fermigas

Pre-wedding pics

2009-05-24T21:40:00.000-07:00

2006-07-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

Oh God. I said 20.

2006-07-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

Back in 20!

2006-07-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

But I did lick my lips!

2006-07-19T03:21:00.000-07:00

Whew. That was exhausting!

2006-07-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

Arrr!

2006-07-19T03:17:00.000-07:00

Ahhh!

2006-07-19T03:16:00.000-07:00

Uh-er??

2006-07-19T03:15:00.000-07:00

Hedgehog

2006-07-19T03:12:00.000-07:00

You might have expected him in the UK, but in Arusha?

Have you seen my robot jockey?

2005-10-30T21:29:00.000-08:00

51 degrees or so.

2005-10-30T21:24:00.001-08:00

Morning at Mena House

2005-10-30T21:17:00.000-08:00

Lapis Fiati

2005-10-30T21:14:00.000-08:00

Sunset from Le Meridian

2005-08-15T03:24:00.000-07:00

View to the south from Haifa hotel

2005-08-15T03:23:00.000-07:00

Mt. Carmel from the east window

2005-08-15T03:11:00.000-07:00

On the road to Haifa

2005-08-15T03:09:00.000-07:00

Morning over Ben Gurion

2005-08-15T03:08:00.000-07:00

Self portrait on a moving bus in a large London airport around sunset after a long flight in a small seat in the middle of a row

2005-08-15T03:05:00.001-07:00

Bearings

2005-08-15T03:05:00.000-07:00

Moore's Law, Bandwidth Scaling and Metcalf's Law

2005-07-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

I went to physorg today to catch up on the Tempel 1 mission, but found several items that will have a lot more impact.

One of the primary drags on Moore's Law is heat production. As transistor size decreases with each generation of manufacturing technology, more are packed onto a smaller area, and the heat that needs to be removed goes up per unit area. A novel way of removing heat has been devised.

What makes this method even more interesting is that it appears to have broad utility outside the computer industry:

"In addition to computer and other electronics applications, bulky liquid-liquid heat exchangers - found in everything from automotive oil coolers to ice cream makers - could be made 30 to 50 times smaller if the new approach is adopted."

Where are liquid-liquid heat exchangers used? Just about everywhere. What's more, there are a lot of places (like cell phone towers) where they aren't used because they are just too bulky. As the discoverer says:

"I think we may be looking at a paradigm shift in how heat exchangers are designed."

Stay tuned.

The Bandwidth Scaling Law states that the amount of bandwidth available to consumers doubles every so often. How frequently has varied between 6 months to 18 months, so it's not a reliable law, but it's still remarkable. The law initially applied to wire and optical networks. Now, versions of the law include wireless networks, but there is a qualitative difference that can't be overstated: the network goes with the user. So far, this difference has come in bubbles: low-bandwidth limited capability bubbles like cell phone service cover large regions; high bandwidth, full capability bubbles with full internet access are limited mostly to buildings and some designated public spaces. The major qualitative shift will come when the high-bandwidth bubbles converge. The industry has been moving towards a technology called WiMAX which appears to be the best candidate for bringing convergence. Its primary drawbacks have been cost, heat and power. An old new technology, the ribbon electron beam may well have solved all three at a stroke.

Metcalf's Law essentially states that the value of a network scales as the square of the number of nodes. Roughly stated, a network with twice as many people provides four times as much value to its subscribers. In part, this is what creates lock-in. Once enough people are connected to a network, the relationships they develop in the context of that network make it much easier for them to accomplish certain kinds of goals by virtue of the amount of specialization they have access to, and to switch to another network would require a great deal of reinvestment. Once a network reaches a certain size, it grows itself. Working out the behavior of such networks as they scale keeps many disciplines very busy. What's the easiest way to find someone or a service in a large network? How and why do parts of networks clump? What kinds of clumps are stable? How do these clumps communicate? How do clumps-of-clumps clump (and so on, up the chain). Are there ways to characterize clumps at different scales which allow meaningful comparisons to be made without masking the essential nature of each scale? Some interesting work has been done with regard to the sensitivity and robustness of networks at different scales. They show that networks whose decay exponent (the logarithm of the ratio between the probabilities of finding a number of connections on randomly selected nodes between adjacent decimal scales) is between 2 and 2.5 can store and are very sensitive to a large number of patterns (selective perturbations), and very resistant to random perturbations. Furthermore, this behavior is scale free. As long as the ratio is observed, the network can scale to infinity and its storage capacity is proportional to its size. The decay exponent for the brain was found to be about 2.1.

Alfonso the Wise regarding the Ptolemaic epicycles

2005-06-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

"Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe."

The irreducibly complex evolution of the argument from ignorance

2005-06-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

I do not know that, therefore this.

I do not know that and no one knows that, therefore this.

No one knows that, therefore this.

No one knows that, therefore it cannot be. I'm not saying it means this, but it makes you think, doesn't it?

No one knows that, therefore it cannot be, we've known that for a long time now.

I know a lot of people say they know it, but there are more people who can't see how it could be, so it cannot be.

I know a few people still say they know it, but really, there's no way to know that, we've known that for a long time.

There's no way to know that reliably.

There's no way to know that.

There's really no way to know anything reliably.

There's no way to know anything, naturally.

There's no way to know anything naturally, therefore this.

This is the only thing you can know reliably. Everybody knows that.

You don't believe this so you can't be trusted. You're on the slippery slope to the primrose path to the purifying fires of the all-knowing.

You can't be trusted, and people who can't be trusted are obviously dangerous. Everybody knows that.

You and the people who associate with you are dangerous, someone should do something.

I know you say you didn't do anything, but reliable sources have complained about you, so we have to check it out. We're just doing our job under the provisions of the Patriot Beliefs Act. Every true patriot knows that.

Your honor, not only did we find these books, but the perpetrator cannot explain how the tale circulating about his bugging of the fifty-party Chinese Whispers contest homed in on his guilt with each retelling. Furthermore, his attempts to convince us that his inability to reconstruct how the tale actually started to take shape without the record of the bug might be remedied if only he were able to investigate the Chinese Whisperers themselves is not only highly irregular, but also unnatural, his woeful tale of it being premature without the proper tools and sufficient preparation notwithstanding. Everyone knows they whisper because what they have to say cannot be known, and that the whole of their whispers is more than the sum of the whispers of the parties.

Well, sir, you say in your defense that you didn't do anything and that given time and resources you can show it beyond a reasonable doubt, but the sooner we end this charade, the better it will be for everyone. The public morale must be upheld. You do admit to owning these books we've learned have a corrupting influence on children, so even though you didn't know they had been banned, I have no choice but to sentence you accordingly. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

I know you say you were just defending yourself, but it's your word against theirs. They've been model inmates. The one you claim killed his friend accidentally has been an asset to prison ministries for several years. I can't see how he could have broken your legs. Frankly, with your whispered history of willful unbeliefism I'm inclined to side with their account. I'm afraid I have no choice but to sentence you to death, such execution to be carried out in the maximum security wing of the One True Exodus 2006 Memorial Penitentiary at sunrise on the day marking the start of the third year and the sixth month since the nuclear desolation of Jerusalem which was foretold in the revelations of the Bible Code and carried out by our Righteous Army. This court urges you to spend your final days in repentance and worship that you may know even as you are known.

We should do something about his friends and family. One bad apple and all that. You have to prune a tree to save it. Everybody knows that. It's simple, really. I don't get why people have to make it so hard. Life is a tale told by an idiot.

Ain't that the truth. Hey, what's the chapter and verse on that?

I don't remember. Probably Proverbs. Nothing like the old wisdom.

Ain't that the truth. Hey, can you get me in the room when they fry that guy?

I would, but I don't do anything that can get me noticed any more. Things are dicey these days, a lot of the bigs gettin' the axe, if you know what I mean. Sorry. Stick your neck out, it gets chopped off. It's better not to rock the boat.

Ain't that the truth.

Abstraction

2005-06-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

We manage intellectual complexity through abstraction. Powerful generalizations collect a wide range of phenomena into a single unifying principle. Abstraction allows us to bring well understood intellectual tools to bear on particulars with which we are unfamiliar.

This is commonplace and yet still astounds. Why should this be so effective? Is this a trick of our brains? Does it reveal something fundamental about the universe?

Why is abstraction such a fertile mechanism for understanding the world? How is it that it produces such beauty in mathematics and the sciences, while generating such disastrous outcomes in economics, politics and the arts?

Abstraction leads at once to deep understanding and obfuscation. The more rarefied, the more comprehensively effective an explanation becomes, the more context -- history of learning -- it requires. This path to beauty is hard. It requires patience and confidence that nature is knowable, no matter how carefully hidden.

The path to beauty in the arts is deceptively accessible. We are wired much better for apprehension of its usual subjects and media -- inter alia faces, forms, movement, speech -- than we are for comprehension of logic, numerical quantities and intricate processes. Our stellar gifts are these summary judgments codified in visceral and emotional responses, the currency of animal nature. They bind us socially into small groups, endow us with a certain restlessness in space and carelessness towards stretches of time longer than a few months.

If beauty makes sense, it makes sense that it should be most accessible in what is most highly developed in us, the modes of being our bodies settle into most reliably. It is unlikely that our species will evolve to enable such immediate apprehension of the beauty enumerated by abstraction. Or, perhaps it has, we just haven't done enough due diligence to have discovered it yet.

Is there an upper bound on complexity?

2005-06-17T22:29:00.000-07:00

Jaron Lanier has argued against what he calls "cybernetic totalism" on the grounds that we just don't know how to build reliable software systems larger than 10 million or so lines of code. Similar limits are in play in most engineered systems. This leads to a few questions:

1) Are these limits due to our current ignorance or are they real limits inherent in the nature of complex systems? If they are real limits, can they be expressed in a useful general law?

2) Does biology routinely circumvent these limits? Is this why we see parts within parts within parts -- the emergence of unitization at various scales?

3) Is there a useful quantitative measure for characterizing proximity to the complexity boundary?

Kauffman on the small stuff

2005-06-15T00:16:00.000-07:00

Stuart Kauffman, from The Edge:

As I proceed here there are several points to keep in mind. One is that you cannot do a work cycle at equilibrium, meaning that the concept of an autonomous agent is inherently a non equilibrium concept.

A second is that once this concept is developed it's only going to be a matter of perhaps 10, 15, or 20 years until, somewhere in the marriage between biology and nanotechnology, we will make autonomous agents that will create chemical systems that reproduce themselves and do work cycles. This means that we have a technological revolution on our hands, because autonomous agents don't just sit and talk and pass information around. They can actually build things.

The third thing is that this may be an adequate definition of life. In the next 30 to 50 years we are either going to make a novel life form or we will find one—on Mars, Titan, or somewhere else. I hope that what we find is radically different than life on Earth because it will open up two major questions. First, what would it be like to have a general biology, a biology free from the constraints of terrestrial biology? And second, are there laws that govern biospheres anywhere in the universe? I'd like to think that there are such laws. Of course, we don't know that there are—we don't even know that there are such laws for the Earth's biosphere—but I have three or four candidate laws that I struggle with.

Darrow on Design and Order

2005-06-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

In the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial", Clarence Darrow pointed out the circularity in the argument from design:

"To say that a certain scheme or process shows order or system, one must have some norm or pattern by which to determine whether the matter concerned shows any design or order. We have a norm, a pattern, and that is the universe itself, from which we fashion our ideas. We have observed this universe and its operation and we call it order. To say that the universe is patterned on order is to say that the universe is patterned on the universe. It can mean nothing else."

What constitutes order or randomness, pattern or chaos, communication or gibberish, clarity or incomprehensibility is contingent on the beholder.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", is often proffered by way of accounting for tastes. There are differences between individuals and cultures across both space and time. Poetry that moved me as a child I now regard with that certain condescension inflected with embarrassment. Should time gentle me through another thirty years to my biblical allotment, I will no doubt be profoundly moved by another set of verses largely incomprehensible to me now.

Piaget and his heirs in developmental psychology have, in a series of ingenious experiments, shown that aspects of our understanding of the real world develop at particular points in childhood. I don't know whether the appearance of these are pre-wired or they are learned. It would seem inasmuch as these are the "origins of order", it might have some impact on the force of Darrow's argument.

If we are pre-wired to recognize object permanence (the belief that objects do not cease to exist when we cease to see them) then it would seem on the face of it that to assume, as Darrow does, that we learn this pattern from the universe, is false. On the other hand, if we assume that this skill evolved, this mechanism for recognizing order in the universe would itself have been the product of that order.

Paleyological Argumentation

2005-06-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

"In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there."

William Paley in Natural Theology, 1802.

Obviously, Paley knows something about the watch. Even if he has never seen a watch, he has seen the handiwork of human designers, and he can identify characteristics which the watch shares in common with their artifacts. His argument assumes that these characteristics are shared by the manifold of nature:

"Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation."

From this, Paley draws the conclusion that nature is the handiwork of a designer, one of incomputably more power than a watchmaker. The weakness of this argument is located in the premise that nature shows "every manifestation of design". Paley gives a few examples, but this hardly buys a designer for the Whole Shebang. At best, it merely admits a designer for those aspects of nature which actually do show "every manifestation of design", and not neccessarily a designer of infinite power, merely one capable of getting that particular job done. The real kicker is, though, Paley can't prove that any of the handiwork of nature requires any kind of designer at all. One man's design may be another man's accident. What he has here is an analogy.

This becomes clearer if we think about that rock. Paley states that for all he knows, the rock could have been there forever. What he's really saying is that the rock doesn't look at all like anything he's accustomed to attributing design to, so there's nothing inviting him to conclude that the rock has a designer. Is he justified in this belief? Perhaps, but not absolutely. The rock may very well have been designed and placed there. What prompts Paley to pleed ignorance about the origin of the rock is precisely the fact that he has experience with rocks!

The watch and the rock are both objects with which Paley is familiar, and he draws his conclusions based on this implicit knowledge. It is only on the basis of this experience that he can affirm or deny whether each object has "every manifestation of design". If Paley wishes us to conclude that nature has an intelligent designer, he can't do so based on the fact that nature shows "every manifestation of design", because his experience is based only on human designers, and this premise (and the fact that he's never seen the work of a verifiable non-human intelligent designer), can lead him to conclude no more than that nature is not the handiwork of a human designer.

Bitch is, breeders have been around for a long time.

Sim Ark!

2005-06-09T03:01:00.000-07:00

You've played the SIMS and SIMS2. You've made your own skins and nurtured your perverted offspring through a long life...

Now, help Noah build the ark and pack it with two (or seven pairs) of every kind and all the food they'll need for a year! Watch Noah, his wife and the kids try to keep the predator and the prey separated, all the while remembering that they're prey, too!

Learn how many of the 2,761 termite species like gopher wood!
See with your own eyes whether or not they clear the pigeon poo!
Watch the irate T-Rex and Brontosaurus getting their daily exercise!

Later, follow the 262 species of ants on their brave journey back to Japan! Watch 2,700 even braver species of ants on their way back to the Americas! (them bugs gotta get back fast so the rain forrests can grow back!)
Learn how Koalas improvise when they realize that that the 2000 lbs of Eucalyptus leaves they each dragged (some of that swamming!) from their native Australia isn't enough food to support their 20-lb frame for a full year plus the long trek to the ark and back!
See the Pandas laugh at the Koalas. They were smart, they brought 75,000 lbs of bamboo each!

What Forces have Driven the Evolution of Religion?

2005-06-09T02:33:00.000-07:00

Religions evolve over time. A certain amount of change occurs during the lifetime of the average churchgoer; there are revivals, then more change. Schisms, but eventually the more conservative branch finds itself with the views of the progressive.

Infinity in the Physical World

2005-06-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

Why assume that singularities are actually singular at all? Why should we expect absolute collapse rather than continuing collapse?

Decoherence and the Objective Reality of Numbers

2005-06-07T22:26:00.000-07:00

Given that the laws of QM give way to the macroscopic laws, what escape is there from determinism?

More importantly, how does macroscopic regularity fall out of QM at all?

Is it possible for PI, e or i to have different values in different universes? On the surface, it seems that natural constants -- those the usual subject of talk of the anthropic principle -- can be twiddled from universe to universe; is there something special about these mathematical objects that make them invariant regardless of the knobs are tuned?

Anthropic Rollout

2005-06-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

There's something odd about the argument that God set up the rules and the initial conditions and let the universe go. Some 13.7 billion years later, here we are, with a salvation plan.

On one hand, such a God seems rather magnificent. That's a staggering piece of twiddling. On the other hand, the degree of determinism involved is even more staggering. Just when did the free will kick in?

Then there's the problem of quantum randomness. Setting the initial conditions would seem insufficienct to guarantee outcomes.

Dr. Pepper and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

2005-06-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

Very cold Dr. Pepper is refreshing.
As I consume it, I warm it, so net entropy increases.

Very hot hot chocolate is comforting.
As I consume it, I cool it, so net entropy increases.

In both cases, I have increased my ability to perform Work.

The increase in my ability to do work is much greater than the energy I lose in bringing the parts of my body which touched the liquid (and the liquid, too, for that matter) back to their normal temperature. This process also increases entropy.

Evidently, there's enough energy in these liquids so that I can regulate my temperature.

I suppose I could survive if I only consumed Dr. Pepper and hot chocolate for a month. I'd count the calories to make sure I could maintain my weight, of course. I wouldn't feel all that great because I wouldn't get many of the nutrients essential for optimal functioning, but I wouldn't die.

There's enough energy in these liquids to regulate my temperature and allow me to move about and to sustain bodily functions like breath, heartbeat, digestion and so on. As expected, all these processes increase entropy.

I don't think I could survive a month if I didn't eat or drink anything. I would die much more quickly than if I only subsisted on Dr. Pepper and Hot Chocolate. Say I made it for a whole week and then died. Oddly, the net increase of entropy at that moment would be significantly less than it would have been had I kept to my Dr. Pepper and hot chocolate regimen. By this logic, I, now being dead, would be in a more ordered state than had I continued faithfully swigging.

What gives?

Anticipating that my liquid diet might not do me all that much better than starvation, I decide instead to eat a balanced diet. I figure out the BMR required to sustain my current weight given my sedentary lifestyle. I spend a lot of time each day weighing and preparing precise proportions of food so that I get just the right amount of each of the nutrients, and have fats, carbs and proteins in healthy proportion. I drink plenty of water. I eat six small portions a day and never feel hungry. After a month, I've lost a little bit of weight. It occurs to me that I got some exercise staying on top of my diet. I feel great, however. What's more, I've increased the net entropy more than I would have in either of my other "diets".

Strong now, I'm very motivated to feel even better. I add aerobic training to my daily routine and increase my food intake to compensate for the energy burn rate. At the end of the month, results are starting to show. I've got muscle tone, my cardio stats are improving and I'm generating more entropy.

After a year, I run a marathon. I put in a lot of miles on the road every month, I lift weights and eat significantly more than when I started a year ago. I'm a very competent entropy generator. What's more, I never feel frazzled with how much time it takes to balance a job and the routines and family life. I've got some order at last.

Three years later, I enter and finish the Badwater Ultramarathon. Granted, I'm dead last, and I feel terrible, but that only lasts a week. Once I get back to increasing entropy at the usual world-class rates I'm back to feeling spectacular.

As it turns out, I'm a human interest story. Unbeknownst to me, the Wedge of Order Promotion Society (WoOPS) tried not once, not twice, but 13 different times to knock me out of the race by setting up various paralyzing aroma-therapy traps along the course. (I'd nearly come to blows with one of their members because I'd worn my homebrew micro-label “Entropy Gear” the previous year in the New York Marathon). The story went global and before I know it, Nike enters a branding deal with me and I'm in ad campaigns with Shaq and Flash. The folks at Dr. Pepper figure out a nutritional formula and name it Dr. Entropy.

Within a year, over 1 billion people around the globe are living the High-Entropy life and things couldn't be better. You can't even get a watch without an entropy meter any more, and so many people are running ultramarathons that I can't even make the cut at any of the bigs.

The WoOPS folks protest the Animal Entropy Front for a while, but after numerous accidents with highly active cows, retire to a suspended animation colony. After squabbling for a year over the meaning of "I return slowly, so chill" (their leader's statement upon entering prison), they move their operation to the high country to chase the glacier as it recedes from the old tree line thanks to Global Warming.

Anthropic Principle vs Survivorship Bias

2005-06-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

Anthropic Principle: Life on Earth is the result of a magnificent set of highly-tuned parameters.

Motivation for the Survivorship Bias: A scammer sends out 8000 emails making a prediction on the rise of a stock, 4000 for up, 4000 for down. The following week, he sends 2000 ups and 2000 downs to the folks who received the correct prediction in the previous mailing. After six weeks, he's got 250 people who've seen him make 6 correct predictions in a row and are ready to give him some money to invest.

Seen from one perspective, the guy seems like a genius. Viewed with the full set of facts in hand, he turns out not to be so spectacular, and the winner, while lucky, is not special in any predestined fashion.

If there are an infinite number of universes popping in and out of existence, all with variations of the "finely tuned parameters", we just happen to be this kind of winner. The lucky kind.

Of course it would be nice not to get sick or tired or hurt or hungry...

---

Dennett approaches this from a strictly logical viewpoint; The fact that we know about the special conditions for life means that the special conditions are indeed in place; it does not, however mean that they MUST be in place. Were they not, we wouldn't be here, and that, on the whole, is more likely.

QM, conservation of Energy and Mutation

2005-06-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

It has been suggested in some quarters that quantum mechanical effects might provide explanations for consciousness and a "hand which guides evolution."

Wilson's article in The Volitional Brain (Libet, et. al.) showed that the QM effects required to allow mind-body interaction proposed by its proponents would need be of a magnitude which would violate conservation of energy.

An analysis along these lines with regard to the mechanisms of mutation might prove profitable.

A Machine that can reproduce itself

2005-06-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

From CNN.com:

A revolutionary machine that can copy itself and manufacture everyday objects quickly and cheaply could transform industry in the developing world, according to its creator.

The "self-replicating rapid prototyper," or "RepRap" is the brainchild of Dr. Adrian Bowyer, a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath in the UK.

Blue Brain

2005-06-06T07:33:00.000-07:00

From New Scientist:

An effort to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level, was launched on Monday.

The “Blue Brain” project, a collaboration between IBM and a Swiss university team, will involve building a custom-made supercomputer based on IBM’s Blue Gene design.

Assorted astronomical novelties

2005-05-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

A Very High Energy (VHE) gamma ray sky survey of the Milky Way's disk taken by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) reveals 2 Dark Accelerators, objects emitting VHE gamma rays, but no light in the lower energy wavelengths.

The Andromeda Galaxy, our closest big neighbor extends three times further than previously thought. I should get the original paper to see if the mass estimates have been revised upwards. Will this result obtain for all galaxies?

Voyager 1 is nearing the edge of the solar system. Of course, no one knows exactly what "edge" means.

The Carina Nebula's full of a a lot of young stars, some of them up to 100 Sols. The Spitzer people seem to be promoting this as the new Pillars of Creation/Fingers of God picture. Coming soon to a t-shirt near you? Coincidence of the day: Dennis Overbye. Mentioned on the audiobook version of A Short History of Everything I started listening to today; wrote the NY Times article on Carina.

Allen's SETI-scape of scopes ($31 million cheap) is starting to wake up. It should be able to look for more signals in a year than what's been sampled in the last 45 years. Is SETI @ Home going to have enough juice? (Is it even jacked into it?)

Probably the coolest news for amateur astronomers is that a couple of our own helped to find a new extra-solar planet. The method uses microlensing, and the amateurs used equipment well within the reach of the typical backyard hobbiest (who admitedly spends much more than a spouse will ever overlook.) Evidently, there are a lot more out there. Is there a registry of known microlenses? The distances involved suggest this might work for objects in the SMC. Might it work at larger distances? The gravitational lensing effect has been used for quasars and distant galaxies; have any been used to analyze the light from supernovea at cosmological distances?

Tech of the year 2004

2005-01-03T05:46:00.000-08:00

TRN published its top picks for the Technology Research Advances of 2004. this is worth a careful read.

Dan Huard's blog was picked up on Slashdot. Upshot: G4TechTV blows (more than ever). So there you go. More interesting was this comment to the thread:

Sciencey things your science channel has missed in the last two years: Cloning animals, finalizing the human codon search, new fundamental particles, new states of matter, the stem cell debate, half a dozen governmental-level beliefs about what's going on with our environment, two near-misses from asteroids large enough to threaten the ecosphere, three potential global plagues, the closure of one of the clay institute math problems, two major developments in number theory, a polynomial time algorithm for determining primality, the development of silicon on insulator chip doping, a refactoring of the mechanisms believed to underlie gravity and the suggestion that gravity may be blocked by not one, not two, but three seperate mechanisms in three seperate sets of reproducible studies, the first application of an antiviral agent to humanity as developed by large-scale simulation, various public policy issues regarding monitoring especially but not solely after 9/11, the food shortage on the international space station, the development of transparent transistors, OLED, a solid year of functional transmissions from two seperate self-powered agents on Mars, the experimental suggestion of subatomic-scale selection mechanisms, a robot lab entering the orbit of one of the moons of saturn, rollable solar cells, the commercial development of space, the ESA's support for a space elevator, the first grown and functioning human heart, the Jetson promise of home utility robots, stem-cell based reversal of paralyzing spinal injury, the drop of the home machine fabricator beneath not just the $50k but also beneath the $10k mark, the introduction of the first three major space powers since the 1970s, and the first time Bush has ever come through on one of his grandiose research promises.

Maybe I'll get the time to annotate this. I missed the story on the gravity-blocking mechanisms and I can't get google to spit anything up.

Other recent slashposts worth noting:

Inside the Shadow Internet. Wired article. Another Jeff Howe "lookit me, I know the dark side" breathless Kevin's Kool piece. Summary: P2P wouldn't be seeded with the best media and warez if it weren't for the topsites. Topsites are funded by the angels. Wa-wa.

Safecracking for the Computer Scientist. (PDF). Decent consideration of niche physical security and potential application to CompSci. More focused in this topic than the old stalwart from Anderson. I need to take a look at Ross's current position on trusted computing now that palladium/NGSCB's been killed off in the dotnet elephant stampede.

Space Stories: More SpaceShipTwo Details (BBC), NASA Prepares to Launch Comet-Buster (Deep Impact), New and Improved SETI (Space.com), Cassini Shows Close Up of Iapetus (JPL image).

A consortium of communications companies got together to increase 3G speed by a factor of 10. Maybe we'll see something working by 2010. Speech recognition on large-screen handheld devices connected to video-capable broadband will not only make it possible to have a voice-activated Tivo experience everywhere, it will make it possible to have everything you're about intellectually (or, more likely "pop-culturally") with you at all times. Here's the scoop: If you have an always-on 100 Mbit connection to your little handheld, you don't care about how much hard-drive space it has (although by 2010, it'll be a lot). You can stream videos, music and books from your home base (which may be your 2010 ISP or google, which already gives everyone a gig), so you won't need iTunes to sync the stuff to your device. Your calendar, email, voicemail and all that jazz should be much easier to unify. There's more, but I should feed the horses.