Another week closer to Spring…or so we hope. This week’s links are very heavy on environmental stories. I apologize for the one-dimensionality, but Jarred has some Web 2.0 stuff planned for this week to even things out a bit. Links:
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. offers three major environmental policies for the next president: a carbon cap-and-trade system (wisely endorsed by Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain); smart grids and modernizing energy delivery infrastructure; and drastic improvements in energy efficiency for buildings and machines. Sounds like a start [Hat Tip: Grist].
Treehugger features stories on space debris (click through to see the image…pretty unbelievable) and the “Pacific trash vortex“–an area twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that’s entirely covered in garbage (more here). Further proof of the attitude that out of sight is out of mind…until our children grow up, anyway.
The latest version of Google Earth includes a feature that shows users when a satellite image was taken; this is enormously important for conservation efforts aimed at tracking land and water conditions over time. Also helpful for spies.
If I managed to freak you out with my post on the need to specialize in your career, Monica (of Twenty Set) follows her original post with helpful tips to take inventory of your current job in terms of skill focus. One sign that your current job is too unfocused:
You could train a recent college graduate to do your job well in a few days or less – This demonstrates you do not need any experience or knowledge learned over time to complete your tasks, which implies busy work or menial duties.
The New Yorker featured a really fascinating article on something I rarely give a second thought: elevators. The story includes an account of the horrific experience of a guy trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. The time-lapse video of his ordeal makes me think I’ll be taking the stairs for a few weeks.
I keep procrastinating on a green architecture post; in the meantime, this is one of the coolest green building concepts I’ve seen recently: urban skyscraper farming, courtesy of the Dwell Magazine blog. Check out this design, and follow the link for details:
I’m giving Jarred this raw meat themed iPod case for his birthday, just to send Ashish (and Steve Jobs, for that matter) over the edge. Fortunately for you, Ashish, it’s way too expensive for a gag gift.
For those of you who get jazzed up over some of our space-related posts, Google just made your (and my) day. Last August, the G-spot updated their Earth application with a new feature called Google Sky. Sky allows you to discover the universe in much the same way we’ve been able to discover our own planet using Earth. I’ve toyed with it off and on, and it’s pretty awesome. But since I unfortunately can’t download Earth at work, I am unable to browse the galaxy while I sit on my keister doing jack diddly enthusiastically seek assignments from my superiors.
The Giant of Mountain View must have heard my soul’s death rattle for, behold, here comes “Google Sky Maps.” (That’s my name for it anyway. I think they just call it “the web version of Google Sky,” but that’s lame. C’mon Google! Use some of that 20% time to dream up something creative. Google SkyNet? No? Too creepy?).
It still has room to improve, though. I get a little disoriented; as Garett Rogers suggests, it could use some sort of ground reference so we are reminded that we’re always observing from the Earth’s surface. And the service is still a little laggy, likely due to an overwhelming response from the geekosphere to Google’s conch shell call (I was lucky enough to have a tape recorder with me when the sweet sound came echoing down the streets of Washington. See below.)
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Anyway, for better or worse you can now waste spend your billable free hours frolicking across the universe. Enjoy.
I saw an ad for the film while browsing the web a few weeks ago, and I almost scrolled right by. I usually don’t pay attention to web ads, let alone click on them, but I took the bait on this one upon seeing Ron Howard’s name attached to it. The film had received several honors and awards, but it was the enticing trailer that finally won me over.
And, as I’ve noted before, I’m a sucker for pretty much everything related to space. So I queued it up on Netflix and waited patiently.
A week or so later, the mailman brought me my little red envelope. I bought some beer, gathered some friends, and settled in to be entertained. I was not entertained. I was spellbound.
Before I introduce this week’s winner, let me make two disclosures.
At least two of the writers here at Tropophilia are huge space junkies. Taylor and I both went to Space Camp, were (and, come Christmas, will be born-again) Trekkies, and still get jazzed over anything that manages to exit the Earth’s atmosphere for destinations both known and unknown, explored and unexplored. Space is indeed the final frontier and – being both Americans and bros, and thus by nature in love with chasing frontiers – we can’t help but be obsessed with it.
I watched The Astronaut Farmer courtesy of Netflix last night, and while the movie was a little too cheesy and warm-and-fuzzy for me, I still had my heart in my throat and a little water in my eyes when this everyday dude finally gets his homemade rocket off the ground, into orbit, and then back down to Earth.
And so, with those disclosures made, it is my pleasure to announce that the recipient of this week’s Tropophy is Virgin Galactic. Yesterday, Virgin Chairman Richard Branson unveiled the design of SpaceShipTwo, the improved iteration of the SpaceShipOne model designed by Burt Rutan which won the Ansari X Prize in 2004. By the end of 2010, this vessel will be taking civilians on trips into space. Fo’ real, yo.
A few weeks ago I read an article in The Economist about distributed computing, defined by Wikipedia as “a method of computer processing in which different parts of a program are run simultaneously on two or more computers that are communicating with each other over a network.” Basically what you do is download a program that, when you’re not around, uses your computer’s processor (which would otherwise be mostly idle) to crunch data sent to it from a central server. Your computer joins thousands of others crunching data at any one time, forming a giant networked supercomputer with each unit working on a different piece of the puzzle.
What’s the puzzle? It can be anything, or at least anything that requires a whole lot of computer power to figure out. Some puzzles are humanitarian in nature; for example, the World Community Grid (sponsored by IBM) currently has projects tackling cancer, AIDS, and Dengue fever research, as well as African climate change. Others are more geeky (or, should we say, scientific), like the SETI@home project which is searching for extraterrestrial intelligence by analyzing radio telescope data.
So the bottom line is this: while one way to save the planet and contribute to science is through the donation of time and money, another way is through the donation of your computer’s processing power. Why let your computer idly sit while you’re at work or school all day — occasionally using a small processor burst to throw the next picture from your hard drive onto your screensaver, which no one but your dog is watching – when you can have it use its full capacity to solve some of the world’s toughest problems?
The buzz word for this phenomenon is “donating spare cycles.” Basically, a cycle is the process your computer goes through to retrieve a command from its memory and execute that command. It’s how your computer works and, in a way, it’s how our minds work too. A human cycle, then, would be the process our brain goes through to retrieve and process information from our memory. But do humans have spare cycles to donate? You bet.
RT @Jason: Logged into Facebook for the first time in two months to see the Questions product (it's ok). Leaving FB changed nothing in m ... 2010/07/30
A few weeks ago I read an 
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