Tower of Babel anyone?

Is it me or does the new world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, look a lot like the Tower of Babel? Heck, it's even in the right region of the world. Let the conspiracy theories begin, re 2012 and all that nonesense.

Avatar = New TV/DVD/Hardware

As many people out there, I loved the Avatar.  But upon coming home and gazing at my newly bought TV, I had to sign with exasperation. Now, as increasingly greater number of movies will come out in 3D, to view them anywhere near approaching the quality seen in theatres, you'll have to again buy brand new equipment. It just seems that BlueRay won over HD DVD in the past year or so, and now we'll have to see whether Sony will step up and make 3D integration. Any thoughts?

Shoot Low and Act Surpirsed

Note the following NASA article: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/31dec_uncertainfuture.htm?list912666. Specifically, the sentence that notes "The rovers began missions intended to last for just three months but which have instead gone on for six Earth years, or 3.2 Mars years." Why do they do that? It seems every mission that has ever been sent into space, from the Hubble to Voyager, has been intended to last some ridiculously short amount of time (not to mention ISS or Skylab or Mir). And, it's like a suprise that they make these things last for decades longer. Wow, we thought we sent up something crappy into space, but wow, it is really still working. Must have been designed by engineers or something. Not marketers. Hubble, launched in 1990, was supposed to have a life of something like 5 years, but 20 years later, it's still going. Yes, there have been multiple service trips, but it appears that, after the initial mirror repair, most of the service calls were just to update equipment and swap out some insulation. They make it sound originally like after some seemingly random time period (how they arrived at that specific time frame is never explained), there will be some catastrophic power failure and the piece of tech will just die. And it never happens. So, what I'm wondering is whether the ridiculously short time frames are just to cover their behinds (in case something goes wrong, they can always say, well, it was supposed to happen 20 years ago), or whether these are valid surprises as far as machines inexplicably working years past their alleged expiration dates in the dead of space.

Be ready to be here for quite some time

Note the following article dealing with space travel. The key point I take away from the article is that we are never getting out of our solar system. No technology works to give rapid travel and without rapid travel, humans would have to go into space for hundreds if not thousands of years in an outdated spaceships with no hope of ever getting new equipment. That's the biggest downside to conventional travel to far away places, in my opinion - no way to get the latest technology to the travelers. Imagine if the Apollo program was actually to go to some far away planet. They would still be in the middle of nowhere while look how the technology progressed in the last 40 years. They would have to basically make do with technology that now is beat by any run of the mill graphic calculator. Same applies to any ship leaving now. Advances are so rapid, and space travel is so slow that even if someone decided to dedicate their entire lives to it, they would basically be stuck techonologically unless they themselves develop something new (which given the limitations of being in a ship with limited resources is virtually impossible). Any thoughts?

Same Subject, Different Reception

Ever wonder what makes a movie popular? Most times, if not always, it's not scientific accuracy but spectacular effects and/or big name actors. Two prime examples: Deep Impact/Armagedon and Volcano/Dante's Peak. Both pairs of films came out within a few months of each other. Both Armagedon and Volcano did much better financially in the theatres than Deep Impact (which to be fair, had a bigger opening) and Dante's Peak, even though the later ones where much more scientifically accurate - Dante's Peak so much so that it drew praise from volcanologists. Deep Impact was also praised by astronomers. Surprisingly, both Armagedon and Volcano was not a hit with the critics, but the general public loved the amazing effects (at least at that point they were) and one can say bigger stars in Armagedon and Volcano. Now, over time, both of the underdogs drew grudging respect and even when they were in theatres, many people preferred them over the more popular pair. Nevertheless, we have those pesky box office results. Money talks, or so they say. And although I cannot think of another similar situation where two movies so alike in subject matter coming out within months of each other, if Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is any indication, fans still prefer larger than life experiences when going to the movie theatre, and saving more scientific movies, hopefully, for their Netflix or DVRs. Any thoughts?

Space, the Final Frontier

I found this graphic fascinating: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/12/humbling-video.php

It's a shame that we can't see anything in real time and are stuck seeing things as they were in the past. Any thoughts as to ways to overcome this problem? I personally do not see any. Even if we send out billions of tiny satellites all over the universe, they would only be able to send radio waves back that also travel at the speed of light and by the time they arrive in most places, we may not even exist anymore to receive either the radio waves or the satellites if they return.

It's interesting how it even takes the sunlight 8 minutes to reach us. For all we know, our sun may have blown up and we wouldn't know it for 8 minutes. Ah, bliss.

Why the Olympics should say YES to PEOPLE like Oscar Pistorius

A recent article was posted at Dvice.com. See http://dvice.com/archives/2008/08/shift_why_the_o.php#more

I disagree with the article and posted this at the bottom of the article:

Until the steroid issues at the Olympics are truly resolved, the concern over
double amputees competing is a bit premature at best and prejudiced at worst.
The same issues have arisen with the new swim suits for swimmers that give, one
could say, an unfair technological advantage to people with the money to buy
them as opposed to diving with just speedos. And there is a difference between human power prosthetics and self-powered prosthetics that artificially recreate muscles. That's a pretty simple line. Artificial recreation of muscles allows one to make a stronger and faster prosthetic that will easily beat a human. A self-powered
prosthetic that does not artificially recreate the muscles in the foot can
hardly provide an advantage.

Agree or disagree, all constructive comments welcome.