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lukecorp luke fritznews sciencedailywired space.com newscientist beyond 2000 links scientific americancosmic ancestry extropy webmonkey reading The Cyborg Handbook: Chris Hables Graylistening  weblogs eatonwebdamaged vavatch orbital archives 8.1.2000:8.31.20007.1.2000:7.31.2000 6.1.2000:6.30.2000
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7.31.2000 Once again, sorry for no weekend posts, but again I was having too much fun in the real world.
I found this "Keo" project interesting. It will orbit for 52,000 years and then crash back to Earth, intact. It will contain 6 billion messages from our time and contain other cool things like an artificial diamond that will contain samples of blood, seawater, air. etc. I think I might just leave a message on thier craft... Speaking of eons, I decided to check out The Long Now Foundation's website. They are all about thinking long-term and preserving documents so that we don't forget about the past and the present. They also want us to stop thinking with the "faster/cheaper" paradigm that has been humanity's focus for the past 10,000 years, and move to a "slower/better" paradigm that nurtures creativity. nothing really exciting has happened so far today... I'm looking around and i see: new greenhouse gas (not harmful), another protein story about disease (again), etc. etc.
I guess I can say that its good that NASA is sending a 'water-sniffer' to Mars for the 2003 launch window. I don't know exactly how useful it is, since we already have good evidence for water on Mars, but hey, data is data. It would be cool if we could scan for microbes or something near the points where water has seeped out of crater walls and canyons and the like, but that will have to wait for a later mission. I really liked this article about using animals to help clean the house. Martyn Robinson, a naturalist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, uses slugs to clean his bathroom and shower curtain. He uses geckos to keep the roaches under control, black ants to eat the termites, skinks to eat silverfish and cockroaches, and orb spiders to catch mosquitoes. The animals don't do a perfect job, but get most of it done. Robinson also makes an important point for having animals do the cleaning: And the more diversity there is, the less likely we are to have pests. Pests may get used to chemicals, but they never get used to being eaten. lukasius 09:50 | link : : : grr, my computer keeps crashing right when I'm about to post! Do you know how annoying that is?? Now I have to retype everything. Ok, heres an idea that, knowing the general population, probably won't catch on too well... Dan Reicher, the U.S. assistant secretary of energy, thinks that we can cut our electricity bills to zero within the next decade or so. He doesn't pay any electricity for his house, through use of solar power. He's so enthusiastic about this, he made Bill Clinton sign a Million Solar Roofs pledge, but there are still only 70,000 that have done so. I don't think it will work until photovoltaic cells come down in price, but maybe it will catch on if the government keeps pushing it. Who knows? Oh, and Zvezda docked finally, so we (the US) can start building the ISS again. Finally!
Good morning, I am pleased to announce the invention of deflector shield technology. Sure, you've seen it on Star Wars and Star Trek and the like, but did you know we are actually making progress towards having effective plasma shield technology? Mounir Laroussi at Old Dominion University is at the forefront of cold-plasma research, and he thinks that within 10 to 20 years, cold-plasmas could be used as sci-fi intended, as beam weapon defense. Right now, the applications for cold-plasma are: superstealth (completely absorbs radar), and food sterilization. Very exciting indeed! And thats about it... My grandfather, a retired doctor, asked me to read this article about Dehydroepiandrosterone, Melatonin, & Testosterone in Human Evolution. I finally got around to it, and found it mildly interesting. There are many facts and figures quoted in the paper, but the author seems to be either a) not a doctor, or b) a poor writer. I think this is the case, because the author, James Michael Howard, has an uncanny ability to jump to conclusions based on one chart or one fact. This is all well and good, but he needed to back up his conclusions with more than "I think...". I still think he's probably on to something, but much further study needs to be done. After surfing the DHEA "shrine", I found another article about how caloric restriction may be due to prolonged DHEA usage. Hmm. Ok, movies? I only watched one movie... Alien Resurrection. It was ok, but pales in comparison to Alien. I think this is because the movie wasn't dark and suspenseful enough, mainly because the director sucks (coming from a seasoned critic, LOL), and the distinctive dark H. R. Giger style is sorely lacking. NO! YES! What about the science world? Let me see...
A new moon was found orbiting Jupiter. Its the furthest out and the smallest, at a little more than 3 miles or so. Its not interesting and hasn't even been named yet. They still call it "S/1999 J 1". Read an interview with Dr. John Logsdon, Director of Space Policy Institute at George Washington University about the future of the International Space Station and Russia's involvement in it. Basically some political BS that wants us to think that Russia's space program is not falling apart at the seams. Hmm. after actually doing a good deal of work this morning, allow me to begin the post process for today...
Finally NASA is getting off their lazy asses and researching some nuclear propulsion tech. Its a baby tokamakish type of thing. I'll let the article explain its intricacies. This brings me to another thing: Why did we ban civilian nuclear research in space? If we never passed that non-proliferation in space thing with a total ban, we'd have nuke ships flying around all over the solar system, and have man on the moon and the asteroids already. The Orion program is an example of what we could have had. ok, im going crazy with the posts today, but theres so much cool stuff going on! :-)
A submarine that can beat the concorde from London to NYC? Sounds crazy? Technology developed by hydrofoil research and Russian torpedo research has sparked interest in supercavitation. Torpedos have gone upwards of 500kph and bullets have gone 5400kph in naval tests by both the Russian and US Navies. Now they are talking manned supercavitation experiments! If they can get this right, you'll be taking an underwater rocket to London instead of the concorde, and get there in only 1 hour! An interesting article in the latest issue of Scientific American, about the feasibility of making plastics from living plants. The whole focus here is not needing to use fossil fuels anymore. Long but interesting. A way to eliminate airplane vortices when landing. This will allow planes to land with less time seperating them, decreasing congestion and making landings a little safer.
The first robot that uses only food to power itself! Chew Chew, as it is affectionately called, uses a microbial fuel cell (MFC) to convert energy stored in food to electricity. What makes it unique, is that the MFC and components are small enough to fit onboard. However, its not quite powerful enough to immediately use food to power itself, it uses the food to charge its batteries, and then uses the batteries to fuel its movement.
The researchers (Chernyak, Mukamel and Shapir at Rochester) simulated thousands of different configurations of the dendrimers and found that the magic number of times it should branch is 9. Any more or less branching results in a diminishing return of captured light. Thinking about the possibility of these super-efficient photoelectric cells, I had visions of a clear, microscopic film that could be coated on any surface to generate mind-numbing amounts of electricity. You could paint your house with it to generate electricity and heat water, coat your car with it to power the radio and headlights and AC, and you could even put it on your clothing to help power PDAs and cellphones, or even a portable AC unit. And gone will be the days of bulky, unsightly solar panels; you might not even be able to see the new films at all! GADGET: The Cybiko computer. Promises to make high-school a living hell for teachers everywhere. I wish they had these when I was younger. It is a small computer that chats, transfers MP3s, surfs the internet, and checks e-mail all wirelessly with other Cybiko computers within 300 feet. And all for $129! Whoa. Scientists confirm that people stop thinking when they fall in love. Higher brain function pretty much grinds to a halt, say scientists at University College London: Upon sighting the object of their affections, the candidates all stopped thinking. lukasius 10:19 | link : : : 7.19.2000
Nothing profound has happened so far today in the sci-tech world. I did find a nice article on some radical design ideas for airplanes. The blended wing body (BWB) and box wing designs are getting serious consideration from governments and the aerospace industry. These designs promise to drastically reduce fuel consumption and increase the amount of cargo and passengers that planes can carry.
I have some bad (not that bad) news: Our current Human physiological makeup cannot support us for long periods of time in space. This is because the tubulin in our cells needs gravity to organize into parallel or spiral configurations. In space, its totally random. We need tubulin for cell division and proper health, and so long periods of time in space causes a general deterioration of the body, including organs and bones. Until we can genetically engineer ourselves to not need gravity anymore, we will have to research ship designs where centripetal forces can be created in such a way as to generate artificial gravity (like those donut shaped space stations). I believe this news isn't a deathblow to space exploration, but rather causes us to appreciate how foreign space really is to us. We will need to properly simulate Earth-like conditions in space. Because we will have functioning ecosystems and artificial gravity environments, we will create more permanent facilities for our exploration and manufacturing needs. This will allow humans to reside permanently in space, and travel for years to other planets. Well, it seems that a Pulsar has been "lying to us about it's age", says Dale Frail. They happen to be much older than originally thought. 'The Duck', which was originally thought to be 16,000 years old, is much older. The scientists reporting the new findings say that it could be anywhere from 40,000 to 170,000 years old. Also, Spacewatch is getting an upgrade. A new 1.8 meter telescope will vastly increase the detecting power of the program, from 2 to something like 20 NEOs a month. This means we have a better chance of catching one of those 'killer asteroids' well before it hits us. I'm all for this kind of thing, as it ensures our species won't be wiped out like the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. This program gets even less funding than SETI, and it probably is one of the most important projects that we could invest in. Conplete coverage and databasing of all potential threats would cost less than 10 million dollars, yet we spend trillions on 'deterrence' from threats that are like firecrackers in comparison to this threat. Once again, it makes me wonder how a race as stupid as ours has managed to get this far, but I reassure myself that there are some good people trying to make the world safe and sane. Watched 2 movies so far this weekend. X-MEN of course, and The Postman. If you want to see a really horrible movie, watch The Postman. It's like Dances with Wolves but with some post-apocalyptic world that really isn't apocalyptic. Some bum just drifts around pretending he's a mailman and kills some gang-leader after 3 hours of drifting. No profound meaning, no excitement, no redeeming value. Basically, The Postman just makes you hate yourself for wasting 3 whole hours of your life. When will Kevin Costner learn that we hate his style of movie? Well, i guess some people might like it, but come on! Ok, I think whats going to happen with this blog, is you'll get sci-tech stuff on weekdays, and movies on weekends, just because i really veg out on weekends, and most science seems to slow down on weekends anyway. In their lawsuit, which failed, the Apaches said Mount Graham is central to their land-based religion and that the telescopes are a desecration. "One of these guys actually came to our office and asked me, point blank, how would I feel if somebody put a telescope on top of a church in Rome," said Consolmagno, who took his vows as a Jesuit brother in 1991 and arrived in Tucson two years later. "And my answer was that, in fact, we’ve done that," he said. "The church of St. Ignatius in Rome, the roof of that church was the site of the observatory that Angelo Secchi used to discover carbon stars." "To me it’s not a desecration at all. It’s honoring a sacred site," he said of the Mount Graham observatory. "It’s part of our philosophy that God reveals himself through creation, and studying creation in a scientific way is a way of coming closer to God." I just thought this was humorous, you know, that little twist at the end that makes jokes funny? Oh forget it.
Working out after a big Chinese feast is a bad idea, a really bad idea. Hmm, while I'm lifting weights, I will provide some more news and links. Distributed computing is an emerging field in cyberspace, and I'm pleased to announce that several companies have started putting our idle computers to work. They plan on actually paying people to use their idle time, around $10 a month. Another interesting fact: United Devices thinks their distributed network (77,000 computers) will have double the computing power of IBM's ASCI White. You've heard of rail guns, right? Well, how about making a big one and launching aircraft with it? Thats what the US and British navies are thinking about. One consequence is that a nuclear power plant may no longer be needed. Also, there will be less waste, and planes can be launched faster and with a higher turnaround. A humorous article about death and statistics, and the people who actually go and compile them in the first place. Hmm, sleep sounds good right now. Ok, now that thats out of the way, NASA blocked a whole bunch of people (1.5 million Excite at home users) from its websites, because Excite didn't get rid of the hackers using their networks. I guess that's fair, since after the block, Excite suddenly took action. NASA kept Excite on its toes? I noticed they kept quoting attrition.org, quite a useful site! Well, got to go to dinner, I will post some more around midnight EST. A gall bladder was removed today by a robot! The robot is called the daVinci Surgical System. The operation was a complete success, and the patient went home only 4 hours later. This is because the daVinci System is less invasive and makes smaller cuts. Soon, every surgery can be performed using a similar system. Interesting. Also, the Starchaser rocket, a British design, has bounced into the lead for the X PRIZE competition. They successfully launched a rocket last Thursday, with sponsorship from the Discovery Channel and Microsoft. Project leader Steve Bennett is confident that, with funding, he will put a man in space by the end of 2001 and start a tourist thing by 2003, which will meet the X PRIZE requirements. The requirements are: get 3 people to 100 km and back, and then do it again within 14 days using the same rocket. Good luck Steve.
Another fun site: Dr. Fun. This is actually pretty hilarious. It's sorta the same humor of the far side.
Decided to explore the wonderful world of transhumanism again today, and stumbled across a vast right-wing conspiracy, only kidding... Actually, I found out that people are actively practicing Calorie Restriction as a way of life extension. I find this to be really cool, as I thought I was the only one thinking "If mice live 40% longer when they eat half as much, then if we eat half as much, wont we live to be 140?". It seems I'm already practicing this diet anyway, but there are lots of facts, figures and references for you to decide on your own whether CR works. Today, the office where I work closely resembles the police department in the movie Blade Runner. This building is like from the 30's and has a lot of wood and art deco and ceiling fans, and its about 308 Kelvin. NEWS FLASH: Looking for some Blade Runner sites, I found out that Ridley Scott (the director) revealed yesterday that Deckard (Harrison Ford) was actually a 'replicant', the same thing he was hunting down in the movie. I never thought! Here's a couple of good Blade Runner links: Ok, umm here's another quote:
-Getrude Stein It seems scientists have done it again! They figured out a way to double crop yields in farms by using innovative planting cycles of corn and soybeans. This means less stress on the land, because crops will be planted more often and prevent erosion of topsoil. Also, it means that the US could free up 320 million acres of land for other purposes (maybe national parks?). The leading scientist of this plant genomics research, Dr. Ray Bressan, has something else to say. As an environmentalist, he is concerned that environmental groups are seeing biotechnology as an abomination. He thinks that these groups should realize that much of the biotechnological research, such as his, will allow us to take the stress off of our planet, and harm it less. I'm all for that. We should either learn to live more harmoniously with nature (unlikely), or get "out of it's hair". Our present course of action does neither, and we should embrace practical applications of biotechnological research as a way to save our environment. Can you believe that what makes plump, juicy fruits and vegetables is the same thing that promotes tumor formation in humans? Thats what some scientists from Cornell think. But thats not what I found interesting. What I found interesting was this: Corn kernels were not originally succulent, and wild tomatoes looked more like red blueberries. "When you see a beautiful ear of corn, you're actually looking at a gross exaggeration of the corn's real anatomy. Tomatoes and all other fruits and vegetables show the same thing, compared with their ancestors. They have gross exaggerations of the specific particular parts of their anatomy -- their fruit for example -- valued by humans," says Tanksley. If not for this mechanism, humans would not have developed beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and modern civilizations would not have been born. "We're now codependents with domesticated fruits and vegetables. Without them, we can't sustain ourselves, and without us the domesticated plants can't sustain themselves either," says Tanksley. "The humans and the plants have been caught up in a dance of co-evolution." I love evidence of symbiosis between humans and nature. It shows that we are bound to it still and have been reaping the rewards of beneficial partnerships with it. If it wasnt for these relationships, we'd still be hunting and gathering. alrighty then, its sunday, so i did the usual cruise through the cultural wasteland called Montrose (where I live), observing the fuel prices, the Chuck'E'Cheeses and Radio Shacks. The only coffee shop is a Starbucks, and the cultural center of the area is the Barnes and Noble megabookstore. Ok, so you get the idea I don't like Akron. Well, I guess I'm more used to a metropolis with a more cosmopolitan feel (like Chicago where I go to school). Enough of that crap, I also watched a movie called The Road Warrior. It's the second mad max movie, and I still haven't seen the first one, but I will get around to it once TBS airs it on their channel (they're bound to eventually). The movie is pretty boring, but has that interesting edge. It's a post apocalyptic grungy film about some tribal warrior dudes against some nice warrior dudes with a refinery. the nice dudes want to go and build a better life out of the desert, but the mean warrior dudes want the gas. mad max saves the day. hmm, I also watched some documentary on the pentagon. It's the largest building under like 10 stories in the world. 2nd is the kremlin and third is where I live at school, Tech. It's kinda cool that we have a building that big at school. oh well, anyway, it was interesting.... I especially liked the figure of 16,000 miles of cables, most of which dont go anywhere, but nobody is sure, so theyre afraid to pull them out. HAHA, the nerve center of the greatest military power in the world is a really big condemned building! At least theyre renovating it, for a cool BILLION dollars! (It cost 83 million to build in 1941 dollars). Ok, enough rambling. well, another veg-out weekend. I watched Instinct last night, with Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr.. Despite the negative reviews, I thorougly enjoyed it, as I am more interested in movies that make you think as opposed to artistic perfection in movies (which is what critics are after). Its about an anthopologist that disappears for 2 years in Africa then kills a few Rwandans. He's apparently insane, and a psychologist comes in to figure out whats wrong with him. It seems that the anthropologist has been living with gorillas during his absence from civilization. There's a lot of interesting philosophical dialogue about how humans aren't in harmony with nature and will kill it all off if we don't get back in harmony with it. It's interesting because it explores the reason for our schism from nature, and how our perception of reality may be an illusion that masks the destruction that we cause nature. There really isn't too much of a point, but it's interesting nonetheless. Oh, its loosely based on the book Ishmael. another lunch time update: Greenpeace decided to enter Vandenberg AFB, to protest a missile defense test later this evening. I mean, come on! I think blowing up a nuke in the upper atmosphere is probably better for the environment than blowing one up in a rainforest or something. Shouldn't Greenpeace stop being so stupid as to choose these forms of protest rather than promoting programs such as recycling and cleaner energy sources? Nuclear power is way better for the Earth as a whole than burning billions of tons of coal, oil, and biomass. The greenhouse effect is in my opinion the most dangerous threat to the survival of the earth. Like to know how well Sydney airport would run if it were located in the Arctic Circle and handled twice as much traffic? The FFC could work it out. Check it out. I stumbled across a congressional response to a letter dealing with Intelligent Design and creationism. Basically it shows that some scientists are treating evolution as a religion, and that the debate is getting a little too philosophical rather than empirical. Basically, I think both sides aren't providing enough evidence to prove their cases. I like evolution better, but I am always open minded about things. I haven't seen enough evidence for intelligent design (intelligence meaning a god). It may be that the Earth itself is intelligent, or that evolution pure and simple can explain it. Intelligent Design makes the universe so much more boring than something based on complex laws, and it would make us all fatalistic, since we would then know that we have no control over our lives. But hey, it's possible. Hmm, that was a bit controversial... If you'd like to chat about that, I don't mind. I'm not attacking anyone with these statements. QUOTE: Out beyond the fields of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. - Jelaluddin Rumi
Finished a day of mind-numbing access database editing at work. I've never used acess before, and it took me half the day to figure out how to cross-link and update and auto-report generate, yikes! Oh well, I've got the hang of it now, and my brain is numb. I don't like how "user-friendly" Access is. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. - Marcel Proust
why is it that when i try using one of those easy to use programs like dreamweaver, i can never get my code to work right, but then when i go in and just write it all in through notepad, it works like a charm? i was really excited about dreamweaver for a while, but it looks like i'll only use it for site management, not site creation. Today, i learned that scientists have essentially given sight back to the blind. They implanted artificial silicon retinas (ASR) that have 3500 little solar cells to create a black and white grid. I remember thinking that these guys that came to my engineering design and communication class a while back did really cool stuff. They worked for IDEO, which designs stuff with people in mind. They did stuff like the Palm V for example and a whole slew of other projects. Surfing through their site brought me to an article about ubiquitous computing and the future of business in 2010. This also jogged my interest in wearable computing, which seems to have gone nowhere in the past 5 years. MIT started something a while back called the Oxygen Project, and IDEO did some really cool concept graphics and little stories from the user's point of view of how wearables affect their lives. It's really interesting and exciting, but theres still a long way to go. FACT: there is enough clean Helium-3 on the Moon to satisfy Earths energy needs for thousands of years. FUN FACT: a chinese astronaut is called a taikonaut ok, i have been wrestling with this code for too long. so i am going to let it all go i guess and leave it for a later time. if anyone wants to help out or know whats wrong, the left links cell is getting dragged down and i cant remember how to fix it. umm, here is a little update (well, a big one), and now i don't have the default template up anymore, but there are a few code problems that I'm wrangling with. oh, and my favourite drink ever is diet ice botanicals. they come with 0 calories and a whole lotta herbal junk, which i like. it's cool taking herbals in a tasty liquid form. hmm, what else? im working for chemstress consulting in akron for the summer doing network stuff. btw, you like the picture on the upper left?
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