Psybertron Asks

Just published an update to my Pirsig Timeline. Some significant edits to facts concerning associated people, and some re-organisation & re-wording of notes, references and acknowledgements.

Helium-3 apparently is in plentiful supply on the moon and is an attractive, safe and stable raw material for fusion reactions ? The Russians are planning to mine it and bring it on home. [via Nova Spivak’s Minding the Planet]

Never heard of that before ? In what form can it exist on the moon, not gas surely, and if waterless and inert, what form ?

Aha – I see it’s not a new idea, at least 8 years old – the speculative bit is whether the quantities actually exist adsorbed in moon dust (ex-solar “wind” radiation), and whether practically extractable. Attractive numbers, though as ever, it’s never the numbers that count.

The evolutionary biologist dies last Thursday 2nd Feb 2006.

Surely something wrong with this Ian Pearson (BT Futurologist) sequence of predictions.

2020: artificial intelligence elected to parliament
2040: robots become mentally and physically superior to humans

However optimisitic the time scale does this imply that MP’s (Members of Parliament) are mentally and physically inferior to the average human ?

Good post from Dave Pollard about the consequential costs of homeland security and the war on terror post 9/11.

Particularly liked this para :

[The significance] of the horrific attacks of 9/11 was not their high death toll or visual spectacle, but their ability to provoke a knee-jerk reaction in American conservatives that a recurrence of those attacks must be prevented at any cost. That cost has so far included the bankrupting of the US treasury, a widening of the disparity in quality of life between the rich and the poor to a gulf, and the opportunity cost (what otherwise could have been achieved by peacetime spending) of over a quarter trillion dollars per year.

“At any cost” – is just too simplistic a response to any real-world situation.

Thanks to Leon for spotting this. A TV Advert for Powergen (UK Energy / Electricity provider) where the main character (played by Simon Day – ex Fast Show “Tommy Cockles”) is seen reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by torch / flash-light.

(You need to pay a subscription to download the full clip, but you can see the image and play the small broadband flash video clip, in the link above. In our area, Powergen sponsor the weather forecasts, so the series of ads are easily tracked down on TV.)

About the same as what it’s like to be a bat apparently.

“Seeing” is about spatial (relative topograhical) awareness, not vision.
We see with light, Bat’s with sound, (electron microspcopes with electrons) and it seems Rats with smell.

Could I also just point out the significance of “stereo”.
Reality is in the difference (between the ears, eyes, nostrils, warring nations, whatever)

Some stunning photos by Feng Jiang. [Also via Matt]

I’ve not found time to do much sightseeing in my business visits, but I recall on one flight over mile after mile of this terraced mountainside, mentally calculating the billions of man-years that must have gone into creating that hand-crafted landscape fitting so perfectly with the stunning natural landscape.

Jiang doesn’t give any locations to caption his pictures, (not even on his powerpoint version) ? That mountains and lakes boat trip looks like one of the advertised tourist locations.

I see Bill and Bill agree with me, on Google’s China move.

A good visual indication of the effect – to compare Google.cn with Google.com – from Russell Brown’s public address, via Matt.

Struck by this quote from last week’s BBC news story on the Iran nuclear programme resumption – referred to the security council this week. I still see this whole world-energy / economy / consumption story tangled up in the same web as the mid-east / Israel story, whether we’re talking Chinese energy needs, Iranian nuclear ambitions, Hamas election victories, Declared anti-Zionist aims, and so on. One reason I scoffed last week at the “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” rhetoric.

The mix of brinkmanship and good-cop / bad-cop negotiation games goes on, fortunately …

China’s work behind the scenes seems to be focussed on trying to keep the diplomacy alive.

China’s most obvious interest is energy. Three years ago, when Iran was already supplying 13 per cent of China’s oil needs, the two governments signed a major deal which included Chinese development of Iranian oil fields. It is a source of supply of growing importance for China – one it doesn’t want disrupted by politics.

China also has a deeply-engrained reluctance to takes sides with the US against a fellow non-Western nation.

It’s a complex game, needing a steady nerve and the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. Interesting, given the outward appearance that expanding China has bought the western consumerism “dream” that the “deeply engrained” east-west cultural difference comes into play, even in the diplomatic dealings.

“We” – fellow non-western nations, notice.