I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that is 2010 tomorrow. I realised that according to some popular science fiction stories, we should have ships somewhere in orbit around Jupiter by now.
Science fiction stories like 2010 are curious stories. 2010 was set in the context of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. The movie features the famous HAL 9000 artificial intelligence and pseudo-villain of the story. In our time we have barely left Earth, might be returning to the Moon some day and Mars looks like a destination we might reach in a few more decades.
When it comes to our technology, we don’t really have AI in our daily life but who knows what the military is playing with. We could have a HAL 9000-SkyNet slowly waking up. Then again, we might be a few more innovations away from Google’s various services meshing together and becoming self-aware. That is probably just bad science fiction but the year ahead doesn’t seem to be as advanced as science fiction would have it in some respects and yet, in other respects we seem to have even more advanced technology.
I guess that is the problem with science fiction that is set in the near future. More often than not we get to that point in time and still don’t have flying cars, hoverboards or super smart, connected data networks.
There is a post on the Google blog about how to save energy and it reminded me about something I read/heard a while ago. The idea is that given how many people visit Google and the fact that the Google landing page is white and uses a fair chunk of energy, if Google turned the landing page to black the energy saving across the board would be pretty significant.
Wouldn’t that be a good way to save energy? I wonder what a black Google search page would look like?
Update:Jyaif commented that the Google blog has a post about just this issue and it does. It turns out that turning the Google page black could actually increase energy usage in some monitors. The blog post then sets out a couple things you can do to reduce the amount of energy you are using by enabling the energy saving features of your computer and monitor. Thanks for the comment Jyaif!
I watched this talk by John Doerr at TED which I wanted to share with you. It is a 20 minute talk but well worth watching. Bottom line: John Doerr doesn’t think we are going to make it through this climate crisis we created.
I’ll post my thoughts about some related stuff on GeckoVox as soon as my ADSL line is back up and running.
I came across this video on Afrigadget about a small company called Madasoleil which is bringing solar power to rural Madagascar. This video is episode 56 of a video podcast called MyNameIsBill on Revver:
This video is inspiring if you consider the possibilities. I’d love to know which panels they are using and what the cost of those panels are. Consider what you could do to mitigate the power failures due to Eskom’s failing infrastructure with cost effective and efficient panels that you could conceivably lay on your roof or in an array on your property.
FYI:
Whenever temperature/pressure/humidity combine in the right way, water vapor will condense into droplets (a cloud!) – basic physics. Decreasing temp and/or pressure results in increasing relative humidity. When temp/press reach a certain level the air cannot hold any more moisture (as vapor) and condensation occurs.
With aircraft, they usually end up altering the local atmospheric pressure, and perhaps to a smaller degree the air temperature.
The condensation cloud you see in the photo is due to the shockwave surrounding the jet (see explanation on Wikipedia). Assuming temp/humidity are relatively constant at that altitude, the rarified air in front of the shockwave bow decreases in pressure with the speed of the jet until it causes vapor to condense into droplets.
You can also get condensation above the wing of a commercial jet as it rotates to climb after takeoff if the air is humid and the jet pulls a few Gs. I’ve seen this many times when traveling.
I have also seen it occur when F16s and F/A18s are doing hi-G (6+) turns at the Reno Air Races (and we pay them to have that much fun!).
It doesn’t take speed!. It simply takes altering the physical properties (temp/pressure/humidity) of a local region of air so that you achieve the combination that results in condensation of the water vapor.
This is a cool set of photos. Thierry Legault shot some awesome photos that have appeared on CNN, Bad Astronomy and The Next Net, to name three services. Take a look at the following image of the Sun. Do you see the dots against the backdrop of the Sun:
Now take a look at this image:
The dot on the right is the International Space Station and the one on the left is the Space Shuttle. How cool is that?
(Copyright in the images is reserved by Thierry Legault. Permission was obtained to republish these images.)
I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that is 2010 tomorrow. I realised that according to some popular science fiction stories, we should have ships somewhere in orbit around Jupiter by now.
There is 
