2008 February « Michael Graham Richard

Archive for February, 2008

Internet Project: Re-Humanizing People in War-Torn Countries

February 29, 2008

Children in Iraq

There is a rule in big media: Don’t show regular people doing normal things in countries that your country is at war with (or might soon be at war with). So you will rarely see in the US media images of Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, etc, just buying things at the market. Children playing. Normal street scenes that wouldn’t be out of place - except for the visible local cultural differences - anywhere in the world.

So that is what I would like to see. If there are any people living in or visiting these countries reading this, please flood youtube and your blogs with videos and photos of normal life. Lets get these images out as an antidote to the pernicious pro-war propaganda (which now works in more subtle ways than before, sinning as much by omission as by what it clearly says).

Anti-war people have shown enough blood & guts, cadavers and dismembered bodies. It’s time to try something else. I believe that people will be more empathic to images of people in situations they can related to rather than in the alien (for them) world of war.

For those interested in learning more, I highly recommend Antiwar.com and Antiwar Radio.

Photo: Children in Iraq.

Posted in Society, Thoughts | No Comments »

The 4 Main Building Blocks of the Human Body

February 28, 2008

Periodic Table of Elements.

If we are our bodies, what are our bodies made of?

99% of the total number of atoms in the human body are either Hydrogen (H), Carbon (C), Nitrogen (N) or Oxygen (O). Ratios are approximately:

63% Hydrogen
24% Oxygen
9% Carbon
3% Nitrogen

Seven elements make up 0.9% of the remaining atoms. They are: Sodium (Na), Magnesium (Mg), Phosphorus (P), Sulfur (S), Chlorine (Cl), Potassium (K) and Calcium (Ca).

The last 0.1% is divided between eleven elements that are needed in trace amounts, all of them metals or metaloids except for Fluorine (F), Selenium (Se) and Iodine (I). There’s also three more that we aren’t sure yet if they are required for life or not: Boron (B), Silicon (Si) and Nickel (Ni). For their atomic masses, see the periodic table of the elements above.

I find it fascinating that our extreme complexity can be reduced to 4 main building blocks. Very light elements, too.

Source: Alberts, Molecular Biology of the Cell, 5th Edition. P. 47, 49.

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Posted in Science & Technology | 2 Comments »

Future Gaming: Total Freedom Off the Beaten Path

February 21, 2008

Virtual World

I haven’t played computer games in a long time, not since the days of Quake 2, but I’ve kept an eye on developments in the field and I think I can take an educated guess on where the state of the art will be relatively soon.

So imagine you are playing a first person action-adventure game that takes place around New York City. Your friend gets killed in building A, you investigate, find clues that lead you to building B to meet certain people, etc. There’s a fairly linear storyline that you can follow and it will lead you to a conclusion that wraps things up.

But lets say you don’t feel like following the main plot. Nothing special about that, lots of games give you freedom to wander around and explore. What I’m taking about is taking this to the next level not only in scope, but in detail and interactivity.

So you are in virtual NYC. What would you be able to do? What about taking a cab to New Jersey, going to Newark to buy a plane ticket, fly to Paris and have a drink under the Eiffel Tower, then go get another plane ticket, fly to Saudi Arabia and visit Mecca. Or go to Tokyo and find a karaoke…

Why not? With a game engine sophisticated enough, all of these things could be generated almost automatically as long as you have lots of raw data. During game development, you would feed it tons of detailed maps, satellite photos, encyclopedia information, government statistics, architectural blueprints and demographic information. For the details, you could probably feed it a few terabytes of public domain geo-tagged photos and videos (from sites like Flickr and Youtube, or whatever we have a few years from now) that would help with the appearance of buildings in various places, how people dress in different parts of the world, local plants and animals, parks and waterways, hills, mountains, etc. The blind spots could be extrapolated or filled in by the programmers.

(more…)

Posted in Future, Science & Technology, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

Internet is the New Turn-of-the-Century Vienna

February 18, 2008

Map of Vienna, 1958 image

Vienna, the capital of Austria, was the place to be at the end of the 19th century. Unlike Paris and London, it was quite small: You could walk across it in half-an-hour. It had operas, theaters, museums for natural history and the arts, good banks, a stock market and some of the best universities in the world.

It was almost impossible not to constantly meet friends, colleagues and relatives on the street. Even the most famous and powerful people were close:

Opera singers, stage actors, and members of the royal family [were on the streets]. When a famous singer walked by, or one of the more than sixty archdukes drove by in their carriage, people would greet them with spontaneous applause. [...] Yet the best example - and almost unbelievable for us today - was [emperor] Franz Joseph himself, who frequently departed in just his carriage from the [...] palace. Anyone could walk within reach [...] and lift his hat to the white-haired emperor.

Within two generations, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert appeared on Vienna’s stages in rapid succession, something that is without precedent in history. Passion for music united all strata of the population. In the words of William Johnston: “Slovenliness might be tolerated in politics, but not in musical or theatrical performance.”

The elites did not confine themselves to exclusive social circles and ivory towers. In cafés, the Viennese met to talk business, exchanged ideas, debated issues and met people who worked in various fields. For students and young intellectuals, school was very hard at the elite gymnasiums, much closer to modern college than high-school, but their education did not stop outside the classroom: the cafés were also a place to learn and grow.

The better cafés subscribed to the major international journals of science, art and literature. Designed for the entertainment of customers, these subscriptions made the cafés function as a kind of private library.

(more…)

Posted in Books, Music, Science & Technology, Society, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

Using Lasers to Detect Diseases via Breath

February 18, 2008

Detection Chamber - Michael Thorpe
Photo: Michael Thorpe holds a detection chamber next to a novel laser apparatus. Credit: JILA, NIST, University of Colorado at Boulder.

Today, the University of Colorado at Boulder made an announcement regarding a very promising technology:

Known as optical frequency comb spectroscopy, the technique is powerful enough to sort through all the molecules in human breath and sensitive enough to distinguish rare molecules that may be biomarkers for specific diseases

Combined with other rapid-response technologies, this could be part of the detection side of a BioShield, a technological immune system for humanity.

The optical frequency comb is a very precise laser for measuring different colors, or frequencies, of light, said Ye. Each comb line, or “tooth,” is tuned to a distinct frequency of a particular molecule’s vibration or rotation, and the entire comb covers a broad spectral range — much like a rainbow of colors — that can identify thousands of different molecules.

Source: University of Colorado at Boulder

See also:

This was cross-posted on the Lifeboat Foundation blog.

Posted in Science & Technology | No Comments »

Photo: Winter Chili

February 14, 2008

Chili Peppers

Last November, I posted some pictures of chili peppers I was growing. Here’s a whole new batch: I pollinated the flowers by hand and 7 of them turned into peppers. Some are still green, so they’re harder to see.

Posted in Visuals, food | No Comments »

Nagasaki’s Nuke was Supposed to be Dropped on Kokura

February 1, 2008

Nagasaki - Before and After the Nuclear Explosion photo
Nagasaki before and after 1945 bombing. Public domain image.

On August 9, 1945, the B-29 bomber Bockscar dropped a 21 kilotons nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. It detonated at an altitude of about 550 meters (1,800 feet) over the city and killed an estimated 40,000 people and injured about 25,000 more.

But that wasn’t plan A.

“Fat Man” Nuclear bomb photo
A post-war “Fat Man” model. Public domain image.

Three days earlier, on August 6, the Enola Gay B-29 bomber had dropped the “little boy” bomb on Hiroshima, killing an estimated 90,000-140,000 people. Kokura was the secondary target, if for some reason it had been impossible to nuke Hiroshima.

Hiroshima photo
Hiroshima, in the aftermath of the bombing. Public domain image.

Back to August 9, the Bockscar was flying over Kokura but it was impossible to visually see the target because of clouds and smoke coming from an earlier fire-bombing of the neighboring city of Yahata. So they moved to their secondary target which was Nagasaki.

The people of Kokura avoided nuclear death twice within 3 days, once because the Enola Gay’s primary target wasn’t cloud-covered, and once because the Bockscar’s primary target was. People were doing their laundry, going to work, making love while plans were made - and almost carried out - to nuke them.

I wonder how they felt when they later learned about it.

Kokura photo
What Kokura looks like today. Credit: T.J.M., Creative Commons license (BY-NC).