Toaster sent me this link with a comment saying I would probably like it. There's no probably - it's as beautiful as the first one if not more. Four of my favorite "faces of science" in one video! Sagan's still the cutest, athough Feynman would be a hoot to hang out with.




Meanwhile I'm having an awesome night! My aunt and uncle are visiting from NY, and we had them up for dinner. I made chili and John made tamale-stuffed peppers. I also did a big ole cheese tray for snacking and heated up a store-bought cherry pie for desert. Then we made them watch the IT Crowd (which they loved - cuz they are crazy cool) and now we're watching Criminal Minds and CSI:NY, which I had better get back to before I miss something important. :)

When I was eight or nine I wanted to marry Carl Sagan. Sigh.

The whole presentation was wonderful. Some awsometastic person has posted all of it; this clip is part 10 of 10 as you can see. Anyway, this clip contains my favorite portion of the presentation. He fields a question asking as you are the current "face of science" for this generation, who is your favorite of the previous faces of science: Sagan, Burke, Clarke, etc. His story about Carl Sagan made me cry. I wanted to marry Sagan when I was five. :)

Start around 3:30 for the question and his beautiful response.




Through some lucky turn of chance, I timed returning home just in time to catch him on Book TV. :)

Our Friday Science lecture for the month of January was Dr. Kenneth Ford, Director of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. http://www.ihmc.us/

I am hoping they will post a video or audio of his lecture, because it was too cool for words. Also, I didn’t take good notes because I was just darn enthralled with what he was saying. He talked a little bit about sensory substitution and showed a pictures of some soldiers who lost their sight from IEDs in Iraq using a special set of glasses his company created. The idea is that you don’t see with your eyes, they just take in sensory data. You see with your mind, and the soldiers’ minds were fine. They just needed to switch form DVD output 1 to output 2. So they put cameras on sunglasses and made some sensory thing that you placed on your tongue. The tongue is ideal because it’s got loads of nerve endings, is close to the brain (for bandwidth speed), and is wet (for electric current). The TONGUE gets the sensory data and sends it to the brain to see the images! He said it’s like looking through a tunnel, no peripheral vision, but it’s better than no vision. One of the soldiers, upon getting the glasses, just stared at his baby son for hours and hours. He told a funny story about attending a lecture in a very very very famous northern school where the lecturer (not a scientist) talked about humans evolution leading the eyes to be on the head for better distance viewing – the higher up they are the more they see. He then said this lecturer must have never heard of snakes or dachshunds, and he went on to say the eyes are where they are because they are close to the brain. Apparently as a design system we are a bit inefficient and it takes too long for messages to get from one part of our body to another, so putting the eyes really close to our brains speeds things up for us. Believe it or not, that was really funny and interesting when he said it.

He also talked about Legged locomotion and showed some exoskeletons they have created. They go over one's legs (or arms or whatever) to make you more powerful. Very $6000000 man/T1/T2. They were designed for the military to make stronger soldiers, but they have the side effect of being really helpful to people who have lost their legs (arms) – including soldiers returning from wars. As a part of the clips he showed of the various exoskeletons, he also showed some of the robots they built that were designed to not need humans (TBot). I recognized a few of the robots from some of our YouTube nights, which was cool and scary. I would love for him to come to our YouTube parties. He narrates as the robots walked, and he was funny. In one, his coworker is beating the robotic legs with a broom to try to destabilize it. He said “It seems to have sped up. I’m getting away from this guy!” For the “flamingo” robot with backward hinged legs he said something like “we added music to the background for this one because we found it makes him seem more graceful. Without the music it’s not nearly as impressive.” For the DARMA-doglike-robots-climbing-over-rocks competition (not the real name) they programmed their robot to throw himself down after crossing the rocks because 1) they thought it would look cute to fall at the DARMA judge’s feet (suck up!) and 2) it was faster to fall across the finish line than to walk across it so it shaved seconds off their time. The next year, he said, *everyone’s* fell across the finish line. (It was adorable, he was totally bragging. He even showed a bar graph elaborating on how much better their robot did than MIT and others in the competition.)

The majority of his talk was about going back to the moon! Which was awesome!!! So many pictures, so many videos, so many schematics of the moon rover he worked on. In addition to the cool amazing sciential parts of it, he told a lot of personal stories about the astronauts and engineers. My favorite part was when he showed the clip of President Obama at the inaugural parade watching the rover. He made some very giggleworthy comments about his coworkers standing there. He recently had surgery on his arm, so he himself couldn’t attend the parade. He pointed the other engineers from the project marching alongside the rover and said NASA doesn’t have uniforms so they probably all ran out together to buy matching khaki pants. Then he said all the hotels were booked, so NASA set up a tent for everyone to sleep in and IT WAS FREEZING so the other engineers kept sending him emails (because of course the tents had wifi, it’s NASA) saying “we hope your arm *really* hurts.”

This has now become my favorite of the lectures. My other favorites were the volcano one because it was very well done and really held my attention, especially as I didn't have much of an innate interest in volcanoes before attending AND the breeding rabbits one because I got to hold a rabbit for 75% of the lecture. I wish some of my friends could have been there. I ended up sitting next to Ray Sansom!!


(PS right now I'm eating raw brownie - mmmmmm)

I read about this cool race called Escape from Berkeley in an article from the NY Times called Race Starts with Little Fuel, and Goes Uphill from There. People build or modify cars to run on anything but gas, and then are given the equivalent of one gallon of whatever their source is and told to race to the finish line in Vegas. Other than their initial gallon, they have to scavenge for the fuel source. The descriptions of the contestants and their vehicles are both impressive and adorkable. I was particularly impressed with the Alabama farmer who converted his truck to run on wood. He took a table saw with him on the race!


Also, I haven't tried it yet, but there's a new chatbot that almost passed the turing test. Here's an "interview" he did with New Scientist. I'm about to try out their link and see if I can chat with him myself. He's responses to the interview wouldn't have fooled me so much as annoyed me! LOL! He is very good at talking around questions. Then again, so is the author of the book I'm currently reading...

EDIT - OMG Raven, go to the chatbot's website. He speaks German!!
EDIT EDIT - He's got a funny blog, too.

I'm totally serious. My name is going to go flying around the earth! Woot! I printed out a copy of the certificate and it’s pinned to my bulletin board at work. LOL!

NASA site so you can participate

Even better, I have another excuse to use this space shuttle icon! I'm so happy. :)

Anyway, here's more info on the program. Deadline to participate is November 1st.

Send your name around the Earth on NASA'S Glory mission

WASHINGTON – Members of the public can send their names around Earth on NASA's Glory satellite, the first mission dedicated to understanding the effects of particles in the atmosphere and the sun's variability on our climate.

The "Send Your Name Around the Earth" Web site enables everyone to take part in the science mission and place their names in orbit for years to come. The Web site, where participants can submit their information, is located at:

http://polls.nasa.gov/utilities/sendtospace/jsp/sendName.jsp

Participants will receive a printable certificate from NASA and have their name recorded on a microchip that will become part of the spacecraft. The deadline for submitting names is Nov. 1, 2008.

The Glory satellite will allow scientists to measure airborne particles more accurately from space than ever before. The particles, known as "aerosols," are tiny bits of material found in Earth's atmosphere, like dust and smog.

"Undoubtedly, greenhouse gases cause the biggest climatic effect," said Michael Mishchenko, the Glory project scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "But the uncertainty in the aerosol effect is the biggest uncertainty in climate at the present."

Glory will carry two scientific instruments, the Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor, or APS, and the Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, and two cameras for cloud identification. The APS instrument will help quantify the role of aerosols as natural and human-produced agents of climate change more accurately than existing measurement tools. The TIM instrument will continue 30 years of measuring total solar irradiance, the amount of energy radiating from the sun to Earth, with improved accuracy and stability. Understanding the sun's energy is an important key to understanding climate change on Earth.

Glory is scheduled for launch in June 2009 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Glory will orbit as part of the Afternoon Constellation, or "A-Train," a series of Earth-observing satellites. The A-Train spacecraft follow each other in close formation, crossing the equator a few minutes apart shortly after 1:30 p.m. local time each day. The A-Train orbits Earth once every 100 minutes.

Our power was out for about four or five hours today. Thankfully it was coolish outside because of the overcast skies or the flooding (it went back and forth between the two) and the wind blowing helped to keep the temperature down, as well, so even though we had no A/C it never got hot in the house. At one point the wind was so wild that I got really afraid and stood in the hall for a little bit. My husband, of course, went outside to watch the trees. After being assured it wasn't a tornado I gave up and went outside, too. It was really pretty.

I finished Number: the language of science ... , and while I did enjoy it, it certainly got a bit above me mathematically. Still, I quite liked most of it. My favorite parts were the idea of number sense, Gematria, and the many controversies and arguments as mathematics grew and defined itself. If only I knew how to do superscripts; I would love to share my favorite section from the book. I'm going to try... There is a formula: e/\i*pi + 1 = 0 that has actual mathematical use but was loved metaphysically because it can be called the mystic union "in which arithmetic was represented by 0 and 1, algebra by the symbol i, geometry by pi, and analysis by the transcendental e." All that math and I liked the crazy mystic symbology. Oh, also loved that in the "further reading" section the authors recommended Simon Singh. :)

**EDIT:** Down in the commentszarathud posted the equation with superscript as it is supposed to look. Yay! **end EDIT**

The other day I made a bunch of St Michael the Archangel icons. I want to make a nice cross and a nice nativity scene, too. ( the actual artwork were so beautiful )
But I wanted to try anyway.

And my reunion was pretty cool. I didn't see the people I most wanted to see; with the exception of two people, my best friends from high school didn't attended. But I did see three people I really enjoyed in classes even if we didn't hang out outside of school. I was really excited to see them. I also saw a couple I didn't know well in school but were friends with someone I dated in college, so I got to catch up with them. I got to see someone I was in college classes, and we swapped email addresses so I'm hoping to keep in touch with her. Best of all, I got to get better acquainted with someone I knew but was more friends with my friends than with me. I wish I had known him better in high school; he was really cool. He married someone who graduated two years before me so there was lots of catching up. He and Monkeys hit it off, I think, which was really nice. Anyway, the gatherings were nice but way too noisy, I was still too shy to converse with people, and I wish I had been braver and able to talk to the slightly familiar faces. Still, I'm glad we went. I'm even more glad that eight of us cut out early and went to Basken Robbins for ice cream and easier conversation!

For some reason this really impressed me -

Navigating seals perform a star turn
11 June 2008
NewScientist.com news service
SEALS in the open ocean may be able to navigate by the stars.

Whales, sea lions and seals exhibit a behaviour called spyhopping, where they stick their heads out of the water, apparently surveying their surroundings. This led some biologists to suspect that these mammals might use the stars for navigation.

Björn Mauck of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and colleagues used a specially built pool planetarium to test two harbour seals on their ability to recognise and orient themselves by the stars. The 5-metre round pool was covered by a dome onto which was projected a simulation of the northern sky, with about 6000 stars.

The team highlighted a particular star with a laser pointer, rewarding the seals for swimming towards it. They found that even when the whole sky was rotated at random, the seals could still home in on the star with very high accuracy (Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-008-0156-1).

"Seals and many other animals are exposed to the starry sky every clear night, and thus certainly have sufficient opportunities to learn the patterns of stars," says Mauck.

The seals' technique appears to be similar to that of Polynesian sailors, who traditionally linked stars to spots on the horizon where they rise.

From issue 2660 of New Scientist magazine, 11 June 2008, page 16

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19826605.000-navigating-seals-perform-a-star-turn.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

Okay, thanks to iGoogle I discovered a really cool artist named Edward Monkton. I love him! I love his little hearts and stars and scribbles. I love his bright colors. I love his adorable line drawings. I love his cute little critters with occasionally unnerving comments. They are indeed interesting thoughts. Occasionally creepy, occasionally thought provoking, occasionally heartacheingly sweet.

The INTERESTING thoughts of Edward Monkton

Samples of my three favorites I found on google...


I'm still enjoying Numbers but I had to take a break to review multiplication and addition of radicals. I also had to look up the word "surd". I'm sure I never learned that ... but maybe. Crazy how much you forget. I can hear myself reading "lalalalalala" in place of reading a4+2b3 + 7p2 + q = 0 or whatevers in the text. I was debating reviewing imaginary numbers before continuing; however, my goal for this book isn't to learn/relearn math but to share in the joy of it's discovery (or deduction) so I decided to plunge forward regardless. I will figure it out on my own as I go. If numbers can be transcendental than so can I.

Yay!!! Been looking forward to this ever since saw the previews at some movie. :) :) :)
Discovery Channel.

I am reading Number...the Language of Science and highly recommend it. I'm only on chapter 3 and it has become my favorite science book I've read thus far.

When I bought it I read enough of the cover to know the principle of the book (how the concept of number evolved from the beginnings of time to the 20th century) but I did not grasp until after the preface that it was written in 1930. I suppose the quote on the cover "This is beyond doubt the most interesting book on the evolution of mathematics which has ever fallen into my hands. - Albert Einstein" should have given me a clue.

Anyway, the date of origin isn't that big a deal when you are looking at the birth of number and number theory but two things have struck me so far. His disregard for binary (the book predates computers, binary got a one paragraph mention about it's use in calculation machines - LOL!) and in chapter three "number lore" there's a mention of Fermat and his infamous margins with the implicit "still to this day has not been solved dun dun dun..."

Otherwise the origin of number words and concepts is so totally fascinating everyone needs to read this book.

Twice now I've forgotten to send a link so I'm posting the entire article because it's fascinating.

( Platypus genome is as weird as its looks )

From New Scientist How cool! First city that will be truly eco-friendly.

From New Scientist Soyuz capsule: How cool is it that someone drove up in a truck and helped them out?!? That would so be us!!! Not that I'm hoping a spacecraft will crash land around us on a Saturday night.... but come on!! How cool!

… Whitson described the ordeal today during press interviews at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. For one "very long" minute, she said, the astronauts suffered forces of 8.2 times normal gravity - nearly double the force they'd expect on a normal descent.

She compared it to having several people sitting on her chest. "It was pretty stressful just trying to breathe - I could also feel my face getting squished back," Whitson said. Of the landing, she added: "Everyone had told me to kind of expect a car crash at the end. I'd say that was a pretty accurate description."

On the ground, a hand reached into the capsule and Whitson assumed the rescue forces had arrived. But she was actually helped out by some local folks who had spotted the capsule and driven over in their truck. One spoke to Russian crew member Yuri Malenchenko.

"They asked Yuri where the boat came from," said Whitson. "He's like - what boat? They were referring to the capsule. It took him a long time to explain that we actually had been in space." …


Finally, I forgot to send the link to this so there's a short article behind this cut about Monday's early morning upcoming ( Aquarid meteor shower to peak on moonless night )

Yesterday’s seminar was outstanding and I wanted to jot some notes down so that I don’t forget how much I enjoyed it…

Here’s the press release (modified a bit) and after that a really long summary of the parts I found most interesting. (Sadly, it’s more about her experiences their than about her discoveries!)

( press release )

Alison Beauregard teaches Natural Disasters and some other science classes here at my college and is in charge of the Friday Science Seminar program. I’m used to her introducing the speakers, but today was special. Not only was it the last seminar of the season, not only had it had been a very successful first season, but the final speaker of the season was her big sister and you could tell she was proud of that fact. Her introduction was the last half of the press release word for word except at the very end she tagged on the line "ladies and gentlemen, *my sister*" with a huge smile.

Her sister came up and her first comment was she was relieved after hearing the introduction because she was a little nervous about what her little sister was going to say about her. (laughter) Then her voice became a little accusatory and said to the 70-100 people assembled that when Alison invited her to speak she was told it was going to be a "small group affair" so she was thrown by the large number present. (more laughter) But she was excited to get to talk about her own research for a change instead of her normal lectures and she dove right in to it.

• Krakatau is not pronounced “Krakatoa” like I’d always heard. It’s “Krakatau”. This was the first major volcanic eruption in the days of the telegraph and the first message sent out the world has a typo! So it stuck. That’s actually similar to how my husband’s home town’s name went from Neshboro to Neshkoro. The map maker misspelled it and the town had to change all their signs!

• Serendipity = free trip to Java! - ( How to con the BBC into flying you to an errupting volcano )

• It’s A Science Boat! – Was this a well-funded trip? Didn’t sound like it. Their "Science boat" was only a science boat because there were scientists on it. It was a modified fishing boat that had no science equipment on board. I don’t have the numbers memorized but it was something like this – 7 scientists, 7-man television crew, 1 National Geographic photographer, and 40-man ship crew. She was the only girl. She was the only girl. And not only were the islands hard to sail to from Jakarta, they had no shores. So they had to stay on the boat when they weren’t working. No camping. The crew had to take turns sleeping because there weren’t enough bed for everyone.

• The Glamour of Television – ( Do not trust documentaries! )

• Her advisor is famous with National Geographic, by the way. I’ll try to get his name but she said he gets mentioned on that channel about once an hour. Some people in our audience recognized his name and giggled.

• On Their Own – ( It was a good thing the TV crew left, but to leave they had to take the boat. )

• Camping with monsters - ( She insisted on the middle tent so to have someone on either side of her. )

• Fire in the hole! – ( The whole time they were there working the new volcano was erupting. )

• Results – ( she did get some science in there )

Some website with more Krakatau info

Sorry so long! Mostly for me :)

Remember the coolest counselor in the world from the Duck post yesterday? This is what he sent me today... The title of his email was "The Ultimate Peepshow".


I'm so tired. My new job plus the pottery class plus social life have taken a bit of a toll and I'm exhausted. But on the bright side droidgirl's mom gave me a peppercorn cheese ball tonight at a Mary Kay party so life is beautiful. There is nothing like going to a Mary Kay party where the four people in the room (including the host) do not wear makeup because they do not like makeup. That poor MK Consultant!! She put on a good show and everyone was really polite. We actually had a good time because she was animated and we enjoy each others company. However, I'm sure it was like pulling teeth for her. Lots of blank stares, poor girl.

OH! And it's pi day!!! (3/14) So I ate pie today! Droid's mom made mini pecan pies for Droid's party, too. She's a really good cook!!!

And because I'm an idiot... ( New Plantes = New Mnemonic )

And, for those curious about the new planet order mnemonic, the Wired article also talks about the girl who won the National Geographic competition– ten year old Maryn Smith of Great Falls, Montana suggestion was "My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants."

For some reason I can’t keep the "carpet" or the “sailed under” in my head. I want to say “showed us” and a carpet can't really show you something so I forget the C word and spend so much time trying to remember the mnemonic that I actually forget the planet order I do know. Alas.

For my friends who are StarGate fans...
Space.com did a review of the new movie (possible spoilers depending on what you consider spoilers) and I loved the description of some of the extras on the DVD. Toaster and I got to see Chris Judge on a panel at Dragoncon and he was hysterical. :) This brought back memories. DVD Review: 'Stargate: The Ark of Truth'
***************

Plus, Space.com had a cool article about alien contact in real life. I think this was written in response to suggestions for what to include in a first contact type beam from Earth (as opposed to the stuff sent out on Voyager). The Doritos commercials and Beatles songs from my earlier posts weren’t part of a planned continuous broadcast to space in a focused attempt to contact other cultures. But apparently SETI is considering doing just that and odds are the beings receiving and translating that message will be considerably more advanced than our own. So what do we send? Most people seem to think send the best of the best to impress and make a good first impression. But this guy thinks differently. I’m editing the heck out of this because really I just wanted to share *embracing imperfection* because that paragraph made me giggle but to get the joke you need these other two paragraphs…

… But perhaps even more impressive to an advanced civilization would be a more balanced presentation that reflects honestly on our foibles and shows a certain self-awareness of our imperfections. When looked at in this light, perhaps even a description of our somewhat primitive science, mathematics and technology could be illuminating to extraterrestrials.

A Measured Response … What might surprise ET is how well humans get by, even when we are a bit inaccurate. Though we now know that the value of pi is 3.14159 ... (and on it goes into infinity), earlier mathematicians used much cruder estimates of pi. For example, when wise King Solomon was planning a bathing area in the great temple he was constructing, its specifications indicated that the pool would have a radius of 5 units and a circumference of 30 units. If you plug these numbers into the equation for calculating the circumference of a circle, you'll see that the value of pi was estimated to be 3. While this number underestimates pi by about 5%, by all accounts, the temple turned out to be quite spectacular. Perhaps the most important message that ET could gain from this example is that in spite of our imperfections and miscalculations, we humans are capable of moving forward, sometimes with a fair amount of style.

Embracing Imperfection Indeed, rather than continually focusing on ways that we as a species are superior beings, perhaps as we attempt to make contact with ET, we should take the opposite approach. As a species we are, to put it bluntly, quite imperfect. More often than our egos would like to admit, we snap at our spouses, forget appointments, pay our bills late and round off important mathematical constants to the nearest integer. …

Oh come on! That was funny!!! The article is good, too. Like I said, this is just part of the article. The full piece can be found here: How we present ourselves to aliens

Furthering the “Why I love my husband” post from before…

Yesterday he came out of his Apple room with an odd smile about his face, a sweet look in his eye, and one hand hidden behind his back. I was excited! Or at least I was excited until he commented that his back was itching. I pouted and told him he wasn’t allowed to use body language that implied he had a special secret gift for me behind his back if he couldn’t deliver so he made a “wait right there” gesture and went back into his computer room. A few seconds later he was back in the living room with a ukulele and serenading me with “You Are My Sunshine” – a song he always sang to me at the end of every date through the mesh netting of my parent’s front screen door. Apparently a month ago he brought a ukulele from a local pawn shop and has been keeping it hidden in his computer room, practicing the chords on weekend mornings while I’m still asleep and in the 15 minutes in the afternoons when he beats me home from work and has the house to himself. It was going to be a surprise for our wedding anniversary in April. How incredibly sweet is that?!?!!??! If course, now I don’t get an anniversary surprise but that’s okay because an out-of-the-blue Sunday surprise is just as good.

*************************************************************
Also, though not as romantic as my Sweetie, I love New Scientist Magazine!
Their articles are always interesting and even when technical are still understandable to a layman like me but....sometimes they are rather funny. This is a short one written by one of their interns -

Are we sending the right message to ET?

It's midnight on a far-flung planet and some alien astronomers happen to have their radio telescopes pointed right at Earth, when they get a tiny spike in RF power - it's a message! Quick, decode it. What's it say?

It's . . . it's . . . an advertisement for Doritos. Beamed across the cosmos. On purpose.

No joke. Doritos' latest effort will see the UK public trying to come up with the winning 30-second spot that evidently will represent humanity's first interstellar ad campaign. With that universal fame, the winner will collect the tidy sum of 20,000 GBP.

In June, the ad will be broadcast using the high frequency radar telescope at the EISCAT Space Centre in Svalbard, Norway. It'll be aimed toward the "habitable zone" around one of the stars in the Ursa Major constellation, one of our best candidates for an untapped populace of snack food consumers.

But it's 42 light years away. By the time they get the message and pop over, just think of all the Doritos flavours there will be.

OK, OK, so everybody loves a good PR stunt. Admittedly it could be more enticing than the heady stuff we've been pumping out until now, or nothing at all. And I'm as compulsive a Doritos eater as the next guy (or the next seagull).

But we are, conceivably, talking about the first impression we are going to make on an alien population. Couldn't we advertise something more representative of our cultures, our hopes and dreams and interplanetary worthiness? Like Spam? Corn dogs? Help me out here. After June the marketing floodgates shall be open forever - what do you think we should be pitching to the universe at large?

Jason Palmer, New Scientist intern
Link to actual article

I have that iGoogle thing set up to give me a bunch of links to science articles from various agencies but my favorites are New Scientist Magazine (LOVE THEM - they have several editions for the various scientific fields) and Space.Com. Today there were two interesting links.


You know those commercials for the HPV virus (I wanna be one less!). Well boys need to get vaccinated, too!!! If they are sexually active and perform certain acts, it is possible they can get tongue, throat, and other oral cancers. That surprised me. The full article is here New Scientist


But my favorite article today was from Space.Com regarding finding extraterrestrial life that's trying to find us. I guess it was written in response to a politician's claim that our television/radio signals would scramble beyond recognition of intelligence before they got far enough into space to reach aliens. I will not pretend to know a lot about telecommunications or satellites or anything - I don't. But several asides in the article really made me laugh. Of course, this is my favorite...

“Let's consider some other earthly transmissions, for instance NASA's recent broadcast of Beatles music to Polaris (the North Star). For this, the space agency used the 210 foot Deep Space Network antenna near Madrid, Spain, and a mere 20 kilowatts of transmission power. In order for the Polarians, if there are any, to notice that this unsolicited serenade is washing over their planet, they'll need an antenna about 7 miles across. (Note to propeller-heads: I've assumed that their microwave receivers are about ten times less noisy than ours. Hardly unreasonable.) If they actually want to download the music to their iPods, they'll need heftier gear: about 500 miles on a side. Polaris, of course, is not next door. Its 430 light-years distant. This enormous span is what accounts for the large antenna requirements. The North Star is not the nearest audience for such a Beatle blast, incidentally – there are about 100,000 stellar systems that are closer. Maybe NASA chose this target because the Polarians agreed to pay royalties.”

My thoughts about the politician's statements were not as clever: 1) Our television and radio signals are not typically intelligent before the scrambling so what's the big deal about after, and 2) Yay! A politician was talking as if aliens were there but we just weren’t technologically good enough to reach them. (Though he was probably "assuming for the sake of argument" trying to cut funding to something and not really believing in aliens at all.) Anyway, the entire article is at Finding Them Finding Us

Let's do this people!! I read this on my science news site. YAY!

NASA beams Beatles song into space

17:27 04 February 2008
NewScientist.com news service
New Scientist Space and Reuters

An intergalactic celebration of The Beatles is being launched on Monday with the beaming of their peace anthem "Across the Universe" into outer space.

The man behind the idea, which marks the 40th anniversary of the recording of the song in 1968, is an avid Beatles fan who has persuaded space agency NASA to kick off the party and now hopes to convert alien life forms to The Beatles.

"At the moment, we are sending up Morse code as a way of contacting aliens," Martin Lewis told BBC radio. "Maybe we should send them something a little more cheery."

If all goes according to plan, NASA will transmit the Beatles tune via its Deep Space Network at midnight GMT (1900 EST).

At exactly the same time, fans across the world are being asked to play "Across The Universe" in a bid to "create a harmonic convergence" around planet Earth and throughout the universe.

According to a statement from NASA, the transmission will be aimed at the North Star, Polaris, which is 431 light years away from Earth. The song will travel across the universe at the speed of light – about 300,000 kilometres per second.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney, who beamed his first intergalactic concert to the International Space Station in 2005, congratulated NASA and asked them to pass on his regards to anyone else out there.

"Amazing! Well done, NASA!" he said in a statement released by the space agency. "Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul."

Fans can watch the event online.


NewScientist.com Across the Universe article

Hello and Happy Christmas!! Hope everyone has a wonderful evening and a wonderful tomorrow!! :)

Apologies as I've had a margarita with Redd and Toaster but I read something interesting in the Know it All so I thought I'd share.

Did you know Ian Fleming of James Bond fame wrote Chitty Chity Bang Bang??

And that Fondue supposedly originated during a Swiss truce in the 16th century when Protestants brought bread and Catholics brought cheese (or vice versa). He described it as a Reese's Peanut Butter Cups moment but with more war and religion. I thought it neat since we just had six Protestents go to Christmas Mass with our Catholic friend. We should have gone out for fondue afterwards instead of Mexican food.

Finally, for fowl the term duck only applies to females! The male duck should be called a drake. Mr. Jacobs, in relating this to his experiences, said Daffy Duck's true daffiness must be gender identy disorder :)

Oh, and aposiopesis is the deliberate failure to complete a sentece, as in "Why you..." or "Why, I ought to..." The author suggested a t-shirt that says "Aposiopesis makes me want to ..." which I thought brilliant. And anyone who gets emails from herzograven will love this word. I never really used the ... before getting his emails! Now I find myself using ... in nearly every email I sent out. I even used it twice in my Christmas newsletter. And everytime I type it ... I smile. I love my friends. And I love big words like aposiopesis. Life couldn't be better! Or could it...

Love this book.

EDIT: I read a book a few years ago, I'm thinking Fermat's Enigma (definately a Simon Singh book), where the author talked about Pythagoras so I was excited to see AJ Jacobs have a section on Pythagoras as I thought it would be a review for me and I could feel "knowledgable". But I learned something! The word "square root" actually comes from Pythagoras's little crazy cult (which I did know about!) when they used their gnomon to represent numbers

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being a perfect square representation of the number 16. He realized from this the four dots at the bottom of the square was the root of 16. Four dots forming a square and being the root of 16. So "square root". And then he figured out how to get square roots in general that probably weren't so nicely square. But it started out sensibly enough. Math can be cool. Especially after tequila.