Earth sends flying saucer to look for life

Hurling an object 12,500 miles per hour at the surface of Mars, and reducing that velocity to zero in seven minutes for a soft landing, is an amazing feat that hardly seems possible. And yet, that's exactly what scientists at NASA did tonight -- successfully. Here's the backstory of how that works:



Looking for extraterrestrial life is the primary objective of this mission. In fact, this is the first time in the history of the human race that we have ever tried to directly reach out to another world and cup unearthly life in the palm of our hands -- albeit robotic hands. How absolutely perfect it is, then, that we sent something resembling a UFO, a flying saucer straight out of The Day The Earth Stood Still. No matter what, technology always oddly ends up immitating science fiction.

Quantum computing for dummies

If you have trouble comprehending that everything you see on the web resolves to Yes/No states in the form of binary 1s and 0s, you're really going to have trouble understanding quantum computing, which among other things takes advantage of the quantum physics wave-particle duality inspired concept of something being two states at once. A bit can be either a 1 or a 0, a qubit can be both at the same time! It's hard to wrap your mind around, so fortunately the folks at SEED Magazine offers this one page guide to quantum computing. I'll come back to this topic in a "bit" (pun intended) as I feel this is an evolutionary step in computing.

I'm not dead...

... just cleaning things off my plate. Unfortunately there's only one guy in a fifty-mile radius who equally balances right-brain form with left-brain function, tracks new web developments religiously, has any real experience in online graphic design and architecture, and can program or fix other's code in four or more separate languages. Unfortunately that guy is also easily distracted by a warm breeze, the fragrance of a flower, the exploding bursts of color that come with spring, or the ever-changing drift of a lazy river. That guy has a propensity to let things pile up. I'm looking forward to meeting you for drinks after I've finished dinner.

Viral video, passing along

Posted per request, mostly out of respect for the sincerity of the request. For the record, I support the police and have several friends who are police officers, though of course I'm not always on the right side of the whole lawful citizen thing. I don't, however, support the shooting of an unarmed man for any reason. Abuse of the position happens, probably often. The account of the incident published in the Herald News, from the sole perspective of the officer who shot the man in the back, twice, sounds dubious at best. To me it sounds like convenient bull shit to say he reached for the officer's gun. But regardless of what actually happened, it is out of sincerity for the request that I pass this along.