[Deana originally put a tsunami relief fund donation box here. I've moved it to the navigation bar on the right so it will stay visible even if new entries are posted. --Ed.]
My brother Carl sent me a really good article debunking the idea that 'Happy Holidays' is an attack on Christmas. What's scary is that the idea apparently needs to be debunked.
...or "yet another reason to buy a Mac". Over the past few years, Apple has set up a hardware recycling program for old computers. If you send your old Mac to them, they'll disassemble it and recycle the parts, diverting up to 90% from the landfill. If you live in Cupertino, they'll even take your old PCs.
The program has been very successful, recycling hundreds of tons of materials each year. The Apple site has a fascinating recycling flow diagram which shows where all that stuff ends up.
Today is the Winter Solstice! Sit back, have a hot beverage, listen to some music, and enjoy these two stories, one true and one fanciful.
From all of us Radcliffs to all of you Global Spin readers and authors, we hope you have a wonderful holiday.
The ersatz AAA meetings took place in Atlanta this past weekend, and if you're curious how they went, I've posted the body of my letter to one of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion conference organizers (ha) below:
I thought I'd let you know how the "At the Crossroads of Magic and Science" session went on Friday. First of all, the conference (I don't know whether or not you attended) was nightmarish and strange.
Most sessions were listed as being canceled, and when you reached a room where a session was still supposed to be taking place, most of the time there was just a projector, a screen, a table with a pitcher of ice water, chairs...but no human presence at all. Conventioneers were literally roaming the hallways in packs, peeking into doors, hoping that something was going on.
Because of this, and because I ran into a prof from Tulane who told me that she had just seen Tim Knowlton, I put up a makeshift sign announcing that our session would, in fact, be taking place. Tim arrived, and there were two people in the audience, but soon that was 8 people, and by the time I finished reading my paper, there were about 35 people in the room. Tim read his, and then I read Celia Rothenberg's. We had only three out of seven papers (none of the 'orphans' that you mentioned would be transferred into the session were there), but they were well-received and there was a lot of discussion afterwards. So the session was well-attended and people seemed to enjoy it, but there wasn't really a lot of competition... It would have been nice if we'd had a better idea of what to expect for the session in terms of participation, and other papers would have been welcome, but it turned out okay.
I heard that 600 people attended the whole convention, so we managed to attract 6% of the attendees. Pretty impressive. :-) (Sigh)
I sort of regret going, but I needed it for my tenure-track CV, one of the astronauts Glen and I want to interview seemed impressed by our inclusion in the conference, and it was the only way to get my $160 convention fee back from GVSU. And people did like it!
I am so, so sorry. But I found a reference to this on Slate.com this morning, and when I saw it, I had to share. Think scary, scary Japanese anime cats for consumerist girls. This led me to the truly painful main site, where there are references to Catz, Dogz, and Foxz (sic). This is horrible, yet a part of me is thinking, oh, that is SO Yeti!
Mike came up with a tasty combo this weekend: Silk Nog and Bailey's Irish Cream. The best part is that if you squint when reading the labels you could consider it "good for you". For those of you who are recipe-impaired, here's a run-down:
8 oz. Silk Nog (the 'snog', aka soy nog)
1 oz. Bailey's Irish Cream (the "Irish", aka "what we had in the cabinet")
Blend until blended. Drink until drunk done.
Advanced recipes:
2nd glass:
a glass of snog
a splash of Bailey's
another splash to fill the glass and then you drink it
5nd glass:
lasta the snog
resta the Bealy's ahaha the Bailey's ha thankyou
nother glaz:
more bargle. Beagle. B-ahaha. Ballyer. Whisky. Now.
It's nice to know that San Diego is becoming known for something politically positive instead of the usual.
Scientific proof that water once flowed on Mars has been voted the breakthrough of the year according to journal Science.
Runners-up included Homo floresiensis, human embryo clones, and declining diversity. Yay, scientists!
Honda is working on the next generation ASIMO humanoid robot, and their early progress is pretty exciting. ASIMO can run (if only at 3kph), shake hands (thanks to new sensors), avoid obstacles, and cock its head as though to ask, "Why do I only have a 1-hour battery?"
The Honda ASIMO site has video clips of the research model -- pretty impressive stuff.
Sorry, guys, but this is just so gross that I have to share. I don't know what's worse: the legs or the missing upper half . . .
[Editor's note: the link goes to a "lap pillow" shaped like a woman's lap. Just thought I'd mention that, since I expected to find a decapitiation scene. ~c]
In case you're feeling voiceless and depressed lately, here's a little article about sending a note to the FCC.
Finally an answer to that age old question: Why is your poo bright green?
This will leave your head, if not your driedle, spinning.
I may be the slow one here, but I just saw the World on Fire video by Sarah McLachlan and I was really moved. This article explains how they spent $15 on the video itself and donated the money a video would normally have cost to eleven different charities around the world. As you watch the video, it tells you how much each thing would have cost and what they spent it on instead. It's awesome.
Yes, it is that time of year again: the birthday of our very own blogmeister, Chris "Clearwater" Radcliff. In the name of true birthday randomness, I present you with a link that has nothing to do with you, yet seems as though it might...
Today's the day to celebrate Debby, botanizer extraordinaire and frequent Global Spin contributor. And what better way to celebrate than with a nice bottle of wine? ;)
Happy Birthday!
Yeah, well, it should be illegal, but it's not.
And now there's talk of a 411 cell phone directory. . . Oh, yeah, I even checked that one out on snopes -- Celling Your Soul!
So, in case you haven't heard of it, here is the link to the Do Not Call Registry. You can at least register your home line -- and your cell line if you're paranoid.
Finally posting a bit about my time at Space Camp. Summary: it was as much fun as any geek could pack into eight days. And there were rockets.
Follow along with the photos as you read, and it could almost be a picture book. Almost.
I'm trying to capture a feeling here, an elusive one. It's the kind of feeling you get after having a profound dream; the feeling that you need to hold on tight to something fleeting, something as fragile as it is important. Bear with me for a moment, and we'll see if I can pin it down.
I recently spent a week -- 8 days, actually -- in Huntsville, Alabama at U.S. Space Camp. It was a trip I'd wanted to take for years, since I realized that there was in fact a Space Camp program for adults and it was in fact within my reach. It took me 5 years and numerous postponements to get there. That may not seem like a long time, but consider that it was pre-9/11, pre-Columbia-accident, pre-X-Prize, pre-Dubya, and pre-Ben when I first thought of going. You can understand, then, how I felt right up to the last minute boarding the plane in Dallas: my destination was a hazy, half-imagined thing that couldn't possibly stand up to the years of anticipation.
Luckily, I had one night to rest and get acclimated. Flights from San Diego to Huntsville were timed awkwardly, so I ended up flying in the day before the program started. I booked a room at the Marriott which shares the USSRC grounds. (I later found that camp regulars call it "Hab 4" because it's so close to the other "Hab" buildings.) I spent the evening reading sci-fi adventure novels, which is the closest thing to "rest" that I'm capable of. The whole evening felt like time in a waiting room, though: comfortable, almost forcibly relaxed, but with that little bit of anxiety about what I was going to do next.
Getting settled at Camp... oh, I have to digress here. I have no idea what to call the place, which is more than a little part of my problem. "Space Camp" is just begging to be marginalized, like it's a place where space cadets go when band camp is otherwise booked. The more-accurate but less-recognized alternative, Advanced Adult Space Academy, still sounds like something Luke would complain about not being able to attend because he has to stay on the farm for another season. When I was asked why I was in Huntsville by a pleasant lady on the plane, I sidled around the name, trying "U.S. Space & Rocket Center" before finally having to call it Space Camp. Her eyes lit up at that. "Oh! Do they still do that?" Sigh.
Getting settled at Camp (hmph) was the usual nervous enterprise, but that was quickly overcome by the sheer joy of the place. It didn't hurt that I started the morning by exploring the museum of space exploration artifacts, but my own mood was fueled by the infectious excitement of the other new arrivals. It soon became obvious that this wasn't the realm of geeky kids, but of geeks of all ages. Our senior member was a 67-year-old tough-as-nails mililtary doctor, and the average age was probably closer to 50 than 30. Most of the group knew each other, repeat visitors who had grown close in previous missions. Four of us were youngsters, though, new to the adult program as well as in the 21-30 bracket. (The other three were twentysomethings, but I'm hip enough to fit in. Or childish enough. Or something.) We "Ankle Biters" took to each other quickly, teaming up whenever we saw the opportunity. We didn't actually separate ourselves from the rest of the team, but more often than not we found ourselves together, both in structured and free time activities.
Amidst the mission briefings and space-history lectures, the week was punctuated with tests of skill and teamwork ranging from the mysterious Area 51 (of which I will speak no more) to rocketry (both water and fire) to robotics. "Kid in a candy shop" doesn't half describe it. Here we were, young scientists and engineers, not just playing astronaut but geeking out on millions of dollars' worth of robots, model rockets, simulators, walkie-talkies, GPS receivers, harnesses, and other hardware so specialized it was known primarily by NASA acronym. (Another spin in the MAT, anyone?) We weren't just being allowed to play with the toys, we were being challenged to make extraordinary use of them, really push them to the limit. "Rockets? Hah! Our grounds are littered with rockets! To impress us you have to make something really special, out of cardboard and duct tape and pantyhose!"
To relax from all this great fun... One night, heady from an Ankle-Biter upset in the water rocket competition, we purloined ice cream, bananas, and cookies out of the cafeteria and made banana splits topped with Smarties. Another, David and I "aborted" to a sports bar at the Marriott to brainstorm about robots and the future of nuclear electric propulsion. Can you imagine playing hide-and-seek in a space museum and rocket park, after hours with a pair of walkie-talkies? If so, you can imagine what a nerdvana this place was, not the least because we shared it with so many fellow hard-core spaceheads.
Then there were the missions, simulated excursions on the Shuttle and International Space Station. Before I went, I wondered if "training" on the Shuttle would be more depressing than exciting. After all, it was designed 30 years ago and it's likely to be decommissioned within a decade, assuming any Shuttle ever flies again. I even had the thought that an "X Camp" with X-Prize winners or a "Mars Camp" sponsored by the Mars Society might be a better idea. Once I was in the thick of it, though, it became obvious to me that the hardware didn't matter at all, or at least not much. I could have been training for an Apollo mission to the Moon and it would have been just as exhilarating. Once you've been in a tiny room flipping switches, healing injuries, and chasing down anomalies for 24 hours, it doesn't really matter if the outside is a Mars analog or simulated LEO. The result is still mind-altering, still addictive.
On my last day in Huntsville, only a few hours after graduation, the four of us went out for a celebratory lunch. The Canadians had never had southern barbecue, so we found a rib restaurant -- wet wipes, paper plates, bibs and all -- called Dreamland Barbecue. Perhaps it was the NASCAR-themed rocket model at the bar, perhaps it was the neon "NO FARTING" sign, but the whole experience was surreal. It didn't help that we were all floating on a cloud of endorphins and sleep deprivation. The ribs were both bizarre and excellent, just like the week had been, just like my new friends were. Bizarre and excellent.
Travelling home turned out to be no rest from the Surreal World. From the sports broadcast on the van radio to the "zombie mall" decor of the Dallas airport, everything looked like a strange parody of itself, a little less than real. A lot of that was due to my own sleepwalking state, but at least some of it was true culture shock. With the difficulty of survival, the sheer monstrous complexity of the life support systems we rely on without a second thought, how could anyone think that any of these trinkets, schedules, or vague security warnings actually mattered? I knew what really mattered, and it fell neatly into two categories: the place I was leaving behind, and the family I was returning home to see.
Since I've been home, I can sense my mind trying to fit these extraordinary experiences into its understanding of my daily existence. Mostly, it spills over into my dreams: my bedroom is the middeck, we can't launch until I zip up my blankets correctly, I have to stop my infant son from floating freely around the cabin... I wake up feeling disjointed. That feeling hits me again at odd times during the day; I've been through a life-changing experience. Shouldn't my life be changed somehow?
It's a feeling you might get after watching a "superhuman" movie like Star Wars or The Incredibles, assuming you get drawn in the way I do. You exit the theater feeling like the concrete and metal landscape around you is missing something, devoid of the magic and suspense that were packed into every minute up to then. You should be able to run straight up that wall, or levitate over this crowd, right? Shouldn't you be watching diligently for an attach from the alley, or listening for a cry for help?
In this case, I find myself wanting to do something -- anything -- to make the dream of space travel a reality. Someone at Camp had mentioned that there was enough expertise among the 14 of us to mount a mission of our own. So why doesn't that actually happen? Where do I go from here?
My mixed feelings toward NASA have been stirred up by this whole thing, too. Looking at photos of the Shuttle, I can't help but see how beautiful it is, how complex and wondrous. SpaceShipOne, which is no slouch, ends up looking like a Volkswagen next to an orbiter which drains a swimming pool worth of fuel every 25 seconds to channel enough fire through its goblet-shaped Main Engines. My pragmatic side tells me that its beauty is its downfall, that the STS is too much of a hack to be of real practical value, but these are dreams I'm talking about!
After a time, I got back into my routine and normality -- or the usual approximation -- returned. One night, a few weeks after getting back, I went out walking with my infant son -- our usual nighttime ritual. He's been getting more interested in the sky, and he kept staring upward and outward. At one point I saw the Moon reflected in his eyes. Then it hit me. I'll keep doing what I've been doing all along. I'll keep dreaming. We'll keep dreaming.
And we'll keep going back until the dream is real.
A Boston Globe article raises a good point about the current situation in Falluja. The city has been "secured" by the simple method of removing all its residents and shooting anyone who remained. The problem with that winning strategy? Letting anyone back in.
"Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned."
Reality check, guys. If any resident could be an "insurgent", i.e. fighting to remove us from their city, doesn't that tell us something about our status there? Hello?
I know I have some wild ideas of my own, beliefs that defy the available evidence, but at least I don't build a big shrine to my irrational beliefs and call it a museum. "Look! If I take this page from Genesis and fold it like this and make the words match up like so, it's science! Or a pteradactyl. Whatever."
Ok, not that he can read this, but we adults know that it's Ben's first birthday!! I can't believe it's been a year already!! Congrats KK and Chris!
I like my news on the funny side. Humor makes the pill a bit easier to swallow. In that vein, Eric pointed out The Borowitz Report. It's funny, it's timely, and it's served in small daily doses.
These are a couple of articles about some nifty organic farming stuff going on in Georgia.
Georgia Farmer Shares his Wealth
Immigrant Farmers Get a Helping Hand in Georgia
The latest Organic Style features a cool article on biodynamic wines, with a focus on our friends at Robert Sinskey (that's where Deb works). Yay!
