Uneven heat emission sending Pioneers 10 and 11 off course
7 July 2008
The mystery surrounding the unexplained course deviations of deep space probes Pioneers 10 and 11, which are currently somewhere in the vicinity of the Solar System’s Kuiper Belt, may have been solved. At least partly, that is.
Slava Turyshev, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has spent the last two years studying data from the probes, which were launched in the 1970s, and concluded that uneven heat build-up across their structures is causing the trajectory anomalies:
Pioneer 11 gives off heat in certain directions more than others. The uneven heat emission is enough to nudge the spacecraft off course, accounting for 28% to 36% of the anomaly detected when Pioneer 11 was 3750 million kilometres, or 25 times the Earth-sun distance, away from us.
Originally published Monday 7 July 2008.
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OpenAustralia: opening up the Australian Parliament
17 June 2008
OpenAustralia, a new website that allows you to track debate and discussion in the Australian Parliament, launched on Sunday. Nathanael Boehm, who is on the project team (in a post on his no-longer online website purecaffeine.com), describes OpenAustralia far better than I could:
OpenAustralia is a site that aggregates House of Representatives debates with data about the Members of the House of Reps and presents it in a way that makes it easy to see what debates your Member in your electorate is participating, what they’re saying and whether they’re doing a good job of representing you. You can see statistics of how many debates they’ve been involved with. You can comment against any Member’s contribution to a debate and discuss that with other users of the site.
OpenAustralia also lets keep tabs on your local MP, and while learning that my local representative Peter Garrett (he of Midnight Oil fame), is one of the more vocal MPs (is that really a surprise?), I also learnt a few other things:
Has spoken in 50 debates in the last year – well above average amongst MPs. This MP’s speeches are understandable to an average 20 – 21 year old, going by the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score. Has used three-word alliterative phrases (e.g. “she sells seashells”) 138 times in debates – well above average amongst MPs.
Originally published Tuesday 17 June 2008, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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Arthur C Clarke’s Newspad RSS news aggregator
30 May 2008
Author and futurist Arthur C Clarke is credited with predicting the emergence of a number of technologies, including a tablet-like device called a “Newspad”, which could serve the latest news stories from electronic versions of newspapers.
So far more has been said about comparing the Newspad to PDAs or Tablet PCs, but the Newpad also worked in a very similar way to today’s news aggregators, or RSS feed readers.
In the novelised version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, (chapter title “Moon Shuttle”, pg 66-67) Dr Heywood Floyd, chairman of the US National Council of Astronautics, spends time reading on his Newspad, while traveling to the Moon.
Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.
Not only did Arthur C. Clarke predict PDAs and Tablet PCs, he also foresaw the emergence of news aggregators, and RSS technology.
Originally published Friday 30 May 2008.
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One hit wonders and pop longevity
18 May 2008
The Whitburn Project: One-Hit Wonders and Pop Longevity
Are there more one-hit wonders in the music charts today than there have been in the past? Andy Baio analysed data from 1900 to this year, in search of one-hit wonder trends.
The longest-charting one-hit wonder to hit the #1 spot is Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” from 2006, which stayed on the charts for 32 weeks. The one-hit wonder that stayed at the #1 longest is Anton Karas’ “The Third Man Theme” from 1950, which stayed in the #1 position for 11 weeks. Finally, the longest-charting one-hit wonder to appear anywhere in the Top 100 is Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing” from 1997, which peaked at #16 but stayed in the top 100 for 55 weeks.
I wonder if it’s a little too early to make a call on Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” which was released only two years ago though? He may yet enjoy further chart success in the not too distant future.
Originally published Sunday 18 May 2008.
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Gilligan’s Island conspiracy theory alternative synopsis
18 April 2008
The story about a seemingly random group of people setting off together on a three-hour cruise somewhere around the Hawaiian Islands, has, if you’ll excuse the pun, never held much water.
It’s quite clear some people expected the “cruise” to last a little longer than three hours.
First there’s Ginger, the movie star, who was carrying more luggage than any sane person would take on a three-year voyage.
Then there’s Mr Howell, the millionaire, and his brief case stuffed with “thousand dollar bills”. And what about the professor and his stash of scientific paraphernalia?
What possible utility could any of this have had during what was meant to be a three-hour cruise?
Gilligan’s Island fan Adam-Troy Castro has written an interesting dissection of the (still) popular TV show, and he may have unearthed the actual purpose of the “three-hour cruise”.
Mr Howell, rather than Gilligan, was in fact the pivotal player here.
One of the glaring questions that’s bothered us for a quarter of a century is: Since the snobbish Howell can presumably afford to buy his own yachts, why would he be interested in a “three-hour tour” aboard a dinky little charter vessel owned by two ex-navy men? And why would he take along a briefcase filled with thousand dollar bills, when one of the perks associated with great wealth is unlimited credit?
To be shipwrecked on an (apparently) unchartered and unknown island, means the Minnow, the cruise boat, had to be a long way from the main group of Hawaiian Islands, so what had they gone out to look at in the first place?
Certainly not the local reefs, since there’s no scuba equipment aboard. And certainly not the local shoreline, since when the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was not only unable to make it to port, but was blown outside Hawaiian territory. It must have been an unusual distance from shore to begin with. And still, no normal tourist site, let alone one miles from shore, can possibly explain the amount of money Howell brought with him.
It’s obvious something incredibly below board was planned, and cash stashes and superfluous scientific equipment, don’t really leave too much to the imagination.
Howell chartered the Minnow to make a multi-million-dollar drug buy. He’d paid off Gilligan, and the Skipper too. He’d brought along the necessary cash. He even brought along an extensive wardrobe, just in case the coast guard showed up and he had to leave U.S. territory in a hurry. And just to make sure he wasn’t ripped off, he brought along an expert to evaluate the merchandise he was getting.
So who was in cahoots with who though? Apart from Mary Anne, it seems everyone else was in on the drug buy.
Mary Anne appeared to be a bona fide tourist intent on some sightseeing, and the “gang” felt that not allowing her to board the Minnow, which to all intents and purposes was a tour vessel, would have looked suspicious.
Mary Anne, a Kansas farm girl … had won a Hawaiian vacation in a contest. Howell and his cronies must have let her on board because failing to do so would have raised undue suspicion among harbor authorities; they probably intended to dump her body at sea.
In a twist to proceedings however, Mary Anne was not exactly who she appeared to be either…
Vacations given away in contests are always for two people, not one! And Mary Anne, who claimed to have a fiance back home, had no real reason to be travelling alone. Therefore, she must have been maintaining a false identity as well – and since everybody else on the Minnow was frantically putting on a show for her benefit, she must have been putting on a show for theirs. The conclusion is inescapable. Mary Anne was a Fed.
The producers of Gilligan’s Island didn’t follow through with the planned fourth series, thus leaving the story… unresolved. Therefore the alternative synopsis advanced by Mr Castro may be quite plausible.
Originally published Friday 18 April 2008.
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Del Kathryn Barton wins Archibald Prize 2008
7 March 2008
Sydney based Australian artist Del Kathryn Barton has been named winner of the 2008 Archibald Prize, with a self-portrait featuring her children: You are what is most beautiful about me, a self-portrait with Kell and Arella.
Born in Sydney in 1972, Barton has a Bachelor of Fine Art from the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, where she taught for three years until 2003. She has had regular solo exhibitions since 2000 and has participated in national and international group shows including the Helen Lempiere Travelling Art Scholarship, the Blake Prize for Religious Art and the Sulman Prize. She was a finalist in the 2007 Dobell Prize for Drawing.
The Archibald Prize Exhibition opens to the public tomorrow, Friday 8 March 2008, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, in Sydney.
Update: for those interested, the portrait measures 180 centimetres (cm) wide x 280 cm high, and as far as I can tell the work is a combination of illustration and painting.
Originally published Friday 7 March 2008.
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The Aussie Bloggers Forum launches
1 January 2008
A brand new discussion forum for Australian bloggers — which I was invited to help setup — goes into soft launch (I hope: this is the timestamp speaking again…) today: Aussie Bloggers Forum (update: no longer online).
Of course it’s not just for Australians, and everyone, where ever you are, is welcome.
So whether blogging is your major or minor, head along and say hello, network, and strut your stuff.
How’s that for an easy, not too demanding way, to spend New Year’s Day?
Originally published Tuesday 1 January 2008.
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Grow your DVD movie collection each time you visit the supermarket
9 December 2007
Going to the supermarket is increasingly becoming a one-stop-shopping experience. In addition to sourcing groceries, some stores now offer not-half bad coffee, which you can enjoy as you pace the aisles. And for movie fans, a visit to the supermarket is only going to get better, with news that DVD vending machines are being rolled out across Australia:
Instant DVD has installed vending machines in 12 supermarkets throughout Melbourne and Sydney and intends to expand to 500 throughout the country, creating yet more competition for the traditional video shop.
The hire prices are too bad either, and the “late fee” for not returning the title by the due date may not — depending how much you like the film in question — be so terrible either:
All movies cost $2.99 a night to hire and can be returned to any of the service’s vending machines. If you fail to return a movie within two weeks its price is charged to your credit card and it becomes yours to keep.
I’m not really up on the state-of-play when it comes to late fines on hire movies, since returning hires is about the only thing I actually do promptly, but it seems to me someone who’s a little more casual in this regard could end up with quite an impressive DVD collection.
If nothing else it makes for a good way to try before you buy. If you like the movie enough simply keep it, and two weeks later it’s yours. I wonder how the price of the “to keep” hires compares with those on weekly special at the supermarket though?
Originally published Sunday 9 December 2007, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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The changing political landscape in Australia, and the world
30 November 2007
The defeat of the Liberal/National coalition Government in last Saturday’s federal election in Australia could herald an upheaval in the political landscape, not only locally, but globally, says Steve Biddulph, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:
We are so conditioned to the idea that two main parties define politics, we even call them left and right as if they were parts of our body. But parties spring up in response to the primary tensions in a certain time and place. In the 20th century that polarisation was capital versus labour.
A century earlier, before even the idea of power among the working poor, politics was aristocrats versus tradesmen, the growing middle class of shopkeepers and artisans that formed the basis of the Tories.
It’s no longer the workers against the bosses though.
The issue of the future, coming down on us now like a steam train, is of course the environment, the double hammer blows of climate change and peak oil. Energy, weather and human misery are the factors that will define our lives for decades to come. You can cancel your newspaper, those are the only four words you need to know.
But that’s not the end of it.
For two years now the best predictions have been that the subprime meltdown would act as merely the detonator of a much larger explosive charge created long ago by US consumer debt, concealed by Chinese and Arab investment in keeping that great hungry maw that is America sucking in what it could not begin to pay for.
The avalanche-like fall of US house prices will be closely followed by the same in linked economies worldwide, and presage a harsh and very different world than the one we have lived in.
In a nutshell then:
In short, the party is over. We are a civilisation in collapse.
Earlier this year, former Labor leader, Kim Beazley, who incidentally has just been appointed professor of politics and international relations at the University of Western Australia, predicted the party that lost last weekend’s federal election faced political oblivion in Australia.
“If the Labor Party is not able to get in there and change [the current] industrial laws, the whole character of working Australia will change substantially, and to the Labor Party’s detriment.”
The Liberal party’s position being equally as serious.
If Mr Howard lost, “there is a serious question mark over the future of the Liberal Party”. Labor would win the NSW election in March and Mr Howard would remain the only governing Liberal. “After some years of Labor state governments, Liberal oppositions are still struggling to get a third of the seats in state parliaments.”
Mr Beazley noted the state Liberal branches were already in poor shape and if Mr Howard lost the election, the Liberals would not govern anywhere.
The next few years stand to keep political observers on their toes.
Originally published Friday 30 November 2007.
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A late evening visit to the Sacred Heart Monastery, Kensington, Sydney
26 September 2007
Skulking around the darkened grounds of monasteries isn’t exactly my idea of living it up on a Saturday evening, but there I was last weekend, up at the Sacred Heart Monastery in the Sydney suburb of Kensington, armed with my camera, looking for photo opportunities.
I’ve been intrigued for some time by a floodlit building I can see across the racecourse from my living room window, so finally decided to trace the spectacle to its source.
The jaunt had the hallmarks of a c-grade horror movie though. The overly quiet tree lined street the monastery is located on. The ground’s wrought iron gate complete with squeaky hinges. The dark, foreboding, stairs leading up to the front of the building. Who knew what might be lurking there in the deep, gloomy, shadows.
It’s in the name of art, I kept telling myself as I apprehensively ascended the stairs. Yet, I lived to blog about the experience…
Originally published Wednesday 26 September 2007, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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