Under the Radar: September 2007

Saturday, September 29, 2007

October 12, 1997, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr took off in an experimental aircraft from the Monterey Peninsula Airport

John Denver was just plain a lot of fun in the 70s... he is where we get the expression "Faaaar out!"

He died flying a modified experimental Long-EZ aircraft designed by Burt Rutan. He loved to fly. Here is an explanation of what happened.

(Copy and paste the links in your browser window... there are too many of them to make them clickable... the software is confused.)

http://www.asktog.com/columns/027InterfacesThatKill.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Denver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8nDdPM_Qk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLBKOcUbHR0&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFgKkTKqh9Y&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eivZd4j5MBs&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwARpaKHx_w&mode=related&search=

And a duet with Karen Carpenter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzlpeV0gK-M&mode=related&search=

Broadcast Satellite Analog Hi-Vision 9 Ends

Analog high definition broadcast satellite transmission by NHK in Japan will end tomorrow, September 30, 2007, at midnight.

This broadcast only started in 1999, but it has already been supplanted by terrestrial digital high definition broadcasting. It is just amazing to see something come in and go out so fast. The US will discontinue analog broadcasting soon. All analog broadcasting will end in Japan in 2011.

The first television broadcast in Hawaii was December 3, 1952; the last will be on February 17, 2009. The rate of technological advance is so great that you can see new things come into use, and marvels they were at the time, and go out of use in the blink of an eye... and the rate is increasing...

Empress of the realm

Here is Kira, Empress, master of the many humans who devotedly wait on her hand and foot.

I had a dream that I was walking in a field, but the sky was pitch black... and there were millions of beagles walking very purposefully in the opposite direction. They flowed around me... like flocks of sheep... not in a panic, but walking quickly. I looked to the right and to the left, and all I could see were beagles...

So I called "Kiiiiraaaa", and I saw a little snout point up in the distance... after a while, she came up to me, and when I saw the white lightning bolt on her back, I knew it was Kira.

"Kira!" I yelled, and she jumped in my arms... and she was cold...

"Oh, oh. Kira, you are dead... and so am I... and we are in the beagle afterlife for some reason..."

I woke up and never figured out what the reason was.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Grave of the Fireflies 火垂るの墓 (Hotaru no Haka)

Or perhaps my translation would be "Grave of the Firetrailers". The Japanese title does not use the common word for firefly and instead uses a much broader term, which in context perhaps better evokes the whole.

Truly extraordinary. If it were to be released now rather than when it was 20 years ago, it would be a sensation. Almost none of the animation since comes even close.

Here is a short description by Roger Ebert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTBS2k5qDE0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotaru_no_haka

Try going to eBay and searching for Grave of the Fireflies. See the discussion below.

Amazingly cheap DVDs at eBay, but...

You can find amazingly cheap DVDs at eBay... sometimes for just a couple of dollars... However, there are a few things to watch out for.

THE BIDDING IS RIGGED. If it is a "Buy-it-Now" price, then if you click on it, that is the price you will pay for it. If it is a bidding price, what you are looking at is the second highest bid, not the highest bid. In other words, if there is a bid showing for 2 dollars, bidding 2 dollars and 1 cent is unlikely to win you the item because the actual current bid, which you cannot see, is already above 2 dollars. In this situation, if you try bidding $2.01, you will see the bid immediately jump, as if someone were online bidding against you. That is just because they were hiding the actual highest bid from you.

THE BUY-IT-NOW PRICE DOES NOT INCLUDE SHIPPING. The shipping cost can be an important clue that something may be wrong. You will find a number of DVDs selling for only a few dollars... but the shipping is TO the US, and instead of being just a few dollars, is very high... Hmm... then look where the item is located. That may be a clue that it is a pirated copy that may not be what you are interested in.

MOST DVDs HAVE REGION CODES AND WILL ONLY PLAY IN ASIA OR NORTH AMERICA OR EUROPE. This is another clue. If it says "All regions", that is again suspicious and may indicate that it is a pirated copy.

Here is a screen shot of a DVD on eBay that I think is suspicious. Note that the starting bid is only $0.99, the Region Code lists all regions, it says it is new, and the shipping is $6.99.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Worm trying to trick you into infecting your Windows computer by fake Skype chat message

There is a worm for Skype for WINDOWS circulating. It seems to take the form of a chat message, pretending to be from someone you know. If your computer becomes infected, you will be blocked from accessing Symantec and other security sites. Just receiving the message will not infect your computer; you need to follow the link and grant permission for your machine to become infected. This is worth remembering because it is likely we will see future similar attempts.

Here is an excerpt from a PC World article:

... the worm sends chat messages that attempt to trick victims into thinking they were accidentally sent a file with messages such as "look what crazy photo Tiffany sent to me,looks cool" and "oops sorry please don't look there :S."

The displayed link attempts to download a file ending with a .scr extention, used for screen savers. If double-clicked, the malware - known variously as Skipi, Pykspa and Ramex - will first attempt to disable securty software, and then install another, data-stealing piece of malware, according to research from Symantec.

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/005384.html

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/09/windows-worm-ta.html

Sunday, September 9, 2007

The most distant object made by humans

Thirty years ago, Voyager I was launched... it is now more than a hundred times farther away than the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

It is now more than one-half light-day away! At that rate, if it were going toward the nearest star, it is still only about 1/3,000th way there... meaning it would take nearly 100,000 years to arrive.

Voyager I is still functioning and is still sending back data! However, the power supply will run out in about 10 years.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14261627

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_I

Thursday, September 6, 2007

It is raining cats and dogs... and the typhoon isn't even here yet!

Typhoon No. 9 is still far to the south of Honshu, but it is raining like mad outside... and it is supposed to get worse tomorrow!

http://www.tenki.jp/typ/index.html

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Does corn syrup cause even more problems than we thought?

Carbonyl compounds are elevated in people with diabetes and are well documented to be linked to diabetes complications such as ulcers and nerve damage.

It seems that these harmful compounds form in substantial amounts when, instead of sugar cane sugar, you use corn syrup to make soda.

If you don't know what diabetic foot ulcers look like, try Google Images. I warn you, it is pretty shocking.

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Another example of improved computing making the impossible into the practical and routine

A decade ago, the peak intensities of many meteor showers were difficult to predict and were often just guesstimates. Meteor storms were predicted, and observers saw nothing. No one was looking, and surprise showers appeared. That is why the Aurigid meteor shower is known to have been observed by only three people before yesterday. (I woke mom up at 1:20, and she saw one in a few minutes even though it was nearly completely overcast!)

Improved computing now allows much better prediction of meteoroid streams. Models are so good that the predicted peak of the Aurigids was 4:33 AM PDT, and the actual peak was 4:15 AM; the predicted peak rate was right on target. A decade ago, you would have gotten tentative guesses as to whether or not one would see anything at all.

http://aurigids.seti.org

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Les Miserables

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3698104979232723548&q=les+miserables&total=2171&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3698104979232723548&q=les+miserables&total=2171&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

ISBN-13: 978-0295985350

みなしご元禄津波
The Orphan Tsunami of 1700

One winter's night in the year 1700, a mysterious tsunami flooded fields and washed away houses in Japan. It arrived without the warning that a nearby earthquake usually provides. Samurai, merchants, and villagers recorded the event, but nearly three centuries would pass before discoveries in North America revealed the tsunami's source.

The Orphan Tsunami of 1700 tells this scientific detective story through clues from both sides of the Pacific. The evidence uncovered tells of a [magnitude 9 earthquake off the coast of the Pacific Northwest] a century before Lewis and Clark...

You can see a summary at
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1707/

http://www.amazon.com/Orphan-Tsunami-1700-Japanese-Earthquake/dp/0295985356/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204357404&sr=1-1

Video simulation of the megaquake.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=72698052150208427&q=pacific+northwest+megaquake&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Map of simulation of the megaquake.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/supercomputer/02-08Virtual90Megaquake.asp

A tsunami is unlike any "wave" you have ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jixyBvjJZQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl8giZ66j7o

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)

Liberal, optimistic, exhilarating. The most spectacular lectures you will ever see.

www.ted.com

Try these to start

The best presentation ever... legendary... your view of the world will change in many ways... and there will be hope...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

The World Now Eats (and Dies) Like Americans
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/10

Extremely graphic... even made me queasy... but you cannot understand the light without knowing the darkness...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/142

The Law of ACCELERTING Returns

You have probably heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns: more effort gets you only marginal increase in reward (for example, if you exercise for half an hour a day, you get most of the health benefits; if you exercise for an hour a day, you get almost all of the health benefits; and exercising for two, three, or four hours a day will give very little added health benefits).

However, there are situations in which reward does not diminish (at least for a long while) and actually speeds up over time. People tend to see progress in technology as proceeding in a linear fashion, so they expect the 21st century (barring something truly unfortunate) to progress something like the way the 20th century did. But according to Ray Kurzweil, the technical progress in the 21st century will be more like 1,000 times that of the 20th century.

Here is an example. Cost to read the DNA of one person
in 1990: 3 billion dollars
in 2005: 2 million dollars
in 2006: 200,000 dollars
target for 2010-2015: 1,000 dollars

Being able to read your DNA will allow medical treatments to be tailored specifically for you, vastly improving outcomes.

This BBC Horizon program is, granted, sensational infotainment, but it is probably the most efficient introduction to this topic.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3882715179234602208&q=human+v2.0&hl=en

The article below is very long, and there may be parts that are difficult to follow, but look over the entire article because it is a map of the world we are already living in, and it shows what looms up the road.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1

Step 1: Slow the ageing process

Something that humans have seen only once is about to happen again: functional lifespan will vastly increase.

This happened the first time in the 20th century with improvements in public health, sanitation, nutrition, vaccination, and pharmaceuticals. Someone from the 19th century would not believe how low our risk of death is, how free of disability and pain we are, and how long we live now. Things are hardly perfect, but to all humans who lived before the early 1900s, the world we live in now would be an unbelievable paradise.

In the next leap, we will not only live even longer, but disease and disability will often be delayed by years if not decades. If we can just make it through the next 15 years or so, the interventions will be unbelievable. It is quite possible that many of us, even those in middle age, will live to see the dawn of the 22nd century, looking and feeling like 40. I am not joking.

So, how do we improve our chances of getting there? Doing basic things to take care of your health is obvious, but there are other things that can be done.

We have known for 70 years how to slow the ageing process and delay the onset of the diseases of old age: eat less. Or more exactly, reduce the number of calories while maintaining adequate amounts of protein, fats, vitamins, and other nutrients. The difference is shocking, and it has been shown in animals from ameba to monkeys without exception. Basically, when calories are low, cells turn on genes that fix damage, so you age more slowly. Fasting at least once a month seems to produce most of the desired effect.

If you have not seen this New York Times article, take a look at the monkeys.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/health/nutrition/31agin.html?ex=1163480400&en=193a4a4fe169ec69&ei=5070

The monkeys are both about 25 years old. The one on the right ate a normal diet and is old, frail, gray, scruffy, and has the shrunken skull of an old monkey (like a 90 year old human). The one on the left ate a diet with the same nutrients, but with about 30 percent fewer calories. The contrast is shocking. The monkey that ate fewer calories still looks young and healthy (like a 60 year old human).

So, step one is avoid excess calories, especially from sugar, white bread, white rice, and white potatoes.

But the amount by which you have to reduce calories is quite difficult for most people to maintain. Is there another way we can turn on the damage repair genes? The answer seems to be yes.

Throughout human evolution, we have always eaten plants that were far from perfect. They were drought stressed, attacked by fungi, and attacked by insects. Ironically, this seems to have been good for us. When plants are attacked or do not receive enough water, they produce huge numbers of chemicals to defend themselves. In seasons when there were a lot of these chemicals in plants, animals eating the plants used that as a signal that hard times may be coming, so their cells turned on the damage control genes to protect what the cells already had. We also did not have steady supplies of food, so whenever we didn't eat for a day, again the damage control genes turned on. Specifically, unnecessary molecular tags are removed from the DNA, returning gene expression to the way it was when we were younger. In modern life, all the plants we eat are completely protected from fungi and insects and are watered carefully. All the stress response chemicals that they would normally produce are not there. We never go for a day without eating. Therefore, our damage control genes are never turned on, so the molecular tags on our DNA become more and more different from the way they were when we were young, our gene expression becomes more abnormal, and we age at a high rate.

If we consume chemicals that plants make in response to stress, it turns on the damage control genes, and voila, the effect is the same as caloric restriction, although it is unclear what dose is necessary. One chemical that has been shown to turn on damage control genes is resveratrol, which is found in the skin of grapes, especially when the grape plants are stressed by drought or fungus infection, and is found in many other plants as well. Since people who drink red wine made from grapes harvested and processed in the French way seemed to have extremely low levels of heart disease, researchers tried screening red wines from France to find out if there were compounds which produced the effect. Resveratrol is the most potent found so far. When given to laboratory animals, it slows ageing by 20% and even much more, and it decreases risk of cancer by up to 70%. Further evidence comes from numerous studies showing that consumption of 3 glasses of red wine per week is associated with 70% reduction in colon cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and other cancers.

I have been taking resveratrol for two years now, and I think the effects are apparent. When I stopped for 6 months because I ran out, the skin started to look old and wrinkled. Resveratrol is easily destroyed by exposure to air, heat, and light. I take the one from Longevinex at
http://www.longevinex.com
because it seems to be the most biologically active. It costs about a dollar a day, which is much cheaper than a glass of wine, though much less fun, so I do both.

These results are not obscure, but you may not have heard about them. Do a Google search for any of these topics and you will find thousands of hits.

So, step 1, let's at least do simple basic things to slow the ageing process and delay the onset of serious diseases of old age. You may be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. 万歳！

Under the Radar