Random Rankings

I thought I'd rank a few things, in order of best to worst:

Star Wars: 4, 5, 6, 3, 2, 1
Star Trek Series: Next Generation, DS9, Enterprise, Original Series, Voyager, Animated
Noble Gases: Helium, Krypton, Neon, Argon, Xenon, Radon
Kubrick Films: Dr Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket, Clockwork Orange, 2001, The Shining, Barry Lyndon, and the rest.
TF2 Classes: Demoman, Medic, Scout, Soldier, Heavy, Sniper, Pyro, Engineer, Spy
British Colonies: USA, Australia, India, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand
Queens of England: Elizabeth 1, Victoria, Anne, Mary 1, Elizabeth 2
Whig Presidents of the USA: John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, William Henry Harrison

Lists are often not comprehensive, too much work.

Teaching Science

The title "teaching science" has a double meaning. Science needs to be taught more, and earlier, to American children in particular, and we also need to use science to improve teaching.

Far too often, a teacher enters into a school with a few methods that have been passed down without scientific analysis. They then settle into a rut that does not change, regardless of effect. We need to bring Scientific Management to teaching. Teaching can be optimized just like any other process. This is not to say that individual teachers should be robots, but they should be compelled to use methods that work better. This requires a lot of leeway for teachers and administrators to see if a particular teaching method is more effectual for a given educator, but that's what all Scientific Management features, in an ideal world.

People seem to think that Science and its cousin Math are advanced topics that are only fit for a small segment of students, and they only should be introduced at a relatively advanced level of schooling. Both of those principles are disastrously wrong. Everyone should have a basic knowledge of how science works, and anyone can learn it.

If science were better known, we wouldn't have nearly as many parasites on gullibility, our psychics, homeopaths, astrologers, mediums (media?), ghost hunters, and so on would have to move into industries that actually create value.

There's no reason younger children can't learn the basics of Math and Science. If a kindergartner can learn that "The cow goes 'Moo'", then there's no reason that they can't learn that the red line (below) is the radius of a circle.

Decimal Time

Have I ever mentioned my support for Decimal Time here on the blog? It's basically the Metric system, but for time. There are only 10 hours in the day, 100 minutes in the hour, and 100 seconds in the minute. The second actually ends up being pretty close to the length of a second now, but the other units would take some getting used to.

There are several benefits: the math involving time would be infinitely easier, (most people don't bother doing any math that requires converting from one unit to another, it's too hard), there'd be no ambiguities about time, (No AM and PM, just 00.00-09.99). The objections are basically the same objections America gives for changing to the regular metric system, plus the problem that the rest of the world doesn't do this one.

Sometimes I wonder how much of our time is lost because of easily fixable problems. Both the metric system and Decimal Time would require an initial investment of manpower, but would make everyone's life easier for the rest of time. I think it would make a good return on investment within ten years. The government needs to spend money on things to prop up the economy right now anyway, so it may as well be something that increases future efficiency.

Space Logic

L4D is out, theoretically, so I've been thinking about Star Trek while waiting for the game to let me play. There are some silly clichès in the show, especially the 2-D nature of space. Only in Wrath Of Khan does someone note that all the ships are essentially on the same plane, and maybe they should take advantage of that fact?

Anyway, everyone knows that our galaxy is a disc, and that you get more matter the closer you get to the center of the disc. Naturally, there is also more matter on the center plane of the disc as well. If spaceships used free floating particles in space for fuel, (which canon says is not the case), it would be most advantageous to stay as close as possible to that center level. Of course, it's not significant enough to put people as close as they are in the show, but it's an interesting idea, at least.

This pulling fuel from space would also mean that ships couldn't battle in one area without exhausting it of particles; battles around fixed locations would favour those with better resource management. Moving battles would favour those being pursued, since they would get first access to the particles.

In case you think using space as fuel is silly, it has been proposed by those cleverer than me. Current scientific thought says that there isn't enough matter in space to make it worthwhile, but we are always discovering new things. In Science Fiction, particularly Star Trek, increasing the amount of Hydrogen floating in Deep Space would probably be the least far-fetched thing in the show.

All this is never going to be used, so I'll settle for asking for a new Star Trek TV show that keeps somewhat loyal to its roots. The last thing we need is 24 in space, however appealing that may be to middle management.

Japanese Space Elevator

Apparently about a month ago, Japan announced that they'll make a space elevator for 10 billion dollars. If it's actually possible to do it that cheaply, or even if it cost 100 billion dollars, then every country in the world that can scrounge up that much money should get on it today. It cuts the price of putting something in space a hundred fold.

If Japan (or any country) has a space elevator, and no other country does, then there will be no "American" or "Russian" space program. There will be no national program but the one that has the space elevator. If you could do a project for 1% of its original cost, it makes any inconvenience worth it. A space elevator makes getting into space so cheap, that you could go for your vacation.

It's too bad that the American government has no sense of vision, has no direction, and has absolutely no sense of priorities, since I guarantee that building a space elevator of our own would give innumerable benefits, and we're going to be late to the party, because we're focusing on stupid things of the moment.

Genuine People Personalities

Humans have a tendency to see patterns where there aren't any. It goes back to our hunter-gatherer days. If you think a sound might be something rustling in the woods, it's better to assume it's real than to be eaten by a tiger.

There's a similar phenomenon in anthropomorphism. People assign personalities to almost anything. An owner of a Roomba will probably be willing to tell you about how their Roomba feels, and how it's "special". Most Roombas have a name, like you would give to a pet or a human.

When people hear about this tendency to assign personalities to things that have none, they smugly smile to themselves, sure that, "I'm not that silly." I look at it the other way. If humans are known to create imaginary personalities, then the most reasonable assumption is that people and animals don't actually have a personality, and we are merely projecting this facade onto what is essentially a robot made of meat.

----------------
Now playing: Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama
via FoxyTunes

Republican Science

In the recent Republican debate, three of the ten men running for president don't believe in evolution. How is this possible? I suppose it's possible that some of them are just pretending, but that would be even worse. I vowed I wouldn't make this a whiney, emo political blog, so I'm going to stop now.

Water on Mars

According to this Slashdot article, there is confirmation that there is water on Mars. Vast amounts of water.

Step one is complete. Now we need to move to step two: sending people there to die.

I don't mean to say that we should send people hoping that they die. I'm saying that when we send people to Mars, lots of them are going to die. I believe that the first successful colony on Mars will incorporate parts from previous, unsuccessful missions. We just have to steel our hearts against the nearly endless tragedies that will come inevitably from what will be the hardest thing man has ever done.

Cheating

It is traditional for fiction with future technology to explain how it works. I have no idea why. If the author had a real explanation, he'd probably go invent the future product, instead of sitting around writing books. Because they don't have a real explanation, they cheat. They add "Flux Capacitors", "positronic networks", and so on. They essentially use magic, but replace it with a different word.

Michael Chriton's Timeline is the biggest cheater of all time. The technology is a common one in fiction, Time Travel. In the book, it turns out that they are not traveling through time at all, they are travel ling to a parallel universe that has an Earth similar to our history. You want to see Lincoln? You can't go back in time, you go to a parallel universe that happens to be before 1865.

Some would point out that this is silly, and that it makes some unrealistic assumptions about the nature of the universe. I don't mind it, personally. That's not the big cheat.

The big cheat is that they didn't invent any technology that allows them to travel to alternate universes! They created a machine that did nothing at all. The only reason that they can travel to alternate dimensions is that someone in yet another dimension is transporting them. I swear, I am not making this up.

Terraforming Mars

As you may know, Mars, despite being the best candidate for colonization in our solar system, is pretty inhospitable. In comparison to Earth, it has very little mass, (only about 11%) which means very little gravity.

The low gravity also means that little atmosphere clings to the planet, essentially none of which is oxygen. Also, there is essentially no water that we know of.

So what are we to do? Terraform! All we have to do is crash an almost endless procession of asteroids into the planet, adding mass and water. After doing that for a century, we could start atmosphere 'factories' designed to change the crappy atmosphere of Mars into a nice Oxygen/Nitrogen affair.

There are simpler ways to terraform a planet, and it would be possible to live there today if we were willing to live under domes. But why settle for less?