In honor of The International Year of Astronomy 2009, I plan on posting some of my favorite space photos and information/links to relate why they’re special. This is the Tarantula Nebula, about 180,000 light years from Earth and located in the southern constellation Dorado. It is a massive star-birth region in The Large Magellanic Cloud, and also the location of the most recently observed supernova. Compared to the Orion Nebula, which is only 1500 light years distant, it would cover one-quarter of the night sky if it were that close and be visible during the day!
[Read the article.]

I just caught Phil Plait’s post about “The New Doctor Who”, who will replace David Tennant in 2010; after a year of sporadic specials in 2009. The Doctor Who franchise started in 1963, the year that I was born, and now they’ve chosen the youngest Doctor ever, Matt Smith who is 26. That’s only a year older than my son! (He’s even a month younger than the actress who played Rose Tyler in the series!)

I have nothing bad to say, the young man looks very enthusiastic and that’s certainly a requirement for the position. (It’s been commented that Captain Jack will certainly be pleased with this latest regeneration!) I’ve also noticed that this uniquely British series, brought to us by the BBC, always offers us a Time Lord who has a British accent. That’s not a problem or anything, but pretty odd that the ONE REMAINING TIME LORD is so infatuated with England, to the point that his voice and mannerisms are pretty mainstream British. In any case, this should be interesting. I am just disappointed that we only get a couple “special” episodes in 2009, and full production of the series won’t continue until sometime in 2010 because of Tennant’s desire to take a sabbatical as a “stage actor”.

I’ve watched a few movies this week (Eagle Eye, Wall-E…) and if I can get a few things done I might go to the theater for the 4:30 showing of Keanu Barada Nikto movie (The Day the Earth Stood Still). Either that, or I’ll see it tomorrow with Jarrett. Someone told me that I should relax and watch a movie or two this week! First, let me make notes and comments on these magazine articles, before I file them away in a dusty ol’ cabinet.

Thoughts and Musings…

Do you ever read the “50, 100 & 150 Years Ago” column in “Scientific American”? It always amazes me how much our society has changed over these time spans. I think most of us would survive alright if we woke up 50 years ago, or 75 for that matter, despite society being quite different. But, if we had to fend for ourselves much earlier than that, I think we’d be out of luck. Today we have free time, disposable income and technology that couldn’t be imagined a hundred or more years ago. Dropped into 1850 or 1900, we’d be hard pressed to offer a skill that would be marketable and we would find it very difficult to fit in. We would have to deal with disease, industrial pollution, lack of electricity and services we consider necessities (refrigeration, clean drinking water, modern hospitals and dentist). The average person engaged in manual labor and worked six-day work weeks. Their lives would seem awfully spartan compared to the “luxuries” that even the most meager income earns you in America today. Put us back at an even earlier age, and we’d be faced (many of us for the first time) with killing to eat and perhaps living off the land, depending if we lived in a city or not. In any case, there would be a laundry list of basic skills that would be fundamental to survival and self-sufficiency that we would quickly need to acquire. Let’s face it, we fit well into our modern age, but we rely on the contrivances of modern technology and the expanded rights and protections afforded by a more open-minded and egalitarian society and we’d be at a serious disadvantage if these things went away overnight.

In the December issue of Scientific American, Michael Shermer discusses what he calls “Paternicity”, in his column. We know that the human brain evolved to recognize patterns, to make sense out of sketchy data. Our ancestors needed to make quick judgements and decisions based on little data, such as when they heard a rustle in the grass. “Could it be a tiger?” He posits that since the consequences are worse if we underestimate the risk, it leads to our tendency to “believe” something is real when it may not be. Thus, people believe strange things and superstitions that make no sense and run contrary to Occam’s Razor. In the January issue, Shermer discusses further how our “making sense” out of grainy data can be affected by “priming” the brain to favor certain patterns. An example I use is the un-reality “ghost hunting” shows on the cable channels. On these programs, you have your hosts priming you with stories and setting up your brain (that pattern interpretation machine) to accept any spurious noise or motion as likely being caused by something supernatural. Our brains evolved to look for some patterns more than others, like seeing faces, which is why we often think we see faces in tree bark or sand dunes on Mars. We also train our brain to pick out faint voices, particularly those of loved ones. So, it should come as no surprise that some people buy wholly into the scam that listening to white noise (perhaps by having a loved one buried with a cell phone, or by hiring a medium to channel the dead) will let us actually communicate with the dead. Like Shermer often says, “Talking to the dead is easy. Getting the dead to talk back is hard.”

A couple very interesting scientific discoveries may make us reconsider what it takes for life to “get started” and even where in the solar system life might exist. In the December issues of SciAm, Peter Nielsen discusses how a synthetic molecule called peptide nucleic acid (PNA) may lead to the creation of a new and totally alien sort of life in the laboratory. PNA mimics the information-storing features of RNA and DNA, but rather than using a sugar-phosphate backbone, it uses a protein-like backbone that is sturdier. This could lead to new drugs and gene treatments. It also could show us how life might have evolved elsewhere in the universe. Scientists fully expect that life would not follow the same exact path it did on Earth. In another article, by Carolyn Porco, it seems that a closer examination by the Casini probe of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, is giving all indications that the tidal effects of Saturn may be heating the interior of the small moon, giving it a liquid water sea beneath it’s icy crust. This means Enceladus may join a short list of moons and planets that are good places to search for live in the solar system.

The January 2009 issue of SciAm is a special issue on Darwin and Evolution, on the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth. One interesting article examines human evolution, over the past 10,000 years and concludes that the pace of human evolution has actually increased with the advent of agriculture and cities. If we want evidence for evolution, we may need only look as far as ourselves. Homo Sapiens has evolved, perhaps 100 times faster over the past 10,000 years than at any other point in the past 195,000 years (when the first actual member of our species was discovered to exist in Ethiopia). Human ancestors (Hominidae) have been evolving and diverging into distinct species for about seven million years. This all begs the question: What will become of Homo Sapiens in the coming millennia?”

The signs of evolution are all around us, yet we live in a day and age where strict creationist dogma still asserts that the Earth is only 6000 years old and where states (like Louisiana) pass laws that seek to put un-scientific alternatives to evolution on equal footing. Should we be “teaching alternatives” to a round earth, as well? As one article reminds us, “without evolution, modern biology, including medicine and biotechnology, wouldn’t make sense.” It goes to show that despite Nature’s tendency toward evolution, humans often resist the evolution of ideas. In another 1000 years, will humans be advanced and sophisticated with unfathomable technology, or will we be dumbed down by the very laws of nature that brought us to where we are now. Would a time traveller to the future find themselves to be primitive compared to their decedents, or superior as portrayed in the movie, “Idiocracy”?

The Earth is only as flat as you make it…

We mark the passing of time with birthdays and holidays. The seasons come and go. Right now it’s winter in the northern hemisphere, and the days are a bit grayer and shorter, but we are accustomed to that. If the Earth didn’t have a reliable 23.6 degree tilt with respect to its orbit around the Sun, we’d either live in a boring world that never changed, or one that was too chaotic to predict. Yet our world is predictable, and another year has come and gone. We usher out 2008 and welcome 2009 on a happy New Year’s Day.

(On a tangent, no to the conspiracy theorists out there who claim that “global warming” is due to a 26 degree axis shift - that would cause such violent weather as to destroy our crops and kill many millions of people with the side effects. A small fraction of a degree shift in the past turned lush tropical lands in northern Africa into the deserts we know today, so a big change would not go unnoticed by any human. Where do these kooks come from?)

I haven’t felt up to the task of blogging much this past week. There were lots of things to do. My house and mind were cluttered and needed time to relax. To start with, a little over a week ago when my break began, I was pretty tired from work and just needed a break. Less time in front of a computer. Less time tweeting and blogging, more time cleaning and organizing. When our lives are filled with clutter, we are too distracted to do our best. It took a couple days to unwind. A fair amount of time was spent breaking up the ice that built up in my driveway. Ellie had a broken and bloody nail, and I had to put a plastic collar on her so she wouldn’t lick it. (It’s better now.)

I was feeling the pressure of Jarrett’s imminent return, to clean and run errands on Saturday. I got an oil change, took old clothes to Goodwill and bought some shirts for work at JC Penney’s. I picked up a new steel door and storm door at Lowe’s, and then had to take the storm door back the next day to have it swapped with a white one (who orders black storm doors?) I was making good progress, although I still hadn’t gotten to taking down the wallpaper in the living room. Then, when looking for a tool in the basement, I realized the sump stopped working and the basement had flooded. There were only a few things on the floor that were ruined by the water. Some old magazines I didn’t need. So, I was lucky, but I couldn’t let the water sit.

I jiggled the sump and it began to pump again. I tried to use the carpet cleaner to vacuum up many gallons of water, but it wasn’t up to the task. The 15 year old Hoover sucked it’s last bucket of dirty water. I had to find something better, and went back to Lowe’s to see what they had to offer. This is where I found the new love of my life, a 5.75 HP Shop Vac, with a built-in pump that let’s me run a garden hose to the basement drain (many of my neighbors run their sump water out to the street). I vacuumed on Sunday, and put fans out and towels to help dry things. On Monday, after helping the handyman get started on hanging the new doors, I worked until 8pm slowly and meticulously sucking up water in the basement with my new best friend, my little R2D2-shaped Shop Vac.

Yesterday morning, I had the carpet man stop by. I was really sick of the old carpet I inherited in the spare room in the basement. It had always been musty, indicating previous flooding. I also noticed water damage to the drywall around the baseboard. As it turned out, when the sump failed to kick in, not only would water spill out into the sump room (my workshop, next to the great room in the basement that I just had finished and carpeted two years ago), but the water would rise to the level of the foundation and seep in any crack it could find. Thus, the spare room was getting water directly, without it having to run from the pit that the sump was in. So, I was sick of things and got a box cutter and chopped up the old carpet and piece by piece piled up the soaked carpet and pad on my sidewalk. This got rid of the smell, and also let me quickly get an indication of any flooding that might affect the newly carpeted areas.

I arranged my financing and ordered the new upstairs flooring I was planning on changing. Because GCO is allowing me to pay off all the new carpet and wood flooring with no interest over 60 equal installments, I was able to do a lot more than I could have afforded out of pocket. (I have to admit, I’ve gotten easier bank financing, loans and credit increases in the past six months than in the past ten years - despite claims of a ruined economy!) I dumped the old carpet in a dumpster (per arrangement) and bought a new sump and installed it. For the first time in a week I felt confident that I could go to bed last night and not wake up this morning to a new flood. (Hmmm… maybe I should name the Shop Vac, Noah??) I will certainly keep my eye on the basement as we finish off the winter and move into the spring thaw. But, I think this episode is relegated to the annals of 2008, and 2009 will no doubt bring new and different surprises!

To sum up this past year, I’d have to say it was one of slow and steady progress. I spent time with home improvements and organizing, but I also saw progress at work, in my professional activities and travelled to San Francisco, Northern Michigan, Los Angeles and Quebec City for various events and to spend time with family. My extended family seems to be healthy and doing well, and the pets are pampered as usual. I had mysterious medical “issues” early in the year, but other than being sick for March and most of April, I remain fairly healthy and in good spirits. 2008 was a building-year, and I already have quite an active January planned, so I am prepared for a prosperous new year! I am sure that my holiday time will help me reset and refocus before returning to work next week. I needed it, if I do say so myself.