'Humans will make contact with aliens within two decades,' say astronomers

Of course, this would be SETI astronomers.

Here's the story => dailymail.co.uk

Although I'm not as optimistic as them, I still think SETI does valuable research. I think the odds of contacting an alien civilization are very small, but if we don't look they're zero. I believe the payoff of such a discovery would be a tremendous push towards changing the petty world view that so many of us have.

The key to how likely you think it is to find intelligent life depends upon the values you stick into the now famous Drake equation (invented by the first SETI researcher of course).

N = R^* f_p n_e f_l f_i f_c L
It calculates the number of communicating, intelligent, species in the galaxy. The equation seems to carry a lot of weight with folks simply because its math. Math can't be wrong, can it? Well, the math can't be wrong but that doesn't necessarily mean that the number it calculates as any connection to reality.

Here are what each variable stands for.

R^*: The number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

f_p: Fractions of stars with planets around them.

n_e: Number of planets per star system capable of supporting life.

f_l: Fraction of those planets where life arises.

f_i: The fraction of the above planets on which intelligent life evolved.

f_c: The fraction of those civilizations that develop the means to communicate over distance.

L: The length of time these civilizations last for.

Obviously, most of these numbers would be highly speculative, but what Drake argued was that even conservative numbers produce tens of thousands of such civilizations. Well, since his time what were considered to be conservative numbers by Drake have turned out to still to large. Do a bit Googling and you can find conservative numbers that have this coming out to be less then ten. The galaxy is a far less hospitable place then we thought half a century ago.

But I'm not going to even bother with that. There's plenty of evidence that Drake's equation is obsolete anyway. One of the biggest factors it doesn't take into account is that the universe his hardly static and is continuing to evolve as well. The universe 5 billion years ago (when our solar system came into existence) is not the same as the universe now.

Here's a good article that provide a counter-point to SETI and the Drake equation.

The Drake Equation is Obsolete

Mike

My Nebulous Internet

I've mentioned a couple of times about the whacked Internet connection I have at the cottage, so I thought I'd describe it here, with pictures too. :-)

	Satellite signal gets to us at my brother-in-law's shed (sorry, no TV). Four of use chipped together for the service.
	Signal goes into my brother-in-law's. The building was built shortly after the turn of the century and was, for many years, a small hotel for the fishing camp on the island. Of course it enters a modem and then gets routed back out.
	250 feet of Ethernet cable then snakes through the bushes to an abandoned shed which is closer to our cottage. There's no electricity here so there is also a 200 foot extension cord running from the brother-in-law's shed.
	There it plugs into a wireless router which serves as our access point, and also the access point for my father-in-law. The shed is, maybe, 5X5 with no door and the biggest issues are thunderstorms which almost inevitably resets the router. 200 ft of inducting cable running along the ground with no serge protection is obviously a week point
	We attached some high gain antennas to the router and stuck them out of the back wall of the shed, which really helps.
	About 500 feet away, in our cottage, is another antenna picking up the signal from the router
	And viola! Here we are. It ain't the greatest, but it works pretty good and sitting, looking over the lake while doing my work, is hardly something to complain about.

Dead Rising - Save The Max

Okay, this game is a couple of years old, but I had such a blast playing it last fall and winter that I ended up writing a bit of a walkthrough to being able to save the maximum number of survivors.

Save the Max - Dead Rising Walkthrough

The game is a zombie survival game where you play a photo journalist named Frank who ends up in a barricaded mall during a zombie infestation (ala Dawn of the Dead - though the packaging claims no affiliation). The purpose of the game is to survive 72 hours of game time. Although open ended, sandbox, games are all the rage, I don't think there is another game as open ended as this. You could investigate the source of the zombie invasion, try and save survivors, deal with various psychopaths, or just spend your time killing endlessly respawning zombies. Yeck, you could even finish the game doing nothing, never leaving the safe room the game provides.

The game is far from perfect. Some of the game mechanics and design choices can get very frustrating, the survivor and psycho AI and voice acting are annoyingly limited, and the instant zombie respawn is cheap, but I've completed the game at least four or five times which means, at least in my mind, it did some things right.

Anyway, the walkthrough is just how to save as many survivors as you possibly can. If you have the game, give it a shot.

Mike

Particle Physics For Non-physicists

Particle Physics For Non-physicists

The above is a link to a 24 episode lecture series on Particle Physics. I'm almost half way through the first episode (it's just over half-an-hour) and have already decided to forward this on to some of my physics teacher friends.

I get the first lecture (or at least a cut from it) here for you to peruse. The guy's not the best presenter in the world but I like the structure of his first lecture and the way he is approaching the topic.

Good stuff.

I'll have more to say when I have a chance to add more, but I want to finish the episode right now.

Mike

Unnecessary Censorship on Sesame Street

Sean at Robotics Camp

I got a couple of short videos of Sean at Robotics Camp from this past week. I lifted these from a CD the councilors made. They use Lego Mindstorms, which is becoming a more and more common product in classrooms. I've used an older version of the kit in the classroom myself for a few years. It's fabulous stuff, but I wanted to move into a programing environment that was more object oriented, but that's another story.

The first is he and his partner's attempt at building a robot to run a maze. The idea is to use a light sensor to have the robot "see" the black lines and to adjust its path accordingly. As you'll see, it fails. Sean's line is that he and his partner argued on this one almost from the beginning.



Actually, you can see the robot trying to turn as Sean is pushing it. I kinda wished he just let it go, even if it turned the wrong way.

This second video is the result of a project where the kids had to design amusement park rides. This time it goes a bit better.



Mike

Feeding Day & Does No one Get A Joke Anymore?

What do you feed Wilbur? Dead baby mice of course. Today was the first day Sean was supposed to try and feed his snake (he gets one mouse a week). They warned us that he may be a little nervous at first and may not eat. Not a problem. A couple of seconds of dangling the mouse in front of Wilbur got him to snap it up and in a minute, he had the thing down.

Other snake highlight, he shed his skin last night too. I should just turn this into a snake blog.

You likely caught this one on the news. This is the cover of the latest issue of the New Yorker and it's creating quite the stir south of the boarder.

Here's the ABC story => http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/07/obama-new-yorke.html

I guess main stream media in the States is getting so close to unintentional satire that when actual satire hits the news stands, few people seem to get the joke. In fact the very media that is going on about how terrible this cover is are the people that this biting satire is aimed at. Unfortunately, they're too stupid to realize they're being made fun of.

I mean, here's Fox news (yes, I know, an easy target) reporting on the Obamas fist bumping (why this is even news is beyond me). I guess the truth is, if they honestly can't tell how stupid they sound when they go on and on about this stuff, how can I possibly expect them get a not-so-subtle jab from the New Yorker.

Mike

First Sign of Over Indulgent Parenting

You buy your kid a snake.

Yes, that's a snake - a corn snake to be precise - and it's my son Sean's, who's twelve.

We ended up clearing out an aquarium full of fish for the snake's new home (whose name is Wilbur, by the way). Don't worry, we didn't flush them. The place where we bought the snake was more then happy to take them off our hands, I'm sure to be resold. Some were getting fairly large. In fact, they feel the Chinese Algae Eater we had was too big to sell and they're going to but it in their display tank. I was actually very happy to get rid of the fish. Deb and I have had an aquarium almost since we married, but I was personally quite sick of the thing.

Anyway, in may last post, made four days ago, I promised to post again tomorrow. Oops! We actually had Internet issues at the cottage. We've got a bit of an involved system with a satellite ISP coming in at my brother-in-laws, and a 200 ft Ethernet cable extension cord taking the signal to a wireless router which is sitting in an old tool shed that has been abandoned since the place was a fishing camp half a century ago. We can then pick up the signal from the router in our cottage. Anyway, a storm reset the router to its defaults and, unfortunately, changing it back has to be done from my brother-in-law's computer and he wasn't up. It was alright though, as I could still pick up the signal from another wireless router off the same system, this one intended for my sister-in-law's on the other side of the island. The only problem - I had to walk half way there to pick up the signal. This was fine for doing my school work (which is just a lot of uploading and downloading between off-line work), but kind of cut into my more leisurely Internet activity.

Oh well.

I'm back home now with a more dependable DSL this week. Sean's got robotics camp that I'll be driving him to in Oshawa (it's about 45 minutes from here). I plan on dropping him off and then using the time to crash a library and finally finish off this last bloody assignment for my Java course. Wish me luck.

Mike

On-line Courses & Sailing - They Mix Well

At the start of this month I set a goal of trying to blog every day. As you can see, I didn't quite pull it off, but four in the past week isn't bad.

Truth be told, despite being on summer vacation, the past while has been extremely busy and not likely to get better in the next little bit.

Since March I've been taking a second Java course on-line through Athabasca University, but through preparing exams, marking, righting reports and getting an on-line course that I'm teaching ready, I had to put working on it on hold. I've got one assignment, one unit and then the final exam to complete before the summer. I finally had a day today to work on it (the first in weeks). I worked until a little after three. By then by brain was fried so I went for a sail (it is nice to have that release).

I'm writing this from my cottage on Georgian Bay (that's off Lake Huron in the Great Lakes, for anyone who doesn't know the area). I have an old Laser that I can take out. I stuck my head out and saw the white caps rolling past the island I'm on, and knew I had to get out to clear my head. We are on the lee side of a small group of islands. The wind was from the west, maybe even a touch north (usually its south-southwest) creating some unpredictable shifts around our cottage. Just getting out and beating past the islands into the more open water was trickier then I thought it was going to be. To add to the unusual direction, the wind was very gusty and shifting. I'd be hiked out (and even luffing a bit to keep the boat in a loose approximation of being flat), when the wind would shift head on and I'd have to get into the boat quick to keep from falling in backwards. One time I got in only to have the wind shift back even harder. These 44 year old bones don't react like they used to and I end up being projected into the water and onto the sail.

I thought it may get better out past the islands, but it didn't. I ripped back and fourth for fifteen or twenty minutes before admitting defeat and heading back in. One consolation, the water is extremely warm for early July.

Anyway, the summer course I'm teaching seems to be going well. We just finished our first week and the marking has been coming in. I'm getting into a routine of banging it off as it comes and staying on top. I'm also preped a week ahead, which feels good considering this is the first time for this course to be in the summer, so I'm doing it from scratch.

I think this is enough for today. I'll continue this tomorrow.

Mike

Nanotube Radio

Berkeley University - Nanotube Radio

Using a carbon nanotube one ten thousandths the thickness of a human hair, physicists at Berkeley have created a working radio. Pretty amazing stuff that has all kinds of implications, but I'll leave you to read the article yourself.

You can even have a listen to the Star Wars Theme played through it.

Mike

Pirate TV Teaser

Torrent Freak Article

This is a teaser for a new show from the people that produced Lost and Heroes and based upon Matt Mason's book "The Pirate's Dilemma". Sounds like it may be an interesting show, but it amazes me that a major network would back such a thing.

I guess we got to wait and see what the final product is like.

Mike

Bullshit: Recycling

I love Penn and Teller. This is an amazing show. I wish we got it in Canada (something else to blame on the CRTC).



Basically, I do agree with what they're saying. Recycling aluminum makes perfect sense, as do certain types of plastics (though it drives me nuts to see these Granolas drinking bottled water when, environmentally, it is so much better to drink it from the tap). Personally, I see recycling newspaper as being close to a wash (doesn't matter much whether you do it or not), but when you start mixing in other papers (especially the glossy colour stuff) then it is nonsense to recycle it. Recycling anything else doesn't make sense, other then the "feel good" argument.

The thing is, there is something to the feel good argument. It raises awareness of environmental issues and helps to create a public that is willing to accept change. It's like David Suzuki telling us all to switch to compact florescents. In of itself, the impact of changing light bulbs is minimal, but it creates an awareness and a mode for change that make us more excepting of the more large scale changes that are continually coming.

Also, I think it has been widely forgoten that the origin of the recycling symbol was that there were three parts to the cycle - the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. And recycle was the least effective of these.

Mike

Wow! I Instantly Feel Better About Our Education System

July 18: The original video was pulled from YouTube (I guess the French don't like being made fun of). This is the best alternative I could find. Not the original, but someone with too much time on their hands editing junk in.

The part that's amazing is that over 50% of the audience said the sun went around the Earth. Folks have commented that they think people in the audience were trying to mess them up. No way! It's not like they film this show on a college campus or something. People that are in the audience of game shows are into the game show. They're not there to mess them up - despite how many us who like to make fun of them would.