The Wisdom of Dilbert

...just something I found on one of my random journeys around the 'Net.

A Steam-Powered Vegetarian Robot?

The Victorian Era (1837-1901) is a period of human history that I’ve always felt had its own an inimitable charm, what with its delightful gas-lit city streetlights, its tailcoats and top hats, and its neo-Gothic architecture (an example of which is the U.K.’s Houses of Parliament, which were rebuilt between 1840 and 1870 after the original palace was destroyed in a fire). But without doubt, one of the most enduring icons of the Victorian Era, and the concomitant Industrial Revolution, was the ubiquitous steam engine.

Coal-fired steam engines were what drove everything from the great railways, the mines, the textile mills and other factories, the pumping of the domestic water supply, and the irrigation of farmland. By the 20^th century, though, advances in internal combustion engines (the kind that’s in your car) and electric motors (like in the ceiling fan above you), and the adoption of oil as a fuel spelled doom for the once-mighty steam engine.

Or did it? Maybe steam was just waiting for a comeback born of the drug-induced hallucinations of some crazy scientist at a government laboratory. I presume that that must be what happened because, seriously, no one in a normal state of mind could come up with something like EATR (Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot): a steam-powered, vegetarian robot. It’s still primarily a concept, but a working prototype is being built.

The motive for creating something like this (apart from the obvious “Because we can!”) is that such a robot could theoretically operate indefinitely in environments where conventional fuel sources are hard to find. It’s perfect for the American Army, for instance, because it would allow them to dispatch teams of EATRs to perform reconnaissance missions in environments like forests. It could also allow human soldiers to rest while it forages for biofuels, recharges electrical devices, or even transports heavy machinery. Civilian versions of the EATR could be used for forestry patrol and for agricultural applications.

The EATR uses image-recognition software linked to a laser and a camera to recognize plants, leaves and wood. 68kg of vegetation would provide enough electricity to travel around 160km, its builders estimate. Once it identifies appropriate fuel, a robotic arm gathers and prepares the vegetation before feeding it through a shredder into a combustion chamber. The heat from combustion turns water into steam, which drives a six-piston steam engine that turns a generator that creates electric power to be stored in batteries and delivered to EATR’s electric motors when needed. A little circuitous? You bet.

As well as using biomass, EATR’s engine can also run on petrol, diesel, kerosene, cooking oil or anything similar than could be scavenged. The ability to consume a wide range of fuels would be important if the vehicle found itself in areas like deserts, where vegetation may not be available and alternative fuel would be needed.

The robot is actually being developed by a private firm, Robotic Technologies, Inc., but has received funding from DARPA- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a US government agency. DARPA is, of course, no stranger to outlandish research projects. If the ARPANET that they had created by 1970 to link government communications networks could turn into the behemoth that is the Internet today, who’s to say that we won’t soon be letting our cars out to graze at night, instead of taking them to petrol stations?

[For a hilarious press release from Robotic Technology Inc, countering media claims that EATR feeds on the dead, go to http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/company-denies-its-robots-feed-on-the-dead/]

[Most of the information in this article is from Technology Quarterly (June 12, 2010), a publication of The Economist]

This is Why I Love 'The Economist'

I’ve always maintained that newspapers are relatively boring. I mean, sure, they’re worth looking through if you’re really interested in current affairs, but the great majority of newspaper articles are simply a collection of facts thrown in your face- the writing itself is rarely worth remembering.  I realize that this unemotional presentation of the bare facts is part of how newspapers are supposed to work, but it does take something away from their overall appeal.

News magazines, on the other hand, can often be a whole lot of fun- and none more so than The Economist, if you ask me. (The Economist actually prefers to call itself a newspaper, but it’s really got more in common with news magazines like TIME, Forbes, Businessweek, etc.) Just check out this article to see for yourself that it’s possible to find laugh-out-loud moments in a serious analysis of the news. [It might help if I pointed out right away that the tone is meant to be ironic.]

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16059928&fsrc=nlw|hig|05-06-2010|editors_highlights

Just in case you don’t get it because you’re not familiar with some of the illustrious (?) personalities mentioned, here’s a quick recap of what might be their greatest claims to fame.

Robert Mugabe: The current Zimbabwean president’s “land reform” efforts, which began in 2000, consisted largely of invading and grabbing farmland belonging to whites and reallocating it to supporters of his regime. These actions caused agricultural production in Zimbabwe to plummet, and to leave a once-self-sustaining nation at the mercy of donations from the World Food Program in order to avoid starvation.

Than Shwe: As leader of the ruling military junta in Myanmar, Than Shwe is partly responsible for keeping opposition leader and democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi (who is a woman) under house arrest for fourteen of the past twenty years.

Silvio Berlusconi: Famous for his extramarital sexual exploits. Most recently, in June 2009, he was accused of hiring 42-year-old escort Patricia D’Addario to spend the night with him. Before then, in April 2009, there was outrage over his attendance at an eighteen-year-old girl’s birthday party. His wife noted that he’d missed his own sons’ 18th birthdays. Berlusconi, of course, claimed that he’d never had “spicy” relations with the girl.

One can’t help but feel that it says something about the Italians in general that they’ve allowed this man to become their longest serving Prime Minister.

Mahmoud Ahmedinajad: In the face of economic sanctions, democratic pressures, and outright threats from the rest of the world, the Iranian president has steadfastly stood by his country’s plans of developing civilian nuclear infrastructure. At least, he claims that it’s only for nonmilitary purposes- but not many people are willing to take his word for it. And so the brinkmanship continues, with Western powers continually trying to push Iran further into the corner, and Iran obdurately constructing secret nuclear facilities and keeping out nuclear regulators…

Saddam Hussein: Earns a mention here for his regime’s ‘multiculturalist’ efforts at eradicating the Kurdish people in northern Iraq and silencing Shia religious dissidents throughout the country. Attacks on the Kurds, in particular, made indiscriminate use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas and sarin. An estimated 180,000 Kurds were killed and 1.5 million were displaced during the Ba’ath Party’s rule.

Idi Amin: I actually had to look him up- and I’m glad I did. Idi Amin was the president and military dictator of Uganda between 1971 and 1979. He was famous for his egotistical behaviour, and enjoyed making provocative statements aimed at Western powers. He created and conferred upon himself the title of CBE- Conqueror of the British Empire,  parodying the existing title ofCommander of the British Empire, which is granted by the British monarch. The dig about his innovative culinary skills refers to a widespread rumour that among his numerous other eccentricities, he was also a cannibal!

Dick Cheney: As Vice President, he was George W. Bush’s second-in-command, and he probably comes in second on the list of the most despised American political figures of recent times, as well. Alongside his political career, Cheney spent time working in the private sector, and even served as the CEO of a  Fortune 500 corporation called Halliburton between 1995 and 2000.

His ties with Halliburton, which offers services to support oil exploration and drilling, later became the subject of public scrutiny, as allegations arose that the company was receiving preferential treatment in the awarding of oil contracts in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. Cheney was always a fervent supporter of the Iraq War, and it seemed possible to many  that part of the reason for this was that Halliburton stood to make huge gains from such an action.

In July 2003, the Supreme Court ordered a group of oil company executives, including Cheney, to disclose documents relating to oil contracts in Iraq. Cheney refused, stating that the executive branch of the government had the right to keep such documents secret. (It does not.)

Kim Jong Il: Well, just take a look at the picture. And remember that he’s alwaysdressed like that.

Hugo Chavez: He’s immensely popular in his home country, largely because of his programs to support Venezuela’s poor majority. In 2009, he won a nationwide referendum to eliminate term limits for the presidency, essentially making it possible for him to govern indefinitely. Chavez is a staunch opponent of American foreign policy, and has gained international recognition for his vocal (and verbose) tirades against the Americans, and on various other topics.

His Sunday show, Alo Presidente (Hello President), a largely unscripted monologue, often exceeds seven hours, amounting to 54,000 words, or 333,000 characters, about the length of a romance novel. He’s so fond of an audience for his political views that he even recently joined Twitter. Observers are extremely skeptical of his ability to say anything in under 140 characters, though.

Existential Anguish

I can't imagine a work of art more poignantly capturing an ill-defined but all-consuming sense of existential anguish than The Scream.

The lack of recognizable facial features on the principal subject somehow only serves to convey its emotions more acutely. It's as if everything that once made this creature human has been stripped away, leaving behind only a raw core of fear and pain. These emotions are of such crushing magnitude that they distort material reality around the subject, causing the skies to boil and meld with the land and the sea. There's no detail in the surroundings because it all pales into insignificance- even nonexistence- in the face of the subject's pain. 

Crucially, though, the two figures in the background are not distorted in the same way as the faceless subject. This fact, along with their physical distance from the subject, seems to drive home the idea that it is alone in its pain. There is no hope here of misery being assuaged by finding itself in like company. It suffers alone. 

One of the most famous paintings of all time, The Scream is an example of Expressionist art, which sought to express emotional experience and the meaning of being alive rather than physical reality. It's been the victim of several high-profile art thefts, and was recovered more than once in sting operations by police forces from several countries.

Upon examination of his life, one might find that it's not too inappropriate that Edvard Munch would have created such a powerful depiction of human misery. Munch's father was religious to the point of fanaticism, and forcibly imposed his values upon all of his five children. Of his father, Munch once said: "My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious—to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born."

Munch himself was chronically ill, but had to contend with the poor family's constant moving from one sordid flat to another. One of his younger sisters was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age. Another quote attributed to Munch: "I inherited two of mankind's most frightful enemies—the heritage of consumption [tuberculosis] and insanity."

It is interesting that Munch took an open-minded view of the world- and of art, in particular- in contrast to his father's unwavering adherence to parochial religious dogma. 

NASA’s Spirit Rover Nears Death on the Red Planet

(From top: The mission badge of the Spirit rover, featuring Marvin the Martian; and a few pictures that were beamed back to Earth by the Spirit rover)

Spirit is dying. And, one might say, it’s about time, too. The intrepid little rover’s been exploring the Martian surface since January the 3^rd, 2004. It shares the Red Planet’s surface with its twin, Opportunity; but since their landing sites were almost diametrically opposite one another, they probably don’t get into too many fights about who’s on whose side of the planet.

Spirit, which is about the size of a dune buggy, got stuck in a sand trap in May 2009, and since only four of its six wheels remained fully operational by then, it hasn’t been able to extricate itself yet. This leaves the rover in an extremely vulnerable situation, as it’s unable to orient its solar panels to take full advantage of the sun’s energy, or to allow the wind to brush dust off the panels’ surfaces. And now, with the onset of the harsh Martian winter, when even less of the sun’s energy reaches the planet’s surface, Spirit may run out of power completely.

It would be a sad end to what’s been a long and fruitful life of adventuring. Far longer than nearly anyone expected, as a matter of fact. When Spirit and Opportunity were launched, their expected lifetimes were only three months. They’ve both already outlived that estimate by a factor of around 24. They’ve survived surviving paralyzing cold, blinding dust and long periods without sun, all of which occasionally left them silent and still, but only until conditions improved and they shook off the dust, stirred to life and puttered off to do more work.

Don’t you just wish all electronic appliances were that resilient? 

A Surprising fact about the Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope- like the more recently built Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – is one of those icons of scientific endeavour that captures the imagination of thousands all over the world. Soon after it was launched in 1990, it was discovered that the main mirror, despite having been constructed to within 10 nanometres of all specifications, was incapable of producing sharply defined images. It took an extraordinarily difficult servicing mission to correct the Hubble’s optical flaws; but in the end, it was a complete success.

After that first servicing mission in 1993, The Hubble went on to produce some of the finest and most captivating images of space ever seen. (“Pillars of Creation”, one of the most famous Hubble images, is included here.) The astonishing detail and the nuanced coloration of these images lend them an evocative beauty that often transcends a lack of understanding of their actual subject matter in a way that few other scientific images do.

However, it may come as a surprise to learn that much of the appeal of these images comes not from the telescope itself, but from the astronomers and image processing specialists who- in a sense- “photoshop” the images before releasing them to the public. That’s because the Hubble only sends images in black and white!

Astronomers have to make choices about composition, colour and contrast in order to bring out specific aspects of the data that the Hubble beams down to Earth. And while these decisions often have scientific meaning (just for e.g., hotter stars are usually blue-ish white, whereas cooler ones are redder), they are also occasionally made purely in order to enhance the visual appeal of the images.

For people who’ve never had access to the Hubble’s raw data, it might be hard to rein in a vague sense of disappointment over the fact that the universe may not be quite that pretty, after all; but, looked at another way, it’s a whole lot more mysterious…

Terminator

No sudden, sharp boundary marks the passage of day into night on planet Earth. Instead, the shadow line or terminator is diffuse and shows the gradual transition to darkness that we experience as twilight. With the Sun illuminating the scene from the right, the cloud tops reflect gently reddened sunlight filtered through the dusty troposphere, the lowest layer of the planet’s atmosphere. A clear high altitude layer, visible along the dayside’s upper edge, scatters blue sunlight and fades into the blackness of space. This picture actually is a single digital photograph taken in June of 2001 from the International Space Station, orbiting at an altitude of 211 nautical miles.