10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

…you could be forgiven for thinking there was something worth worrying about. If, that is, you were convinced that all the scientific minds at NASA, and their academic consultants, were out to get their measurements whether or not it involved imperilling the human race. I mean, even assuming they’d be able to analyse them in the absence of civilisation as we know it, where would they publish?

Or is it that these guys think that NASA hasn’t considered the possibility that ‘the moon controls all the tides’? Some professor at NASA is going to sit up and go ‘Gosh, Joe from North Carolina points out that the moon interacts with the Earth! Stop everything, we mustn’t touch it in case we knock the planet’s orbit out of whack!’ He then mutters, as an aside to his secretary, ‘Send that man a t-shirt as a gesture of thanks. Then have him kidnapped and kept in a Cape Canaveral basement as our Senior Plans-A-Four-Year-Old-Could-See-Though Checker.’

Schrödinger’s Kitten: Why Yes, We Scientists Have A Death Wish And We Are Taking You With Us

Facebook Group: Don’t Bomb The Moon‘

I wonder if the guys at the Examiner working on this electronic news project had any inkling that this project of theirs would eventually lead to the layoffs of their colleagues in the newspaper industry today.

Thanks to Boing Boing.

More campy looks at the future:

This one seems like the “Frozen TV Dinner” view of the future.

I have always been an astronomy enthusiast. While not delving into the mathematical side of astronomy, I have been fascinated by it ever since I was a little kid.  I must admit that even today, I find it relaxing to spend a day up at Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton and taking in the telescope tour for the upteenth time, not to mention the nice little hiking trails in the area. With one-fifth of the world’s population unable to view much of the heavens at all, it’s nice to find places where the heavens can be very much visible. While it may not be the view one gets in the middle of nowhere, it’s certainly the best one can get close to home. Hopefully the International Year of Astronomy for 2009 will help make people more aware of what they are missing.

International Year of Astronomy 2009 Trailer

Apollo 8 wasn’t supposed to go to the moon, as it was originally planned as a low Earth orbit test mission.  But the Soviet Union’s Zond 5 lunar orbiter, launched in September of 1968, containing  turtles, wine flies, meal worms, plants, seeds, bacteria, other living matter and a 175 cm tall, 70 kg mannequin, prompted NASA to turn Apollo 8 into a mission to reach lunar orbit and return to the Earth safely. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before, and it was certainly a gutsy move on NASA’s part to try and upstage the Soviets in the Space Race. Now 40 years later, NASA is celebrating this mission with a short documentary film with original footage and current interviews with the three surviving crew members.

People tend to forget how crazy these men were in their work on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. They were real heros in that they were testing hardware that had never been used before and had only recently been dreamt up by engineers bent on fulfilling the vow given by President Kennedy (2) in 1961 to put a man on the moon before the decade was out.  Many men died in this pursuit, their deaths leaving vacancies in a rotation where other men eagerly hoped to fill their spots in hopes of being selected as the first man to walk on the moon. During these missions, many of them were not aware of the meaning of what they were attempting to do.  But in recent years, the 12 men who were lucky enough to walk on the moon, and the additional men who flew into space to prepare for those landings, have become much more philosophical in their views on what they did and have been more willing to give interviews and share their thoughts and memories of those historic flights.

I strongly recommend Andrew Chaikin’s book “A Man On the Moon“, a history of the moon program and interviews with the 12 men who walked on the moon. And by the way, Neil Armstrong did not utter the phrase, “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky!“

While such technology certainly blows the mind, one can only wonder where and how it could be used. The most obvious application would be in the study and treatment of psychological disorders and diseases, but I am certain there would be military and national security interest in such technology as well.  And it goes without saying that the porn industry could make a hefty buck with such a colorful gadget at their disposal … !  Who knows, maybe one day this gadget will transmit your dreams onto the family holodeck to provide  endless hours of family fun and entertainment.

Perhaps this may end up being a hoax, but if it is true, it’s certainly an amazing achievement. In fact, I am surprised it has not been reported on in more mainstream news publications.  So far only one major publication, the Telegraph, has reported on it, and so far, only a smattering of articles have shown up in Google News search results. Leave it to the blogosphere and sites such as Boing Boing to report about news stories such as this.

But the store is indeed open, and the video below shows the enthusiasm of those in attendance, with most of the enthusiasm coming from employees of the store itself. Besides six or seven people eagerly showing off their iPhones, the crowd outside simply watched the celebratory antics of those employees inside, all in freezing temperatures.  I can’t help but think that while I’m sure a large amount of Apple faithful showed up at the grand opening that day, a larger group of people came as curious onlookers.  Apple’s share of the computer market in Europe is much smaller than in the United States, with market share in Europe hovering somewhere around 3% as of late 2007, compared to Apple’s nearly 8% share of the US market.

My impression during five years of living in Munich was that there was a lack of enthusiasm towards the Mac in general.  Only a few of my friends “converted” over to the Mac before I moved back to the United States at the beginning of 2006, and I can think of several cases where these same friends fought tooth and nail to convince their bosses on getting them a Mac for work, with their pleas always falling on deaf ears.  With this in mind, I can’t help but feel that Apple is banking on a few things in deciding to open a flag ship store in conservative Bavaria. Perhaps fatigue with Windows Vista and Microsoft’s ongoing battle with European Union anti-trust cases make some people want to try something different.  Or perhaps the fabled iPod/iPhone halo effect will cause people to crack their wallets in buying a new Mac.  And maybe a growing market share for a browser such as Mozilla Firefox shows European instincts in wanting to try something different.  This desire for change may not necessarily lead the masses to flock to the Mac, but I certainly hold hope in Apple succeeding at convincing some to Think Different.

At a time when the country is not churning out enough scientists, and science funding is on the wane, the last thing one of the world’s largest news agencies should do is cut a division that had only 6 producers and 1 reporter, Miles O’Brien, that covered a wide array of scientific and technological stories around the world.  Unfortunately, programming about celebrity gossip and scandals bring in the big bucks, whereas stories on science and technology are seen as dry and unprofitable.