Thursday, April 21, 2011

Happy Holidays

Happy Four and Twenty. Ladies and gentle-ents Sorry I didn't have an update yesterday.

Shit was real weird. First of all I get a message on Bookface, as it were, and come to find out a green truck, and a white van have been parking outside my recently-dead father's house. I had to get a ride out to look and see what was taken. yada yada yada, they took a bunch of stuff outside, but didn't actually break in so it was shitty but alright. That's about as personal as i want to get with this here internet box before I jump into today's political rant, and very importantly. Before I get back to my previous format of having links in the title-esq segues I would use. I liked that, and forgot about it. So I'm going back to that and going to be playing around with using youtube video of clips I liked, and want to share... don't worry not kitten's with mittens, but there are some news clips, or science announcements I would like to speak for themselves from time to time.

Back to the title scheme:

Rachel Maddow in : The GOP and Really, Really, Really Big Government.



Ai yi yi! I need to sleep and I've left this window open for hours. Enjoy Rachel Maddow tomorrow will be the triple supreme special of posts I swear.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

WISE data, Water MASERs, and Variable Specific Impulse Magneto-plasma Rockets Oh my! (Also a shout out to UsUncut, and UkUncut. Fighting Corporate Tax Dodgers for the good of the world.)

Alright everyone, welcome to the internet and day two of this years go at keeping 'Future in the Rough' as a blog. Also I plan on choosing a day of the week (after I find the usb cable for my camera.) where I can start posting a video blog entry.. just got to get a backdrop, set up a corner of the room as a studio and bam. It should be fun, and it'll be a convenient segue into showing off the all the work I want to do with film this year.

So I'm excited about this. The Weekly video will be a little saner than my usual blog posts probably because I'll be attempting to make a bit of sense, versus this Half-venting half-informative political, and science blog. So I'll try and talk about a few more relevant issues, but mainly a lot of what I find to be underplayed news. But we'll come to that when I get around to implementing it. (within a week.)

I did a lot of crazy fuck the police rants yesterday so let's change the pace a bit and open up with NASA's first payload of Visual Data from the WISE skymapping spacecraft, which scanned the entire night sky in the infrared spectrum. The project revealed among other barely radioactive beauties in the night sky 19 NEO (Near Earth Objects) which warrant higher concern to the earth due to size and proximity of orbit. I know this sounds alarming but I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'

Here is a link to a popsci.com article discussing what I found to be particularly interesting. Rather, perhaps beautiful is a better word to describe my fascination with the article's topic being what they call 'Cosmic water fountains' found within our own Milky way Galaxy. Technically what they are talking about is the presence of large cosmic clouds of water particles traveling at speeds of up to 350 km per second. These are objects are identified as 'Water Fountains' a type of 'Maser' which is a large Microwave laser signal. Masers of this particular nature can be found in nebulae wherein there is active star formation, or surrounding a dying star. The water in the molecular clouds absorb, amplify and re-emit the present energy to give off the microwave laser signals which indicate their locations.

I know, kind of an old concept cleaned up by new data. Hydrocarbons are among some of the most simple, and abundant baryonic substances in our visible known universe by current understanding. However, the concept of cosmic sized water clouds being flung into intra-galactic space. It not only sounds beautiful, but stands as a beacon to the availability of resources needed for our concepts of habitation. I find that touching, in that Carl Sagan sort of way.

Finally back to NASA before I jump off here for a quick break before going into my daily thoughts on politics. This is a link to a very exciting conceptual engine which they have been experimental since 1977 but starting this year, is being prepared to test on the ISS in 2014. A Plasma drive orbital adjustment engine. So I'm sure you are either confused and excited, or not-confused because you read the link and excited... or not-confused and unexcited (which I call secret confused.) So I'll Assume all three and get more specific. It's called the Variable Specific Impulse Magneto-plasma Rocket. VASIMR. The linked PDF here shows on page 25, and in much further detail beforehand in the PDF if you are curious enough to check it out, there are some projections for the range of time we could develop these solar powered, plasma propelled craft as solar efficiency rises and they are able to use higher MW engines. The difference between the 500kw engine that will be tested on the ISS later this year and theoretical 2.5MW engine hauling similar crafts with equal fuel weights is 1557 days at 500kw (this engine will just be to correct ISS orbit from time to time at drastically lower fuel cost.) compared to 426 days with a 2.5MW engine. In terms of months as the table shows that is 52 months over 14 months. At current the competitors for engine models remain largely Nuclear, and Chemical rockets. Cost Efficiency and speed are the two driving forces which could propagate this engine in today's inter-political, or commercial space market.

Before I go I'd like to leave a link to UsUncut's website US uncut is the sister affiliate of UKuncut. UsUncut started by Carl Gibson of Mississippi, who was influenced by the decentralized protest against corporate tax evasion in the UK known as UkUncut; is working hard to get the word out against the same corporate tax evasion taking place in the united states. Bank of America, Verizon, FedEx, GE, and BP are major targets of UsUncut for their individual crimes of tax evasion. In this aspect the US movement still mirrors the UK movement as they shine the same light on more European situated companies such as Vodafone, Boots, Sir Philip Green, Tesco and supermarket brands, as well as large UK banks.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Restarting this blog The right way. Ranting about large portions of our Society and how we run it.

Today has been kinda a long drawn out day. But that could be the hangover. Man, has there been a lot to blog about since I've been dormant. So I suspect this'll be a long ranty one. I'll keep the newer ones more segmented.


Okay every - one.

It's been a year and three/four days since I made my last post. I started this, and put it aside and stopped doing it. But well, the ranting is back and I need to vent about Space News, and my extremely unorthodox political views about society.

Democracy is spreading in the middle east they said months ago when Tunisia's revolution began kicking off what has been called the Jasmine Revolution or 'Arab Spring'. Later revolution spreading to Egypt and Algeria; here, four months later Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are among the names of the largest countries seemingly influenced and effected by the revolutions, into their own actions. There are talks of what is called on one Al-Jazeera opinion piece a 'peace troika' between Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel. This could a historic moment for middle east peace.

This has a lot of people in the United States and elsewhere taking notice of their live, and situations. Questioning the social, and judicial systems that confine their lives... What of this is necessary? what of this is too much? can we really come into a peaceful modern future with the ideologies, and structure useful to a bygone people, and era who inhabited a vastly unknown world which doubtless orbited in an unknown void of space. Now, I am not saying that basic structure has not remained constant at the very core of humanity and of the societies which we are host to and part of. But that being said there are some key issues I think I have with some of the unnecessary aspects of society which could be re-managed in ways which would allow them to take greater advantage of their available resources such as money.

What am I talking about? well, and this is going to sound wild at first. We shouldn't rely on the police to provide justice for non-violent crimes, we should use lawyers. I'm talking about massive police cut backs, and re-distribution of policemen to areas experiencing more violent crime. But In areas where the crimes are of a predominantly non-violent nature the burden of Justice should fall on the victim to take advantage of a city appointed lawyer (which we will need way more of, and lawyers are an overcrowded worker base as well, at the moment.)

When I talk about Non-violent crime what do I mean? I mean victimless crime, would be put in the hands of the citizens, whereby illegal non-violent actions are considered 'actionable' instead of 'illegal' and any offended citizen can rightfully sue the person for money, or compensation for violating the law. This compensation process will provide justice, and punishment. Eliminating the use of holding cells for non-violent crimes, and crimes where there is no present statement of concern about the defendants plan to run. Perhaps if we have a system of making a license invalid out side of town, until the court date that could get around the whole bail/bondsman relationship and issue but cops would need to treat runners like violent offenders in this case meaning they would pursue them. If the defendant does not appear in court, in addition to a fine from the courts.

What I effectively mean here, is that I want to ensure the rights of the people to produce, or consume anything they desire as what I would consider fair considering all people on equal footing (hypothetically) in terms of who fits the bill of 'responsible adult'. However substances deemed illegal could be actionable by any offended party, so the school could sue you for smoking pot. But your neighbor is a dick if he does, but if it's on his land sure he's a victim. A roommate of mine suggested that this seems like a rather horrid process, which I told him was the determent from committing non-violent offenses.. people will sue you. You will have the right to a trial which you will be charged for fleeing if you did so, and be treated humanely as possible and eliminating need for holding cells, or guards in most non-violent cases.

This would also mean that non-violent crimes could be mostly solved with monetary exchange, and we could see a drop in people arrested by the now lowered number of police over data they happen to uncover during a warranted unrelated investigation. But an steady stream of people who rape, fight, murder, steal, molest, or eat other people (granted they weren't eaten with consent that is.) Filling up the ample Jail space to serve their time, with a small enough portion of non-violent criminals that were deemed needing of jail time by the courts that could be maintained by the minimum security facilities we already have too many of, and keep over-full of too many non-violent criminals. I'm not saying you couldn't goto jail for this shit.. just only if you are stupid and offensive with your non-violent crime on someone elses property, or on your property to a visitor. And I think it's fair to say you could call the cops in any situation where you are too scared to know what to do properly for investigative assistance and preparation for court as they would today. But with More of their budget freed up for cool things like suped up cars, and nice labs like they have on TV shows.

Jobs you say? This would kill them? well... yeah or at least make them move to where they are needed. But Imagine the stress it would relieve from the Lawyers looking or work, not to mention the generations of law school grads to come. We have a lot of lawyers in the U.S. and we're only making more. For this to work, we need more lawyers this creates a demand, or deficit of lawyers over time unless the public is encouraged to seek law as a profession.. Perhaps they should have a large federal union they could work for, maybe even this would require the formation of a new institution of Modern Society. A social program that manages fleets of some kind of cross between a lawyer, and a cop. Imagine that... *shivers* alright, I see my roommate's point. But still Imagine the power that would put into people's hands. The Motivation it would provide the people to be active in the legal affairs of themselves and their nation. Active and aware people, a concerned people, and a judicially represented people.

I'll write more about this later in my even wilder spiel about what we could do now to get the attention of major Corporations in America that are playing games with us at the National level, and at the personal level by becoming more aware of your rights to legal representation, and the power of the proletariat.