Summer of (Ugh) Trump

My interest in politics right now is pretty low, and the 2016 presidential election still seems a long way off. So I don't often think much about it, and I rarely blog about politics (heck, I rarely blog at all these days -- though I write a lot in my journal). But the 16 ring circus that is the fight for the Republican nomination is pretty hard to avoid, especially when my wife watches MSNBC and I occasionally sit in. Rachel Madow and other MSNBC commentators have been having a field day with the motley crew of Republican contenders. But since Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency in June, he has made their jobs even easier and has dominated every news cycle with his ever more ridiculous shoot-from-the-hip pronouncements.

He started with Mexicans and immigration, claiming that most illegal immigrants are rapists and drug dealers. He says that when he is president, he will build an impenetrable wall along the border with Mexico, and force Mexico to pay for it. Then the other day in an interview on stage, he ad-libbed some remarks about Senator John McCain and how he isn't really a war hero, followed by, "OK, maybe he is, but only because he was captured. And I like people who weren't captured." I'm definitely no fan of John McCain, but anybody who does not respect the service and sacrifice of a naval aviator who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison is insane and despicable. Though of course we already knew that Trump was insane and despicable. Yesterday he went on the rampage against some of the other Republicans who have insulted him in the press, especially Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Speaking to an audience in South Carolina, Trump insulted Graham as a loser and a wimp and actually gave out Graham's private cell phone number to the crowd.

Trump's form of campaigning is basically improvised insult comedy -- Don Rickles with more money and a creative hair stylist. It's only a matter of time before everyone, no matter how conservative, realizes what a toxic waste dump he is. It's hard to understand how he can achieve 16% in any poll of anybody, Republican or not (some suggestions here). Someone pointed out on a show last night that four years ago, Sarah Palin (not even running), Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachmann were leading in Republican polls at this point (summer 2011, ahead of the 2012 election season). Romney and Santorum were far behind. In spring 2011, Trump himself was actually leading in the polls. I don't recall when he bowed out of the 2012 race that Mitt Romney ultimately won for the GOP nomination. So his strength in the polls at this time really means nothing, except that under the crazy rules set by FOXNews, national poll position will determine which 10 of now 16 Republicans will get to participate in the first GOP debate on August 6. So Trump will be on stage that night, making the Republican debate even more bizarre than it would be with only "serious" candidates.

As comedian Andy Borowitz has written, Trump is the first openly asshole presidential candidate, and there apparently are a lot of assholes in the country who are rooting for him. He is not a serious presidential candidate, and he certainly knows this himself (I read somewhere that he's only spending 50% of his time on his presidential run because of his business commitments). But Trump is an entertainer who thrives on any sort of publicity, and that is what he is getting now by the ton. The good news is that it disrupts the GOP. The bad news is that he makes somebody like Jeb Bush almost look like a reasonable person. Almost. 

Salieri and Me

One of the things that has always annoyed me about myself is my lack of fluency in most of the things I do. By fluency, I mean the seemingly effortless way that many Europeans switch among 3-5 languages (while I struggle to follow a simple conversation in French or Japanese), or the way Paul Simon writes a song, or Eric Clapton plays guitar.  Back when I was still flying, I spent some time (in 2011!) with an instructor working on a tail-wheel rating that I never quite finished. Although I managed to do things safely, I was frustrated that I could never come close to the smoothness and consistency with which my instructor handled the airplane.

Closer to my professional life, I discovered in college that my brain’s “math engine” didn’t work very well beyond matrix algebra and calculus. I was the only science or engineering major I knew whose verbal SAT scores were higher than the math scores. I always felt that my “real” science major friends could “think in math,” while I somehow had to emulate the math in my verbal brain, a trick that didn’t work very well for abstract subjects like quantum mechanics. When I did software development early in my career, it was similar. Basic algorithm development, coding, and debugging were all OK – but despite my physics and optics background, I just could not get my head around complex optical analysis algorithms (or invent new ones, as I was expected to do). Is this why I eventually ended up in marketing and sales (albeit for some highly technical software products for optical science and engineering)?

While this is only a partial list, right away you might spot a problem: too many interests. If you dabble in a lot of different things, how can you expect to be an expert in any of them? That is a good point, but my interests are my interests, and I have trouble just dropping something I love (though I have pretty much done this with flying, a demanding hobby where dabbling is dangerous). Other conclusions might follow. Things that seem effortless seldom really are. You have probably heard about the 10,000 hour rule. I’m not sure it’s exactly a rule, but the idea is that you need to do something for 10,000 hours or more before you can expect to be really fluent or expert in it. My most recent flight instructor probably has 10,000 hours of flight time (I have about 125). Paul Simon has probably written 1000 or more songs – I have written maybe 200. I almost never practice playing the guitar (when I try, I usually end up writing a song fragment instead – or if I’m lucky, maybe a complete song). Although I can still recall chord progressions and lyrics for songs I learned in my teens or twenties, I can hardly remember new songs I learned or practiced a couple of months ago (including my own songs!).  Fortunately I am quite good at making and playing from lyric/chord sheets!

I love Mozart’s music, and I’m a big fan of the movie Amadeus, even though it is only loosely based on Mozart’s life, with many aspects exaggerated for dramatic effect. One of these is Salieri’s extreme jealousy of  Mozart’s musical talent, even to the point of working to sabotage Mozart’s career. The evidence suggests otherwise, but it makes for a good story, and for some good lines for Salieri. In the movie and in real life, Salieri did very well as the court composer for Emperor Joseph II. But in the movie, he compares his own musical gifts to those of Mozart, and comes up short: “All I wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?”

Forget Mozart, I can hardly compare myself musically to Salieri, a professional who wrote more than 40 popular operas and who enjoyed status, fame and fortune until his death in 1825 at the ripe (for the time) old age of 75.  But I sometimes share his frustration in seeing what is possible in a Mozart, Paul Simon, or Eric Clapton, even though I have not begun to put in the time or effort (not to mention the prerequisite talent) to create or achieve at such a sublime level. There’s a character in The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving (no relation) who says, “You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.”  I don’t think I have really done even that – if I had, surely I would be working on songwriting, Japanese, higher math, guitar, something, every single day. But many days I just go to work, or if I’m home, I hang out, I read a book, watch a movie, or play around with apps on my iPad. And check Facebook five or six times. Or 10. Of course I do have the serial obsession thing going on – when I do lock onto a well-defined project (like getting my pilot’s license or recording an album), I manage to focus on that pretty tenaciously for weeks or months at a time (which is not always a good thing).

But aside from English (speaking, reading, and maybe writing), I have achieved fluency in one important skill: rationalization! After beating myself up (rather gently) for a few paragraphs, I can turn around and think things like “lifelong learning is fun” or “creativity is its own reward” (as argued in this lovely letter from Kurt Vonnegut), and congratulate myself for at least trying to speak foreign languages, create music, understand general relativity, or fly airplanes (despite my relatively poor sense of direction and lousy parallel parking skills).

Finally, I cannot end this blog post without acknowledging that to a high level of approximation, I’m whining here. Anyone who has had a chance to write, play, and record music with amazing friends and musicians, learn to fly with dedicated and talented flight instructors, and travel enough to have found French and Japanese worth studying – shouldn’t be complaining!  But hey, it's a blog.

Why Do I Like What I Like?

I believe that biochemically, serotonin and dopamine are more or less the only two things I enjoy. But at some other level, I often wonder why I like what I like. A lot of it seems to be about novelty. Although there is probably not much that is truly new, novelty emerges in a lot of ways. Surprise is one (perhaps obvious) way. This seems to be the key to a lot of humor - a funny writer or comedian sets up a certain expectation and then takes it in another direction.Creativity is another path to novelty. What could be more novel than a drawing or song you create yourself? Travel is another path. Simulation and gaming too - artificial travel, in a sense. Books are still a pretty good simulation (they run on that old school, low-energy, mobile processor we like to call "the mind"). There are lots of things to like in the world, but I don't like or even notice most of them.

What about a new song by someone other than myself? I often enjoy the sense of familiarity and surprise that this entails. A three-minute pop song has a fairly predictable structure. It will usually incorporate typical musical elements (western scales, chords, and harmonies, common instruments like guitars, keyboards, and drums). But I hear many new songs that do nothing for me, even if others might think they are great. And then once in a while - BAM. A new song just hits me. Why is that?

Here's an example of a recent song that just grabbed me, "Is This How You Feel?" by the Australian band The Preatures. I heard it on the radio (KCRW) when I was Los Angeles recently, and I instantly turned it up. I was about to stop the car to enter a restaurant for dinner, but I waited to hear the rest of the song, and to use the iPhone Shazam app to identify it. I went back to the hotel after dinner and found the song on SoundCloud and YouTube. The video is basic but effective enough. It's a strongly rhythmic and extremely catchy song. I love it, and even after hearing it twenty or more times, it still makes me smile. I don't know why. It's not the lyrics, which are barely coherent (best I can tell, it says, "I'm excited about you, do you feel the same?"). The singer sounds sexy and excited, and many listeners seem to find the song infectious. I had never heard anything from or about this band before, but now I expect I will buy their EP or album once it becomes available in the US. It reminds me somehow of the old song "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind, though it's a love song rather than a drug song. I'm not sure what's the same about them but they seem to trigger some of the same pathways in my brain, and that 1997 song is one of those I will listen to nearly every time it pops up.

Here's another example, Paul McCartney's brand-new song "New." This one is not quite so hard to fathom - the basic rhythm and tonality evoke Paul's Beatles classic "Penny Lane." It's not the same as "Penny Lane," but there is definitely something strongly "Beatleish" about this song, even if Paul's 71 year old voice is not quite as smooth as it was in 1967, it's still Paul, and it's still damn good. There are some very deep neural pathways that trigger on almost anything that evokes the Beatles (even partial matches like the bands Badfinger and Jet and the nearly forgotten early 70's singer-songwriter Emitt Rhodes). And yet... Paul has put out maybe 20 albums since the Beatles. I probably have half of them and love perhaps 3 or 4. Even Sir Paul himself doesn't trigger all my "Beatles = Good" neural patterns. I'm not sure why.

It's not all about other people's music. I like a lot of my own music, and I especially like the feeling of completing a new song or a new recording, sort of a "creative rush." Finishing a larger work like my three albums gets an especially big "like." But even my own work doesn't get an "all access pass." There are many things I write or record that do nothing for me a few days or weeks later.Even finishing a blog post is a little "creative rush." Pretty much any act of creation, though some can be so long in birthing (like my 2005-2006 space flight how-to book Go Play In Space), that it's hard to know whether I like it or not! With some distance, it eventually seems worth all the work, and I feel satisfaction in having completed such a project. Learning something complex (like how to fly, or Japanese) is another "project" type of thing with more long-run satisfaction than "creative rush," though there are some milestones that can be quite a thrill (like my first solo flight back in 2000).

It's not all about music. Books are still a major thing in my life. I just finished the final novel (Dust) in a SF trilogy by Hugh Howey. I discovered the first book Wool a few months ago on Amazon, and I found it to be a very enjoyable piece of post-apocalyptic science fiction. This tends to be one of my favorite SF sub-genres. That seems odd even to me. How can stories of the end of the world and its aftermath be "enjoyable?" I don't know - maybe it's the puzzle aspect of figuring out how to survive. Maybe I identify with the heroes and heroines of these stories. I don't know - I just like many of these stories. I also like many books in many other genres, most of it non-fiction.

But what about the familiar? Why do I still love to hear many Beatles songs some 45 years after I first heard them? Why do I still enjoy pizza or haddock or Cocoa Krispies every time? Or seeing the ground or the clouds from 3,500 or 35,000 feet? Or seeing pictures of planets or galaxies from Cassini or Hubble? Or playing the guitar? Or speaking Japanese or French? These things are not exactly novel. I don't know. I guess there are a lot of ways to trigger those little shots of serotonin and dopamine. Evolution came through with some pretty fine home-grown drugs!

Obama Action Figure

When I was in Japan last month, I was searching for some info on a Japanese toy. Can't remember what or why, but along the way I found a description of a Japanese action figure toy... of Barack Obama! I thought it was hilarious.

There was some other cool stuff in Japan I've been meaning to write up. Maybe I'll write a post about my 2012 travels when I have some time off between Christmas and New Year.

Keeping Me Sane

Although I'm normally only moderately interested in politics, I've gotten a little obsessed with the election in these final few weeks, as I did in 2008. I look too much at polling sites. Between that and trying to finish my new album, my brain capacity is pretty much maxed out (I keep some in reserve for work). I thought the President did very well in the final debate tonight, and Romney didn't look crazy, which I guess was his goal,as he tried to portray Obama's foreign policy actions as weak, while saying that he agreed with most of them and would do the same things. But I'm still worried that something like half of the people in this country think that Mitt would be an OK president.

Two things keep me sane in this. One is Nate Silver's number-crunchingly satisfying FiveThirtyEight Blog which takes tons of different polls' data, runs them through an election simulation model, and predicts the odds (and many other things). This helps me avoid panic when some specific poll shows Romney with a 6 point lead. Nate did very well in 2008, calling 49 out of 50 states correctly. Tonight his forecast has the President with a 70% chance of winning the electoral college, with 290 electoral votes. I hope he's right!

The other thing that helps is The Borowitz Report. Andy's often zany fake news articles are most often about Mr. Romney these days, such as this one on his belief in a woman's right to choose... what to make for dinner. I hope Andy doesn't have Mitt to kick around much longer.

Deep, Light, and He Can't Help It

I tried to not write this blog post, but I couldn't. Of course you could, you say! You've got free will!

Nope. It sure seems that way sometimes, but I think this is an illusion. A very convincing illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. My friend Craig Collins explains this heavy concept with his usual light touch in this excellent blog post. Not that he had any choice in the matter.

New Song: Blue (Monkey Butt)

It's weird what sorts of things pop up when I play around with the many sounds and options in GarageBand on the iPod Touch or iPad. Often an instrument sound, automatic pattern, and rhythm will lead to a new song. This new one sounded bluesy (not surprising since the progression is like Em Bm C F#dim), so I started using the word "blue," and before long I had a demo. Although most of the things I mention are not actually blue, monkey butts sometimes are. So there. Like much of life, this song is something of a joke, but not completely.

Matt Bors Wins Cartooning Award

My favorite editorial cartoonist by far is Matt Bors. So I was happy to learn that Matt has been awarded the 2012 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning (check out some of his work on that page, or look through his blogged archives). He is fearless and funny. Nobody gets a pass from Matt Bors - not Obama, not God, not even Steve Jobs! Though like me, he does seem to have special feelings for Rick Santorum. Matt really deserves this award. Congratulations!

You Have To Laugh...

I'm trying to not pay much attention to politics this early in 2012, but the many antics of the Republican presidential candidates are just too much like a car crash - you don't want to look, but you can't help it. There are two guys who spin this stuff with all the decorum and hilarity it deserves: Andy Borowitz with The Borowitz Report, and Matt Bors with his amazing political comics and blog posts. Laughing is better than crying.

The Beatles Sex! I Mean LOVE!

That post title is an experiment, prompted by a quick look at this blog's stats, courtesy of Google (who also hosts Blogspot blogs, of course). They keep track of everything, as you might expect of Google. Although I'm not blogging as much as I think I'd like to (and once did), I'm still curious about who might be reading my posts, which posts are most popular, how people got here, etc.

Thanks to Google, I know that the top 10 search keywords that brought readers to my blog are beatles love, the beatles love, beatles, music of the spheres, asteroid flyby, the beatles, airbus a380, flyingsinger blog, water cycle, and solar system. Water cycle? Anyway, it's striking that on my nominally space-themed blog, four of the top ten searches are for the Beatles! Hence my post title - if "beatles love" is big, how about "beatles sex?" My most popular post is one that I wrote about the Beatles LOVE show and CD on December 31, 2010. Number two is "Space Models," about my summer 2010 visit to the French space museum in Toulouse. I also know that to date, my blog has received 124,798 page views. (This is not exactly my "all time" page views, but only since Google started tracking my stats around June 2009 - I actually started this blog in October 2005.) I probably should have run some ads. But I know you hate that as much as I do.

Of course 124,798 is probably how many pageviews Lady Gaga gets per minute. But by mentioning Lady Gaga, the Beatles, and sex in this one post, I am positioning myself to give her a run for her money. Don't worry, though. I will not be mentioning Justin Bieber, Amy Adams, fixed mortgages, Ron Paul, or any other trendy terms just to try to drive traffic to my blog. Or sex.

Science!

I love this. My son-in-law is a post-doc and he says it's pretty much right. Graphic by Matúš Soták.

My Other Car is a Saab?

I'll have to run this by my wife, but it seems like a great deal. We've got a Prius and a Volvo - how about a 1964 Saab in great condition? A mach 2 Saab J35 "Draken" jet interceptor, that is. I saw this in a video news item on Yahoo. It's a sweet ride and an amazing bargain at $175,000 (you can't even get a new Cessna 172 for that) but it is something of a gas guzzler for a Swedish vehicle (about $5000 of jet fuel for 10 minutes of supersonic flight). I'm sure it's much more economical if you stay off the afterburner.

There are also some intermediate hurdles if I'm going to take advantage of this deal. First I'll have to get current on my private pilot certificate (single engine propeller aircraft only) and medical. Then I'd have to get an instrument rating and probably a commercial pilot certificate too. Then I'd have to get some jet training and probably get type certified in a two-seat jet of similar performance (maybe someone in the world has a two seat Draken you can get checked out in - the one for sale in Stockton, CA is a single seater). By the time I do all that, John Travolta will have bought it and flown it home.

Packing for Mars

When I was ten years old (in 1963), I had a plan for my life. After high school, I would go to the US Air Force Academy, followed by flight training (jets, of course). Later I would go to test pilot school with the ultimate goal of becoming an astronaut. I was too young for Apollo (and for Vietnam as an officer and pilot), but if it had worked out, I would have been an Air Force pilot in the late 70's and astronaut-ready by the mid-80's. The plan fell apart when I was 12 and started to develop severe myopia. The Air Force Academy and flight training wouldn't allow corrective lenses (of course even if I had 20/10 "Yeagervision" there are any number of other things that could have killed my plan, but hey, it was a fun plan while it lasted).

At that time, the idea of space flight represented nothing but sheer excitement, but now that I've read the new book Packing for Mars (by Mary Roach, subtitled "The Curious Science of Life in the Void"), I understand better than ever that the astronaut's life is much more complicated and less enjoyable than you might imagine. Maybe this wasn't the life for me. Of course I knew this at some level from a lot of previous reading about space flight, but with the exception of some astronaut memoirs (especially Mike Mullane's down-and-dirty Riding Rockets), they don't go into much detail on the discomforts and inconveniences of space flight. Mary Roach does, and she does so with a writing style that is informative, colorful, personal, and often downright hilarious. I was laughing out loud at least once in every chapter. Her writing style often reminds me of Bill Bryson. She explains things clearly, but emphasizes quirky details and people. While the situations are often funny, she obviously respects the people and the work they do, so it never comes across as snarky - she's often laughing with the astronauts, cosmonauts, and other space workers.

Of course she covers the required "going to the bathroom in space," but she also covers the psychology of isolation and confinement, general problems of zero-G (including bone loss and vomiting), crash testing (with cadavers!), animal testing, Earth-based mission simulations, hygiene, and the ever-intriguing questions of sex in space. On the latter topic, she isn't able to come up with any hard evidence (sorry) that it has happened, but you can't say her research wasn't thorough. Considering that someone might have "done it" in a zero-G parabolic test flight, she tracks down and watches an obscure porn movie that was rumored to have had one scene shot on such a flight. She uses a fluid dynamics argument (sort of) to conclude that while the scene may have been shot in an airplane, it was not shot in zero-G. Read the book for more. You will also learn some interesting things about dolphin behavior and anatomy, since these marine mammals have to deal with some of the same issues as zero-G astronaut couples might encounter.

The author interviewed astronauts, cosmonauts, and all sorts of researchers, and her field trips included a flight on the "vomit comet" (she didn't vomit, thanks to "good drugs" they give you) and a trip to Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, where NASA conducts simulated lunar and Mars missions in a remote, desolate, cratered environment that's about as close as you can get to Moon or Mars terrain on Earth. NASA and the US astronauts seemed to be the most "uptight," and the Russian cosmonauts the most frank in describing uncomfortable stuff. One exception was Jim Lovell, who was was unusually open, especially when she asked him about Gemini 7, in which he had spent two bathing-free weeks in the tiny Gemini cabin with Frank Borman, who apparently could be a rather cranky and difficult guy. Lovell proved he was brave enough for Apollo 13 by spending some 23 days in space with Borman (Gemini 7 and Apollo 8 - Borman was sick most of the time on Apollo 8, though it wasn't admitted at the time - so perhaps a bit of crankiness could be forgiven).

I read the Kindle version of the book, and I found it was valuable (and funny) to read most of the footnotes, which required a "click" for each one. Some of the funniest comments are in the footnotes. A very good book, even if you're not especially interested in space.

Why Moon Landings Were Not Faked

I found this brief video clip through a Universe Today post from last week, but I just love it, so I have to post it here too. It's one of the few "space related" things that I find myself sharing widely with "civilians"  (i.e., friends and relatives who care nothing about space, also called "normal people"). And it's just so funny, I've watched it five or six times myself.

Admittedly this video is more about humor than space, but it does address something that has always puzzled me about moon landing conspiracy "theorists." Between 1962 and 1972, NASA's budget totaled about $260 billion (in 2007 dollars). Much of that was spent on the Apollo program, ostensibly to send astronauts into Earth orbit (11 times, since all the moon missions first orbited the Earth) and later to the moon (nine times with six successful landings - the others were the two planned orbital missions and Apollo 13 which flew once around the moon and back to Earth). According to Moon hoax fans, if this money was spent at all, it was spent on faking the moon landings through an elaborate conspiracy involving thousands of government and contractor employees. These people supposedly built a lot of real-looking but non-functional hardware (plenty of civilians saw the hardware) and applied amazingly advanced special effects technology to produce thousands of photographs as well as many hours of film footage, video, and audio recordings (including radio transmissions that seemed to come from the moon - though of course NASA also controlled the tracking antennas, so who knows?). They also produced a lot of scientific data and a few hundred kilograms of "moon rocks" (which could have come from Hawaii or someplace, right?).

That's all well and good, the joke's on us and all, but what about the Saturn V rockets? Thousands of people witnessed the launch of thirteen gigantic rockets in Florida from 1967 to 1973. Flames came out, loud noises, something went into the sky. Where did they go (some did go only into Earth orbit for tests and to launch the Skylab space station in 1973)? Well maybe the conspiracy people will allow that NASA can put things into Earth orbit. Are they still up there? Did they burn up and reenter the Earth's atmosphere? Wouldn't someone have noticed this? Or did they go to the moon, but without astronauts? Was NASA good enough to do that, but not to land and return the astronauts?

It's all so ridiculous, of course, and if you are in the conspiracy frame of mind, you can always come up with additional things that could have been faked to conceal the other fakes. But why thirteen Saturn V's? And why six "faked" landings (plus Apollo 13 which was aborted)? Why not just launch two or three Saturn V's (to prove you're testing them, of course) and then one successful faked landing? Then declare "mission accomplished, JFK honored, Soviets beaten" and spend the rest of the money on planes and bombs for Vietnam?

Recently the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back pictures of the Apollo landing sites. But who controls LRO? NASA of course. No doubt the conspiracy continues to this day. And there is no way to convince the conspiracy faithful, of course. But we can have a good laugh about it once in a while, as with the video that triggered this whole rant!

My South Park Space Avatar

I rediscovered a cool Flash-based web site for creating avatars based on the drawing style of "South Park," sp-studio.de. So I made myself into an astronaut character (can't you tell that's me in there?). I also created a more realistic self-portrait in my natural environment.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I am easily amused.

David Shrigley. Simple. Sick. Funny.

I was going through some papers and found some postcards by David Shrigley. I bought them a few years ago at a bookshop in Oxford, England. His artwork is simple (when he draws people, they remind me of Beavis & Butthead, remember them?). His ideas are often quite bizarre. But he cracks me up. Here are two I have that I was able to also find online by searching for "David Shrigley postcards." He has a few books. I should buy one of them in case I lose the postcards again.

xkcd: "Height"

I occasionally read the funny/nerdy comic xkcd. I saw this drawing of "the observable universe from top to bottom" ("Height") a long time ago and have always wanted to blog something about it. So here it is. Be sure to click the small image and scroll to examine all the funny bits visible at full scale. Heights above the Earth's surface are accurate on a log scale. You can also buy a poster of this from the artist.

P.S. Looks like I wrote about this in 2008 too. Oops.   It's cool enough to blog twice.

Freaky Future Follies

I just discovered two windows into the future. One is serious but often funny, a TED talk by Juan Enriquez called "Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis." This is from a very recent TED conference (February 20, 2009) and provides some interesting big picture views on the economy (with hilarious visuals), followed by some thoughts on where we are headed with developments in cell engineering, tissue engineering, and robot engineering. The clip of the robot mule is somehow a bit creepy, like a Dali painting come to (robotic) life.

The other discovery is funny but somehow serious, the music of the comedy duo Flight of the Conchords. They are not new, but somehow I never heard any of their stuff (nor saw any of their HBO series, though I see now that the second season just started on January 18, so I'm not as far behind as I thought). Their satirical songs are not only outrageously funny, they are musically quite good, and their song and video "Robots" somehow connects with Enriquez's TED lecture. You can find a lot of Conchords videos on YouTube.

I probably will not be blogging much the next couple of weeks. The last time I was in China, Blogger was blocked by the Chinese government content filters (oddly enough I could access the Blogspot editor, so I could edit but not view my blog). I'm not sure if Blogger will be available this time or not - I hear these things come and go depending on what certain political bloggers say about China. But I shall return.

Yes!

I think this is so funny, I had to order one of the t-shirts. It will help me wind down from wearing Obama campaign t-shirts. Profits from the merch benefit the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which is also cool. I noticed there that they have a new edition of a book called Evolution vs. Creationism and that you can download a PDF of chapter 1 ("Science: Truth Without Certainty") for free. It's a nice exploration of important terms like theories, laws, hypotheses, and facts, and how these terms differ between common usage and scientific usage.

Thanks to Asymptotia for the tip.

The Matrix Runs on Windows

This video is hilarious. They have the look and feel of Keanu Reeves and The Matrix nailed - and Windows too.