Astronauts say ET life must exist

We will eventually find life in space. That from the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

“If we push back boundaries far enough, I’m sure eventually we’ll find something out there,” said Mike Foreman, a mission specialist on the Endeavour, which returned to Earth in March.

“Maybe not as evolved as we are, but it’s hard to believe that there is not life somewhere else in this great universe,” he told a news conference in Tokyo.

Life on earth is pretty resilient and diverse. It exists at nearly every climate, in water or on land. That said, life as we know it requires oxygen, carbon, and water. Certainly no planets in our solar system other than Earth have those building blocks.

Wikipedia has a quick summary of the common explanation of how Earth came to be hospitable to life:

Scientists have been able to reconstruct detailed information about the planet’s past. Earth and the other planets in the Solar System formed 4.54 billion years ago out of the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun. Initially molten, the outer layer of the planet Earth cooled to form a solid crust when water began accumulating in the atmosphere. The Moon formed soon afterwards, possibly as the result of a Mars-sized object (sometimes called Theia) with about 10% of the Earth’s mass impacting the Earth in a glancing blow. Some of this object’s mass would have merged with the Earth and a portion would have been ejected into space, but enough material would have been sent into orbit to form the Moon.

Outgassing and volcanic activity produced the primordial atmosphere. Condensing water vapor, augmented by ice and liquid water delivered by asteroids and the larger proto-planets, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects produced the oceans. The highly energetic chemistry is believed to have produced a self-replicating molecule around 4 billion years ago, and half a billion years later, the last common ancestor of all life existed.

Although that’s an improbable series of events — as demonstrated by the lack of life around us — it’s not impossible to replicate. Given the vastness of the universe, the odds support the probability that Earth’s rock to life process could be replicated somewhere else. There are billions of known galaxies with innumerable amounts of planets — our galaxy has around 4 trillion.

Since life thrives here in all types and varieties and in all conditions, life on another planet is likely given that they have water, carbon, and oxygen. So even though a planet’s climate may be brutal, life can exist.

That doesn’t mean ET life is sentient, although I would have to believe that humans are not the only form of intelligent life in the universe either.

The sad news is that we won’t find the answer to this question in our lifetime. We will have to travel outside our solar system to find it, which we have neither the technical nor societal capacity to do. A manned mission to Mars will be a tremendous step in that direction though. But keep in mind that it takes 2 years to get there from Earth. So for manned or unmanned missions into deep space to succeed, multiple generations of staff will be required to say nothing of the immense technical barriers that must be overcome.

See also:

+ New evidence suggests life came from space

Google Street View confused for surveillance operation in Rome

The zeitgeist of Rome, Italy made itself plain last week:

For many Romans, these are jittery times. For the first time in a generation, the mayor of the Eternal City, once a left-wing stronghold, is on the political right. Gianni Alemanno, a former neo-Fascist, swept to power late last month on a tough-on-crime platform that included bulldozing encampments of Roma [gypsy] people, expelling supposedly violent foreigners and installing London-like surveillance cameras around town.

So a group of Romans can be forgiven on Wednesday afternoon for assuming the worst when a black car sporting a massive, rotating video camera, slowly drove down Viale Trastevere, a busy thoroughfare, filming everybody in sight. On cue, pedestrians shuffled off the street and into bars, out of sight of the offending vehicle, no doubt wondering if these are the new intrusions that must be endured after a sudden shift to the right.

Of course it was nothing more than the Google Street View car. Nevertheless, with such Mussolini-like rhetoric coming from its new mayor, it is heartening to see that Romans are wary of the creep of a surveillance state there. I fear that’s not all they have coming with Alemanno in office.

Healing PTSD in virtual Iraq

Is it time in ‘invade’ Burma?

Victims of the recent cyclone in Burma aren’t being helped. The junta is incapable and intrinsically xenophobic. It can’t help itself and is wary of accepting help from outsiders. Meanwhile, people are dying. The lack of clean drinking water is, amongst other things, causing concern of widespread illness and further death. As such, it was only a matter of time before someone suggested that the international body invade Burma to save its people.

Time published an article airing that idea out. I think they were wrong to use the word ‘invade’ though. That’s a term associated with war, which is not what they are calling for.

Instead the article gives voice to those who want to airdrop supplies into stricken areas. Even though the junta would ostensibly not approve of this action, it has historical precedent in Berlin, Somalia, and Bosnia. In other words, we’ve provided humanitarian assistance without the expressed will of a state’s ruling body before.

The problem with making the comparison between those operations and a potential response in Burma is that we actually did invade militarily in the example states. Setting our willingness to do that aside, invading is just not an option in Burma since it would exacerbate the current crisis — by orders of magnitude.

Air dropping supplies obviously doesn’t require an invasion. That said, a lot of the treatment does need to be administered by doctors. So although parachuting food and water in would help, the people need medical attention which requires trained professionals.

The article does talk about working through Thailand who has normalized relations with the junta and has already been allowed to land in Burma with aid supplies. Since the deliveries go into military hands, there is no guarantee that they are being effectively dispersed or used though. Also, that arrangement presents the same problem as air drops do: the Burmese people need doctors, not just supplies.

At this point we’ve come to two conclusions. We can’t invade and supplies alone will not suffice. As for the latter, I think that dropping them in unannounced will only further antagonize the junta and injure efforts to bring in doctors. Since we can’t invade, we have to coerce the junta.

Any and all pressure needs to be applied on the military rulers. The UN should consider the possility that this situation constitutes a war crime. The Bush administration must lean on China and India to leverage their regional power. The junta’s foreign assets have to be frozen until they provide the UN and aid-relief agencies with immediate and unencumbered access to disaster areas. As agonizingly slow and imperfect as all that is, it’s the only reasonable way to forge change in this horrifying situation.

White NYPD officers unknowingly harass highest ranking black officer

Two white NYPD cops are on suspension after ordering a three star chief — in a department vehicle with identification — out of his car at gunpoint. The chief is black and said the officers had no probable cause to initiate contact.

NY Daily News also has a map that breaks down NYPD contacts by race in the subway system.

Drive through LA with an urban planner

To append to this morning’s post on LA’s transportation issues, I want to post this discussion Street Films had with an urban planner there. I know I’ve posted a lot about LA’s urban design lately, but since it’s been the protagonist of urban sprawl in America, I figure they are a good microcosm of the movement for alternative transport.

The urban planner makes a solid argument about parking. Certainly the need to park our cars consumes a lot of urban space. That pushes buildings away from streets and sidewalks and forces development outwards. But the real problem is free parking. Free parking provides an incentive to drive. She makes the case that we should charge (more) for parking in order to encourage use of alternative transport.

It’s the plastic bag approach. To cut down on use of plastic bags, some grocery stores started charging .5¢ or .10¢ per bag and people switched to paper or boxes instead.

She also made a pretty devastating critique of contemporary urban design. She said that urban planners see streets simply as a “place to move cars,” making them nothing more than a “sewer pipe.” That mindset disconnects the street and highway from the city, hence our indifference to sprawl.

The world in three links

We in the blogging community have been a little narrow minded lately. Everyone is paying the election its dues, but there are more pressing matters in the world today. I promise Hillary won’t drop out when you’re reading these links:

1. Hezbollah seizes West Beirut, civil war possible
2. Burma still not accepting aid workers; 100,000 now feared dead
3. Mexico’s top cop assassinated

Gas prices so high people are taking mass transit in LA

Alternative transportation is on the rise in LA — at least temporarily. Metro says that ridership has risen on both its rail and bus systems since January. There are also signs that more commuters are choosing to carpool or cycle. The changes are attributed to rising gas prices, but aren’t expected to last for long.

The MTA usually sees a temporary increase in riders when gas prices reach certain thresholds, like $3, $3.50 and $4 a gallon, he said. Then ridership goes down once people become accustomed to the higher cost.

“What we hope every time,” he said, “is that as more people become introduced to using rail as an alternative, we can retain more of those discretionary riders over time.”

What is more likely, said Brian Taylor, director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, is that people will begin buying more fuel-efficient vehicles. In April, in fact, sales of passenger cars were up 5.2% nationally while light-truck and sport utility vehicle sales were down 17.4%.

Taking public transportation in LA is a privilege determined by geography and commute distance. If you can take it you’re lucky because it doesn’t go anywhere — it’s limited to a small box in the region’s center — so your origin and destination must be within a reasonable distance in the right part of town. Although I hope Angelenos will start taking mass transit in larger numbers and more frequently, the system’s geographic limitations suggest that the UCLA professor is going to be correct.

Angelenos obviously don’t see alternative transport as a blessing though. They ♥ cars. In fact, they have this social scorn for alternative transit. Some of it is reasonable — the geography — but the rest is simply bizarre:

“My friends ask me what’s wrong with me”… “When people see you walking, they think something’s wrong with you,” he said. “People driving by turn their heads away like you’re going to ask them for money.”

I’m not a psychologist, but this would be an interesting topic to research. My hypothesis would be that it has something to do with class and status. LA is so uber-social that nobody wants to be associated with the stereotypical broke bus rider. If you’re walking, you’re poor. If you don’t have a car, you’re poor.

Irony is poised to strike though. If these people continue driving and paying exorbitant gas prices, they’re going to be poor.

See also:

+ It’s about time to tax the petro-car culture

First spacewalk in HD

Over 100 hours of NASA’s glory days (hopefully there are more to come*) have been digitally remastered for a Discovery Channel documentary. “When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions” will air this summer, but we already have a sneak peak at how amazing it’s going to be. Here is America’s first spacewalk from Gemini 4 in 1965:

*NASA is planning two epic programs. The first is a manned mission to land on an asteroid. The second is a manned lunar program.

LA Homicide Report: it’s bloody

This is eye opening. LA Times maintains a blog called “The Homicide Report” which tracks, you guessed it, homicides in LA. They also have a visual representation of the reports here. The amount of violence there is staggering.

Nightmare in Burma just beginning

Air Force fear peddling met with more criticism

It seems I’m not alone in taking the Air Force to task for their new ad campaign. DANGER ROOM patches together a pretty scathing attack piece calling the ads ‘scare mongering:’

No one expects commercials to be word-for-word accurate — not even ads from the U.S. military. But a new Air Force commercial, about the perils of an attack in space, does more than stretch the truth, a bit. It snaps the truth into tiny little pieces, experts and former officers say — violating the laws of physics and common sense, while flying in the face everything that’s known about the world’s constellation of satellites.

“What if your cell phone calls, your television, your GPS system, even your bank transactions, could be taken out with a single missile?” the military ad asks. “They can.”

No, they can’t. Not unless there’s some new missile out there that can strike dozens and dozens of targets, spread out over thousands and thousands of miles.

There’s reality and then there’s this ad — they are mutually exclusive. For example, cell phones don’t rely on satellites. Neither does TV (unless you have satellite) or bank transactions. GPS is dependent on satellites, 24 to be precise. So for all that technology to be taken out by one missile — even though some of it isn’t even in space — would require the most lucky missile shot of all time.

“It is clear that the Air Force is preying on the lack of public understanding of the threat (and space in general) in an attempt to convince voters that space is important too and only the US Air Force can protect America in space,’ [former Air Force space officer Brian] Weeden notes. “After years of trying to convince the politicians that areas such as space situational awareness needed more funding and failing, the Air Force has turned to another method to get its message across: fear.”

Just so we’re all on the same page, the Air Force is spending our money trying to scare us with a scenario they made up in order to justify getting more of our money.

See also:

• Air Force trying to stay relevant - Part 1
• Air Force trying to stay relevant - Part 2
• Air Force wants liquefied coal to fuel jets

Obama intercepts Hillary’s hail mary

Drudge is calling Obama ‘the nominee.’ It’s not a done deal, but it now seems inevitable thanks to a decisive win in North Carolina and a near draw in Indiana. The aftermath though, will certainly focus more on last night’s loser.

Hillary canceled her media appearances this morning. Obviously had she not done that, she could have looked forward to tough questions on her electability. I think last night’s results corroded her well trodden answers.

Since she’s behind in every metric, she couldn’t lose ground in either the delegate count or popular vote and maintain a claim to the nomination. As long as she was getting closer using springboards like Pennsylvania she could buy time and make the argument to unpledged super-delegates that Obama wasn’t electable vs. McCain — praying that they would come to her rescue. But the near total reversal of her momentum last night seems to have ended that hail mary strategy.

With absolutely no technical recourse remaining that would yield her the nomination, I can’t imagine what her justification for staying in this race would be aside from narrowly focusing on reinstating delegates from MI and FL. She’s running out of arguments and people are running out of patience.

Another Guantanamo PR disaster

In 2001, Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj was captured on the Afghan-Pakistan border. He was held as an enemy combatant and taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The US military charged al-Haj with being a courier for terrorists, a claim he denies. He didn’t face prosecution.

Al-Haj was just released and returned to his home in Sudan to much fanfare; he delivered a speech on national television:

“I was subjected to 130 (interrogation) sessions, more than 35 about the Al-Jazeera and they wanted me to be a spy against Al-Jazeera,” he said, adding that being a faithful Muslim he had turned down the offer.”

He went on to slam Guantanamo as the “most heinous prison mankind has ever known.” He also noted that his basic rights were deprived, most notably the right to face charges and trial.

The US is getting thrashed by the world media and populations over this story: IHT, Al-Jazeera, BBC, and Xinhua. It doesn’t matter what the government, military, analysts, or talking heads say about Guantanamo’s merits. It’s over, they lost. Guantanamo is solely a symbol of American ‘justice.’ It’s hypocritical, embarrassing, and undercuts our credibility on human rights.

Close it.

Tar sands reaping reward and havok in Alberta

Mother Jones has a must read article on the wide array of consequences attributed to extracting oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada. Everything from prostitution and drug use to rare forms of cancer and deformed fish — the place once renowned for its subtle beauty is turning into an industrial wasteland.

The article starts by detailing the story of a small town just downstream from the sands, where the health effects of tar sand mining is very clear. Pathogens and carcenagens have infiltrated the water supply upstream and have slowly contaminated the local ecology.

[Read more →]

Hillary’s playing (awkwardly) for Team America

When freedom hangs by a thread…

“We’re going to knock balls out of the country’s park,” [Hillary Clinton] says, standing in a minor-league baseball stadium, “for the home team, which is America”

[via MoJo and The Economist]

Aside from this being the worst sports analogy of all time, Hillary continues to wrap herself in the flag with this one. After the past 8 years, I think we can do without the sophomoric jingoism: ‘Smash OPEC. Obliterate Iran. Go America!’ Do we want another rabble-rouser for a president?

Besides, nobody really wants to experience the pain associated with a potential Hillary-McCain patriotism-off, right?

The Cheesecake Factory, where it only looks like marble

As discussed earlier today, the NY Times ran a critique of chain restaurants yesterday. I differed from Ezra Klein in that I thought the criticism was generally fair, although they definitely went into the experience with preconceived judgments. The heat was aimed at the cultural aspect of these restaurants and one chain in particular deserves such attention.

[Read more →]

Too many kids on pills

A new study warns that too many children are taking anti-psychotic medicines in the US and UK. The worry is that many of these medications haven’t been approved for children or tested for long-term side effects:

With scant long-term safety data, it’s likely the drugs are being over-prescribed for both U.S. and U.K. children, research suggests.

The most common drugs are used to treat hyperactivity. The logic behind that has never sat well with me. ‘He’s not paying attention, we better just tranquilize him.’ I realize it’s a difficult for parents and teachers to deal with a child who has one of those disorders, but messing with the chemistry of their brain isn’t a solution. Considering the fact that nobody really knows what the long-term effects of these drugs are, it might just make the present bearable but the future far more complicated.

Frontline did a series last year called “The Medicated Child” which explored that conundrum. They came to the conclusion that treating so many kids with such unpredictable drugs is an uncontrolled experiment on a massive scale:

Using cell phones to find people

Cell phone technology allows carriers to imprecisely triangulate the locations of its users assuming they have their cell phones with them. Police have come to appreciate this new tool in finding missing persons.

While this information certainly helps find missing people, the police do not need a warrant to access it and that’s a little troubling:

In missing persons cases…cell phone providers require that officers assert a customer may be in immediate danger — “exigent circumstances” in the industry’s parlance — before releasing the information, said Joyce Masamitsu, associate director for state public policy for Verizon Wireless. Verizon alone handled about 26,000 such requests last year.

Masamitsu said Verizon, like other cellular providers, requires detailed follow-up reports from investigators. But she said the company doesn’t conduct any independent review of the requests before releasing location information.

“All the officer needs to do is confirm to us that an exigent circumstance exists,” she said.

Making it a habit to trust authority is never a good thing. I’m not suggesting that police are taking advantage of the carriers right now, but it seems like that wouldn’t necessarily be a difficult thing to considering the malleable definition of “exigent circumstance.” That’s why states should require a court order for police to obtain this information. At the very least, it would require that wording to be more precise.

The Feds, meanwhile, do require warrants. However, their use of this technology is much more mischievous:

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime…

These judges are issuing orders based on the lower standard, requiring a showing of “specific and articulable facts” showing reasonable grounds to believe the data will be “relevant and material” to a criminal investigation.

That legal chicanery needs to stop. I’m all for tracking bad guys, but we have to play by the rules to do it. Congress needs to make it clear that ‘reasonable grounds’ is not the same as probable cause — the standard that’s used to issue warrants, make police stops, etc. It’s actually the crucial pillar that ensures freedom from police interference in your everyday life, unless, of course, you’re breaking the law or look like you are. We shouldn’t allow it to erode.

NY Times food critics serve chain restaurants

Ezra Klein sounded off about the NY Times article in which food critics critiqued chain restaurants in suburban New York City. He was put off by their thinly veiled distaste towards mainstream restaurants. While I understand where Ezra is coming from, I think he fails to take into consideration the “surprisingly decent” consensus. They thought the food was pretty good, especially for the cost.

Their central criticism, which is somewhat justifiable in my opinion, focuses on the cultural aspect of these restaurants. Chains seem to process their customers with factory-like efficiency. But that’s usually lost in the faux atmospheres they use to create hype. Some restaurants are more egregious in this respect than others. More on that later.

Every reviewer in the Times article made note that they were handed pagers. “Coasterlike disks” was how one reviewer put it. The culture shock he experienced wasn’t limited to that during his trip to the Outback Stakehouse:

On a recent Saturday night, a companion and I threaded our way through the crowded holding pen beside the host’s station. Table for two? The teenagers staffing the post slid their eyes down the long list of names as though working a particularly difficult problem on an AP statistics test. “Ummm, 70 to 75 minutes,” one finally said. I’m not sure what was more unnerving, the length of the wait or the precision of the estimate.

We were handed one of those coasterlike disks that light up when your table has been called. There were no seats in the bar or waiting area, of course. They had long been snared by people who appeared to have taken up semipermanent residence and were perhaps even having their mail forwarded.

When I’m handed a pager, I feel that they minus well just strip a barcode around my wrist. The restaurants that do that are usually very busy and I’m sure it helps with processing and allows customers to carouse nearby businesses while they wait. Nevertheless, a pager denotes that I’ve left the personal realm where names matter and entered a computer like process where only pager #11 counts. So I feel the Times reviewer is right to stress that impersonal trait chain restaurants share.

But the most telling — yet hidden — shot the reviewer took was aimed at the decor:

A display of boomerangs. Some sports jerseys. Beer signs. Five large TV screens, all playing sports.

That’s where Ezra’s criticism makes sense. These comments could be interpreted as cold and listing the decor as matter of fact. Judging from the first two paragraphs though, I detect an anti-mainstream slant. Setting the boomerangs aside, the reviewer just described the majority of restaurants and bars in America — obviously that’s the problem.

The Times also went to the Cheesecake Factory. I have a special vendetta to resume with the Factory. I’ll post that later today.