February 2009 Archives
Interesting article: New Planets & an Unknown Object Discovered Beyond the Solar System
Future telescopes such as NASA's Kepler, set for launch in 2009, would be able to discover dozens or hundreds of Earth-like worlds. The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), to be launched early in the next decade, consists of multiple telescopes placed along a 30 foot structure. With an unprecedented resolution approaching the physical limits of optics, the SIM is so sensitive that it almost defies belief: orbiting the earth, it can detect the motion of a lantern being waved by an astronaut on Mars.
If we're able to see other planets in other solar systems soon, and if we're able to see lanterns on Mars, it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to expect Google Earth-like resolution for exoplanets within the next hundred years. We'll be able to feasibly search for extra-solar civilizations - without even leaving our backyard.
This suggests a kernel for a short story: what if we found such a civilization, hundreds of light years away? And, after refining our telescopic technology, soon after we discover a huge fleet of ships headed towards Earth? It seems the other civilization has discovered us first.
The punchline, of course, is that the extraterrestrial fleet's arrival time is two or three hundred years away. We don't know whether this civilization's intentions are friendly or otherwise - so it might make sense to prepare for the worst. But how do you do so against a civilization that might have tens of thousands or even millions of years of technological superiority? Can you even prepare a response, or is it hopeless?
The most interesting part, I think, is the debate about what response to prepare - and how it would change the priorities of our society, as the day of reckoning got closer and closer.
I have been thinking about what kind of response would be appropriate. If we could identify two or three additional civilizations, and somehow notify them of the approaching civilization's presence (ideally, without tipping our hand about the existence of our own), we might trigger a protracted encounter between extraterrestrial civilizations. Of course, this is just a stalling tactic, and isn't sustainable forever. And there are risks to our doing so. But perhaps it would buy enough time for us to flesh out our "real" response.
But as to what the "real" response might be? I have no idea.
For Valentine's Day, I cooked up some Babaganoush-Hummus Pasta for Heather [recipe]. She said it was great! Here's a picture - it doesn't look too appetizing in the picture; it looked better in real life. Anyway, here it is:
Thank you Rachel Ray!
I was running a little late going to work this morning. As I hurriedly backed out of my parking space, I saw that two maintenance men for our apartment complex were rolling around in their golf cart, behind me. They waited while I pulled out, backwards, and turned.
As I put it in drive, I glaced quickly in the rear view mirror to make sure I hadn't mown down any maintenance workers. But there was only one in the golf cart. My first thought - honest to God - was, "that guy's a vampire!" Of course, he wasn't a vampire. He had just gotten out of the golf cart while waiting for me to pull out. A fact that I verified by turning my head and looking around.
Usually, I'm pretty rational. I've been accused of being hyper-rational, in fact, at various times. I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately. In fact, I think it's time for bed for me now.
G'night.
At work, I've been working on our user personas. For the marketing uninitiated, personas are essentially articulations of assumptions you have of your user - in a nice, consistent, relatable story. For the really clever, the number of assumptions is driven down and replaced by market data.
To ad flavor to personas, and to encourage stewardship of building a product towards a persona (AKA market segment), it's useful to have some sort of face attached to your personas. Some people like photographs. I prefer avatars - not because they're cuter, but because research has shown that people more broadly identify with stylized, simple representations of human beings than actual photos of human beings [citation needed]. That's why cartoons are so popular.
Anyway, here are three of our personas' faces:
This was created by the PlanetCreation face generator app - http://www.planetcreation.co.uk/createpic/. Based on the ads on that site, it looks like this tool has been used to build Zwinkys. That's pretty cool.
Continuing the Japanese theme here...
It turns out that Kodo performed today in Ann Arbor. I learned about the performance early this week and snapped up a couple of tickets on the floor, in the second section back.
It kicked ass.
It was probably the most impressive musical performance I've ever seen. It exceeded both Heather's and my expectations.
Here's a video. Although it really doesn't do it justice, it gives you a sense of the intensity of these men and women:
They did this one piece, and it sounded like crickets. And then water dripping. All very organic. Then there was the rhythmic laughter. Then the odaiko, or "big drum". When it was struck, it reverberated in your internal organs in a not-unpleasant way. It all really has to be seen to be believed.
Very cool. I recommend it highly to everyone. They're still coming to a bunch of American cities this month and next - including Chicago (soon), Philadelphia, Newark, Boston, Cleveland, and D.C. - cities where many of our friends and family live. Go see these guys, seriously.
One of the coolest things I've ever seen on YouTube. Each face tells a story. I wish I had had this idea!
Just to give some context, somebody placed a camera on a conveyor-belt sushi joint in Japan.
Found via Digg.
A little while ago I blogged about how I thought perhaps someone had carved a face in the snow on top of my car hood:
Andy reckoned, in the comments section, that it was probably due to heat dissipation in the engine. Terence, in an email to me, offered up more evidence that this was the case:
The hood of your car isn't just a flat piece of sheet metal. If you open the hood and look at the underside, you'll see box tubes that stiffen the hood. Those box tubes retain heat longer than the areas of the hood that aren't stiffened, and cause more snow to melt in those areas.
So it appears that I fell victim to the human tendency to perceive faces in random inanimate objects:
Many more examples.
Or is there something more going on? In my experience, Japan has made a science out of embedding human facial characteristics into many of their products, to make them cuter, more human, or more accessible.
Perhaps the Japanese engineers at Honda effected - intentionally or otherwise - pareidoliac characteristics into the hood of my car, and these effects manifested themselves in an unanticipated way - a heat signature selectively melting a layer of snow. Just another example of a meme embedding itself in a physical medium, to find a welcome host in the form of my brain, which in turn - along with this blog - further disseminated the meme by broadcasting it onto your browser, and into your brain.
OK, this is getting a little spacey. Maybe i'm overanalyzing it.
I'm speaking/participating at an event next Tuesday at Michigan: Serious Games, Simulations and Natural Learning.
Maybe I'll see you there.
You know, the word "value" is an interesting and powerful word. But it's gotten me in trouble a few times - twice recently.
By "value", I mean the abstract concept of what problems an opportunity solves, or what pain it alleviates. Sometimes quantitatively, other times qualitatively. I was exposed to this notion of value at Michigan, and I've found it tremendously valuable to think about a lot of things in these terms.
Often - but not always - answers about value take the form of positioning statements. For example, what's the value of an IM client? Its value is that it's like email, but it allows for fast communication iterations that start to resemble real 2-person conversational speech, and so is less formal. It also alleviates the need to send a formal email, in many cases, when less formality is required - kind of like texting rather than a voice phone call. And it's also like a telephone - but there doesn't have to be any sound - a big advantage, particularly at the workplace. And it's less costly than a phone call.
OK, that was a mouthful. With more time, I would phrase it more articulately. The point is, many of us are used to talking about value in terms of some sort of a dollar amount. When I ask someone, "what's the value of an IM client," I wouldn't be surprised to hear them say "fifty dollars." But that's not what I'm asking at all; instead, what they've told me how much they're willing to pay for such a service, or how much the going rate is. Or how much they're willing to part with to ensure that the value they get out of the service doesn't go away.
So anyway, I've gotten myself into trouble a couple times recently, alienating people by asking them things like, "OK, so what's the value of what you're proposing?" Unfortunately (and, in retrospect, predictably) the interpretation was, "please attach a dollar figure to your proposal," - or, worse yet, "your proposal is worthless." I don't want to stop asking this question, because I think the answer is often extremely revealing. I just need to phrase it in a less provocative way.
Value that people are willing to pay for is still often a very important question, of course - but not until this more fundamental question about an offering's value is made crystal clear.
Couple of weird dreams this weekend.
In the first, I was visiting my parents' house - the house I had grown up in. My bedroom in this house was on the second floor, first door on the right coming up from the stairs. In my dream, I was on the first floor landing, looking upstairs. Outside my room, hanging from the ceiling, there was a working traffic signal.
"Hmmm, you know, now that I think of it, this hallway wasn't so heavily trafficked that we really needed one of those," I thought to myself. And I also thought of the few times that I had "illegally" turned left on red into the stairs - often when I was late for school. But I had never been caught.
And now, it occurred to me that traffic lights in people's houses was a pretty unusual thing... "I should blog about this," I thought in my dream. So here I am.
Second dream: I'm sitting on the couch with Heather in our apartment, and we see a large spider - tarantula-size - descend from the ceiling on spider silk thicker than shoelace. The strand was clear and pure, and the way it bent the light was beautiful. It got to the floor, connected the strand to the floor, and made its way back up the strand. It was building its web.
"What should we do?" Heather asked me.
"Let's let it finish. Then we'll destroy it," I said, cruelly. Although I'm not sure now whether I meant the spider, the web, or both. We waited and watched as the web revealed its shape and eventually it came to completion - faster than we thought. It was time to make good on my promise.
Then I woke up.
About a week old, but still cool: The New York Times has created a time/location map of Twitters during the superbowl:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/02/sports/20090202_superbowl_twitter.html
The emoticons are the best. What a neat idea.
My current favorite. Not worth listening to on crap speakers, though.
It was relatively tropical this weekend in Ann Arbor. Only 40 degrees F.
Still some impressive icicles outside our window though. But there was a steady stream of icicle melt coming off the roof for more than an hour today.
Here's a pic. Hopefully these won't last too much longer this year.
