Religious kooks

Winner of the 2009 Golden Crocoduck

The guy I voted for.  Yay!

I should be surprised …

but I’m not.

My thoughts exactly

I’ve seen this on several sites, but I guess it originally came from Shoebox Blog.  I think it is perfect:

The Golden Crocoduck

You can vote here.

Something I have not seen in years

I went out to lunch yesterday and brought it back to work. While I was walking down the hall I glanced down and saw something I had not seen in years:

The guy had pushed in that little doohickey thingy. I can’t remember the last time someone had done that. It was odd because about a month ago I was at a coffee shop looking at the lid on my tea and I was wondering why they still make those lids.

As I’ve said, were you expecting something profound in a blog?

Why we need to retire the shuttle

Over on Space.com, there is an article about some issues around the next shuttle launch. It was all interesting, but there was one line that stood out with neon signs for me.

NASA would avoid flying during the New Year’s holiday because the shuttle’s computers are not designed to handle the year-end rollover.

WTF? Shuttle Y2K? My calculator has a calendar that DOESN’T have a problem with the year-end rollover.

Something to ponder

I probably have over twenty bookmarks. A few are fancy with flair, which I just use to spruce up my bookshelves. Most are simple thin cardboard – either plain or laminated – printed with logos for companies or events. Some I’ve had for a decade or more, and they are bent or faded or torn and I wonder how do you tell when it’s time to throw them away? Technically, as long as there is something with which you can use to mark your place in a book, it’s still a bookmark. If you rip a bookmark in half, you end up with two bookmarks.

I think I did throw a bookmark away about a year ago. It had seen its way through many a book, and I think it was on the verge of disintegrating. I threw it away mainly so I could start working on another bookmark.

What? You were expected something profound on a blog?

A prediction

I predict that December 22, 2012 will begin like most mornings, although there will be more hangovers because of all the “End of the World” parties. 99.99% of people will laugh off the idiocy of the doomsdayers and continue their lives. Of those who truly thought the world was going to end, some will actually be upset that it didn’t; now they’ll have to pay off those gigantic doomsday bunkers that they built. The rest will probably just assume that their prayers (happy thoughts) prevented the disaster.

And I will link back to this blog as proof that I’m a prophet.

The Moon or Mars?

Of late there has been much discussion over whether we should focus our space exploration on returning to the Moon or going to Mars. Well, here’s my two cents.

The Moon, hands down. Don’t get me wrong, I like Mars and can’t wait until we go there, but this is what I think will be on Mars 200 years from now: a few thousand people. There will probably be a main spaceport, and numerous bases around the planet, think Antarctica on a far larger scale. The main research will be if there was/is life there. If it is found, you can pretty much scrap those giant domed cities you find so often in scifi. Martians will trump urban sprawl. But if life isn’t found, then we’ll just keep looking, and the possibilities of Martians will trump urban sprawl.

Now, does the Moon get my vote just because of these problems on Mars? No. The Moon is far better than Mars in evolving humanity into a space faring species. While there is interesting selenology (lunar geology), the lunar outposts will soon grow into lunar factories. There will be factories on Mars, but most of their products will just be for Mars. Why ship a sledgehammer all the way from Earth when you could just make one here? But with a lower gravity and no atmosphere to deal with, the products from the lunar factories will probably go into lunar orbit and from there out to the asteroids.

From Earth we could launch a mission to the Near Earth Asteroids using the same equipment we go to the moon with, but throwing in the resources of the Moon means we could do so much more. And among the asteroids is where we will truly become a space faring species. Learning to live on Mars lets you live on Mars. In that sense, focusing on Mars is like going down a dead end street, it may be interesting, but you don’t really go anywhere. In contrast, learning to live on the Moon and the asteroids lets you live everywhere else in the solar system except the Gas Giants and Venus. We need to learn to live in space because there is far more space than there are planets. I said that I expect a few thousand people to be living on Mars 200 years from now. 200 years from now there may be just as many people living on asteroids, but I bet their population growth will be ten times greater than that of Mars.

So, Mars is interesting, but we will be able to do so much more going to the Moon and the asteroids.