Featured Links - September 16, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The entrance to Frenchman's Bay

Why Does The Fibonacci Sequence Appear So Frequently In Nature? "The rationale behind irrationality." A good explanation of a simple mathematic sequence that has hidden complexities.

650-Foot High Megatsunami in Greenland Sends Seismic Waves Worldwide. "In September 2023, a megatsunami in Greenland triggered seismic waves worldwide, caused by a landslide in Dickson Fjord. The event generated two seismic signals: a high-energy signal from the landslide and a long-lasting VLP signal from a seiche in the fjord. The findings offer new insights into the risks posed by climate change and landslides in Greenland."

Inside Iron Mountain: It’s Time to Talk About Hard Drives. "Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services sounds the alarm: Aging tracks created through an all-digital workflow aren't guaranteed to play back." This has been a known issue with recording tape for many years and now it's happening with hard drives and optical media. We need a long-term (hundreds of years or more) storage media for digital data.  

When bats were wiped out, more human babies died, a study found. Here's why. "Researchers find infant deaths increased after farmers used more pesticides to compensate for rise of pests." Unintended consequences are killing children.

AI can now replicate the human brain to solve the 'cocktail party problem' – and it has led to criminal convictions. "The human brain can single out noises in a busy room, but technology can't, which makes using recordings as proof tricky."

Brick and Roses: How Community-Led Development Shapes Design. "Across North America and the U.K., community land trusts, co-ops and co-housing groups are nourishing bold, aspirational design paradigms — and a new generation of urban advocacy." High-density developments don't have to be ugly and soulless.

An AI May Have Just Invented "Alternative" Physics. "An AI shown videos of physical phenomena and instructed to identify the variables involved produced answers different from our own." This is really interesting and brings to mind a number of science fiction stories with exactly that idea. 

The 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow: Some Thoughts. A report on the Glasgow Worldcon by Abigail Nussbaun. Wish I could have been there. 

Photo of the Week - September 15, 2024

This week's photo is of an old cottage/house in our neighbourhood that looks like it is slated for demolition to be replaced by another soulless McMansion. I took this with my Pixel 8 Pro and cropped and adjusted the contrast and colour in Google Photos. 

Another one for the history books

Saturday Sounds - Memphis '69: The 1969 Memphis Country Blues Festival

Although for many, the musical highlight of 1969 was the Woodstock Peace and Music Featival, there were other notable musical events that year. This week's musical treat is a documentary about the 1969 Memphis Country Blues Festival. It was a much, much smaller event than Woodstock, but there was a lot of good country, folk, and blues played over the weekend.

This is the full playlist from the documentary:

03:14 Rufus Thomas with The Bar-Kays
08:01 Bukka White
09:58 Nathan Beauregard
12:01 Sleepy John Estes & Yank Rachell
14:00 Jo Ann Kelly & "Backwards" Sam Firk
17:20 Son Thomas
20:20 Sleepy John Estes & Yank Rachell
22:07 Lum Guffin
23:21 Rev. Robert Wilkins & Family
26:09 John Fahey
28:56 Sid Selvidge with Moloch
30:53 John D. Loudermilk
35:43 Furry Lewis
42:35 Bukka White
43:53 Piano Red
47:05 Jefferson Street Jug Band with John Fahey and Robert Palmer
50:26 Insect Trust
52:25 Moloch
56:22 Johnny Winter
01:02:40 The Salem Harmonizers
01:05:34 Mississippi Fred McDowell

Highlights for me were Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Johnny Winter, and Mississippi Fred McDowell. Enjoy. 

The FAA Is STILL Hobbling SpaceX

Back in March, I posted about how the FAA was holding back SpaceX's revolutionary Starship program. Now, after a reasonably successful test flight in June, SpaceX has issued a statement outlining its disagreements with the way that the FAA is holding up a license for the next launch. 

If you don't want to read the whole thing, Ars Technica has a good article (with lots of links) summarizing the current situation. 

Tuesday's update from SpaceX was the most aggressive statement the company has released about the FAA's slow processing of launch license applications, and it touched on a deeper complaint than the FAA's lack of resources for oversight of commercial space activities. The company suggested the hold-up for launching Starship's next test flight isn't SpaceX's technical readiness or even that an understaffed FAA is overwhelmed with regulating a fast-growing commercial launch industry.

Instead, SpaceX wrote in a statement to the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics that licensing delays are caused by bureaucratic sluggishness, a lack of transparency, poor methodologies, and regulatory inefficiency and duplication. As an example, SpaceX cited roadblocks with its ongoing application for a launch license for the fifth Starship test flight.

"This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis," SpaceX said. "The four open environmental issues are illustrative of the difficulties launch companies face in the current regulatory environment for launch and reentry licensing."

I'm not a fan of Elon Musk these days (I will never forgive him for what he's done to Twitter and his behaviour there has been abhorrent), but I do think SpaceX is right to complain here. 

 

About That Cebate

I did not watch the presidential candidate's debate last night; I have an extremely low tolerance for watching anything that Trump says. I figured I'd get the highlights today and I was right. From what I've seen and read, it looks like Harris definitely got the better of Trump. It remains to be seen if that makes any difference. 

The best comments on the debate that I've seen are from SF author John Scalzi. from a post on his blog. Here's some of it.

It’s unlikely Trump will do another debate, because Trump doesn’t like being a loser, and he lost this debate even more comprehensively than he lost the 2020 election. From here he’ll retreat into the safe little world of right-wing media, where even his most unhinged pronouncements are met with respectful nodding and agreement. He’ll double down on his hate and his ranting and his inability to censor even the most embarrassing of thoughts. And if, after all of that, he’s still rewarded with a second term, then all his resentment and seething inadequacy will find a focus on anyone and everyone who ever made him feel a fool, and this time, he won’t bother having anyone around him who will tell him no.

A Tribute to the Original Star Trek

It's been 58 years since the first episode of Star Trek was broadcast. I still remember going over to my friend Chris Coggon's house to watch it because his family had a colour TV and being completely entranced by the show. 

On File 770, Chris Barkley has listed his favourite 15 episodes from the three seasons of the original series and describes how they influenced his life. It's a lovely tribute to one of the great and most influential TV shows.

Featured Links - September 9, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Family home - for a family of foxes

• A new era in hurricane tracking begins. "Inside the dangerous mission that could revolutionize how we hunt nature’s most terrifying storms."
• Arecibo Wow! I: An Astrophysical Explanation for the Wow! Signal. "We hypothesize that the Wow! Signal was caused by sudden brightening from stimulated emission of the hydrogen line due to a strong transient radiation source, such as a magnetar flare or a soft gamma repeater (SGR). These are very rare events that depend on special conditions and alignments, where these clouds might become much brighter for seconds to minutes. The original source or the cloud might not be detectable, depending on the sensitivity of the telescope." Another LGM contact bites the dust. 
• NARA recovers famed 1982 Grace Hopper lecture recorded on obsolete media format. An important piece of computing history has been preserved.
• Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free. "What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn’t bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library? You’d probably think they were delusional. Yet that argument has now carried the day in putting a knife into the back of the extremely useful Open Library from the Internet Archive."
• After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship. "It's no secret that government IT can be a huge bummer. The records retention! The security! So government workers occasionally take IT into their own hands with creative but, err, unauthorized solutions."
• A Word, Please: Coffee-shop prompt stirs ChatGPT to brew up bland copy. "A short article about a new coffee place prompted grammar expert June Casagrande to check her work against AI. The latter created tepid copy that included weak sentences and left out relevant details."
• Russia Bought the Right. "The cost was around $10 million so far, but this might just be the first of many bombshells." 
• Meet the right-wing Canadian influencers accused of collaborating with an alleged Russian propaganda scheme. "Tenet Media founder Lauren Chen allegedly took funds from pro-Moscow outlet." The Canadian connection to the previous story. 
• Are Some Ultraprocessed Foods Worse Than Others? (gift link) "A new study may offer the biggest clues yet."
• A window into the body: New technique makes skin invisible. "Researchers have developed a new way to see organs within a body by rendering overlying tissues transparent to visible light. The counterintuitive process—a topical application of food-safe dye—was reversible in tests with animal subjects, and may ultimately apply to a wide range of medical diagnostics, from locating injuries to monitoring digestive disorders to identifying cancers."
• Tonga eruption that poured 150 metric tons of water vapor into the stratosphere affected the atmosphere for years. "A new study builds on previous research into the underwater volcano's effects on the climate."

Photo of the Week - September 8, 2024

This week's photo is of a rather decrepit looking shed that is on a property that was scheduled to be redeveloped. I now see that the signs announcing the redevelopment are gone so perhaps it has a little more life left, though given the condition of the building, perhaps not a lot. 

I took this with my Pixel 8 Pro and cropped and straightened the original image. 

A descript shed

Saturday Sounds - Monteverdi VESPERS of 1610 | The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge

This week's musical treat is something a little different: a choral performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge. One of my Facebook friends posted a link to this and I thought I'd give it a listen. I'm glad I did. 

Having been raised a Catholic, I was exposed to religious classical music at an early age and I still enjoy it. This is quite a lovely performance of a piece that I don't recall having heard before, at least not in its entirety.  

From Planet Hugill, a site I must look at in more depth. 

In April this year, Graham Ross directed the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge in a performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 at Smith Square Hall (formerly St John's Smith Square). The performance featured the English Cornett & Sackbutt Ensemble, plus Margaret Faultless, violin, Jonathan Manson, bass violin, William Hunt, violone, Elizabeth Kenny, theorbo and Silas Wollston, organ, alongside instrumentalists from Cambridge University. Nicholas Mulroy did the heavy lifting as soloist alongside other soloists from the choir.

The result was filmed, beautifully, by Andrew Staples for Studio 2359, with recorded sound by John Rutter. The film has now been released and is available the Choir of Clare College's YouTube channel. The results are nothing less than astonishing and extremely engaging. Despite using a college choir, this is a relatively intimate performance and I have great admiration for the way a series of soloists step out from the choir and perform all those solos with terrific aplomb. 

 

Going Green at Algoma Steel

Steel plants are dirty places. I was quite aware of that when I was growing up in the Sault. Even living a few miles away from "the plant", our snow would occasionally get darkened by dust blowing off the coal piles at Algoma Steel. And you could see (abd sometimes smell) the smoke and steam from the blast furnaces that were the plant's glowing heart.

Now most of those blast furnaces are shuttered or torn down and soon they will all be gone, replaced by mammoth electric arc furnaces that will melt scrap metal and iron to make steel, drastically reducing the pollution, and especially carbon dioxide, coming from the plant. 

The Globe and Mail looks at Algoma Steel's new venture and what it will mean to help meet Canada's goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

When fully operational, Algoma’s project is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by three million tonnes annually, or 70 per cent. That equates to more than a tenth of Canada’s 2030 goal under the Paris Agreement. It will also eliminate smokestack and fugitive emissions, the company says. The first furnace is expected to begin startup operations at the end of this year.

It's a laudable goal but it's going to be hard on the already shaky economy of the Sault.

One of the of the tough aspects of the changeover for the community is the plant will require fewer workers, because of the efficiency of the technology. It currently employs about 3,000 people, and once it makes the transition, that number will fall to 1,600 to 1,700, Mr. Garcia says.

When I worked there as a summer student during my university days, Algoma Steel employed more than 4,000 people, and that was down quite a bit from its peak. The transition to "green steel" is going to be a hard one for the Sault, but it is necessary, and just one of the many that Canada's resource-driven economy has to make in the future. 

Review: Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen

Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, Penguin Random House, 2024, ISBN 9780593476093 (ebook)

I'm a child of the Cold War. I grew up in the shadow of a SAC bomber base about 15 miles south of us across the border in Michigan and B-52 bombers regularly flew over my uncle's cottage on their landing approach to Kincheloe. There was an air raid siren on the hill overlooking the high school near our home and it was tested regularly. Of course, I remember the uncertainty and fear of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

I've understood the power of nuclear weapon ever since studying physics in university and reading books like The Effects of Nuclear Weapons and Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb.. But in the past 50 years, the fear of nuclear war has faded into the background, with periodic flareups like the Ukraine war and sabre rattling by North Korea. 

But reading Nuclear War made me seriously afraid. It's clear that we are living in a world where nuclear conflict could be started and escalate into an all-out war in 90 minutes or less. The triggering event could be a deliberate attack, as postulated in the scenario laid out in the book, but it could also be something unintentional. Given the hair-trigger launch on warning policies of the major powers (something I wasn't aware of before reading this book), a full scale conflict would be almost inevitable.

Nuclear War is a fast paced and compulsively readable descent into hell. It's thoroughly researched, with more than 200 pages of notes and references, which helps to make it scarier than the best horror movie. Recommended, but with a very strong trigger warning.

Movie and TV Reviews - August 2024

Movies and TV shows that Nancy and I watched in August. I do these posts mainly so I can keep track of what we've been watching, so the reviews are cursory. 

Movies

• The American Society of Magical Negroes: I hadn't heard of this one until my daughter mentioned it. It's a combination of rom com, satire, and pointed social commentary. Worth watching if you like any of those tropes. (Amazon Prime).
• Jackpot: The premise is dystopian and almost believable but the movie plays it for laughs. Very much light entertainment. The best part was the blooper/gag reel which was integrated into the credits. (Amazon Prime)

TV Shows

• House of the Dragon (season 2): I enjoyed this season, somewhat to my surprise. (I didn't like the first season though it did get better towards the end.) However, the finale was ... disappointing. (Crave)
• Presumed Innocent: I've not read the Scott Turrow movie this was based on nor am I likely to after the twisty ending of the show was revealed. We enjoyed it and it kept us guessing but it's still not as good as the better British shows. (Apple TV+)
• Antiques Road Trip (season 3): Our comfort/relaxation watching. We'll probably get to season 15 sometime in 2026. (When we started watching the show, we worked our way backwards from the current season 26). (PBS)
• Black Snow:  A detective from Brisbane travels to a small farming town to solve a 25-year-old cold case. This is one of the best shows we've seen in a while. I liked the way it dealt with issues surrounding Australia's treatment of indigenous and Islander peoples. I'm glad to see there will be a second season. (Acorn TV)
• My Lady Jane: A light alternate-history fantasy with shape shifters. I enjoyed it, though the voice-over narration is overdone. Too bad there won't be a second season. (Amazon Prime)
• Signora Volpe (season 2): A British spy retires in Italy but can't stay out of other people's business. A bit darker in tone than season 1. (Acorn TV)
• Collision: A British police procedural about an investigation into a freeway accident that affects many lives. After watching a couple of episodes, we realized that we may have watched this before (it came out in 2009) but we didn't remember enough to spoil it, so we kept watching and enjoyed it. (Acorn TV). 
• Hidden Assets (season 2): We watched the first season of this and liked it and the second season is just as good. (Acorn TV)

Featured Links - Septermber 3, 2027

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Summer flowers beginning to fade

• Minimal Influenza Virus Transmission from Touching Contaminated Face Masks: a Laboratory Study. "Somewhat reassuringly, today we've a study in Nature that suggests that concerns over viral transfer from touching a contaminated face mask may be overblown." If I could have gotten COVID by touching my mask, I'd have had it long ago. 
• Financialisation: a 21st century commercial determinant of health equity. " The aim of this Viewpoint is to expand the understanding of the commercial determinants of health to explicitly include the financial system and present key plausible pathways via which the financialisation of advanced economies influences public health and planetary health equity. The global public health community must pay close attention to these key commercial determinants of health. It is now crucial to reduce the power of financial actors and hold financial actors accountable."
• R.I.P. Journalist, Editor and Counterculture Enthusiast, Steve Silberman. I never met Steve Silberman but I have been reading him for years and have corresponded with him a bit here Mastodon. I always enjoyed reading what he had to say. I will miss seeing him his posts and I am sure  I won't be the only one.
• 2024 Dragon Awards Winners. These were awarded at DragonCon in Atlanta over the Labour Day Weekend. Starter Villain by John Scalzi won the Best Science Fiction Novel Award and is the next book on my TBR list.
• MAGA attacks on Kamala Harris' stepdaughter threaten to backfire on Donald Trump. "Ella Emhoff has triggered Trump's bitter bro fanbase — but an embrace of the incel vote could come back to hurt him. "
• 'Everything we found shattered our expectations': Archaeologists discover 1st astronomical observatory from ancient Egypt. "This first ancient Egyptian observatory discovered in modern times showcases advanced knowledge of astronomy and its profound link to the Egyptians' spiritual and ritualistic practices."
• String Theorists Accidentally Find a New Formula for Pi (archive.ph link). "Two physicists have come across infinitely many novel equations for pi while trying to develop a unifying theory of the fundamental forces."
• Is digital technology really swaying voters and undermining democracy? (archive.ph link) "Many fear that voters are being manipulated by political campaigns that use Facebook ads, TikTok and YouTube videos, but research reveals a more surprising story."