Saturday, January 26, 2008

Don't be a Donna



This worked better as a West Wing C-plot than in real life.

From season 2, "The Fall's Gonna Kill You":

Ed and Larry approach, laughing.

LARRY: Donna.
DONNA: Yeah.
LARRY: Have you seen C.J.?
DONNA: No. What’s so funny?
LARRY: Ed just got a fax... [laughing] I’m sorry. Ed just got a fax from a man named Byron Talmadge. He’s the Associate Administrator for NASA’s Office of Space Cadets....
ED: Flight.
LARRY: Office of Space Flight.
ED: The OSF.
DONNA: What’d the fax say?
LARRY: A huge Chinese satellite is gonna come crashing to Earth, and we don’t know where, and we don’t know when.
DONNA: Seriously?
ED: Yeah, it’s right here in the fax.
DONNA: A satellite is... crashing to Earth and NASA sent us a fax?
ED: Yeah.
DONNA: This is for real.
LARRY: Yes.
DONNA: [terrified] A satellite is gonna crash into the Earth?
ED and LARRY: Yes!
DONNA: Why are you laughing?
ED: We thought it was funny.

The two of them turn to leave.

DONNA: I’m an assistant. What am I supposed to do with this information?
LARRY: The fax was for C.J., just give it to her when you see her.
WOMAN: Donna, they say it’s not going to rain this afternoon.
DONNA: Well, that’s a relief. [walks off]

Later, end of Act 4

C.J. turns away. Josh follows after her.

JOSH: You know, uh, Donna got hold of this fax that was sent to the press office from the OSF at NASA.
C.J.: What, something falling out of the sky?
JOSH: Yeah.
C.J.: We get that fax once a week.
JOSH: Yeah, but Donna doesn't know that. She thinks it's an emergency.
C.J.: And you didn't want to tell her?
JOSH: No, 'cause the other way you get a day's worth of entertainment without leaving the office. She doesn't know that these things fall out of the sky all the time... once every ten days, as a matter of fact. Since the first year we started putting man-made objects in space, 17,000 have come back and remarkably, not one person has been hit. [beat] So I suppose there's an argument to be made that we're due.
C.J.: Yeah. You picked me right up there, Josh.

C.J. crosses the street.

JOSH: See you tomorrow!

We pan up to the "Pennsylvania Ave 1600 Block" street sign and -

DISSOLVE TO: END TITLES.
FADE TO BLACK.
THE END

P.S. - The math says you're safe. Several tons of meteors actually make it through the atmosphere and hit the ground every day, and no one's ever been killed. Every planetary science undergrad at the University of Arizona gets to / has to crank out the math on this one. Bottom line, there's sooo much earth and sooo few people. You're good.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Whale stories

Of all the "designer dirigibles" profiled lately by Dezeen, my favorite by far is the "Manned Cloud":


Also, R. Douglas Fields surveys current research which asks "Are whales smarter than we are?":

From the neuroanatomical evidence she concludes that the large whale brain supports a complex intelligence that is driven by the socially complex and highly communicative lifestyle of these predators.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Mercury's cool I guess.

The Messenger probe will reach Mercury today around 2pm and immediately start sending back images. Unless it forgets to slow down or something, which is not without precedent.

Messenger took this video as it left Earth:



UPDATE: It forgot to slow down, but it was supposed to. Although the probe reached Mercury today, it's moving way too fast to just park itself in orbit. It's going to whip back out towards Venus a few more times to slow down, and eventually settle into orbit around Mercury in 2011 (!). Stupid laws of physics. No, no, I love them.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Mars is safe...for now.

Risk of Mars impact now 1 in 10,000.

Meanwhile, having successfully navigated the asteroid belt, NASA's "New Horizons" probe snaps this picture of Jupiter and its moon Io (with an erupting volcano) on its way to Pluto:

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

The Question, 2008

Every year, the Edge Foundation asks the world's smartest people one question. This year's: "What have you changed your mind about? Why?".

This takes days to read, but my favorite answers so far are "The Handicap Principle", "Mother Nature is not our friend", "Why men are at the top", and "Taking the Posthuman Era Seriously".

My former Professor (and great inspiration) Carolyn Porco articulates the point of this blog in her answer:
"When the truth becomes problematic, when intellectual honesty clashes with political expediency, when voices of reason are silenced to mere whisper, when fear alloys with ignorance to promote might over intelligence, integrity, and wisdom, the very practice of science can find itself imperiled. At that point, can darkness be far behind?"

Yo, what she said.

Science Debate 2008

A call for a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology

Go. Sign.

Monday, December 24, 2007

A light conscience plays well on TV

Can you imagine anyone from the Bush administration doing anything like this?

Madeline Albright on Gilmore Girls:



Bill Clinton's Last Days in Office:



I can't find the clip of the real Janet Reno's appearance, where she busted through a wall and yelled "It's Reno time!", but in this clip Will Ferrell's Janet Reno beats the hell out of the real Giuliani. In 2002, Janet Reno actually had several dance parties modeled after the SNL sketch.

Janet Reno's Dance Party:

Add to My Profile More Videos

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Things I miss about the 90's: Trip Hop

The whole genre seems to be about going to Europe and seducing and/or assassinating people, back when that kind of thing was so absurd that it was romanticized by icy soprano-vixens and not, like, our foreign policy. Anyway:

Hooverphonic - This Strange Effect


Hooverphonic - 2wicky

Massive Attack - Angel


Tricky - Christiansands


Mono - Life in Mono


Esthero - Heaven Sent

All I want for x-mas...

...is for this asteroid to hit Mars. There's a 1 in 75 chance it'll happen, so I'm hoping for a secular holiday miracle. We'll know for sure in a week or so, but the simulations based on current data are pretty awesome:



Thursday, December 20, 2007

Post-Concorde

The Concorde may be extinct, but NASA and Virgin Airlines are working together to develop a passenger space-plane. It looks like an evil flying squirrel:

Not that I'm complaining. The X-43 (until it gets a better name) will fly from New York to London in an hour. In November, a test craft hit Mach 9.6 (about 7,000 mph):



Some background on the concept:


Yo, we live in the future.