WaveSpace

When I was 12, I read a book about Leschi, a chief of the Nisqually tribe which formerly inhabited the area, around the south Puget Sound. After broken treaties and encroachment by settlers, he led a resistance movement, but was captured and executed. It was just one injustice of many in American history of course. A few years ago, I finally got around to reading Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee which provides a more comprehensive look at our genocidal past. I was surprised to learn that Tucson, my adopted home for many years, was featured in one prominent incident: the Camp Grant Massacre.

The story is that a band of Apache made peace with the U.S. government after years of fighting. They surrendered and encamped near an Army fort, in the area where the Aravaipa and Gila rivers meet, northwest of Tucson, in 1871. However, at the same time, a different band of Apache continued to make raids in southeast Arizona (then a Territory). People were outraged that the U.S. was feeding and sheltering these Apache and when they learned of the attacks, it boiled over. Led and armed by some prominent Tusconans, a gang of white settlers, Mexicans and Tohono O'odham Indians decided to take matters into their own hands. (Mexico and the O'odham both had long histories vs. the Apache). Turns out the camp was mostly women and children, over one hundred in all, but they slaughtered them, only keeping some children for their own (or to sell).

This horrific story has gotten renewed attention in recent years with the publication of three books by three different authors about it: Massacre At Camp Grant, Big Sycamore Stands Alone, and Shadows At Dawn.

Outside of Tucson, the massacre was widely condemned, including a condemnation from then-president Grant. A trial was put together within the same year, but owing to the location of the trial (Tucson), the jurors were sympathetic and return a not-guilty verdict in a matter of minutes. One of the ringleaders was elected mayor soon after and another is remembered principally for the neighborhood that bears his name (Sam Hughes, evidently the guy who provided weapons).

Historian Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, author of the first book, recently gave a talk for the Tucson Archaeological and Historical Society. [As a light-hearted aside (for people of a certain age), if you want to feel young, I can now highly recommend going to a historical society meeting]. He's done some pretty amazing research on the topic and, among other things, presented several strands of evidence that the raids really were not done by Apache at Camp Grant. (I haven't read any of the three books yet, so I don't know if the killers believed this in error, or used it to justify their attack, but they did use it afterwards as a defense when tried in court). Another interesting thing he showed was quotes from anti-Apache editorials in the local paper by a dude named Wasson (the tallest peak in the Tucson Mtns is named after him).

It's not all one-sided of course (my opinion here): the default mode for the Apache in the southwest seems to be one where raiding and terrorizing neighboring peoples is fairly prominent. However, I don't think anyone with a modern perspective would think that what happened in 1871 was in any way justified.

But today, as then, there are still racists who will completely dehumanize any group we happen to be fighting. Furthermore, there is something of a contemporary parallel here in Tucson again, with the spin-up of an unsolved borderlands murder into an anti-immigrant backlash, spurred on by right-wingers in the media and our own elected officials. It even has a similar ring: that the federal government isn't doing enough to protect us or even (among the more paranoid) is aiding the enemy.

Over at GreatVanishing.com, my friend Richard Leis is serializing a (non-fiction) book about what happens when the technological becomes biological--integrated into our bodies and Nature. Throw augmented/virtual reality and artificial intelligence into the mix of world-changing technologies. Follow his site if it interests you anywhere near as much as it does me. This topic has, I'm sure, spawned a thousand dystopian stories, but it can't be all bad, can it? Imagine being able to access, say, Wikipedia, just by thinking about a topic. Hell, imagine being able to edit Wikipedia just by thinking about it! What if, instead of ranked search terms as a measure of a topic's popularity, you could see a live aggregate view of all conscious thought on a subject?

First you need a mind-machine interface (preferably without clunky headgear). I've seen some amazing research in this area, but suffice it to say, it should be possible. Will we become Borg? Now of course the Borg were slaves to their technology, completely lacking in independent will. We will have to find a way to avoid that fate (though for Apple fans, it seems it is already too late).

Besides becoming immensely more capable, by becoming biological, our technology will also become immensely more energy-efficient. It bothers me that, while you always hear about how green technologies cannot by themselves meet the world's growing energy demands, there is no coordinated effort to reduce that growth itself. Our devices are getting better with each new generation, doing more with less power, but the number of devices has increased by a larger factor. However, there is much more room for gains in efficiency.

Would it drive you crazy if ads could be pushed into your thoughts? I guess they could just hit you at a lower level and create, say, the compulsion to buy a particular product. Given all the potential downsides, I think it is all the more important that these future technology platforms be completely open....

Forty years ago, a British mathematician named John Conway invented something he called the "Game of Life." It's not the silly board game you probably played in your youth. It is, rather, a type of cellular automaton or "CA" which is really a very simple type of computer program. The display is a grid of squares. In the grid, any kind of pattern may be placed by filling in squares. The rules of the game--the code of the program in essence--describe how a square will change with each run of the program. For instance, a square remains filled if it has either two or three neighbors. You can see some animated examples on the wikipedia Life page or at this interactive online version. From a set of very simple rules, the behavior is quite unpredictable, even life-like (hence the name) in a crude way.

But just recently, something totally new came about. A student, Andrew Wade, invented a pattern that produces a new version of itself. I.e. it reproduces. This had never been accomplished in the Conway Life CA, though many had tried. It's called a "spaceship" or "glider" because, as each new generation appears, it glides across the grid. It was given the name "Gemini" because of it's dual-lobed structure. You can see a picture of it, though in actuality, it is some 4 million squares in either direction. It takes over 30 million iterations to create the child copy, cannibalizing itself in the process. The scale of these numbers, if it is the smallest self-replicating entity in Conway's Life, give you an idea of why it was only just now invented after 40 years. I say "invented" because it was the product of an intense, concerted effort, using software to build and refine until the goal of self-replication was achieved. Now that's what I call intelligent design.

But could have such a pattern arisen by accident? After all, Conway's Life has been incorporated into screensavers, so it's probably had millions of cpu-hours testing randomly-generated patterns. On Sun's OpenLook desktop, it was the default screensaver, where filled cells used the Sun logo, color-coded with the number of steps that they'd been "alive." However, the grid was only a few hundred cells, and on the hardware it ran on, 30 million iterations would take about a year!

But I'd have to guesstimate that even on a grid with many billions of cells running for many trillions of iterations, Gemini or something like it would be very, very unlikely to occur by pure chance. The rules of Conway Life are extremely harsh, necessitating a very complex pattern to reproduce, as you can see in Gemini with all of it's structure.

The fascinating thing about that is, kinda like a real organism, it has all this defensive structure, which basically allows it to live just long enough to create the copy. As the defensive structure is being broken down, there's a tape structure in the middle, containing patterns that are used to build up the new structure.

Now of course the interesting question is, can we draw any conclusions about the evolution of life on Earth? It's too different I think, the rules are much more complex. Further, by contrast, those rules drive many processes that would tend to build things up: think about tides pushing sediments into pools, being filtered by buoyancy, and pumped with energy. A closer analog may be interstellar space, which you might even model using a CA, to see what it takes to build up, say, amino acids. In his book A New Kind of Science, Stephen Wolfram (creator of Mathematica) tries to make the case that modeling physical processes in terms of simple computational steps (in other words, a CA) can be a good alternative to equations, which is the traditional way, but become unwieldy as the complexity of a simulation grows. This is becoming more common; for example, at our summer team meeting last year, one of the geologists showed the results of a CA simulating the growth of stromatolites.

I never liked Walt Whitman's When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer. It's gotta be one of the most popular sections of Leaves Of Grass, perennially, included in samplings of Great American Poetry, particularly those taught to schoolkids. To me, it came off as kind of anti-science, to the belief that science operates at the expense of wonder, while I believe the absolute contrary, that science is the greatest source of wonder.

Later, I made a re-appraisal: the poem is more about gasbag lecturers who present science as a dry accumulation of facts--they are the ones who've sucked out all the wonder--and it was against them that Whitman, slipping away in the starry night, rebelled.

I was reminded of this poem when coming across ICP's 'Miracles' video, a literal fuck-you to scientists for sucking all the 'magic' out of everything (lyrics). I really wish they had seen it the other way....

But now check out this SNL parody video that mercilessly skewers 'Miracles'!

This week, millions of Arizona citizens will be asking themselves a now critical question: "Could I be mistaken for an illegal immigrant?" Those same citizens have something else in common... their racial appearance. Yes, we have explicit assurances that racial profiling will not be done. In other words, one or more other factors such as activity, behaviour, location (location, location...), dress, etc have to play into the determination. But--let's be honest here--race is always going to be the first-order term in this equation. To meet the definition of profiling, it would have to be the only term in the equation.

And so, because of this new anti-immigrant law, legitimate Arizonans of Latino descent have cause to worry, to imagine scenarios of a sort somewhere between worst-case and every-day, where they are challenged to present their papers. The usual right-wing canard applies: "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear." How fearful would you be, having to ponder the consequences of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong skin color?

Better make sure we always have our driver's licenses handy, they'll say. For some reason, that seems to be an acceptable form of ID, despite the lax requirements to get one. Maybe next year it will be more stringent; liberty being ratcheted down. That family picnic a little ways up the mountain now seems distinctly unwise, better just to go to the park downtown. Fascism in action.

The perception of an illegal immigrant problem outweighs the reality. Yes, there is border violence, there is drug trafficking. Just recently, a rancher was killed. A few years ago, a Park ranger was killed also. These crimes have received a lot of attention. The Mexican teen who was shot and killed for throwing a rock at a Border Patrol agent barely made the news. Hundreds of migrants die in the desert every year, but those who leave water caches for them are arrested for "littering." And many places along the border have had a big increase in crimes in general. What gets people up in arms, however, is not the trouble along the border. I recently overheard a woman in a hospital waiting room complaining vehemently about how illegals were getting treated "for free." I've heard it elsewhere too--these are supposed crimes that have outraged off many middle-class Arizonans--that illegals are an internal friction in the system, taking services without paying taxes. Arizona's right-wingers have, of course, stoked this outrage while benefiting from it politically.

What I've read presents a very different picture. The vast majority of illegals are doing exactly what you or I would do in their situation: find a way to support our families. And it is a fact that there is a substantial labor shortage here in Arizona, but not one in Mexico. Take into account to, that getting into America legally as a labourer is a byzantine process requiring years of persistence. They've committed no crime other than the shortcut to get here. But they're politically an easy target, and it's an election year.

Mary's recuperating from knee replacement surgery, so we've been watching a massload of movies and TV.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Rob Corddry consistently keeps the humor level up, playing a profane, hard-drinking, drug-abusing washout with a Motley Crue fixation. In one scene, he tries to shake down his friend's teenage son for Ritalin, "they're all on Ritalin!" he shouts before ranting about how best to turn the pills into suppositories. Finding themselves back in 1986, he and his friends are alternately struggling ineptly to prevent their destinies and trying outrageously to preserve the future. While very funny, it's basically all crude low-brow humor, failing to make much of a commentary on the 80's, or make clever use of John Cusack and Crispen Glover. Chevy Chase has a small role that could have been used to parody the nutty professor role (like those of Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future or Christopher Walken in Click) but instead falls flat.

Arrested Development: Seasons 1,2, and 3

I never watched this while on the air, and the comparisons to ABC's (very funny) Modern Family got me interested. It's just as funny, but the humor is more clever and witty. Now I can't stop saying "Bob Loblaw Law Blog" and other phrases from the show. According to IMDB, a movie is in the works.

The Hurt Locker

Very intense. First shakey-cam movie to win Best Picture? I like how it tries to present the reality of war in Iraq, completely devoid of politics. Requires you to suspend your disbelief that there could be a guy whose passion is defusing IED's, and who has disarmed nearly a thousand of them!

Precious

Certainly one of the most powerful films I have ever seen. Gabby Sidibe is incredible in the lead role. I can't believe that Howard Stern would say ugly things about her, thus subjecting her in real life to some of the insults her character endures. Mo'nique earns her Oscar several times over, and I'd even go so far as to say that Mariah Carey is perfect in a small but important role as a social worker. Somehow, a film about the worst degradations of humanity, and the most monstrous characters who have lost their humanity, manages to end up giving you faith in our damned species.

Where the Wild Things Are

The plot starts out great, fully realizing the depths hidden in the popular children's book (which was one of my favorites). But, like the character, it gets lost, in a long, aimlessly meandering Act II, that had me all but giving up on the movie. It does so much right: the characters, the costumes, the setting, the creatures. But then it gets boring, really boring, and stays there until the final scenes. I'd read some reviews, so didn't have high expectations, but it failed to meet them (and I'm a fan of everything else Spike Jonze has done).

Shakes the Clown

I'd love to be able to say this (Bobcat Goldthwait's 1990's movie about an alcoholic clown) is an unheralded work of genius, but the truth is, it's little more than average. Rival gangs of clowns (party clowns vs. rodeo clowns vs. mimes) struggle for supremacy in a clown-town (Padookaville) while Goldthwait's clown struggles to stay sober... it does have some funny moments , including Robin Williams as an impatient mime instructor.

Big Fan

Patton Oswald is a lowly Staten Island toll booth worker by day, an obsessed Giants-fan who lives for his nightly sports-talk-radio call-in. It's very, very dark. It reminds me of some classic New York movies like those by Abel Ferrrara, or the early films of Scorcese. Worth watching for the character portrayals.

Whip It

Drew Barrymore's directing debut worked on every level for me. It was original, avoided cliché, had good characters, an entertaining and believable story, and didn't try too hard to be funny or heart-warming.

The Invention of Lying

You probably know the premise: in a world where no one can even conceive of telling the smallest fib, where even fiction does not exist, Randy Gervais plays a guy who discovers lying. Small lies lead to bigger lies, and pretty soon, he has invented religion! Sadly, despite that refreshingly honest take on things, the rest of the movie was pretty standard Hollywood stuff: unrequited love that, through persistence, succeeds in the end (Jennifer Garner plays the love interest, in a slight twist of her 13 Going On 30 character--that was a much better movie).

Hachi: A Dog's Tale

Loosely based on the true story of a dog who became a folk-hero in Japan nearly a century ago, this one is much better than the standard Hollywood pet movie. This is due largely to the great acting (Richard Gere as the man, other fine actors in supporting roles, watch the extras to see how much work they put in with the dogs, one of them is "the Meryl Streep of Akitas"). But it helps that the story is not too contrived; they take the basic story and set in present-day New England. G-rated, kid-friendly, though (as you might expect) quite sad in the end.

Inglorious Bastards

Way too slow; very disappointing. I ended up fast-forwarding through all the pointless dialogue to the few scenes where Nazi's get their violent comeuppance.

Whiteout

A suspenseful mystery set amid the scientific research crews on the Antarctic... sounds great, huh? It starts out (incongruously enough) with a nice Kate Beckinsale undressing/shower scene, and it all goes south (so to speak) from that point onward. Whiteout? They should have called it Blackout... because I wish I had no memory of the rest of this movie! I'm pretty sure the young researchers don't cut loose like drunken frat/soho people at the nd of their tour (but maybe I'm wrong about that, will have to ask some friends who've been down there)!

Surrogates

Good, though predictable, sci-fi set in a near future where people interact entirely through robotic avatars.

2012

I'm trying to think of the few positive things this movie had going for it, and about all I can come up with is the nightmarish level of CGI realism it brings to LA sliding into the ocean, or Woody Harrelson's apocolyptic DJ being consumed by the Yellowstone supervolcano while broadcasting live.

The Lucky Ones

Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams, and Michael Peña as a trio of Iraq vets thrown together in a cross-country trek. Another movie that wisely leaves politics aside and instead focuses on realistic characters and the conflicts they face coming back home plus the reactions they get from people they meet (both positive and negative). Great acting and a number of funny scenes.

Couples Retreat

Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau have played some great character duos (Swingers, Made) but this time around they mostly stick to a script that doesn't give them a lot of chances.

St. Trinians

Brit comedy about boarding school girls run amok that, while funny, falls into a formulaic plot (they have to pull off a heist to save their school).

Moon

Stellar sci-fi that recalls classic stories by Arthur C. Clarke and others, while being completely new. An indie movie that mostly eschews CGI and uses model miniatures like many of the great s-f movies of the 70's and 80's (which was one of the goals of the director, revealed in fascinating Q+A on the DVD extras).

Pandorum

The haunted/infested spaceship has been a plot fixture in so many movies that it practically deserves its own genre. This one seems derivative of all of them.

The Informant!

A compulsive liar leads the FBI on a series of fraud investigations into food giant ADM (based on a true story). Matt Damon has played such a wide range of characters, and done them all so well, that it's almost unremarkable by now.

I enjoyed director Richard Kelly's (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales) film The Box, despite a poor ending that was a let-down and a little inconclusive. It reminded me a lot of a certain class of science-fiction short story that blends elements of horror and mystery and leaves out the futuristic and technical.

Without giving away too much, I will say that it's partly set at a NASA's Langley research center and the story involves an alien response to the Viking 1 Mars lander. And that it shares some things in common with Donnie Darko such as references to philosophy, a sense of nostalgia (to the 70's this time), and the prominent east coast setting, while having stronger sci-fi elements.

It does take time to get to the sci-fi parts, descending slowly and creepily. But ultimately, it felt like the story abruptly ran out. It could have been a great movie, as opposed to a merely good one.

There's a certain mid-70's zeitgeist that writer/director Jared Hess manages to capture in Gentlemen Broncos. These were times when awesomely bad sci-fi/fantasy merged with gender-bending glam rock in the morass of Aquarian idealism and indulgance. Though set in a later time, the story takes place in a small Utah backwater town where eddies of that era remain. The opening credits are artfully rendered using sci-fi paperback covers of this era, both fantastic and gauche.

His earlier film Napolean Dynamite didn't hold a lot of appeal for me. Yet I found this one quite awesomely extraordinary. Maybe that's because it's a story of smart dorks and science fiction instead of dumb dorks and high school. Michael Angarano, the kid from Sky High, plays a teen named Benjamin Purvis writing these absurdly bad sci-fi/fantasy stories, which are brought to life in amazing sequences with Sam Rockwell and others. Ben lives with his mom in a geodesic dome house. His dad died when he was young, and they struggle to make ends meet. Everybody is taking advantage of them; the story revolves around his winning back their honor and getting what he is due.

A smug, egotistical, established crappy sci-fi author, Ronald Chevalier (played with hilarity by Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords), steals a manuscript called 'The Yeast Lords' from Benjamin and gets it published as his own work. Chevalier provides some great comic moments; his douchebaggery goes far beyond plagarism. In one, he ridicules a workshop of teen authors, expounding his formulaic method of inventing character names.

There's a couple of gross-out moments. In one, Mike White (from Chuck and Buck) plays a "guardian angel", sent from their church to be a big brother to Benjamin. He's got ridiculous hair, and arrives wearing all white, with a giant Burmese python on his shoulders. The python takes a huge dump all over his clothes.

The movie has many clever touches, like how the department store Benjamin works part-time in has one-half women's clothing, the other half semi-automatic weapons.

Michael Angarano plays the character of Benjamin perfectly. Initially quiet and withdrawn, as things don't go his way he becomes downbeat. Finally tired of being stepped on, he becomes assertive and takes action. Finally, in the end, when he realizes a victory against Chevalier is at hand, he smiles for the first time, breaking into a wide grin.

Hackability: the freedom to modify the technology you own, in ways that, for example, make it more useful or more interesting. Is it important? To many, it is not. As computers become more like mere appliances (and appliances more like mere computers), it is inevitable that these devices become less hackable, more tightly controlled, less open. Yet others feel that this is a fundamental right--we're talking about devices that you own after all--and we'll lose something important if it goes away.

The argument is peaking lately with Apple's iPad announcement, which promises to be the first widely purchased device with all computing power of a netbook but all the restrictions of the iPhone and iPod Touch.

I'm going to get to my take on the issue in a roundabout way. First, a case study in hackability: podcasting. Contrary to popular belief, podcasting was not invented by Apple. It was invented by people cobbling together software--hacking--on their computers. They took an open format, RSS, to encapsulate audio files and wrote programs, initially in Python (a free and open source scripting language) to do something novel: automate the delivery of home-made radio programs. One of the originators was Adam Curry who wrote the first working prototypes, despite not being a programmer.

So this is the type of software hacking I'm talking about and it's something you won't be able to do on the iPad. Yes, no doubt people will find a way to "jailbreak" them--crack the security protections, but sooner or later, they'll succeed in completely locking them down. Microsoft's XBOX 360 for example, has yet to be cracked. And, of course, you can write iPad/iPhone software, if you purchase a key and own a Mac to write the software on (presumably, those systems will never be locked down). FWIW, no less a person than the inventor of the personal computer and co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, professed that his "favorite gadget" [quoted in the Gizmodo blog] of the moment is an Android device. So the greatest hardware/software engineer of all time is having fun on a platform that is explicitly hackable.

It's also worth point out that a prerequisite for hackability is the freedom to install whatever apps you want, something that Apple has steadfastly opposed (often citing apps for being explicit, or politically objectionable, or for unfathomable and contradictory reasons).

Luckily, there are hackable alternatives to Apple's mobile platforms, so their closed appliance-like nature does not really bother me, except as signs in a disturbing trend. (I don't want all computers to be locked down).

Ultimately, a great deal of innovation comes from hackable systems, as Apple's own early history perfectly illustrates. We need those people who want to push a device beyond what its software A.P.I. provides, or assemble hardware to create new types of devices. Design, be it hardware or software, is an art. They say there are three types of artists: the innovators who roughly pioneer new styles and techniques, the masters who perfect the art form in stunning works, and the imitators, who work within existing genres but lack the genius to push the boundaries. The iPad, like most Apple products since the Mac, is the work of a master; it wasn't the first tablet PC, but it will be the first to really show what the platform is capable of becoming. But those innovators need the instruments to work with too.

Lest you doubt that President Obama can perform miracles, consider this: today he proposed eliminating human spaceflight from NASA's budget and the space activist community did not erupt in outrage; in fact, overall, they seem to like it! Likewise, I definitely support it. Here's why.

Bush's Vision for Space Exploration AKA "Apollo On Steroids" had problems. Principally, it failed to articulate why we should return to the Moon. It's a dead end. Robert Zubrin (founder of The Mars Society) has said, "the Moon will be an interplanetary pay toilet but they'll pay you to make a deposit." He meant that literally, in that the Moon is so poor in organic resources that human excrement would be worth more than gold to any future lunar colonists. Dennis Wingo, writing on The Space Review, cogently points out that we need to justify space exploration in terms of economic benefits that the public can understand. The Moon, in my personal opinion, does not provide that. It's a new Antarctica, a great place for certain types of research such as radio astronomy (on the Farside), but little else for the foreseeable future. It actually costs more, in terms of fuel, to stop at the Moon on the way to destinations beyond.

Those other destinations are where the action should be, and the Obama NASA budget proposal explicitly focuses exploration here. It won't be human exploration, at least in this budget. But by pointing NASA's Exploration division (as opposed to the Science division) in that direction, it lays a foundation for a better human spaceflight program: one that won't be repeating the glories of the past but reaching for new challenges beyond. This 'flexible path' provides a diverse multitude of destinations which have demonstrable economic benefits. First, the Sun-Earth Lagrange points, gravitational islands in space where we already have operating astronomical research satellites and more, including the next-generation Hubble, will be stationed. Repair missions to these could protect our investments in this fundamental research. Next, the Near Earth Asteroids. Sooner or later, we'll need the ability to 'nudge' a potential Earth-impacting asteroid out of the way. These asteroids also contain immense mineral resources and it's not too far-fetched to think that innovative techniques could make some of those resources available to industry here on Earth. Further out, the tiny moons of Mars, asteroids themselves, do provide an economically sensible staging area for missions down to the red planet. And Mars is the ultimate destination, the most Earth-like of planets, the one most rich in resources that humans can use to live.

By proposing robotic precursor missions to these places, the Obama administration is laying out the the boldest vision for NASA since Kennedy's, and one that can pay-off in benefits beyond the "flags and footprints" of national prestige.

These rationales have been advocated by The Planetary Society, by the Augustine panel (an independent task force commissioned by Obama; they recommended a number of alternatives too), by space mission designer Robert Farquhar, and probably many others. It's a credit to the president that he's making decisions that would provide more value for the NASA buck (actually, for every dollar of taxpayer money spent on NASA, about 167 dollars are spent on other things). Congress will fight back--NASA's human spaceflight infrastructure provides for tens of thousands of jobs, particularly in the Gulf Coast states.

Congress may win. Who knows, we may end up with a NASA budget that funds the Constellation architecture (the Ares I and V rockets, the Orion capsule, etc). As an aside, one of the problems with the Constellation plan, in contrast with Apollo, is that it would require two successful coordinated launches, one for cargo and one for crew, for any trips to the Moon or beyond. Instead, Obama calls for a new heavy-lift vehicle.

He also calls for making use of the International Space Station for ten more years, until 2020. The ISS, begun over a decade ago, has only just recently been completed to the point where it can host a crew of six, as originally planned. A few more shuttle missions are scheduled to fully complete it. Since it took twelve years to build, it makes sense to make what good use we can out of it.

Additionally, Obama calls for NASA's budget to be increased incrementally, by about $1 billion a year to support increased R+D and Earth & space science missions. This is exactly what NASA needs to be doing as a core mission: developing technologies that can be turned over to private enterprise, as well as continuing to do space science that lacks a profit motive, but enriches our experience and inspires learning.

Finally, Obama proposes that deliveries to the ISS be outsourced to private enterprise, as the Shuttle is still slated to be retired in a year. There are few companies that could deliver in that timescale, but still, you have to start somewhere. This could be the kick-off of competition that finally begins to reduce launch costs which, ultimately, are the biggest obstacle in the way of further space development.

I watched, giddy with anticipation, of what wonders Steve Jobs would produce today. Some form of tablet, I've long thought, would be the ideal form for the personal computer. When Palm Pilots were the accessory du jour, I hoped for one with with a 8.5x11" screen for better book reading and web browsing. For their time, they were very useful devices (I have two), especially when they added wireless internet, cell phone capability, an MP3 player and a camera. Sadly, the company devolved and has never tried to make a tablet computer.

Microsoft, and its associated PC manufacturers, have had a decade-long experience in this field. These Tablet PC's are essentially just laptops with a slightly different form factor, but with equivalent bulk. They have not been marketed extensively to consumers.

So the iPad is the first attempt by a major player to create a mass-market tablet computer. As such, and because it is Apple, the particulars are very interesting to geeks like me, if not the entire tech-obsessed community.

The iPad name is not catchy, but that's not terribly important. iTab or i1 would have been better. iSlate would have been worse.

As expected, the operating system and user interace is the iPhone OS, a scaled-down version of OS X. When Apple introduced this with the iPhone and iPod touch, combined with the multi-touch interface, it was a major revolution--think of how terrible cell phone interfaces were (and many still are). It doesn't have the jaw-dropping sex appeal that it had in 2007, but there is still nothing better (though Android is catching up).

It's interesting that Apple is trying to position it in a niche between an app phone and a laptop, rather than an uber-device that tries to do everything. I think such a device is possible; for instance, consider an iPhone that you could also dock into any type of display: an LCD when at a desk or a thin book-sized display for around the house, and as always its own display when away. The only computer/camera/phone/whatever you would ever need.

I like the fact that Apple is using an open, DRM-free format (ePub) for books. They have still not fully embraced such formats for music and video unfortunately.

It (and all Apple devices) really should have a built-in card slot for expandability. SD cards are now available up to 64 gigabytes and will go up to 2 terabytes in the near future. Carrying around a few of those is unbeatable bandwidth.

Overall, I have a wait-and-see attitude regarding the iPad, and the anticipated slew of copy-cat tablets. Right now there are too many special purpose computers (gaming system, DVR / media hub, eBook reader, smart phone, laptop, desktop, etc). The challenge for the iPad and any other tablet computer is that they'll have to do better in at least a few of these categories if they're finally going to catch on.

I tried looking for these on grooveshark, but found very few. So it's back to YouTube. The good news is that there are more full tracks this time around (as opposed to stream rips from netradio mixes). The bad news is, the links will probably go bad again eventually.

1. Brace Yourself - Jochen Miller
2. Mumbai - Dan Stone
3. See the Sun [Aurosonic Remix] - (Matt Darey presents) Urban Astronauts
4. Borealis - DJ Eco
5. Pong - Wippenberg
6. Unprepared - Marco V
7. Anjunabeach [Nitrous Oxide Remix] - Above & Beyond
8. Deep Down - (Josh Gabriel presents) Winter Kills
9. Tuvan [Andy Blueman Remix] - Gaia
10. Sahara Nights - Temple One
11. Nothing At All - Rex Mundi (featuring Susana)
12. Maybe Next Time - Robert Nickson
13. Deep Universe [M6 Remix] - Klauss Goulart
14. Starstruck [Jochen Miller Remix] - Be:Gold
15. Metropolis - Gareth Emery
16. RAMsterdam [Jorn van Deynhoven Remix] - RAM
17. Faces - Andy Moor and Ashley Wallbridge (featuring Meighan Nealon)
18. Peace [Sander van Doorn Remix] - Depeche Mode
19. Circles [Andy Blueman Remix] - Robert Nickson
20. Rain [Cosmic Gate Remix] - Armin van Buuren (featuring Cathy Burton)

I saw Avatar a few of weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it was one of the best movie experiences I've ever had. The 3D and CGI effects are amazing; a science fiction world is vibrantly visualized like never before. With this technology (and, currently, tons of money) sci-fi can finally be brought to the screen with little that needs to be left to the imagination (and I suppose that can either be a good thing or a bad thing)!

Some of the reviews have struck me as strange. For example, my good friend Richard Leis found the story anti-technological and anti-progress. Another transhumanist blogger, George Dvorsky, goes several steps further to add that Avatar is anti-corporate, anti-human and is "Gaianist" propoganda. With all due respect... what are they smoking?

Let's recap the story. Many reviews have pointed out similarities in plot to Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, FernGully or Princess Mononoke. None of which I have seen, so I can't comment on that. But here's Avatar in a nutshell: a Western imperialist soldier switches allegience, coming to the aid of aboriginals, leading them to a victory they otherwise would have lost. If set in a historical setting, that would be very condescending, I would think. Set in a future, distant world it is something else; perhaps lacking in creativity you might say, maybe appropriate for a style of retro-pulp Indiana Jones sci-fi, but Cameron doesn't go there. Here's the twist: the world is a living entity, and responds to the crisis with a wave of biological activity that crushes the imperialist invaders. We might add that the imperialists in the story are the paramilitary half of a corporation (the other half is R&D) seeking to mine a mineral needed for the ongoing expansion of humanity.

Now let's examine the charges....

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A first-person perspective

All day, desert broom seeds were in the air everywhere, streaming by in a persistent light breeze from the southeast. Tucson was a chilly 42 degrees in the pre-dawn morning, but less cold in the starting line, sheltered by the downtown skyscrapers. I thought that I'd be early, arriving at 6am, but by the time I got to the start, thousands and thousands of cyclists were already queued up, filling solid four or five city blocks. I squeezed into a spot in the 'Bronze' block. It seemed appropriate: in 1992, I'd done the 10th annual El Tour de Tucson in 7 hours 38 minutes [the best riders do it in under 4.5 hours], good enough for the 'Bronze' category [I think they've since changed the medal ranges]. Back then, it was a couple of miles longer, and went clockwise around the city.

So it was a little bit of a trip down memory lane as well--distant memories, faded by 17 years, almost half my life, and encountered in reverse. The dry Santa Cruz river crossing, complete with a Mariachi band serenading us. The dry Sabino Creek crossing at Canyon Ranch. The long stretch of Tangerine Road, thankfully now a descent.

Midway between these two rides, sagging like an overburdened hammock, the late 90's and early aught's, I had been pretty out of shape: over 170 lbs, high cholesterol, lacking energy. Now, after a few years of running seriously and a year or so of cycling, I feel in better shape than ever: most of those extra L.B.s had been dropped, cholesterol cleaned up... probably could do it in 6.5 hours, I hoped.

7am, dawn, rider #201 was ready to go. The start was given. But there were so many riders ahead, it was four or five long minutes before we could even start moving. We joked. "I'd just be a hazard up front," said the guy next to me. "I'm a hazard back here," I replied.

But eventually, we did get started, slowly, the streets packed curb-to-curb with riders. We covered the first few blocks at a walking pace. One rider a little ahead went down but popped back up unhurt.

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So I put together this playlist of all my favorite Porcupine Tree songs that would fit on a 80-minute CD. I realized afterward that, unintentionally, they all deal with tragedies of various sorts, from the personal to the planetary (more often the latter), though with a particularly British sense of detachment and even whimsy, and always with great music. I guess these guys just like writing songs about the end of the world!

You can stream it for free with an iMeem account (they have agreements with the major labels) or download on iTunes.

1. Stars Die

"The Moon shook...." There actually was a monk in the 13th century who witnessed a large impact on the Moon, and watched the surface ripple. But in this song, we're confronted with the fact that, yes, stars die, civilizations end, or are forced to flee their solar systems. A nice touch is the audio of the greeting from Richard Nixon to Apollo 11; imagine it radiating outward ahead, endlessly, ever more faint....

2. A Smart Kid

Another beautiful song, almost a lullaby... about escape from the end of the world!

3. Even Less

What a subtle touch of genius, to take the audio of a numbers station (cryptographic messages sent in the clear) as a metaphor for the mystery of a suicide, for hidden reasons that rational minds cannot comprehend?

4. Last Chance To Exit Planet Earth...

Is that Ti or Do (the cult leader of Heaven's Gate)? Anyway, what a great, weird song. I heard this first on Radio Paradise and it sparked my interest in Porcupine Tree. (And, FWIW, read about Radio Paradise in Linux Journal!)

5. Time Flies

"I was born in '67, the year of Sgt. Pepper...." I recognize riffs in this song from Dark Side and Animals, but hey, take from the best!

6. Radioactive Toy

"Give me the freedom to destroy...." A precautionary tale?

7. Space Transmission

Creepy. Lovecraftian?

8. Every Home Is Wired

Very Twilight Zone. You think it's utopian, but then the theme is twisted and turned on its side....

9. The Sound Of Muzak

"One of the wonders of the world is going down..." the heat death of independent radio?

10. The Sky Moves Sideways

This is the live version from the album Coma Divine.

Dystopian Dreamland

An audacious set of guidelines for health care reform. How dead in the water are they? It seems to me that it combines the benefits of nationalized health care with the inefficiencies of a deeply regulated hierarchy of public-private partnerships, while preserving a core flaw of our current system--the idea that health care can be a profit-making enterprise. If you're a health insurance company, and you can't turn anyone down, how do you grow your profits? Simple, you add as many customers as possible by buying up smaller companies, etc. The logical outcome is Wal*Care. Still, in the long run, it may be better than what we have now. There was a nice moment with the Republicans sitting there, shi**ing brix, while Obama mocked them with the hollow promise of 'demonstration projects' for their ideas.

Here's a few thoughts on District 9 without spoilers.... District 9 is great science fiction with a social message, although it doesn't beat you over the head with it, big Hollywood style. It's comparable to a really good short story rather than a condensed version of a novel. Most science fiction readers I've met claim to prefer novel-length stories, if not multi-volume epics. I've don't really understood why.

And it's real science fiction, not glorified space opera or thinly veiled action (though it does have some elements of that in a middle section that shifts away from the documentary-style technique in the rest of the movie). It seems that filmography is getting to the point where sf can be realized with enough believability that a lot of great stories could be adapted to the screen with this gritty, realistic feel!

Tuesday July 14

Joe and Ann Decker are close friends of the Dunkley's. They're retired; he from the Park Service and she as a schoolteacher. He worked as a ranger in Canyonlands and Arches before coming up to Glacier. They have us all over for lunch, Chicago-style hot dogs, buffalo burgers, strawberry pie... Joe suggests that the Mt. Brown Lookout trail would be a good one to do.

That evening, Mary and I plus her parents went to see BeauSoleil at a small concert hall in Whitefish. The lead guy, Michael Doucet, gave neat little intros to each song. They play Cajun music. Although nearly all of the songs were in French, the music was great. He told a few jokes. One starts out with "We have a mountain in Louisiana too." (I'm thinking, "What? No way!"). It ends with "It's 339 feet tall; used to be 342 but people kept walking on it!"

Wednesday July 15

I start out early to do the Mt. Brown Lookout hike. Glacierhikers.com lists it as Brutal, one step above Strenuous. I'm a little apprehensive, not for that reason, but because it's my first solo hike in Glacier, and encountering a bear is always a possibility. If I had to use the bear spray (a little can of very strong pepper spray, meant to discourage a charging bear), could I do it without freaking out?

Heading up the highway, I put the Foo Fighters on random, and, ironically, some of the lyrics that come up on the drive are "I'm alone and an easy target" and "what I need now is a little resolve...."

I park at Lake McDonald Lodge and take a few photos of the interior, then start over to the trailhead. Coincidentally, there's a group of five college-age girls starting out at the same time. We chat a bit on the trail; they're heading up to Sperry Chalet and back for something like a 20-mile day hike, so our paths diverge.

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Sunday July 12

My six-panel panorama of the lake in the morning (when it was indeed very Tranquil) did not turn out: not only was it partly overexposed, but I'd carelessly left a gap between two frames. autopano-sift can do amazing things: but only if you give it enough data to work with!

The hike, amazingly, did not leave me very sore, so I ran five miles in the midday, before feeling tight. I didn't quite make my goal of a 30-mile week, but WTF, with 26 it was double my average.

Mary's oldest brother James, his wife Aly and their family came over; we had a massive supper of home-cooked sausage/chicken gumbo and jambalaya. Their son Alexander just had his 1st birthday the week prior, where there was much cake and presents. He's just getting to the "da-da" speech stage and taking his first steps. Crawling around the living room, he discovered a shoe box on a low shelf. Curious, he opened it up; it was filled with receipts. He started taking out receipts, one by one, and setting them aside. I sat beside him and would grab a receipt, tell him "thank you" and collect them in a pile. This went on until the box was almost empty! We were joking that he'd be a banker or an accountant when he grows up....

Monday July 13

My other nephew is Scott, who's a sophomore in high school; he's really into golf and skiiing. But I don't really do either, so on this day we set out to hike the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park. It was cloudy and cool mid-morning starting out from Logan Pass. A mountain goat casually strolled right by us on the trail. Clouds were rolling up and over Haystack Butte, and soon we were enveloped in the mist. Visibility dropped and it got colder, but we kept hiking, knowing that Granite Park Chalet wasn't too far ahead. At about the midpoint, rain turned to sleet, and I was soaked, and cold.

The stupidest thing I had done in packing for the trip was to purposefully skip taking waterproof pants, despite the fact that it would have been only a few more ounces. So there I was, hiking in soggy blue jeans, having to keep hiking to stay warm. At one point, rounding a corner, an intense wind nearly knocked us down. Scott shouted to be heard, "Should we keep going?" "Yeah!" I responded. We reached the chalet before too long. Many other hikers were taking refuge in the small dining hall. After a 30-minute break for lunch, we were back on the trail. The rain let up, and we blazed down to the Loop, ahead of our expected arrival time.

So it was mostly a slog; I'll have to do this trail again some other time when the (supposedly spectacular) views are not fogged over....

Saturday July 11th

A chilly morning; despite the thermals, the borrowed bag did not keep me as warm as I hoped. But I did sleep soundly. By the time the sun hit the tent I was up and out. It warmed up quickly and I switched to shorts and a T-shirt. John was all set up for breakfast and cooked a whole pack of bacon, four eggs scrambled and hot cocoa!

While John fished, I wandered, hoping to get to the top of the rim. I should have taken a direct route behind the camp, but I stupidly chose to go halfway around the lake, then up. The trail petered out, leaving two poor options: bushwhacking through thick, shoulder-high huckleberry, or a water-logged path at the edge of the lake. Getting up to the top of the rim no longer seemed worth it so I returned to camp.

The other guys had done some fishing; we packed up and headed out by around noon. I packed a couple of broken-off stromatalites from the outcroppings that were all around the campsite. These can be some of the oldest fossils on Earth, formed by mats of blue-green algae in shallow seas.

After some consultation, we decided to follow the stream for a more direct route down. It quickly turned dangerous in and around the creek, so we blazed a trail tangent to the chute. I led, pushing through incredibly thick patches of huckleberry, into dense fir forest, down precipitous brush-covered slopes, hanging on to branches with every step. I slipped a few times but was having fun until hitting the edge of a cliff and began to think we might have to back-track. John consulted his map and led us down an even steeper section, then across, eventually leveling out. We crossed another stream, crawled through a dog's hair thicket of alder bushes and soon caught the trail.

The crazy bushwhack had probably saved some time; we had descended at least halfway. The trail seemed steeper than it had coming up. It was hot in the sun, fairly cool in the forest. Within 90 minutes we reached the trailhead.

J had seemed to be doing okay on the way down, but was puking again in the stream (upstream!) at the trailhead. The two dweebs got in the back and rode mutt as we sped off, windows open. John asked them if they wanted to hit the A&W but Jason answered, "Nope. We're broke." That was that, we dropped them off at his trailer in Columbia Heights and wished them well.

Walking into the A&W, all stiff-legged, in dirty stinky clothes.... I inhaled a bacon cheeseburger; don't even remember what it tasted like.