…until the next Space Investment Summit, this time in San Jose. If you’re a potential space investor, or investee, this is a good opportunity to do some matchmaking.
Space Logistics Infrastructure
Mike Snead has a very interesting piece on the need for developing infrastructure in space, in this case for the deployment of space-based solar power, but the system he describes would also make it much more cost effective for NASA to do planetary exploration, both manned and unmanned. And it’s a goal toward which they’re making, to first order, zero investment.
There’s very little in the piece with which I would disagree, though there is a quibble:
I do not use the term
Copernicus Weeps
Well, at least Sophie gets it right. If she’s his wife, she married an idiot. Or at least an ignoramus.
[Update while later]
Perhaps it’s not so surprising:
Well of course that’s what they’d say. Aren’t the French told from birth that the entire Universe revolves around them?
I wonder how Americans would do? Sadly, probably not much better.
The Return Of WW III?
Ron Rosenbaum is worried about Pakistan. With good reason, I think.
Hybrid Computers
The distinction between hardware and wetware is going to really start to blur in the coming years:
Charles Higgins, an associate professor at the University of Arizona, has built a robot that is guided by the brain and eyes of a moth. Higgins told Computerworld that he basically straps a hawk moth to the robot and then puts electrodes in neurons that deal with sight in the moth’s brain. Then the robot responds to what the moth is seeing — when something approaches the moth, the robot moves out of the way.
Higgins explained that he had been trying to build a computer chip that would do what brains do when processing visual images. He found that a chip that can function nearly like the human brain would cost about $60,000.
“At that price, I thought I was getting lower quality than if I was just accessing the brain of an insect which costs, well, considerably less,” he said. “If you have a living system, it has sensory systems that are far beyond what we can build. It’s doable, but we’re having to push the limits of current technology to do it.”
There are going to be some humdinger ethics issues to deal with along this road.
Tech Flops
Here are this guy’s opinion of the top ten for 2007. And by “technology” he means IT.
Rejuvenation?
An anti-aging drug is about to go into human trials, even if its makers won’t admit that it has this effect.
Grammar Rant
I was going to just link something, but after quite a Google search, I couldn’t find a good explanation on line that focused on just this issue (I found lots of hits, but none of them satisfied). It’s been bugging me for decades now (ever since I first went on line, and found so much misuse of the words). I don’t know if it’s a new phenomenon, or if we just see a lot more of it because we see a lot more people’s written material. I also don’t understand why it’s so hard for some people to get right, though perhaps because of the “oo” sound in “lose.” Anyway:
“Lose” = “to not win, or to misplace.”
“Loose” = “not tight, or not bound.”
“Loser” = “someone who has lost.”
“Looser” = “making less tight (or more loose).”
“Losing” = “in the process of achieving a loss, of a sporting event, or political race, or valuable assets.”
“Loosing” = “to set free (e.g., loosing the horses to let them run free, or loosing the dogs to chase a criminal).”
[Sunday update]
Behold, a blog devoted to needless quotation marks.
Want To See A Weird Web Site?
Here you go. Particularly this page, about the secret German moon base, from 1942 through 1992.
Latest Space Carnivals
It’s moon mania over at Out of the Cradle, and here is the 31st Carnival of Space.