We have a programmable lego brick.
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(5)
12:52:36 PM,
Thursday 11 August 2005
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Looking at the Stenoshark: Why do humans have such bizarre noses? Upright posture, I'm sure somehow, but how? Maybe because we have hands, so we don't fall on our faces/run into things nose first so much? So we can look up without drowning? To hold our glasses up?
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(3)
04:11:36 PM,
Wednesday 10 August 2005
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At work, they're talking about an Employee Stock Participation Program (ESPP). We'll be able to put 10% of our paycheck after tax to buying stock at a 15% discount. A 1.5% raise, yes? What's the catch here? It looks as though usually the stock is issued every 6 months, so it's a 3 month lag on the money for an extra 15%. Is there some sort of corporate tax dodge here? I'm sure someone is being swindled, I just want to make sure it's the government and not me. Are they hoping I'll be silly enough to keep the stock for more than two minutes after they issue it? There's a cap so rich people can't make more than $3,000 a year at this game, so it isn't management pocket-lining.
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(3)
10:33:53 AM,
Wednesday 10 August 2005
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Sidebar update. Removed John Peel and PF *sniff*. Replaced TPM and Juan Cole with the Washington Monthly. Wonkette would have been gone had I done this a week or so ago, but the unfunny interlopers seem to have evaporated. Added madness related sites. CrazyMeds is wonderful. A responsible, sensible, readable compendium of information by a "a bipolar, epileptic, autistic, agoraphobic uberspazz" with the uncanny ability to read PI sheets.
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(7)
04:00:55 PM,
Tuesday 9 August 2005
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First, a list of things people should know:
-There is no clean emergency access to the mental health system. Don't go crazy during the summer, or on weekends. Tuesday morning would be ideal.
-If you consider yourself a candidate for catastrophic failures of your mind, you should have a therapist. Even if they're patently useless, they give you a way into the system, so you can get help if you ever need it. Emergency Rooms, while a blessing, are very far from good.
-There's a tipping point, past which people are unable will themselves back to sanity. After a certain point, they will not get better on their own. Cups of tea don't work. This is the big one.
-The demonic possession idea of mental illness persists. It's a sort of kindness to those surrounding the mentally ill; that wasn't who they are. That was the disease. It's also tragically, horrifically wrong. She was always there, and was always the same person.
-The content of manic delusions come from the outside world being processed very badly. They are neither messages from God, as the maniac can't help but think, nor manifestations of the inner soul. They are edifices built from whatever shiny bits attract the attention of a mind running with the throttle stuck open. The specifics don't matter very much in the end.
-Thinking the cat hates you, that it's Wednesday when it isn't, or that you're having a lucky day are the same sort of mistake as the most grandiose delusions. The mistakes are the symptom, not the disease.
-There are worse things than medications, like hospitals.
-Mental hospitals aren't as bad as you might think.
-It isn't actually all that hard to know more than the doctor. Particularly the sort of doctor you're likely to be able to get a first appointment with in August. Trust, but verify.
-There is nothing more important than insight; than knowing that you're not right. It's also terribly difficult.
-Sanity has a practical definition. It's the ability to make enough sense of the world to function in it. Knowing that you're insane is a mindbendingly strange thought.
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(8)
03:20:21 PM,
Tuesday 9 August 2005
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Seriously. NASA wants to be NASCAR.
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(3)
05:09:34 PM,
Monday 8 August 2005
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So, after some research, here's what seem to be the problems with the space elevator:
Nanotubes kill mice. It wouldn't surprise anyone if they had similar effects to asbestos.
The article relies on power beaming being just over the horizon. People have been talking about power beaming for a while, either to supply energy to the moon base at night, or recharge satillites. The only public success I could find was flying a small remote controlled plane.
Military laser research doesn't seem terribly encouraging, though they are apparently getting pretty good at blowing up mortars if anyone is silly enough to aim them at the large mortar-blowing-up laser device. Also, giant mirrored blimps to bounce lasers at incoming missiles. This is only evidence that power-beaming is feasible if you think the military grant writers never get taken in.
Everyone seems to agree that power beaming wouldn't work when it was cloudy. I haven't found any word of sucessful long range tests, but then, you wouldn't. So who knows? Either secret military tests are working (why else would we still be funding star wars? Oh, yes. Right.), my google skills aren't what they should be, or the world of space engineering research is full of kooks who fully recognize that they're surrounded by people with crazy ideas that will never work , but, when necessary, take other kooks success as a given.
Which leads us to the next problem: no big explosions. Bad television. Probably not at all compatable with whatever nitwit PR scheme thinks us sending the shuttle up to have massively publicized minor problems that will probably not but just might kill people is the way to secure NASA funding. It's like they're trying to compete with NASCAR.
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02:56:31 PM,
Monday 8 August 2005
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A Space Elevator soon?
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(1)
11:00:32 AM,
Monday 8 August 2005
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Taken here. It's worth noting that this is taken looking NNW. Half the horizon was lit up.
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09:26:05 AM,
Saturday 6 August 2005
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Odd sunset last night. Sky was a bright flat enclosing red and purple.
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(3)
09:20:10 AM,
Saturday 6 August 2005
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(1)
09:15:21 AM,
Saturday 6 August 2005
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The trouble with most computer games is that they do not let you fail. This is the arcade tradition: If you make a mistake, the game ends, and you feed it further quarters. Ideally, one should make a plan, try it, and then have to deal with all the many ways it goes wrong. Instead you blindly follow the plot, fail, and try again, with information you couldn't possibly have. This problem is getting worse, because the plot is pinned to the cinematic cut scenes.
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01:14:25 PM,
Friday 5 August 2005
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site & script courtesy of Moss
