Links for 20-10-2006
Bumper edition! Life found underground, debunking bad science journalism, the transparent factory, Spamhaus, kite power, space elevator contest, Second Life reportage…
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“The bacteria exist without the option of photosynthesis by using radioactive uranium to convert water molecules to useable energy. Similar life forms may exist on other planets, experts speculate.”
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“Someone might want to chat with Professor Curry about a career change, staying away from technological forecasting, or at the very least learning more about accelerating change.” Debunking bad science journalism at Betterhumans.
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3 – EmpathyScience fictional story by Chris Lawson about animal uplift at Cosmos magazine. Link via Sentient Developments.
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4 – Project Blackbox“Project Blackbox is a prototype of the world’s first virtualized datacenter–built into a shipping container and optimized to deliver extreme energy, space, and performance efficiencies.” Cyberpunk becoming reality, yet again.
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“Earlier this week Universal Music released some initial results from its experiment in tapping its deep archives to measure Long Tail demand for older music (European music, in this case).”
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“I have put together some photos, to provide a bit of a ‘tour’ for folks who have not yet been to Dresden. I hope you find them informative.” The VW Phaeton factory – a new addition to my ‘must see’ list.
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“Recent episodes of deadly heat in the United States and Europe, long dry spells across the U.S. West, and heavy bursts of rain and snow across much of North America and Eurasia hint at longer-term changes to come…”
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The Spamhaus case has the internet legislators pretty baffled and upset.
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“The British Library and the recording industry are arguing about proposals to extend the lifespan of copyright. Wendy M Grossman looks at the issues behind the row.” At teh Grauniad.
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“Instead of driving, walking, or rolling around like other vehicles designed to traverse distant, rugged landscapes, the new rover changes its shape and topples along, veering a bit from side to side as it moves ahead.”
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” … high hopes for a new wind-power generator that resembles a backyard drying rack on steroids. Despite its appearance, the Kite Wind Generator … could produce as much energy as a nuclear power plant.” Hmm.
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“With two 65-kilowatt fuel cells and six hydrogen tanks under the floor and a secondary battery on the roof, the clean train emits only water and runs without receiving juice from power lines.”
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“Bloggers don’t get much sunlight in their day-to-day routine, so this plant wall is about as close as we’ll get to ‘being outside.’” Hah! Speak for yourself, Gizmodo.
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“While it’s laughable that it would take the industry this long to even venture to admit what was obvious to most everyone else, it is a tiny step in the right direction.” Traditionally pithy round-up at Techdirt.
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“Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale’s avatar took the stage in CNET Networks’ “Second Life” headquarters to talk about the metaverse’s latest developments in front of an audience of several dozen residents.”
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” … by posting the musical ingredients of his 1982 classic Shock the Monkey and inviting fans to morph it into something new and original.” Very interesting news; the labels are starting to look a little silly now.
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“If my desktop printer understood the lessons of social software and Web 2.0, it wouldn’t be attached just to my computer or local network. It’d be accessible by my closest family and friends, too, regardless of where they lived.”
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“This site currently contains more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images of both publications and handwritten manuscripts.” The whole shebang. ‘Nuff said.
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“Second Life residents are spending $7 million a month on digital goods and services.” And Wired has a top-ten of the most desirable or useful items.
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” … issued a press release warning the IRS to not tax participants in on-line games.” Odds on they will anyway – wars against abstract nouns have to be funded somehow, after all. Via the Speculist.
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“Above all others, the book I am most looking forward to reading is William Gibson’s Spook Country. According to his blog it’s done, finished and delivered.” It’s not just Jonathan Strahan who feels this way…
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“It’s dangerously shortsighted to make architectural decisions based on the threat of the moment without regard to the long-term consequences of those decisions.” Schneier tells it how it is.
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“Environmental and health risks stemming from nanomaterials are real and need to be addressed head on by both industry and regulatory bodies, experts said this week at a conference.” Media hype should be avoided too, but little hope of that.
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” … sales of “emotion detection” technology to corporate call centers has reached $400 million annually [...] originally developed for eavesdropping, [they've] been employed by customer service agents to get a better idea of customers’ moods.”
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“With $400,000 in NASA-provided prize money at stake, 16 teams have gathered this week in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for the second annual Space Elevator Games as part of the X Prize Cup…” Go, climbers, go!
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“Use Google Earth to check out this spectacular space exposition at the Las Cruces airport, October 20-21, if you can’t be there in person.” Google Earth resources for those who can’t make it to the physical location of the 2006 X-Prize games. Like me.
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“…the Mileura Wide-Field Array gives us the chance to piggyback SETI on the back of a well-funded area in cosmology, looking at a significantly different part of the spectrum than existing SETI searches.”
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“Everyday conversation used to be ephemeral. Whether face-to-face or by phone, we could be reasonably sure that what we said disappeared as soon as we said it.” Bruce Schneier talks sense.
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“An invisibility cloak **that works in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum** has been unveiled by researchers.” Hence a deluge of Harry Potter / Star Trek headlines all over. Science journalism is a terrible thing sometimes.
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“Prior to Moore’s milestone works, writing comic-book dialogue was an occupation akin to being the script doctor on a porn video: It wasn’t clear the job even needed to be done.” Reason is underwhelmed by ‘Lost Girls’.
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October 20th, 2006 at 3:47 am
Those uranium bacteria are seriously cool, but they’re hardly the first bacteria discovered that use energy not somehow derived from the sun. There’s the (somewhat well-known) deep vent bacteria, which don’t use sunlight, instead reducing sulfur. (I don’t think they do a lot of environmental scavenging. To be truly independent of the sun, the organism would have to fix both carbon and nitrogen. I have no idea where the uranium bacteria are getting their nitrogen.) Some microbial ecologists think there’s a huge number of bacteria (well, prokaryotes) living in the subsurface crust and reducing various elements — I’ve heard people say that the total biomass might exceed the surface biomass.
I think New Scientist might have lost something in their telling. I’ll have to read the cited paper tomorrow when I can get to it. (Also, Desulfotomaculum is hardly a new bacterium — it was first described in 1965.)
My favorite bacteria (other than the ones that make rocket fuel) are the deep-sea photosynthetic bacteria. They live in the deep sea, where the sun doesn’t reach, but they have lots of genes for photosynthetic pathways. One guess is that they use other organisms’ (other bacteria, probably) bioluminescence. (I’d give a citation, but my bookmark seems to be broken.)
I’m convinced that, at least on this planet, anywhere there’s an energy imbalance, some sort of life will pop up to take advantage of that imbalance. I have a hard time believing that life is so unique that the situation is any different elsewhere in the universe, but I’ve got nothing but speculation to work with there.
Sorry, geeking out.
October 20th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Energy fans might find this interesting. A lay person’s guide to nuclear energy’s wacky people, politics and technology is at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com. This thriller novel: “Rad Decision” was written by a longtime industry insider and is provided free online. Readers seem to like it judging from their homepage comments. Also endorsed by Stewart Brand, internet pioneer and founder of The Whole Earth Catalog. RadDecision.blogspot.com
RadDecision.blogspot.com
October 21st, 2006 at 2:35 am
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