Breezes of Heaven

Jupiter: Juno Perijove 06 from Sean Doran on Vimeo.


"As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking on the moon and Jupiter... Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse."  -- Ovid


Cyclones as big as the planet Mars - dozens of them - cover the poles of the planet Jupiter. A spacecraft named for the mythical Jupiter's wife, Juno, has traveled the 300 million plus miles and is capturing the best images yet of this giant planet.

Here on Earth, we have observed and studied Jupiter for thousands of years, and we've never had such astounding images or detailed measurements. 

More on the mission itself here.

The Last Neighbor - Pluto

If you have more than 3 moons you're a planet in my book, but Pluto is what it is - a wee dwarf planet. It looks huge in the pictures now coming in from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. (Great links to the mission via KnoxViews, where Randy notes "It will take 16 months to download all the data and images collected by the probe... At 3 billion miles away, it takes 4.5 hours for signals to reach Earth.)

Here's the man who first sighted Pluto in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, who is actually on-board the New Horizons probe ... well, a portion of Clyde's ashes are on-board. An 11-year old English school girl suggested the name Pluto.

There is a human fondness for the wee world.

It's also essentially our last neighbor here in this Solar neighborhood, and beyond it we see an infinity of galaxies and neighborhoods - and our little neighborhood appears very small.

Science Shows Why Stupid Folks Praise Stupid Folks

Pamela Geller

I'm somewhat happy to report there appears to be a theory to explain why deeply uninformed folks suffer from "illusory superiority".

Such a theory helps explain the idiocy of, for instance, folks in Texas who firmly believe the U.S. Military is prepping an attack on Texas and even why rabid hate-speakers like Pamela Geller considers herself a defender of Free Speech. This theory likely explains why some consider FOX News a source of "fair and balanced" journalism.

The theory is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

A 1999 study at Cornell University by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Krueger concluded that this effect is:

"... a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.

Pretend News on FOX

"The study was inspired by the case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras."

Hoo boy, does that explain a lot of wacky thinking and talking from certain people and groups.

The summation here also notes such people:

fail to recognize their own lack of skill
fail to recognize genuine skill in others
fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy

recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill

There is a very real threat and danger to the rest of us from the folks who suffer from their delusions of wisdom -- incompetence grows quickly and, when voiced by someone in a position of authority their madness gets legitimized as having some value or truth.

Spring - Time 2015

Yes, it does seem that as the intermingling social interactions via the Internet are moving faster (tweets, tags vines, InstaBabble) I might appear to be blogging slower. Time is relative you know.

This is for your benefit, dear reader. What you read here has actually been pondered and constructed to be worth a bit more than the Time it takes to read it. Such posts are certainly created by others, probably quicker too. These posts are but good things among good things. 

You, dear reader, I thank for your Time, and proffer a few Timely items below:

Spring is getting shorter, Summer is getting longer.

" ... for thousands of years, spring has been losing time in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, summer is the longest season, with 93.65 days ... As the years go on, spring will lose time to summer, and winter will lose time to autumn ..."

I am ok with this.  

This next article has some dubious sections, but a curious theory on Time could be intimated by experimentation with the Large Hadron Collider -

"The detection of miniature black holes by the Large Hadron Collider could prove the existence of parallel universes and show that the Big Bang did not happen, scientists believe."

I am far more concerned about miniature black holes than the big bang proof. And of course there are parallel universes ... aren't there?

And here, a Spring/Time movie recommendation. It's based quite closely to Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies" and is now on DVD titled "Predestination". Very good science fiction film, without all the typical trappings. But when the Time paradoxes start to kick in, the story takes off. It begins as an almost detective story, but grows into something far more vast. 

Heading Into A Digital Dark Age

One of the million or so pieces of cuneiform writing awaiting someone to decipher it.

Google V.P. Vint Cerf - often tagged as one of the Internet's founders - warned of a coming lost century since digitized information fades fast as technology and software change.

"Ancient civilizations suffered no such problems, because histories written in cuneiform on baked clay tablets, or rolled papyrus scrolls, needed only eyes to read them. To study today’s culture, future scholars would be faced with PDFs, Word documents, and hundreds of other file types that can only be interpreted with dedicated software and sometimes hardware too.

"The problem is already here. In the 1980s, it was routine to save documents on floppy disks, upload Jet Set Willy from cassette to the ZX spectrum, slaughter aliens with a Quickfire II joystick, and have Atari games cartridges in the attic. Even if the disks and cassettes are in good condition, the equipment needed to run them is mostly found only in museums.

"The rise of gaming has its own place in the story of digital culture, but Cerf warns that important political and historical documents will also be lost to bit rot. In 2005, American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, describing how Lincoln hired those who ran against him for presidency. She went to libraries around the US, found the physical letters of the people involved, and reconstructed their conversations. “In today’s world those letters would be emails and the chances of finding them will be vanishingly small 100 years from now,” said Cerf."

Full article is here.

Meanwhile, some folks are thinking and working on the structure of a 10,000 year memory structure. Meet the Long Now Foundation.

History no longer belongs to those who write of it - it belongs to those who know how to archive and access it across thousands of years.

Heading For Doomsday Say Clock-Keepers

Historians could likely determine when and where humans began to ponder on The End of The World As We Know It – when folks felt some inexorable urge to hang over the heads of humanity the demise of all existence. Today, perhaps, one could sit at a keyboard and monitor and search the Internet to explore that mystery.

Fortunately, or not, for the last 70 years, Western Civilization has had a metaphorical clock to measure the approach of extinction – the dire-named Doomsday Clock.  Thursday, clock-keepers alerted us that we are now at 11:57, three minutes til midnight, aka Doomsday. It’s a two-minute leap since the last move of the clock’s hands in 2012.

I’m not sure what purpose the metaphorical timepiece serves – to insure we all accept the inevitability of our collective demise despite our actions to prolong Life? Is it to signal us, like a football game’s 2-minute warning, that the Terminal Last Call approaches so that we can … what? Hunker down? Hug loved ones close? Launch some Kal-El into the vast depths of space?

Maybe it’s akin to that school teacher warning the class that everyone will get detention unless “you straighten up and fly right, Buster?”

It is discomfiting to realize humans may actually possess both the weapons and the will to demolish humanity.

Perhaps it’s akin to those dreamy notions of Nostalgia – everything was better in Times long past, only despair and death are ahead, and the Now is merely longing and regret and dread.

Banning Tablets And Phones in the Classroom

NYU professor Clay Shirky teaches theory and practice of social media and has now decided he must ban the use of laptops, tablets and phones in his class - they are beyond distracting, they are barriers to learning.

He writes of his reluctant decision to ban the devices in an essay at Medium, and has some fascinating science to back his decision.

"A study from Stanford reports that heavy multi-taskers are worse at choosing which task to focus on. (“They are suckers for irrelevancy”, as Cliff Nass, one of the researchers put it.) Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.
---
"Humans are incapable of ignoring surprising new information in our visual field, an effect that is strongest when the visual cue is slightly above and beside the area we’re focusing on. (Does that sound like the upper-right corner of a screen near you?)

The form and content of a Facebook update may be almost irresistible, but when combined with a visual alert in your immediate peripheral vision, it is—really, actually, biologically—impossible to resist.

"I’m coming to see student focus as a collaborative process. It’s me and them working to create a classroom where the students who want to focus have the best shot at it, in a world increasingly hostile to that goal."

The idea of being unavoidably distracted gets a thorough investigation in the new book "A Deadly Wandering" by Matt Richtel. The book, based on a fatal texting and driving incident, is reviewed here.

High Schoolers Use 3-D Printer and Pythagoras to Solve Ketchup Mystery

Yeah, what goof off thing is this? It's a by-product of American education reform, STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. And two Missouri boys puzzled out why that first blotch of ketchup out of a container is always watery. Then they used a 3-D printer to fabricate a doo-hickey to prevent it from happening. That's Science!!!

All snark aside - consider this a crystal clear notice: all the good jobs in the next 30 years? STEM, people, STEM.

Now,  the story:


"The prompt was that they had to come up with something that was relevant to them. So we always start with the phrase, ‘it really bugs me when.’'"

"It is based on the pythagorean cup idea .."

So some teenagers using STEM methods and tech, use an idea from 500 BC. to solve a modern complaint. That sure sounds rather like Education.

Changing Your Outraged Brain

I'm seldom a fan of the material found in Psychology Today magazine. But I noted an article this week about words and the physical effects words have on our brains and bodies.

Negative words flood the brain and body with chemicals and emotions and studies indicate the brain and body react to one negative word while a positive word has to be repeated to create similar impacts.

There are recent discussions about the apparent rise in what's being called the "Outrage Industry", as daily and hourly we see and hear stories and events which are meant to evoke powerful emotions. Some might say the public is addicted to outrage.

Way back in the mid-90s, I knew a fellow who listened every day to 6 or 7 hours of angry radio rantings from Boortz and Limbaugh and others. Day after day after day, he became sullen and angry and just plain mean. For him the world was an Us versus Them place locked in a holy war. I found it quite sad to watch him devolve into a hating machine. He became physically ill, and nearly died.

The article noted above indicates that while our brains react immediately to negative words to combat danger. A positive word, a Yes, does not do that. One researcher says a person needs 3 or 5 Yeses to equal the effects of one No.

It's very easy to drown in the oceans of outrage, some folks constantly bellow about The End of Everything.

And while negative commentary on our shared worlds can be found in abundance in the posts here on my blog, I've tried to balance that with the positive or humorous or even the silly.

So what follows is nothing less than an effort to add to the positive. Read the list of words below. You can even say them out loud and effect even more powerful change, and if others hear you, that change will spread. You can repeat this act every day too. Ready?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

2012: Days of Future Passed

As the new year approaches I tend to reflect some, as most folks do, on Past, Present and Future. In truth, I'm likely too reflective on a constant basis, perhaps part of the hard-wired nature of The Writer in My Head.

Given the purely tentative and fragile essence of Life itself, I confess to some surprise to still be a living creature here on this wee speck of a planet in an infinite Universe. Existence for more than a handful of decades defies the odds. Perhaps it is that I have felt as if I were an Old Soul since I was but a young boy. Now that I am far beyond young boyhood, the passage of Time perplexes me far more than ever.

This fading year, 2012, is one where I have realized I am aging to the point of cultural irrelevance, a fact which was driven deep into my thoughts rather too often for comfort. My time here has straddled two centuries, and the changes in how life is lived are radical and spectacular. A great many of the changes were expected, yet many more were not. (Not that such a state is uniquely mine.)

And there's the simple fact that the time which has passed in my life is now greater than the time which is ahead and yet to be lived. Spooky.

The year I was born, Time magazine proclaimed that the "Men of the Year" were Scientists. Scientists. 

Every day, new and startling discoveries are made about our world and how we manipulate it and use it and attempt to understand it. Sadly, this year, the dubious wisdom of the Tennessee state legislature decided that Science was a collection of random theories which were to be challenged and doubted by American grade school and high school students. 

Not that Science solves any and every problem, but the vast wealth of possibility and discovery has apparently been dismissed as if they were mere Superstitions while Superstition is now heralded as a beacon of Truth.

The men who were singled out in 1960 helped to create so many of the innovations which shape life today via technology and medicine, and much more, and hundreds of other inventors and innovators built on their ideas:

George Beadle, geneticist, Charles Draper, designer of the Apollo Guidance Computer, John Enders, "Father of Modern Vaccines", Donald A. Glaser, particle physicist,  Joshua Lederberg, artificial intelligence and genetics,  Willard Libby, chemistry,  Linus Pauling, quantum chemistry and molecular biology,  Edward Purcell, magnetic resonance creator and physicist,  Isidor Rabi, physicist and microwave developer, Emilio Segrè, physicist, William Shockley, "Father of Silicon Valley". Edward Teller, physicist, inspiration for "Dr. Strangelove",  Charles Townes, quantum electronics, James Van Allen, nuclear and astrophysicist, and Robert Woodward, organic chemist.

I often think that it will be the children who have been born in the last few or next few years who will provide the next major shift in how life on our planet is lived -- and I confess that I most selfishly want to live as long as possible just so I can be alive as our wee planet makes another monumental stride into and beyond the realms of possibility.

Here's to you 2013 and all the years and surprises yet to come. 

Tennessee Designers Make Mars Rover Move

It's deeply gratifying to learn that some very smart folks in Ooltewah, Tennessee are responsible for making the massive, newly-landed mobile laboratory on the surface of Mars actually move around.

The American Bicycle Group in Ooltewah (population: 687)  designed the legs to withstand to the landing and be able to move around the surface for the next several years, according to the story in today's TimesFreePress:

"The Chattanooga team left its mark on Mars, too. Each one of their names is etched inside the legs they helped create that have now found a permanent home among the stars."

At KnoxViews, R. Neal noted today that the wheels of the car-sized rover will leave a "secret coded message" in the Martian soil.

As this new hallmark in robotic space exploration made it's landing, some thousands of folks gathered to watch it all live on the giant screen in Times Square. (click to enlarge)

More pictures of the evening here.

The rover has a nuclear battery which could power the robot for some 14 years - the graphic below, via Space.com, reveals how it is loaded with cameras and equipment. (click to enlarge)

Schools Reforms: No Science, No Baggy Pants

via The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Gov. Haslam says he'll sign into law a bill about how science is taught in Tennessee ... even though it "changes nothing" about how science is taught in Tennessee.

What??

As reported by Andy Sher:

"Haslam said he has had discussions with State Board of Education officials on “does this affect our curriculum and what we teach regarding evolution in the schools and the answer is no. Does it change the scientific standards that are the ruling criteria for what we teach in schools and the answer is no.”

So what in the heck is this law anyway?

Only one thing is certain - supporters of this law deny it has anything to do with allowing religious and political views to be presented in science classes, even though that is exactly what this law allows:

"These bills misdescribe evolution as scientifically controversial,” the statement says. “ As scientists whose research involves and is based upon evolution, we affirm — along with the nation’s leading scientific organizations ... that evolution is a central, unifying, and accepted area of science. 

“The evidence for evolution is overwhelming,” the statement continues. “There is no scientific evidence for its supposed rivals (‘creation science’ and ‘intelligent design’) and there is no scientific evidence against it.”

Yes, the legislature is deeply concerned with education - at least when it comes to devaluing science and with whether or not students wear baggy pants. That's because a new law about school dress codes apparently was needed even though every school already has dress codes and policies on what is acceptable and what is not. The aim though, is for a State Dress Code:

"The only bit of discussion before the vote last night came from another Memphis Democrat, Rep. Antonio Parkinson, who applauded Towns for bringing the bill, but lamented its narrow scope. He said the prohibition should be statewide and vowed to join Towns in working toward that end next year."

Gov. Haslam Confused About How Laws Are Made

Seems Gov. Bill Haslam does not know how government works.

I sent him a letter encouraging him to not sign the anti-science bill which is on his desk right now. He sent back an email today saying:

"After careful review of your letter, I have determined that the Tennessee Department of Education is the appropriate agency to address this type of inquiry, and therefore have forwarded your letter to Commissioner Kevin Huffman's office for consideration."

No, see, the new law before you, right now, is your responsibility since the legislature stripped away the ideas of debating policy from the state's Dept. of Education.

Now if this response means that Gov. Haslam will not sign Senate Bill 0893 and instead veto it and say "this is a decision best left to the Dept. of Education" then I would be stunned. And will write an apology.

Gov. Haslam does seem to comprehend and understand political games though - check out how he handles the anti-science bill as reported by Tom Humphrey:

"Haslam was asked his views on the bill last week after announcing plans to use federal funds to build three new Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) schools in the state.

"I don't know that I have any great insight there for you on that one," Haslam said, adding that he had heard of the bill but knew little about what was involved. The governor said he plans to ask state Board of Education officials about it.

"I think it is a fair question as to what the General Assembly's role is, I think that's why we have a State Board of Education," he said. "I think the General Assembly, though, does represent people and their votes and thoughts matter there."

Way to say nothing at all, Gov. Haslam.

Rest assured, you will be saying plenty - and none of it good - if you sign the bill and make it a new law. 

UPDATE: The Goldilocks Complex


See Also:

" ... these attempts to rewrite our curriculum by some legislators are not about helping our children become independent, rational thinkers capable of understanding and evaluating alternative theories of life; witting or not, these legislators are stooges for an agenda that would shackle our children to a life of ignorance."

Legislation for Hillbillies

An Open Letter to Gov. Haslam and the Tennessee Legislature

An Open Letter to Gov. Haslam and the Tennessee Legislature:

As a lifelong resident of the state of Tennessee, educated in public school as well as at a private Baptist college, I am compelled to write and express my deep disappointment and grave concerns over pending legislation, Senate Bill 893, regarding how Science is to be taught and not taught in our state.

Since it was brought forward in 2011, the aims of this law are crystal clear - it seeks to add room in our Science programs for non-scientific information. Our education system - and our young students - requires the strongest support from our Governor, our Legislature, and our communities, but this legislation instead claims that Biology and Science are flawed and mistaken at every level. It assumes controversies exist at their very foundations. It devalues Education itself.

If the state demands we "teach the controversies" regarding Science, then why not demand that the clergy preach about the controversies of their Religion? That would be ridiculous for the state to mandate, wouldn't it? This proposed law is equally ridiculous.

Holding Science accountable to Religious or Social systems will not encourage or nurture Education. 

It's worth noting that educators and scientists or biologists across the state did not propose nor support this legislation. Certainly, all our educational curriculums should - and for the most part already do - encourage critical thinking and respectful debate. Do you, Governor Haslam, believe otherwise or have any such proof of a dire lack in our schools? Or do you work instead to increase the level of skill and understanding demanded today in Science, Math, and Technology?

I understand and accept that political landscapes are constantly changing - allowing the ebb and flow of politics to override our Education system can only create errors in critical thinking.

So I encourage you to defeat this measure and to provide a stronger voice for Education and Science in Tennessee. 

This legislation stands in stark opposition to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Programs your office has been actively supporting. I feel you have to make a choice, sir, as to which educational approach you support.

Sincerely,

Joe Powell

State Pushes Anti-Science Laws To Governor Haslam

Grade school and high school are the academic locations Tennesseee's politicians want to use to determine the value of science and that of religion too. Yep. Science is some dubious scheme to make you doubt Jesus, according to the state legislature.

Nearly one year after this ridiculous idea first shambled into the legislature, the bill to order teachers to say science is a controversial topic is waiting for Gov. Haslam to sign it. Knox Rep. Bill Dunn has allowed Hixson Senator Bo Watson to run the legislation through this time. 

"The idea behind this bill is that students should be encouraged to challenge current scientific thought and theory,” said state Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson."

Yeah, forget education about the value of science or math or biology - let kids decide classroom by classroom if they believe any of it.

So, from last year, this original coverage via your Cup o' Joe post:

"Knoxville Rep. Bill Dunn was very careful in presenting HB 368 so it hides the anti-science goals, but the result is clear - science classes must present science itself as controversial and the bill promotes a deep lack of understanding of what "scientific theory" means. As for who should help create these low standards - not scientists, of course - but administrators. The bill only defines as "controversial" a select set of areas: "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." And, as noted below, Rep. Dunn's legislation is the creation of evangelical Christians.Rep. Dunn's aim of injecting politics into school science classes is a dangerous act. And his proposed new state law is a part of a nationwide effort to use the schoolroom as a political tool to promote political agendas. These bogus ideas are labeled "Academic Freedom" bills, which sounds nice, but really point to a desire to eliminate critical study and reject the history of scientific investigation, and the legislation is drafted by evangelical organizations:

"... 'academic freedom' bills that are being introduced by state lawmakers around the country instruct educators to teach students about “both sides” of controversial issues—most notably on evolution. The Seattle-based, pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute is behind efforts to introduce many of these bills and has proposed sample legislation for lawmakers to follow.

Since the Louisiana bill was passed (making it the only state to have actually passed an academic freedom bill into law), proposed bills have included global warming and human cloning on the list of “controversial topics,” as they encourage “thinking critically” about the “relationships between explanations and evidence.”

More recently, in Kentucky, a bill was introduced in the Legislature that would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

Other troubling aspects of this dumbed-down educational law includes the following confusions for teachers:

"Some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects."

Whose expectations? Those of the uneducated and misinformed? The really loud folks who think science is a colossal hoax?

Schools must also insure " ...respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues."
Respect for the scientific method, peer review, and the actual scientific meaning of the concepts of "theory" and "experimentation" .... well, let's just push that aside. Since new data and observations are made in most scientific fields of study as a result of the work of scientists, then, yes, concepts and theories are often revised. But it's a huge leap in thinking to claim that science is mostly mistaken guesswork and inherently controversial."

----

And Haslam thinks he'll sign the bill unless the school boards of the state (schools is evil, ya know, full of unions and commies) tell him not to sign it. And he may just sign it anyway.

Meanwhile, from the  actual scientific community which works in the fields now labeled controversial ....

Among those expressing opposition to the bill are the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Nashville Tennessean, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, and the Tennessee Science Teachers Association, whose president Becky Ashe described (PDF) the legislation as "unnecessary, anti-scientific, and very likely unconstitutional."

Best Political Video of the Year

So very much of the talk from our leaders in government from the state to the federal level suffers a debilitating lack of vision. Instead, with the help of media reports aimed at the lowest levels, we are hearing instead about policy debates on personal behaviors and the limp campaigns for elected office.

Government and business are mired in a relentless pursuit of money - we all deserve so much more and we should be demanding it too.

To learn more about how you can join the real Progressives of the world for just one penny, go here.

Unwired: A Non-Liveblog of Life Outside Cyberspace

I decided to do an experiment and shut off the internet for a while, eventually going 12 days with no email, texting, no connection with The Web. I was curious what the changes would be since I've been connected to The Web for about 20 years. And I didn't tell anyone, just wasn't there .. there being here, on The Web. What were the results of the experiment?

I'm awake, up writing on and off The Web daily and early, a longtime habit. So I decided that instead of surfing and reading online, I would keep sort of a non-published Twiter feed to document the effects of being so disconnected. And then publish the results on The Web.

So here is Part One of a Three Part series of the non-liveblog:

DAY ONE

11:30 a.m.
Have marked the first 24 hours with no online usage.

What if I were to decide to never return to explore the world via online access? What if this non-connected landscape becomes preferable? Will I become an oddity of creation? Not being part of online discussions, comments, image sharing and info sharing, will I become a person unwelcome should I prefer to engage the world in the flesh, face to face? Will I be perceived as a danger, a threat even?

12:20 p.m.
Should I have told people I was going to do this? As those who undertake some solo journey to an isolated location, like that guy in that movie “127 Hours” who did not let people know he was taking on a risky task, he got stuck in some rocks and had to saw his arm off, so should I have alerted someone?
Or have I already chopped off an appendage by abandoning my internet post?

I hope I don’t start calling people on the phone for no real reason or decide to become a phone texter. Texting seems alien to me now – maybe I should decide now not to fill in the internet absence with pervasive texts … I am getting a little nervous.

2:18 p.m.
No one here in the house has started a meme today.

There have been, however, several snarky and witty comments made, but no one wrote them down or shared them with anyone outside of the house.

My neighbors have not come by to show me any photos of funny cats or cute kids.

4:30 p.m.
It occurs to me that this document is sort of like live-blogging an event which is not really live, nor is it really taking place. It’s a running commentary on what is not happening. Or, it’s a commentary on something which is really just happening to me. I am going to continue, though, since I have encountered much which is utterly useless and self-serving on the internet, so this project seems worthy of coverage and reporting. To me. For now.

 ....

DAY TWO

5:30 p.m.
This day has not been too bad. One glaring difference is the ability to obtain news and information, as mentioned before. Cable local and national news are offering an astonishingly narrow selection of stories. So much of what I am seeing reminds me of the old Punch and Judy puppet shows of hundreds of years ago – laughable figures beating each other up in an endless loop. (Note: While I know the old P and J shows began many years ago, I cannot provide the actual date they began to take place and spread since I don’t have access to vast archives of research offered by the internet to verify or correct my claims.)
---

DAY THREE

8:24 a.m.
I had thought initially that I might try this experiment for a month, now I’m thinking a week will be my limit.        

1:20 p.m.
Daylight is really bright.


 DAY FOUR

3:05 pm
I miss being able to look at funny pictures of whatever I want. So, here’s a picture from my hard drive – Charles Napier in “Star Trek”

DAY FIVE
7:48 a.m.
Oh man, this tiny dribble of information coming into the house via radio and television is ridiculously inadequate. It’s barely a notch above using the Pony Express to share news and information.

I can measure this weak and puny stream of information not by the bytes arriving by second, it is words per hour. And I know too there are some in the wide world who may just be pining for my perspectives which have been absent.

I have resisted urges to go to a friend’s house or library to sneak online for just a minute to check email messages. But my resolve is fading … I imagine it will take at least one week to kill such urges.


8:48 a.m.
A few weeks ago when web site operators wanted to make a global protest against internet piracy legislation, the web sites shut down for only 24 hours to make their point and kill the legislation. 24 hours. What would the response have been if, like me, they shut down for 5 times as long (120 hours and counting)?

9:15 a.m.
Have I been released from a digital cage or have I been caged in an analog world?

9:42 a.m.
This was a terrible idea.
....

That's the end of Part One, and when the other parts are published in the next few days, they will be linked here and here.

And a question for you, dear readers: How long would you be willing to go without The Web?

50th Anniversary of Friendship 7

Celebrations - but no ticker tape parades this time - are marking the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's flight into space as he became the first American to orbit our planet.

""He is a man of boundless courage, limitless optimism and unswerving honor."

 More pictures here.

Pentagon Spy Drones For Home Users

Flying spy drones are making the move from military/police applications to home use. At the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, exhibitors are teasing the sale of these items for just about anyone to use.

"Like the HD video cameras now included in the livestreamers’ cellphones, aerial surveillance drones have progressed from ultra-expensive professional gear to impulse-buy items. What was once in the Pentagon budget is now at Toys “R” Us – in a simple form, at least.
---
"Introduced in 2010, the one-pound styrofoam craft has four rotors and a plethora of sensors to keep it stable and navigable. In some ways, it resembles an iPhone, with accelerometers and a gyroscope to measure movement and location, for example. Parrot says that it can fly 50 feet high, up to 11 miles per hour and stay aloft for about 12 minutes on a charge.

"Built-in Wi-Fi allows control from an iPhone or Android phone. The Wi-Fi also beams back moderate-resolution (640-by-480-pixel) video to the phone.

---

Rapid advances in this new spy tech are already underway:

"This updated version, due out in the second quarter of 2012 for a list price of $299, offers a better HD camera at 1280x720 resolution, as well as the ability to recognize and interact with shapes and colors for an augmented reality (AR) “gaming mode,” which layers digital drone obstacles and enemies atop the camera’s actual view of the real world.

"The new 2.0 AR.Drone also offers pilots a “traveling” mode, allowing them to set the drone to automatically move and record in specific directions for maximum stability and image quality. As in the case with the Wi-Spi drones, the recorded video can be uploaded directly to the Web."

Stephen Hawking on the Universal Mystery

Like many people, I've followed the works and ideas presented by the scientist Stephen Hawking for many years with great interest and fascination. His ideas are always fascinating as he ponders the workings of the universe even as he himself is stuck in a physical form which has lost the ability to move or speak without the aid of machinery. He's quite enigmatic.

But in an interview published today in New Scientist magazine in honor of his upcoming 70th birthday, I've learned he and I share a tremendous curiosity for another endless enigma. When the magazine asked him "What do you think most about during the day?" he replied:

"Women. They are a complete mystery."

I'm with you, Stephen. 

Women are one of the best creations in the universe. While one might be able with diligent research and investigation to decipher the workings of time and space, and at least present a theory of some sort, which might be tested and explored, about our shared universe ... women continue to dumbfound men. (Not that difficult, really.) And I would hate to contemplate a universe without them in it.