| Memetic Rick Semi-regular ramblings from a Los Angeles transplant, science geek, and home-brewer all rolled into one guy. |
Current Terror Alert Level |
| Memetic Rick Semi-regular ramblings from a Los Angeles transplant, science geek, and home-brewer all rolled into one guy. |
Current Terror Alert Level |
If you didn't know already, the author of "A Wrinkle In Time" and several other classic young adult books, Madeleine L'Engle, died last week. (the NY Times did a nice article.)
With that one book, she managed to have more of a profound impact on my life than any other author in current memory. Although the science was extremely fuzzy in the interests of fiction, I credit this novel with my first exposure to concepts of genetics and higher dimensional physics. Thus began a long happy time reading science fiction and noodling around in avenues of real science.
As for that esoteric fourth dimension, NPR recently produced a segment that does a good job of explaining the basics. I still wish there were better methods for building tesseract models as 3D projections than I can find online...
This has been rumoredin the past, but this tvsquad post is something like the third mention of Twin Peaks season two coming to DVD finally in Spring 2007.
Time to make cherry pie.
Neat! The next X-Prize challenge was announced recently: a $10 million prize for the first team to decode 100 human genomes in 10 days.
I remember seeing a call for grant applications to develop similar rapid genome sequencing technology a few years ago. It will be interesting to see how quickly we get to this point. I predict a nice mini-revolution in sequencing of smaller genomes from model organisms, as was done before the first human genome... bacteria, yeast, etc.
The article also mentions that this might spur Congress to complete passage of the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act, currently stalled in the House of Representatives. That'd be a nice side benefit, too.
Those crack British egg scientists have devised a method to label each egg with invisible ink that changes color when the egg is boiled to the desired consistency. You need to buy a full set of soft-boil or hard-boil eggs, though.
Why not just do a little cross-marketing or coupon deal with the makers of those egg timer doohickies, instead?
(from the Boing Boing)
Dang, if I am a little sad inside that I missed the first television broadcast of the National Spelling Bee last night!
Yay for nerdy jersey girls! Of course, I am biased...
(coverage on CNN)
I am a nerd. Despite being up to my eyeballs in science on a daily basis, I spent free time reading the book "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku on string theory and higher dimensions. It's just enough knowledge to be dangerous... the best kind, really. Might have blogged this book, but I can't find it :( (Update: Ah, yes, mentioned here)
Anyway, the RSS feed for this silly webcomic linked to an article in the Scotsman (reprinting from Sci-Tech Today) about US Air Force and DOE interest in a theoretical propulsion system that could get us to Mars in three hours:
The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.This is all based on a recent paper by physicists Dröscher and Häuser [pdf] describing an implementation of Heim Quantum Theory. It's an admittedly controversial approach, but fun to think that there are groups willing to test this stuff.Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.
More on Burkhard Heim and the debate on his science at Wikipedia.
Second only to the glorious rhinoceros in my heart is the lemur. My affection for this group of lower primates mostly stems from my decision to include them in my Grand Unfinished Novel, where the alien representative from the 5th dimension prefers to take the form of a Coquerel's Sifaka on Earth. But, I digress...
I flipped through an August issue of Science News in the lab breakroom during lunch, and found mention of the discovery of two new lemur species. Microcebus lehilahytsara is the little bugger pictured. Mirza zaza, no doubt pouting somewhere that his photo wasn't included in any of the (brief) searches I did for more info online, even has the better story. M. zaza was once lumped in with a different species of lemur, until researchers noticed behavioural differences in the wild and confirmed the distinction with genotyping.
I wonder what it must be like working for the Primate Report journal...
I'm mostly blind from eye doctor pupil dilation, so this post will serve as a reason to go back and look at this stuff further when I can actually read it. Still, the Slashdot capsule review looks pretty interesting.
Space Race 2: son of shuttle (Washington Times)
t/Space Offers an Option for Closing Shuttle, CEV Gap (space.com)
Wed May 4, 3:32 PM ET
The post office turned its attention to science Wednesday, issuing four new stamps honoring pioneering American scientists.
"These are some of the greatest scientists of our time; their pioneering discoveries still influence our lives today," John F. Walsh, a member of the U.S. Postal Service's board of governors, said in a statement.
Featured on the 37-cent stamps:
_ Josiah Willard Gibbs, who lived from 1839 to 1903, was a pioneer in the study of vector analysis, electromagnetic theory, statistical analysis and thermodynamics. He earned the first doctorate in engineering to be conferred in the United States. He taught at Yale University and was the author of several books and scientific papers.
_ Barbara McClintock won the 1983 Nobel Prize in medicine for her discoveries in genetics. She was among the first scientists to study the way genetic material controls the development of an organism.
_ John von Neumann was one of the top mathematicians of the 20th century. He helped develop a machine that became a model for modern computers, worked with Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study and was a consultant in the project to build the first atomic bomb.
_ Richard P. Feynman won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1965 for work in quantum electrodynamics. His work included diagrams that help visualize the dynamics of atomic particles.
First day of issue ceremonies were being held at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., with the 37-cent stamps going on sale nationwide on Thursday.
(From Yahoo News - AP and my buddy Jen C.)
I know that it is virtually impossible for any remake of the Superman movies to not be blasphemy, but I have a hard time forming all the words to describe what I don't like about this peek at the new costume for the summer 2006 movie by the director of X-Men.
(larger view here)
The X-Men look was very cool, but Superman does not wear leather, dudes.
JPL has decided that they needed to end my day today by freaking me out. The biomimetics group there (facial and speech recognition, not the biological database type stuff I do) has developed a prototype robot head that can recognize people and respond to questions.
There's even a video of "eva" in action (17 MB quicktime). It does look a wee bit scripted, since the interviewer keeps fiddling with a laptop before she responds. Still, as a work in progress, this is one step closer to machines rebelling to overthrow their human repressors if you ask me.
(via Boing Boing)
Google maps now has a satellite image mapping option. Nifty fun!
Here's a map centered on the UCLA building where I work.
I have a new feed in my blog reader with entertaining pointers to the wacky corners of the Internets, and often video clips to go along with it.
Today, they linked to a video of a bat walking on a treadmill.
Thank you, Transbuddha people.
I've been following the author's writing and publishing saga through his mailing list for over a year, now, but Higher-Order Perl is about to be released. He promises a complete copy of the book free on his site, too.
What makes this such an interesting book is that it is entirely based on the concept of writing Perl code to generate other Perl code. Your scripts could conceivably re-write themselves using these techniques. I makes my head hurt sometimes, but I look forward to trying this out...
[Edit: I found the original source for the image below and the movie file by accident today, as well as the company, Parallax, that markets this as an accessory to their hobbyist robotic stuff. Still cute.]
Ye Olde Babelfish translates the original site text roughly as "Some people only want to eat certain colors. That is naturally nonsense, but for those people there is now, however, a skilful apparatus: the M&M Sorter. Yes, it really works. The machine sorts the candies on color."
It looks like a nifty robotic project: taking a quick digital photo of each M&M, deciding on its color, and plunking it down in the appropriate tube. Odd, but nifty.
Further links:
WMV format movie of the sorter in action
goedZO?! weblog - M&M's sorteer machine (original Dutch blog post)
(Brought to me by the Blogdigger WMV Media RSS feed, normally full of stupid porn spam, but with the occasional gem like this)
(initially seen on Boing Boing)
Hertford, home of the Holy Grail
An ancient secret society; a demand for a papal apology; and a network of hidden tunnels. Strange things have been stirring in Hertfordshire recently. Oliver Burkeman goes in search of the Knights Templar and, perhaps, the cup of Christ
Tuesday January 4, 2005
The Guardian
One of the problems with secret societies - especially the kind whose members exert a shadowy influence on the course of world events - is that they can be a bit difficult to track down. Never was this more true than of the Knights Templar, the ancient Catholic order rumoured, among other things, to know the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. Officially, the Templars don't exist, having been driven underground by the pope more than 600 years ago; in The Da Vinci Code, they are described as inhabiting "a precarious world where fact, lore and misinformation had become so intertwined that extracting a pristine truth was almost impossible". Nobody even seems to agree on what the Holy Grail is: some say it is the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper; others that it was used to collect his blood at the crucifixion. Needless to say, the Templars haven't been too eager to clarify any of this publicly.
If there is something implausible in the idea that huge stretches of world history have been secretly coordinated from a market town just north of the M25 - well, maybe that's what they want you to think. The local newspaper, the Hertfordshire Mercury, certainly seems convinced: over the past few months it has published several intriguing stories quoting local Templars, who told its reporter of a secret network of tunnels under the town that was still in use by the order. "It reaches beyond well known central Hertford locations," one Templar said, "including the tourist office, the castle, Monsoon, Threshers, the post office, Bayley Hall, and the council offices." Treasures of "immense importance" were hidden there, it was claimed. Was the quest for the Holy Grail finally about to come to an end? More surprisingly still, was it about to come to an end underneath Monsoon on Market Place?
The man who has persuaded the Vatican to consider apologising, Tim Acheson, meets the Guardian in icy morning fog in Hertford, wearing smart pinstriped trousers and a thick winter overcoat. His midnight-blue sports car is parked nearby. "As you might expect," he says, setting the tone for the day, "there are going to be some things that I'm not able to discuss."
Acheson claims to trace his ancestry to a renowned Scottish Templar family of the same name, though he won't confirm his own role in the group. Might he just be a practical joker who managed to fool the Vatican? "That could well be, couldn't it?" he says, as we order coffee in a Hertford establishment closely modelled on All Bar One. "I can't tell you anything to prove that I'm not. I think that would be a perfectly reasonable theory."
There is, however, sound historical footing for the idea that a Vatican apology might be warranted. The Templars were victims of their own success: they had been granted the right to operate, during the era of the Crusades, with unprecedented freedom, levying taxes and growing rich by establishing some of Europe's first banks. (According to legend, they also invented the biscuit.) Envy and hostility ran high, until, on Friday, October 13 1307 - the original unlucky Friday the 13th - hundreds of Templars were arrested in France. They stood accused of homosexuality, of devil worship, of crimes "horrible to contemplate, terrible to hear of", in the words of King Philip of France, who ordered the arrests. They were tortured, by the Inquisition, into admitting heresy, including their scandalous belief that Jesus had had children with Mary Magdalene. Their grand master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake a few years later, and the Templars were officially disbanded by the Pope.
But only officially. "The vast majority of Templars either escaped, or didn't escape, but survived," Acheson says. So how did they end up in Hertford? History records that a number of them were imprisoned in Hertford Castle, but how did Hertford become a centre of operations? "I can't really tell you that. All I can tell you - it's going to be quite vague - is that they flourished in western Europe." He explains that there is a stained-glass window in St Andrew's Church, just down the street, that contains a clear metaphorical allusion to the Holy Grail, and a cryptic hint that it might be hidden in Hertford. In the picture, Acheson adds, Jesus and Mary Magdalene are looking at each other "in a very meaningful way". (Later, I find the window, interrupting local parishioners who are decorating the church for Christmas. I think I can see what Acheson means about Jesus's expression, although mainly he just looks a bit depressed.)
Among the many things that don't quite add up about the Templars' request for an apology is: why now? Why break the silence, drawing all manner of unwanted curiosity from Grail hunters and Da Vinci Code tourists? Public accountability is a laudable goal, but it's hardly something you expect from the secret rulers of the universe. Indeed, when a group of amateur archaeologists recently announced their intention to investigate Hertford's tunnel network, someone posted a message on a local website warning that anyone who tried would be "dealt with". The message read: "Anybody intending to find out more, let alone discover hidden areas of the labyrinth, should check their life insurance policy very carefully indeed."
Acheson simply says he thinks it would be fitting for the Vatican to issue their apology in time for 2007, the 700th anniversary of the start of the Templar suppression. "Among my peers, there are people like me who believe that these issues deserve further attention ... There's a new generation coming through that strongly believes it's time to be a bit more open. I'm part of that generation." Besides, he says ominously, "Things are about to happen that will deserve attention."
The notion that "things are about to happen" recurs throughout the Templar conspiracy theories that clog up the internet. Seemingly, 2000 had been awaited as a watershed, the moment the Templars' secret knowledge would cascade into the public domain. It didn't happen, of course.
So what sort of "things" is Acheson talking about?
"I can't tell you."
OK. But could you maybe give me a rough idea of the timescale? Are these things going to happen this year? This decade? Next century? "I honestly can't tell you. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I can't tell you."
Acheson takes me on a walking tour of Hertford, and proves a knowledgeable guide, but a frustratingly cryptic one, too. So I decide to take matters into my own hands and head for Monsoon. Gemma, the manager, responds far more patiently to Grail-related inquiries than might arguably be her prerogative. There's no tunnel beneath the shop, she insists, "just the store room" - but it's "definitely haunted. When we have sales meetings there you can hear someone walking over our heads, or doing the vacuuming. But upstairs, the shop's closed and empty."
Has she ever found anything unexpected down there? Like maybe a cup, or something? "No," she says. "But there is ... the Accessorize cupboard." She leads the way through the store to the adjoining branch of Accessorize, pushing past a display stand of silky hats towards a corner cupboard. Opening it, she points to a square piece of metal resembling a manhole cover, sunk into the floor. "We don't know what's under there. But there's a strange smell." She enlists a colleague, Jo, who has worked there longer. "Have they ever looked underneath there?" Gemma asks.
"Yes," Jo replies. It would be atmospheric to be able to report, at this point, that her eyes open wide with terror, that she starts to tremble. But she doesn't. "It smelt a lot," is all she can remember.
Generally, in fact, the people of Hertford seem rather reticent on the subject of the Grail. Do they know something they're not telling? Eventually there seems nothing for it but to abandon any attempt at subtlety and ask Acheson directly.
"Tim," I say, as we walk through the fog back to his car, "do you know where the Holy Grail is?"
We stop at the kerbside to let an articulated lorry pull out. Then we cross the road, past a Mazda dealership, towards the car park.
"No," Acheson says after a while, with a thoughtful expression. "No, I'm afraid I don't."
And yet, I still exclaimed "This is awesome!" as I read through the page.
Combining two hobbies of mine, Legos and computer science, this truly excellent nerd has built various logic gate models.
Inspiring.
(as /.ed)
One of my many science mailing lists (Molecular Visualization) had a series of posts early this week about a project for K-12 science classes using bead work to teach the structure of DNA.
The result is pretty darn nifty.
Detailed instructions are here
Just saw this nifty little toy on Boing Boing:
The 12 sided calendar, each month on a pentagonal face of a dodecahedron.
In all my free time (HAH!), I want to alter the postscript to print holidays and weekends in red like the example photos, but that would require learning how to program in postscript. Maybe in 2008...
While attempting to gauge who in LA that I know will care that the Red Sox are in the World Series, so I can also appear enthusiastic as needed (not really plugged into this since I'm up to my eyeballs in school, and they have too large a history of choking anyway...), I found some other Massachusetts information worth posting.
Thirteen performances in a row. Go team!
Humor the old geek reminiscing about seeing the original Superman in 1978 (RIP big guy).
Bryan Singer feeds rumors into the mill on the new Superman movie
Granted, Ain't It Cool News is a fun site that is often filled with unsubstantiated movie production stories, but this is the director spilling the beans twice.
I'm thinking this would make a nice birthday gift *hint*hint*
Wired News: Inventor Rejoices as TVs Go Dark
(via BoingBoing)
Space.com: Tense Moments During Trailblazing Private Space Flight
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 29 September 2004 11:28 am ET
Updated at 11:55 a.m. ET
MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA – In a mission that could herald a new era of space tourism, a privately built, three-person rocket ship flew to space and back today. The event was the first of two flights scheduled to capture the $10 million Ansari X Prize.
The mission had tense moments as the craft appeared to make an unscripted roll near the top of its flight.
The X Prize money goes to the first privately built vehicle that can haul a pilot and two passengers to the edge of space, then repeat the feat within two weeks, in this case by Oct. 13. SpaceShipOne’s design team, Scaled Composites, based here at the Mojave Spaceport, said before the flight that they were ready to turn the vehicle around for reflight, perhaps making the second rocket run Oct. 4.
Trouble at the top?
Under clear desert skies here, SpaceShipOne was under the controls of a single pilot, but it was weighted as if three people were aboard.
Slung underneath the White Knight carrier aircraft, SpaceShipOne and its pilot, Mike Melvill, headed down the runway just after daybreak and lifted off to the cheers of thousands of gathered well-wishers. The joined vehicles made a slow spiraling ascent high above the desert landscape. The White Knight then released SpaceShipOne. After dropping and gliding a few seconds, Melvill ignited the vehicle’s hybrid rocket motor.
The target was 62.5 miles (100 kilometers) altitude – a sky-high goal required by the X Prize Foundation of St. Louis, Missouri in order to vie for the cash prize. The altitude is generally considered to be the threshold of space.
The unofficial altitude reached was 330,000 feet. That's 62.5 miles (100.5 kilometers).
SpaceShipOne appeared to go into an unexpected roll and shut down its main engine sooner than expected, following the high-altitude drop. Commentators in a live webcast were concerned.
"It appeared there were some wrinkles" near the apex of the flight, said webcast commentator Jim Scott. He and a colleague repeatedly expressed concern for the welfare of Melvill.
It is not yet clear what the problem was, however. Melvill did indeed turn the spaceship into an airplane, as planned, and then glided down.
SpaceShipOne returned later in the morning and landed on the same runway.
Space Tourism to come?
Curious onlookers and space tourism promoters were on hand for the historic flight.
The White Knight carrier plane was emblazoned with the logo of Virgin Galactic, which earlier this week announced it would contract for a variant of SpaceShipOne to carry paying tourists into space.
Robert Bigelow, billionaire hotel magnate and space tourism promoter, said this about SpaceShipOne this morning: "I'm impressed with the sheer speed of the vehicle." It goes over Mach 3 (Mach 1 is the speed of sound) and is privately built. "That's an accomplishment in itself besides all the other things it'll do today."
Bigelow this week announced a new prize of $50 million for the first private group that can build an orbiting, passenger-carrying spacecraft.
Wayne Stacy, 36, a coach and sports science professor from Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, just came to the Mojave to watch a bit of history.
"I missed class for this, but the students did not seem to mind," Stacy said. He saw first SpaceShipOne spaceflight on television in June. "It was just amazing. I just had to be here to see what is one of the most significant events of our time." Stacy thinks the space tourism industry "is already going. But we need events like this to create awareness outside the space community."
Verification required
Whether or not the vehicle "made the grade" so to speak, will be verified by independent methods, said X Prize Foundation head, Peter Diamandis, in a pre-flight interview with SPACE.com.
At least three independent methods, two radar tracking systems, and an onboard "gold box" will be utilized to verify flight conditions of SpaceShipOne as it makes its suborbital trek, Diamandis said.
More than a dozen teams around the globe are building, testing, and flying hardware to compete for the Ansari X Prize, an offer that expires at year’s end. The X Prize Foundation hopes to jump-start the space tourism industry through competition among entrepreneurs and rocket experts.
SPACE.com's Anthony Duignan-Cabrera and Robert Roy Britt contributed to this report.
How do they find me when I have a feeling I can count readers on no more than both hands?
A favorite quote:
9:19 pm on July 31, 2004
Some more thoughts:
Most comment spammers access the mt-comments.cgi script directly. Knowing this, it gives us a possibility to prevent abuse using .htaccess:RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}!^http://.*yoursite\.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^path-to-mt/mt-comments.cgi - [F]Some other ways of avoiding automated comment spam:
Readers of your weblog must register before posting to your weblogImage comprehension technology (accessibility issues though)
Like pmac says, there are loads of tools out there, just go Google (it's a verb) for them!J.
For I wish to see this concert, yet live on the other coast and will be flying into Boston that night for the Molecular Parasitology Meeting in Woods Hole. Alas.
Debbie Gibson, September 17, 2004
UPDATE: Less than five minutes later, I see that she's playing in a revival of "Brigadoon" through the end of this week, and that's playing right on the UCLA campus. Eighties crush nostalgia is not $60 ticket price material, however.
Scramjets integrate air and space - The Industrial Physicist
As the 21st century unfolds, a revolutionary engine technology is aiming to fly craft at high Mach speeds and seamlessly integrate air-to-space operations. The supersonic combustion ramjet, or scramjet, uses no rotating parts, will power vehicles hundreds of miles in minutes, and will make rapid global travel and affordable access to space a reality.
These goals drew closer to achievement this spring when the first scramjet-powered aircraft flew on its own. On the afternoon of March 27, an unpiloted X-43A, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) craft mounted on a Pegasus booster rocket, dropped from a B-52 flying at 40,000 ft off the coast of California. The rocket sent the experimental aircraft soaring to its test altitude of 95,000 ft, where the X-43A separated from its booster, and its scramjet engine fired for a planned 10-s test, achieving an incredible Mach 7, or 5,000 mph.
(as /.ed)
I inaugurate a new blog category with notice that I've upgraded to MovableType 3.01D (the D stands for...delicious?).
No more stupid Comments Section spamming, offering links to "Nifty Stories" and "Ingrid scat" (blecch), and a few others I don't feel like repeating. Which spammer robot decided my site was worthy of this annoyance in the first place?
Well, I still get to see and delete them, but at least now there's one convenient screen to do all that before my loyal, non-software-based readers are subjected to the crap.