Relevant History

links for 2009-12-31

• The Trouble With Predictions: The “Negroponte Flip” 20 Years Later
  "As a futurist, I have respected the fact that the future is not only not what it used to be, but that specific predictions as to dates and market size can certainly come back to bite you."
  (tags: forecasting future technology)
• FT.com / US / Economy & Fed - Soros to invest $50m in economic think-tank
  "George Soros, the fund manager, has pledged $50m to back a new think-tank with the mission of reconceiving the field of economics, which he describes as “a dogma whose time has passed”. The group, to be called the Institute of New Economic Thinking, will gather luminaries in the field of economics to reflect on the ideas that allowed the latest economic crisis to transpire and to bring new ideas to a profession that some argue has become too deeply entrenched in free-market ideology."
  (tags: economics science)
• Nascent: Sensemaking in Multi-Fusion Environments
  In brief a sensemaking system is one that, in contrast to a data warehousing solution, does something active with each piece of data as it is acquired, rather than only storing the data for later re-use. Identity disambiguation is a problem that these class of systems have been applied to in the past, however the new technique will be more generally applicable.
  (tags: intelligence)
• Rachel K. Hanig and Mark E. Henshaw, "Needed: A National Security Simulation Center," Studies in Intelligence 52:2
  The IC has responded to current challenges by trying to improve standard best practices; improving information-sharing; and promoting alternative analytical techniques. "A solution that fuses all three initiatives together into a single whole and that resolves the problem posed by the pressure for analytical timeliness would be ideal. We propose that one solution is, ironically, both widely known and little practiced by the IC, simulations."
  (tags: forecasting simulation intelligence)
• Roger George, "Meeting 21st Century Transnational Challenges: Building a Global Intelligence Paradigm," Studies in Intelligence 51:3
  "The opportunity now exists to tap into a vastly larger amount of expertise than was previously available to US intelligence. However, this will require working from a very different paradigm from that which characterized much of our Cold War history. The key features of that traditional paradigm were: secrets; classified channels of information flows; a focus on a few hard targets... very limited contact with outside experts who were almost always US citizens; and focus on key facts and finished intelligence products. The new paradigm, in contrast, will focus on “open source” information and reach out to a wide variety of experts who are non-intelligence professionals drawn from different sectors and often non-Americans. As the 21st century is expected to be far less predictable and dynamic, the objective is to scan the horizon for emergent issues and so-called weak signals that are harbingers of futures for which few governments have begun preparing."
  (tags: forecasting intelligence security open_source web2.0 collective_intelligence)
• Carmen Medina and Rebecca Fisher, "Thinking About the Business of Intelligence," Studies in Intelligence 53:3
  “Why did economists not do a better job anticipating the crisis?” was the question everyone seemed to be asking as the global economy began to unravel last fall. The consensus seems to be that most economists not only failed to see the crisis coming but also were downright hostile to the few who argued that The Great Moderation—the era of economic stability brought about by modern banking system controls—wasn’t so great after all.... Anyone who has looked at his brokerage accounts or her retirement portfolio lately already “gets it” at the macro level. But what exactly happened on the cellular level to get us to where we ended up? And what can we, as intelligence professionals, learn from those events?
  (tags: forecasting psychology future intelligence)
• Government 2.0: Intelligence Renaissance Networks
  "Recently, I attended a small conference about using social tools for information sharing hosted at Johns Hopkins University and sponsored by the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). Our hosts for three days were the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) World Intelligence Review (WIRe) and the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) Intelligence Community Enterprise Services (ICES). They were able to bring together the people who build social tools, those who evangelize about them, and influential end users to have candid and open discussions about them."
  (tags: forecasting web2.0 collaboration intelligence networks gov2.0)

The limits of FourSquare

Jessica Grose on what's wrong with Foursquare:

The major limit to Foursquare’s widespread appeal is what differentiates it from the other location-based apps—game mechanics, which have limited appeal to older users (it should be noted that competitor Loopt has recently acquired similar gaming technology). With Foursquare, you get badges based on participation, and you can compete for badges with your friends. If you “check in” to a particular location often enough on Foursquare, you become “mayor” of that location. If you check in four nights in a row, you get a “bender” badge, and so on. Though hyper-social twentysomethings in cities with endless options may enjoy competing with their friends for the “player please” or “douchebag” badges, the reward system does not hold much for anyone older. “I don’t get any real thrill from the gaming aspect,” one thirtysomething, New York-based Foursquare user told me. “All the badges seemed aimed to a young, single dude,” said another.

Another limitation of Foursquare’s appeal is that users are rewarded—“given pieces of digital candy,” in the words of co-founder Dennis Crowley—for seeking out new venues and experiences as much as possible. This is only valuable in enormous markets like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, where there are constantly new restaurants, events, and bars to patronize.

Hiking in Castle Rock State Park

Yesterday the family went on a hike in Castle Rock State Park.

via flickr

Castle Rock's about an hour south of our home, and is one of the many excellent parks on Skyline Ridge, the mountains that divide Silicon Valley from Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay, and the Pacific coast.

via flickr

The kids have been getting into rock climbing recently (our local Y has a climbing wall equipped for top-roping), and I wanted them to have a chance to do a little outdoor climbing. Castle Rock is famous for having lots of very interesting sandstone formations that are weathered and great for climbing; they range from smaller rocks that are good for kids, to some very difficult technical climbs.

via flickr

There's one outcropping in particular, at Goat Rock, that the kids found hard but not impossible, and offered a terrific view of the mountains-- and a steep drop on the other side.

via flickr

One of the things I'm trying to teach the kids (particularly my self-described daredevil son) is that you need to respect the fact that while it's fun, climbing can kill you if you don't pay attention. Being smart about the risk is part of the challenge.

via flickr

There are two major trails in the park, Saratoga Gap and Ridge. Ridge leads to Goat Rock, and is a good steady climb from the parking lot. It has some beautiful sections, but I thought Saratoga Gap was even better: not only are the views spectacular, but the trail runs over a couple streams and rocks that the kids enjoyed scrambling over.

via flickr

Parts of the park look like something out of a Roger Dean album cover for Yes. I found that a little disorienting in a pleasant way.

via flickr

There's a waterfall that's supposed to be great during the rainy season; it was a bit anemic yesterday, but the observation deck beside it has a terrific view.

via flickr

[To the tune of Van Morrison, "And It Stoned Me," from the album Live at the Fillmore West (April 26 1970) (a 4-star song, imo).]

On resolutions

The Guardian has a timely article examining why New Year's resolutions fail:

Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire... and his team had asked 700 people about their strategies for achieving new year resolutions. Their goals ranged from losing weight or giving up smoking to gaining a qualification or starting a better relationship.

Of the 78% who failed, many had focused on the downside of not achieving the goals; they had suppressed their cravings, fantasised about being successful, and adopted a role model or relied on willpower alone.... On the other hand, people who kept their resolutions tended to have broken their goal into smaller steps and rewarded themselves when they achieved one of these. They also told their friends about their goals, focused on the benefits of success and kept a diary of their progress.

People who planned a series of smaller goals had an average success rate of 35%, while those who followed all five of the above strategies had a 50% chance of success, the study found.

"Many of the most successful techniques involve making a plan and helping yourself stick to it," Wiseman said.... Other strategies that helped people to achieve their goals included making only one resolution at a time and treating occasional lapses in the plan as just temporary setbacks.

Since I'm about 20 pounds lighter than I was this time last year (but 15 pounds from where I really want to be), I read this with particular interest. There's plenty of research that indicates that regimens involving self-denial, and require immediate sacrifices for long-term gains, are hard for people to keep to: this is why retirement accounts that automatically deduct money from your paycheck are more reliable than your own intention to put away some money every month for retirement. I think Wiseman's findings are consistent with that work.

Like a lot of people who've fought with their weight, I have a pretty complicated relationship with food. Some of the foods I overdo most easily are really simple, like Ritz Crackers (go figure). It's also something of a narcotic: I find if I eat more than a modest lunch, I get dumb. But unlike smoking, it's not a relationship you can ever end: I'm stuck with eating.

For me, the first critical discovery about dieting was that the miracle key to weight loss is... eat less food. It's really that simple. Not exercise, not Atkins (which worked for a while, but then didn't, and feels pretty ecologically unusustainable anyway), not some other diet; just a lot less food. And making that work, in turn, required paying a lot of attention to little things. I figured out that the time of day I'm most likely to have trouble with food is before dinner (and to a lesser degree after). I've learned what diversions work: investors in gum companies had a very good 2009 thanks to me, and I drink vast quantities of water and tea, mainly for the satiety effect. I also realized that eating certain ways creates problems: eating breakfast while standing over the kitchen sink may have worked when I was a grad student and only had two eggs and a moldy lemon in the fridge, but these days, it's a recipe for disaster. I've learned that when I have a bad day, you have to not get too discouraged, and just start over again the next day. Or the next year.

[To the tune of Van Morrison, "School Of Hard Knocks," from the album Keep It Simple (a 1-star song, imo).]

Paper planes in space

I love this idea: paper planes in space. Last year, Japanese paper plane maker Takeo Toda

and fellow enthusiast Shinji Suzuki, an aeronautical engineer and professor at Tokyo University, announced plans to have about 100 of their paper planes launched by a Japanese astronaut on board the international space station, 250 miles above Earth.

The 30cm planes, made from heat-resistant paper treated with silicon, survived temperatures of 250C and wind speeds of mach 7 ‑ seven times the speed of sound ‑ during testing. But the attempt was postponed after the pair acknowledged it would be all but impossible to track them during their week-long journey to Earth, assuming any of them survived the searing descent.

And no, I'm not sure how a paper plane will behave in either microgravity or the exosphere. Is there enough atmosphere to get any kind of lift and stability? Whatever.

[To the tune of Van Morrison, "Kingdom Hall," from the album Live at the Bottom Line, New York City (November 1 1978) (a 2-star song, imo).]

links for 2009-12-27

• Forex Trading: Why Are Economists So Bad at Forecasting?
  "Forecasts satisfy a deep psychological need that we live in a somewhat predictable and controllable world," says Philip Tetlock, a professor of organizational behavior at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "Those are essential stories. People just find the truth" — that the future is unknowable — "too dissonant."
  (tags: forecasting psychology future)
• Satellite pioneer joins Morehead State's space science faculty | International Space Fellowship
  Bob Twiggs is a rock star in the small satellite world. He invented the “CubeSat” satellite standard which has become a world-wide standard for pico-class satellites (satellites weighing 1 km. and under).
  (tags: cubesat)

On belay!

Climbing at the Y.

F6: Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying spacecraft

Having been doing a lot on cubesats recently, I was struck by a Space News report that DARPA is funding a $75 million project "to develop the final design for a radically new space architecture in which traditional, large spacecraft are replaced by clusters of wirelessly connected orbiting modules"-- i.e., networked cubesats.

Dubbed System F6, short for Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying spacecraft, Orbital’s design was selected among four competing study contracts issued in 2008 and 2009, according to a Dec. 18 company news release. The new contract is valued at $74.6 million over a one-year period.

Gregg Burgess, Orbital’s vice president for national security systems in the company’s Advanced Programs Group, said the new space architecture has the potential to transform space systems in much the same way that the Internet changed many aspects of daily life.

“System F6 is not just an incremental improvement in technology, but rather a fundamental transformation of the entire space community,” Burgess stated in the news release. “Fractionated and networked architectures could be the answer to recurring problems that debilitate the space sector, including significant cost increases, late deliveries, launch mishaps and on-orbit failures.”

Burgess said each of the System F6 modules is designed to work with the others in a cluster to perform tasks once reserved for large, traditional spacecraft while providing the same overall mission capability.

For those who aren't that familiar with conventional satellites, what makes this idea revolutionary is that normally spacecraft are expensive; take a long time to design, test and launch; and are all-or-nothing propositions-- if they crash or fail to deploy properly the costs are catastrophic. Theoretically, you could replace some big satellites with constellations of cubesats, which could be upgraded incrementally, reconfigured for different missions, and would be more robust against accidents or attack. Very different.

[To the tune of The Futureheads, "Burnt," from the album News & Tributes (a 1-star song).]

links for 2009-12-23

• Guidance on the use of strategic futures analysis for policy development in government
  "This short guidance document outlines how particular futures techniques can be used for particular parts of policy development. It is based on a detailed analysis that is available as a separate document.1 It builds on the guidance provided in the Foresight Horizon Scanning Centre (HSC) toolkit which should be referred to for thorough guidance on the use of techniques."
  (tags: future forecasting policy strategy)
• Senario Planning (Foresight Horizon Scanning Centre, Government Office for Science)
  Excellent introduction to scenarios. "This note is designed to provide an introduction to scenarios, particularly for those organising or participating in country, regional or thematic scenario planning work. It suggests a choice of three possible techniques, and brings together the results and lessons from work carried out in different countries and contexts."
  (tags: scenarios planning forecasting future methodology)

links for 2009-12-22

• Orbital Wins DARPA Contract for Spacecraft Clusters | SpaceNews.com
  "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp. a $75 million contract to develop the final design for a radically new space architecture in which traditional, large spacecraft are replaced by clusters of wirelessly connected orbiting modules.... dubbed System F6, short for Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying spacecraft.... [T]he new space architecture has the potential to transform space systems in much the same way that the Internet changed many aspects of daily life. “System F6 is not just an incremental improvement in technology, but rather a fundamental transformation of the entire space community,” Burgess stated in the news release. “Fractionated and networked architectures could be the answer to recurring problems that debilitate the space sector, including significant cost increases, late deliveries, launch mishaps and on-orbit failures.” "
  (tags: cubesat space)
• Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up | Magazine
  "While the scientific process is typically seen as a lonely pursuit — researchers solve problems by themselves — Dunbar found that most new scientific ideas emerged from lab meetings, those weekly sessions in which people publicly present their data. Interestingly, the most important element of the lab meeting wasn’t the presentation — it was the debate that followed. Dunbar observed that the skeptical (and sometimes heated) questions asked during a group session frequently triggered breakthroughs, as the scientists were forced to reconsider data they’d previously ignored. The new theory was a product of spontaneous conversation, not solitude; a single bracing query was enough to turn scientists into temporary outsiders, able to look anew at their own work."
  (tags: sts science neuroscience psychology attention learning innovation creativity research)
• Kevin Niall Dunbar | University of Toronto - Academia.edu
  "My laboratory (The Laboratory For Complex Thinking & Reasoning: Genes, Brains, Cognition) conducts research that spans the domains of Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Educational Neuroscience, and Cognitive Neuroscience. The overall focus of our research is to discover and foster the psychologically and educationally important mental processes underlying Thinking, Reasoning, Problem Solving, and Creativity. Our recent research using fMRI has been on analogical reasoning, causal reasoning, and conceptual representations of scientific concepts. The goal of our work is to harness these findings in ways that facilitate the learning of concepts in both science and the arts and facilitate their transfer into the real world."
  (tags: neuroscience cognition science psychology)
• Scholars Seek Better Metrics for Assessing Research Productivity - Research - The Chronicle of Higher Education
  "Evaluating scholars simply by tallying their citations is "like saying Britney Spears is the most important artist who ever existed because she's sold 50 million records," said Johan Bollen, an associate professor of informatics and computing at Indiana University at Bloomington, as he introduced a daylong workshop on academic metrics here on Wednesday. "That's not how we do things in the real world," Mr. Bollen continued. "And I don't think we should do things like that in scholarly assessments either. … We need to find ways to take trust, prestige, and influence into account.""
  (tags: research scholarship publishing socialsoftware)

links for 2009-12-18

• Scenarios for 2030
  Challenge Networks' scenarios for 2030, published in 2006.
  (tags: scenarios future GPPAG)
• Shell Global Scenarios - An Explorer’s Guide - About Shell
  'Scenarios: An Explorer’s Guide' is written for people who would like to build and use scenarios, and also for those who want to enhance their scenario thinking skills. We visualise our audience as people who are curious by nature, who want to make a difference, and who are highly motivated to acquire a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.
  (tags: scenarios future strategy GPPAG)
• Beat Habegger, "The Contribution of Strategic Foresight Public Policymaking: Assessing the Experiences of the UK, Singapore, and the Netherlands"
  "[F]ew contemporary challenges can be confined to one policy area anymore and governments have realized that a single-issue focus is in many instances insufficient. Consequently, they have started to experiment with foresight that cuts across the traditional boundaries of policy areas. This article will concentrate on three countries that have been at the forefront of this trend, the United Kingdom (UK), Singapore, and the Netherlands. To this end, the paper first discusses the concept of foresight and explains how it may contribute to public policy-making. It will then pursue a review of foresight activities in the UK, Singapore, and the Netherlands that cut across the conventional issue- and departmental boundaries. Finally, it will draw some lessons with regard to the key requirements and success factors if foresight ought to make an effective contribution to the development and implementation of public policies."
  (tags: strategy forecasting policy GPPAG)
• "Essential Documents" from the Council on Foreign Relations
  "Vital primary sources underpinning the foreign policy debate." Pretty huge.
  (tags: foreignpolicy strategy globalization future GPPAG)
• Ministry of Defence | MicroSite | Development Concepts Doctrine Centre | Our Teams | Strategic Trends
  "Strategic Trends provides a measure of context and coherence in an uncertain predictive area characterised by risk, ambiguity and change.... The DCDC approach goes beyond identifying the potential future military threats, to which our Armed Forces will have to respond, and looks at the developments in areas that will shape the wider strategic context within which Defence will have to interact."
  (tags: strategy military forecasting future gppag scenarios)
• Ministry of Defence > Development Concepts Doctrine Centre > Our Publications > Strategic Trends Programme
  "The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 3rd Edition is the latest iteration of work commenced by the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), as the Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre (JDCC), in 2001 and is published here as a Adobe Acrobat PDF file. Strategic Trends explores a range of potential outcomes over the next 30 years. As with previous editions, the document has been placed in the public domain in order to generate debate and discussion."
  (tags: scenarios future GPPAG)
• Nonprofit Law Blog: L3C - Developments & Resources
  (tags: l3c nonprofit socialenterprise)

Wait 'Till

The De-Phazz remix of Ella Fitzgerald's "Wait 'Till You See Him" (on Verve Remixed) is one of the most fabulous things I've ever heard. Wow.

[To the tune of Ella Fitzgerald, "Wait 'Till You See Him (De-Phazz Remix)," from the album Verve Remixed (It's a 4-star song).]

Academic job market sucks for thirtieth year; Ph.D.s remain unaware of other job markets

This piece of complete non-news in the New York Times caught my eye this morning:

With colleges and universities cutting back because of the recession, the job outlook for graduate students in language and literature is bleaker than ever before.

According to the Modern Language Association’s forecast of job listings, released Thursday, faculty positions will decline 37 percent, the biggest drop since the group began tracking its job listings 35 years ago.

The projection, based on a comparison between the number of jobs listed in October 2008 and October 2009, follows a 26 percent drop the previous year.

I read this, and wondered what bothered me about it. Obviously the news itself is bad, but not surprising: the academic job market has been a disaster area for a generation now, it's not going to get better, and anyone who thinks it will is delusional. When I was in grad school in the late 1980s, the conventional wisdom was that we were hitting the job market at exactly the right time: the generation that was hired during the Great Expansion in the 1950s and 1960s would retire, and we'd cruise into those positions.

Needless to say, that didn't happen, and the fact that many of those jobs were converted into short-term positions should have been a clear signal that The Market Had Changed.

But this is old news. What gets me about this piece, I realized, is how it's framed. It equates "the job outlook for graduate students in language and literature" with "the academic job market:" there's no sense that Ph.D.s might be capable of doing SOMETHING ELSE with all that knowledge. Demonstrably wrong, guys.

[To the tune of British Sea Power, "Something Wicked," from the album The Decline Of British Sea Power (It's a 1-star song, imo).]

links for 2009-12-17

• Peer Pressure and Other Pitches - WSJ.com
  More businesses are using behavioral economics to appeal to customers, seeking to capitalize on the notion that people don't always act in their economic self-interest.
  (tags: economics psychology design interface behavioral_economics)
• UTIAS/SFL - Low-Cost Launch Program
  UTIAS/SFL provides a low-cost launch service for nanosatellites. This service was originally motivated by the needs of the Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment (CanX) program. The CanX program demonstrated a need for reliable, low-cost access to space for regular (18 to 24 month) launches of 1-5 kg spacecraft.
  (tags: cubesat canada space science)
• LightSail-1- A Solar Sail Mission of The Planetary Society
  "LightSail-1 -- the first of The Planetary Society's three spacecraft --will demonstrate that sunlight alone can propel a spacecraft in Earth orbit. Taking advantage of the technological advances in micro- and nano-spacecraft over the past five years, The Planetary Society will build LightSail-1 with three Cubesat spacecraft. One Cubesat will form the central electronics and control module, and two additional Cubesats will house the solar sail module. Cameras, additional sensors, and a control system will be added to the basic Cubesat electronics bus."
  (tags: cubesat space future)
• Smart People Believe Weird Things: Scientific American
  "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons."
  (tags: psychology decision-making evidence)

You kids get off my lawn so I can retire

Sometimes a "what people are commenting on" list (like this one from CBS' Market Watch web site) looks like a direct, unmediated view of the id:

via flickr

Gee, I wonder what Baby Boomers are worried about?

It also makes me wonder how well the "biggest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history" is going.

[To the tune of Audioslave, "Bring 'em Back Alive," from the album Audioslave (I give it 4 stars).]

links for 2009-12-16

• Researchers and students to develop small CubeSat satellites
  "The RAX will measure the energy flow in the ionosphere, the highest part of Earth's atmosphere where solar radiation turns regular atoms into charged particles. Disturbances in the ionosphere can affect earth-to-space communications such as GPS signals, digital satellite television and voice and data transmission systems including Iridium and Globalstar.

  "This project will help us better understand space weather processes, how the Earth and Sun interact, and how this weather produces noise in space communication signals—noise that translates to lower quality telecommunications capabilities and error in GPS signals," Cutler said.

  The RAX satellite will act as a receiver that will pick up signals from a ground radar transmitter. These radar pulses will reflect off disturbances, or space weather phenomena, in the ionosphere."

  
  
  (tags: cubesat space spaceweather)
  
  
• 
  
  Compute Scotland : Clyde in a new age Space
  
  
  Profile of Clyde Space, involved in commercial CubeSat work.
  
  
  (tags: space cubesat scotland)
  
  
• 
  
  Cubesat RAFT
  
  
  Naval Academy project. "The DOD interest in this RAFT project is its requirement to TRACK all space objects and the difficulty it will have in tracking these 4" cubesat clusters due to their large numbers and small size which is below the NSSS routine tracking ability. RAFT was approved by the DOD Space Experiments Review Board in the fall of 2002. Since DOD cannot pay for our project to fly on the typical Cubesat Russian (low cost) launcher, DOD developed their own 5" cubesat launcher.

  RAFT OBJECTIVES: The RAFT Mission is to provide a cubesat in the cubesat cluster which has an on-board transponder capable of identifying itself via the NSS satellite Radar Tracking system to help locate the Cubesats. Without this transponder, the Cubesats are too small to be detected by normal non-queued tracking systems, and so there is no easy way to find these individual cubesats once they have begun to spread from the original launch tracking elements."

  
  
  (tags: cubesat space)
  
  
• 
  
  Creating Citizen Scientists § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
  
  
  "Researchers in fields ranging from biochemistry to cosmology are recruiting armies of volunteers to help solve some of science’s thorniest problems."
  
  
  (tags: citizenscience pro-am science science2.0)
  
  
• 
  
  Orbiting Carbon Observatory Mission Overview
  
  
  "It is the first spacecraft dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide, the most significant human-produced greenhouse gas and the principal human-produced driver of climate change. This experimental NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder Program mission will measure atmospheric carbon dioxide from space, mapping the globe once every 16 days for at least two years. It will do so with the accuracy, resolution and coverage needed to provide the first complete picture of the regional-scale geographic distribution and seasonal variations of both human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions and their sinks-the reservoirs that pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it. Mission data will be used by the atmospheric and carbon cycle science communities to improve global carbon cycle models, reduce uncertainties in forecasts of how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, and make more accurate predictions of global climate change." (Crashed in 2009)
  
  
  (tags: space environment climate satellite)
  
  
• 
  
  FEATURE: Cubesats - How Small Can Satellites Get? : SatMagazine
  
  
  You’ve definitely heard of the... 1 kg satellites called Cubesats, so named due to their physical dimensions being that of a 10 cm cube. They are extremely popular as an educational tool at universities, but is it truly feasible to create a functioning satellite within so small a package? Additionally, do Cubesats have any practical use, or are they merely just a toy?
  
  
  (tags: cubesat space)
  
  
• 
  
  Satellites aim to shake up quake predictions : Article : Nature
  
  
  "The controversial idea that earthquakes can be predicted by monitoring tiny fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field is to be tested by two new satellites. Although many seismologists see little merit in the idea, NASA and the US Air Force are together contributing about $1 million to provide data analysis and ground instrumentation to support experiments with the first satellite, the privately funded QuakeSat. Built by QuakeFinder of Palo Alto, California, the craft is now returning data from orbit after its 30 June launch. A second more expensive and ambitious satellite, funded by the CNES, France's national space agency, will follow next April."
  
  
  (tags: cubesat earthquakes space science forecasting)
  
  
• 
  
  What's Shakin'? Tiny Satellite to Try and Predict Earthquakes
  
  
  A California company is planning to launch a satellite that will monitor, and hopefully one day predict, the state's shakiest feature - earthquakes. Dubbed QuakeSat by its Palo Alto-based creators, the microsatellite is tasked with watching the world for extremely low frequency (ELF) signals in the Earth's magnetic field -- signals that could be a precursor to an oncoming temblor. But first, it has to show that the signals have value as an earthquake indicator in the first place. "We're obviously very optimistic, but we won't know until we try it," said QuakeFinder president and CEO Jeannie Seelbach in a telephone interview. QuakeFinder is developing the satellite as well as a ground-based earthquake detection network. "However, we think that this is something that has enough promise to be explored."
  
  
  (tags: cubesat space earthqualkes forecasting)
  
  
• 
  
  Solar flare puts GPS off the air -- Government Computer News
  
  
  On 2006 solar flare that disrupted GPS.
  
  
  (tags: astronomy science)
  
  

links for 2009-12-15

• CloudSat Test Platform
  "The CloudSat is a CubeSat program being developed by Vanderlei Martins of the University of Maryland - Baltimore County (UMBC) Physics Department in collaboration with the NASA GSFC Climate and Radiation Branch. The CloudSat will take photographs of the vertical profile of clouds, in order to study cloud microphysics and thermodynamic properties."
  (tags: cubesat science weather meterology)
• NASA - GeneSat-1
  Short release on GeneSat-1.
  (tags: cubesat genesat nasa space science)

links for 2009-12-14

• CALL FOR SESSION PROPOSALS
  "[Y]oung people's forms of participation with new media are incredibly diverse, and that risks, opportunities, and competencies are spread unevenly across the social and cultural landscape. Young people have differential access to online experiences, practices, and tools and this has a consequence in their developing sense of their own identities and their place in the world. In some cases, different forms of participation and access correspond with familiar cultural and social divides. In other cases, however, new media have introduced novel and unexpected kinds of social differences, subcultures, and identities. It is far too simple to talk about this in terms of binaries such as "information haves and have nots" or "digital divides". There are many different kinds of obstacles to full participation, many different degrees of access to information, technologies, and online communities, and many different ways of processing those experiences...."
  (tags: media culture education academic learning conference)

I wrote on Victorian solar eclipse expeditions, when I could have doing this....

Tony Perrottet found something pretty interesting:

A couple of years ago, while researching a treatise on salacious European history, I discovered the phantasmagoric wonderland of sex that was Georgian Britain, the era from 1714 to 1837. Long before the heyday of Austin Powers, debauchery proliferated up and down the rain-soaked land, fueled by riotous boozing and self-indulgence. "There was a gusto about 18th century vice unmatched before or since," writes historian Fergus Linnane with tangible nostalgia, in London: The Wicked City. A flood of wealth from the budding empire allowed the leisured classes to fulfill their carnal fantasies without restraint. And perhaps the most striking feature of the age was the explosion of British sex clubs.

[To the tune of Nine Inch Nails, "The Greater Good," from the album Year Zero (I give it 2 stars).]

links for 2009-12-13

• Podcast: Fixing Climate Change Is Going To Cost You - Planet Money Blog : NPR
  "Economists see climate change as a tragedy of the commons problem. We benefit by putting carbon into the atmosphere because it means cheap electricity and cheap gasoline. It saves us money in the short term, but eventually if we continue, we'll all suffer."
  (tags: environment economics climate)

links for 2009-12-11

• Japan sees small satellites as 'moneyspinners'
  Moves are afoot to use small satellites to facilitate the growth of Japan's aerospace industry.
  (tags: satellite cubesat japan)
• Glass Satellites
  "Scientists in The Aerospace Corporation's Micro/Nano Technology Department are fired up about the tiny glass demonstrator satellites they’ve been developing."
  (tags: space satellite)
• Smallsats Could Get Boost in Global Financial Crisis | AVIATION WEEK
  "Small satellites have been widely regarded as second-rate by Pentagon and intelligence community officials, who opt for massive, high-technology spacecraft lasting a decade or more in orbit. But the time may finally be at hand for skeptics to begin accepting smaller, simpler systems for some national security missions. If so, the face of the U.S. satellite industry could change dramatically because smaller satellites are less complex to build. If the barriers to entry into this market are lowered, the standard cast of Pentagon contractors could be joined by smaller, and potentially leaner, upstarts."
  (tags: satellite space cubesat military)
• CubeSat -Based Disaster Detection and Monitoring Systems
  "Situational assessment is a critical element for emergency response systems. Since terrestrial-based sensing and communication systems may be compromised in the event of an attack or natural disaster, a small-satellite surveil- lance and tracking network is proposed as a low-cost, readily deployable solution. The University of Hawaii’s Small Satellite Program has developed a CubeSat-class picosatellite platform for performing terrestrial disaster detection and monitoring. This paper describes the development and demonstration of a 1.5U CubeSat with a geo-referenced imaging payload, and its ties to the responsive space field."
  (tags: cubesat space disasters)
• starbulletin.com | News | /2006/08/29/
  "TWO GENERATIONS of ultrasmall satellites developed by University of Hawaii students are sitting on the shelves waiting for launch. And a new and improved model is in the works."
  (tags: cubesat space education)
• UH engineering student honored The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper
  "Blaine Murakami, a 22-year-old graduating senior at the Manoa campus, was awarded the 2005 Alton B. Zerby and Carl T. Koerner Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Award by Eta Kappa Nu, the national electrical engineering society. In 2003 Aaron Ohta, who graduated from Manoa that year, received the same honor, and Kendall Ching received it in 2001. The common denominator has been electrical engineering associate professor Wayne Shiroma, who mentored all three. Shiroma, a former Hughes Aircraft satellite engineer before coming home to Hawai'i to teach, has involved all of them in construction and design of mini-satellites at UH, a project that also has immersed dozens of Manoa engineering students in real-life engineering experiences."
  (tags: cubesat education space)

links for 2009-12-10

• Advances in Space Research : Establishing space industry in developing countries: Opportunities and difficulties
  Although it is generally agreed that the outer space should be used for the benefit of all mankind, only a fraction of the countries have the necessary technological base for accessing space. Space technology, with its implications on science, economy and well-being of citizens, is mostly chosen as one of the priority areas for technological development by developing countries. However, there is already an over-capacity in global space industry and there are doubts on necessity of additional capacity establishment by developing countries. In this study, the importance and benefits of capacity-building in these countries are emphasized and the advantages and disadvantages that developing countries have in the framework of space technology acquisition are briefly presented.
  (tags: space globalization cubesat science)
• Tiny satellite set to transform the way gas and electricity meters are recorded | Mail Online
  "Scientists said today they plan to commercially produce the CubeSat - which is 10cm high and weighs the same as a bag of sugar. The 1kg device, which can be constructed with off-the-shelf electronic components, have traditionally been a cheap way for universities to research outer space. They are taken into space on the back of larger satellites from which they are launched. Once in space they are powered with solar panels. But University of Strathclyde scientists have teamed up with Glasgow space firm Clyde Space to develop an advanced version of these satellites. Clyde Space would like to commercially produce them, and the university team hopes to use the partnership to launch Scotland's first satellite."
  (tags: cubesat scotland space)
• Elendu Reports - CubeSats: Satellites for Poor Developing Countries
  a national space programme has tended to be the exclusive preserve of a few rich industrialised countries. Some developing countries notably North Korea, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt, and lately Nigeria, though not usually classified as industrialized countries, are however trying to catch up. These countries have tried to start at the miniaturized, lightweight end of satellites, because they are less complex as well as much cheaper to assemble and launch.
  (tags: cubesat space)
• South Korean satellite launch misses target | World news | guardian.co.uk
  "[T]he Naro-1, was due to put a scientific observation satellite into orbit and propel South Korea into an exclusive group of nine nations that have launched domestically built satellites from their own territory."
  (tags: satellite Korea)
• CiNii -  The Development and Design of New Generation HAUSAT-1(CubeSat) Pico Satellite
  "This paper addresses the development and design of the HAUSAT-1 (Hankuk Aviation University SATellite-1), a new generation picosatellite, being developed by SSRI (Space System Research Lab.) of Hankuk Aviation University."
  (tags: korea cubesat space)
• Tiny, DIY Satellites Get NASA Boost | Wired Science | Wired.com
  "We’ve known that the DIY ethic is good for modding your Roomba or building a beer bong, but groups of college students have taken the movement to the next level: space. Working on shoestring budgets and short timelines, duct tape and tape measures, CubeSat enthusiasts build 4-inch square satellites and then piggyback their dreams on bigger missions’ rockets. They do it dirty and cheap, but their results are competitive with their spendier counterparts."
  (tags: space cubesat science diy)
• University-Class Spacecraft
  "[T]his site is about university-class satellites (sometimes called student-built satellites); we prefer this term to “student satellite” because the latter has become nonspecific through overuse.... [T]he significant distinction of a university-class satellite (as opposed to a space mission with strong university participation) comes from programmatics, not cost or performance; while university-class satellites have traditionally been lowcost and low-performance, this is a logical consequence of the way the missions have proceeded, not an inherent part of their nature. (In fact, there is a mistaken belief that university-built spacecraft are a low-cost alternative to “professional” satellites; see my 2004 paper for further discussion.) The purpose of a university-class mission is to train students in the design, integration and operation of spacecraft, and this is accomplished by giving students direct control over the progress of the program."
  (tags: satellite cubesat university innovation space)
• NRO Embraces Cubesats for Testing Advanced Technologies
  "In an effort to reduce risk in developing operational spy satellites, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has started a new program that will use tiny satellites, known as cubesats, as in-space test platforms for promising new technologies."
  (tags: cubesat military security space)
• Category:Projects - PicoSatPortal
  "This category intends to gather all PicoSat and CubeSat projects."
  (tags: cubesat)
• The Space Review: The promise of innovation from university space systems: are we meeting it?
  "Students often believe that their work will lead to breakthroughs in the satellite industry because student projects can afford to be more innovative and ambitious." According to the aerospace industry and NASA, in contrast, "The value of student-built spacecraft is not in the hardware, but in the experience developed by students.... Who is correct? Are student-built spacecraft valuable because they provide technological innovation or because of the student training opportunities?"
  (tags: cubesat space science education university)
• Washington University CubeSat readied for NASA/Air force competition
  "Swartwout said there has been a boom in spacecraft production at universities worldwide, with 30 university-built spacecraft launched over the past decade. Enabling this trend has been the electronics revolution of the late '90s, which made possible the opportunity for universities to make much smaller vehicles with much cheaper price tags. This in turn led to Swartwout developing the modus operandi of developing student-built, "disposable," spacecraft that function over a short timeframe of a few weeks. The hope, Swartwout said, is that some day an innovation developed by students at a university will become a "disruptive" technology - one that is implemented and alters the status quo of spacecraft design."
  (tags: cubesat education space)
• SPACE.com -- Cubesats: Tiny Spacecraft, Huge Payoffs
  2004 article on cubesats
  (tags: science space cubesat)
• HobbySpace - Satellite Building
  "Flying satellites in space might seem like a real stretch for the amateur. In fact, for decades the amateur radio community has been building and flying their series of amateur satellites under the guidance of AMSAT (The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation). Furthermore, amsats have been first in a number of satellite technologies including store and forward messaging and dopplar location for search and rescue. See Highlights of Space Radio for more examples of amsat accomplishments. Amsats have also become the models for the smallsat revolution. More and more spacecraft, such as the space probes Lunar Prospector and the Mars Global Surveyor, as well as low earth orbit comsats like Orbcomm, are built small and specialised and in relatively short times. This goes against the traditional approach of huge general purpose spacecraft (see, for example, the Cassini probe to Saturn) that take many years to build."
  (tags: satellite space amateur citizenscience)
• AMSAT - A Brief History of Amateur Satellites
  "Orbiting Satellites Carrying Amateur Radio (OSCAR) series of small satellites was initiated for radio amateurs to experience satellite tracking and participate in radio propagation experiments." First amateur satellites were launched in 1961, substituting for ballast on a USAF rocket.
  (tags: space cubesat citizenscience history)
• AMSAT - Cubesat Information
  List of cubesat launches, 2003-2009.
  (tags: cubesat space satellite)
• The first Norwegian satellite? The Norwegian Space Centre
  "A payload from Trondheim and a satellite platform developed in Canada can give Norway a better view of activities in ocean areas under national jurisdiction."
  (tags: cubesat space norway)
• Michael's List of Cubesat Satellite Missions
  "This list is meant to give an overview over the success rate, mission and payloads, communication, attitude and orbit determination and control systems along with links to the various projects. Only missions already launched, scheduled for launch, or being actively worked on are included on this page."
  (tags: cubesat space timeline)
• Cubesat - Proyecto espacial Colombia en órbita satélite colombiano Libertad 1
  Website of the Libertad-1 project, Colombia's first satellite.
  (tags: cubesat space colombia)

links for 2009-12-09

• Small Satellite Conference: Elements of New Space Systems (Utah State University, 2009)
  (tags: cubesat conference)
• SwissCube, the first all-Swiss satellite, designed by university students and built entirely in Switzerland, has been successfully launched from a site in India. - swissinfo
  "The EPFL also wants to build on the success of SwissCube and already has a number of space projects up its sleeve. "We want to develop a niche area and build slightly bigger satellites up to 10kg," said Borgeaud. "With those you can do some amazing things but at reduced costs." It is presently in discussion with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to see how its observational requirements can be met by small satellites. There is also an interest in using the tiny devices in the fields of astronomy and planetary science, where Switzerland is a world leader."
  (tags: swisscube cubesat space spaceweather science)
• Switzerland Sends Its First Satellite Into Space
  "The size and budget constraints have led to several innovations that may be used in future commercial satellites. For example, the engineers had to develop a more efficient system of copper contacts connecting the solar cells to the walls of the satellite to conduct electricity to the interior. By playing with the size, form, and spacing of these contacts, the team developed a new method which is both efficient and inexpensive."
  (tags: cube)
• Space For All - The HobbySpace Log » POPACS - participatory science satellite project
  "Gil Moore, a satellite pioneer and the force behind the Starshine educational satellite project, describes the new polar orbiting passive atmospheric calibration satellite (POPACS) project."
  (tags: cubesat thermosphere spaceweather)
• Morehead State University - News: News Release - Satellite pioneer joins Morehead State’s space science faculty
  "POPACS (Polar Orbiting Passive Atmospheric Calibration Sphere, is a 3-unit cubesat with cold gas propulsion in elliptical 1,500 km. orbit which will be the first cubesat built using a 3-D printer. POPACS will be launched in 2012 by the Air Force Space Test Program."
  (tags: space cubesat 3dprinting rapid_protoyping)
• Storytelling’s Value for Management: Review of Charles Jacobs, Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science
  "In this upside-down, counterintuitive world, where actions often produce outcomes that are the opposite of those intended... managers have to think less like Aristotle and more like Socrates. The vehicle for progress, in other words, is not the answer reached through logic but the question addressed through stories.... Managers need to reach back to the most ancient learning tool we have — the compelling narrative that engages us. The role of emotion in decision making, after decades of denigration by management theorists, turns out to be prime, in light of the recent research. It is impossible for us to make decisions if there is no emotional component to the process. Only stories can bring together context, relationships, and the emotional mind — the essential ingredients of this new approach, where the environment is seen as a source of opportunity to create the behavior one desires. These are also the ingredients of great strategy."
  (tags: books management organizations stories planning strategy)
• Sir David King and Sandy Thomas, "Taking Science Out of the Box: Foresight Recast," Science 316 (5832): 1701-1702.
  "Science belongs at the heart of good government, but too often it is relegated to the political sidelines. The problem comes from both sides: scientists who do not know how to convey their expertise to a wider world and politicians who are not convinced that it is worth their while to listen. For the past 5 years, a new program has been running in Britain that aims to bridge this gap. The program has demonstrated that when scientists speak clearly to a receptive political audience, the result can be highly effective."
  (tags: future methodology science futureofscience deltascan scenarios)

Peninsula Craft Fair

Today was the Craft Fair. Each year Peninsula has a fair in early December that's part fund-raiser, part school marketing, and part social event; it's one of my favorite events for the same reasons I like things like biking and travel. This year, as usual, we were over there during early set-up: my daughter had a table this year, and was selling handmade jewelry. (She did pretty well, too, and we had some interesting conversations around pricing: in particular, whether you should charge people more for pieces that actually take you longer to make when you're just learning, or whether you give people a discount because your early work isn't necessarily as good as your later work.)

setting up the front porch, via flickr

After helping my daughter get settled with her stuff-- which basically involved making sure she had the boxes that she needed, and that he'd connected with her fellow Girl Scouts-- I walked around and took pictures. I always like the school right before these events open: it's like being backstage before a show.

turning the play space into a cafe, via flickr

Of course, since its a progressive school, Peninsula has always had a pretty active arts and crafts program, though the specific offerings have varied depending on the interests of the teachers, tradition, etc.. (Though by varied, I mean decade by decade: my wife's weaving teacher arrived at the school during the Roosevelt administration, and left sometime in the Reagan years.) For a long time, I regarded it as an interesting part of the school culture, but more recently I've come to form a theory that it serves an important role balancing the other parts of the school curriculum.

our renovated auditorium, via flickr

It's a bit of a stereotype about the school that Peninsula kids spend a lot of time learning interpersonal stuff, getting in touch with their feelings, etc.-- typical flaky California educational stuff. Like some stereotypes, there's a grain of truth to that, at least in the lower grades: certainly the nursery kids are explicitly taught how to behave, how to deal with disagreements and bad feelings, etc.. I think for the older kids it's more implicit, in part because most of them have been through years of training already, but also because they all kind of realize that they need to be civil because they're all going to be living with each other for the next several years.

There's nothing wrong with this, but even for someone who writes, teaches, and designs events for a living, it seems a bit... insubstantial. But after reading Matthew Crawford and Richard Sennett, and especially the way craft standards support the rough, blunt communication about success and failure, I started to see the crafts at Peninsula in a new light.

karyssa miller's weavings, via flickr

For while it's important to get along with other people, and to be creative, it's also important to know that some things absolutely have to be done in certain ways, and that beyond a very basic level, expression can't happen without mastery of your medium and cultivation of talent. The kids start off on very simple looms, and progress over time to more sophisticated ones: it's a big thing to move to the floor looms, or to graduate from rope pots to the potter's wheel. Further, the loom doesn't give a damn whether you're imaginative, or you get along with your friends: it needs to be handled a certain way, and it requires you to have a feel for your materials. The utter impersonality of craftwork forces you to learn things that you don't in more egalitarian and human contexts, and the fact that the school provides both is a good thing.

soup heroes, via flickr

Craft Fair setup

Vendors are setting up for the 11 opening. So far it isn't raining. Let's hope that holds!

links for 2009-12-05

• Deliberate Practice : The Frontal Cortex
  "Virtually every psychological study that investigates expert "performers" - from chess grandmasters to concert pianists to brain surgeons - concludes that what separates these individuals from their peers is the amount of "deliberate practice" they are willing to endure."
  (tags: psychology research science brain development genius practice)
• Expertise and deliberate practice
  Expert performance improves with practice up to a certain point, then plateaus; but "continued improvements (changes) in achievement are not automatic consequences of more experience and in those domains where performance consistently increases aspiring experts seek out particular kinds of experience, that is deliberate practice."
  (tags: learning practice psychology research mind)

links for 2009-12-04

• The Brain Observatory - In Memory of H.M.
  The Brain Observatory, is dedicated to the study of the architecture in the human brain. We have optimized multiple complementary imaging modalities, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and computer-controlled microscopy, to illustrate the detailed structural design of the brain and to understand how cognitive systems are perturbed by neurological disease."
  (tags: neuroscience brain science memory)

Peter Drucker on forecasting too early

This is striking:

[When] Warren Bennis praised him publicly for his foresight, [Peter] Drucker had this surprising reaction: "It was meant as a compliment, but I winced because, bluntly, I was 10 years premature with every one of my forecasts. And that’s not a compliment. That is saying that one has had no impact."

[To the tune of Tori Amos, "Mr. Zebra," from the album Boys For Pele (I give it 1 star).]

Ineffective ad of the day

This ad on Weather.com doesn't really inspire me to refinance my mortgage.

Am I supposed to identify with this guy? Because when I think "homeowner," I think "shirtless ex-Skynrd roadie who looks like he's got the lead role in this year's San Quentin performance of a Passion play."

Okay, back to work.

[To the tune of Tori Amos, "That Guy," from the album Abnormally Attracted To Sin (I give it 4 stars).]

Brain science's last tribute to H. M.

This, pardon the phrase, is kind of mind-blowing . The Brain Observatory, a UCSD lab, is slicing the brain of amesiac patient H.M., one of the most-studied people in the whole history of science, into 2500 sections-- and the process is being broadcast live.

We are slicing the brain of the amnesic patient H.M. into giant histological sections. The whole brain specimen has been successfully frozen to -40C and will be sectioned during one continuous session that we expect will last approximately 30 hours (+ some breaks and some sleep in between). The procedure was designed for the safe collection of all tissue slices of the brain and for the acquisition of blockface images throughout the entire block.

It's really worth checking out, first as a kind of morbid wonder ("oh my god, that's really a brain!"), then as a technically fascinating event ("it's sort of like one of those meat cutters at the deli-- and is that a sumi-e brush they're using to take each slice?"). Where you go from there is up to you. Me, I find it kind of an amazing tribute to someone who contributed a lot to our understanding of the neurological foundations of memory.

The man was named Henry Molaison, though before he died last year he was only publicly known at H.M. According to the Times, he "lost the ability to form new memories after a brain operation in 1953, and over the next half century he became the most studied patient in brain science."

Before H.M., scientists thought that memory was widely distributed throughout the brain, not dependent on any one area. But by testing Mr. Molaison, researchers in Montreal and Hartford soon established that the areas that were removed — in the medial temporal lobe, about an inch deep in the brain level with the ear — are critical to forming new memories. One organ, the hippocampus, is especially crucial and is now the object of intense study.

In a series of studies, Mr. Molaison soon altered forever the understanding of learning by demonstrating that a part of his memory was fully intact. A 1962 paper by Dr. Brenda Milner of the Montreal Neurological Institute described a landmark study in which she had Mr. Molaison try to trace a line between two five-point stars, one inside the other.

Each time he tried the experiment, it seemed to him an entirely new experience. Yet he gradually became more proficient — showing that there are at least two systems in the brain for memory, one for events and facts and another for implicit or motor learning, for things like playing a guitar or riding a bicycle.

I keep coming back to the Web site, and looking at the computer-driven slicer taking off another section in one window; the control panel of the microtome in another; and some grad students or techs in a third window. Computers and people, workplace and wonder, and the brain-- at once intensely human, and seen this way very alien.

[To the tune of Stereolab, "The Man With 100 Cells," from the album Margerine Eclipse (I give it 1 stars).]

Conversation in the car this afternoon

I was driving the kids home from school when the Troggs' "Wild Thing" came on.

Wild Thing, I think I love you
But I wanna know for sure...

I said, "Hey like, wow, man, that's like, cool," in a dazed hippie voice.

My son, who's nearly eight, said, "Is that old-fashioned talking?"

You damn kids. Get off my lawn.

links for 2009-12-03

• RLV and Space Transport News » QB50 - a Cubesat constellation
  "[T]he QB50 constellation was organized under the management of Jean Muylaert, who is Director of VKI; previously, he was the head of Aerothermodynamics Department in ESTEC and involved with the development of the EXPERT (European Experimental Reentry Testbed) payload to be tested in mid-2010 with a Russian Volna rocket. The constellation of 50 Double Cubesats, sequentially deployed by a single launch (with the Russian Shtil 2.1 rocket, based upon the Volna technology) is to put around the Earth a network for multi-point, in-situ, long-duration measurements in the lower thermosphere, between 90 and 320 km. This environment used for atmospheric re-entry operations is not very well known because of its variability under the influence of “space weather” changes (due to the activity of the Sun)."
  (tags: cubesat space spaceweather qb50)
• QB50, an international network of 50 CubeSats in low-Earth orbits for lower thermopshere and re-entry research
  "The lower thermosphere (90-320 km) is the least explored layer of the atmosphere. Atmospheric Explorers were flown in the past in highly elliptical orbits (typically: 200 km perigee, 3000 km apogee); they carried experiments for in-situ measurements but the time spent in the region of interest below 320 km was only a few tens of minutes. Nowadays, sounding rocket flights provide the only in-situ measurements."
  (tags: cubesat qb50 science space spaceweather)
• Towering follies: the Dubai architecture you couldn't make up | Art and design | guardian.co.uk
  "The kilometre-high skyscraper, the underwater hotel, the cloud on stilts ... Steve Rose mourns the eye-popping erections that should never have been commissioned." Who could have guessed that some of this would turn out to be speculative vanity projects with shaky financing? Weren't the business cases for an underwater hotel and city with its own Death Star pretty ironclad?
  (tags: architecture dubai)
• Kentucky Space: Cubesats to test self-assembly principles?
  "Could CubeSats be used to demonstrate newly discovered non-contact assembly principles that might be used to build large equipment and satellites in space?"
  (tags: cubesat space science design self-assembly mageneticfluxpinning)
• Swiss Cube | The first swiss satelite
  "SwissCube is the first satellite entirely built in Switzerland.... Due to its size and available power (less than a few Watt are generated by the solar panels), SwissCube can of course not compete with the capabilities of much larger satellites. However, it carries most of the sub-systems (e.g. structure, on-board computer, communication, attitude control, antennas) that exist on large satellites and allowed students to build a complex engineering system." Insert your own Swiss Army Knife in space joke here.
  (tags: cubesat space satellite technology)
• Social Capital Blog
  (tags: blog sociology socialsoftware socialcapital networks)
• Horizons2020
  Set of 2 scenarios written by Siemans in 2004. Focused geographically on Europe, but the scenarios cover many aspects of life in great detail - unfortunately, not warfare. It's a beast of a document.
  (tags: gpp)

"listening, understanding and neutralizing"

From a reader of Andrew Sullivan:

Obama is after bin Laden. No other single action would pay such huge dividends. In this, Obama proves himself again to be, not just the politician as chess master, but the politician as martial artist, always seeking for the fulcrum, the pivot point where four ounces of effort will yield a thousand pounds of result.

It is a very high level skill, far higher and more effective than the brute force men like Cheney, Bush, or Rumsfeld rely on, and it's difficult to attain, because it depends on three subsidiary skills that lesser men simply never recognize, much less master: listening, understanding and neutralizing.... What appears to some to be hesitation or lack of engagement on his part early on in any effort is really just preparation.

[To the tune of Audioslave, "Jewel Of The Summertime," from the album Revelations (I give it 3 stars).]

The Framinghman Heart Study is the gift that keeps on giving

The Framingham Heart Study really is an amazing source of data:

Dr John Cacioppo, head researcher from the department of psychology at Chicago University, said: "We detected an extraordinary pattern of contagion that leads people to be moved to the edge of the social network when they become lonely.

"On the periphery people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left.

"These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater.

"Because loneliness is associated with a variety of mental and physical diseases that can shorten life it is important for people to recognize loneliness and help those people connect with their social group before the lonely individuals move to the edges."

For the study the team examined records of about 5,000 people who lived in the Farmingham [sic] area of Massachusetts.

[To the tune of Hank Williams, "Long Gone Lonesome Blues," from the album 40 Greatest Hits (Disc 1) (I give it 3 stars). And yes, I was inspired to listen to it by the article.]

Accounting for the future

Some of the most interesting things I've read in the last year are books like Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness and Eliezer Yudkowsky's work on cognitive biases and risks [pdf], which take a close look at the psychological limitations of thinking about the future. Of course, the claim that futurists-- or OR people, accountants, etc.-- make is that the tools they use can correct for these biases.

But a Wharton accounting professor's recent studies suggest that even the apparently most rigorous quantitative tools can contribute to our holding faulty views of the future:

Accounting techniques like budgeting, sales projections and financial reporting are supposed to help prevent business failures by giving managers realistic plans to guide their actions and feedback on their progress. In other words, they are supposed to leaven entrepreneurial optimism with green-eye-shaded realism.

At least that's the theory. But when Gavin Cassar, a Wharton accounting professor, tested this idea, he found something troubling: Some accounting tools not only fail to help businesspeople, but may actually lead them astray. In one of his recent studies, forthcoming in Contemporary Accounting Research, Cassar showed that budgeting didn't help a group of Australian firms accurately forecast their revenues. In a second paper,he found that the preparation of financial projections added to aspiring entrepreneurs' optimism, leading them to overestimate their subsequent levels of sales and employment.

"It's been shown in many studies that people are overly optimistic," Cassar says. "What's interesting here is that, when you use the accounting tools, the optimism is even more extreme. This suggests that using the tools, which a lot of academics and government agencies say is good practice, can lead to even bigger mistakes."

The second of the two studies is more interesting here, because it asks whether doing things like writing business plans and creating sales projections make entrepreneurs more realistic or less realistic in their views of the future. He draws on the work of behavioral economists, who

have documented a number of mental shortcuts and biases that can lead people to depart from the logic that traditional economic orthodoxy would suggest. One of the concepts, for example, introduced by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and co-author Dan Lovallo, is that "an inside view" can distort decision making. A person who adopts an inside view becomes so focused on formulating his particular plan that he neglects to consider critical outside information, like other people's experiences in pursuing the same goal.

"Individuals form an inside view forecast by focusing on the specifics of the case, the details of the plan that exists and obstacles to its completion, and by constructing scenarios of future progress," Cassar summarizes. "In contrast, an outside view is statistical and comparative in nature and does not involve any attempt to divine the future at any level of detail."

Doing financial projections for an entrepreneurial venture, Cassar realized, entails the creation of an inside view. The entrepreneur builds a storyline of success in her head and then plays it out in her spreadsheet, showing rising sales year after year. "Humans are good at storytelling and building causal links," Cassar notes. "They think, 'I'll go to college, I'll write a business plan, I'll raise some capital and then I'll go public or sell out to a big competitor.' There's a probability attached to each of these steps, but they don't think about that. They put all the links together and evaluate the likelihood of success at a much higher probability than is realistic."...

People who did financial projections were the most likely to overestimate the future sales of their ventures. In other words, "the same management activities that entrepreneurs rely on to cope with uncertainty appear to be causing individuals to hold optimistic expectations," he writes. Interestingly, writing a business plan also led to optimism about the likelihood of success, but it didn't lead to overly optimistic expectations because it's also "positively associated with the likelihood that the nascent activity will become an operating venture," he adds. Put another way, people who write plans are more likely to start companies, thereby justifying their optimism.

The details are worth looking at, but the basic moral is clear: what seem like rigorous tools can lead people astray, through a combination of their apparent rigor, and the ways their use generates inside views. The interaction of users and tools co-produces what looks like objective data, and a particular way of looking at that data that's likely to exaggerate the odds of success and downplay the odds of failure.

Now for entrepreneurs you can argue that this is a good thing, and that entrepreneurs aren't successful if they dwell too much on the risks of failure. Starting your own company is an exercise is controlled, disciplined self-delusion. But how much do these kinds of biases-- ones generated by a combination of apparently good information and processes that generate inside views-- affect the work of futurists? I wonder.

[To the tune of Radiohead, "All I Need," from the album In Rainbows (I give it 5 stars).]

This is a really good idea!

From Bloomberg, via Balloon Juice:

[S]enior Goldman {Sachs] people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank....

[The combination of] Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall- Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them.

Update: As Indecision Forever says,

If Goldman's buying guns they're probably about to rig a spectacular collapse of the worldwide gun market by packaging sub-prime pistols into securities, manipulating the quality ratings of those pistols and then re-selling them to everyone else.

[To the tune of Pet Shop Boys, "What Have I Done To Deserve This?," from the album Discography: The Complete Singles Collection (I give it 1 star).]