41,000,000th floor … men’s wear, satellite deployment

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_space_elevator

My good friend, Tom, has had a thing about space travel. This is nothing new …. he has had the bug for years. I cannot say my enthusiasm is at his level, but I certainly understand it.

For the past few years, he has been working with a company, LaserMotive out in Seattle, and they have been working on a problem that seems a little outlandish to some people: begin the process of building an elevator to space.

I know the image that comes to mind … a vision of a normal elevator disappearing into the clouds and opening up somewhere in orbit …. hope you were wearing a spacesuit.

It seems outlandish, even as science fiction goes (and space elevators have populated science fiction). Yet, how many ideas from science fiction of the past later became reality (note: there is a reason why most cell phones open the same way Star Trek style communicators do … their inventor was inspired by the show).

So, this week, after months of delays, LaserMotive finally got to test their mettle at the NASA sponsored Space Elevator Games held out at Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert of California (the same place where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and where the earliest space shuttle missions landed).

The challenge: have a robot climb a cable 1 km long. Do it at an average speed of 2 m/s, you can share in a $900,00 payday. Do it at a speed exceeding 5 m/s, and you can share in an additional $1.1 million payout.

LaserMotive has had false starts in the past, but this time did not disappoint. They easily qualified for the $900,000 prize, and were the only one of the teams there to have a successful run.

The hope is that one day, robots such as these can help construct the “cable” that would serve as the “elevator cable” for a space elevator, significantly reducing the cost needed to launch payloads into space.

Congrats to LaserMotive for taking a small step forward into unknown territory.

Here is video of the first run … sorry, no explosions or ray guns … just a little bit of history.

Shakespeare, Serling, and the growth of mature scifi …

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-classic-hollywood28-2009oct28,0,1202866.story

An odd set of coincidences occurred over the past few days … hardly even the most important things to happen, yet they stuck out as something of an odd set of coincidences.

First, on Sunday, while eating dinner with my parents, my father had Turner Classic Movies on the television, and it was broadcasting Forbidden Planet. When the film concluded, the host reminded us that the film was based on Shakeepeare’s The Tempest, and was considered the first truly respectable work of cinematic science fiction (note: I guess we are tossing out Frankenstein, but since that was “supposed” to be directly based on the Shelley novel, and not some futuristic adaptation, I guess FP is the first semi-original piece of legitimate scifi for film). It is hard to disagree. Despite being over 50 years old, the film has aged remarkably well … you never hear about anyone trying to remake it … it is perfect just the way it is,

The link above is to an LA Times piece about Rod Serling. Serling was a well respected TV writer when he suddenly shucked his career over a precipice to write, host, and produce kiddy scifi. Of course, there was nothing kiddy about The Twilight Zone … quite the opposite. TTZ was quite probably for TV what FP was for film: an attempt to produce high quality science fiction that could be entertaining, but more importantly used the trappings of science fiction (space ships, ray guns, monsters, aliens, etc) as the backdrop for a moral, philosophy, or most importantly, to comment on the current state of humanity (something that even journalism had a hard time doing). The LA times article further points out that with Serling, you had a writer in charge instead of a suit. This lay the groundwork for the better scifi series that would follow … everything from cop show/western writer Gene Rodenberry’s little “wagon train to the stars” in the 1960s, to Ronald D. Moore taking the lessons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and applying them in masterfully recreating Battlestar Galactica.

Weird coincidence …..

I happened to read that LA Times article while waiting for this evening’s feature attraction: ABC’s attempted relaunch of the old NBC miniseries “V“. For the 2% of you not familiar, “V” is an exceptionally veiled parable which relates how totalitarianism (notably, the Nazis) not only came to power, but that even in the warm Los Angeles sun of the 1980s, it would be very easy to happen all over again. It is a miniseries that reminds us that all good wars have nothing to do with religion or ideology (its always about resources … in the case of “V”, our reptilian overlords want our water, and want us as a new protein source). The original miniseries was a tremendous application of science fiction … the aliens and their spaceships were the backdrop … the lessons about allowing society to be swayed into devotion to a charismatic individual or group was the real point. The sequel miniseries and subsequent series was not as good, and was really not needed (the points about totalitarianism were dropped, and the point became all about plot).

This new series has already thrown the gasoline onto the fire. In the first episode there was a moment when a the alien leader is being interviewed by a newscaster, and she calmly explains that her people are going to be expanding their “healing centers” to every major city around the world. The reporter returns with “you mean, you are offering us universal health coverage”. The reptile-in-human clothing smiles and responds “yes, you could call it that.” I’m not sure if Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama were watching, but if they were, you could tell there would be a small chill going down their spine. That piece of overt politics aside, I thought this was not bad as remakes go. The exotic good looks of Morena Baccarin could not have been a better choice to play the alien leader … a combination of intelligence and warmth mixed with a very cold demeanor buried beneath. This will be worthy of a second look next week

school happenings …

I have always felt blessed to work at the school I work at. The kids for the vast most part are good kids … minus a few crazies, I have received support from my parents … minus a really bad call from my department chair a few years ago, I have received pretty good support from my superiors … my colleagues have been pretty good … and the school district has been financially sound.

But something has changed.

This years is our first year under a new superintendent and business manager. The previous superintendent left under murky circumstances after only three years. The new guy (a guy I happen to have some trust in … I think he is a good guy), announced that the school is running a roughly $17 million structural deficit …. which is to say that the district has somewhere between $80 million and $100 million in reserve, but that the current level of expenditure paired with less money coming in from investments and property taxes has created a situation that will put the district in severe financial problems within the next year.

The district has announced that they are in the midst of determining what to cut, and what to start charging more money for. The district has requested that the teachers union consider reopening the contract (currently in year 3 of a five year deal) to cut costs. The union is currently in midst of an internal fight regarding this: certainly all of the untenured teachers are in favor of this, as are some of the recently tenured teachers who are in danger of losing their jobs. There are tenured teachers who are in favor of opening the contract, provided that there are written guarantees that concessions would translate to jobs being saved. Most of the teachers are, however vehemently against conceding a dime. There are some old school hippiesque teachers who just won’t give in to “the establishment” under any circumstance …

There is some irony to what is happening … on the one hand, the union is reminding everyone that they only wanted a 3 year contract … and actually had wanted annual pay increases tied to the consumer price … which is practically nothing today (this of course would have led the union to lynch its leadership right now). The Board didn’t want a 3 year contract because the last contract negotiation was so contentious (it nearly led to the district’ first strike in its 100 years). The other irony was that the union stood firm on big salary gains (the contract averages out to some 4% or so increase per year) because the union claimed that the district was sitting on a huge cash reserve. Now $100 million is not chump change … but for a huge school district (6,500+ students … well over 400 teachers plus support staff …. three large schools, two alternative schools), $100 million could evaporate very quickly if it is not managed properly.

So once again, the union and school board are circling each other. The district is not releasing detailed financial information, and the union is refusing to do anything until they get to see more detailed information. One issue that is starting to come up: if a large number of the younger staff are dismissed … a lot of those younger teachers were the margin which prevented a strike on the last contract …. with them out of the way, a strike might be all but inevitable, which is one of the reasons some of the older staff are so willing to see the younger staff go.

Needless to say, rumors are rife …. the number of layoffs … how much students will be charged to play sports … class sizes of 50 or more … how many of the support staff will be dismissed … my favorite was a story about a teacher coming into possession of an accidentally sent out e-mail from the business manager with the real financial data and strategies to “misinform the public and union” … of course was a bold faced lie.

The superintendent has been giving public talks (first with teachers only, and now later community forums). The public has been upset with the teachers getting large pay increases in a time when a lot of families are barely getting by … or not. There has been a loud outcry over spending when the district should have better predicted that there wouldn’t be as much money around. The superintendent has been careful to not blame any problems on the teachers, but has noted that the request to open the contract has not been responded to yet. The union hardliners (IMO) quotemined this and have been holding up as proof that the administration is trying to throw the teaches under the bus. I haven’t bought into that.

The district has announced that they have set a deadline of January to announce all of the cuts … this in order to give teachers losing their jobs the best opportunity to find new work. The next few months will not be boring, if not depressing.

Barney, Meow Mix, and CIA torture

http://new.music.yahoo.com/various-artists/news/musicians-crank-up-the-volume-on-guantanamo-debate–61995482

A number of bands are jumping on the bandwagon to shut down the prison camp for suspected terorists at Guantanamo Bay, after learning that their music was used as a torture device.

Sure, the obvious suspects like Marylin Manson and Britney Spears were used …. but so apparently was the Barney theme song and (for those old enough to remember) the “Meow Mix” commercial jingle.

I guess the CIA will never be accused of not trying their best … listening to this garbage that long would drive me insane enough to start spilling secrets.

The home of your 2016 Olympic Games!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091017/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_brazil_violence

Chicago’s crime rate is actually down a bit … but to my knowledge the El Rukn’s never took out a police helicopter with a SAM!

Congratulations IOC … you not only have put the Olympics in a virtual war zone, but after the slap-in-the-face insult you delivered to Chicago, you have managed to add to the list of cities like Denver that will never apply to host the Olympics again.

Fortunately, the Chicago Olympic committee needn't search far for someone who can relate ...

Muammar Gaddafi: Nutjob extaordinaire

Muammar Gaddafi is a nut case. Sure, we have known about this in America for 25+ years, but the sign that he had gone completely around the bend must have been his recent nuzzling up the USA.

It seems that the Colonel’s son was recently detained in Switzerland for two days. Reason, that rat bastage chip-off-the-block was beating two of his servants. Now Switzerland may not be the most tolerant nation on Earth (universal suffrage for women did not arrive until the 1970s or 80s), but they know that even if your name is Hannibal, and your dad owns Libya, you go to jail for assaulting people.

Dear old dad responded by cutting funds to Nestle and arresting two Swiss businessmen. The president of Switzerland, like so many of the “make love, not war” crowd (not that all Europeans are appeasing, but there is historic prescendent, no?), ran off to Tripoli to apologize for arresting the Colonel’s son. The Swiss should, of course, know better than to protect the civil rights of innocent doglike servants to the Libyan royal family.

For the next year, Libya holds the presidency of the UN Security Council (another reason to not back a world government like the UN). Colonel Gaddafi was in New York to give a speech before the 50% of the UN which didn’t have the intelligence to walk out prior to his rambling incoherence. Among the items he proposed for the UN to take up: the partitioning of Switzerland.

I mean, if you are going to pick on a country, picking on Switzerland ranks right up there with going after Denmark. The Colonel proposes returning the Italian speaking areas to Italy, the German speaking areas to Germany, and the French speaking areas to France (I guess the Romansch speaking areas become a Forbidden Zone lined with scarecrows to keep the curious and the apes out). Gaddafi reasons that Switzerland is less a country and more a mafia (which given a history of laundering money for the Nazis and many other criminals and criminal organization, I guess we could give a pass to the senile old coot on his thinking there … on the other hand, I suppose it takes one to know one).

Personally, just to say I saw it in my life time, I think the Swiss need to get angry and call out the military to pay Tripoli a visit. I’m not violent, and don’t approve of wars without good reasons, but the surrealistic headlines: “Swiss Bomb Libya – Swiss flag now flying over Gaddafi’s palace” might just be worth it for the sheer novelty.

Crime on college campuses

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-18/how-safe-is-your-college/?cid=bs:archive6#gallery=713;page=1;item=

A recent survey of on and off campus violence has been collated into a list of the 25 most dangerous colleges and universities in the nation; some of which I have some indirect connections to, thanks to friends and acquaintances:

#25: The College of St. Rose (Albany, NY)
#24: University of California (Riverside, CA)
#23: Yale University (New Haven, CT)
#22: New Jersey Institute of Technology (Newark, NJ)
#21: Alabama A & M (Normal, AL)
#20: Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
#19: Buffalo State College (Buffalo, NY)
#18: Brown University (Providence, RI)
#17: Springfield College (Springfield, MA)
#16: California State University (Monterey Bay, CA)
#15: Norfolk State University (Norfolk, VA)
#14: University of Baltimore (Baltimore, MD)
#13: Hampton University (Richmond, VA)
#12: Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago, IL)
#11: Fitchburg State College (Fitchburg, MA)
#10: North Carolina Central University (Durham, NC)
#9: Bowie State University (Prince George’s County, MD)
#8: South Carolina State University (Orangeburg, SC)
#7: Grambling State University (Grambling, LA)
#6: University of Maryland – Eastern Shore (Princess Anne, MD)
#5: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
#4: Tufts University (Medford, MA)
#3: University of Maryland (Baltimore, MD)
#2: St. Xavier University (Chicago, IL)
#1: Emerson College (Boston, MA)

In short: don’t send your kids to college in Massachusetts or Maryland unless they have taken self defense courses.

Reaffirmation

As a teacher, I have had parents come to me on more than one occasion and ask “what should I do?” As someone who long ago turned their back on having children, that always puts me in an uncomfortable position.

Sure, I have those days where I wonder if it would be better to have actively tried to convince some woman to marry me and have a child or two … I see plenty of successful parents out there. Sometimes, in moments of self-guile and hubris I even think “people have been parents for thousands of years …I difficult can it really be?”

Then every so often …

I have been sick the last two days, so last night at about 7:30 I headed to Chipotle to get something in their hot red salsa, which I am convinced should require FDA regulation as a medicine for cold sufferers. This stuff pretty much kills any bacteria or virus it comes into contact with.

As I walk in, the line is short … just two people ahead of me. I notice this woman with three kids not in line, but with their eyes skyward looking at the menu. I get up to be next in line, when mom decides that she is ready and that it is OK to move in ahead of me.

First, she orders beef tacos ….. the kids are yapping about what to put on it …. then “I don’t know if I like the beef” … she gets some beef for the kid to sample …. its too spicy …. OK … I need a steak burrito ….. and the tacos with mild beef … The preparer puts aside the tacos, and starts working on the steak burrito …. one kid is yammering about drinks … the other is saying no cheese. The steak burrito comes through, and it has sour cream on it. “I asked for that without sour cream” she says (note: she never uttered anything of the kind). Now they are throwing away the tacos and burrito and starting again. Then she needs a steak burrito bowl and guacamole and chips … after all of that, the line has grown considerably, and they take my order. She is now up to the cash register, but there are no non-spicy beef tacos. For those not aware, Chipotle’s barbacoa is mildly spicy beef … they don’t make any non-spicy …. but this restaurant …. in an attempt to save a customer …. apparently is trying to make some in the back. This goes on and on with the whole selection of the salsa (what kinds are there?) to the addition of lettuce and cheese.

Then the coupons come out.

I am really trying to be sympathetic vs. annoyed …. really I am … even though this has been dragging out for almost ten minutes. The people behind me are laughing quietly at this woman who is holding everyone up (at this point, the line now has 24 people, and nearly reaches the door; I counted on the way out). Finally she thinks she’s got everything while the kids go fill up their cups and make a mess of things over there.

It was one of those life affirming moments in my life … I never suggest that others should follow my lead …. quite the contrary. However, every so often in the grand scheme of the universe, you get that moment of insight and think “there, but for the grace of God, could have been me.”

Not sure if the hot sauce did anything, but I was feeling less congested last night and much better this morning. Coincidence????? (probably)

Introducing: Liam Patrick

Saturday was my niece’s second birthday party. She now understands that when she wants something that someone else has, she says “SHARE!”. When someone else wants her to share, she says “NO!!!” She still wants nothing to do with me, which is always tough as the godfather. Her uncles and aunt gave her a pink Barbie convertible which she is starting to drive around.

Last night, I stopped by after dinner with mom and dad, and my sister-in-law noted she was having false labor contractions, but nothing to worry about … the C-section was scheduled for another week.

By midnight “false labor” became “full blown labor”, and by 2:30 am, I was an uncle again. 7 lbs, 14 oz and 21 inches long.

Most importantly, mother and son are doing well.

Of far less importance: it has weighed heavily a bit with all of the problems we have been through that if this last baby in the whole family for a long time to come was not a boy, then my generation would mark the end of the family. Liam’s arrival gives some hope that the name will last at least one more generation.

addendum: I did get up to see my brother and sister-in-law, and baby Liam this evening after my department meeting. My mom was visiting (dad is strictly forbidden from any contact with my brother’s family), and I got to hold my nephew for a while. Surprisingly, he has a strong reddish look to his hair (no one in either of our families has red hair). After we turned down the lights, he opened his eyes to look around. Big sister was there. I don’t think she quite understands all of this yet, but she can say her little brother’s name.

Cool nickname (9/7/09): The Diomede Dateliners

Town: Little Diomede Island, Alaska

Don’t Believe it?: http://diomede.bssd.org/blog/

There is no cool logo this time. When I first saw this name on the list, my initial inclination was “wow, a school’s teams named for an NBC news magazine” … but that’s because at that moment I forgot the significance of Diomede Alaska.

Diomede is the edge … in some ways the absolute edge of the United States.

Little Diomede Island is located in the Bering Strait, about half-way between Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, and Russia’s Chukchi Peninsula. As a matter of fact, Little Diomede’s sister island, Big Diomede Island, is owned by Russia. The two islands are suspected to be some of the last remnants of the land bridge that eons ago connected Asia and North America, allowing early humans to cross into the Americas.

Little Diomede is home to about 170. If you go to the website and scroll down, you can actually control a camera on the outside of the school, and yes, unlike the state’s former governor, you actually can see Russia pretty clearly from there (Big Diomede is only about 2.5 miles away).

The school’s nickname is in reference to the fact that somewhere in that 2.5 miles of no-man’s land between Russia and the U.S. is the International Date Line … thus looking west from the school is also looking a day forward in time.

Holding out on a small rock in a cold unforgiving climate with an original name is certainly a worthy addition to the list.