M. Thomas Apple's Blog, page 14

Bringer of Light, Chapter 41 (part three)

Having heard Captain (Ret.) Sergey Bardish’s final message, Weng dredged up old memories. Now, he must make a decision…

Sergey had done as he asked. He was on Mars. But Sergey had known Riss better. He should have listened to the old man.

Now, it was too late. Riss did not need him. Neither did Mars.

Mars—his Mars—was already fading in the past. Not in his future. But that was no reason to keep it from being in others’.

“Martin, we cannot win.”

Martin let his hand drop and stared at the floor.

“The gas cannot be used,” Weng said. “Lù yáo zhī malì, rì jiu jiàn rénxīn. This place no longer belongs to us. Live and let live.”

The Overseer yanked a lettuce cube from its resting place and threw it against one of the lab walls. He picked up another and did likewise. A third. Opened his hand, let it drop to the floor.

He stared at the floor, at the remains of the lettuce, its tiny roots spread out in a soggy tangled mess.

“We must ready to leave,” Huynh said. “Overseer, there are many who would support you still.”

Martin laughed, a thin, hollow laugh. “Me? I doubt it. And you had best start referring to me as Velasquez-shi.”

He stomped on the ruined lettuce plant, folded his arms.

“Sam, you must lead.”

“Me?”

“I am not in the best frame of mind at present. But I must agree. We can’t stay here.”

Weng nodded. His life here was not with Riss. He knew that, now. He wanted no fighting. No arguments. Just…to go somewhere else.

But where?

“How many 3D printers do we need? How many hydropons to set up? Gravity generators?”

Huynh replied, “We have already set aside the appropriate number of each, Sam. Some of us anticipated this possible outcome.”

“Anticipated? As in, you already have picked a location and constructed living spaces? Prepared water reclamation plants?”

Martin shook his head. “There are several land transports waiting. Two ships, as well. I have been in contact with those who did not trust…”

His voice trailed off before resuming, bitterly.

“…our new ‘leaders.’”

“And where do we go to start up a new colony?”

They said nothing for a few moments. Weng felt himself sighing and successfully resisted. So. They really hadn’t planned that far ahead, after all.

If they stayed on the planet, somewhere else far away from the current settler pod locations, he was sure Riss and her new “United Mars” would leave them alone.

For a while.

But eventually there would be conflict. It had happened before, with devastating consequences. Once, Weng had “flown” the Mars Warplane in a virtual museum on Lunar Base. The VR game left him with the distinct impression that it had not been a particularly enjoyable experience in reality. Certainly nothing they wanted to repeat.

They also couldn’t go back to Earth. Even if the conflict were to end before they arrived, the various UN nations would surely not forgive them for abandoning the colonies. Money and resources wasted. A new world thrown away, left to radical rebels. They would be blamed. Imprisoned, perhaps.

That left only one option.

“We will need to seek another planet for colonization,” Weng said.

There was a shocked silence.

He continued.

“Or a moon.”

Next: Bringer of Light, Chapter 42 — Meditation. A New Foundation

Dhammapada, verse 305

They who sit alone, sleep alone, and walk alone, who are strenuous and subdue themselves alone, will find delight in the solitude of the forest.

First-look at the Dust of Bennu

Carbon accounted for almost five percent of the sample’s total weight, and was present in both organic and mineral form, while the water was locked inside the crystal structure of clay minerals, he said.

Scientists believe the reason Earth has oceans, lakes and rivers is because it was hit with water-carrying asteroids 4 to 4.5 billion years ago, making it a habitable planet.

https://www.sciencealert.com/first-look-at-pristine-asteroid-dust-reveals-abundance-of-water-and-carbon

We have ample evidence now that all water on Earth was brought during the “Late Heavy Bombardment” period (4~4.5 billion years ago). Imagine how many rocks it took to get enough water (estimates anywhere between 20 and 200 million years of asteroid after asteroid slamming into the Earth).

And the only reason life exists on Earth is that there is enough iron and nickel in the Earth’s core to generate a magnetic field to prevent solar radiation from ripping off the atmosphere. Which is likely what happened to Mars.

(Alright, alright, technically electrical currents running through the liquid iron outer core as well as in the crust and ionosphere also contribute to the magnetic field. Go check out this horribly complicated explanation if you like.)

Note that this is the third time to get asteroid dust to examine. JAXA has managed to do this twice now. But Hayabusa-2 only got about 5 grams. The OSIRIS-REx project got about 250 grams (1/2 lb). Lots more = lots more to save for future researchers who will have developed even more sophisticated analysis methods.

Now lets get some PEOPLE on those things and start mining and living in space, already!

Dear Diary – August 19, 2004

[Note to self – it’s probably not a coincidence that so many of my better diary entries were written in August. I obviously have more time to think and write at that time of year!]

What strange turns my life has taken. Never would I have in a million years expected to be here, now, in this apartment, typing on an extended keyboard into a Japanese computer, in a Japanese city, listening to the same Cure tape I was listening to back in 1996. Has it actually been 8 years?

Ten years ago I was playing role playing games and drinking in Robbins lounge, getting ready to pack everything I owned into a moving van to move to Ann Arbor. A city I didn’t know, with no money for deposit or rent, or a job. Without a clue. Totally hopeless. Instead of exploring the city, I stayed in my bedroom and played games or typed. What was I thinking? I can’t even get in touch with the few people I met there. Even the ones I knew at ND are either gone back where they came from or no longer answer my emails. 

I can still picture them all in my mind. I can still see the rooms I lived in, all the way back home. Even the freshman dorm room which no longer exists, since they tore the building down. How can that be?

It must be this which makes us human; the ability to take the visual and turn it into mental. The capacity to make emotional connections between the world outside and the world inside. The belief that there are two worlds. This makes us human, and at the same time it makes us separate. It is a false belief, that we are not of the outside. Yet there is no returning. Once we start, we can never stop. Even changing languages doesn’t help. We merely start over again from a new perspective, still outside the outside. 

AI and the future of warfare (as predicted)

Both Russian and Ukrainian forces are integrating traditional weapons with AI, satellite imaging and communications, as well as smart and loitering munitions, according to a May report from the Special Competitive Studies Project, a non-partisan U.S. panel of experts. The battlefield is now a patchwork of deep trenches and bunkers where troops have been “forced to go underground or huddle in cellars to survive,” the report said.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/human-machine-teams-driven-by-ai-are-about-reshape-warfare-2023-09-08/

I found it interesting that many people online were commenting about Iain M Bank’s take on AI (for an in-depth analysis of his Culture series check this out on Blood Knife) and how he “predicted” all this.

Uh. You know, I’m not sure whether Banks wrote much about integrating traditional weapons with AI (since I haven’t read his series). But I do know that PK Dick wrote a short story called “Second Variety” about trench warfare and AI robots making more versions of themselves and taking over the world.

He wrote it in 1953.

(You can read it at Project Gutenberg.)

That is waaay before the Culture series.

Sigh. Read the classics, guys.

Dear Diary – November 30, 1999

I must explore alone. I will redefine the quality of being alone for generations to come. The word “alone” will no longer suffice — “aloneness,” the feeling human isolation; “alonetivity,” the alienation from society; “subjectivitis,” the alienation from the objective word; “individualreality,” the division from the former self.

O Isis OSIRIS-REx!

Currently, OSIRIS-REx is located at a distance of 7 million km from our planet. On September 24, OSIRIS-REx will drop a capsule with samples of asteroid matter, after which it will enter the earth’s atmosphere and land on the territory of the Utah Test and Training Range.

https://universemagazine.com/en/osiris-rex-is-on-a-course-for-earth/

The tiny spacecraft launched back in 2016 and reached the asteroid Bennu in 2021.

One main reason for this mission is to find out what Bennu is made of. After the asteroid spewed out tiny “micromoons,” OSIRIS-REx successfully collected a tiny soil sample. By “tiny,” I mean less than 50 to 60 grams. And it couldn’t actually land, since the asteroid is too small to have enough gravity to support the spacecraft.

Now we have less than two weeks to find out what’s in the soil — assuming the capsule is retrieved without incident. And then OSIRIS-REx will head back out to visit yet another asteroid (Apophis) in 2029.

Yes, that famous “planet-killer” the media screamed about a few years ago as “the most dangerous asteroid in the world.” (uh. “in the world”?) It will “only” approach within 38,000 km in April 2029, but could possibly collide in 2036.

No problem.

Dear Diary – May 19, 2001

A story must be more than merely a story. It must be an examination, of the human heart, of the mind, of the spirit. Of experience and existence. A simple recapitulation of one’s personal past or the delusional suffering of a dysfunctional suburban American family have no merit. Overcoming the reality we believe we live in, debunking fiction and elevating the truth, that is worthwhile.

On beauty

“Ad pulchritudinem tria requirunter:

integritas, consonantia, claritas”

“Three things are needed for beauty: wholeness, harmony, radiance.”
(as translated by “Stephen,” i.e., James Joyce.)

Or more simply integrity, consonance, clarity.

Note that the original is a bit longer, in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica:

Ad pulchritudinem tria requiruntur: Primo quidem integritas sive perfectio: quae enim diminuta sunt, hoc ipso turpia sunt. Et debita proportio sive consonantia. Et iterum claritas.

Dear Diary – March 10, 1990

Sometimes I wish I could put my thoughts directly onto paper. I think all the time, about everything…I see pictures in my head, pictures of my past — exact details of what I saw and experienced. Déjà-vu often occurs to me. It’s strange, that feeling of already having been someplace. Sometimes I can tell what’s going to happen in a matter of minutes. I can’t stand things like that — they send chills up my spine.

Woah. Déjà-vu.