Let's find some aliens

Let's cut the fluff out of this blog and just get into the meat of it. When are we going to find aliens? Nathan Karst has recently alerted me to a most exciting prospect for those convinced that space exploration is of the utmost importance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/apr/25/starsgalaxiesandplanets.spaceexploration

Scope that out. If you don't want to, I'll paraphrase. A planet has been discovered orbiting the star Gliese in the constellation Libra. Only 20 light years away, "Measurements of the planet's celestial path suggest it is 1½ times the size of our home planet, and orbits close to its sun, with a year of just 13 days. The planet's orbit brings it 14 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. But Gliese 581 burns at only 3,000C, half the temperature of our own sun, making conditions on the planet comfortable for life, with average ground temperatures estimated at 0 to 40C. Researchers claim the planet is likely to have an atmosphere."

My question, "When are we going?!".

Last week I had a discussion with a bunch of veterans. Working at the YMCA, there are plenty of interesting groups that I teach and these guys were no exception. All suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, the men were scared of the dark, loud noises, and other seemingly childhood phobias. But I cannot say it enough, these men changed my LIFE. I only got to teach one class to them and it absolutely melted my face off. My expectations were low. Not for them, but for myself. I expected to be discredited as the youngster who knew very little. "Who is this 23 year old and what gives him the right to try and teach us? We who have held our friends as they have died. We who have heard the bullets by our ears. We who have lost our limbs, our families, our friends, our minds. Who IS this 23 year old and what gives him the right?!" I couldn't have been so wrong. I have never felt so respected and accepted in my life. It was far from a standard class. The men, mostly uneducated, had an extreme interest in everything I had to say. They had a tendency to question and to play devil's advocate. Not out of disrespect, but simply to learn. It was incredible. At the end, we had a discussion on my deepest passion. Space exploration. I expected to show a video on the planets, but then we just got lost in talk. Lost in talk, lost lost lost, lost in the stars!!!

"Why does this stuff matter David? Why when people are dying of AIDS and cancer and wars. Why space travel? Why astronomy?"

We got into it deep. Space travel birthed technology we could have never imagined. The computer age, medicine, physical therapy, hydroponics, etc etc. The apollo program sparked a tech revolution like none other. What would a mission to mars spark? Beyond?

Nathan and I muse on this often. Imagine there is a world 20 light years away with possible earthlike conditions(and now there is!) . The government throws down the gauntlet. "We need volunteers to go. Chances of arriving alive are slim. We expect 1% of people to make it to the planet. There is an even smaller chance that the planet is habitable, but a chance nonetheless!"

Would you go?
Why?
Why not?

Let's hear it. Holler back at me now.

Love,
David

XOXO to the XO

I remember when I was a freshman in highscool, way back in 1999. On the first day of classes each teacher asked, "Can I see a show of hands to see who has a computer with internet access in their home?". Attending a private school that catered to the middle class, the result was about 70% of my classmates raising their hands. This was certainly above the norm for classrooms around the country in the days of dail-up AOL 4.0 and dodgy 56k modems. Computers and the internet were still in the beginning stages of proving their worth for education and a PC wasn't yet part of classroom life. Yeah, I'd had the Clarisworks tutorials and seen the Mac Brickout club in middle school, but by no means had teachers begun incorporating computers into their daily instruction and assignments. We weren't ready, and paper hadn't yet failed us.

The next year I'd learned that teachers had been gauging computer usage because the school had decided to abandon paper report cards and moved the process entirely online. It was a big jump at the time, even though today it seems astonishingly simple. From 1999 to today computer use has continued to explode. This morning alone I've checked my bank accounts, paid bills, entered my work hours, and sent a dozen emails, all online. Even 4 years ago when I'd started college, checking grades electronically was already a well established practice.

Remember the days when you had to "sign on" to the internet? Hard to believe, huh? The fact that your night of chatting could be ruined by a busy signal to a access number? Today it's hard to find a home, and even harder, a business that's not persistently connected to the internet via broadband. America has taken off into the information age with the PC and the internet as our guides. Yet, we are a tiny, tiny, fraction of the world. Though admittedly there is a vast amount of junk, there is more valuable information found online than any school or university library could ever provide. That's why it is a shame that access to this nearly limitless knowledgebase is relegated to only those with the money to purchase the necessary, and still expensive, tools. Particularly when it is those without the money that would benefit most.

That's where the OLPC comes in. OLPC stands for One Laptop per Child. You may have heard about it as the $100 laptop program. Well, three years into the project, assembly lines are ready to get rolling in November. The $100 laptop is still a goal for the OLPC, but for the time being the price for these kid friendly machines is $200.

Though you're more than welcome to purchase one of these machines, you and your child aren't exactly the target market. OLPC is targeting the impoverished nations where education very rarely goes past the fifth grade.

With that in mind they've created the XO (meant to resemble a child when rotated). Knowing that kids are more prone to drops, spills, bumps, and dings than adults the XO is brilliantly engineered to withstand all of the aforementioned hazards. Yet, it's not simplay a damage resistent toy. There is some serious technology inside the XO.

From the NYTimes' David Plouge:

"In the places where the XO will be used, power is often scarce. So the laptop uses a new battery chemistry, called lithium ferro-phosphate. It runs at one-tenth the temperature of a standard laptop battery, costs $10 to replace, and is good for 2,000 charges — versus 500 on a regular laptop battery.

The laptop consumes an average of 2 watts, compared with 60 or more on a typical business laptop. That's one reason it gets such great battery life. A small yo-yo-like pull-cord charger is available (one minute of pulling provides 10 minutes of power); so is a $12 solar panel that, although only one foot
square, provides enough power to recharge or power the machine.

Speaking of bright sunshine: the XO's color screen is bright and, at 200 dots an inch, razor sharp (1,200 by 900 pixels). But it has a secret identity: in bright sun, you can turn off the backlight altogether. The resulting display, black on light gray, is so clear and readable, it's almost like paper. Then, of course, the battery lasts even longer."

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the XO is its networking capabilities. At any point, with no installation or configuration necessary, you can connect to any other laptop to share documents, drawings, video, even take a look through the built in camera and see who you're chatting with. And it goes far beyond a 1 to 1 connection. Using the "mesh" network they've engineered, you can essentially leapfrog from computer to computer and have a spontaneous network created with mere proximity. Throw an internet connection in and everyone's online. Truly impressive.

Lastly, there's the software. Everything on the laptop is open source and not only that, it's immediately editable, giving children the abilitiy to tweak and tinker and create whatever they desire, learning by manipulating.

The ingenuity and simplicity of the XO is something that pages and pages can be written on. If you're interested in more check out David Plouge's review at the NY Times website.

And the webpage at: www.laptop.org

If you're the giving kinda person, check out the give one get one program. For $400 you get an XO and put one in the hands of a child who needs it!

Help them reach the $100 laptop goal!

-dp

Hello boys

I registered bigontheblog. The name is changable. I just wanted to get things moving.

I've got a post ready to go up about the $200 laptop.

I'm thinkin we each make a short little blurb about ourselves and what we're doing before stuff starts getting posted here? I'll probably go ahead and get that started here in a little bit.

I'm keeping my thetaoofdp.blogspot.com blog for everything I write, but it will be far more "this is what I did this weekend" kinda stuff, where as I'll be posting "this is what I think about Ubuntu" stuff here, keeping things a little more, not professional, but less personal at least.

Anyway, I've got some ideas and I'm sure you guys have some as well. No better way to mesh out how we want this thing to go than to start.



-dp