David Erik Nelson's Blog, page 32

Voyager 1 Has Left the Building, Entered Interstellar Space

(Cross-posted from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog, since I thought Mojonauts would be interested in this giant leap for nerdkind, too.)

The New York Times has a very charming, informative piece on the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has been confirmed to have left the influence of our brave and noble Sun, and entered the depthless black between the stars.

The piece--and the ongoing work of both the Voyager spacecrafts[*] (which were only supposed to run for about 4 years, their original mission wrapping up in the early 1980s) and team (most of whom seem to be pulling AARP discounts)--is an excellent meditation on progress and age and the simple fact that, for most of us, doing something great is not about a single dazzling moment, but about continuing to plug away, day after day, decade upon decade, until the many small success add up to something bizarre and wonderful.

Exiting the Solar System and Fulfilling a Dream - NYTimes.com

Voyager 1 left the solar system the same month that Curiosity, NASA’s state-of-the-art rover, landed on Mars and started sending home gorgeous snapshots. Curiosity’s exploration team, some 400 strong, promptly dazzled the world by driving the $2.5 billion robot across a patch of Martian terrain, a feat that turned the Red Bull-chugging engineers and scientists of Building 264 of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus into rock stars. By comparison, the Voyager mission looked like a Betamax in the era of Bluetooth.

The 12-person Voyager staff was long ago moved from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus to cramped quarters down the street, next to a McDonald’s. In an interview last month at Voyager’s offices, Suzanne R. Dodd, the Voyager project manager, said that when she attended meetings in Building 264, she kept a low profile in deference to the Mars team.

“I try to stay out of the elevator and take the stairs,” Ms. Dodd said. “They’re doing important work there, and I’ll only slow them down.”

Incidentally, the Voyager spacecrafts carry the "Golden Records"--analog phonograph records featuring sounds of Earth, as well as encoded photographs, and etched with pictograph instructions on how to play the cosmic record. Of the two dozen musical pieces included, only three are from the United States: A Navajo chant[**], Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," and Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night—Cold Was the Ground."

Blind Willie Johnson, you've finally made it into interstellar space--on vinyl, and a gold record, no less! If that's not the American Dream, then we've got the wrong kind of Americans.

At any rate, all of this is especially resonant for me, because the Voyager crafts were put into space the year I was born. Slowly but surely, we're each getting somewhere. Amen.

[*] There are two, both launched in 1977. Voyager 1 has left the solar system; Voyager 2--which has been on a slightly different trajectory--is still on its way out. In the meantime, you can follow its various calibrations and adjustments via Twitter (I'm not joking, and *love* this Twitter account).

[**] Which I'm pretty sure translates to the repeated refrain "Be careful; these guys probably want your land."

This Obamacare Subsidy Calculator is Actually Pretty Reassuring

Subsidy Calculator | The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

Under the ACA (Affordable Care Act—which some demonize as "Obamacare," while the rest of us laud it as "Obamacare!") folks without employer-provided healthcare will need to buy there own private insurance. That's expensive, so the federal government is going to subsidize the purchase--at a *much* more generous rate than many of us expect, I'd wager.

For example: Although I work (and earn about half our household income), I'm a freelancer and have no benefits. All of that comes through my wife's job (as an evil-lazy-no-good-terrible-leaching teacher). Running the numbers here, I discover that if my wife were to lose her job--leaving us with just my earnings and no healthcare--we'd be covered 100% for basic insurance, and $100 per month for good insurance (i.e., basically the deal we have through my wife's school).

That's pretty profound.

Were such a disaster to strike, between my income, lowered household expenses (no more commute, much less out-of-home childcare), and our savings, we'd actually be able to keep our house and maintain our lives in our community for a couple years while she looked for work.

In case it can't go without saying, this substantially changes the hold employers have over their workers, many of whom might elect to walk away from unjust working situations now that doing so *won't* certainly and quickly consign their loved ones to poverty.

Just sayin' . . .

Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) Classic issue #106 (published October 31, 2002) "Using colons correctly."

So, we first ran this issue of PMjA in 2002 and, man, some stuff has changed a little. #whoa

Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) Classic issue #106 (published October 31, 2002)

Using colons correctly.

Giant Squid: Ask The Giant Squid: What Has Love Got To Do, Got To Do With It?

by the Giant SquidDear Giant Squid,

I have the biggest crush in the world on my 7th hour Trig teacher, and I think it's going to kill me.

She's really nice and all— like patient and funny and all that. But, also, she's just so totally freaking hot it just about makes your eyes tear up. For real. She has dark eyes and dark brown, almost reddish, hair and this smile that's real low-key and sharp at the edges, just a little upturned at the edges.

And her figure— man! It's just, like . . . it's just too much. She's got these totally perfect boobs that . . . well, like, this one time, she was wearing this loose white blouse, and one of the buttons had come undone and when she leaned down to talk me through this really crazy story problem . . .

Fiction: The Woodpecker and Blossom Hit the Road, part 3 of 4 by Jonathan FarlowSlobber McAllister and his best friend Gene Pickard left the newly refurbished Columbia theater just after 10:30 that night. They had skipped Citizen Kane, seen The Wizard of Oz, Gene wanted to see that one and a little of the Marx Brothers movie because Horace Spinks said that it would be so good. It was stupid and they walked out and sat down on the curb until 11:00 when The Blob was supposed to start. While they were sitting there Slobber smoked cigarettes, detailed the movie scene by scene and analyzed the merits of the film as compared to the Japanese monster movies, which he preferred, and the giant atomic bug movies of the 1950's. Spurred by the comment from Gene that he was glad that monsters weren't real Slobber insured him that not only were they real, but the woods in that area were full of them.

. . .

Poetry: A Lobster is a Tree by G. Chartrand and L. Lesniakthe removal of whose end-

vertices produces a caterpillar.

. . .

Rant: The Last Time I Saw bin Laden by David Pacheco As a recent arrival in this country, I received a phone call yesterday from Tom Ridge, the Director of Homeland Security, asking me about any previous dealings I may have had with Osama bin Laden. It's all a part of Attorney General John Ashcroft's way of adding a personal, cuddly touch to the racial and ethnic profiling he's mandated. Sort of like Hitler wearing pyjamas with feet.

I told Ridge about the last time I saw Osama.

Osama and I go way back. Way, way back. Back even before the last time he hated the U.S. before they trained him and gave him money and then he liked them and now he hates them again. We've never been particularly close, mostly because of the religious differences (he's an Extreme Fundamentalist Muslim, whereas I think women are human beings). But still, he calls me every time he's in town, we hang.

. . .

Dave-o's Latest Column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle, on Writing Careers, Plus Getting Quoted a Bunch in Forbes

(Reposted from my more daveocentric blog, on account these sorts of things tend to interest Mojonauts, too.)

A couple of quick items now that I'm back in town and in the computing seat:

1) I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. The August column (which obviously snuck in kinda late; I was out of town) is about How To Launch Your Writing Career in Four easy steps:

Launching a writing career is a four-step process:

1. Get a Baby

2. Write Some Stuff

3. Go to Library Story Time

4. Check Your Email

I know, I know, you have a few questions. So, I will clarify in detail below, with footnotes.

. . .

“Hey!” you’re about to type, “This isn’t a career plan, it’s just a string of random events involving a nameless baby! None of it applies to me; I don’t even have a baby! What a rip-off!”

What’s tripping us up is this word “career.” . . .

It's just that easy! Learn more and ACT NOW: The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In it for The Money: How to Career as a Writer

2) A few months back a nice blogger from Forbes visited my coworking community to talk about remote workers and coworking and stuff. So, if you want to read a little more about the "terrible investment decisions" portion of my "career," check that out.

AT&T Got Werner Herzog to Make a Driver's Ed Film about Texting-while-Driving

*Whoa.*

Werner Herzog is exactly the right human to do this.

Werner Herzog texting while driving documentary "From One Second to the Next" is worth watching. (VIDEO)

I'm going to level with you: I get around by bicycle in a mid-sized college town. I almost get smashed by a driver doing something janky--usually while looking at a phone--on a weekly basis. I signed a 10 year term life insurance policy this morning because, in the case that I'm murdered by an inattentive driver, I'd prefer to lose consciousness knowing that my wife and children will not be left homeless by my passing.

Detroit's Current Electoral Shenanigans: Duggan vs. Dugeon #PureMichigan

New Detroit mayoral candidate Mike Dugeon likely to cause confusion for Mike Duggan supporters | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

Backstory: As of early spring Mike Duggan (the pink man on the left of the image) was the front-runner for mayor of Detroit, leading the runner-up (Sheriff Benny Napoleon) by 2-1, and with quadruple the support of the current mayor, Dave Bing (who was third in the race, and subsequently decided not to seek re-election). Then Duggan got bumped from the ballot on a technicality: in Detroit you need to be over 18 and registered to vote as a Detroit resident for at least one year. When he filed his petition to run for mayor, Duggan had been a detroit resident for over a year, but had only been registered to vote in Detroit for 351 days. They tossed his ass off the ballot--at the urging of Tom Barrow, also running for mayor. So, Duggan shifted gears into a massive write-in campaign, which actually seemed to be going pretty well (for what it was--a Hail Mary).

And then this: Mike Dugeon, a west-side barber with a mysteriously homophonic name (also pictured) joined the campaign as a write-in candidate.

Now, we're all still a little foggy about Mike Dugeon's platform, although the Detroit Free Press informs us:

Dugeon has no known previous political experience nor an inclination to share his political thoughts, at least not on his Facebook page, where he complains about women not taking his calls unless he provides booze and marijuana.

Yes, there's a temptation to see this as an issue of race--and, I'm going to level with you, it is: Kwame Kilpatrick got re-elected in the face of scandal (including both official misconduct, systemic misappropriation, and a murder) in large part by activating long-standing animosity between the majority-black city and the much paler suburbs. For that matter, the mayor's office and city council have an established pattern of being far from awesome with the city's vibrant Hispanic population.

But the problem here, with the shamefully obvious "Duggan vs. Dugeon" ploy, isn't about race. It's about the fact that with Duggan's name no longer printed on the ballot--and some lucky timing with the city's bankruptcy--Benny Napoleon has sailed into being frontrunner without any meaningful public debate about where the hell Detroit should be going, and without explaining how a guy who can't balance the sherif's office budget (it runs at a $30 million deficit this year, with a bloated administrative staff) is going to fix the city's finances, or how a guy who, as Detroit chief-of-police, managed the department into a DoJ investigation and federal consent decree, is going to clean up the city.

So, anyway, this is a really cheap trick. But I guess we can all at least take solace in knowing that Detroit's next mayor will be thrifty.

Noam Chomsky and a "Journalist" Walk into a Bar . . .

I continue to write a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. In a departure from my normal tedious exegeses of gun statistics and local bridge policy, this latest column is based on a conversation I had with Noam Chomsky in early July. It begins something like this:

I’m interviewing Noam Chomsky in the bar of the Campus Inn a block from the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The bar is dim and entirely abandoned at 10 a.m. on a Friday morning. Because I’m highly distractible, I can’t help but periodically marvel at the symmetry of this: I only ended up interviewing Noam Chomsky at all because I’d Tweeted a link to a joke about Heisenberg, Gödel, and Chomsky walking into a bar [1], and Dave Askins (editor of this fine publication) had responded by noting that Chomsky would be speaking at the University of Michigan a week or so later, and essentially dared me to interview him.

I’d agreed, on the assumption that it would be impossible to land an interview with the man almost universally regarded as America’s foremost public intellectual. I was wrong [ . . . ]

. . . and goes downhill from there. Enjoy!

(For those more interested in Chomsky and less in my chatter, you can read the unedited transcript of the interview or listen to all 48 minutes of the audio.)

Epic Rap Battles of History: Doc Brown vs Doctor Who

I never really got the whole Dr. Who thing, but I love seeing George Watsky in the mix.

Doc Brown vs Doctor Who. Epic Rap Battles of History Season 2. - YouTube

Epic Rap Battles of History: Darth Vader vs Adolf Hitler

I like that STAR WARS is finally being acknowledged as a historical event, just like the Flood and Creation as depicted in Genesis.

If You Learn About Only One Bat-shit Crazy Thing Today, Make It Jeremy Bentham's "Auto Icon"

(cross-posted from my Snip, Burn, Solder Blog, 'cause it dawned on me that it was totally unfair for me to leave you dedicated Mojonauts out on something with pictures this great)

Listen: The father of Utilitarianism had his skeleton preserved and dressed in his favorite suit, in order to preside over meetings after his demise. Bentham did this. Bentham, in many regards the ur-Rational Guy, the philosophical father of our post-modern avatar of Rational Behavior.

But the preservation method for Bentham's head got screwed up, with monstrous results. It wound up looking like it was carved from meatloaf jerky, so they used a wax head instead, and positioned Jeremy Bentham's actual severed head on the floor between the philosophy scarecrow's feet--just because.

They (who? who knows?!) ultimately decided the severed head on the floor was either gruesome or an attractive nuisance, and so decided to store it in a box somewhere and replaced it with a replica, or sometimes nothing. Anyway, in the pic above, that's Jeremy Bentham's actual head on the floor, fronting all John the Baptist-post-Salome-style. Here's a close up of the head--the actual head of an actual famous philosopher who had this done to himself on purpose:

So those creepy peepers? Bentham carried those around in his pocket for much of his life, so they could wind up in his severed jerky head and attend meetings for all eternity.

This . . . I . . . damn. I guess dude believed this bizarre gesture would somehow maximize humanity's happiness and reduce suffering, although the mechanism for that escapes me.

In the end, though, I find the idea of those eyes staring at the inside of a dark box even *more* distressing than having them stare out a glass case from between Bentham's feet. Even though he can't see us, J.B. is still watching us, and likely finding us wanting. *shudders*

Jeremy Bentham - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bentham died on 6 June 1832 the age of 84 at his residence in Queen Square Place in Westminster, London. He had continued to write up to a month before his death, and had made careful preparations for the dissection of his body after death and its preservation as an auto-icon. As early as 1769, when Bentham was just twenty-one years old, he made a will leaving his body for dissection to a family friend, the physician and chemist George Fordyce, whose daughter, Maria Sophia (1765–1858), married Jeremy's brother Samuel Bentham.[18] A paper written in 1830, instructing Thomas Southwood Smith to create the auto-icon, was attached to his last will, dated 30 May 1832.[18]

On 8 June 1832, two days after his death, invitations were distributed to a select group of friends, and on the following day at 3 p.m., Southwood Smith delivered a lengthy oration over Bentham's remains in the Webb Street School of Anatomy & Medicine in Southwark, London. The printed oration contains a frontispiece with an engraving of Bentham's body partly covered by a sheet.[18]

Afterward, the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "Auto-icon", with the skeleton padded out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes. Originally kept by his disciple Thomas Southwood Smith,[19] it was acquired by University College London in 1850. It is normally kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college; however, for the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as "present but not voting".[20]

Bentham had intended the Auto-icon to incorporate his actual head, mummified to resemble its appearance in life. However, Southwood Smith's experimental efforts at mummification, based on practices of the indigenous people of New Zealand and involving placing the head under an air pump over sulphuric acid and simply drawing off the fluids, although technically successful, left the head looking distastefully macabre, with dried and darkened skin stretched tautly over the skull.[18] The Auto-icon was therefore given a wax head, fitted with some of Bentham's own hair. The real head was displayed in the same case as the Auto-icon for many years, but became the target of repeated student pranks. It is now locked away securely.[21]

(see also: Jeremy Bentham's Auto-Icon | Atlas Obscura)