Line up all the viruses on Earth end to end (go ahead, I’ll wait), and they’ll stretch over 10 million light years. In my new podcast, I talk to Curtis Suttle of the University of British Columbia about what it means to live on a virus-dominated planet.
GoDaddy To Cease Registering Domains In China [Domainnames]
The Washington Post is reporting that GoDaddy, the biggest domain name registrar on the planet, will soon stop registering domain names in China. Their announcement comes in the midst of Google closing their Chinese search engine, though GoDaddy says their decision is specifically a response to "new government rules that require applicants to provide extensive personal data, including photographs of themselves." Yes, that is a bit creepy. [Washington Post] More »
View From the 9th Floor
"Before I discuss the details of the NASA budget request, I would like to talk in general about the President's new course for human exploration of space. With this budget, the United States has positioned itself to continue our space leadership for years."
"The President's budget, should it be approved by Congress, will enable NASA to align with the priorities of the Nation and to more optimally contribute to our Nation's future."
NYC’s Depressingly Congested Traffic, Mapped by Taxicab GPS [GPS]
Brainpreservation.org and the Judeo-Christian account of death
Michael Anissimov just posted a link to the site brainpreservation.org.
The site advocates a plastic-based alternative to cryonics - pump the brain full of plasticy resin that prevents the structure from being disrupted, and then wait for brain slicing and scanning technology to arrive.
The interesting part is the old chestnut about "normal people" being too "irrational" to see that this is a worthwhile thing to do, and accepting the Ancestral-Judeo-Christian account of death - roughly speaking, the idea that when you are alive you have something like a "soul" or "essence of aliveness", and that at some definite point, that essence disappears.
In the past, before scientific medicine, that point tended to be pretty easy to identify: you stop breathing, your heart stops, and your body stops moving (apart from rigor mortis). From the point of view of other people, your "agenthood" and "personhood" cease - there is now simply a human-like piece of meat lying on a bed. Nowadays, legal death is harder to define: stopped heart, cessation of breathing, etc are not sufficient conditions, because doctors can make the human-like piece of meat with no pulse or breath turn back into a walking, talking person again.
Cryonicists and transhumanists might endorse an information-theoretic criterion of death: you die if the future can no longer cause a walking, talking breathing, thinking you to come into existence from some record of you. Hence, cryopreservation and plastination are akin to being in a coma.
Information, of course, is not absolute like the Ancestral-Judeo-Christian "Essence Of Life". The fundamental laws of physics - as far as we know - do not destroy information, they merely disperse it to various degrees. Even cremation doesn't destroy the information in your brain, it merely distributes it so thinly over your future light-cone that it is unlikely that any physical entity could piece it back together. There may be edge cases where the information required to piece someone back together is not impossible to gather, but too difficult for anyone to bother attempting.
From the site:
I do want to change the world – I want to put an end to death. I want to make it every person’s right to experience the future centuries from now, and to live without the constant fear that aging and crippling disease will take away their joy for life, make them a burden to their loved ones, and strip them of their dignity. We have it within our power today to create that world. Let me say that again, we have it within our power today to create that world. From a medical and technical standpoint all that is needed is the development of a surgical procedure for perfusing a patient’s circulatory system with a series of fixatives and plastic resins capable of perfectly preserving their brain’s neural circuitry in a plasticized block for long-term storage. Such a procedure would, in effect, put the patient into a long dreamless sleep where they can wait out the decades or centuries necessary for the development of the more advanced technology required to revive them.
How could a patient ever be awoken from such an unconventional sleep? The necessary technology exists in primitive form today – the plasticized brain block will be automatically sliced into thin sections and these scanned in an electron microscope at nanometer resolution. Such scanning can map out the exact synaptic connectivity among neurons while simultaneously providing information on a host of molecular-level constituents. This map of brain connectivity will then be uploaded into a computer emulation controlling a robotic body – the patient awakes to a new dawn of unlimited potential.
Given our current state of knowledge it is quite likely that the perfection of a surgical brain-preservation procedure could be accomplished in less than five years with minimal amounts of research funds. However, aside from a few underfunded research groups, no serious brain preservation research is currently being performed. More tragically, even if such a surgical procedure were available today the legal system would prevent its proper use as a life saving measure by preventing it from being administered before the declaration of legal death. The reasons are social and political, and from those standpoints such a world is much harder to reach. It requires large numbers of people to viscerally accept a new metaphor — a metaphor that the last 150 years of biological science has demonstrated to be accurate — the metaphor that we are machines.
Michael Comments:
Amen! The above is not so much a proposal for new technology, as it is a proposal for new attitudes. If I want to preserve my brain now, and “commit suicide” according to the Judeo-Christian-influenced standard meme complex, then I should be allowed to do so.
1984 Mercedes 300D – Stereo Wiring
i need to know, in the dash of a 84 mercedes 300D i installed a new sterio and i need to know where i hook up the wire for the ignition?
AT&T MicroCell 3G: Salvation for Your Crappy Reception Is $150, No Strings Attached [At&t]
Sure, we kinda think AT&T's cell-reception boosting MicroCell 3G should be like, free, since it's using your pipes to route calls, but I suppose this is about as swell as we could've hoped for—$150 with no monthly fee. More »
Happy Birthday, Steve Ballmer [Microsoft]
You've seen Steve dance before. Today, if you are using Windows, sending emails from your Hotmail account, or even editing Excel spreadsheets, I insist you do a little monkeyboy dance in your seat. For Ballmer—the ever-entertaining CEO. More »
iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and MySpace Team Up to Guilt You Into Paying For Music [Piracy]
A group of online music industry giants, including Apple, Amazon and MySpace, have teamed up to form "Why Music Matters," a group aimed at turning pirates into purchasers. More »
Pulse Jet Valve Material
so i am designing a new pulse jet and i have thought up a (theoretical) revolutinary valve system .... the problem is, not really a problem more of an improvement, but i need a non metal flexable, but not too flexable, material that will resist a large amount of pressure and exponintal amounts of he
Discovery Preps For April Launch
Discovery's STS-131 payload canister is raised into the launch pad's payload changeout room. Credit: NASA/Troy Cryder
The shuttle Discovery is sitting on the launch pad being readied for a scheduled April 5th launch. You can see the payload canister being readied to load into the payload bay in the image above. The crew members are having their prelaunch physicals.
This will be the 33rd trip to the International Space Station in what will be known as STS-131 when Discovery lifts off.
The STS-131 mission will be staffed by:
- Commander Alan Poindexter
- Pilot Jim Dutton
- Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Clay Anderson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The mission will deliver a multi-purpose logistics module filled with science racks for the laboratories aboard the station. There will be three planned spacewalks, with work to include replacing an ammonia tank assembly, retrieving a Japanese experiment from the station’s exterior, and switching out a rate gyro assembly on the S0 segment of the station’s truss structure.
We’re coming down to it folks, only three more scheduled missions after this one. Somehow it seems fitting Discovery will be the last scheduled shuttle to visit the ISS. That is unless of course, somebody in Washington decides taking a back seat to the world in the space pursuits is not a very good idea and decides to keep things going.
Motor Terminals – Start and End Points
hi,
How to find motor 6 terminal start and end point for 3 phases? the problem wat i m facing is, i have i motor without name plate n without terminal plate.....so i get 6 wires with sleeve n now i wan to take Amp n RPM from it but for that i 1st differenciate starting n endind point of
Trying to Setup a Web Site
Take care unless you want to waste days of effort, a week of waiting and enjoy frustration.
I tried to create a website using one of the many advertised 'free' web site creation and hosting sites which Google throws up.
I spent two days creating a nice site (or did it evolve ) with their
Hearing on NASA’s FY 2011 Budget and Change in Exploration Plans
- House Science and Technology Cmte Space and Aeronautics Subcmte Hearing: Proposed Changes to NASA's Exploration Program, 24 March: ESMD AA Douglas Cooke and Tom Young testify at 2 pm EST.
- Hearing Charter
- live webcast
- Presentation by Doug Cooke
- Testimony by Tom Young
"Over the past few months we have held many hearings to address safety concerns for human spaceflight, the competition of international space programs, and the impact of NASA's programs on the skilled aerospace workforce and industrial base. We have also heard from the Government Accountability Office and NASA's Inspector General. And just last month NASA Administrator, General Charlie Bolden testified on the FY2011 budget request. Unfortunately, the NASA Administrator was unable to satisfy many of the members of this committee. Today we are going to continue to take a closer look at the elements of the proposed plan and try to get additional information--to the extent that such information exists."
Ball Joint Test System
we will buy this device unless we find good alternative
please review this device and tell me if there is american or europian alternative or no
http://biss.tradeindia.com/Exporters_Suppliers/Exporter4380.402564/Ball-Joint-Test-System.html
thank you
Turbo Encabulator
The turbo encabulator
seems like it could solve a lot of my engineering problems because of its multi functionality. I was wondering if anyone has come across any other machines which are as useful as the turbo encabulator before I pu
Google Would Remind My Grandpa of the Arrogant White Invaders [Google]
Days after Google moved from China, Sergey Brin is pushing the US to fight censorship there. But the West has a history of forcing moral and economic standards onto foreigners. This sort of thinking isn't good—it's how wars start. More »
Samsung Air Conditioner
We have a samsung cassette air conditioner model CH44ZA. The wired remote displays OC. The machine does'nt respond to the on/off switch. The main power was de-energised for over 5 minutes and re-energised, all to no avail. Any ideas of possible problems?
Found: 90% of the distant Universe | Bad Astronomy
This is fascinating news: 90% of the distant Universe was thought to be missing, but it was recently found. And what’s weird is, it was found to be in the red. Quite literally.
[Note: before you ask, this has nothing to do with dark matter. See below!]
First, a bit of background. Galaxies are filled with hydrogen gas, and that gas is a major component of the clouds that collapse to form stars. When that happens, the hot stars ionize the gas: the flood of ultraviolet light strips the electron away from the proton, freeing both. If the electron gets near the proton again, they can recombine. Because of quantum mechanics, the electron can only exists in certain energy states, which are a bit like steps in a staircase. You can jump from the third step down to the second, but there is no second-and-a-halfth step.
So it is with electrons. It used to be taught that this levels were like orbits, but that’s not a great analogy; the staircase is better. So if the electron is on the second level and drops to the first, it gives off energy in the form of light (just like when you step down you lose a bit of energy too, and it takes energy to go up a step). For the 2 to 1 step in hydrogen, the photon emitted is in the ultraviolet, and has a special name: Lyman alpha.
Ionized hydrogen gas clouds tend to blast out lots of Lyman alpha. This makes it a good way to search for distant star forming regions; just look for that wonderful wavelength of light associated with the 2 – 1 transition of hydrogen.
As it happens, we know that when the Universe was young, about a quarter the age it is now, star formation was going on at a much higher rate on average than it does now. So astronomers figured, hey, why not do searches for distant galaxies using Lyman alpha? They should pump it out, and make them easy to see.
So they looked. And to their surprise, they only found about 10% of the galaxies they predicted they should!
Uh oh.
This has been a problem for some time. But it’s not anymore: a recent experiment by astronomers shows that the galaxies are there, but they’re hidden!
What they did is look in one part of the sky, using the GOODS South field (part of which is pictured above), trying to find Lyman alpha emitting galaxies. Then they looked at the same region, but looked instead for H alpha, the line emitted when an electron jumps down from the third energy level to the second. And guess what they found: tons of galaxies!
The problem, they surmised, is that the galaxies are actually there and emitting Lyman alpha. But before that ultraviolet light can get out of one of those galaxies, it gets reabsorbed by gas inside the galaxy itself. We never see it.
But H alpha can more easily escape the galaxies once it’s produced. For one thing, it’s red light, and that can penetrate the gas and dust better than the ultraviolet Lyman alpha light can. There are other more complicated reasons as well, but the point is, the galaxies were simply hidden from us before, but not anymore. By extrapolating their results, it looks like they found 90% of the distant Universe!
I’ll note: this has nothing to do with dark matter. As it happens, 90% of the matter in the Universe is in a form that emits no light, but affects other matter through gravity. We know it exists, and you can find out why here. We know it exists locally, in nearby galaxies and clusters of galaxies, too. This new result doesn’t affect that, since the now un-hidden galaxies are very far away, like many billions of light years away. They can’t possibly affect nearby galaxies, so they don’t account for dark matter.
I love this study. It’s a great application of simple logic, though it wasn’t so simple to do: they had to use a lot of time on a monster 8 meter telescope to do it! But they were able to answer a question that has been around for some time, and it really does look like they’ve solved it.
And, as always, it makes me wonder what else is lurking out there in space, hidden but for a leap of logic and technology that will allow us to unveil it. Science is all about thinking around problems, and peeking into dusty corners. Sometimes the most interesting things are found there… including, in this case, the vast majority of the Universe!
What the Supposedly Leaked Apple iBooks Pricing Says About the Great Publishing War [Apple]
A rumored peek at bestsellers on Apple's iBooks reveals that the $9.99 ebook is very much alive, suggesting Apple does some pricing flexibility with bestsellers, and books that publishers sell for less than the average $26 hardcover price. More »
