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

Don't Screw With The Librarian

Something I learned long ago. Librarian's are useful and make them your friends. They make painful enemies.

No… F--- you. Librarian gets revenge on "junk" faxer.

Frankly, I don't believe most people think, either.

Here's an excellent article on dog behavior at Slate.com. I was struck by this passage:

Do Dogs Think? - Owners assume their pet's brain works like their own. That's a big mistake. By Jon Katz: "This time, Heather got my full attention. I took notes, asked questions, then called a canine behaviorist at Cornell and explained the problem in as much detail as I could.'Everybody says the dog was reacting to her going back to work,' I suggested. 'Everybody is probably wrong,' was his blunt comeback. 'It's 'theory of mind.' This is what often happens when humans assume that dogs think the way we do.'"

I've lived my life around dogs and other animals. And I've found that the more I treat a dog like a dog and not like a child, the better it responds. Animals have emotions. They get angry, scared, get bored, and experience pleasure and pain. But like this article says, they don't think about things in the same way that humans do.

I grew up on a farm and always remember being around animals of all types and one of my earliest memories is going with my Grandpa Murray to pick out a long hair German Shepherd pup, Duke. Duke was a huge, dignified dog who was hit by a school bus when he was nearly a year old and walked with a limp for the rest of his life. One of his pups, sired with a neighboring collie, became my first dog, Nicky.

Nicky had Duke's size, but not his long hair. I remember getting him when I was six, the same year my brother was born. He and I were constant companions. He accompanied me on my daily cores. He stood by me and blocked the icy wind howling across the prairie as I pumped water for the cows. He played with us kids and never complained with any ill treatment, but he terrified adult strangers that came to the house and stared at them through their car doors, eye-to-eye. And I once saw him pick up a concrete cinder block that someone had left in the barn yard, carry it off under a tree, and chew it into pieces.

I thought of Nicky as my best friend. But I always thought of him as a dog. I don't know. Perhaps it was because I was raised on a farm and worked with lots of animals. But I'm also a big believer that humans and dogs have co-evolved, so we need each other. Dogs, above all other animals, have adapted themselves to living with us and providing us companionship. In a way, they're a very successful species because of that.

I strongly recommend Desmond Morris's book, Dogwatching. It was very helpful for me an my relationship with dogs.

Hey, I wanted one of these when I was a kid!

Well, not this thing, but close. Wired News: Machine Makes Dishes on Demand

When I read this paragraph, I knew exactly what they were doing.

"MIT Media Lab's Counter Intelligence Group, which develops innovative kitchen designs, has created a machine that makes dishes on demand and recycles them after diners have finished a meal. The dishes are made from food-grade, nontoxic acrylic wafers, which are shaped into cups, bowls and plates when heated, then resume their original wafer shape when they are reheated and pressed."

My friend, Bill Bailey (yes, just like the song) had one and it was so cool. It was the Mattel Thingmaker Strange Change Lost World Set! You had these little plastic cubes, but when you put them in the special chamber, they turned into dinosaurs! Then you could compress them back into little squares.

Oh, and I remember burning my fingers on the hot plate that caused them to change. That's probably why they took them off the market. But from my perspective as a 7 year old boy, the danger was part of the attraction.

I also will note that as a sign of my growing self control, I did not automatically buy one of these off of eBay the second I remembered this bit of childhood.

A Fresh Coat Of Paint

I spent all of yesterday, a few hours Sunday evening, and most of a previous Saturday a week back painting the "Bonus" room.

This T-shaped room has been the "play room" since we moved into the house nearly 12 years ago, a place for the kids to store their toys and play, watch TV, and study, often all at the same time. But now the toys are put away and sold off at garage sales. The room was long overdue for a touch up.

Now, almost finished, we have a comfortable alcove with a lounge chair and bookshelves, painted in an eggplant purple. Diane has two desks there as well, one for sewing and another for paying bills and sorting papers. And the main room is a duck's egg green, a mellow and comfortable color.

I've take the opportunity to upgrade the TV to a flat screen, high definition unit and included a Mac mini for web surfing, slide viewing, but mostly access to our music library. Soon we'll install decent speakers to fill the room with music.

I wondered during the transformation if I would find this a melancholy task. But no, it's a time of comfortable maturity, both for ourselves and our children.

Diane and I moved the furniture and painted the walls, but I'm hiring a pro to paint and apply a faux finish to the theater lobby downstairs. Few will see our little sanctuary up over the garage.

And following up on our previous story . . .

FedEx plane crashes in downtown Winnipeg"Oct 6, 2005 — WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - A small aircraft carrying cargo for FedEx Corp. — including six vials of research viruses — crashed in downtown Winnipeg on Thursday, killing its pilot, the only person on board, but sparing injury on the ground."

If I were writing a horror movie script about a deadly virus that wipes out most of life on earth, this is how I'd start it.

Say Hello To Captain Trips!

Now here's a "gee wiz" article that is also an "nothing good can come of this" article.

CNN.com - Researchers reconstruct 1918 virus - Oct 5, 2005: "The public health risk of resurrecting the virus is minimal, U.S. health officials said. People around the world developed immunity to the deadly 1918 virus after the pandemic, and a certain degree of immunity is believed to persist today. Also, in previous research, scientists concluded that modern antiviral medicines are effective against Spanish flu-like viruses."

At first, I'm extremely impressed that they've been able to "recreate" the virus. That's a hell of an impressive feat. But I'm also concerned about their lack of concern. " . . .a certain degree of immunity is believed to persist today." I'm glad they hope so. Any one of them want to test that theory?

Flu and disease control needs too be a top priority with the science and health communities. And add to that Bush's interest in controlling a flu outbreak, you could say I'm rather worried.

Oh, for those of you reading this, but not strong enough in the google fu, seek out Mother Abigail.

NASCAR's For Pussies - This Is Racing!

CNN.com - 'Star Wars' NASCAR? Get ready for rocket racing - Oct 4, 2005

As far as I can tell, NASCAR is to racing as WWE is to wrestling. Staged, one big soap opera, and one step away from bread and circuses (there are those Romans again).

But rocket racing! Now that's cool. Real men race rockets.

Uh, er, real women, too. I have a feeling that women could be really good rocketeers. And thinking about that link, jet pack racing would be even cooler!

I hope she wins

I don't know if you follow the lawsuits that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been pushing against people, but I'm tickled pink someone is fighting back.
Disabled woman sues RIAA

I don't know what her being disabled has to do with the story, but it's good to see someone go on the attack.

Frankly, the recording industry is completely in the wrong. They can't sue illegal downloads out of existence. They're making lots of enemies.

I'd dance with glee if they were convicted under the organized crime laws!

Loyalty, Cronies, and Favors, or Everything I Know About Politics I Learned From The Godfather

I must admit, the Bush administration is becoming absolutely fascinating, in a train-wreck sort of way.

You know the scene I'm talking about. It's at the wedding. The Godfather is accepting supplicants.

Corleone: Why did you go to the police? Why didn't you come to me first?
Bonasera: What do you want of me? Tell me anything, but do what I beg you to do.
Corleone: What is that? (Bonasera whispers his request in the Don's ear.) That I cannot do.
Bonasera: I will give you anything you ask.
Corleone: We've known each other many years, but this is the first time you ever came to me for counsel or for help. I can't remember the last time that you invited me to your house for a cup of coffee, even though my wife is godmother to your only child. But let's be frank here. You never wanted my friendship. And uh, you were afraid to be in my debt.
Bonasera: I didn't want to get into trouble.
Corleone: I understand. You found paradise in America, you had a good trade, you made a good living. The police protected you and there were courts of law. And you didn't need a friend like me. But uh, now you come to me and you say - 'Don Corleone, give me justice.' But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you, uh, ask me to do murder for money.
Bonasera: I ask you for justice.
Corleone: That is not justice. Your daughter is still alive.
Bonasera: Let them suffer then, as she suffers. How much shall I pay you?
Corleone (after standing and turning his back): Bonasera, Bonasera. What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you'd come to me in friendship, then this scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.
Bonasera: Be my friend - - Godfather. (The Don shrugs. Bonasera bows toward the Don and kisses the Don's hand.)
Corleone: Good. (The Don puts his hand on Bonasera's shoulder.) Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But uh, until that day - accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.
Bonasera: Grazie, Godfather.
Corleone: Prego.

Go, watch the movie. That's all you need to understand the Bush administration and the president himself.

Ouch

Somehow, and I can't for the life of me figure out how, I've apparently cracked a rib.

Ouch.

I suppose I should use the correct term and say fractured a rib. But then again, this is self diagnosis. I feel fine otherwise, but I've got a dull pain in my left side, about mid way up the rib cage. Feel fine, that is, until I laugh, cough, hiccup (oh, God, that hurt), or breath deeply.

Oh, or try to lay on either side. Especially on the left.

According to the best information I can find, there's nothing to be done and without other symptoms it looks pretty clearly that yes, it is a cracked rib.

Ask the Medical Expert on Cracked Ribs

Unfortunately, I don't have a good story to go with the injury. No kick boxing, no rock climbing accident, no rough sex (although I think that's what I'm going to start telling people).

Ah, I have it. I was injured during an unfortunate bout of interpretive dance.

medical, humor

Ray Kurzweil's Full of Shit

OK, I get that Mr Kurzweil is smart and rich. But I also think it's clear that he's also a kook.

Ray Kurzweil deciphers a brave new world | Newsmakers | CNET News.com: "I'm quite aggressive in reprogramming my biochemistry. I take over 200 supplements a day. The thing that's unique about our program is that it's what we call aggressive supplementation. We're not programmed to stick around as long as I am. We need to reprogram our biochemistry, to reprogram our disease processes, processes that result in cancer, and various aging processes. My own personal program is detailed in the book."


And it's also clear that he doesn't get what Vernor Vinge is talking about in the Singularity. The Singularity is not "the geek rapture." It is the point where we can no longer predict that happens next. It's technology accelerating to virtually infinite power. We don't know if it mean the end of life as we know it (or just the end of life, period), or if it means cool, god-like, superhero powers for everyone. But then again, Mr. Kurzweil is interested in selling books. "My own personal program is detailed in the book."

But I'm pretty sure that taking vitamins won't help much. So keep munching your Flintstone chewables, Mr. Kurzweil. I wish you luck in your quest to live forever, I really do. But to live forever as a machine means to leave being human behind. We humans are big, messy and and unpredictable. Our thoughts and minds are made up of not just the things that happen to us, but the bio-chemical soup of our own bodies. You take my mind and record it into a machine and it's not me.

Do I want to live a long time? Hell yes. I want a very long life in a healthy body. I do not want an infinite existence as a running application staring out through digital cameras.

My own personal program is detailed in the blog.

science, kurzweil, shit

Remake, Rework, Reimagine. It's still a flop.

One of my favorite TV shows from my teenage years was "Kolchak: The Night Stalker". It was funny and scary at the same time. And Darren McGavin was perfect as Karl Kolchak.

And so, with all cherished childhood memories, someone it out to destroy them. I've seen the previews for the remake and it's so far off the mark that it has passed from bad, to funny, then on past that to just plain pathetic.

CNN.com - The new 'Night Stalker' -- and friend - Sep 29, 2005

TV

The Feel Good Movie Of The Year!

Two thumbs way up! Shining

Finally, there's a trailer that doesn't give the movie away.

Thanks Metafilter!

humor

And this is why they don't let me fly fighter jets.

Wow, never realized that I shared this with only 1/6th the population. Photic sneeze reflex

I thought everybody did this. It's really pronounced with me. When I step outside on a bright, sunny day, I sneeze, powerfully, at least twice.

But this still doesn't explain where I got X-Ray vision.

science

Those Funny Old Newsreels. Not So Funny This Time.

Today William Gibsonpointed to this short film on despotism.

When I started it up it looked like it would be another funny, dated educational film. After watching it, I'm not laughing. Watch it now. I'll wait.

From my perspective it's a clear, well thought out lecture on the dangers and possibilities of loss of democracy. I also noted that some of the comments on the Internet Archive page labeled it as Marxist propaganda. That's another sign to me that the content is accurate and all the more frightening.

As I've mentioned recently, I've been watching HBO's Rome and thinking about all things Roman. The Romans lost their republic and gained, for a while, an empire. But they paid for it in blood. They gave up their freedom for protection and entertainment. The Roman republic had their own Osama Ben Laden, too. He was called Vercongetorix. And the fight against him allowed Julius Caesar to seize power (lot of good it did him).

So, let's look at the factors. How concentrated is the media and information about the current war? How concentrated is wealth and respect? How free and open is education?

I remain hopeful for the world, for the United States, but I am also deeply concerned. Can our freedom and democracy be lost? Certainly. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

politics