Cyde Weys Musings

We’ve been to Luna. Our robots have been to Venus and Mars. Our probes have visited all the planets in the solar system. But we haven’t been to Sol. Yet. NASA is planning a new mission, set to launch in 2015, to correct that little oversight. Solar Probe Plus will get within nine solar radii of Sol, taking direct measurements of the solar corona. These measurements will likely provide the answers to two of our biggest unknowns about Sol: how is the corona half a million degrees (Celcius) if the surface of the Sun is only 6000 degrees, and where does the solar wind get such high velocity from?

Solar Probe Plus is also going to be a “green” spaceship; it’ll be powered by solar energy (duhhh). The solar arrays actually have to be liquid-cooled, and they can’t be kept in the sunlight for extended periods of time, as the temperature at nine solar radii is 1400 degrees Celcius. Ouch. I hope the main heat shield works well.

I’d also like to take this moment to encourage the use of the names “Sol” and “Luna” instead of the much more awkward phrases “The Sun” and “The Moon” in writing and in speech. Any determinate proper noun that requires a definite article is irregular, and I think should be avoided if an alternative exists. Plus, Sun and Moon aren’t even specific; there are many moons of other planets, and the central star of each solar system (not just our own) can be referred to as its sun. Consider that the sentence “I’m traveling to Earth” sounds correct, whereas “I’m traveling to Sun” does not. So, please do English a favor and elevate your language. Someday there will actually be people living on Luna, and what do you think the odds are of them putting up with the sheer awkwardness of “The Moon” on a day-to-day basis? Slim!

I would also recommend “Terra” instead of the “The Earth”, but we see Earth used so often its dropped its definite article, and thus there’s no need to throw around another potentially unfamiliar name.

Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York believes he may have found the cognitive trick that allows all optical illusions to work — humans can see into the future. Allow me to explain, because it’s actually not nearly as silly as it sounds.

The complete neural pathway from light hitting the eyes to the formation of a visual perception of the world in the higher parts of the brain takes about a tenth of a second. Researchers have long wondered how humans manage to be as accurate as we are, considering how much can happen in a tenth of a second (think of how far a pitched baseball traveling at 80mph will move in 0.1 seconds, for example). Mark Changizi believes that our visual system extrapolates about a tenth of a second into the future to make up for the delay (using dead reckoning, I guess?). Thus, we aren’t actually seeing the world as what it is, but as what our highly honed visual system thinks it should have been based on an extrapolation from a fraction of a second prior. The eyes aren’t relaying images directly to the brain; there is some processing going on in between. And for the most part, this solution works just fine.

Except in the case of optical illusions. Optical illusions trick our brains into falsely extrapolating what an image will look like in the very near future. Optical illusions are thus a continual cycle of our visual system predicting something that won’t actually happen, then constantly getting confused about it. This explains how static images can appear to be moving, etc. It’s a really elegant explanation, and combined with the previous knowledge that there is a delay in our visual system, it just feels right to me. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this explanation ended up being correct.

Incredible as it may seem in 2008, there are indeed some remaining uncontacted human tribes (click that link for the pictures alone). These are people living with no contact with the modern world apart from the occasional airplane sighting, doing things in all likelihood as they have been done for centuries or millennia. While modern civilization has washed across the globe these past few thousand years, it has as of yet failed to spread to the some of the most remote corners of it. I find that absolutely fascinating.

But it also brings to my mind a moral quandary. These are people like you and I; they are not “savages”. It’s not that they were incapable of coming up with civilization on their own, it’s simply that their environment isn’t amenable to it (for more details on this thesis, I refer you to the Pulitzer prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond). Yet civilization is a great thing that uplifts the human experience, right? So don’t they deserve the benefits of civilization, what with the much better medicine, modern agriculture, the Internet, et al? Who the hell are we to not gift all of this to them when it’s perfectly within our abilities to do so, solely because we want to keep them around as a sort of curious sideshow, a museum exhibit on the human condition before the march of progress revolutionized it? Isn’t that at its core more arrogant than not contacting them at all?

Haven’t we reached a point in the evolution of humanity where we should go back to all of the unfortunate folks who missed the rising tide and fill them in on the great news? We’re sending space probes to distant worlds they likely know of as nothing more than wandering objects in the sky, if that! Were I in their position, I would at least want the knowledge of modern times, even if I did not want the style of modern life. And you have to admit, there is some strange lure to living simply, but I draw a distinction between living simply by choice and living simply in ignorance. Don’t they at least deserve a choice in the matter? It’s their lives. There are a couple of people dying from completely curable illnesses at this very moment in the uncontacted tribes. Shouldn’t we at least ask them if they want our modern medicine? If I was dying of a completely curable disease and someone somewhere had a cure, but refused to announce themselves and alleviate my suffering because they preferred that I remain in an “untouched and pure” state, along with all of the unnecessary suffering that entailed, I’d have a few choice words for them.

Unfortunately, if we do not proactively address the issue of our first contact and do it in a responsible manner, it will be handled by unprofessionals in a completely irresponsible manner. Humanity is sweeping across the globe. Already, the territory of the outermost uncontacted tribes is being infringed upon by loggers and poachers. And their first reaction is often simply to murder the uncontacted tribesmembers using firearms; they simply want the trees and the animals, and don’t want any pesky people defending their land shooting arrows at them to get in the way. Don’t we owe them better than that as an introduction to modern civilization? They’re going to experience civilization one way or another, either in the form of an amazing present or in the form of a large boot squishing them beneath it.

And there’s one more issue at play here. The linked article mentions that the uncontacted tribes haven’t built up many immunities to disease owing to their utter state of isolation. Illnesses following first contact can prove fatal to up to one half of their populations. It’s like the American Indian situation all over again, but even worse, because the diseases are more deadly and more global now than they were centuries ago. Yet loggers are increasingly encroaching upon the uncontacted tribes’ territories, so they will eventually get these diseases regardless. Shouldn’t it happen under the auspices of modern medicine instead? Isn’t that the only moral way to do it? With modern immunizations and hospital care, the mortality rate can be brought way down. We owe them their first contact in a conscientious manner, if for no other reason than so they don’t experience waves of deadly illnesses after their first accidental contact with people who don’t care about their wellbeing.

So, I say we invite the remaining uncontacted tribes into the fold of the rest of humanity. They can turn down all of our amazing technology and continue living life exactly as they do now if they want to, but at least give them the simple choice. They’ve already seen our airplanes buzzing above them. I do not think a simple direct introduction will faze them much further. It is to our great disservice that we patronizingly use the rationalization of “they wouldn’t be able to handle it without their society collapsing” in actively avoiding first contacts. If there’s anything we’ve learned in our own many-thousand-year journey through civilization, it’s that humans are infinitely adaptable.

It’s time to stop leaving them in the dark and turn on the light.

As much as I wince each time I have to fill up the gas tank (which I’m doing less and less these days, thanks to working from home more often), I do realize that higher petroleum prices are ultimately a good thing. And so does a writer for Market Watch. We’ve been able to maintain this addiction to oil for so long only because the lobbying might of the oil companies has overwhelmed the benefits of switching (and not because it wasn’t cost beneficial to switch from oil, because it already is). But as gas gets more and more expensive, alternative options like plug-in cars will look more and more attractive. Once a major shift is made, the negative externalities of petroleum production will be reduced by a good deal.

So the next time you’re wincing at how much it costs to fill up at the pump, console yourself with the knowledge that this is ultimately good for the future of mankind on this planet. Widespread petroleum use is environmentally unsustainable due to the particulate pollution and carbon dioxide emissions (and thus, global warming) it causes. The sooner we get away from it, the better. And the best way to get away from it, and indeed, perhaps the only way to get away from it in this political climate where the oil companies wield such great power, is to make it such that people simply cannot afford it.

Who’s with me on a countdown to $10/gallon gasoline?

As I watched the successful landing of Phoenix on Mars tonight on NASA TV, as the scientists spontaneously broke out in applause and cheers of joy after each successful stage of the insertion, I shared in their joy. But I also couldn’t help but feel sorrow that I missed a much more momentous space exploration moment decades earlier: the original Moon landing. Of course, there’s not much I could’ve done about that, having not been born yet at the time and all, but I still envy my parents’ generation immensely just because they were there to experience it. We haven’t had any similar kind of joyous humanity-unifying event since.

That’s why I’m so eagerly awaiting the first manned mission to Mars (and yes, I even fantasize about it). Forget all of the arguments about the amount of science that can be accomplished for a given cost by a manned mission versus robotic missions; a robotic mission can’t possibly have the same emotional oomph, and that feeling it inspires in humans across the globe is incredibly important. The Moon shots did more for NASA than a hundred robotic missions ever could have. There’s just no replacement for sending people. So I can’t wait for the day when humankind goes to Mars, and when that day finally arrives, you will know it, because I will be making a hell of a lot of noise.

Earlier this year I wrote about mental performance enhancing drugs, an area of interest and research that is exploding like plastics a few decades prior. The allure of it is simply too great; who wouldn’t want to be smarter, more able to focus, more efficient at getting things done? A significant fraction of each day is completely wasted for me; imagine if I was able to use all of that time solely for productive endeavors like writing and programming?

Back in high school and early college I was on ADD drugs (with a doctor’s supervision, of course). I can definitely say that they worked, but they also had rather unpleasant side effects. It felt like I was barreling through each day at an uncomfortably rapid pace. In the end, I decided I’d rather just be myself. I made it through college with a respectable GPA, having survived some severe procrastination crises that I’m sure the drugs would’ve helped. Even now at my job I get the haunting suspicion that I could be a lot more focused, and thus get things done more quickly, with ADD medication. Luckily caffeine is a decent substitute. And I do think most humans have some “form” of ADD; our brains simply weren’t wired by evolution for the kinds of things we use them for in every day working life, and there is so much room for improvement.

So imagine my fascination when I read about one man’s experimental usage of Provigil, an anti-narcolepsy medication that also has the amazing effect of making people smarter (and without any speedy side-effects). Go read about his experiences and ask yourself if it doesn’t sound appealing. If someone handed you a bottle of Provigil, could you resist the urge to try it out? I know I would try it, but I’m kind of afraid of finding out how productive I can really be.

The first stage of humanity, what really separated us from the rest of the animals, was when we developed the ability to hack our environment. Then, through science, medicine, and good-old fashioned body body modification, we started hacking our bodies. The next stage in human-lead human evolution will be hacking our minds. We’re just on the cusp of a revolutionary break-through in this area. Imagine how society will change when the average person will be able to afford mind upgrades to Einstein-levels of genius! The pills we have now are but a first step.

And don’t say we shouldn’t do it. Our present human society is built on a sturdy foundation of violating as many natural constraints as possible (think surgery, medicine, air conditioning, and laws). Surpassing the constraints on the mind is just the next step.

It’s a poor showing for humanity that our natural response to scarcity is to feel envious of those who can afford excesses. When a resource is scarce, the rational response should be to use it sparingly and only when necessary. But humans are hardly rational creatures, and scarce resources are thus afforded a certain cachet. “Wow!”, the thinking goes, “Look at that huge Hummer that guy’s driving! He must pay a lot of money in gas just to keep it running!” It’s thought processes like these that make me not so optimistic as others that we can solve the global climate crisis in a decent time frame.

I recently sojourned to Phoenix, Arizona on a business trip. In case you aren’t familiar with the area, let me start off by saying that it’s in the middle of a desert. A real desert. It frequently goes months without any rainfall. It is hot there. The only native plants that would grow in the absence of human activity are cacti. Alas, many humans do live there, and they aren’t content with just cacti; hence the problem.

I was struck by the number of aqueducts I saw. The city is flat, but every so often you drive over a bridge above an aqueduct. Don’t go thinking Roman-style raised masonry aqueducts; thanks to the wonders of electricity and machinery, modern aqueducts are little more than deep artificial rivers, with pump houses wherever a gain in elevation is needed. They’re a lot easier to build than the aqueducts of old and they carry a lot more water. And they need to carry a lot of water in Phoenix, because they use so very much of it.

Never before in my life have I seen so many outdoor fountains. I hail from Maryland, land of the 100% summer humidity, where fountains are few and far between. There isn’t anything particularly impressive about a fountain in an area where water is bountiful. But I saw them everywhere in Phoenix: in front of restaurants, our hotel, even the office park of the company we were there doing work for. In the middle of the desert, with no natural water anywhere in sight, having a fountain is a good way of showing off wealth. “We can afford to waste this water!” they scream. And waste it they do, because when the temperature is above 40 degrees Celcius and the humidity is hovering in the single digits, a lot of water is lost to evaporation.

And then there are the artificial lakes. It seems like every golf course out there (and there are lots of them) has huge artificial lakes to go along with it. The idea of having lakes in the middle of a desert is preposterous, yet there they are, evaporating however many untold gallons of water into the atmosphere each day. They just scream wealth.

Yet I haven’t even covered the single most wasteful use of water yet. Remember how I said that the only native things that grow in the desert are cacti? Yet when you’re traveling through Phoenix, you see luscious greenery everywhere. All of it has to be watered constantly, because otherwise it will die. Keep your eyes on the look-out for sprinkler pipes and irrigation pumping stations. You’ll see them everywhere in Phoenix, literally on every block in most affluent neighborhoods and business districts. As I saw all of the flowers and palm trees and neatly manicured golf greens, all I could think of was a twist on a classic saying: Water, water, everywhere, and all of it to waste.

A big status symbol in Phoenix is simply having a green lawn around your house. And they pay thousands of dollars a year in water for the privilege. It’s ridiculous that so much water is wasted in a place that has so little of it, but that’s human nature for you. When a resource is scarce, using a lot of it is frequently a status symbol. Rather than simply adapt to the desert life, humans pump water from hundreds of miles away at huge cost and from places that cannot really spare it.

Just how do we think we’re going to lower atmospheric carbon emissions when we build a freaking mega-oasis in the middle of the desert?!

The History Channel has been disappointing me lately. I used to watch it regularly, trusting it because, after all, they’re talking about history; how could they get it wrong?! And their programs on actual history are still good. But they’ve aired a whole flood of pseudoscientific bullcrap recently. For instance, one of their new shows is devoted to ‘examining the wonders of ancient ages’.

In one episode I watched, they credulously reported on people firmly in woo-woo territory speaking about a full-sized glider that the Egyptians could’ve used to fly high above the pyramids. All of this speculation was based on a little children’s toy. Oh, and then there was the broach they said looked like a space shuttle and it had to have an aeronautical inspiration because the wings attached at the bottom, not at the top like with birds or insects. Hello?! Whatever happened to Occam’s razor? Isn’t artistic license a lot more likely than those ancient indigenous South Americans being visited by aliens (or time-traveling US astronauts?).

And I’m not even going to talk about “Ghost Hunters” or that show about alien encounters. That crap makes my blood absolutely boil. So the History Channel has been pissing me off a lot recently, and I’ve been wondering how it’s fallen so far from not that long ago when it used to actually, you know, talk about true things.

Well, here’s a redeeming moment for them. They’re making a new show about Evolution, and by all accounts it looks good. Evolution is one of my favorite scientific subjects. I wrote countless thousands of posts on talk.origins debating it, and just recently I’ve been reading Stephen Jay Gould’s essay books (again). There’s a gaping dearth of coverage of evolution in American popular media, probably because of the many vocal idiots that inhabit the inland and southern areas of the United States, and I admire History Channel to have the courage to go ahead with this show. It’s going to be awesome, and it really could educate a lot of people.

Now if they’d just have the courage to not air all of that other crap.

This is one helluva ad for Seagate. What you are looking at is a 400 MB Seagate hard drive that survived the Space Shuttle Columbia’s break-up upon re-entry. Not only that, the data, which was for a microgravity xenon shear thinning experiment, was recovered and has yielded an important scientific research paper.

If I was Seagate, I would make this story into a magazine ad yesterday. It would also make a good ad for Ontrack Data Recovery, the folks who salvaged the data off the disk.

When I last tackled biofuels, my opinion of them was pretty much uniformly negative. So, what’s changed in the interim? Not much, just even more evidence that biofuels are evil (and I don’t use that word lightly). The New Statesman published an article on Thursday titled How the rich starved the world, and as soon as I read it I knew I had to discuss it here.

The article contains some pretty stunning statistics that I didn’t have in my previous post. Between 2004 and 2007, global corn production increased by 51 million tonnes, while the consumption of corn-based biofuel increased by 50 million tonnes in the United States alone. Add to that all of the corn used for biofuels in other countries and you can plainly see that, in the past three years, the amount of corn available for consumption worldwide has actually decreased. No wonder food prices are rocketing, and no wonder starvation is becoming a bigger problem worldwide.

If that were the sole extent of the problem, though, it wouldn’t be terrible. But it’s not. Next year the US consumption of corn for biofuels will rocket up to a ridiculous 114 million tonnes, which is one third of the entire production of the US. Using corn for biofuel doesn’t even save money and it doesn’t help fight climate change either — the only reason for it is the criminally myopic laws recently enacted by Congress. And hope isn’t on the horizon either, as all of the current presidential candidates are paying lip service to Big Agribusiness. This issue represents too much Midwest money and too many Midwest votes to pass up, even though burning food to power SUVs while millions starve verges on a stereotypical mad scientist level of evil.

So here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to continue burning our food for use as fuel in what is easily the worst decision in decades. Food prices will get more expensive here, but we’ll mainly just hear lots of grumbling from the lower class who don’t really get much political representation anyway. But these effects will pale in comparison to what will happen in developing nations. Millions of people will starve to death as food prices continue to rise. Can any politician who’s voted in favor of biofuel subsidies and mandates really live with the knowledge that they’ve caused the deaths of millions of people? Is securing Midwest influence more important than doing what is right?