Monthly Archives: November 2005

The THREE Million Dollar Mouse

Our good friend Reason reports on an exciting development: $1 million donation just received by the Methuselah Mouse Prize:


Yes, you read that right: Mprize, $1 million donation, and I have it from Dave Gobel that the cashier’s check just cleared today. Wow. This was somewhat out of the blue, and certainly far ahead of our expectations for progress in the rest of 2005!

Let me be one of the first to thank the anonymous donor for his or her generosity and for greatly raising the level of vindication experienced by the Mprize volunteers and other donors. This is a big step forward for efforts to vitalize serious scientific progress towards a cure for aging. There is a long way to go yet – and more seven figure donations, I hope – but thank you, anonymous donor, for pushing the best present day effort into the major leagues.

We’ll second those thanks. Unlike other prizes where all the drama and intrigue derive from who is going to win, the Methusaleh Mouse Prize continues to be intriguing on both ends. Watching the prize amount grow like this is really quite exciting.

20-20 Hindsight

Our ability to look into the deep past has never been greater:

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope may have detected the infrared glow from the very first generation of stars, a new study reports. If confirmed, the work would reveal the structure of the universe a few hundred million years after the big bang, when the galaxies that exist today were just beginning to take shape.

Is it ironic or somehow symmetrical and appropriate that the wave of technological advances which enable us to see so far into the past also make it next to impossible even to imagine — much less predict — what kinds of changes will be occuring over the next century or so?

The Solar Tower and the Space Elevator

Recently I’ve been reading up on Australia’s long term plan to erect a Solar Tower. Click here to see the concept video [scroll down to the "View an Artist Rendition of the Solar Tower" link].

OzTowerCompare-web.jpgThe Solar Tower website claims that this structure will be the tallest building in the world. You can tell by the picture that it won’t be a close contest. If, that is, this Solar Tower is completed before a Space Elevator.

That thought led me to this: why couldn’t the Solar Tower serve as the base of an Austrialian Space Elevator?

The planned site for this solar tower is in the remote outback of Buronga in the Wentworth Shire of New South Wales, Australia. This sort of remoteness is also a key requirement for the Space Elevator. You want it far away from normal flight paths to avoid accidental collisions. But remoteness will also help guard against intentional 9/11-style terrorist attacks.

Both the Space Elevator and the Solar Tower would work best near the equator. The Solar Tower could provide the electricity needed to power the Space Elevator laser. It could power an entire space port. There’s even the possibility of using the Solar Tower’s rising hot air directly to cut the cost of part of the lift through a hot air balloon principle, or by aiding a stirling engine.

Both the Solar Tower and the Space Elevator are big projects that will benefit the private sector but will require governmental effort. Perhaps some of the engineering expertise needed for one project could benefit the other.

Synergy all around.

We're Learning

Glenn Reynolds, in a new TCS column, with more thoughts in response to Peggy Noonan’s ennui:

But while the members and hangers-on of yesterday’s power structures are mulling their reduced prospects, ordinary people seem to be doing pretty well, as the economy continues to boom, small businesses to form, and new kinds of enterprises take off. We certainly don’t view government with the same awe we felt before Watergate broke, or journalism with the same respect it had before Dan Rather struck, but all available evidence suggests that it was our earlier attitudes that were misinformed.

Indeed.

We’re Learning

Glenn Reynolds, in a new TCS column, with more thoughts in response to Peggy Noonan’s ennui:

But while the members and hangers-on of yesterday’s power structures are mulling their reduced prospects, ordinary people seem to be doing pretty well, as the economy continues to boom, small businesses to form, and new kinds of enterprises take off. We certainly don’t view government with the same awe we felt before Watergate broke, or journalism with the same respect it had before Dan Rather struck, but all available evidence suggests that it was our earlier attitudes that were misinformed.

Indeed.

Keep It Simple

Research backs up the Speculist approach (really, pretty much the entire blogosphere approach):

Many fledgling writers have been taught the mnemonic KISS: Keep it simple, stupid. A new study backs the wisdom of that advice.

Long words used needlessly along with complicated font styles — two tactics employed routinely by students trying to pad their work — are perceived as coming from less intelligent writers.

Mark Twain once wrote in a letter to his sister: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

It’s the same basic idea. Adding complexity to a message doesn’t necessarily enhance the complexity of the idea presented. And even when it does, it doesn’t necessarily enhance that complexity in a meaningful way. So the value of communication goes up when we convey more information using fewer words and/or syllables.

The obvious exception would be Steven Den Beste, but even he seems to have traded it in for a more concise format.

Of course, the end game is to be able to say it all with a simple “heh” or a well-placed “indeed.” We aren’t quite there yet.