Mars revelations come thick and fast. Rather than just inflate the rank of this article on Computerworld , I've been doing a bit of thinking about it.
See, originally, febrile, fertile imaginations such as ER Burroughs populated the red planet (and a few of the others) with teeming thriving life. Of course, they didn't have it as good as Earth, well, okay, as good as certain fertile parts of Earth - but there sure was such a solar system out there. Venusian, Jovian, Martian - you name it... You can argue that once astronomy proved that Mars = Venus = Jupiter = "A planet' = Earth, then Burroughs and Verne and the space opera writers that followed merely extrapolated as far as "Those are planets, Earth is a planet, Earth has life - hmmm..." and took it from there.
Fast forward to as far as we can go on this particular tape, being that article above. It's the culmination of what has now become a fairly large body of research data being analysed, and in pretty short order, we were informed that Mars had the right chemicals for life. Except water. And atmosphere. And temperature....
But those groovy little 'bots we sent up there sent back a neat series of numbers, and now we're told that not only does Mars have water in the form of subsurface ice, it has snow as well. Slowly, we're having to come to the realisation that Mars may well have had life. Bear in mind, the article also states that the presence of free water is probably almost as far back as the birth of our solar system. And it has no answer to the temperature problem either.
But we do know of extremophile bacteria that live happily in permafrost, others that live in superheated steam vents, yet others that thrive only when shielded from oxygen, so we know that life will find a way no matter what conditions.
But the revelation for me came in the closing words of the article. "scientists are hoping to activate a microphone to record sounds on Mars before power fails" - because we do all know that sound can only be transmitted in a medium, it could not be heard if there is no atmosphere. So when will we see the first Martian on a robotic webcam?
Tuesday, 30 September 2008
Monday, 29 September 2008
Cyber Twin
Just been reading up on conversations my Cybertwin has been having - damned if it doesn't get some interesting conversations...
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Naivetics
Union "rights" - isn't that what Unions were for in the forst place? to break bad laws?
I don't know about the Union ads on TV at the moment - asking Labor to make sure the Unions and workforce get back their empowerment to strike on social issues. It's a sort of a vicious circle thing, isn't it?
I mean, Unions were originally formed to prevent unscrupulous employers from taking advantage of the workers. Unions were the "power of the people" creating some equilibrium in the economy which grew up along with our Industrial and Technological Revolutions. They were about changing the laws. Now they seem to have sat back and let the government extract their testicles, gonads, and vas deferens, to the point where they have to run ad campaigns to try and get their right (to get rights back) back.
Come on Nutless Ones - all it takes is for everyone to take their nose out of the feed trough and all strike together. Every single last person in the workforce. A resounding slap in the face of the "government." (I parenthesise that word because it is to be hoped that every government worker will also be on strike.)
Why doesn't it happen? Because a lot of people are not unhappy enough with their lot yet. Unions started to gain power in an environment where a lot of people were working very hard and still not able to support themselves and their families, and thus rife for exploitation. Banding together was the only way to negotiate. But today, it's hardly that big of an issue. We have enough. Even though a government is adroitly removing over half of that from your pockets in various forms of taxes and fees, we have enough.
So "naivetics" (my simple view of politics) doesn't work. And speaking of that, here's another thing that puzzles my naivetic senses:
The financial crisis. Caused? By the collapse of a few key lending institutions. Why did they collapse? Because the people they were lending to, stopped paying. Why did they stop paying? They didn't have enough. Now everyone in the USA is going to share a portion of the burden that the "not enoughs" have dropped. It makes Unions irrelevant in a way.
And it avoids the real issue, which is that a few people at the tops of those pyramids became, and still are, very very rich. When in fact they didn't do such a great job, actually. Had they been more vigilant in their oversight, they would have picked that their field agents were making poor risk choices, and acted to stop them. But all they chose to see was lots of customers, ergo lots of income. Right? As they always say, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and watching a table load up with food without wondering who was gonna pay for all that was just sloppy management.
Aren't there criminal laws that can be applied in this case? See, the fact that they're not being applied makes me think maybe the government was looking away too, and still are. Maybe they can handball this hot potato until the luckless new guy gets in. Maybe they too were watching the table load up with food.
The facts that my naivetics can see are that in the USA, people's rights have been curtailed and denied for decades, their individuality has been repressed, and by means of schools, advertising, and enforcement, they have been brainwashed to a great degree to become a pliant mass.
It actually seems not to have worked, because now those chickens are coming home to roost with a vengeance. The USA is considered an annoying voice but no longer a superpower nor even relevant to many, and it has now collapsed financially, making it less of an economic force too.
To top it off, the USA now plans to use that economic disaster to welsh out of carbon emissions responsibilities. That means that at some stage, some real new world power is going to have to step in and tell them to shut their machinery down, or have it shut down percussively. NOTE: See below for update, a scant day later.
And the only difference between the USA and Australia is that they have a few decades' head start on us... C'mon Aussies - always always keep the bastards honest! We have a chance to not follow the USA into that nasty place reserved for the fallen school prefect. Let's not muck it up - tell the government that we expect follow-through and action on the issues such as petrol prices, carbon emissions, sustainable energy, and environmental issues.
Maybe then we'll have a voice as a people again, and with any luck that voice won't be speaking a foreign language.
:UPDATE: Companies may not know that we're a few decades behind the USA - seems they too want carbon emissions relief *now,* same as their reflections overseas. Told you it wouldn't take long... This is where Rudd needs to use some of those gonads he extricated from the Unions, and put his foot down...
I don't know about the Union ads on TV at the moment - asking Labor to make sure the Unions and workforce get back their empowerment to strike on social issues. It's a sort of a vicious circle thing, isn't it?
I mean, Unions were originally formed to prevent unscrupulous employers from taking advantage of the workers. Unions were the "power of the people" creating some equilibrium in the economy which grew up along with our Industrial and Technological Revolutions. They were about changing the laws. Now they seem to have sat back and let the government extract their testicles, gonads, and vas deferens, to the point where they have to run ad campaigns to try and get their right (to get rights back) back.
Come on Nutless Ones - all it takes is for everyone to take their nose out of the feed trough and all strike together. Every single last person in the workforce. A resounding slap in the face of the "government." (I parenthesise that word because it is to be hoped that every government worker will also be on strike.)
Why doesn't it happen? Because a lot of people are not unhappy enough with their lot yet. Unions started to gain power in an environment where a lot of people were working very hard and still not able to support themselves and their families, and thus rife for exploitation. Banding together was the only way to negotiate. But today, it's hardly that big of an issue. We have enough. Even though a government is adroitly removing over half of that from your pockets in various forms of taxes and fees, we have enough.
So "naivetics" (my simple view of politics) doesn't work. And speaking of that, here's another thing that puzzles my naivetic senses:
The financial crisis. Caused? By the collapse of a few key lending institutions. Why did they collapse? Because the people they were lending to, stopped paying. Why did they stop paying? They didn't have enough. Now everyone in the USA is going to share a portion of the burden that the "not enoughs" have dropped. It makes Unions irrelevant in a way.
And it avoids the real issue, which is that a few people at the tops of those pyramids became, and still are, very very rich. When in fact they didn't do such a great job, actually. Had they been more vigilant in their oversight, they would have picked that their field agents were making poor risk choices, and acted to stop them. But all they chose to see was lots of customers, ergo lots of income. Right? As they always say, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and watching a table load up with food without wondering who was gonna pay for all that was just sloppy management.
Aren't there criminal laws that can be applied in this case? See, the fact that they're not being applied makes me think maybe the government was looking away too, and still are. Maybe they can handball this hot potato until the luckless new guy gets in. Maybe they too were watching the table load up with food.
The facts that my naivetics can see are that in the USA, people's rights have been curtailed and denied for decades, their individuality has been repressed, and by means of schools, advertising, and enforcement, they have been brainwashed to a great degree to become a pliant mass.
It actually seems not to have worked, because now those chickens are coming home to roost with a vengeance. The USA is considered an annoying voice but no longer a superpower nor even relevant to many, and it has now collapsed financially, making it less of an economic force too.
To top it off, the USA now plans to use that economic disaster to welsh out of carbon emissions responsibilities. That means that at some stage, some real new world power is going to have to step in and tell them to shut their machinery down, or have it shut down percussively. NOTE: See below for update, a scant day later.
And the only difference between the USA and Australia is that they have a few decades' head start on us... C'mon Aussies - always always keep the bastards honest! We have a chance to not follow the USA into that nasty place reserved for the fallen school prefect. Let's not muck it up - tell the government that we expect follow-through and action on the issues such as petrol prices, carbon emissions, sustainable energy, and environmental issues.
Maybe then we'll have a voice as a people again, and with any luck that voice won't be speaking a foreign language.
:UPDATE: Companies may not know that we're a few decades behind the USA - seems they too want carbon emissions relief *now,* same as their reflections overseas. Told you it wouldn't take long... This is where Rudd needs to use some of those gonads he extricated from the Unions, and put his foot down...
What precisely is a "corn dog?"
I never knew, until I saw this . Now I know.
I'm onto the 2nd Edition of The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook and this time around I've been looking for royalty-free (and free to download) images that address the book's subject matter, and so far it's all good. That image has given me a chance to sit and grin, and I might call it a day. The whole page is here if you're into healthy food for a Shih-Tzu.
The 2nd Ed will have a bit more explanation and hopefully some extra recipes too. Also, I'm hoping to have 2nd Ed set to some medium-sized book format so it can also be printed by the online on-demand printers such as Amazon or Lulu or similar.
I'm onto the 2nd Edition of The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook and this time around I've been looking for royalty-free (and free to download) images that address the book's subject matter, and so far it's all good. That image has given me a chance to sit and grin, and I might call it a day. The whole page is here if you're into healthy food for a Shih-Tzu.
The 2nd Ed will have a bit more explanation and hopefully some extra recipes too. Also, I'm hoping to have 2nd Ed set to some medium-sized book format so it can also be printed by the online on-demand printers such as Amazon or Lulu or similar.
Saturday, 27 September 2008
This site is its own Re:ward
http://www.urbanrevision.com/ - and also a site I'll be following from now on, see if it has worthwhile hints and tips on it.
Friday, 26 September 2008
Acerbities - beware, leave a bad taste
Thoughts tonight, in random order:
(While listening to very gay evening show announcer commenting on gross foods, when he was shuddering with campy shudderiness about rollmops, a herring fillet wrapped around a few pieces of pickle, and then pickled itself.) What, he won't put fish in his mouth?
(Watching a TV show where they had a smashed mobile phone but managed to recover "the last message on it") So the message came from a throwaway disposable mobile phone - you still have its number. And from cell tower records you can tell which numbers it called or sent texts to. And therefore, you have the number of the mobile phone currently in forensics. And therefore, you can examine records to see which phone numbers it, in turn, rang or texted. This is not rocket science yet a supposedly cutting edge forensics team were stumped by it.
(Seeing people performing senseless acts of violence on other people, either in school shootings, one-punch manslaughters, bashings over a measly handful of money from ATMs, and a bashing to get a car from one person.) If you think there's always a bit of good deep down in everyone, then obviously you have met wayy too few people yet. Aleister Crowley had a philosophy of life which we these days translate as "Do as ye will shall be the full extent of the Law" - but in fact in Crowley's time it was "an ye harm none, do as ye will shall be the whole extent of the Law." We've lost that respect for one another somehow.
(Hearing about McCain ditch his campaign to do something about the USA economy brings several sad thoughts in a short train:) How is McCain going to fix an economy he didn't even acknowledge was b0rked until a few days ago? Does he have enough money personally to fix this? Is he going to go to Bill Gates, Larry Ellinson, Larry Page, and Sergei Brin and call in favours we don't know about? How will he cope as a President when Medvedev is on the Hotline, Iraq, Pakistan, and North Korea want to launch nuclear missiles, and the tea lady asks him how he wants his coffee? And why suspend your campaign because of this? You have a running mate. While you're multitasked and can't give it your all, she can take up the slac.... Oh... Yeah, she has kids to drop off at hockey and an NRA meeting she's speaking at...
(China Land of Hasty Shoddy Nonpoisonous pick any two are working on developing a space drive based on microwave ejection) And it will not have lead based paint, nor will the plastic bits make our workers hallucinate if they chew them, the microwave klystrons (or magnetrons, have it your way) will not have that shoddy insulation on them nor will they break down and pass 23,000 volts back into the spaceframe of the ship, and we'll build it between disasters like earthquakes, typhoons, and Olympics...
Then too we have climate change gurus arguing with climate won't change gurus while the climate changes, petrol prices and rents making one small sector very happy at the expense of a much larger sector, rental rage, road rage, and idiots on the road.
This has just been a week for it.
(While listening to very gay evening show announcer commenting on gross foods, when he was shuddering with campy shudderiness about rollmops, a herring fillet wrapped around a few pieces of pickle, and then pickled itself.) What, he won't put fish in his mouth?
(Watching a TV show where they had a smashed mobile phone but managed to recover "the last message on it") So the message came from a throwaway disposable mobile phone - you still have its number. And from cell tower records you can tell which numbers it called or sent texts to. And therefore, you have the number of the mobile phone currently in forensics. And therefore, you can examine records to see which phone numbers it, in turn, rang or texted. This is not rocket science yet a supposedly cutting edge forensics team were stumped by it.
(Seeing people performing senseless acts of violence on other people, either in school shootings, one-punch manslaughters, bashings over a measly handful of money from ATMs, and a bashing to get a car from one person.) If you think there's always a bit of good deep down in everyone, then obviously you have met wayy too few people yet. Aleister Crowley had a philosophy of life which we these days translate as "Do as ye will shall be the full extent of the Law" - but in fact in Crowley's time it was "an ye harm none, do as ye will shall be the whole extent of the Law." We've lost that respect for one another somehow.
(Hearing about McCain ditch his campaign to do something about the USA economy brings several sad thoughts in a short train:) How is McCain going to fix an economy he didn't even acknowledge was b0rked until a few days ago? Does he have enough money personally to fix this? Is he going to go to Bill Gates, Larry Ellinson, Larry Page, and Sergei Brin and call in favours we don't know about? How will he cope as a President when Medvedev is on the Hotline, Iraq, Pakistan, and North Korea want to launch nuclear missiles, and the tea lady asks him how he wants his coffee? And why suspend your campaign because of this? You have a running mate. While you're multitasked and can't give it your all, she can take up the slac.... Oh... Yeah, she has kids to drop off at hockey and an NRA meeting she's speaking at...
(China Land of Hasty Shoddy Nonpoisonous pick any two are working on developing a space drive based on microwave ejection) And it will not have lead based paint, nor will the plastic bits make our workers hallucinate if they chew them, the microwave klystrons (or magnetrons, have it your way) will not have that shoddy insulation on them nor will they break down and pass 23,000 volts back into the spaceframe of the ship, and we'll build it between disasters like earthquakes, typhoons, and Olympics...
Then too we have climate change gurus arguing with climate won't change gurus while the climate changes, petrol prices and rents making one small sector very happy at the expense of a much larger sector, rental rage, road rage, and idiots on the road.
This has just been a week for it.
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Natural Selection In Action...
Isn't Nature wonderful - cos no-one wants depressed kids - right? (Well, Nature gets a hand from drug companies in this case - but the end result is the same... )
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
O Damn!
Are they sure they couldn't have picked a slightly less hackable name ?
Really, though - what possesses people to pick names without first thinking about the ramifications? O damn. We seem to have come across as a bunch of Dicks, turned the firm into a bit of an antifirm ... Oh well...
Really, though - what possesses people to pick names without first thinking about the ramifications? O damn. We seem to have come across as a bunch of Dicks, turned the firm into a bit of an antifirm ... Oh well...
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