Potpourri XI

Rockets could destroy the ozone layer. Waiting to see if this line of argument catches on in the U.S. while the Chinese and Indians continue to go forth boldly.

Morgan Freeman is going to host a Science Channel show on space exploration. Huzzah!

NASA has a presence on FlickR.

Chicago is rated is #1 by AskMen.com as the best city "for dating and sex, sports and entertainment."

India is looking at building its own space shuttle.

A mockup of the Orion crew exploration vehicle's crew module is on display on the National Mall.

The Ares I-X test flight is shifting to August. This is starting to infringe on my trip to Europe. My request to alter the launch window around my vacation was not accepted, unfortunately.

The U.S. is falling behind in cyber-warfare. That's probably because all our IT has been outsourced to Bangalore.

Interesting site on Antarctica and global warming...and another site offering an alternative theory on how ice ages affect the shapes of continents and oceans.

G20 protests turn violent, surprising no one.

From the "If Bush did this" file, President Obama gave Queen Elizabeth II an iPod. It was later revealed that she already has one.

Jeff Krukin from the Space Frontier Foundation posted an April Phule's Day press release on behalf of President Obama. Will Watson at SFF had another PR regarding space. Doc's response was priceless: "It was hard to hear the joke over the sound of all those axes grinding."

As I mentioned yesterday, the ISDC is coming up. I got my leave approved today, so I'll be booking my registration this evening.

And, on a lighter note, North Korea is fueling up its latest rocket. Japan, China, and the U.S. are all on alert, at one level or another. (Okay, I'm kidding. That's not a "lighter note." I'm just snarky this evening.)

What Would You Ask Ray Kurzweil?

For those of you who already know who Kurzweil is and what this is about, Darlene the Science Cheerleader and I have the opportunity to do an email interview with him and write an article on ScienceCheerleader.com. As you might imagine, I have a whole boatload of questions in my mind, but in reality, R.K. will probably answer, at most, a dozen. If you have a question you're dying to ask about The Singularity, forward it my way, and Darlene and I will include it in the list for consideration. I'll keep this open until Friday night (whenever I crash--usually around 10:30-11 p.m. Central Time).

For those of you who have no idea who Ray Kurzweil is or what this is about, you may continue reading below. RK's most famous book, "The Singularity is Near," talks about a fundamental transformation that is occurring in the world's technology--not just computers, but also nanotechnology (manufacturing things at the atomic level) and biotechnology (changing the human genome to overcome illness, disease, or defects).

RK proceeds from the idea that computers have been making massive improvements in processing speed and capability every couple years. The basic theory governing this advance is Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit has been increasing by an order of magnitude once every two years. This is how you get computers with ten times the speed for the same amount of money. RK says that this ability to compute is allowing us to also better understand everything faster, from the human genome to climate modeling to the human bloodstream. Eventually, around 2045 or so, the world's computers will achieve a point where they become not only superfast, but superintelligent--faster than us and smarter. This condition, called the Singularity, will enable us to do anything from extending life more or less indefinitely to accurately predict the weather a year out, to "uploading" the contents of our minds into the internet--allowing our souls to more or less become "ghosts in the machine."

Kurzweil has even partnered with NASA and Peter Diamandis of the X Prize Foundation to create a "Singularity University" to help technical, business, and political leaders understand and cope with the changes the Singularity will bring. There are more links below. I'm sure all sorts of questions can come to mind. I've got mine, what are yours?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
http://singularity.com/
http://singularityu.org/
http://bartacus.blogspot.com/2007/11/review-of-singularity-is-near-review-is.html
http://www.nss.org/resources/books/non_fiction/NF_038_singularityisnear.html http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PWXrnsSrf0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSSYyFqpS3U&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYIj3VxSdzI&feature=related
http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html