made available to the people who help provide the funding.

And when that happens, you get cool projects like this one, where data on wind direction and speed are used to create truly amazing art. The information on current conditions, and predictions for the future, are updated hourly. When you look at the animated version of this map, what you see is the most recent forecast playing out.

Read a previous BoingBoing story about using wind forecasts to improve renewable energy.

I've been following the story about the scientists who have been working to figure out how H5N1 bird flu might become transmissible from human to human, the controversial research they used to study that question, and the federal recommendations that are now threatening to keep that research under wraps. This is a pretty complicated issue, and I want to take a minute to help you all better understand what's going on, and what it means. It's a story that encompasses not just public health and science ethics, but also some of the debates surrounding free information and the risk/benefit ratio of open-source everything.

H5N1, the famous bird flu, is deadly to humans. Of the 566 people who have contracted this form of influenza, 332 have died. But, so far, the people who have caught bird flu don't seem to have contracted the disease from other humans, or passed it on. Instead, they got it from birds, often farm animals with whom the victims were living in close contact. H5N1 was first identified 14 years ago, and there's never been a documented case of it being passed from person to person.

But that doesn't mean such a leap is impossible.

That's because of how the influenza virus works. Influenza is made up of eight pieces of RNA, containing 10 genes, and they all replicate independently of one another and there's no system for error correction*. That means you have more opportunity for mutations to arise that change what the virus does and who it can infect. Think of it like dice. Genetic replication is like putting a die in a jar, shaking it up and seeing what you get. Everybody does that. But influenza has eight die, not one. So it accumulates mutations faster. As a bonus, influenza viruses that infect the same host can share genes—essentially creating a baby virus that carries traits from different parents.

That's why, despite 14 years of relatively low-risk behavior, scientists are still concerned about what H5N1 might do in the future. All it would take, theoretically, is the right roll of the dice, and suddenly you have a flu virus with a 60% kill rate that can pass from person to person.

At least, theoretically. Could that actually happen? And, if so, how likely is it that the "right" bad combination of genes will come up? You can see why these are important questions to ask, and that brings us to the controversy.