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Like bird watching, there is bound to be someone that likes a good toxic plume. And for your viewing pleasure, Boston.com has compiled a decent collection that involve some space-based photography.

In response to my post on the future of agriculture, several people emailed me a short documentary that looks at rural Japan entitled The Slow Life.

Here is the video hosted at Google:

My major complaint with the video is that it paints the farm life as some kind of magical industry that is on the verge of collapse. Nothing can be farther from the truth.

There are two big reasons why farming as a profession resides in the single digits in the developed world: 1) automation and 2) large, healthy harvests

For instance, in Japan, nearly the entire industry is automated. For instance, the RMAX is a fully-automated UAV developed by Yamaha (Discovery Channel had an episode on one of its variants used in the US for topographical mapping). It fills several roles including the delivery of pesticides and fertilizers. And there are thousands of them flying throughout the Japanese countryside.

In addition not only has the harvesting aspect of farming also been mechanized but the actual crop yields are essentially the highest in the world. Thus less land is needed to produce more crops. And GMOs will further help productive capacity over the next several years.

Back to the video, while some individuals and families may indeed flee from urban centers to live in quieter, nicer smelling regions, their marginal contribution to farming output is negligible at best.

Arguably their futile exercise provides an excellent illustration for why farms have been depopulated over the last several decades: the manual labor is literally backbreaking and subjugates participants to battle all of the environmental hazards that billions living in subsistence want to flee from. The video captures a small portion of the industry and only shows one-side of it.

Oddly enough, I am somewhat pleased by their actions in part because there are fewer hippies left in the cities. Now if only all of the Naderites would jump on that bandwagon.

[Note: the Japanese government subsidizes the industry and outlaws foreign competition -- so land use would arguably different than it is currently (what is so bad about importing a lot of food?)]

One of the popular obituaries currently making the rounds is that of David Caminer, who is credited with inventing the first business computer. He created it to provide accurate accounting for a large tea company in England.

The statement that stuck out for me was an old gem from the popular science publication NewScientist: “In today’s terms it would be like hearing that Pizza Hut had developed a new generation of microprocessor, or McDonald’s had invented the Internet.”

Not to minimize his inventiveness, but as Plato’s old saying goes: necessity is the mother of invention.

For instance:

- To manage its call centers and ginormous network infrastructure, AT&T developed Unix, the core operating system underneath Mac OS (BSD) and one that heavily influenced Linux as well as Windows NT… the core kernel that runs every Windows OS since 2000 (WNT was created by the guy who made VMS for DEC — and yea, Unix arguably influenced the design/structure of later variants of VMS). In fact, thirty years ago, you could purchase a terminal made by AT&T. It certainly would seem weird if they developed one today, right? (the Supreme Court essentially forced them to exit that market place).

- Nintendo has been around for over a hundred years. It started as a card maker (like Poker cards) and evolved substantially over time.

- Flickr, is known as a popular web-based photo portal. However, before its web 2.0 days the development team originally created tools for an online role-playing game. They shelved the game and a few years later made bank when they were bought by Yahoo.

In fact, everyone knows at least a handful of other inventions that took odd twists and turns before becoming common place in kitchens. I mention several of them in Urban Legends of NASA: What They Did Not Invent.

Sticky notes have a colorful history too. As do submarines and dynamite! (hint: the modern developers saw their potential fulfilling peaceful, civilian matters).

I know you all want to get married today, but if you can stomach a few more years you will have the ability to purchase cheaper diamonds.

No, de Beers isn’t opening their warehouses and flooding the market with their inventory.

Rather, modern-day alchemists have grown flawless diamonds in the lab, some of which have hit the marketplace and most of which are 15% cheaper than their natural counterparts.

If you have a chance, be sure to read Diamonds on Demand from the latest Smithsonian. It is a great update to the 5-year-old piece from Wired and one of my favorites: The New Diamond Age.

Among other quotes in the new piece are statements from de Beers who lobby intensely against synthetic competition. However, all of their arguments boil down to the same nonsensical diatribes used by the anti-GMO crowd.

For instance, here is a whopper from de Beers: “Diamonds are rare and special things with an inherent value that does not exist in factory-made synthetics. When people want to celebrate a unique relationship they want a unique diamond, not a three-day-old factory-made stone.”

Au contraire, I’m fairly certain that specific consumers like guys buying an engagement ring would much rather buy the cheaper alternative if the two items are virtually indistinguishable.

See also: Three cheers for Wired mag and many more for genetic engineers

Or growing them in a petri dish. As a consumer you’ll be able to chose which method you want in the unfortunate chance that you have organelle failure. Amazing.

I thought it was just a mechanism for evil scientists to promote their super evil agendas: Botanists making a date with history

See also: Are Half-Lives Legit or Just Something Sagan Liked?

I doubt I’m the first person to see the similarities but I think I’ve figured out how Australian Hugo Weaving managed to create the persona of Agent Smith. He imitated Carl Sagan.

Sagan:

Smith:

QED.

Someone finally had the balls to tell environmentalists to shove their anti-nuclear power bellicosity.

My favorite print mag lists 10 ways to be more green, most of which require taking action opposite of what hippie Luddites extol.

Of those listed I particularly liked farming forests, accepting genetic engineering, living in cities and of course, nukes. All of them are fairly well-written and filled with a number of interesting studies.

The other green revolution

A quick point regarding genetically modified crops. Nearly all of the food the developed world currently eats is genetically modified in some manner or other and I don’t mean artificially concocted in labs.

Fruits and vegetables have naturally evolved over the course of thousands of years adapting to new climates and geographic locales. However, since the advent of agriculture, humans have cultivated them to meet our own needs. For instance, the domestication of the banana began in SE Asia several thousand years ago and continues today.

Unfortunately much of the sensationalism today surrounds what could happen if some researchers design a hybrid that includes the genes that people are allergic to. This in itself is not a bad thing either unless they refuse to tell others about it (they aren’t transparent which amounts to fraud). But this does not seem to have occurred.

If anything, various consumer groups (plus you and I) have continually tested and studied the produce over the last 30 years and haven’t found much to be alarmed at. As a matter of fact, farmers have been artificially selecting, breeding and splicing flora for centuries without anyone turning into Frankenstein (in fact, we have all gotten a lot sexier looking compared to our ancestors).

The easiest example of this: think of the local orchid down the road where seedless watermelons are grown. These farmers of course are super evil because they figured out how to cross the chromosomes of different seeds to create everyone’s favorite summer fruit (I still have a dozen or so small watermelons growing inside of me because I swallowed seeds as a kid).

As far as the accidents or deaths that have occurred most involve packaging errors (toxic seepage) at the manufacturing level or adverse effects to the fertilizers used — not by the new foods themselves.

Putting the culture back into the ag

Incidentally, the university I attended is one of the larger agriculture schools in the country (both in terms of physical size and research volume). The “farmers” at A&M spend a lot of time doing cell cloning and gene manipulation to create some bad ass veggies, like onions that contain all of the betakarotene of carrots and are also naturally resistant to various bugs and diseases.

In fact, back in the summer of ‘04 I met Leonard Pike the scientist behind the famed 1015 onion and the BetaSweet carrot. He discussed these developments at length and currently works in a series of buildings you might mistake as your stereotypical biology lab, complete with vials, tubes and genetic markers hanging on the wall.

Does it taste like chicken?

Which brings us to in vitro meat — meat that can be grown in petri dishes. This little guy has been in the news lately because PETA is actually doing something productive by offering a $1 million award to someone that can create synthetic meat that looks, tastes and digests just like the natural variety. Not a new idea, but certainly laudable for the possible hygienically safe, mass produced meat that could be available at super low prices.

And speaking of automated production, vertical farming uses skyscrapers as an alternative form of farm ground. It is yet another area entrepreneurs are looking to capitalize on (i.e., installing hydroponics stations on each floor and harvesting plants or even in vitro meat). It’s a win-win for those concerned about buying local produce due to “food miles” — thus in the words of Sir Mix-a-Lot: jump on it.

Viva the second agricultural revolution.

See also: Italy Joins Nuclear Power Revival
Stross & Metcalfe, meet Carbon & Technology

If you have a chance be sure to at least skim the various viewpoints presented in the recent special edition of IEEE Spectrum which tackles the super sexy technological singularity.

While he tends to kind of ramble a little bit, the essay by Vernor Vinge is a useful overview on how many futurists tend to view the various paths engineers and scientists are taking. [See also: Experts disagreeing]

And while individuals like Kurzweil are big proponents of “hard” take offs (in which a singular invention begets a self-replicating smarter-than-human propagation that physically transforms the planet within a relatively short period of time) I think that the safest bet to predict on is a combination of digital devices and network services forming seemingly high-order thought processes… Web 7.0!

Actually, take a quick step back and look at something like the new Luke arm developed by Dean Kamen. This device, which is capable of imitating nearly every aspect of a human arm is surely upgradable and could easily become superior to the appendage we take for granted.

And looking at individuals who are quadriplegic or survivors of multiple amputees, what is to stop the next step in creating synthetic, computer-controlled appendages for the entire body?

I think a milestone in human development will be when the physically handicapped, infirm and elderly voluntarily decide to become grafted into cyborg-like structures. The IEEE Spectrum also graphically displays the current progress on the science of bionics including the Luke arm and other digitally-controlled prosthetics.

One of my questions is what is the price-point in which the nerderati begin to allow themselves to be subjected to biomedical surgery, to replace their limbs with superior devices? Traditional prosthetics for arms and legs typically cost around $5000-10,000. The Luke arm apparently costs $100,000. Do you think advocates of transhumanism such as Google’s Larry Page or megainvestor Peter Thiel would take the plunge as a beta tester?

And this leads to the final question presented to Vinge, how do you prepare for the singularity? I am of the opinion that no one should assume that the AI scenario will occur in your current lifetime and that everyone should practice these three life extension techniques: exercise, eat decent food, save money.

Seriously now, how many fat engineers do you know? What if there is a snag along the way and your lifestyle kills you? By joining a gym and eating decent food not only will you be extending your own life, but you can enjoy your current one. Imagine that, actually having a fun time in meat space!

And while economist Robin Hanson discusses the issues of economics in the IEEE investigation, one thing that few people really have discussed is the costs of becoming a first mover. I would dare say that most people don’t like being the last person on the block to own the latest and greatest gizmo, unless of course it is AYDS.

Therefore, wouldn’t a prudent plan of action be to save say $150,000? It is the same amount of money for being doused into a vat of liquid nitrogen through the auspices of cryonic services like Alcor. As a consequence, not only would you be able to pay for the augmentation operations but in the event that you physically die, at the very least your brain could be preserved, right?

So, how about it? Stop eating junk food, invest your cash strategically, and learn how to program. After all, in the worst gray goo AI scenario, someone that knows how to write useful robotics code may be allowed to live by our new digital overlords. So why not grab a NXT kit from Lego or the new Create by iRobot. After all, Microsoft’s Robotics Studio is fairly easy to use (see Exhibit A) and could very well save your life!

Just kidding, anyone that has watched The Matrix knows you will probably die because we all smell like rotting big macs.

See also:
Specialization, Centralization, and the Future of Chip Integration
The Revolution Will Be Televised, Via IPTV And Micromachines
FLOPS, MIPS, Watts and the Human Brain
10 years from now, where will they be?
Can the Future Do Without Economic Logic?
Seth Lloyd’s Million Megahertz CPU
What is wrong with Moore’s Law?

A Frenchmen is apparently trying to break the record for the fastest free-fall as well as the highest free-fall (both records have held since 1960).

Towards the end of the MSNBC report it is noted that:

He got started after the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986 — with some of the astronauts surviving in high altitudes only to die at splashdown.

The problem with this is that as the article discusses the guy has to wear a pressure suit in order to survive the 130,000 foot drop.

The crew of the Challenger were ejected at around 64,000 feet. Based on evidence from the debris it appears that several emergency air packs were found and a couple had been used. However, as the cabin of the shuttle was depressurizing, they would have still passed out and subjected to the harsh cold temperature (just like cabin blowouts on a jumbojet and the subsequent freezing wind rip the skin off of people sitting near the hole and send them into shock). And to make matters worse, they would have crashed into the sea at around 200 g’s.

So no, the entire crew needed to wear pressure suits in addition to parachutes in order to survive the splashdown.

This is in response to a similarly titled post from a friend of mine, Bob Murphy. Before I proceed I should mention that we both go way back, almost 7 years and I have him to thank for helping me out with a number of questions I have regarding economic phenomenon. Most recently this includes several questions in my interview with Peter Schiff as well as my previous article on Petrodollars and Inflation.

However, this post is not necessarily directed at him, but rather is an excuse to close a number of tabs I have open in my browser.

To get started, be sure to read Bob’s post about why ID is scientific. I posted a comment at the bottom and have been meaning to respond to the rebuttal.

Better yet, be sure to read through the issues he raises in these three sequential threads (1 2 3)

He made the following comment in reply to me:

Good question, but I’m going to punt on it. I haven’t kept up with this stuff since I really got into it about 3 years ago. So the obvious stuff: Cataloguing ever more examples of “irreducibly complex” features of organisms. E.g. if there were compelling neo-Darwinian stories for everything except the human iris, then that would be one thing. But if there are tons and tons of cases where the biologists have to say, “Well, maybe some day we’ll come up with an explanation. You can’t prove that we won’t!” then the case for the neo-Darwinian story is weaker and weaker.

As luck would have it, a brand new video was made that quickly discusses the evolution of the vertebrate eye. Furthermore the wiki entry on the evolution of the eye is extremely comprehensive.

While I am not an optometrist I do believe this material makes a convincing case for natural selection.

Furthermore, if you have a chance be sure to watch Chapter 8 of the excellent video, Judgement Day, which dramatizes the Dover decision.

When ID supporter Michael Behe was on the hot seat in Dover he made his case regarding bacteria flagellum (see the transcript of the video here). His is the lead proponent of the theory of irreducible complexity which essentially says certain organelles are too complex to have evolved from one step to another because there is no evolutionary need to produce the intermediary steps.

However, he was rebuffed at the hearing by David Derosier, the very scientist he tried to quote as supporting his theory. Derosier is still an active expert in the bacteria flagellum field (which is obviously gigantic and super sexy). In the documentary he noted that in fact the little mechanical tail that whips back and forth probably evolved from the rod found in Yersinia pestis, the same little guy that caused the Bubonic Plague.

In fact, the rod has all of the foundational underpinnings that the flagellum currently uses! QED Derosier.

As far as evidence piling up in support of “irreducible complexity” it appears this is untrue too. For instance the clotting system found in mammals that fish lack is something Behe suggests is IC. Yet, based on nearly two decades of research by Russell Doolittle, this again appears to be incorrect.

The hits keep coming

While this post is hardly designed to be entirely comprehensive of the issues discussed, I’d like to throw one more errata into the ring.

It seems that our friend Mr. Generic Lizard appears to be capable of evolving on new homesteads. On an island in the Adriatic, five wall lizards evolved to a point where their digestive systems and heads changed dramatically due to copious amounts of flora it could fearlessly gobble up (… I know, genocide! is what Ben Stein will cry).

Another point from Bob that I’d like to counter is this:

E.g. physicists can use experiments to try to determine the charge on an electron. But it goes beyond the boundaries of science to ask why the charge should be that, and not some other number.

Last week I quipped back, ‘I don’t think that modern-day speciation would somehow unravel because fossil hunters digging through geographic strata are unable to detail exactly why a positron has a mass of 511 KeV.’

This is not the first time I’ve been confronted with this situation. Another friend of mine, Libertarian Jackass (yea, he used to run that popular blog) posted a comment here over three years ago (I never forget!):

This is ridiculous. Even IF you can explain how Chemical X mixes with Chemical Y to produce XYX, you STILL can’t explain why it must be so. Even if you can explain why the sky is blue, why must it be blue? You’ll still never be able to answer those questions…

In retrospect, my response to him was retarded. However, I do believe there are natural explanations for this phenomenon. For instance, diffuse sky radiation is the reason why the sky is blue.

Furthermore, as I mentioned to Bob, the underlying question of “why do certain particles have certain charges” does not in any manner change the explanatory power of biological evolution. Just because a biologist may be currently unable to explain a particular cellular activity or engineering process does not mean that a top-down designer is the creator.

In addition, ignoring all of biology for a minute, what does ID have to say for astronomy? I know what Hugh Ross thinks, but he’s an OEC. And this is an area that I consider myself fairly well-informed and believe that ID has zero explanation for. The fine-tuning argument is entirely backwards. The reason why bacteria, let alone humanity was able to thrive on this rock was not because of some miraculous supernaturalism, but rather because every bit of life adapted to every extreme condition threw at it.

It’s the same reason I doubt there is any complex quasi-intelligent life anywhere in this galaxy: it is very difficult, near impossible for life to survive and evolve to our relatively complex conditions. Miracle, no. Testable, yes.

And for those who have seen Expelled, every one of the cases in which Stein states someone was fired over academic freedom was absolutely wrong. Not one person lost their job or was denied tenureship for their advocacy of ID.

As I mentioned to Bob, from all accounts it appears that with Expelled, the advocates of ID wasted a perfectly good opportunity to educate the masses with regards to the science of ID. Instead they focused on sensational politics, personalities and academia. What about testable or duplicatable explanations?

See the following articles discussing this specific question/topic:
Stellar Appreciation Day
How long did it take for the rings to form around Saturn?
Long distance phone calls in outer space
Are Half-Lives Legit or Just Something Sagan Liked?
Fighting debris with debris creates more debris
Admitting You Are Wrong On Easter
Intelligent Design and the Light-Year

Aside from sounding like some kind of plan hatched by MacGyver, what do those items have in common?

I’ll give you a hint: UFOs.

It turns out that those “mysterious” unexplainable lights in Phoenix are, like every other sighting: very explainable.

I actually kind of find it funny because it was just some guy playing a fun prank:

[...] he used fishing line to attach road flares to helium-filled balloons, then lit the flares and launched them a minute apart from his back yard. He said he believed turbulence created by a passing jet caused the balloons to move around.

If anything it shows just how unskeptical some people still are — jumping to conclusions in an effort to prove their beliefs in ET.

Kind of like deists sometimes do, right?

And it’s not that I knew the correct explanation, but a spoonful of Occam’s razor keeps the boogie man at bay. And cures cancer.

When was the last time you went outside, looked up at the sky and said: “thank you stellar masses, please give me another”?

When was the last time you heard a porn star do the same thing?

If you haven’t sent a Valentine to has-beens like 1987A, then you probably don’t know where the material used to make your computer came from.

Grab a handful of sand

You can find silicon in a bevy of products in numerous industries. You can buy it in bulk and turn it into origami figurines. It is seemingly plentiful but where did it come from?

While you don’t necessarily need to enroll in a planetary formation course at the local college, few people can explain where metals like Si come from.

Believe it or not, but elements like gold that are found on earth didn’t form or grow on a tree. In fact, earth itself didn’t “grow” anything but rather was formed by the accumulation of particles.

Guess where these particles came from? Stars.

You see, stars like the Sun have a core made out of iron. The way the iron got to the middle is that it simply was the heaviest atom of the surrounding lot (e.g., Hydrogen, Helium). For instance, anyone that has thrown their brothers weight set into the pool will have observed that dumbbells sink. This is because the dumbbells are denser than water.

If you’ve ever been at the bottom of a big dog pile (who hasn’t?) you can feel the temperature in your body increase due in part to the pressure exerted on your corpus.

Similarly, based on spectroscopy you can see what kind of elements float around in stars like ours. Aside from nickel, iron is typically the heaviest element found in them (other types of stars have heavier elements, more on that later).

You see, as stuff begins to pile on top of the iron it becomes more compact and the resulting pressure continuously heats up the multi-million degree ball of plasma gooey stuff. This iron gets so incredibly hot that it can explode and fuse into other heavier elements, such as silicon.

That’s right. In order to create silicon you have to blow up a star. Because only then is there enough energy and heat to fuse together other heavier elements.

Don’t believe me? Well, remember little bombs like Castle Bravo or Tsar Bomba?

These were fusion explosions, which are essentially microcosms of stellar activity. In stars, peer pressure literally creates a ballistic explosion. As elements are squished together, the pressure becomes so great that the dorky high school dweeb and hot prom queen fuse together and release a crap load of energy. And in the process become a different, heavier element.

In the case of Castle Bravo, Lithium and Hydrogen deflowered one another. Actually, it was a menage a trois: 1 lithium and 2 hydrogen hooked up.

So now whenever you hear the word ’silicon,’ in addition to thinking of gigantic breast implants and/or iPods, thank your lucky stars.

See also:
How long did it take for the rings to form around Saturn?
Long distance phone calls in outer space
Are Half-Lives Legit or Just Something Sagan Liked?
Fighting debris with debris creates more debris
Intelligent Design and the Light-Year

Some people erroneously believe that nature is really efficient at turning sunlight into energy. The fact of the matter is that typical photosynthesis processes actually amount to an efficiency rate of about 5%.

The leaf coloring is all wrong (but that’s a limitating factor partially imposed by the structure of chlorophyll). They should all be black!

Tanning lotions wanted

Anyone that has driven around in a dark colored car on a hot summer day or worn a black shirt while strolling along the beach with a metal detector (which obviously, only really cool people do) could tell you their body sphere attracts a lot of attention from our friend Mr. Sun.

This is because the color black does not reflect light — it absorbs it.

Celestially, one way astronomers measure objects in space is through their albedo. Or how much they reflect light.

For instance, the average albedo of Mars is 15%. The reason this is an average is because different parts of the surface reflect at different rates. The composition and altitude of various geographical features ranges from Valles Marineris (the largest canyon) to Olympus Mons (the tallest mountain) and can change overnight due to planet-wide dust storms that launch debris and dust miles into the air, changing its aggregate reflective qualities.

Taken to the most logical extremes: there is also the concept of Peaks of Eternal Light, or rather a geographical area that is continuously bathed in sunlight. Because the Earth rotates every day, no single terrestrial area is up for winning this award.

On the other hand, there are certain areas on the surface of the Moon that are suspected of receiving sunlight almost everyday of the year (sans a few hours from eclipses and maybe a few days during the winter).

While the logistical and financial realities are literally out of this world, there have been numerous engineering proposals to erect solar panels on the face of the moon to take advantage of this perpetual illumination — by beaming the accumulated energy back to earth via microwave antenna.

In continuing this thought experiment, I should point out that the moon has an average albedo of about 12%. Again, this is not the same thing as shining (like from a flash light). Think of albedo as a way of measuring mirror strength. The aggregate dust, pebbles, boulders, craters and crevices create the bright image we see every night… or don’t see.

What would happen to the nocturnal world if the entire moon became a black body object? For example, most solar panels have reflective properties because they are not entirely made out of one big piece of silicon-based absorption material. There are pieces of plastic, hinges, glass and other x-factors holding the material together that reflect sunlight.

Let us assume that in the fancy pants future some guy creates an atomically precise manufacturing process that allows engineers to build solar panels across the entire face of the moon, with an albedo no greater than charcoal (4%). As non-reflective as the flat and dull paint on your dad’s first car.

While I’m sure organizations like Green Peace, PETA, WWF would cry many rivers over this, I am curious to know how nocturnal creatures that use optical senses — highly-sensitive to moonlight — would be able to effectively navigate.

On the one hand the phases of the moon already create several nights without much moonlight, yet these creatures manage to flutter and scurry around. What would happen if the big nightlight failed to act as a big mirror?

I hope you cried as much as my inflatable doll did

While this is not going to probably ever occur in any of our lifetimes, the variables surrounding a black moon could possibly lead to solving half of the question that keeps some singulitarians up at night: how to power large amounts of computronium? [Note: large arrays of solar powered satellites grouped into a Dyson Sphere is still the leading candidate.]

And because I want a gold star from the teacher, the answer to the other half is of course: condensing the cosmological masses into increasingly tight densities, thereby reducing latency between nodes.

Perhaps the most efficient arrangement is ultimately a man-made blackbody of sorts. Capable of absorbing all sol-produced light waves (as well as the radiating heat) and converting it all into large amounts of electricity to power 3D chips denser than lead or the inner core… fused impossibly tight, meters on end.

Paging Zyvex Labs and Jim Von Ehr.

See also:
Megascale engineering: Matrioshka Brain edition
Mass drivers and Solar Power Satellites

Some researchers building a tree house in Sweden bumped into a 8,000 year old spruce. That should make some nice violins…

On that note, while it is a bit hoaky, this 2003 animated movie shows 2 anthropomorphic rocks watch the evolution of modern humans, presumably in Deutschland:

While there are several different types of Young Earth Creationists (e.g., AiG, CMI, Discovery) many of them have attacked methods for dating the earth and cosmos at ages longer than several thousand years. Typically they demonize carbon-14 and other radioisotopic dating methods.

Using astronomy as a setting, what energy source are most of the unmanned space probes that zoom across the inner solar system powered by?

Do they use solar energy? Do they use big Energizer bunnies? Do they use dope?

Many of them, including the Voyagers and Pioneers use a technique called radioisotopic decay to power electric generators: Radioisotopic Thermoelectric Generators

In a nutshell, the heat produced from these decaying isotopes (typically Plutonium 238) is converted into electricity and stored in batteries. There are no smoke, mirrors or boogiemen involved in this process.

And as seen with these probes, the rate of decay matches up to the predicted limits and as a result some of the probes will become completely silent in the next decade.

Numbers and nincompoops

Pu-238 has a half-life of 87.7 years, a phenomenon that has been observed and tested numerous times.

Using similar testable, observable methods Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5730 years and is commonly used to date objects younger than 40,000 years.

Potassium-Argon dating has an extremely long half-life and is usually used to date minerals older than 100,000 years.

And the best part about all of these elements, if you do not believe or simply disagree with the ages found by the researchers, you can conduct your own tests.

The same thing cannot be said about supernatural phenomenon, which, by definition, are not natural and therefore not testable.

Note: again, the reason why the field of astronomy can be a powerful ally in dealing with creationists is that it cannot be blocked. Anyone can access it each evening with just a few rudimentary tools. And it happens that in this case, you can launch those tools into space and receive measurements through an odd means: by not receiving signals due to a lack of radiative mass.

See also:
How long did it take for the rings to form around Saturn?
Long distance phone calls in outer space
Admitting You Are Wrong On Easter

More than 10 years ago, back in 9th grade, I was in instigator of sorts.

I was raised under the belief that Young Earth Creationism was the way, the truth, and the light. And in biology class I was flustered that my teacher only spent time discussing the theory of evolution.

So, believing that my views were being persecuted by this “evil secularism,” I had voiced my concern to my mom who in turn discussed it with the principal. He in turn spoke with the biology teacher who was asked to carefully explain to the class that we should all keep an open, skeptical mind about all observable phenomenon.

At the time I remember giving her the evil eye and wrote down anything contentious she might say. But to her credit, she was very passionate about teaching the material and was quite accommodating to any questions.

It would take another 4 years before I came around to recognize my own religious-oriented views were short-sighted and just plain wrong and thus, the teacher is certainly one person I’d like to bump into again to discuss my own evolution.

I mention this because the creationist movement recently put together a new film by Ben Stein called Expelled. In watching the preview the audience is left with the impression that there is an evil conspiracy to root academia of religion, deism and alternate creation stories.

Its writers also suggest that there is a huge ideological battle, a methodological rift in the biological sciences — one that natural selection and traditional science is incapable of explaining. Furthermore, Stein et al suggest a super new paradigm called Intelligent Design is more than capable for explaining the natural phenomenon we see today.

While I’ll hold off judgment until I have a chance to see it myself, I would like to point out several germane issues.

First, as the NY Times and millions of blogs noted, the producer of the movie expelled biologist PZ Myers from the public screening of the film, despite the fact that PZ was in the actual movie and had legitimate tickets. Talk about ironic.

Second, as documented by NOVA and heard in the recent Kitzmiller case, intelligent design is nothing more than a repackaged name of creationism. This case allowed the ID movement to showcase its best arguments to the world yet it offers no testable framework and to paraphrase the judge: is religion not science. The 2007 PBS documentary about this issue is concise and to the point, plus it is available for free and can be viewed online: Judgement Day, Intelligent Design on Trial

Third, even the Templeton Foundation, which awards huge monetary awards to researchers to reconcile religion and science has still not received any proposals for actual ID research.

Lastly, several acquaintances refuse to believe transitional fossils exist. So, here are a couple of quick videos showing the various fossils we do know of right now. And if you still aren’t sold on dynamism, the organized church has been around 2000 years — I think it is only fare if we gave paleontologists a few more years to collect more skeletons.

After all, just imagine the early astronomers in the 17th century trying to explain the light-year.

[Note: and as sad as it is to admit, as a teenager I even emphasized that theory of evolution it was "just a theory" -- like it is merely a hunch. That is a dumb argument because the definition of theory in science is different than the way laymen use it. Gravitation is "just" a theory as is pathology and well, every scientific framework. Testability is the key ingredient that evolution has and ID does not.]

See also:
Useless body parts and non-existent designers
How long did it take for the rings to form around Saturn?
Long distance phone calls in outer space
Neo-Creationists Love Neo-Pets
The Other ID: Incompetent Design
Intelligent Falling theory

I’ve chastised the religious-oriented “stupid design” mantra that suggests humanity is a highly tuned, perfectly designed creation.

It’s still false.

Here is a new pictorial of 13 useless body parts.

See also: Incompetent Design
Top 10 Useless Limbs (and Vestigial Organs)
Neo-Creationists Love Neo-Pets

Here is a video comparing all of the planets to various stars, including the largest ones like VV Cephei. All jokes aside, for whatever reason its author failed to include Uranus.

And here is an image showing what all the water and air on earth would like if they were sucked into spheres.

Over the past several year I’ve mentioned the neuro-supercomputer project jointly being developed by IBM and a biological research team in Switzerland.

Now someone has finally gone to great lengths to detail the latest and greatest results. And for any geek that thinks about a future singulitarian world with cyborgs or even just lots of computronium, you’ll enjoy this piece: Out of the Blue.

Lots of good nuggets that made a skeptic like myself believe these scifi possibilities could possibly take place in the next 50 years.