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Young people these days just do not appreciate the classics . . .

Don't Blame Me ..

If you don't get this .. what have you been doing on Friday night?

From
Via Dean Esmay and hundreds of others.

From "Why Do We Have A Manned Space Program? " by Peter Taylor

Researching for the presentation I'm giving at Oddcon and found this. Nothing directly to do with the subject at hand.

But I like Heinlein and I love The Door into Summer. How cool to see an old favorite given a new twist.

Why Do We Have a Manned Space Program

A variation of the "wake me up when..." theme was described to me in terms of the cat that gave Heinlein's novel, The Door into Summer, its name. The cat meows at a succession of doors during winter, trying to command its owner to open the right one, the one that leads into summer. The cat doesn't understand that the time is not right, and it will just have to wait. Similarly, space colonies and the other important things that space futurists want to build will just have to wait; the technology is not ready, and sending humans into space at current launch costs with current life support, power supply, and manufacturing technology is like the cat scratching at the door to make it be summer.

Pete found his door into summer. Maybe ours is the one we're meowing at now.



Update: I fear that it is possible I might fall into a Bruce Gagnon like state where I utter pretentious krep and start to take myself way too seriously. Feel free to admister repeated doses of 'boot to the head' should this happen. Thank you!

Weather

My father sent me this picture taken on 3/22



Pretty, hunh?

What the future could look like

A snapshot from a possible future.


Squint a bit and paint the sky red. This could be a research outpost on Mars. Or foolish dreams in the Utah desert.

You get to pick.

Photo courtesy of MDRS 47 Gallery. Go Dawgs.

Flood Maps

A mashup I like.

It's amazing what people are doing with the Google Maps API. I'm really digging the Flood Maps, which show you where the water would be if the seas rise by anywhere from 0 to 14 meters. Looks like 8 meters is the sweet spot for me -- so far as I can tell, that puts my condo right on the new beach.

For me the sweet spot is 14 meters. At that point the patch of land occupied by the Liftport office building becomes an island.

That bit in the middle

Now, all of this is a bad thing. Horrible. But a frikin' island. That would be a cool place to work from.

Just _do_ that thing

Whatever it is that you do.

Needless to say things go downhill fast from there. I become sort of
ornery and nitpicky on the phone and do the thing that studio
executives and my wife hate more than anything: I bring up problems
without providing any sort of solutions.

People hate that.

So I don't do the job and someone else does and frankly at that point I
lose interest in following the SNAKES ON A PLANE saga. The movie could
be the Next Great Deadly Animal Loose on a Plane movie and my heart'll
always be a little sad. And believe it or not maybe there's a little
screenwriting lesson in here somewhere:

If you're gonna do it, do it. Don't creep right up close to it, think about doing it, and then back off just a bit and try to convince yourself you're still doing it. You're not. It's binary. You either have faith or you don't. You're either doing it, or you're not.

I hope I've made myself clear.

Yes. In spades. Time to get busy.

Via Dean Esmay

Memo to the New York Times - get to the point - why are the French throwing a hissy fit?

Yes, rioting in the streets. Tear gas, students, nationwide protests. Making me wait until the 'next page' to find out what they're rioting about is .. well lame. As is the reason for the riots.

They want the abolition of a new law known as the "First Employment Contract"

Oh. Well yes then by all means riot. A nationwide hissy fit over employment law. As Hugh Macleod said

Yes, France, you are correct. The 21st Century was indeed invented by the Anglo Saxons for no other reason than to mess with you.

Infotechnicalization

Infotechnicalization. But what does it mean? Ah, that's half the fun.

The Heralds of Resource Sharing

Bowties! Really big honking computers and terminals. A chalk talk on film. Men wearing ties, crewcuts. J.C.R. Licklider . . . holey moley it's history a technophile can appreciate.

A 1972 documentary on ARPAnet, the early internet. A very interesting look at the beginnings of what is now a huge part of most of our lives.

Cool.

What he said

Meme Therapy is rounding off an internal debated over manned vs unmanned space programs. They conclude with sentiment near and dear to my heart.

While the desire to make a fast buck may not be as noble a motive as the desire to expand the sphere of human knowledge, we should not forget that the history of exploration and colonization here on Earth is the history of mercantilism and exploitation, albeit often with savage consequences for those who have been exploited. At least in space we shouldn't have that problem. Manned and unmanned space exploration go together, hand in glove, and we shouldn't rule out one in favour of the other. The real question is what is the most efficient way of getting out there, and the answer to that is to take the project out of the hands of the bean counters, bureaucrats and politicians and into the hands of those driven by that most basic of human desires, greed. While businessmen and corporations may not be paragons of human virtue, at least they have a tendency to get things done, because if they fail they cannot hide behind walls of bureaucracy and political manoeuvring, instead they go bust, and the technology and patents they have developed are snapped up by their competitors to be used again, rather than disappearing into the governments' archives, never to be seen again. We will get out there someday, but as long as the space program is a slave to the whims of government, of national expediency, of the military, and indeed of science, it will be a long, long road with many switchbacks, reversals and pauses, and I for one could do with rather less white elephants sitting in the middle of the road.

Greed is good.

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

I do not think Oliver Stone set out to make a pro-capitalist movie but he seems to have captured the essence of what makes it all work.

Update: Broken link corrected.

Why a space elevator?

People ask "why a space elevator?" Lower transaction cost to space, freedom, resources, profit.



Or maybe I'm more like Vachel than I want to admit.

Little Dee courtesay of Chris Baldwin.

Missing the point

Ms. Supkis misses the point.

Blogger has really screwed up now, it seems they have lost four months of my postings! This is really ticking me off. PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR NEW CULTURE OF LIFE NEWS PAGE!

Google just got a gazillion dollars and they can't keep this site afloat. Says a lot about corporate responsibility!

Ur, no. It says a lot about Google's business practices, but nothing about corporate responsibility. That is all down to statutory obligations. Perhaps she means corporate social responsibility? I am hard pressed to see how they have a social responsibility to provide a free service to bloggers. Elaine can have cloudy opinions on whatever she pleases - but by no means does anyone have to think she knows what she is talking about.

TANSTAAFL.

SFChronicle on orbital debris

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle talks about orbital debris, quotes Jordin Kare and Brad Edwards

“It’s very likely — I’d say certain — that we don’t yet understand all the ways a space elevator can fail, so the current designs may well underestimate how much damage a small impact could do,” said Jordin Kare, who has a doctorate in astrophysics from UC Berkeley and is now a private consultant to the aerospace industry in Seattle.

A veteran researcher on the subject, Bradley Edwards, formerly of Los Alamos National Laboratory, disagrees. He is confident that the space elevator can be safely moved out of the way before space debris hits it. Thus “we can eliminate any concern related to space debris.”

Kare counters that such “an active system will always have a chance of failure, whether through mechanical failures, or plain old human error.” He wryly imagines this frantic exchange between the tracking officials and the elevator operator: “Move the ribbon left! No, the other left!”

I was waiting for someone fromt the engineering side at Liftport (The Space Elevator Companies) to respond before I said anything. Tom obliged last night

I have to side with Jordin on this one. I agree that we will need an active debris avoidance system, and it will do a lot of good, but nothing is fool-proof.

No kidding. Murphy was a grunt and then used the GI Bill to attend MIT, I suspect. Things will break and anyone who seriously wants to build anything more complicated than a toaster would do well to keep this in mind.

Preston Reed Video

Hugh MacLeod said

I'll say it again, if you haven't watched Preston Reed's concert video, you are seriously missing out.

[Preston Reed's blog is here.]
[Preston Reed homepage is here.]

He's right.  The man can flat out play.  His posture looks uncomfortable but what do I know?

MarsCon 2006 Report - Anecdote

SF readers are an interesting lot - those who self-select and get into fandom are even more interesting. One staple of Cons is a blood drive - picture the Red Cross bus filled with fen in costume, one guy dressed as Dr. Who another wearing pirate garb, talking about fanish things - the fellow who just made a Storm Trooper costume for example and was going to wear it to Masquerade that night ...

I'm the last one to be tapped. I'm dressed in a suit because we are representing a company that aspires to earn enough confidence to be entrusted with billions of dollars of capital. Which makes me stand out.

Nurse: What do you do?
Me: I'm representing my company here, handing out literature, spreading the good word.
Nurse: And what do you guys do?
Me: We're building a space elevator.

I love this moment. Are you serious? What is that? We're at a Con, she's probably heard some outlandish stuff today ...

Nurse: And that is ..
Me: Cable on the ground, attached to a satellite and ascend the cable mechanically. For 80% of the cost of a rocket

Long pause while the nurse assimilates this, and decides that I'm not obviously insane.

Nurse: You're .. serious? You are. Wow.

I love moments like that.

Cross posted at Liftport.

MarsCon 2006 Report - Personal

Over here is my professional report covering MarsCon 2006. A personal reaction?

Pretty damn cool.

From the IEAS (they build and fly really big rockets .. for fun) at the next table: "When are you guys gonna get that thing built so we can fly these where they belong?"

Met Liftport stockholder Frank Smith who drove up from Kansas City. His first con as well.

Was it worth it? Sure was. Walked in and the very first person I saw was a fan on wheels. In costume. Said costume was from Earth Defense Forces and leaned heavily to berets, black camo and replica firearms from the late 20th century. Peace bonded of course. How cool is that? Plus the puns, the cameraderie and so on. All good stuff.

India

President Bush travels to India, a historic moment. Welcome to the Anglosphere, India.

Not many people are thinking about what this really means. They should be. Bush's trip to India, and the deal made there today, may end up being the single most consequential act of the Bush presidency.

Proving James' point, the lead on CNN? Arms sales. Granted CNN isn't there to cover the grand sweep of things but c'mon.

The perspective from India?

The most powerful man of the world found his reception at (Rastrapati Bhawan) President House breathtaking. Landmark Indo-US nuclear deal went through successfully and the joint statement made people all over India very excited about the totally changed Indo-US relation. It was 'historic' for one and 'necessary' for the other. It may be the happiest day for Manmohan Singh and his expressed it words and gestures too. The whole world today recognizes the necessity of India in decisions on matters of global importance, and does also consider it a responsible nation. Bush openly talked of the significant contributions that Indians in US are making for the American economy. I consider Bush sincere and brave to whatever he commits, and he can go to any length. I don't doubt if he can make his Congress change the law to make the deal effective. His braveness is clear from his body language. Bomb blast in Pakistan today killing number of persons including one American officer can't deter him from going to Pakistan. I heard one former ambassador considering Bush as the most committed admirer of Indian democracy. I remember the years of Eisenhower and Dulles' diplomacy and how badly we used to feel.

Bush is going to Hyderabad on Friday. It is Hyderabad, as Chandra Babu Naidu by his personal endeavour built and brought the city worthy enough to come on global radar. In evening tomorrow, Mr. Bush will address a select gathering the 16th-century Old Fort (Purana Qila) that will become the focal point of the global attention or some time. This will be a first-of-its-kind event for an Indian monument. Mugal Emperor Humayun built it. And Sher Shah defeated Humayun, occupied it, and built Sher Mandal and a magnificent mosque, the Qila-I-Qunah. Humayun after the death of Sher Shah occupied the fort again, and used Sher Mandal as his library. Humayun fell to his death from the steps of this building. And Friday evening, this dilapidated fort will see and hear the voice of the most powerful ruler of the world getting transmitted all over the world. Is this not a surprising and breathtaking event of history?

Not, to me, surprising but it is breathtaking.

Opening Space for Business

I was going to blog the Business 2.0 article on developing space at Liftport - Tom beat me to it. Then all the space orientated bloggers I read did it and now I feel like a Me-Too Molly when I think about blogging the thing.

It is an important article no doubt but I can't say much that isn't being said by hundreds of other bloggers. Luckily William Gaddis has a way with words.

I know it's already made it's way to Slashdot, but still. Twenty Trillion Dollars. Fuck your small-minded primitivist models. Fuck the Crash and fuck dying in the cradle. Fuck anyone who doesn't think we can or should have it all. Fuck any "utopia" that makes concessions. Fuck all those people who so delight in social power that they would keep us all crippled and chained to weakness.

The resource model is not closed. The future is not the past. There is room for progress.

Another world is possible.

Many, many, many other worlds.

Awesome Business Card

Too bad Frank already a) leaped on the idea and b) got Hugh MacLeod to say "go ahead and use it. no worries".



Now if we had one with a hacked up Liftport logo ... no, it's still no good. Frank has been to that well and used it up.

Not for everyday use of course. The cards would be to hand out at places like, oh, Marscon.