The Blag Switch

This video struck me teary and absolutely speechless.

It always boggles my mind whenever anyone says that science will “dehumanize” in the same way it does when they say it will “take the mystery” out of life.  We get to be all the more human because of science.  Just as science adds wonder and mystery to our world, so too does it allow us to further pursue other quitessentially human pursuits.

The human mind is a funny, questing thing.  It is never satisfied with what it knows but, when healthy, it constantly seeks to learn more about the context in which it finds itself.  I have always felt that curiosity is one of the most fundamentally human emotions and, as such, science is one of the most fundamentally human acts.  To say that scientific pursuits might make us less human, to me, sounds equally as strange as saying that excessive dam building will de-beaver a beaver.

Admittedly, the results of science and of dam-building are very different.  (Though it took a great deal of the former for humans to be able to engage in the latter.)  Dam building did not produce the gas that Dr. Bronowski mentioned in the video.  Then again, nor did it create penicillin.  And yet both have aided in pursuits that human beings have been engaged in since pre-history.

Both allowed human beings to do exactly what they were already doing, only better.  For eons human beings had fought each other and had, in many cases, engaged in complete genocide.  The harnessing of poison gases made this genocide easier and more efficient.  For similar stretches of time, people have cared for the sick.  The creation of anti-bacterial drugs and the wide-spread use thereof made such medical care easier and more effective.

Science and technology allow is to be more human.  They help us to do those things to which we are inclined much more easily, efficiently, and effectively and they open up new avenues of thought and action for us to pursue.  And we traipse down those proverbial avenues with glee and abandon, because it is human for us to do so.  Such explorations are one of the most human of all pursuits.

To say that science dehumanizes us is, to my mind, not only wrong.  It is entirely antithetical to truth of human nature.

(Hat tip to PZ Myers over at Pharyngula for posting that video.)

So I’m finally upgrading to Windows XP SP2. Now, I’m of the opinion that XP SP 1 was the last decent operating system the Microsoft made. Vista (in all its many variants) sucks in a multitude of ways. SP 2, well, I haven’t ever really used it extensively because the past two times I’ve tried to upgrade, it has broken my computer. Once it broke it as in “none of your applications will work and your sound card is now broken.” The second time it broke as in “booting? Why would you actually want your computer to run?”.

But alas, increasingly there are libraries, software, and features that I need for which SP 1 is, for some bizarre reason, insufficient. So here goes: once again trying to upgrade. If I disappear from the internet, all my geek homies can pour a 40 of Bawls on my proverbial grave and exact bloody revenge from the Microsoft goons who forced me to my upgrade-driven doom.

(P.S: How awesome would it be if they actually did make 40s of Bawls? I don’t think I’d ever sleep again.)

So the Army’s premier combat robotics system is being recalled from the field after it started to get all uppity.  Turns out that the robot’s weapon “started moving when it was not intended to move.”  Remember, the four rules even apply to robots.  Especially number 2.

Also, it probably says a lot about me that I looked at that picture and my first thought was “w00t ROBOT!” and my second thought was “huh, that gun’s sporting the same muzzle brake as my Sig!”

I present you with, the Aldrin Cycler.  A way to use primarily use the gravity of Earth and Mars to create cyclic orbiting craft that would essentially function as a ferry service between Earth and Mars:

Basically, you get a craft of useful size and capacity, boost it onto a certain trajectory towards Mars, and which point it gets flung AROUND Mars by Mars’ gravity and heads back towards Earth.  There it gets snared by Earth’s gravity, flung around earth, and heads back out towards Mars.  All of this includes compensation for the changing orbits of Earth and Mars.

Pretty cool, eh?  The inventor?  None other than astronaut and all-around badass Buzz Aldrin.  To see how it works, check out this simulation over at Damn Interesting.

(Found via Neatorama).

Now, I tend to be an unapologetic technophile.  I’m pretty close to thinking that technology and science are unmitigated goods and the more we understand about our world, the better.  Like any obsessive, I have my fetishes.  One of these is space travel.

Now I’m not talking space probes or remote robotic rovers (though those ARE pretty cool).  I’m talking human beings getting out into the universe.  I’m a big believer in the need for a human diaspora and in the idea that the sooner human beings are safely on their way to the stars, the better.  I hope, within my lifetime, to see human bootprints on the soil of a world other than Earth.  I would love it if they were mine, but at the rate and direction I’m going, that’s unlikely.

That’s one of the main reasons why the search for and study of exoplanets fascinates me much.  Doubly so the search for so-called “exo-Earths”, Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars.  One great source for laymen-terms information about that project (and many others) is Paul Gilster’s Centauri Dreams blog.  A recent post of his discusses the possibility of planets and, more intriguingly to me, exo-Earths around red dwarf planets.  Well worth the read if, like me, you like thinking about all the possible places humans might find new homes.

And as interesting as the article itself is, I was struck by one paragraph in particular:

“The devil, it’s often said, is in the details. A friend, exasperated with my enthusiasm for tiny red stars, commented recently that he was tired of all the painstaking numbers — he simply wanted to know whether there was another habitable planet nearby or not. Ah, but it’s just such painstaking numbers that will tell us the tale. We would have no planetary detections at all without gigabytes of slowly accumulating data, from which the signature of distant worlds is finally drawn. A better statement might be, the truth is in the details. Painstaking as they might be, details are the stuff of discovery.”

“…the truth is in the details.”  That is so often very true.  Literally in some cases (like the sciences) and at other times metaphorically so.  And one thing that I think a lot of us have a hard time seeing sometimes.  The big picture is THERE and so often seems so significant.  But often, it’s the little things that really count.

*Sigh* Politics. Seriously. Why is it SO hard to find good political candidates these days? I mean, I’m really not a hard voter to please. In fact, I’ll put with a lot. Want to pursue the War in Iraq? Honestly, at this point, I’m kind of fine with that. I think that it was treasonous (real, proper treasonous, the kind that involves a trial, two witnesses, and a possible hanging in the end) to get into it, but we’re there. And once we’re there the only viable option is to conduct the war the best way we can. I have every faith that the US Military is doing just that. (Say what you will about them, as organizations they are consummate professionals.)

Similarly Net Neutrality (which isn’t REALLY much of an issue anymore, but I’m enough of a geek that I care about it). Sure, I’m against preferential bandwidth and extortionary business practices, but if there’s one thing that recent history has shown time and again it’s that you really can’t stop the signal. Seriously. The RIAA and MPAA have tried, see how well that worked out for them? Business wonks who eye their users with mistrust and greed in their shriveled little hearts should know that said users are smarter than they are. At least when it comes to technology. Pithy and glib as the saying is, “the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it.” Even censorship light, like holding websites hostage for service or bandwidth. No politics needed.

The issues I do care about are few and far between, but the two biggest ones are two that are routinely ignored by major candidates. Namely, science policy and civil liberties. Science, in the modern world, is key to economic and social prosperity. Yes, there are other important factors, but science is the one I know best and it’s the one I’m personally most passionate about. Science helps us understand the world around us and effect positive change in it. It is, in my opinion, among the most important activities we, as a species, as a nation, and as individuals can participate in.

So why the hell don’t my candidates care about it? Why is their involvement in science limited to campaign-trail platitudes and empty vagueries? How is it that we, as one of the most advanced nations on the globe, have national-level politicians who believe the earth is 6,000 years old or who will pay lip service to those who believe the same? Why, in one of the most contentious presidential elections in recent history, can we have endless debate about the War in Iraq, the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, one candidate’s skin pigment and another’s vagina and yet no debate on science or science policy. None. At all. Whatsoever.

Now I don’t expect my candidates to be PhD-holding particle physicists or to be able to do groundbreaking research, but I would love to see one who even acknowledged that it was important. Or that government has an important role in it. The closest we come to politicians involved in science are Bush’s (both, actually) empty promises to fund missions to Mars or shallow platitudes about solving the “Energy Crisis”.

As much as many of us in the science-loving camp would like to believe otherwise, government is hugely involved in all stages of science. From funding (through a huge number of government agencies and programs) to science-related legal matters (e.g. the tiff over stem-cell research and the ongoing debate about AGW) to something as simple as enacting scientifically sound legislation.  So to just leave science out of national political discourse is absolutely stunning.  And what’s worse, it shows no signs of changing.  Political candidates fail not just to have a good science policy plank in their platform but, indeed, any at all.

(I have to give props in passing to the well-intentioned, but ultimately less-than-successful campaign to have a national science debate amongst the presidential candidates.  I also highly recommend Chris Mooney’s article Dr. President, which appeared a few months ago in Seed Magazine, which spearheaded campaign for a national science debate.)

The other issue about which I am passionate is the issue of Civil Rights.  I am in the unfortunate position (given our current political landscape) of meaning ALL Civil Rights.  For everyone.  Any candidate who would do anything to weaken our rights not only won’t be getting my vote but can, in this blogger’s humble opinion, fuck right off.  The Constitution is, to my mind, best seen not as bestowing rights upon us, but recognizing rights that, absent of interference, already have.  Furthermore it promises that our government (who, it bears mentioning, are our employees) will not try to take those rights away from us or dictate the ways in which we can exercise them.  (Standard boilerplate applies about restricting those rights where they interfere with the rights of others, etc.)

So politicians, please get your grubby mitts off of my liberties.  Those amendments are suggestions or are they subject arbitrary revision or radical reinterpretation.  There is no exegesis of the constitution.  If you want to engage in radical hermeneutics, get yourself a bible.  For all this talk of “interpreting the constitution” and all these attempts at divining what the framers really meant, the amendments (at least the ones under fire) all seem pretty straight forward to me.

Don’t tell people what they can or can’t say, can or can’t believe, can print, etc.

Don’t tell people they can’t defend themselves in the most effective way possible.

Don’t search people’s persons, abodes, or effects without their permission or reasonable suspicion of a crime.

And don’t give me any bullshit about “times being different”.  9/11 was a tragedy, not an excuse for a power grab.  Nor is modern man appreciably different from that of previous eras and we still, occasionally need to protect ourselves from each other.  Times change, the constitution aimed to make it so that certain rights do not.

Politicians: the people are your employer and, if you treat them right, your ally.  They can also, if mistreated badly enough, become your worst enemy.  Personally, I wish that their tolerance for abuse was a lot lower, but perhaps that’s just me.  So stick up for their interests.  That means supporting their rights.  It means that people like the ACLU and GOA are both your allies.  Listen to what they are saying.  You don’t have to do it all (I wouldn’t blame any politician for wanting to shy away from supporting NAMBLA’s right to free speech or from the Aryan Nation’s right to own machine guns) but they are making the kinds of arguments necessary to ensure that liberties remain uneroded.  Freedom of Speech means everyone and every idea or sentiment.  The Right to Bear Arms means all law-abiding citizens and all kinds of personal weapons.  The Right to Only Lawful Search and Seizure means everyone, even people accused of terrorism, even if they look foreign.

And yet.  And yet.  Every politician I see gets these things, at best, halfway.  Or they show that they may understand, but then shy at the last gate and fail to put it into action.  And so at best we get platitudes and inaction.  At worst we get utterly shameless assaults on the future ourselves and our nation.

There are all these candidates out there who are desperately whoring for votes.  They always say how they’re honest and hard-working.  They wear patriotic colors and tell us how awesome they think America is.  I’m a citizen.  I vote.  You want to get my vote, you only need to be two things: Pro-Science and Pro-Rights.  It won’t land you every vote, but it’ll certainly get mine.  And maybe I’m optimistic, but I think any candidate which openly, clearly, and forcefully supports science and civil liberties will get a hell of a lot more votes than just mine.

Damn, I’m definitely cruising to get my geek license revoked. I spent part of yesterday and most of this morning trying to get a little AOC card reader to recognize a Mini SD card. Installed the drivers, plugged in the card, and nothing. Tried a Compact Flash card and it worked, but it just wouldn’t read the little SD card I had.

Complained to one of my bosses and he wanders over, takes the card and the reader, and plugs it into the slot that I’d had it in. Still nothing. He then removes the card, plugs it into the slot marked “SD”, and what do you know, it worked.

In my defense, the card does fit in both slots, and the “SD” one is about a half inch wider than the card and significantly taller.