Madame Butterfly
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Universe 'too queer' to grasp
By Jo Twist
BBC News science and technology reporter
Professor Dawkins believes life might be quite common within the universe
Scientist Professor Richard Dawkins has opened a global conference of big thinkers warning that our Universe may be just "too queer" to understand.
Professor Dawkins, the renowned Selfish Gene author from Oxford University, said we were living in a "middle world" reality that we have created.
Experts in design, technology, and entertainment have gathered in Oxford to share their ideas about our futures.
TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is already a top US event.
It is the first time the event, TED Global, has been held in Europe.
Species software
Professor Dawkins' opening talk, in a session called Meme Power, explored the ways in which humans invent their own realities to make sense of the infinitely complex worlds they are in; worlds made more complex by ideas such as quantum physics which is beyond most human understanding.
"Are there things about the Universe that will be forever beyond our grasp, in principle, ungraspable in any mind, however superior?" he asked.
Events of 7/7 and 9/11 remind us that we do not live in three different worlds. We live in one world
Ashraf Ghani, former Afghan finance minister
"Successive generations have come to terms with the increasing queerness of the Universe."
Each species, in fact, has a different "reality". They work with different "software" to make them feel comfortable, he suggested.
Because different species live in different models of the world, there was a discomfiting variety of real worlds, he suggested.
"Middle world is like the narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum that we see," he said.
"Middle world is the narrow range of reality that we judge to be normal as opposed to the queerness that we judge to be very small or very large."
He mused that perhaps children should be given computer games to play with that familiarise them with quantum physics concepts.
"It would make an interesting experiment," he told the BBC News website.
ET worlds
Our brains had evolved to help us survive within the scale and orders of magnitude within which we exist, said Professor Dawkins.
We think that rocks and crystals are solid when in fact they were made up mostly of spaces in between atoms, he argued.
This, he said, was just the way our brains thought about things in order to help us navigate our "middle sized" world - the medium scale environment - a world in which we cannot see individual atoms.
Because we exist in such a limited section of the universe, and given its enormous scale, we cannot expect to be the only organisms within it, Professor Dawkins believes.
He concluded with the thought that if he could re-engineer his brain in any way he would make himself a genius mathematician.
He would also want to time travel to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
More serious focus
Developing world economist and businesswoman Jacqueline Novogratz brought Professor Dawkins' thinking into focus, arguing that we need to fully engage with "developing worlds" to move away from "them and us" thinking.
"The world is talking about global poverty and Africa in ways I have never seen in my life," she said.
"At the same time I have a fear that the victories of G8 will see that as our moral absolution. But that is chapter one; celebrate it, close it and recognise we need a chapter two - a 'how to'.
"The only way to end poverty is to build viable systems on the ground that can deliver services to the poor in ways that are sustainable," she said.
Former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani added that globalisation was "on speed" and needed real private investment and opportunities to flourish.
"Events of 7/7 and 9/11 remind us that we do not live in three different worlds; we live in one world."
He criticised the West for being only concerned with design issues that affect them, and solving environmental problems for themselves.
"You are problem solvers but are not engaging in problems of corruption," he told TED Global delegates.
"You stay away from design for developments. Your designs are selfish; it is for your own immediate use.
"We need your imagination to be brought to bear on problems the way meme is supposed to. It is at the intersection of ideas that new ideas and breakthroughs occur."
More than 300 leading scientists, musicians, playwrights, as well as technology pioneers and future thinkers have gathered for the conference which runs from 12 to 15 July.
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Just in from yoga, so eating some grapes I had cooling in the fridge, and discussing the end of softball season with a roomie.
I'm so darn glad that's over!!
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You like that sappy song King?
Artist: The Plimsouls
Song: Million Miles Away
Friday night I'd just got back
I had my eyes shut
Was dreaming about the past
I thought about you while the radio played
I should have got moving
For some reason I stayed
I started drifting to a different place
I realized I was falling off the face of your world
And there was nothing left to bring me back
I'm a million miles away
A million miles away
A million miles away
And there's nothing left to bring me back today
I took a ride, I went downtown
Streets were empty
There was no one around
All the faces that we used to know
Gone from the places that we used to go
I'm at the wrong end of the looking glass
Trying to hold on to the hands of the past and you
And there's nothing left to bring me back
I'm a million miles away
A million miles away
A million miles away
And there's nothing left to bring me back today
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Been listening to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack and I just have to post the sappy love song lyrics.
We're all singing to it as I play it very loudly.
Never knew I could feel like this
Like I've never seen the sky before
Want to vanish inside your kiss
Every day I love you more and more
Listen to my heart, can you hear it sings
Telling me to give you everything
Seasons may change, winter to spring
But I love you until the end of time
Come what may
Come what may
I will love you until my dying day
Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place
Suddenly it moves with such a perfect grace
Suddenly my life doesn't seem such a waste
It all revolves around you
And there's no mountain too high
No river too wide
Sing out this song and I'll be there by your side
Storm clouds may gather
And storms may collide
But I love you until the end of time
Come what may
Come what may
I will love you until my dying day
Oh, come what may, come what may
I will love you, I will love you
Suddenly the world seems such a perfect place
Come what may
Come what may
I will love you until my dying day
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Here it is. I hope you enjoy it. LOL
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Another friend also has a good one with Trelawny saying "even I saw that one coming", unfortunately she's on vacation and not using it at the moment so I can't copy it.
I'll bring it over when she's back.
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Ouch!!!That's not good!!
I still waterski, but I took a break for a time.
Had a nasty fall, and landed smack on my tum, and it knocked the air out of me.
If my sister hadn't noticed that I couldn't have breathed correctly, Id have most likely been in worse shape.
I prefer wake boarding now.
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Yes, a bit further up.
Closest town is Harrisville.
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Hubbard Lake.
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I spent my summers 30 minutes in from Lake Huron, on the second largest inland Lake.
I understand the lake breezes, and also just floating to keep cool.
I so miss the Lake.
I need to go home.
It's the one thing I can depend on. The one thing.
Besides myself.
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They're saying they've arrested someone.
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Eating some toast and drink the morning cuppa
Listening to the BBC stream on my comp
Talking to some friends on MSN
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Never been.
What do most of you talk about, Trek related?
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Last summer was abnormal.
Typcially July works it's way up to it.
August is usually the hottest and most humid.
It's a bad summer because you can't get out and enjoy the day. It's like winter in reverse, trapped indoors due to the heat instead of the cold.
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That's August Michigan weather Odo!!
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I'm talking to a longtime msn friend right now.
Her son just moved to London from Australia.
She has no way of contacting him yet.
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Temperature: 77°F 25°C
Conditions: Fair
Winds: SSW 12 MPH SSW 19 KPH
Relative Humidity: 74%
Barometer: 30.02 Rising
Visibility: 10.00 Miles 16.09 Kilometers
Feels Like: 79°F
Good thing it's only 8 40 in the am.
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'Grand Theft Auto' now officially adults-only
Video game's rating changed as creator admits sex scenes built-in
Updated: 8:15 p.m. ET July 20, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO - The video game industry on Wednesday changed to adults-only the rating of “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” a best-selling game in which explicit sexual content can be unlocked with an Internet download.
The decision followed intense pressure from politicians and media watch groups, and retailers reacted swiftly — Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. said they would immediately pull all copies from their store shelves nationwide.
The game’s producer, Rockstar Games, said it stopped making the current version and would provide new labels to any retailer willing to keep selling the games, which had been rated “M” for mature. The company also will offer a downloadable patch to fix the sex issue in PC versions, and is working on a new, more secure version, to be rated “M.”
Rockstar’s parent company, New York-based Take Two Interactive Software Inc., also admitted for the first time that the sex scenes had been built into the retail version of that game — not just the PC version but also those written for Xbox and PlayStation2 consoles.
Company officials had previously suggested that a modification created by outsiders added the scenes.
Take-Two spokesman Jim Ankner acknowledged in an Associated Press interview that the questioned scenes were created by Rockstar programmers. “The editing and finalization of any game is a complicated task and it’s not uncommon for unused and unfinished content to remain on the disc,” he said.
In a statement, the president of the Entertainment Software Rating Board said the sex scenes were programmed by Rockstar “to be inaccessible to the player.”
But ESRB chief Patricia Vance also acknowledged that the “credibility and utility” of the industry-run board’s initial “M” rating had been “seriously undermined.”
Many retailers sell “M” rated games, which “may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older,” according to the Entertainment Software Rating Board, but won’t sell “AO”-labeled games at all.
“Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” was last year’s top console game, selling more than 5.1 million copies in the U.S. after its October release, according to market analyst NPD Group. Xbox and PC versions were released last month.
Take-Two said net sales could drop by more than $50 million this quarter, and lowered its financial expectations for the year to set aside funds for returns of the games. Guidance was reduced to $1.05 to $1.12 per share on $1.26 billion to $1.31 billion in sales from a prior estimate of $1.40 to $1.47 per share and sales of $1.3 billion to $1.35 billion.
The rating change is vindication for Patrick Wildenbourg, the Dutch programmer who developed the “hot coffee” modification and made downloads freely available on the Internet. Wildenbourg had told the AP that his “mod” merely allowed the user to gain access to pre-existing content in game.
Such “mods” are wildly popular among the hardcore gaming community, and have been shown to extend the retail longevity of games like “Half-Life,” which is still sold years after its first release because of a popular “Counter-Strike” mod that allows for detailed counter-terrorist shoot’em-up action.
Take-Two president Paul Eibeler said in a statement that “the decision to re-rate a game based on an unauthorized third party modification presents a new challenge for parents, the interactive entertainment industry and anyone who distributes or consumes digital content.”
The developments did little to appease Sen. Hilary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, who applauded the ESRB investigation but remained disturbed that the sex content appeared on store shelves in the first place.
“Apparently the sexual material was embedded in the game. The company admitted that,” Clinton said. “But the fact remains that the company gamed the ratings system.”
Clinton has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate, and said the ESRB must do more to police content.
“I think that the rating board has to be vigilant and really make sure that it’s as thorough as it can be and not just take the game makers’ word as to what’s on there,” Clinton said.
Best Buy echoed that, saying it hopes its decision to stop selling the game will “send a strong message to game developers encouraging full cooperation with the ESRB.”
The Parents Television Council, one of several media watchdogs that have criticized Rockstar and the ESRB, called on the game publisher to voluntarily recall the game and offer refunds to purchasers. Instead, Rockstar has agreed to exchange unsold inventory with new, “M” rated versions that “have the hidden content removed,” the ESRB said.
“I tip my cap to that first step of showing responsibility,” said Tim Winter, the council’s executive director. “Phase two needs to be absolutely getting to the bottom of this coding issue. How did it get into that game? How did it get past the ratings board?”
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Robotics show Lucy walked upright
Australopithecus afarensis, the early human who lived about 3.2 million years ago, walked upright, according to an "evolutionary robotics" model.
The model, which uses footprints to predict gait, suggests "Lucy", as the first fossil afarensis was called, walked rather like us.
This contradicts earlier suggestions that Lucy shuffled like a bipedally walking chimpanzee.
The research is published in the Royal Society Interface journal.
"I think it is very interesting work," Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, told the BBC News website. "There was controversy as to whether [footprints purported to be from afarensis] were showing a human pattern. And it looks like they do."
How human?
Lucy was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, by a team of palaeoanthropologists who were fans of the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
It doesn't end the argument because there is still the possibility that there were different creatures around at the time
Prof Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum
The ancient hominid had many features reminiscent of her early ape ancestry, but she also carried hints of her future descendents.
Her jaw was protruding and her forehead sloped back. But she seemed human, too; her posture being more upright than that of a chimpanzee.
However, there has been a debate about how "human" Lucy's posture actually was.
Some scientists maintain she was probably rather stooped and may have shuffled awkwardly, much like a modern chimp does when it is walking bipedally for short distances; while others think she was upright, routinely walking tall on two legs.
Twenty-five years ago, some footprints were found in Laetoli, Tanzania. The lonely path, trodden by at least two individuals walking side by side, was preserved immaculately in volcanic ash. It is thought to have been left by a pair of Australopithecus afarensis, vainly retreating from an erupting volcano.
The discovery of the Laetoli footprints generated a flurry of interest in scientists hoping to clear up the "posture debate".
Some felt the prints suggested a human-like gait but others were not convinced.
Questions remain
Now, a team of scientists from around the UK have used computer robotic techniques to work out the most energy efficient gait for afarensis based on Lucy's skeleton and the Laetoli footprint trails.
They claim to have cleared up the debate by finding that, based on their model, Lucy almost certainly did walk tall.
There has been a long-standing debate about how human Lucy was
"Assuming that the early human relative Australopithecus afarensis was the maker of the Laetoli footprint trails, our study suggests that by 3.5 million years ago at least some of our early relatives - despite their small stature - could sustain efficient bipedal walking at absolute speeds within the range shown by modern humans," co-author Weijie Wang, from Dundee University, told the Scotsman newspaper.
However, Professor Stringer believes the controversy will not vanish overnight.
"There are still some people who argue that, looking at the anatomy of the foot bones of afarensis, that they were unlikely to have made the Laetoli footprints," he told the BBC News website.
"So it doesn't end the argument because there is still the possibility that there were different creatures around at the time."
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Arkansas Residents Urged to Prepare for Major Quake
Scientists See 'Significant Probability' of Temblor Along New Madrid Fault
By ANNIE BERGMAN, AP
LITTLE ROCK (July 20) - Residents of the northeastern part of Arkansas along the New Madrid fault should be prepared for a high-magnitude earthquake, the University of Memphis Center for Earthquake Research and Information says.
Gary Patterson, the center's information services director, said Tuesday that there is a "significant probability" that a major temblor could rock the region.
"There's always reason to be aware when you're in an area that has the probability to have a a magnitude 6 or greater," Patterson said.
There have been six earthquakes measuring 2 or above along the southern part of the New Madrid fault zone since May 1, and four earthquakes of near magnitude 4 since February, he said.
"It is unusual to have that many fours, but we're only basing that on 30 years worth of data we have to compare it too," Patterson said. "Earthquakes are kind of like hundred-year floods, these things don't follow like clockwork."
Despite the increase in seismic activity, there is no way to forecast whether a larger earthquake will hit, the scientists said.
"We don't think there's any reason for an increased level of concern. There's not a larger event that those would have been precursors too," he said.
On average, there are 150-200 earthquakes in the state each year, Patterson said. The most recent 2.3 magnitude earthquake near Manila on Sunday put the number at 99, which is at the high end of normal occurrences, he said.
Haydar J. Al-Shukri, the director of the Center for Earthquake Education and Technology Transfer at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said there have only been two other times in state history where magnitude 4 earthquakes have happened in such rapid succession.
"Does this mean we'll see bigger one? We don't know at this point," Al-Shukri said Tuesday.
The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management Web site urges Arkansans to prepare for a large earthquake in the region because such an earthquake could cause extensive damage.
There are links for individual and family preparedness, as well as preparedness for pets, schools and businesses on the site.
Some suggestions include knowing safe and danger spots in the home, keeping a list of emergency phone numbers and developing networks with other families.
07/20/05 06:37 EDT
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NASA Aims for Shuttle Launch Tuesday
By MARCIA DUNN, AP
AP
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (July 21) - NASA will try to launch Discovery on the first shuttle mission in more than two years next Tuesday, after tracing last week's fuel gauge failure to, most likely, an electrical grounding problem lurking inside the spacecraft.
Shuttle program manager Bill Parsons said Wednesday the only way to thoroughly check the system is to fuel Discovery and have all its equipment running.
''We believe the best way to go through this is to do a countdown,'' he said. ''If the sensors (gauges) work exactly like we think they will, then we'll launch on that day. If anything goes not per the plan that we've laid out in front of us, then we'll have a scrub and we'll have to talk about it.''
In what would be an almost certainly controversial move in the wake of the 2003 Columbia tragedy, NASA may also proceed with the liftoff if the fuel gauge problem recurs but is considered well understood. That would mean revoking a launch rule requiring all four hydrogen fuel gauges at the bottom of Discovery's external tank to be working properly, and instead relying on just three out of four.
That looser three-out-of-four rule was thrown out after the 1986 Challenger launch explosion.
The fuel gauges are intended to keep a shuttle's main engines from shutting down too early or too late after liftoff, both potentially disastrous situations. Only two of the four are needed to ensure safety, but ever since the Challenger accident, NASA has required all four to be operating.
Parsons said there are considerable ''safety nets'' to protect against launching a seriously flawed spacecraft, if an exception to the fuel gauge rule is made at the last minute.
''Right now, we think we have eliminated all the common causes that we believe could do this and we've done everything we possibly could on the vehicle,'' he told journalists at an evening news conference.
Technicians plan to swap some pins and wiring near the electronics box that is associated with the four hydrogen fuel gauges, to better understand what happened last week.
Discovery's countdown was halted with just two hours remaining before liftoff last Wednesday when one of the four fuel gauges malfunctioned. It was the same type of problem that marred a fueling test of Discovery back in April, with a different external tank.
Despite a week of exhaustive scrutiny by hundreds of engineers, NASA has been unable to pinpoint the precise cause or location of the failure, and an electrical grounding problem somewhere in the aft fuselage is considered the most likely cause. The space agency is holding out hope that the grounding problem can be traced to interference from shuttle equipment in the next few days, but will aim for a Tuesday launch even if the mystery persists.
Among the many shuttle parts suspected of possibly causing electromagnetic interference are newly installed heaters on the external fuel tank. The heaters are meant to prevent the kind of lethal damage suffered by Columbia at liftoff.
''We have a great amount of work in front of us to get us through this and get us ready,'' Parsons said. ''But we've all agreed that this work is doable and that it all takes us to a launch on the 26th.''
The countdown is set to begin Saturday for a Tuesday morning launch.
Discovery and its crew of seven will fly to the international space station to drop off supplies and make repairs, and will test inspection and patching techniques for the type of damage that doomed Columbia.
A chunk of fuel-tank foam insulation tore a hole in Columbia's left wing at liftoff and led to its catastrophic re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003. All seven astronauts were killed.
If Discovery isn't flying by the beginning of August, the flight will be bumped to September to ensure a daylight launch and good surveillance photography throughout the shuttle's ascent.
07-21-05 01:13 EDT
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Talking to my Mom on the phone, she forgets the time changes between our homes.
What do you have to do here? Write your own lyrics?
Big Chill on Ancient Mars
in Science & Technology
Posted
Meteorites point to big chill on ancient Mars
Study throws cold water on theories about warmer, wetter Red Planet
ANSMET / Case Western University
Space.com
Updated: 2:49 p.m. ET July 21, 2005
A new study of gas in meteorites suggests Mars was bitterly cold for pretty much all of the past 4 billion years, putting the freeze on hopes that the Red Planet had any extended wet periods during which life could have flourished.
Several rocks that were once near the surface of Mars, and have in the past few million years been kicked up by impacts that sent them to Earth, have been freezing cold for most of the past 4 billion years, the study concludes.
While the findings don't rule out the possibility of life on Mars, they indicate that biology's best shot would have come in the first 500 million years of the Red Planet's 4.5-billion-year existence.
"Our research doesn't mean that there weren't pockets of isolated water in geothermal springs for long periods of time, but suggests instead that there haven't been large areas of free-standing water for 4 billion years," said David Schuster, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology.
Shuster and Benjamin Weiss, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, present their results in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Ancient Mars
Many scientists have tried to open ancient chapters in the book of Mars geology by modeling the past based on large channels carved into the dusty surface. In some scenarios — very popular a few years ago — the computers said Mars was warmer and wetter during much of its early time.
But recent evidence of past water, provided by the Mars rovers, has not revealed the sorts of huge and deep oceans that some might have hoped for. Instead, water might have existed in shallow lakes that did not necessarily last too long, providing only lukewarm support for the warmer and wetter theory.
Life as we know it requires liquid water, so much of the money spent to explore Mars is geared toward searching for signs of liquid water, past or present.
Yet scientists have failed to conclude whether the channels on Mars, some deeper and wider than any on Earth, were carved mostly by water or whether other substances — such as carbon dioxide — might have been involved. It is also not clear if the riverbeds were created gradually or, as many scientists have come to believe in recent years, by catastrophic floods of water and mud that came in short, hellish bursts.
"Our results seem to imply that surface features indicating the presence and flow of liquid water formed over relatively short time periods," Shuster said.
There has been water on Mars, scientists agree, and much of it may still lurk beneath the surface, recent evidence from orbiting craft has shown. If life ever did get going on Mars, it could still exist in subsurface aquifers, biologists say.
But the new study and other recent work is building a strong case to suggest that Mars has always been pretty inhospitable compared to Earth.
How the study was done
Shuster and Weiss studied previously published data on the amount of argon gas in seven meteorites that are known to have arrived from Mars after millions of years in space.
Argon decays at a known rate that varies with temperature. The amount of argon in a rock can be used to infer the maximum temperature the rock has experienced. Only a tiny amount of argon that would have existed in the rocks initially has leaked away.
"Any way we look at it, these rocks have been very cold for a very long time," Shuster said.
One of the rocks in the study was the infamous ALH84001, which contains etchings that some scientists have interpreted as being created by microscopic life forms. Shuster said the rock could not have been above freezing for more than a million years during the past 3.5 billion years.