This brought a smile to my face

 NOT your average, everyday comic



Though buying milk is a fraught activity these days ...

Making the world safe for frogs (and other diversions)

Frequent visitors to SF and Nonsense may have inferred my scientific/technological interests lean most often toward physics, astronomy, and space exploration. True enough. That said, other items are sometimes too quirky or too important not to catch my eye. Herewith several such -- and, I'll venture, you'll also find them noteworthy.

After all, who doesn't want to read "Dinosaur Extinction Allowed Frogs to Conquer the Planet."

The mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs paved the way for a totally different type of creature to take over -- frogs.

The slimy amphibians exploded in numbers and diversified in the millions of years after a massive asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, taking advantage of the huge holes in the ecosystem that extinct creatures left behind, a new study suggests.

Interested in the quest for extraterrestrial life? Here, possibly, is a new criterion for narrowing the search space. "Ultraviolet light may be key to finding alien life."

Ultraviolet light may have played a critical role in the emergence of life on Earth and could be a key to finding life elsewhere in the universe, a study ... at Harvard suggests. The study found that red dwarf stars might not emit enough ultraviolet (UV) light to kick-start the biological processes most familiar to our planet.

Lies, all lies!

 Can nothing be trusted anymore? "Astronaut Ice Cream was never eaten by astronauts in space."

About as creamy as it looks :-(

(Mind you, it's vile stuff: like chemically flavored dust that's been compacted by some tremendous force. No one not seriously taste-impaired would voluntarily eat this stuff more than once. But it's the principle of the thing.)

Making space for a space program

From the Department of the Sadly Obvious: "NASA officials admit Space Launch System is a rocket without a plan." This was, essentially, the content of an all-hands meeting last month at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. SLS, of course, is the heavy launch system being built to replace the cancelled Constellation heavy launch system, which was being built to replace the canceled-without-a-replacement-on-hand space shuttle.

All dressed up with nowhere to go?

Is this NASA's fault? Denying reality for so long is on them, but the reality itself originates in the highest levels of American government. Administrations routinely reset plans (most recently from the Bush 43 plan reliant upon the Constellation program to return to the Moon, to the SLS-centric vagueness [see below] with which the Obama administration replaced it). If there were interest at the top in a meaningful plan, what are the chances Congress would fund it?

Robots and Descartes and Shakespeare, oh my! What's not to like?

Call it a poem. Call it flash fiction. Either way, the illustrated version of it is awesome. And trust me: that (hopefully evocative) subject line fits it perfectly.

And what, you ask, is it? "I Clink, Therefore I Am." Surely a copy of this poster belongs on the wall of every English lit student -- and teacher/professor -- you know. Ditto every student and teacher/professor of robotics. They just don't (yet) know they need it.

Just a hint ...

(Hmm. I might also, with the slightest of tweaks, have added a detail to the setting and subtitled this "The Merchant of Venus." But I digress.)

As you will by now have inferred, I have dipped a toe -- by proxy, through the auspices of Sci Phi Journal -- into merchandising. The words are mine, and the meter Shakespeare's. The art is by the massively talented Cat Leonard.

It can't hurt to look. Right? Check out the poster (or T-shirt, or travel mug, or iPad case, or ...) at Red Bubble.

Catching up

From the Department of Miscellaneous and Sundry (and saved for a rainy, er snowy day when a blog topic didn't jump out at me) ...

Home, cluttered home

Geologists, biologists, and others divide Earth's long history -- about 4.5 billion years -- into ages, epochs, and periods. Each marks a major shift in the nature of the planet. We humans, despite our grand airs ("homo sapiens sapiens ... twice wise? really?) are newcomers. Still, we are remodeling the place. And so, some scientists wonder: "Are we there yet? Scientists prepare for change of epoch."

What do you think? Has the Anthropocene epoch begun?

In a related vein, "Nation’s Historians Warn The Past Is Expanding At Alarming Rate."

An SF (& bit of F) assortment

Few ideas are as well-represented in SF as space travel. More and more, as we learn how inhospitable Earth's solar-system neighbors are, space-centric storytelling turns to interstellar settings. So: an award specific to interstellar travel seems like it would be a Good Idea. Now, thanks to 100 Year Starship, there is such an award.

"The 100YSS Canopus Award for Interstellar Fiction will be given for the best work of science fiction published between 2011 to 2014 that focuses on the challenges and benefits of interstellar exploration. The award will be given in multiple categories ranging from length, short story to novel, to media, video games to television to film. As well, the inaugural award will be presented in late Spring 2015." Read more about the Canopus Award here.

Holidays have you stressed out?

Some science-and-technology-centric items to make you smile ...

New Age stress relief

Let's begin with the "2014 Holiday Gift Guide: IEEE Spectrum's annual roundup of gifts for techies." It's not intentionally funny, but a few of these items are, IMO, a bit over the top. Thermal smart-phone camera? Smart-phone-controlled personal drone? For the techie who has darn near everything and too much time on his/her hands.

Still stressed? Then check out "10 Science Jokes for Nerds." How many of them did you get?

Chocolate overdose?

The theme that came to mind for this week's post was clearing out miscellaneous and sundry. Sorta kinda like finishing up the Halloween leftovers. They (the  candy, not the eclectic post topics) can't lead me astray after they're all gone, right?

Let's begin with a seriously cool new computer design. As in, "HP’s New PC Can Project a Touchscreen Onto Your Desk." With this configuration, maybe Windows 8 does make a smidgeon (say, one M&M's worth) of sense for a desktop computer.

In addition to acting as a second screen projected onto the surface where your keyboard would normally be, Sprout’s camera/projector mount—dubbed the “HP Illuminator”—also acts as a scanner. The touch mat also has a special coating that renders it invisible to its cameras during scans. You can place documents or objects in front of the computer, scan them with the Sprout’s 14.6-megapixel and depth-sensing Intel RealSense cameras, and then use the multitouch mat to move those scanned objects around and resize them. That work is done in HP’s own Workspace software on the machine, but the company has released an SDK for app developers to tap into those scanning and input features.

You gotta magnify

As Douglas Adams expressed it (like everything else) so well, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." And if you doubt, consider that "This is what North America would look like on Jupiter."

It's not as if this stuff matters

Oh wait. It does.

The Microsoft QA process

From last June, in the Department of Quality Software, "Patch Tuesday disaster breaks Office 2013 for thousands." Way to go, Microsoft!

Of course Microsoft doesn't hold the monopoly (heh!) on buggy, hacker-attracting software. From back in March comes this interesting statistic: "Report: Half of all exploits target Java." It could be just me, but buggy, exploitable products don't seem like the ideal way for Oracle to emulate Mr. Softy.

You practice good computer hygiene, don't you? You have a current security suite on your PC and keep its antivirus definitions up to date? Of course you do. Alas, from just last week, we read that, "Antivirus products riddled with security flaws."

Ring(s) around the genre

Not every item to follow is SF news, but all are recent and (IMO) interesting looks at matters of interest to genre fans. For today's purposes, I'm going with the broadest meaning of SF, speculative fiction rather than my usual focus on science fiction.

Let's begin with a BBC essay, "Can science fiction ever get the science right?" It wraps up by quoting science-fiction author Neal Asher:

"In the end," Asher concludes, "science fiction is not there to make accurate predictions about the future, it is there to entertain and stimulate the imagination. There is absolutely no doubt that many of the imaginations it stimulates belong to scientists. To some extent it drives and directs science."

Not disagreeing with Asher, I'd add that (some) SF also sets out to illuminate implications of  possible futures. That's a good and worthwhile function, too.

Want to broaden your reading? io9 offers us a list of "11 Most Prolific Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors of All Time.

Next up, a Star Wars tidbit ... on DC's National Cathedral, high up, among the grotesques, you can find... Darth Vader.

Alas, if you should visit, Darth is very difficult to spot with the naked eye. Bring binocs.

Craziness

They say fact is stranger than fiction. (They also say don't go on Wolverton Mountain if you're looking for a wife. But I digress.)

So what's new, strange, and relates (somehow) to science, technology, or SF? I'm glad you asked.

Making an ash of oneself

Let's begin, from ABC News, with "Doctors Investigate Indian Baby for Spontaneous Combustion." That's spontaneous human combustion -- shades of Bleak House. Or if you prefer, what the dickens?

I've been fascinated with the potential for human-computer interfaces back to my 2002 novella "Presence of Mind," which grew into the 2008 novel Fools' Experiments (a technothriller that takes place about now). How's this, from USA Today, for a bit of amazing neuroscience tech? "Researcher remotely controls colleague's body with brain."

As in: "Brain researchers say that for the first time one person has remotely triggered another person's movement, a flicking finger, through a signal sent to him by thought ... In effect, Rao's thought was transferred across the campus, via the Internet, to trigger the motion in Stocco, who described it as feeling like an involuntary twitch, according to the announcement."

Of moons, clouds, and the state of the art(s)

Flexing moons, by Jove!

New cameras keep coming to market with more pixels than I can imagine any earthly use for -- but here comes astronomy to the rescue. See (from Space.com) "Alien Moons May Be Easier to Photograph Than Planets." The basic concept: tidal flexing of a moon by its primary generates heat, and that heat is in addition to all solar heating. And heat shows up in infrared imaging ...

That's one more way to search for Jm'ho, the Gw'oth world ;-)

How will you get to distant worlds? Odds are, not by beaming there à là Star Trek. For a mathematical look at the (im)probability of human teleportation, see (from Slate) "Bad News, These Physicists Say That Teleportation is Unworkable." Assuming you want to arrive wherever knowing what you knew when you set out, the trillions of tiny synapses in your head are a big challenge. 

A wild and crazy planet

One of the joys of SF is the opportunity to Think Big. Earth, as large as it is, pales in comparison with, say, a Dyson Sphere or a Nivenesque Ringworld. But within the limits of today's technology, we humans (some of us, anyway), continue to Think Big ...

As illustrated by this CNN article: Sky trains, super bridges: 8 of the world's most spectacular infrastructure projects. Whether or not you're impressed by every one of these projects, I defy you not to be taken with the 1000-ton tunnel-boring machine being used to extend the Tube system in London.

Out with the odd (er, old)

The end of one year and the start of the next is always a time for ... journalistic excess. And so the past few weeks have offered more than their share of interesting (or mockable) articles.

How mockable? Well, Space.com reports an "Exclusive: Mars Rover Curiosity Featured in MAD Magazine."

Not mockable, per se, but entirely random: how about this archival image of the SR-71 Blackbird? I can't begin to guess why, on New Year's Eve, Space.com dredged up this photo. (The SR-71 fleet was retired in 1998.) No matter why ... that image is seriously cool.

(The National Air and Space Museum (Udvar-Hazy Center) has an SR-71 among its many fine exhibits. In a word, "wow." The SR-71 is so streamlined, it appears to zoom even while standing still. IMO, it's the best exhibit in the museum -- which also has the space shuttle Discovery, a Concorde, and the Enola Gay. Quite by coincidence, I was in a plane, taxiing to my gate at Washington-Dulles Airport, at just the right time and place to see the SR-71 taxiing on its way to the museum.)

Beginning the year-end list category, we have Wired's "And the Winner Is… Reader’s Choice for Top 10 Fantasy and Sci-Fi Movie Quotes." Some great quotes, to be sure, and a trip down memory lane. You may also enjoy comparing your favorite movies with Wired's "Reader’s Choice Top 10 Sci-Fi Movies."

And we wouldn't want to miss the Onion's take on "2012 In Technology."

The listing list o' lists

Ah, year's end ... the season of retrospection. Who am I to fight tradition? (Well, a non-traditionalist, that's who. Nevertheless, I shall indulge :-)  )

Happier if you don't know?

Let's begin with "The Most Disappointing Movies of 2012," many of them SF or fantasy. From those that I've seen, I have to agree with the "disappointing" characterization. (Still, John Carter wasn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. What a shame that this movie was considered derivative when so many of the supposedly tired tropes in the story originated with Edgar Rice Burroughs.)

Of strangenesses great, small, and virtual

There's lots of news this post from the realms of physics, technology, and SF.

(But first ... a few days ago this blog added a syndication outlet, through my authorial page at the massively popular book-review site Goodreads. If you're a newcomer to SF and Nonsense: welcome! [And an FYI: for unknown reasons, formatting and layout suffer a bit in the syndication. Posts are easier to read if you click through the link "View more on Edward M. Lerner's website."])

A Higgs going to pieces?

Is the Higgs boson coming out of hiding? If yes -- which would mean particle physics is finally going to have a basis for believing it understands the notion of mass -- will the long-reigning Standard Model of particle physics be collateral damage? From Ars Technica a few weeks ago, see: "Hiding in the Higgs data: hints of physics beyond the standard model."

Proof that the Higgs exists would be huge.  Even a hint that it had been found was a major story. But the biggest physics news in 2011 was the evidence for faster-than-light neutrinos. Hardly anyone believed the FTL measurement -- least of all the researchers reporting it -- but that's what the preliminary data seemed to say.

And so, there were crosschecks, retests, and independent experiments. That's how science is (or should be) done -- even when  the results aren't surprising. And the outcome? In March, "2nd neutrino team refutes faster-than-light find." In April, the "Leader of Controversial 'Faster-Than-Light' Physics Experiments Resigns" amid growing controversy over the flawed experiments. And just days ago, from "Final Nail? Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos Aren't, Scientists Conclude"): 

The same lab that first reported the shocking results last September, which could have upended much of modern physics, has now reported that the subatomic particles called neutrinos "respect the cosmic speed limit. 

Bottom-lining it, Einstein once again has his laurels intact. That's a big part of what makes the is-it-or-isn't-it status of the Higgs boson so interesting. The Standard Model is part and parcel of quantum mechanics, and the quantum-mechanical view of the universe is inherently discontinuous. (Hence those quirky quanta. Say that quickly ten times.) Relativity has an inherently continuous view of the universe. For more than a century, physicists have tried to reconcile these two great -- and very different -- models of The Way Nature Works.

As physicist John Wheeler brilliantly summarized Einsteinian general relativity, "Matter tells space-time how to curve, and space-time tells matter how to move." Imagine that the Higgs boson shows up tomorrow to validate the particle physicist's understanding of matter's attribute of mass. We'll still need an explanation for how space-time gets curved.

But that's enough (heh heh) heavy stuff for one post. Let's lighten things up. 

Dinosaurs in the news

Yup ... they are in the news.  Some truly saurian.  Some metaphorical. And in a fancifully look-alike category, also dragons.

We'll cover dragons first.  Last week (in "Beyond this point (hopefully) be Dragons") I posted about the then imminent launch of the private Dragon space capsule to the ISS. After yet another postponement, the Dragon has launched ("SpaceX Launches Private Capsule on Historic Trip to Space Station.") We now await several days of precision maneuvers to convince the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS that Dragon is safe to dock. Stay tuned.

Artist's conception, methinks

A line of descent from dinosaurs to birds has become well established. But how and when, exactly, did that come about? That's still up in the air (heh) but at least we now know that "T. rex relative is biggest ever feathered animal."

And speaking of which, "Nebraska man changes name to Tyrannosaurus Rex." It sounds rather birdbrained to me. Of course, as some say, birds of feather flock together.

If climate change keeps you up at night, be glad the dinos are gone. According to a recent calculation/simulation, "It's a gas: dinosaur flatulence may have warmed Earth." What gas? Methane, which is many times more potent as a greenhouse gas than the customary media villain, carbon dioxide (see Greenhouse gases).

Maybe the Mayans had it right ;-)

Submitted for your approval ...

"VW agrees to kick the "Crackberry" habit": Is it a harbinger of sanity or an omen of pending doom?

"Will China Break?" as Paul Krugman suggests? Or will the bull safely exit the porcelain emporium?

While teams of particle physicists feverishly search for a needle in a haystack's worth of haystacks, one physicist spends $2,600 for a custom Lego kit to build a 9,500-piece scale model of CERN's Atlas (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) detector -- part of the hunt for the Higgs boson. Heavy.

From the Department of Don't Believe Everything You Read, be sure to read "Doh! Top Science Journal Retractions of 2011."

Cul de sac

My life is crazy-busy these days. So: what better time than today to share a few of the more interesting items from my web-clippings file?

Remember the 1993 movie Six Degrees of Separation? Neither do I. Regardless, the Kevin Bacon game proves too easy. See "Facebook Claims 4.74 Degrees of Kevin Bacon."

As the Eurozone and the EU itself crumple, Brussels bureaucrats took the time to tackle a vital consumer-protection issue. See "Europe's ruling on water preventing dehydration – another 'angels dancing on the head of a pin' moment."

(That topic has a certain Douglas Adams feel about it, does it not? How soon can we expect new workplace protections for telephone mouthpiece sanitizers?)

But truly exciting -- and now I'm not being sarcastic -- is a recent initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. To wit: "Darpa seeks nanotechnology defense against novel pathogens." Consider: