In honor of last night’s crazily intense and prolonged lightning storm in NYC (which just had to happen due to the outright oppressive heat we’ve had over the past few days), I’m posting a link to footage of lightning striking a plane. As its on a government site, I believe that its the real deal. Scary stuff.
Via Chris
I had a fitful night’s rest last night, woke up twice early this morning and each time turned on the tele to see if Discovery made it back okay. Due to bad weather, we’ll all have to wait until tomorrow to see. My friend Phyllis asked, “I wonder if the wee hours were on purpose, or just orbit-related” and you know what? I’m wondering the same thing…
In other space news, I found on Chris’s site an excellent analysis of the shuttle program, it’s limited success, and its multiple shortcomings written by one Maciej Ceglowski. If you are at all interested in space, its a fascinating read.
Phyll sent me to a Smoking Gun post about a memo William Safire wrote in 1969 which provided a speech for President Nixon to read in case Armstrong and Aldren were stranded on the moon. Just like the SG, I find the “widows-to-be” part morbidly amusing.
The answer is “maybe never.” One my favorite movie quotes all time is from Spaceballs – its the classic “We’re looking at now, sir. Everthing that happens now is happening now…” quote (I’ve included the entire quote after the jump). However, a young astrophysicist named Peter Lynds has forumlated a theory which states that “time” is merely an illusion, that time has no divisible unit and therefore there is no “now,” only sequences of events. I know what you are thinking – “Whoa.” I’ll give you a second to process that.
He came up with this idea after watching IQ back home in New Zealand – I shit you not. After the movie, he couldn’t shake the idea that if Zeno’s paradoxes are true, then there is no such thing as a discrete slice of time. So, he began working on a paper stating as such and eventually it was published to widespread notoriety.
His theory threatens to turn the entire physics universe on its head and here’s the best part: he’ a 30 year old college dropout living in a hillside flat described by a Wired reporter as a “cross betwen a tree house and a Hobbit hole.” In fact, the entire Wired article about Peter Lynds is a fascinating read and I heartily suggest you read it.
As promised, one of my favorite quotes of all-time:
Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: Now. You’re looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What hapened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We’re at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: I can’t.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
Colonel Sandurz: Soon.
Dark Helmet: How soon?
Private: Sir.
Dark Helmet: What?
Private: We’ve identified there location.
Dark Helmet: Where?
Private: It’s the moon of Vega.
Colonel Sandurz: Good work. Set a course and prepare for our arrival.
Dark Helmet: When?
Private: 1900 hours.
Colonel Sandurz: By high noon tomorrow they will be our prisoners.
Dark Helmet: WHO!?
I read in today’s NY Times a great story by Thomas W. Gross M.D. about how sometimes the best prescription a doctor can offer is simply lending his ear. I have provided the full text after the jump.
How Much for an Hour of Schmoozing, Doc?
By THOMAS W. GROSS, M.D. May 17, 2005
In our economy, productivity is often measured in units of time. Time is then converted to money. We hire architects, lawyers, plumbers and piano teachers, and we pay them by the hour.
The current medical reimbursement system pays by the job performed, not by the time spent.
Your appendectomy is charged on a flat rate, like a brake job. The surgeon who performs your appendectomy gets paid the same if he takes one hour or two, as long as he takes out only one appendix.
Your family doctor receives the same reimbursement for diagnosing a sinus infection in 6 minutes as he does if he takes 30 minutes.
In our current system, there is no way to buy an hour of your doctor’s time just to talk.
The doctor can give you that time free, but under most health plans he cannot bill you for it.
With the current rate of exchange, as dictated by the health insurance companies, an hour spent talking with your physician has no value.
One night when I was an intern, the nurses paged me around 2 a.m. and requested a sleeping pill for an elderly man with an infection. Imagine that – being unable to sleep in a hospital. That hardly ever happens.
I was up anyway. Interns never sleep, except at lectures, and sometimes in the hospital cafeteria. I was waiting for the results of some laboratory tests for a recent admission.
Because not all sleeping pills are created equal, I went to see this patient before ordering any medication for him. I pulled up a chair, and sat by his bedside. We started to talk.
I learned that he was Hungarian. Before World War II, when he lived in Budapest, he had been a lawyer, a specialist in international law.
Given his description of Eastern Europe in the late 1930’s, I tried to imagine how challenging his job must have been.
After the war broke out, he was drafted, and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, ultimately serving in six different armies, first in Poland, then back in Hungary and then in Romania.
He was later drafted into the German Wehrmacht, and then escaped and was captured by the British. So desperate were the various armies for cannon fodder that original allegiances were immaterial.
He eventually served in the Canadian forces, and then the United States Army. After that, he immigrated to this country and obtained American citizenship.
Ineligible to sit for the bar exam, or to practice law in the United States, he found a job as a janitor in the university library. He eventually worked his way up to become the assistant librarian at the law school.
In his hospital room, we sat and talked for quite a while, but about history, not medicine. I got a glass of water for him and a cup of burnt coffee for myself. He taught me some jokes in Hungarian, and a few in Polish and Ukrainian.
Most of the jokes were about the Communists. It took him forever to get me to understand the punch lines from different languages and cultures, but once I did, we both laughed.
He finally said he was becoming tired, and he fell asleep as I was turning out the light. I slipped away and wandered down the quiet hallway to check my overdue lab reports.
Even in my sleep-deprived state, I was not oblivious to the lesson he had taught me. Rather than prescribe a medication to make him drowsy, I had let him talk himself to sleep.
The next morning, he was more alert than he would have been if I had prescribed a sleeping aid. His infection had abated enough to allow him to go home.
The colonel slept through the night. Twenty years later, I remember more about him than I would have if I had called in a tranquilizer.
I still remember how to say “to your health” in seven Eastern European languages. You’d be amazed how frequently that comes in handy.
I still remember how many K.G.B. agents it takes to screw in a light bulb.
I hope I never forget what I learned that night: Time is not money. Time is medicine.
This week inventor Woody Norris will receive America’s top prize for invention. It’s called the Lemelson-MIT award — a half-million dollar cash prize to honor his life’s work, which includes a brand new personal flying machine called the AirScooter (it goes on sale later this year at $50K per scooter).
The AirScooter can fly for 2 hours at 55 mph, and go up to 10,000 feet above sea level. This is not a joke – go and read the CBS News story and how NASA’s “The Highway in the Sky,” a computer system designed to let millions of people fly in their very own vehicles, will help make this a reality sooner than you think.
“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need any roads…”
Via Slashdot
I went to Google’s homepage today and this is what I saw:
Aside from being the inspiration for a book that has been on the NY Times bestseller list for 107 weeks, let me quickly run down this scientist/inventor/artist’s achievements so that you can feel even worse about watching TV and ordering in last night:
>> Described as the archetype of the “Renaissance man” and as a universal genius
>> Painted the Last Supper
>> Painted the Mona Lisa
>> Was left-handed and used mirror writing throughout his life. Explainable by fact that it is easier to pull a quill pen than to push it; by using mirror-writing, the left-handed writer is able to pull the pen from right to left.
>> Developed the world’s first robot
>> Recorded some 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and science
>> Considered to be the beginner of caricature due to the fact that he actively searched for bodily deformed people to paint them
Just thought I’d share in case you google today from your toolbar only and bypass its homepage.
Check out this optical illusion and be prepared to be wowed and weirded out at the same time.
A few months back, I received a mailer about a one-day course on “Presenting Data and Information” that was being taught by Edward Tufte and while I didn’t go to the class, one of the graphics that it contained really impressed me and I’ve been meaning to post it ever since (click on the thumbnail to launch a popup that contains a larger image):
“This map drawn by Charles Joseph Minard portrays the losses suffered by Napoleon’s army in the Russian campaign of 1812. Beginning at the left on the Polish-Russian border near the Niemen, the thick band shows the size of the army (422,000 men) as it invaded Russia. The width of the band indicates the size of the army at each position. In September, the army reached Moscow with 100,000 men. The path of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in the bitterly cold winter is depicted by the dark lower band, which is tied to temperature and time scales. The remains of the Grande Armee struggled out of Russia with 10,000 men. Minard’s graphic tells a rich, coherent story with its multivariate data, far more enlightening than just a single number bouncing along over time. Six variables are plotted: the size of the army, its location on a two-dimensional surface, direction of the army’s movement, and tempreature on various dates during the retreat from Moscow. It may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn.”
Okay, impressed yet? Here is a bit more about Mr. Tufte. Edward Tufte is Professor Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught courses in statistical evidence, information design and interface design. He has written several books, which have won 40 awards for content and design. The NY Times has called him “The Leonardo da Vinci of data.”
Still not impressed? Then try reading this essay which was published in Wired about how PowerPoint affects thought. It will blow your mind. I highly suggest you read it if this topic interests you at all because he is to data what Stephen Hawking or Brian Greene is to physics.
One of my goals this year is to read as many of his books as possible. Wish me luck.
Dr. David Graham, associate director of science for the office of drug safety at the center for drug evaluation and research for the Food and Drug Administration testifies before the Senate Finance Committee and shows them what is colloquially known as “the flying asshole.”
If only George, Turtle and a few others read my blog, I could hit them too…
I’ve grabbed from Space.com this interview with Burt Rutan, aerospace maverick and winner of the X Prize. He’s been in the papers a lot in recent years (feel free to read the article from Wired back in July, 2003 which is especially good). This new article, basically an interview with Burt, is incrediblity enlightening and if you have any interest in being a civilian astronaut in your lifetime, read it! Also, it’s amazing how much he looks like a grizzled Wolverine – if Logan ever had a father, Burt would be my first choice to play him in the fourth or fifth X-Men movie (see below).
Thursday, October 14, 2004
MOJAVE, California — Nobody can claim that Burt Rutan, the innovative aerospace designer, doesn’t have his head in the clouds – and his eyes focused on the stars.
Fresh from success of nudging the piloted SpaceShipOne’s nose to record-setting heights and capturing the $10 million Ansari X Prize, Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites have clearly set their sights on far loftier goals.
One gets the feeling that in restricted niches of the Mojave Spaceport here, work is already underway on bigger and better spaceships. Asked directly about that prospect, Rutan is quick with a “no comment” that comes wrapped in a guarded smile.
“You think this is cool?” Rutan asked, pointing to the freshly flown SpaceShipOne. “Wait ’til you see SpaceShipTwo … it is erotic,” he added, alluding to the smooth lines of a craft that would seem tangible and touchable – not a minds-eye image of vaporware.
In an exclusive interview with SPACE.com the day after his design won the X Prize, Rutan discussed his passion for making the space frontier accessible to the public.
Simplicity of design
Standing in Scaled Composite’s hangar alongside his creation, Rutan examined the spacecraft. It looks fresh and ready for flight; no worse the wear from its high-speed, back-to-back suborbital jaunts.
“Any damage is actually kind of hard to find,” Rutan said. A slight charring in a couple of spots on the vessel is all that’s visible. “You’re hard pressed to find anything else.”
Thermal protection is not an issue for suborbital space tourism, Rutan said. “We got to 3.3 Mach number, but we only go there momentarily. We don’t sit there for about an hour like the SR-71 does,” recounting the abilities of the super-fast military reconnaissance aircraft.
Looking into the hybrid rocket motor area of SpaceShipOne, Rutan underscores the simplicity of the power plant’s design.
“The fewer things you have that can leak or can fail in a rocket motor the fewer problems you have,” is a Rutan rule of thumb.
Similarly, there’s the plumbing of the craft, pneumatic cylinders and valves to control the large movable tail section rather than using electrical systems. Like your garden hose under pressure, a turn of the valve and water is definitely going to come out, Rutan said. “It’s just that reliable.”
Tomorrowland upbringing
On any number of topics — be it NASA (news – web sites), large aerospace contractors, or inept television reporters — Rutan has an opinion, mischievously taking out a handmade ear from his shirt pocket and casually slipping it on.
Wording on the false ear speaks volumes: “Bull**** Deflector”.
Time traveling back to when he was 12 years of age, Rutan recalls a seminal moment that triggered his yearning about space travel.
In 1955, Walt Disney took television viewers into Tomorrowland – a series of Disneyland presentations that included rocket genius Wernher von Braun detailing space travel in matter-of-fact prose. Those TV shows also talked about floating in weightlessness, lunar exploration, as well as the potential for life on Mars.
“It influenced my life like you wouldn’t believe,” Rutan recalled. Those television airings came before Sputnik in 1957, the selection of America’s first astronaut corps, and the flight of the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin – the first human into Earth orbit.
“And we’re sitting there amazed throughout the 1960s. We were amazed because our country was going from Walt Disney and von Braun talking about it – all the way to a plan to land a man on the Moon – Wow!”
The right to dream
But as a kid back then, Rutan continued, the right to dream of going to the Moon or into space was reserved for only “professional astronauts” – an enormously dangerous and expensive undertaking.
Over the decades, Rutan said, despite the promise of the Space Shuttle to lower costs of getting to space, a kid’s hope of personal access to space in their lifetime remained in limbo.
“Look at the progress in 25 years of trying to replace the mistake of the shuttle. It’s more expensive, not less, a horrible mistake,” Rutan said. “They knew it right away. And they’ve spent billions – arguably nearly $100 billion over all these years trying to sort out how to correct that mistake – trying to solve the problem of access to space. The problem is – it’s the government trying to do it.”
Forecast of things to come
The flights of SpaceShipOne, Rutan said, permit a forecast of things to come.
“I predict in five or six years, the average kid is no longer just hoping and dreaming that he’ll go to space. He knows he will. He’ll at least take one of these suborbital flights that are flying every other day or every day here at Mojave,” Rutan stated. While initially expensive, flights into space will drop in price over time, he added.
“And I predict that within 10 years from now, maybe 12 years, kids will know that they will go to orbit in their lifetime. They will know they will – not just dream and hope,” Rutan explained.
IBM mentality
Turning his attention to the larger aerospace firms like Boeing and Lockheed Martin that offer pricey lines of boosters, Rutan offers free advice.
“They are thinking SpaceShipOne is a toy,” Rutan said. That assumption is akin to the mentality of IBM in 1975. At that time, they believed people aren’t going to have cheap computers. Computers are main frames and they have to be complex and very specialized. That was the view of IBM, he pointed out.
“IBM didn’t know in 1975 that they were going to build $700 dollar computers for people and that they were going to build them by the tens of thousands. But then came Apple,” Rutan said, “and they had to.”
That being the case, Rutan made another prediction: “Lockheed and Boeing will be making very low-cost access to space hardware within 20 years. They just don’t know it yet – because they’re going to have to.”
Thousands of probes
Rutan said that an upshot of public space travel is the creation of far less expensive boosters in order to satisfy growing numbers of customers.
That development — coupled with advances in computers and sensors – will enable thousands of probes to be launched that flood the solar system 25 years from now, Rutan said.
“You’ll be able to do a lot more exploration if you send thousands. And it’ll be cheap because the boosters were developed because people can’t afford to spend too much to get into orbit,” Rutan concluded.
“I could be wrong – but these are the things that keep me up nights.”