We caught one of these in a white enamel pan when we were kids...
Monday, March 24, 2008
Meteoroids the size of a house hit the atmosphere of the Earth
And each produces an explosion the size of an atomic bomb... on average about once a week!
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4D71130F936A15752C0A962958260
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4D71130F936A15752C0A962958260
Gravity waves (not gravitational waves)
Just as the ocean has waves, so does the atmosphere.
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/19/gravity-waves-in-the-atmosphere-can-energize-tornados-video/
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/19/gravity-waves-in-the-atmosphere-can-energize-tornados-video/
Cameras on the Endeavour boosters show launch from a perspective you have never seen before.
Spectacular... wait until you see the separation at about time index 2:20...
I saw the night launch of Atlantis. Wow! I had come from the other side of the planet to see the launch. Couldn't help thinking about Challenger and so it was really scary and emotional for me.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1809091590348118627&hl=en
I saw the night launch of Atlantis. Wow! I had come from the other side of the planet to see the launch. Couldn't help thinking about Challenger and so it was really scary and emotional for me.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1809091590348118627&hl=en
7,500,000,000 years ago, a supermassive star collapsed into a black hole
The light traveled halfway from the end of the universe and took 7,500,000,000 years to get here, half the age of the universe.
On March 19, 2008, at 2:12 in the morning Eastern Daylight Time, had you been looking at exactly the right spot in a dark sky, you would have actually seen a faint flash for a few seconds!
http://grb.fuw.edu.pl/pi/ot/grb080319b/normal.html
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/21/see-that-record-breaking-gamma-ray-burst-go-video/
On March 19, 2008, at 2:12 in the morning Eastern Daylight Time, had you been looking at exactly the right spot in a dark sky, you would have actually seen a faint flash for a few seconds!
http://grb.fuw.edu.pl/pi/ot/grb080319b/normal.html
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/21/see-that-record-breaking-gamma-ray-burst-go-video/
160,400 years ago, a star went supernova in a small neighboring galaxy
400 years ago, some of the light from the supernova reached Earth directly.
Most of the light is in an expanding shell that is now 400 light years in radius, and some of that light has illuminated dust 400 light years from the supernova itself, creating a "light echo". Since the light hitting the dust had to travel 400 light years farther than the light that came directly toward Earth, we see that light echo now.
The video is just astonishing.
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/snr0509/E509_lg_web.mpg
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/23/light-echos-from-400-year-old-supernova-observed-time-lapse-video/
Most of the light is in an expanding shell that is now 400 light years in radius, and some of that light has illuminated dust 400 light years from the supernova itself, creating a "light echo". Since the light hitting the dust had to travel 400 light years farther than the light that came directly toward Earth, we see that light echo now.
The video is just astonishing.
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/snr0509/E509_lg_web.mpg
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/23/light-echos-from-400-year-old-supernova-observed-time-lapse-video/
It is energy conservation panic time
1. Stop excess heat from entering your home. A titanium oxide layer is like a mirror that reflects both ways. It blocks excess heat from the outside in summer, and it reflects back in heat during the winter.
I applied this to my roof 4 years ago, and it is just amazing. The ceiling is cool to the touch in the afternoon in August! And it saved about 10,000 dollars in reroofing costs.
http://www.hawaiiansunguard.com
2. Get a solar water heater. You can probably get a tax refund. It will increase the value of your house on resale, so it will be free. It is ridiculous to burn fossil fuels to make hot water unless you live where it is really cloudy all the time. We have had one of these for 30 years, and it still works fine. I would have had to earn an additional 50,000 dollars to pay for energy to heat our hot water if we hadn't installed it.
3. Solar panels to produce electricity are going to drop in price substantially, so I would wait a few more years to do that. The above 1 and 2 are MUCH cheaper and more urgent. They are low-tech solutions that work now.
I applied this to my roof 4 years ago, and it is just amazing. The ceiling is cool to the touch in the afternoon in August! And it saved about 10,000 dollars in reroofing costs.
http://www.hawaiiansunguard.com
2. Get a solar water heater. You can probably get a tax refund. It will increase the value of your house on resale, so it will be free. It is ridiculous to burn fossil fuels to make hot water unless you live where it is really cloudy all the time. We have had one of these for 30 years, and it still works fine. I would have had to earn an additional 50,000 dollars to pay for energy to heat our hot water if we hadn't installed it.
3. Solar panels to produce electricity are going to drop in price substantially, so I would wait a few more years to do that. The above 1 and 2 are MUCH cheaper and more urgent. They are low-tech solutions that work now.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
On August 27, 2005, I stuck my neck out
Many people are so afraid of being wrong that they are never right. They never venture an opinion or guess what might happen because, Heaven forbid, they might turn out to be wrong.
I, on the other hand, view guessing what will happen as a kind of high-stakes gambling... and we know how much fun gambling is! If only I could win in Vegas...
On August 27, 2005, I stuck my neck out and said:
"New Orleans is about to be destroyed."
You can still hear the reaction echoing through Eternity: "No it isn't. You just make things up."
This is what had happened over the previous four years.
I had read "Drowning New Orleans" in Scientific American in the October 2001 issue. This article said, for example:
"A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands."
"The boxes are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all. If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water. "As the water recedes," says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, "we expect to find a lot of dead bodies."
There was this graphic in the article.
It showed the path of the simulated hurricane passing near Lake Pontchartrain.
Now, four years later, on Friday, August 26, news on the Net was showing the projected path of Katrina.
Hmm, I said, that looks familiar... it was in... Scientific American...
So I got on my Scientific American Digital account and searched for "New Orleans", and there it was. So I reread the article, and the next day, Saturday, stuck my neck out.
On Monday, Katrina had passed and the levees still held, and people said "See, see! You make things up!" And I was really glad to be wrong.
Then the levees failed.
Unfortunately, the problem was not that I was making things up, just reciting sutras into the ear of a horse, which in English would be something like
Scientific American is one of the greatest resources for broadening science knowledge (even if many professors are clueless and think "it is for high school students"... several particularly stupid profs actually said that to me 25 years ago... more exactly, two profs, independently, walked past my desk, saw the copy on my desk, rolled their eyes, and said, "Oh, that is for high school students!" Over time, I realized they did not know how the sun produces light, even though they were doing research in photosynthesis, did not know what causes the aurora, and just did not know a lot of science. The reason they were, without provocation of any kind, being insulting about things that were none of their business, was that the copy on my desk was a threat to them. They were trying to hide what they did not know... It is criminal to try to drag other people down to your level, which is exactly what they tried to do. I have read SciAm cover-to-cover for the last 30 years or so, and I will pit what I know against what they know any day...). Most of the content is free at http://www.sciam.com
It's not that I memorize everything, just collect concepts. The articles can now be retrieved at the click of a mouse. But you have to know that the ideas exist in order to search for them.
Imagine if I had listened to the profs. I would have wound up as ignorant as they were, still are, and will be until they die.
Evolution clearly shows that characteristics are advantageous or disadvantageous depending on the environment. We find ourselves in an unusual environment. For most of human history, change was so slow that being conservative more or less worked (except when it meant doing the same stupid thing over and over again). What is happening now is that change is so rapid that we can expect technology to advance hundreds of times in our lifetimes. Types of jobs come and go, and they are coming and going faster and faster. The original "computers" were humans who did calculations. There used to be TV repairmen. Many factory jobs used to be performed manually. Humans used to design things empirically, but they are increasingly aided by computers, and sometimes the computers evolve the designs for themselves. Biotech could in theory have been done by human "calculators"... if you were willing to spend thousands of years on a simple problem like determining the order of subunits in a piece of DNA, but now such determinations rely on very fast computing. In the course of recent events, we have seen that many people simply cannot change. The only rational solution is to stop wasting our time trying to change them, leave them behind, and move on.
I, on the other hand, view guessing what will happen as a kind of high-stakes gambling... and we know how much fun gambling is! If only I could win in Vegas...
On August 27, 2005, I stuck my neck out and said:
"New Orleans is about to be destroyed."
You can still hear the reaction echoing through Eternity: "No it isn't. You just make things up."
This is what had happened over the previous four years.
I had read "Drowning New Orleans" in Scientific American in the October 2001 issue. This article said, for example:
"A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands."
"The boxes are stacked eight feet high and line the walls of the large, windowless room. Inside them are new body bags, 10,000 in all. If a big, slow-moving hurricane crossed the Gulf of Mexico on the right track, it would drive a sea surge that would drown New Orleans under 20 feet of water. "As the water recedes," says Walter Maestri, a local emergency management director, "we expect to find a lot of dead bodies."
There was this graphic in the article.
It showed the path of the simulated hurricane passing near Lake Pontchartrain.Now, four years later, on Friday, August 26, news on the Net was showing the projected path of Katrina.
Hmm, I said, that looks familiar... it was in... Scientific American...
So I got on my Scientific American Digital account and searched for "New Orleans", and there it was. So I reread the article, and the next day, Saturday, stuck my neck out.
On Monday, Katrina had passed and the levees still held, and people said "See, see! You make things up!" And I was really glad to be wrong.
Then the levees failed.
Unfortunately, the problem was not that I was making things up, just reciting sutras into the ear of a horse, which in English would be something like
Scientific American is one of the greatest resources for broadening science knowledge (even if many professors are clueless and think "it is for high school students"... several particularly stupid profs actually said that to me 25 years ago... more exactly, two profs, independently, walked past my desk, saw the copy on my desk, rolled their eyes, and said, "Oh, that is for high school students!" Over time, I realized they did not know how the sun produces light, even though they were doing research in photosynthesis, did not know what causes the aurora, and just did not know a lot of science. The reason they were, without provocation of any kind, being insulting about things that were none of their business, was that the copy on my desk was a threat to them. They were trying to hide what they did not know... It is criminal to try to drag other people down to your level, which is exactly what they tried to do. I have read SciAm cover-to-cover for the last 30 years or so, and I will pit what I know against what they know any day...). Most of the content is free at http://www.sciam.com
It's not that I memorize everything, just collect concepts. The articles can now be retrieved at the click of a mouse. But you have to know that the ideas exist in order to search for them.
Imagine if I had listened to the profs. I would have wound up as ignorant as they were, still are, and will be until they die.
Evolution clearly shows that characteristics are advantageous or disadvantageous depending on the environment. We find ourselves in an unusual environment. For most of human history, change was so slow that being conservative more or less worked (except when it meant doing the same stupid thing over and over again). What is happening now is that change is so rapid that we can expect technology to advance hundreds of times in our lifetimes. Types of jobs come and go, and they are coming and going faster and faster. The original "computers" were humans who did calculations. There used to be TV repairmen. Many factory jobs used to be performed manually. Humans used to design things empirically, but they are increasingly aided by computers, and sometimes the computers evolve the designs for themselves. Biotech could in theory have been done by human "calculators"... if you were willing to spend thousands of years on a simple problem like determining the order of subunits in a piece of DNA, but now such determinations rely on very fast computing. In the course of recent events, we have seen that many people simply cannot change. The only rational solution is to stop wasting our time trying to change them, leave them behind, and move on.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Rick-Roll!
Totally hilarious! Rick Astley versus Tom Cruise!
The things that you can get some people to believe... and they give you money... oh, wait, it's called organized religion.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2266526,00.html
The things that you can get some people to believe... and they give you money... oh, wait, it's called organized religion.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2266526,00.html
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Why I have gone on and on about oil for the last seven years
Because the story is so long, requiring some understanding about peak oil, the price of oil, petrodollars, major oil suppliers importing most of their goods from Europe, commodity runs, the automobile-dependent layout of the US, and the "enterprise", people have asked me why I went on and on about these things over the last decade. I should have given the overview first, but was learning the pieces myself as I was going along. This is the basic idea:
Since the end of World War II, oil is bought and sold only in dollars (that is why they are called petrodollars). Therefore, if your currency is, for example, the euro, the price of oil depends not only on the price of oil in petrodollars, but on the value of the euro relative to the dollar.
When everyone realizes that the oil starts to run out, the price of oil in petrodollars will go through the roof. This will have two primary effects: there will be a huge incentive to buy and sell oil in something other than the dollar (this has already started), and as the dollar gets dumped, the price of oil in petrodollars will skyrocket further (this is happening now, at least temporarily). As the price skyrockets, there will be even more incentive to buy oil directly. Last ones out will be left holding the bag. Finally, the petrodollar goes, and the benefits of having the world's dominant fiat currency goes with it.
The dollar has already dropped by 40% over the last 5 years as measured by a basket of currencies. The current increase in price is in part due to the buying of futures of all kinds of commodities using the dollars people are holding because, well, they have already lost nearly half their value, so better to buy now things you need before they becomine worth even less.
That is how I thought the "enterprise" would come to a crashing end. I expected this to come say between 2010 and 2015, so I thought there was still time.
I didn't realize that the fraud on Wall Street would pop before there was consensus that the oil would run out (and the producers are still denying it and the Wall Street Journal still publishing the denials).
The run on oil will probably peter out, especially with a recession, and that will delay the peak oil day of reckoning somewhat, but that is still there, so even if we manage to avoid a meltdown now, we may see this all over again, depending on how sharply oil production starts to drop when the peak does come. Among the largest oil fields the world has ever seen, some of them are dropping by 20% a year...
This was first brought to my attention by, as usual, Scientific American (one of the greatest resources for broadening science knowledge, even if many professors are clueless and think "it is for high school students"... several particularly stupid profs actually said that to me 25 years ago... trying to hide what they did not know... I have read it cover-to-cover for the last 30 years or so, and I will pit what I know against what they know any day... I can't imagine how I would feel now if I had actually listened to them!).
In the March 1998 issue article "The End of Cheap Oil", the basic arguments were outlined. So far, the graphs and predictions are more or less on track. This is why I started paying attention to this issue. I use magazines, newspapers, and the Net to bring things to my attention, and then adjust the amount of attention given to particular topics. You cannot decide on anything if you don't know what the issues are.
If you haven't watched these yet, do so immediately. Just as the middle of an influenza pandemic is no time to ask what a virus is, so the near future will not be the time to ask what peak oil and petrodollars are... events can change the world overnight, and there will be no time to understand events if you haven't done your homework.
The Beginning of the End of the Petrodollar
Crude: the Incredible Journey of Oil
Frontline: House of Saud
Petrodollar Recycling
Year country hit peak oil. Oil output has declined since the year given, sometimes to essentially zero.
Japan: 1932
Germany: 1966
Libya: 1970
Venezuela: 1970
USA: 1970
Iran: 1974
Nigeria: 1979
Russia: 1987
France: 1988
Indonesia: 1991
UK: 1999
Norway: 2000
Oman: 2000
Mexico: 2003
Australia (disputed): 2004; 2001
Peak oil production has not been reached in the following nations (numbers are estimates and subject to revision):
Iraq: 2018
Kuwait: 2013
Saudi Arabia: 2014
If the above is not terrifying to you, it should be.
This proverb has been around in various forms for the last 600 years or so.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a nail.
Modern version
For want of regulation the mortgage was lost
For want of a mortgage the collaterized debt package was lost
For want of a collaterized debt package the fund was lost
For want of a fund the brokerage was lost
For want of a brokerage the petrodollar recycling ponzi scheme was lost
For want of the petrodollar recycling ponzi scheme the Empire was lost
And all for the want of regulation
Since the end of World War II, oil is bought and sold only in dollars (that is why they are called petrodollars). Therefore, if your currency is, for example, the euro, the price of oil depends not only on the price of oil in petrodollars, but on the value of the euro relative to the dollar.
When everyone realizes that the oil starts to run out, the price of oil in petrodollars will go through the roof. This will have two primary effects: there will be a huge incentive to buy and sell oil in something other than the dollar (this has already started), and as the dollar gets dumped, the price of oil in petrodollars will skyrocket further (this is happening now, at least temporarily). As the price skyrockets, there will be even more incentive to buy oil directly. Last ones out will be left holding the bag. Finally, the petrodollar goes, and the benefits of having the world's dominant fiat currency goes with it.
The dollar has already dropped by 40% over the last 5 years as measured by a basket of currencies. The current increase in price is in part due to the buying of futures of all kinds of commodities using the dollars people are holding because, well, they have already lost nearly half their value, so better to buy now things you need before they becomine worth even less.
That is how I thought the "enterprise" would come to a crashing end. I expected this to come say between 2010 and 2015, so I thought there was still time.
I didn't realize that the fraud on Wall Street would pop before there was consensus that the oil would run out (and the producers are still denying it and the Wall Street Journal still publishing the denials).
The run on oil will probably peter out, especially with a recession, and that will delay the peak oil day of reckoning somewhat, but that is still there, so even if we manage to avoid a meltdown now, we may see this all over again, depending on how sharply oil production starts to drop when the peak does come. Among the largest oil fields the world has ever seen, some of them are dropping by 20% a year...
This was first brought to my attention by, as usual, Scientific American (one of the greatest resources for broadening science knowledge, even if many professors are clueless and think "it is for high school students"... several particularly stupid profs actually said that to me 25 years ago... trying to hide what they did not know... I have read it cover-to-cover for the last 30 years or so, and I will pit what I know against what they know any day... I can't imagine how I would feel now if I had actually listened to them!).
In the March 1998 issue article "The End of Cheap Oil", the basic arguments were outlined. So far, the graphs and predictions are more or less on track. This is why I started paying attention to this issue. I use magazines, newspapers, and the Net to bring things to my attention, and then adjust the amount of attention given to particular topics. You cannot decide on anything if you don't know what the issues are.
If you haven't watched these yet, do so immediately. Just as the middle of an influenza pandemic is no time to ask what a virus is, so the near future will not be the time to ask what peak oil and petrodollars are... events can change the world overnight, and there will be no time to understand events if you haven't done your homework.
The Beginning of the End of the Petrodollar
Crude: the Incredible Journey of Oil
Frontline: House of Saud
Petrodollar Recycling
Year country hit peak oil. Oil output has declined since the year given, sometimes to essentially zero.
Japan: 1932
Germany: 1966
Libya: 1970
Venezuela: 1970
USA: 1970
Iran: 1974
Nigeria: 1979
Russia: 1987
France: 1988
Indonesia: 1991
UK: 1999
Norway: 2000
Oman: 2000
Mexico: 2003
Australia (disputed): 2004; 2001
Peak oil production has not been reached in the following nations (numbers are estimates and subject to revision):
Iraq: 2018
Kuwait: 2013
Saudi Arabia: 2014
If the above is not terrifying to you, it should be.
This proverb has been around in various forms for the last 600 years or so.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a nail.
Modern version
For want of regulation the mortgage was lost
For want of a mortgage the collaterized debt package was lost
For want of a collaterized debt package the fund was lost
For want of a fund the brokerage was lost
For want of a brokerage the petrodollar recycling ponzi scheme was lost
For want of the petrodollar recycling ponzi scheme the Empire was lost
And all for the want of regulation
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Philip Glass masterpiece, Akhnaten
Akhnaten is an opera in three acts based on the life of the pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV).
The culmination of his two other Philip Glass biographical operas, Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha (about Gandhi) they were driven by an inner vision that altered the age in which they lived: Akhenaten in religion, Einstein in science, and Gandhi in politics.
Where did the belief of "The dead shall be raised" come from?
The Egyptians.
They believed that the circumpolar stars were immortal because the circumpolar stars never set and were therefore the Immortal Heavens. (Too bad no one told them that which stars set and which ones don't depends on how far north or south you are.)
So they preserved the bodies of the dead for eternity (and launched the souls of the Pharaohs through conduits in the Pyramids toward the celestial north pole).
How did they preserve them? The same way they dried fish: cutting the bodies open and packing them with salt.
Preserving the shell, and then launching the soul in the shells toward the unsetting stars, preserving consciousness for eternity... salted salmon flying through space toward Polaris... It made sense at the time, but that was quite a long time ago...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhnaten_%28opera%29
The culmination of his two other Philip Glass biographical operas, Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha (about Gandhi) they were driven by an inner vision that altered the age in which they lived: Akhenaten in religion, Einstein in science, and Gandhi in politics.
Where did the belief of "The dead shall be raised" come from?
The Egyptians.
They believed that the circumpolar stars were immortal because the circumpolar stars never set and were therefore the Immortal Heavens. (Too bad no one told them that which stars set and which ones don't depends on how far north or south you are.)
So they preserved the bodies of the dead for eternity (and launched the souls of the Pharaohs through conduits in the Pyramids toward the celestial north pole).
How did they preserve them? The same way they dried fish: cutting the bodies open and packing them with salt.
Preserving the shell, and then launching the soul in the shells toward the unsetting stars, preserving consciousness for eternity... salted salmon flying through space toward Polaris... It made sense at the time, but that was quite a long time ago...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhnaten_%28opera%29
Koyaanisqatsi
Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi): a crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living.
The most spectacular film, ever. A must see, in its entirety, alone, in a dark room, late at night. Transforming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi
The most spectacular film, ever. A must see, in its entirety, alone, in a dark room, late at night. Transforming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koyaanisqatsi
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Solaris
Soderbergh's 2002 adaptation. Spectacular.
But as when watching 2001: A Space Odyssey or American Beauty, you may find you saying to yourself: "Hmm, something important just happened, but I'm not sure what.
Watch the whole thing one night, alone, in a darkened room. If you can figure out what the movie is saying, congratulations. I had no clue.
If you are not going to watch it, then here is a brief synopsis with a clip of the ending scene, and Roger Ebert's brilliantly insightful explanation.
George Clooney plays a psychologist who is dealing with the death of his wife.
Crew members on a ship in orbit around the planet Solaris have nearly all died or disappeared, and he goes there to find out what is going on.
He is shocked to find replicas of his wife and others created by Solaris, just as he remembers them.
Roger Ebert says something so stunningly obvious about what it all means in the second to last paragraph.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20021122/REVIEWS/211220307/1023
But as when watching 2001: A Space Odyssey or American Beauty, you may find you saying to yourself: "Hmm, something important just happened, but I'm not sure what.
Watch the whole thing one night, alone, in a darkened room. If you can figure out what the movie is saying, congratulations. I had no clue.
If you are not going to watch it, then here is a brief synopsis with a clip of the ending scene, and Roger Ebert's brilliantly insightful explanation.
George Clooney plays a psychologist who is dealing with the death of his wife.
Crew members on a ship in orbit around the planet Solaris have nearly all died or disappeared, and he goes there to find out what is going on.
He is shocked to find replicas of his wife and others created by Solaris, just as he remembers them.
Roger Ebert says something so stunningly obvious about what it all means in the second to last paragraph.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20021122/REVIEWS/211220307/1023
The proximate cause and the ultimate causes of the Shuttle Challenger disaster
When complaining about the loss of Challenger and Columbia one day, a coworker said, "Well, you know, they are the most complicated craft ever flown." I blinked twice and said, "But what caused the disasters had nothing to do with complications of systems engineering. What caused the disasters were 1. frozen rubber, and 2. falling ice."
The proximate cause of the loss of Challenger and her crew: Low temperatures caused an O-ring to stiffen so that it could not move and seat properly. Hot gases leaked out of the joint and ignited the external fuel tank.
But what were the ultimate causes?
Start with redesigns by everyone putting in their two cents.
Where was the O-ring? In a joint in the right solid rocket booster.
Couldn't the booster have been made in one piece so that there would have been no joint to begin with and therefore no O-ring? Yes.
Why wasn't it? Was it not possible to produce it in one piece? Yes, it was possible to produce the booster in one piece. A manufacturer near Florida could have made it in one piece and shipped it by rail to the launch site. That manufacturer was not given the contract.
Who was given the contract? A manufacturer in Utah.
Why? Because it was their turn to receive pork from Washington.
So why didn't the Utah manufacturer make the booster in one piece? Because the rail lines from Utah to Florida couldn't handle the shipment of the booster in one piece. So, they had to make it in pieces, so there was a joint, so there was an O-ring, so there was failure of the O-ring, and so Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik (who were conscious for two minutes from the time the crew cabin detached from the Shuttle until it hit the water, because emergency oxygen packs had been manually activated) were lost due to politicians feeding pork to their constituents and interfering with the engineering many years before 11:39 AM January 28, 1986.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a nail.
Some conspiracy theorists think Washington does so many strange things because it is secretly run by aliens from another planet. The real reason it is so strange: money.
The proximate cause of the loss of Challenger and her crew: Low temperatures caused an O-ring to stiffen so that it could not move and seat properly. Hot gases leaked out of the joint and ignited the external fuel tank.
But what were the ultimate causes?
Start with redesigns by everyone putting in their two cents.
Where was the O-ring? In a joint in the right solid rocket booster.
Couldn't the booster have been made in one piece so that there would have been no joint to begin with and therefore no O-ring? Yes.
Why wasn't it? Was it not possible to produce it in one piece? Yes, it was possible to produce the booster in one piece. A manufacturer near Florida could have made it in one piece and shipped it by rail to the launch site. That manufacturer was not given the contract.
Who was given the contract? A manufacturer in Utah.
Why? Because it was their turn to receive pork from Washington.
So why didn't the Utah manufacturer make the booster in one piece? Because the rail lines from Utah to Florida couldn't handle the shipment of the booster in one piece. So, they had to make it in pieces, so there was a joint, so there was an O-ring, so there was failure of the O-ring, and so Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik (who were conscious for two minutes from the time the crew cabin detached from the Shuttle until it hit the water, because emergency oxygen packs had been manually activated) were lost due to politicians feeding pork to their constituents and interfering with the engineering many years before 11:39 AM January 28, 1986.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a nail.
Some conspiracy theorists think Washington does so many strange things because it is secretly run by aliens from another planet. The real reason it is so strange: money.
August 15, 1971
On August 15, 1971, Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold because, well, the foreigners wanted too much gold and US stores were dropping fast... not to mention that there was then no limit to printing money. The dollar then promptly lost 95% of its value versus gold.
It was great while it lasted, being able to print money at will.
There have been full-page articles since at least the mid-90s warning that the scheme could not go on forever and that the dollar would collapse.
When I used to say to people that the dollar could drop by half, they would always say that that was impossible, to which I responded, "Why? That's what happened before."
By one measure, since 2002, the dollar has dropped by 40% versus a basket of major currencies.
This has caused a run on commodities as everyone with dollars tries to buy something... anything... that might hold its value better.
And while the Federal Reserve tries to save leave-us-alone-when-things-are-well-but-bail-us-out-at everyone-else's-expense-when-we-thieve Wall Street by flooding the market with half a trillion dollars (so far), all they do is drive the dollar lower. So we are trapped.
Since everyone's memory is so short, you should think about what happened in the 70s... interest rates were around 18%, inflation (which is effectively a way of defaulting on debt) was around 18%...
There is no way out except to print even more money, which will cause the dollar to drop even further, which will require the printing of more money in a vicious circle until it finally bottoms out.
The US is no longer the world's largest economy. The largest economy is now the Eurozone.
And in what may be the most telling sign of all, international criminals who used to deal only in $100 bills no longer want them and want euros instead.
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/bms/2006/0511.html
It was great while it lasted, being able to print money at will.
There have been full-page articles since at least the mid-90s warning that the scheme could not go on forever and that the dollar would collapse.
When I used to say to people that the dollar could drop by half, they would always say that that was impossible, to which I responded, "Why? That's what happened before."
By one measure, since 2002, the dollar has dropped by 40% versus a basket of major currencies.
This has caused a run on commodities as everyone with dollars tries to buy something... anything... that might hold its value better.
And while the Federal Reserve tries to save leave-us-alone-when-things-are-well-but-bail-us-out-at everyone-else's-expense-when-we-thieve Wall Street by flooding the market with half a trillion dollars (so far), all they do is drive the dollar lower. So we are trapped.
Since everyone's memory is so short, you should think about what happened in the 70s... interest rates were around 18%, inflation (which is effectively a way of defaulting on debt) was around 18%...
There is no way out except to print even more money, which will cause the dollar to drop even further, which will require the printing of more money in a vicious circle until it finally bottoms out.
The US is no longer the world's largest economy. The largest economy is now the Eurozone.
And in what may be the most telling sign of all, international criminals who used to deal only in $100 bills no longer want them and want euros instead.
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/bms/2006/0511.html
The nightmare
When I was in grad school, the behavior of the profs and students was really strange...
One ornithologist, after 10 minutes of listening to a seminar, suddenly screamed and yelled at the seminar speaker saying "Boy, you know nothing about statistics!" This was typical behavior for this wonderful person. (I suppose the pertinent sentiment is that such arguments are so very vicious precisely because what is at stake is so very small.)
One of the profs used to put his beard in his mouth and chew on it during seminars.
The head of the department, with bells on her fingers, used to crochet during seminars.... jingling the whole time (And that was the least of it. Other people said her specialty was getting students to do research, then cutting off their funding so they would have to drop out, then after a few years slapping her own name on the research... in the Internet age, if that is true, I suppose it will all come out sooner or later).
One of the grad students was attacked by two students in masks and hit in the head with a hammer, presumably for giving them bad grades.
Students took a real human skeleton and stomped it to pieces in the parking lot.
A grad student and a security guard used to take my lunch and eat it.
One of the profs, who normally wouldn't give me the time of day, suddenly was very friendly and put his arm around me and asked me how I was. I said to myself: "Hmm, he is going to Hawaii and thinks I run a free hotel... or... he has something in Japanese that he cannot read..." It was the latter. He never gave me the time of day again. He didn't get tenure, possibly because... he used to put plants in tiny pots and couldn't understand why they wilted so fast even though he was a professor of plant physiology?
One of the really genius profs was trying to lay out a 30 meter by 30 meter square grid. I said let's just lay out a 30 meter tape and another 30 meter tape at approximately a right angle, and then get another tape and measure out the square root of 2 times 30 meters, and we will have a perfect 90 degree angle... but noooooo.... he had just bought a surveying scope... so we spent half an hour using the surveying scope while I had secretly done what I had said, and kept moving the marker and asking "How about this?" until his sightings agreed with what I had already laid out...
The same genius prof, after frequent warnings about a psycho who stole his stuff, said: "[That grad student] might shoot me [the prof] and set my office on fire!"
None of them could type. None of them could read a foreign language. None of them understood science in general. Sometimes someone would go into a lab and kill all the animals.
I used to mutter to myself, "God, these people must all be lead poisoned."
And so it seems, they were...
Even far below 10 micrograms per deciliter there is neurological disturbance... they must have been at 20 or more...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701073.html
There are therefore only three possibilities:
1) genetically stupid,
2) lead poisoned, and
3) stupid by choice.
As Dear Abby said, are you better off with 'em or without 'em?
One ornithologist, after 10 minutes of listening to a seminar, suddenly screamed and yelled at the seminar speaker saying "Boy, you know nothing about statistics!" This was typical behavior for this wonderful person. (I suppose the pertinent sentiment is that such arguments are so very vicious precisely because what is at stake is so very small.)
One of the profs used to put his beard in his mouth and chew on it during seminars.
The head of the department, with bells on her fingers, used to crochet during seminars.... jingling the whole time (And that was the least of it. Other people said her specialty was getting students to do research, then cutting off their funding so they would have to drop out, then after a few years slapping her own name on the research... in the Internet age, if that is true, I suppose it will all come out sooner or later).
One of the grad students was attacked by two students in masks and hit in the head with a hammer, presumably for giving them bad grades.
Students took a real human skeleton and stomped it to pieces in the parking lot.
A grad student and a security guard used to take my lunch and eat it.
One of the profs, who normally wouldn't give me the time of day, suddenly was very friendly and put his arm around me and asked me how I was. I said to myself: "Hmm, he is going to Hawaii and thinks I run a free hotel... or... he has something in Japanese that he cannot read..." It was the latter. He never gave me the time of day again. He didn't get tenure, possibly because... he used to put plants in tiny pots and couldn't understand why they wilted so fast even though he was a professor of plant physiology?
One of the really genius profs was trying to lay out a 30 meter by 30 meter square grid. I said let's just lay out a 30 meter tape and another 30 meter tape at approximately a right angle, and then get another tape and measure out the square root of 2 times 30 meters, and we will have a perfect 90 degree angle... but noooooo.... he had just bought a surveying scope... so we spent half an hour using the surveying scope while I had secretly done what I had said, and kept moving the marker and asking "How about this?" until his sightings agreed with what I had already laid out...
The same genius prof, after frequent warnings about a psycho who stole his stuff, said: "[That grad student] might shoot me [the prof] and set my office on fire!"
None of them could type. None of them could read a foreign language. None of them understood science in general. Sometimes someone would go into a lab and kill all the animals.
I used to mutter to myself, "God, these people must all be lead poisoned."
And so it seems, they were...
Even far below 10 micrograms per deciliter there is neurological disturbance... they must have been at 20 or more...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701073.html
There are therefore only three possibilities:
1) genetically stupid,
2) lead poisoned, and
3) stupid by choice.
As Dear Abby said, are you better off with 'em or without 'em?
Thursday, March 13, 2008
March 13, 1781, and March 13, 1930
March 13, 1781, Uranus ("YU ra nus", not "your ANUS", which seems to have started as a schoolboy joke) discovered by Sir William Herschel, discoverer of infrared radiation, maker of telescopes, musician, discoverer of moons of Saturn and Uranus, discoverer of binary stars, discoverer of the motion of the solar system through space, discoverer of the disk shape of the Milky Way, coiner of the word "asteroid", recipient of the Copley Medal, Fellow of the Royal Society, the King's Astronomer.
March 13, 1930, discovery of Planet X, Pluto, announced by Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of asteroids, observer of UFOs, recipient of a medal from the Royal Astronomical Society.
Some of his ashes are aboard the New Horizons spacecraft that flew by Jupiter in 2007 and will fly by Pluto and Pluto's largest moon Charon (the ferryman to whom you pay a coin to take you across the River Styx, pronounced "Sharon") on July 14, 2015, and possibly fly by an object in the Kuiper Belt around 2020! And here I thought Gene Shoemaker's ashes going to the Moon was something!
March 13, 1930, discovery of Planet X, Pluto, announced by Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of asteroids, observer of UFOs, recipient of a medal from the Royal Astronomical Society.
Some of his ashes are aboard the New Horizons spacecraft that flew by Jupiter in 2007 and will fly by Pluto and Pluto's largest moon Charon (the ferryman to whom you pay a coin to take you across the River Styx, pronounced "Sharon") on July 14, 2015, and possibly fly by an object in the Kuiper Belt around 2020! And here I thought Gene Shoemaker's ashes going to the Moon was something!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Q: What is the most evil invention of the 20th century?
Answer: air conditioning
Washington is so hellishly hot and humid from June to September that the politicians used to leave. Now they have air conditioning, so they stay year 'round making mischief.
Gore Vidal in an interview on NPR ages ago
Washington is so hellishly hot and humid from June to September that the politicians used to leave. Now they have air conditioning, so they stay year 'round making mischief.
Gore Vidal in an interview on NPR ages ago
Monday, March 10, 2008
The Patron Saint of Rigidity and his Anthem
The two basic ways of dealing with life:
If you were born knowing everything, you need never change your mind about anything.
If you were born knowing nothing, you must learn and constantly check what you think against reality, and over time, you will learn to be less wrong.
Here is the Patron Saint of Certainty and Rigidity, Inspector Javert, singing to The Eternal Heavens, in Les Miserables.
Stars
In your multitudes
Scarce to be counted
Filling the darkness
With order and light
You are the sentinels
Silent and sure
Keeping watch in the night
Keeping watch in the night
You know your place in the sky
You hold your course and your aim
And each in your season
Returns and returns
And is always the same
And if you fall as Lucifer fell
You fall in flame!
He is certain because Heaven is unchanging and eternal.
This is merely wrong.
The stars do change. I have seen it myself.
On August 29, 1975, a nova appeared in the constellation Cygnus. I knew well what Cygnus looked like since it is high overhead in Hawaii in the summer. I went outside and looked, and there it was, a new second magnitude star, as bright as any of the others in Cygnus. I took the skychart out from my telescope box, and yep, there was no star marked at that location on the chart. Over the next few days, it faded rapidly and disappeared.
Here is a photo of a part of Cygnus before and during the appearance of Nova Cygni 1975.
So much for The Eternal Heavens.
Anyone who asserts that the Heavens do not change is simply lying or can't be bothered to look.
If you photograph Antares, the bright red star in Scorpius, when you are young, and then photograph it again in your old age and compare the photographs, Antares will be seen to have moved.
If you photograph Polaris, the North Star, when you are young, and then photograph it again in your old age and compare the photographs, Polaris will be seen to have moved closer to the celestial pole.
The constellations in the sky in winter now were, 10,000 years ago, summer constellations.
Take a look at this page. It shows the stars of the Big Dipper now. Click on the radio button for "Animation "(100,000 Years)" on the right and you will see how the stars move all over the place.
http://astronexus.com/node/81
The Sun is a variable star. It has sunspots and is not spherical. It is neither constant nor perfect in any way.
The Earth goes around the Sun. This takes one year.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE6DD143BF936A15753C1A96E948260
Typical of the kind of nonsense humans are capable of... if only it ended with factually challenged ideas about the sky...
Then, of course, some of this behavior falls into the category of
"Trying to kill your own demons in other people".
Jorge said, "Hmm, I thought the Patron Saint of Rigidity was William F. Buckley Jr.".
No, I replied. Buckley is the Patron Saint of The Argument from Personal Ignorance and the Patron Saint of The Argument from Personal Incredulity (otherwise known as I-don't-know-anything-about-neurobiology- but-boy-do-I-have-opinions-about-it and if-I-don't-like-it-it's-not-true modes of certainty).
At least Javert realized in the end that he was wrong. He could have saved himself, and many others, a lot of trouble.
If you were born knowing everything, you need never change your mind about anything.
If you were born knowing nothing, you must learn and constantly check what you think against reality, and over time, you will learn to be less wrong.
Here is the Patron Saint of Certainty and Rigidity, Inspector Javert, singing to The Eternal Heavens, in Les Miserables.
Stars
In your multitudes
Scarce to be counted
Filling the darkness
With order and light
You are the sentinels
Silent and sure
Keeping watch in the night
Keeping watch in the night
You know your place in the sky
You hold your course and your aim
And each in your season
Returns and returns
And is always the same
And if you fall as Lucifer fell
You fall in flame!
He is certain because Heaven is unchanging and eternal.
This is merely wrong.
The stars do change. I have seen it myself.
On August 29, 1975, a nova appeared in the constellation Cygnus. I knew well what Cygnus looked like since it is high overhead in Hawaii in the summer. I went outside and looked, and there it was, a new second magnitude star, as bright as any of the others in Cygnus. I took the skychart out from my telescope box, and yep, there was no star marked at that location on the chart. Over the next few days, it faded rapidly and disappeared.
Here is a photo of a part of Cygnus before and during the appearance of Nova Cygni 1975.
So much for The Eternal Heavens.
Anyone who asserts that the Heavens do not change is simply lying or can't be bothered to look.
If you photograph Antares, the bright red star in Scorpius, when you are young, and then photograph it again in your old age and compare the photographs, Antares will be seen to have moved.
If you photograph Polaris, the North Star, when you are young, and then photograph it again in your old age and compare the photographs, Polaris will be seen to have moved closer to the celestial pole.
The constellations in the sky in winter now were, 10,000 years ago, summer constellations.
Take a look at this page. It shows the stars of the Big Dipper now. Click on the radio button for "Animation "(100,000 Years)" on the right and you will see how the stars move all over the place.
http://astronexus.com/node/81
The Sun is a variable star. It has sunspots and is not spherical. It is neither constant nor perfect in any way.
The Earth goes around the Sun. This takes one year.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE6DD143BF936A15753C1A96E948260
Typical of the kind of nonsense humans are capable of... if only it ended with factually challenged ideas about the sky...
Then, of course, some of this behavior falls into the category of
"Trying to kill your own demons in other people".
Jorge said, "Hmm, I thought the Patron Saint of Rigidity was William F. Buckley Jr.".
No, I replied. Buckley is the Patron Saint of The Argument from Personal Ignorance and the Patron Saint of The Argument from Personal Incredulity (otherwise known as I-don't-know-anything-about-neurobiology- but-boy-do-I-have-opinions-about-it and if-I-don't-like-it-it's-not-true modes of certainty).
At least Javert realized in the end that he was wrong. He could have saved himself, and many others, a lot of trouble.
No human can outperform a machine
No human can produce most goods and most services better than a machine. That is why machines produce most goods and machines dig most ditches.
The number of tasks that humans are better at than machines is dwindling fast...
The number of tasks that humans are better at than machines is dwindling fast...
Sunday, March 9, 2008
French Aérotrain, 1960s
In the 1960s and 70s, the French had prototype hovercraft trains propelled by aircraft engines. The trains rode on a cushion of air and reached speeds of 430 kph (270 mph).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aérotrain
Hmm, I think there would be a number of unhappy birds flying above the track....
Not to be confused with other types of trains called aerotrains...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aérotrain
Hmm, I think there would be a number of unhappy birds flying above the track....
Not to be confused with other types of trains called aerotrains...
Saturday, March 8, 2008
The origin of civilization
Five thousand years ago, humans lived in small villages.
Then, quite suddenly, in many places around the world, came stratified society, monumental architecture, war. Is this how civilization came to be? Are we doomed to endless war?
Before the pyramids at Giza, there was civilization and monumental architecture and eternal flames in Peru. The twists and turns in the story are amazing.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004243045_apperuancientplaza.html
Then, quite suddenly, in many places around the world, came stratified society, monumental architecture, war. Is this how civilization came to be? Are we doomed to endless war?
Before the pyramids at Giza, there was civilization and monumental architecture and eternal flames in Peru. The twists and turns in the story are amazing.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004243045_apperuancientplaza.html
If you are mystified as to why some computers are so difficult to use....
Years ago, when some computers showed "C prompts"...
If you don't know what a "C prompt" is, before 1995, when you turned on many computers, you saw a black screen with "C>" at the bottom. That was it. I am not joking.
You had to know what letters to type in to do anything.
My cousin had just paid a huge amount of money for a software accounting package. No one in the office could figure out how to make it work.
I sat down with the computer for about half an hour, and I made a diagram. I made copies for everyone and explained that you just:
look at the screen and find the same words on the diagram,
then look at the diagram to see where you want to go,
then just follow the steps to get there by typing in what it says in the diagram.
You will then be at the step you want.
The next day, a wonderful helpful person, who has a name that is similar to mine, arrived from the company that, completely by coincidence, may allegedly have something to do with the HAL computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29
When this wonderful person came in and saw the diagram I had made, he said "Who made that!?"
My mom laughed.
Of course the people in the office did not have to call that wonderful person anymore.
Of course many such companies want to help you in your business at the lowest cost to you, and they are still trying to help you with wonderful software with lots of bells and whistles that does not work, but they tell you that it will, and if you won't buy the upgrade, they will force you to buy it, one way or another. They want to help you.
And if you believe that, next time you are in New York, there is a bridge I want to sell you...
Wait, wait! This just got even funnier! And you may even get money from reading this.
Jon upgrades two computers from XP to Vista. His printer and scanners don't work. He has to reinstall XP on one machine just so he can print.
His friend Steve hears about this and tells Jon that software to make printers and scanners work are missing in every category.
Another friend, Mike, buys a laptop with a logo that says "Windows Vista Capable" for 2,100 dollars. Software he used no longer works. Only low-level Vista works.
"I personally got burned... I now have a $2,100 dollar e-mail machine...", he said.
Who are Jon, Steve, and Mike?
Jon A. Shirley, former President and Chief Operating Officer, and current board member of Microsoft.
Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President of Microsoft.
Mike Nash, a Vice President of Microsoft.
How do we know this happened?
Because there is a class action lawsuit against Microsoft, and they found the above in their emails.
If you bought a computer having a Microsoft label "Windows Vista Capable" without the label "Premium Capable", you may now join as a party in the lawsuit.
Why does anyone put up with this?
Kay said: "Stockholm Syndrome"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
As Dear Abby used to say, "No one can use you without your cooperation."
Here is the more detailed story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html?em&ex=1205294400&en=16c93380cf8296d8&ei=5087%0A
kludge: a computer system with mismatched components.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kluge
Hmm, sounds like Vista and the new versions of Microsoft Office.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iy9GaQxB9Y
If you don't know what a "C prompt" is, before 1995, when you turned on many computers, you saw a black screen with "C>" at the bottom. That was it. I am not joking.
You had to know what letters to type in to do anything.
My cousin had just paid a huge amount of money for a software accounting package. No one in the office could figure out how to make it work.
I sat down with the computer for about half an hour, and I made a diagram. I made copies for everyone and explained that you just:
look at the screen and find the same words on the diagram,
then look at the diagram to see where you want to go,
then just follow the steps to get there by typing in what it says in the diagram.
You will then be at the step you want.
The next day, a wonderful helpful person, who has a name that is similar to mine, arrived from the company that, completely by coincidence, may allegedly have something to do with the HAL computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29
When this wonderful person came in and saw the diagram I had made, he said "Who made that!?"
My mom laughed.
Of course the people in the office did not have to call that wonderful person anymore.
Of course many such companies want to help you in your business at the lowest cost to you, and they are still trying to help you with wonderful software with lots of bells and whistles that does not work, but they tell you that it will, and if you won't buy the upgrade, they will force you to buy it, one way or another. They want to help you.
And if you believe that, next time you are in New York, there is a bridge I want to sell you...
Wait, wait! This just got even funnier! And you may even get money from reading this.
Jon upgrades two computers from XP to Vista. His printer and scanners don't work. He has to reinstall XP on one machine just so he can print.
His friend Steve hears about this and tells Jon that software to make printers and scanners work are missing in every category.
Another friend, Mike, buys a laptop with a logo that says "Windows Vista Capable" for 2,100 dollars. Software he used no longer works. Only low-level Vista works.
"I personally got burned... I now have a $2,100 dollar e-mail machine...", he said.
Who are Jon, Steve, and Mike?
Jon A. Shirley, former President and Chief Operating Officer, and current board member of Microsoft.
Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President of Microsoft.
Mike Nash, a Vice President of Microsoft.
How do we know this happened?
Because there is a class action lawsuit against Microsoft, and they found the above in their emails.
If you bought a computer having a Microsoft label "Windows Vista Capable" without the label "Premium Capable", you may now join as a party in the lawsuit.
Why does anyone put up with this?
Kay said: "Stockholm Syndrome"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
As Dear Abby used to say, "No one can use you without your cooperation."
Here is the more detailed story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html?em&ex=1205294400&en=16c93380cf8296d8&ei=5087%0A
kludge: a computer system with mismatched components.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kluge
Hmm, sounds like Vista and the new versions of Microsoft Office.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iy9GaQxB9Y
Where numbers come from
The story of "1" (and "0"). Nearly everything we do is derived from this simple idea.
Spectacularly entertaining. Click on Google Video in the bottom right corner and choose it when a little window opens and it will take you to a much bigger version at very good resolution.
Spectacularly entertaining. Click on Google Video in the bottom right corner and choose it when a little window opens and it will take you to a much bigger version at very good resolution.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
"Popcorn"
"Popcorn" is a famous early synthpop instrumental. Composer Gershon Kingsley first recorded it for his 1969 album Music to Moog By.
Stan Free, member of the First Moog Quartet, rerecorded the instrumental with his band Hot Butter in 1972, which became the first primarily electronic-based piece of music to reach the American popular music charts. The record was one of a rash of Moog synthesizer-based releases that characterized "synth-pop" of the 1960s and 1970s.
The composer himself on piano. Just beautiful.
The original by Hot Butter that hit number one.
Stan Free, member of the First Moog Quartet, rerecorded the instrumental with his band Hot Butter in 1972, which became the first primarily electronic-based piece of music to reach the American popular music charts. The record was one of a rash of Moog synthesizer-based releases that characterized "synth-pop" of the 1960s and 1970s.
The composer himself on piano. Just beautiful.
The original by Hot Butter that hit number one.
Monday, March 3, 2008
The molecular machines in our bodies
This stunning animation shows how cells move around the body in the bloodstream, but primarily shows the molecular machines in our cells and how they move within the cell. Beautiful.
Here is a longer, narrated version. Don't be put off by the many words you probably have not heard before. The point is these molecules behave like small machines and robots... some even walk along paths dragging loads for delivery to specific locations in the cell.
Here is a longer, narrated version. Don't be put off by the many words you probably have not heard before. The point is these molecules behave like small machines and robots... some even walk along paths dragging loads for delivery to specific locations in the cell.
Netscape Navigator goes to cyberheaven
The first browser most of us ever saw.
It was spectacular.... beautiful... a leap from a computer that was a glorified typewriter to the portal we have today that takes us from the past to the present to the future and from the end of the Universe to the subatomic and back again... and makes us laugh and let's us remember... and speaks to us... and gives us video phone for free... and the ability to find things... We had never seen anything like it...
As of March 1, no longer supported, but you can still get the final incarnation at
http://browser.netscape.com
I installed it and am using it for old time's sake.
It was spectacular.... beautiful... a leap from a computer that was a glorified typewriter to the portal we have today that takes us from the past to the present to the future and from the end of the Universe to the subatomic and back again... and makes us laugh and let's us remember... and speaks to us... and gives us video phone for free... and the ability to find things... We had never seen anything like it...
As of March 1, no longer supported, but you can still get the final incarnation at
http://browser.netscape.com
I installed it and am using it for old time's sake.
Forget radio on the radio
All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Prairie Home Companion... more than a decade of programs online, all for free and on demand.
http://www.npr.org
And all of BBC Radio.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio
http://www.npr.org
And all of BBC Radio.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio
Sunday, March 2, 2008
A Living God
From The Atlantic Monthly, December 1896. By Lafcadio Hearn.
From immemorial time the shores of Japan have been swept, at irregular intervals of centuries, by enormous tidal waves,--tidal waves caused by earthquakes or by submarine volcanic action. These awful sudden risings of the sea are called by the Japanese tsunami.
Hamaguchi Gohei [sic, Goryo; see link below] (浜口梧陵) ... was an old man at the time of the occurrence that made him famous. He was the most influential resident of the village to which he belonged... The people usually called him Ojiisan, which means Grandfather; but, being the richest member of the community, he was sometimes officially referred to as the Chôja.
Hamaguchi's big thatched farmhouse stood at the verge of a small plateau overlooking a bay. The plateau, mostly devoted to rice culture, was hemmed in on three sides by thickly wooded summits. From its outer verge the land sloped down in a huge green concavity, as if scooped out, to the edge of the water; and the whole of this slope, some three quarters of a mile long, was so terraced as to look, when viewed from the open sea, like an enormous flight of green steps, divided in the centre by a narrow white zigzag--a streak of mountain road. Ninety thatched dwellings and a Shintô temple, composing the village proper, stood along the curve of the bay...
One autumn evening Hamaguchi Gohei was looking down from the balcony of his house at some preparations for a merry-making in the village below. There had been a very fine rice-crop, and the peasants were going to celebrate their harvest by a dance in the court... The old man could see the festival banners fluttering above the roofs of the solitary street, the strings of paper lanterns festooned between bamboo poles, the decorations of the shrine, and the brightly colored gathering of the young people. He had nobody with him that evening but his little grandson, a lad of ten; the rest of the household having gone early to the village. He would have accompanied them had he not been feeling less strong than usual.
And presently an earthquake came. It was not strong enough to frighten anybody; but Hamaguchi, who had felt hundreds of shocks in his time, thought it was queer,--a long, slow, spongy motion. Probably it was but the after-tremor of some immense seismic action very far away. The house crackled and rocked gently several times; then all became still again.
As the quaking ceased Hamaguchi's keen old eyes were anxiously turned toward the village. It often happens that the attention of a person gazing fixedly at a particular spot or object is suddenly diverted by the sense of something not knowingly seen at all,--by a mere vague feeling of the unfamiliar in that dim outer circle of unconscious perception which lies beyond the field of clear vision. Thus it chanced that Hamaguchi became aware of something unusual in the offing. He rose to his feet, and looked at the sea. It had darkened quite suddenly, and it was acting strangely. It seemed to be moving against the wind. It was running away from the land.
Hamaguchi Gohei himself had never seen such a thing before; but he remembered things told him in his childhood by his father's father, and he knew all the traditions of the coast. He understood what the sea was going to do. Perhaps he thought of the time needed to send a message to the village, or to get the priests of the Buddhist temple on the hill to sound their big bell. . . . But it would take very much longer to tell what he might have thought than it took him to think. He simply called to his grandson:--"Tada!--quick,--very quick! . . . Light me a torch."
The child kindled a torch at once; and the old man hurried with it to the fields, where hundreds of rice-stacks, representing most of his invested capital, stood awaiting transportation. Approaching those nearest the verge of the slope, he began to apply the torch to them,--hurrying from one to another as quickly as his aged limbs could carry him. The sun-dried stalks caught like tinder; the strengthening sea breeze blew the blaze landward; and presently, rank behind rank, the stacks burst into flame, sending skyward columns of smoke that met and mingled into one enormous cloudy whirl. Tada, astonished and terrified, ran after his grandfather, crying,--"Ojiisan! why? Ojiisan! why?--why?"
But Hamaguchi did not answer: he had no time to explain; he was thinking only of the four hundred lives in peril. For a while the child stared wildly at the blazing rice; then burst into tears, and ran back to the house, feeling sure that his grandfather had gone mad. Hamaguchi went on firing stack after stack, till he had reached the limit of his field; then he threw down his torch, and waited.
The whole village was coming; and Hamaguchi counted. All the young men and boys were soon on the spot, and not a few of the more active women and girls; then came most of the older folk, and mothers with babies at their backs, and even children,--for children could help to pass water; and the elders too feeble to keep up with the first rush could be seen well on their way up the steep ascent. The growing multitude, still knowing nothing, looked alternately, in sorrowful wonder, at the flaming fields...
"Grandfather is mad,--I am afraid of him!" sobbed Tada, in answer to a number of questions. "He is mad. He set fire to the rice on purpose: I saw him do it!"
"As for the rice," cried Hamaguchi, "the child tells the truth. I set fire to the rice. . . . Are all the people here?"
"All are here, or very soon will be. . . . We cannot understand this thing."
"Kita!" shouted the old man at the top of his voice, pointing to the open. "Say now if I be mad!"
Through the twilight eastward all looked, and saw at the edge of the dusky horizon a long, lean, dim line like the shadowing of a coast where no coast ever was,--a line that thickened as they gazed, that broadened as a coast-line broadens to the eyes of one approaching it, yet incomparably more quickly. For that long darkness was the returning sea, towering like a cliff, and coursing more swiftly than the kite flies.
"Tsunami!" shrieked the people; and then all shrieks and all sounds and all power to hear sounds were annihilated by a nameless shock heavier than any thunder, as the colossal swell smote the shore with a weight that sent a shudder through the hills, and with a foam-burst like a blaze of sheet-lightning. Then for an instant nothing was visible but a storm of spray rushing up the slope like a cloud; and the people scattered back in panic from the mere menace of it. When they looked again, they saw a white horror of sea raving over the place of their homes. It drew back roaring, and tearing out the bowels of the land as it went. Twice, thrice, five times the sea struck and ebbed, but each time with lesser surges: then it returned to its ancient bed and stayed,--still raging, as after a typhoon.
On the plateau for a time there was no word spoken. All stared speechlessly at the desolation beneath,--the ghastliness of hurled rock and naked riven cliff, the bewilderment of scooped-up deep-sea wrack and shingle shot over the empty site of dwelling and temple. The village was not; the greater part of the fields were not; even the terraces had ceased to exist; and of all the homes that had been about the bay there remained nothing recognizable except two straw roofs tossing madly in the offing. The after-terror of the death escaped and the stupefaction of the general loss kept all lips dumb, until the voice of Hamaguchi was heard again, observing gently,--
"That was why I set fire to the rice."
He... now stood among them almost as poor as the poorest; for his wealth was gone--but he had saved four hundred lives by the sacrifice.
Whereupon the people woke up to the knowledge of why they were alive, and began to wonder at the simple, unselfish foresight that had saved them; and the headmen prostrated themselves in the dust before Hamaguchi Gohei, and the people after them.
Then the old man wept a little, partly because he was happy, and partly because he was aged and weak and had been sorely tried.
"My house remains," he said, as soon as he could find words, automatically caressing Tada's brown cheeks; "and there is room for many. Also the temple on the hill stands; and there is shelter there for the others."
Then he led the way to his house; and the people cried and shouted.
The period of distress was long, because in those days there were no means of quick communication between district and district, and the help needed had to be sent from far away. But when better times came, the people did not forget their debt to Hamaguchi Gohei. They could not make him rich; nor would he have suffered them to do so, even had it been possible. Moreover, gifts could never have sufficed as an expression of their reverential feeling towards him; for they believed that the ghost within him was divine. So they declared him a god, and thereafter called him Hamaguchi DAIMYÔJIN, thinking they could give him no greater honor;--and truly no greater honor in any country could be given to mortal man. And when they rebuilt the village, they built a temple to the spirit of him, and fixed above the front of it a tablet bearing his name in Chinese text of gold; and they worshiped him there, with prayer and with offerings. How he felt about it I cannot say;--I know only that he continued to live in his old thatched home upon the hill, with his children and his children's children, just as humanly and simply as before, while his soul was being worshiped in the shrine below. A hundred years and more he has been dead; but his temple, they tell me, still stands, and the people still pray to the ghost of the good old farmer to help them in time of fear or trouble.
Ah, the above completely mythologized "Long, long ago, in a land far, far away" Lost Horizon version is infinitely preferable to the reality, so spoiler alert! if you read this link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamaguchi_Goryo
The comedy
Civilization, despite its sophistication, pretensions, and many accomplishments, owes its existence to six inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. Stephen Jay Gould
Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. Stephen Jay Gould
Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
The Universe is foamy!
One of the biggest discoveries of the last 20 years is that the galaxies in the Universe are not distributed uniformly through space. There are huge voids with nearly nothing surrounded by filaments along which most of the galaxies are associated. It is as if galaxies were distributed along the films of soap bubbles in a foam.
The hypothesis is that "dark matter" is causing the galaxies to clump together.
If this is true, then what would happen when dark matter streams intersect?
Maybe polar ring galaxies (also sometimes called "polar disk galaxies")?
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19726455.500-x-marks-the-spot-in-dark-matter-web.html
The hypothesis is that "dark matter" is causing the galaxies to clump together.
If this is true, then what would happen when dark matter streams intersect?
Maybe polar ring galaxies (also sometimes called "polar disk galaxies")?
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19726455.500-x-marks-the-spot-in-dark-matter-web.html
What in Heaven is this?
Really weird type of galaxy called a "polar ring galaxy" (sometimes "polar disk galaxy").
A simulated galaxy will be rotated to show the 3D structure, and then photos of real galaxy NGC 4650A appears at the end.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Why do we have a leap day?
A great example of the glorious mess produced when using fudge factors to make things in Nature come out the way we want.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87803957
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87803957
The Streisand Effect
An attempt to censor or remove information backfires. Millions of people try to get what has been banned. Hilarity ensues. Susan says: "What a Funny Girl"!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87809195
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Quick, see Bab's house before she sues again and the picture is removed!
http://www.cnsnews.com/storyimages/2003/streisand_big.jpg
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87809195
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Quick, see Bab's house before she sues again and the picture is removed!
http://www.cnsnews.com/storyimages/2003/streisand_big.jpg
The greatest scourges of life
The Argument from Personal Ignorance and The Argument from Personal Incredulity.
Otherwise known as
"I have no idea what you are talking about; therefore, it is wrong"
and
"I don't believe it (because I don't like it); therefore, it is wrong"
I know many people who have honed these ideas into the finest of the human arts and who practice them on a daily basis.
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/you_know_whats_stupid
Otherwise known as
"I have no idea what you are talking about; therefore, it is wrong"
and
"I don't believe it (because I don't like it); therefore, it is wrong"
I know many people who have honed these ideas into the finest of the human arts and who practice them on a daily basis.
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/you_know_whats_stupid
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
