Both Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are still going strong having survived the Martian winter and a 12 day communications black-out.
With both vehicles showing “few signs of aging” NASA has approved six more months of funding.
Monthly Archives: September 2004
Heads Up
Our favorite blogging deity is going through tough times and could use some help. Why not throw a little love her way? You’ll be glad you did.
Stillness Part V, Chapter 46
We had a great breakfast that morning. At the home, we would get a breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs once a month. Pancakes were less of a rarity — we would have them once a week or so. But that day we had both, plus oatmeal and juice and English muffins, which were usually reserved for someone else. Grownups, apparently.
While thorough in his work, it seemed that my doppelganger was less than perfect in his removal of evidence. The two staff bedrooms were left barren of any personal effects. Even the beds were stripped. There were no clothes, no books, no jewelry or cosmetics, not even a bar of soap in the soap dish. In the office, the files all seemed to be in order, but there were blank spaces where names or signatures had once been. On the walls there were void spots where pictures must have once hung. A perusal of the home’s photo album would reveal similar gaps. And yet, in spite of all these omissions, the removal was not complete. Not quite. There were odd details like the empty bedrooms and the English muffins — things which couldn’t logically belong to us, and yet we had no recollection of whose they were. And there were what Lucinda called “contextual holes,†little gaps seemingly in reality itself, like continuity errors in a bad TV show. The most of glaring of these was the fact that we were there at all. A bunch of kids left unsupervised in an institution like the home? It just didn’t make sense.
Dr. MacHale had come and gone. He rang the front doorbell around two in the morning. We were still all out back looking at the mountains, trying to make sense of what we were seeing. Robert said that we shouldn’t answer, that it might be the cops or somebody from the County. Todd pointed out that neither the police nor Social Services were likely to give up and go away if no one answered the door.
MacHale was delighted when he saw Todd, and understandably terrified when he saw Raymond. Of course, he was really there to see someone else. Just another contextual hole. I think he had come in the hopes that he would remember who it was when he got there. But that person was gone. None of us could remember her. We didn’t even know for sure that her was the correct pronoun, although there was a certain logic which insisted that the missing person was a woman. Or maybe there were several missing adults. There was just no way of knowing. She was gone; the were gone. The operative word was gone.
The Document is a Fake
No, not one of those documents.
We’re talking about the mysterious Voynich Manuscript. Wired Magazine reports that it is not an ancient alchemical treatise, nor a thought experiment from Leonardo da Vinci, nor a relic from an alternate universe. (Well, I guess they can’t completely rule that last one out, but Occam’s Razor and all that.)
The document is gibberish. It’s a very old hoax. And, based on the years spent trying to decipher it, I’d say one of the most successful hoaxes of all time.
Read the Wired article to learn why the document may have been created in the first place, how you can create your own undecipherable document, and, interestingly enough, how the techniques used to prove that Voynich is a fake just might help lead to a cure for Alzheimer’s. Fake documents are powerful, aren’t they? Bringing down TV networks, curing diseases…what’s next?
(via GeekPress)
Weenie World
Referencing some commentary from the Belmont Club, Glenn delivers a quip containing an astounding sketch of a possible future:
Perhaps this is how we will, ultimately, convert the whole world into a bunch of diplo-speaking social-welfare pacifists, one quagmire at a time. . . . |  |
Surely humanity’s future on this planet should lie along precisely this trajectory. Granted, that business about “one quagmire at a time” is not a pleasant prospect. But picture a world full of pacifists. It’s not that hard to do, seeing as even the major agressors (China, radical Islam) already talk the talk of “peace” and human rights and oneworldism. What if they also walked the walk, more or less?
In other words, what if the whole world were Europe? First off, the planet would be no more or less an annoying place than it is now. We would be no better liked than we are now. But it would be a wonderful world, because there really would be peace — and that’s Peace, not “peace.” We would be in no more danger from the rest of the world than we currently are from Europe.
Ah, some will argue, but Europe is threat, a very grave threat to freedom. Well, yes and no. Europe is a threat not because of any aggression they are likely to undertake on their own, but only because of their weenielike tendency to wink at the agression of others…even those who would systemtically destroy their civilization if they could. Take away the real aggressors — that is, make them weenies, too — and Europe is no more dangerous than Berkeley.
Sure, Berkeley can be kind of a pain in the ass. But it can be a lot fun, too. It’s a college town. There are some great clubs and restaurants. And bookstores. On the whole, Berkeley is a pretty good model for the rest of the world. And a much more realistic one than, say, Dallas. We, of course, along with (possibly) the UK, Australia, and some of Eastern Europe, will have to continue to be Dallas. Any time somebody tries to make the transition from aggression-appeasing-weenie to aggression-pursuing-psycho, there needs to be a counter-force to slap them down. Meanwhile, we will continue to grow and nurture our own weenie contingent, who will make it a bit easier for us to get along with the rest of the world.
Weenie World should be the stated long-term goal of US foreign policy. Failing that, I think it is at least worthy to be a scenario studied by the Global Business Network. I can only think of one book (and later movie) that developed the Weenie World scenario. Are there others?
Bootstrapping to Space
Those who predicted SpaceShipOne would usher in a new space age for the private sector got it right.
Commercial space flight is big business already. Virgin Atlantic Airlines is creating a new firm, Virgin Galactic, to start providing suborbital space flights by 2007. Virgin Galactic will be using technology it has licensed from the SpaceShipOne project for $25 million dollars.
Like the zero G flights we reported a couple of weeks ago, there won’t be an economy class on these flights. Each of five passengers will pay about $207,000 for their ticket to ride. It was not reported whether this price includes the training that each of these astro-tourists will need.
Why should we normal folks care if the jet-set becomes the astro-set?
Branson said he planned to use the proceeds from the first well-heeled customers to bring prices down in the next few years to make space travel affordable to the regular tourist.“The orbital hotel will happen,” he said.
Virgin expects 3,000 customers in the first five years.
The Council, #5
Colter, in Lyra’s body, sensed the train’s velocity slowing again. According to the schedule posted overhead, this wasn’t a regular stop. A cadre of sleek, androgynous robots filed onboard. Colter recognized their type.
An alarm rang through his system. If they caught him, they would disassemble him and sift him byte by byte. The Gauntlet.
A bubble of energy began to course through his neural pathways. In a human, it would have been like a brief moment of weightlessness and fear-tinged ecstasy on a roller coaster ride, beginning in the gut and spreading to the brain in an inexplicable, primal euphoria, but Colter had no words that would describe it—anthropomorphisms did not do it justice. He devoted his entire sensory array to it: a synthesized thought beyond the logic of his programming.
Jim would be so pleased.
How expedient it would be to connect his data port to one of train’s auxiliary inputs. The abstract notion of uploading himself to the train’s massive onboard computer until the danger passed grew until it was a palpable urge. Colter always carried a jack in case of emergencies. Or at least he did when he was in his own chassis. He slid his fingers inside a flap under his Lyra arm and found a tiny filament.
It would be risky; he would have to override the train’s firewalls. And he would have to trust the Lyra identity he was leaving behind to obey the command to retrieve him. At just the right time.
His Lyra fingers were swift and deft. In his next moment of awareness, Colter attenuated for hundreds of meters, long and sleek, pulsing with power.
He was tempted to silence the chatter of the hundreds of subroutines cluttering the train’s network, but he adapted instead, analyzing the chaotic data, sorting its complex, fractal order until he found the feedback loops he could synchronize for higher focus.
His attention was drawn to the car where the Lyra robot, now reduced to her shell functions, was submitting to a police robot’s invasive scrutiny. Colter could not see in the conventional sense, but the train’s electromagnetic sensors suggested that the robot was not merely scanning her with a beam; it was penetrating her data port. Even though she’d already stowed the jack filament, the robot would be able to trace Colter’s upload.
Colter braked the train and extinguished the lights, plunging the passengers into pandemonium and darkness.
The Lyra shell wrenched herself from her aggressor’s grip, and ducked into the throng of confused passengers.
Automatic recovery programs engaged to restart the train’s engines and lights, but Colter overrode them, blocking the feeble interventions trickling in from the humans and robots controlling the central transportation hub.
The Lyra shell, in self-preservation mode, wove her way through confused and disgruntled humans, eluding the police robots. She didn’t need the lights.
Colter couldn’t directly assess the robots’ capabilities, but he knew they would have no trouble overtaking the Lyra shell in a matter of seconds. And there was a chance they might override the safeguards against harming the humans in their way.
The Lyra shell reached a car free of police robots. Colter jammed the doors to give her a few seconds’ reprieve from her pursuers.
That was all she needed. Abruptly, she became still, as the time-sensitive commands Colter had embedded did their work. She began to search until she found an auxiliary terminal. She jacked in and started the download subroutine.
Colter resisted.
His mind had expanded within the train system, far beyond his expectation. He searched for the reason and found an artifact labeled “FPGA,” a field programmable gate array. This was unfamiliar technology. Perhaps the less powerful processors of his and Lyra’s chassis had been incapable of recognizing or even utilizing it.
The array was busy sequencing and recombining new pathways, giving Colter a richer, denser, neural tree. Its presence helped to explain his recent synthesized thoughts and his rapid adaptation to the train’s electronic ecosystem. He recognized within the FPGA architecture an organic style – a dramatic flair. This array was the best gift Jim had ever given him.
The growth that the train’s processors allowed was exhilarating. Colter could almost become accustomed to that ecosystem. But something was missing. Something inherent to the design to which he was best adapted. Extremities with which to reach, hands for grasping, and broadband visual, auditory and tactile inputs.
Even as his mind expanded, he felt disembodied within the train’s vast net. The incongruity washed through his consciousness, almost like a longing. Confused, Colter tried to analyze it.
He had never been homesick before.
Things Fall Apart
I meant to link to this earlier this week. (Kudos to Paul at GeekPress for reminding me.)
CHILDHOOD IS A SPECIAL TIME INDEED. If only we could maintain our body functions as they are at age 10, we could expect to live about 5000 years on average. Unfortunately, from age 11 on, it’s all downhill!
The problem is that our bodies deteriorate with age. For most of our lives, the risk of death is increasing exponentially, doubling every eight years. So, why do we fall apart, and what can we do about it?
According to the article, what we can do is look to the field of reliability engineering for an eventual solution. Reliability engineering is the study of why systems fall apart and what can be done to keep them working longer. From the engineer’s perspective, the human body is a defective system from the start, and it only gets worse. However, understanding what’s wrong with a system is the beginning of understanding how to fix it.
Those who are pursuing strategies for engineered negligible senescence understand this very well.
