Another great idea

But what will we have floating over our heads when we come up with the next one?

Quantum dots that produce white light could be the light bulb's successor | Science Blog: "Take an LED that produces intense, blue light. Coat it with a thin layer of special microscopic beads called quantum dots. And you have what could become the successor to the venerable light bulb."

LEDs and their cousins, OLEDs, have enormous potential in changing the way we light up the world as well as use energy. And I certainly look forward to at least one Saturday when I'm not replacing a light bulb somewhere in the house.

But could someone tell me where I could get an LED conversion kit for my trusty 3 D cell Maglite flashlight? I love the thing. Sure, I could get a small, light, palm-sized LED flashlight that produced more light, but the thing is more a weapon than a light source and it's damn comforting when padding around the house at night trying to figure out what made that strange noise.

science

Yet Another Star Trek Invention Comes To Pass

Even the silliest sounding stuff they make up in Star Trek ends up being invented.

Air Force testing new transparent armor | Science Blog: "ALONtm is a ceramic compound with a high compressive strength and durability. When polished, it is the premier transparent armor for use in armored vehicles, said. 1st Lt. Joseph La Monica, transparent armor sub-direction lead
'The substance itself is light years ahead of glass,' he said, adding that it offers 'higher performance and lighter weight.'"

Transparent Aluminum. Christ Almighty.

Armor, sure, yes, useful for that. But imagine what else you could build out of super strong, light, transparent material you can mold.

Scratch proof iPods, of course.

science, star trek, ipod

Bush Administration Self Destructs in 5, 4, 3 . . .

Simply amazing.

I look at the headlines and shake my head in wonder. The Plame Affair, so long swept under the rug, might actually bring down Rove, and perhaps the Dark Lord himself, the Vice President. Bush's approval ratings are dismal. The war in Iraq has gone so, so bad (though not as bad as I feared. Yet.) And the news for them just keeps getting worse.

And what really makes me scratch my head is that they've done it to themselves. The opposition, the generally clueless Democrats, haven't figured out how to oppose. The press has been, until lately, in full lapdog mode.

So, let's ask, "what if" a bit. What if Cheney was forced to resign, Rove and Libby were indicted and resign as well. Bush is cut of from his most trusted advisors. What then?

Hell, we've been there before. How long until some more "you'll have to trust me on this" evidence comes out that Iran is plotting something nefarious against us and we'll just have to invade.

God help us if things go really badly for Bush and they start a shouting match with China.

OK, enough of that.

Here's what it gets down to. Someone in the Bush administration outed an active duty undercover CIA agent for political gain. Frankly, I'd call it treason and haul Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and the VP himself out back of the White House and shoot them. The President deserves impeachment for allowing it to go unanswered for two years. If he wasn't involved he could have called the VP in on day one, demanded to know the truth, and fired all of them on the spot. But he didn't. If he knew, that's conspiracy. If he didn't know, that's incompetence.

And shame on the special prosecutor and the press for not bringing this to a close well before the last election.

politics

Looks Like Karl Has Won A Major Award

Karl Rove's Garage Proves to Be Typical: "* A rather large wood crate marked 'FRAGILE' and painted with arrows indicating which way is up. On top of the crate, two coolers."

And it's pronounced "Frag-eee-lay".

What are we?

This book sounds fascinating: On the Sea of Memory : A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering.

Perhaps for me for different reasons than one would ordinarily think. This interview with the author, Jonathan Cott, touches on it.

Salon.com Books | He lost his mind: "Do you ever stop believing that one day your memories will come back to you?

No, I don't think they will.

So you're resigned to that.

Yes, I am. Although in the book I do quote several spiritual teachers who say we are our memories, and therefore whether we remember them or not they're still with us. And so I'm hoping that in some slightly mystical way they are still with me, in my body somewhere. It's like when I wake up from a dream and I remember for a split second the content of the dream, the images in the dream, and then a second later I don't remember anything. But for that split second I remember them, and I think that maybe in some way those images have filtered down and integrated into my consciousness. Or my subconsciousness, let's put it that way. And they are there to draw on. But I don't know. That's just a mystical belief."

You see, I'm not so sure that we are our memories. I will accept that our memories are a huge part of us, but not all of us. I think what we are is much more complex than that (and this goes back to my argument with Ray Kurzweil, too). And for those that believe in an afterlife, exactly which you is going to live forever? The you of this moment? The you at age 13, full of hope and innocence? The you at 96, locked and lost in a fog of memories and confusion?

When I wrestle with this, I ultimately fall back on Steven Pinker's assertion: The mind is something the brain does. Without my memories, I am not me. And a slightly different chemical mix makes me other than me as well. Me is not a fixed asset. Yes, that's scary. And I fear that Mr. Cott is right and his memories are truly gone - wiped clear of his brain and totally unrecoverable.

So, what are we? We are a marvel. And the possibilities are endless. What we might be today, tomorrow, and into the future is filled with hope and adventure. And when the adventure is over, there's the memory of us, not stored in us, but in our friends and family and our works. That's where memory is most valuable.

mind, memory, science, religion, kurzweil