The Truth is Out There...

Sorry Fox Mulder and, before him, Richard Dreyfuss’s character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It is okay to believe, but to know requires more than belief. The Truth May Be Out There, I’m waiting for the proof out there to come in here before I try to Pen Pal with someone from Alpha Centauri.

The other popular phrase from the old X-Files television show was I want to Believe. Wanting to believe in something that sometimes blinds people from the lack of proof. It is okay to want to believe something. It is okay to believe something. Just understand the difference between belief and truth. A troubling number of people get those two things confused and then get upset with those that do not confuse the two.

Space Debris

No wonder interstellar life just keeps driving right on past earth. We leave 170 million wrecked cars on our lawn. I wonder if there is a scientifically sound story idea about a natural or man-made event that would cause all the space debris to be pulled down to earth? You know, a nice summer disaster flick? It could star John Cusack, and he could run around the world trying to save his onscreen family from flaming shrapnel from the sky? Hell, we could even slap a sequel label on it and call the movie Gravity II: Homefront!

Yeah… why are all my middle-of-the-night story ideas so really, really, really bad?

Invisible Motion

Michael Rubinstein gives an interesting TED Talk on new video-processing techniques used to explore the information captured in microscopic motion.

From TED.com

For more informaiton, check out the MIT Video Magnification page at:

http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/

You can even grab the source code and binaries at:

http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/evm/#code

Laniakea

Because we all should know where we live in case we get lost and need to tell a nice policeman our address...

Our Milky Way galaxy lives on the tip of a celeste appendage belonging to the Supercluster newly named Laniakea.  Hawaiian for immeasurable heaven.  

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/milky-way-found-to-belong-to-a-supersize-supercluster-video/

USA/NSA

This would be cute if it weren't so chilling...  Or is it this would be chilling if it weren't so cute? 

We need to decide on the level of acceptance we will give to government (and corporate) surveillance.  This should be a national (and international) discusion so that an understanding can be reached and the boundaries drawn.  We are not providing our leaders a clear picture on what level of data collection is acceptable.  There can not be much of a challenge to government or corporate overreach until there is an established understanding in the zeitgeist where that line should be drawn.  

Disengaged acquiescence will give us an Orwellian world only bound by the limits of the technology.