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Later today (or early tomorrow morning depending on your current time zone), the Phoenix probe lands on Mars to investigate if life, or traces of ancient life, exists in Mars’ polar wastes. There is a fascinating video on APOD today showing the probe entering Mars’ atmosphere and unfurling its instruments.
It is possible that today may mark one of the greatest discoveries in human history - finding life on another planet. But what are the repercussions, really?
From a religious perspective, there appears to be two possibilities: many of the moderate religions would be relatively open to the idea that the universe is teeming with life, a view bolstered by the Vatican astronomer recently. The fundamentalist religions would appear to have a problem, having accepted that the Earth is the ultimate focus of God’s work. It’s unlikely though that any of them will collapse, inoculated as they are against logic and evidence-based thinking. A bit of word-smithing will usually suffice for most of their congregations and to hell with those throwing stones from the outside. In other words: business as usual.
From a scientific perspective, the discovery on life should not come as a surprise. Over the last 400 years, a stong body of evidence has been built up that we are not so important, or unique, in the greater scheme of things. Given the vastness of the universe, and the ability of life forms to survive even in the most inhospitable of conditions on Earth, the discovery of extraterrestrial life would only bolster this viewpoint. Philosophically, the existence of life would be uncontroversial enough. What’s far more interesting would be the questions that this discovery would pose. What is the composition of the DNA? Would the chemical composition be different? What are the origins of life on Mars? Where else might we look for life? What would the implications be were we to bring samples back to earth? What would this tell us about the creation of artificial life in the lab? To put it mildly, the discovery would have the effect of reshaping and redirecting the research agenda in the 21st Century.
From a man-in-the-street perspective, it would be enlightening, a topic of conversation. I’m not sure if it would change anyone’s life irreperably, as we have now become so used to the announcement of impressive scientific discoveries in our lives. It would be a flitting moment of celebrity, until the media find something else to absorb their attention.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is moot and the more probable event of life not being found will be the result. In any case I’d welcome any views you might have.
I was lucky to attend a talk by a man called Mark Pollock today in Dublin. Mark is completely blind, having lost his eyesight 10 years ago while he was a student in Trinity College.
This event would be traumatic for anyone, but Mark rebounded. In the intervening years, he has completed a Masters Degree in Business, ran six marathons in one week in the Gobi Desert, and has successfully endured a marathon run around the North Pole. He makes his living today as a professional speaker.
That’s guts for you.
Mark had three messages for us:
1) Accept as quickly as you can what you cannot do.
There’s no point looking backwards and pretending that you are still able for something when all the evidence suggests otherwise. Mark spent some time after going blind believing that he would soon get his sight back. Accepting that this would never happen was the key to him getting on with life.
2) Figure out what you can do and go and then do it.
Mark focused on the excuses people come up with that prevents them from making the key steps to improving their lives. All they see are the problems and not ways to get around these difficulties. In his case, the targets he set built on each other over time. By starting with relatively straightforward goals, he gained the confidence and ability he needed to work on more challenging objectives.
3) Don’t go it alone. Seek help.
Mark was explicit in identifying and utilising informal networks in order to get things done. For him, the really big achievements are rarely the work of a single individual. Trying to do everything by oneself is a recipe for failure. Others, who have been there before and who know the pitfalls and mistakes can be of immense value.
Mark’s message has really hit home for me. I would recommend Mark to anyone in a business or organisation who would like to learn from a truly inspirational speaker.
Even though the multi-touch interface is now a reality in the market (what with the iPhone etc.), nevertheless I’ve been wanting to post this particular demo to my blog for some time. It took my breath away when I saw it.
It’s the future, and it’s comin’ at ya.
I’ve always been a sucker for maps, so it’s no surprise that a diagram in a recent issue of the Economist got my mind-juices flowing. It shows in graphic detail Napoleon’s disastrous campaign into Russia: how an initial army of over 400,000 men got whittled down to a mere 10,000 desperate men over the course of the savage winter of 1812. This map is regarded by Edward Tufte as “the best statistical graphic ever drawn”.
In looking for more details about this graphic I came across an article about it on the Strange Maps blog, and I was hooked immediately. Recent entries contain gems such as Papua New Guinea as linguistic superpower, a caricature of Europe in 1870, and a Blonde map of Europe.
Also, as an aside, Truce mentioned an Edward Tufte book “Envisioning Information” to me some while back, that she recommended I read. What with this map and the Hans Rosling presentation capturing my imagination so recently, I’ve decided to buy the book on Amazon today.
I discovered this web-comic on WordPress some time back and I have been following it eagerly. It tells the story of Ness, a young warrior with the Fianna who sets out on a mission of vengeance within Iron Age Ireland. It’s a fascinating story, very well told. I’m looking forward to more installments from Patrick Brown in the near future.
This presentation is from Prof. Hans Rosling where he comprehensively debunks the myth of there being two worlds on this planet - a “developed world” and “the Third World”. It’s a most informative presentation! He uses the most amazing graphical techniques to do it, and delivers the content in a charismatic, engaging style. As far as presentational public speaking goes, this is the gold standard.
from www.ted.com posted with vodpod
Many thanks to my friend Brendan for the link.
It didn’t take long for me to appreciate that this is a biography like no other. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has had an extraordinary life. Coming from rural Somalia, she has been circumcised, assaulted, betrayed, cursed and threatened with death. She has witnessed famine, family breakdown, forced marriage, misogeny, madness and hardline religious intolerance. A close friends of hers has been assassinated. And yet, despite this she managed to get elected to political office in the Netherlands, with her story playing a central role in the downfall of its government in 2006. She was regarded recently as one of the world’s most influential people.
Ayaan’s story is one of great courage: as a child she was ridiculed as dull and stupid, and yet over time she managed to assert herself: rejecting the spouse chosen by her father and in so doing, leaving Africa for Holland. From there, she saught an education for herself. Over time, she rejected Islam and the deeply held cultural traditions of her people, embracing instead the great freedoms that we in the developed world often take for granted. Despite an ongoing threat against her by extremist groups, she continues to campaign uncompromisingly against Islamic fundamentalism.
The story that she paints from her time in Somalia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia is not pretty. Cultural, traditional and religious factors still hold sway to an extent unimaginable in the West. To many, simplistic edicts from the distant past are far more important than the complex accomodations and hard-won understandings of modern society. Women and children are treated as second-class citizens. The law of Allah holds absolute sway, brooking no opposition, promising a nirvana that fails even the most cursory empirical test.
She casts a critical eye on Muslims in Europe, asking why it is that so many of them have failed to properly integrate into Western society. To her, the future must be one of integration, not multiculturalism. She has no time for those who believe that coexistence without challenge is necessary for European societies. In her opinion, traditionalism is not on an equal footing with modernity: those who stand up for the traditionalists serve only to delay and frustrate the cause of human rights for those whom they purport to represent. It is a compelling argument.
Many sections in the book are heart-rending. It is excruciating to read about how she and her siblings were subjected to the horrors of genital mutilation; how her weary and depressed mother inflicted all her frustrations on her daughters through unrelenting physical abuse; how her father rejected her and cursed her; and how her sister succumbed to the misery of mental illness. All these stories are told with much sadness and little malice. It is clear that her family remain close to her heart, despite everything she has been through.
This is a powerful, uncompromising book that has that rare quality of being difficult to put down.
I’m a big fan of mind mapping apps: probably because I have a mind that often needs quite a bit of organising. While I was working on my thesis, I always had a copy of Mind Manager close at hand. It was invaluable as it allowed me to make sense of large amounts of research, organising it into useful categories quickly and efficiently. Now that I have since moved on into a new job, I don’t have it any more and I have felt slightly bereft, having to make do for the time being with Microsoft’s One Note.
Mind Manager is an excellent application, particularly if you have presentations or project plans to write on the fly. However, it’s a bit pricey, so the alternative is a free application on the web.
Mind42 allows you to write, save and publish your maps on the web. You can also collaborate with other users, co-writing or reviewing a map as part of a virtual brainstorming session. The mapping tools are rudimentary but nevertheless easy to use and more than adequate for the majority of mapping tasks.
I tried to publish the above mind-map to my blog using the publishing tools, but unfortunately the code provided does not work on WordPress.
This video is incredibily thrilling and utterly frightening at the same time. Enjoy!
(found via Tom Raftery’s blog)
I’ve been listening to the excellent “Whistleblowers” series on RTE Radio 1. In the past it has featured interviews with Jeffrey Wigand (Brown and Williamson tobacco), Sherron Watkins (Enron) and Craig Murray (British Ambassador to Uzbekistan). Today the subject was Harry Templeton, a Glasgow printer who stood up to Robert Maxwell in the late 1980’s, and got duly shafted for his troubles.
Another story worth listening to is the tale of David Kaczynski, who discovered that his brother, Ted, was the Unabomber.
You need Real Player installed to listen to these programmes.
Some time ago, I wrote about five books for small children that my kids and I absolutely love. I now would like to add another book to this list.
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury)
Oh no! We forgot to shut the door!
The premise of the book is quite simple. A dad brings his three kids into the countryside with the aim of finding a bear. The group are totally unprepared for what lies ahead as they clamber past all sorts of obstacles during their quest. (I can relate very much to the dad in this book). Much to their surprise, they find a bear, and what follows is an exiting race back home with the grizzly on their tail. It’s got everything: repetition, actions, fear and humour. The drawings are superb, particularly as the kids reach the entrance to the cave. I was amazed by how quickly my toddler kids picked up the narrative and were able to recite the whole story verbatim.
Here’s an additional treat: in the following video, Michael Rosen himself plays out the tale. It’s interesting to watch as I use a very different style when reading the story to my kids.
If you know of other small children’s books that really deserve a read, please let me know.
Ooh, ooh, ooh! I just had to do this, even if they don’t actually have a country called Ireland listed… I had to sign myself in as a Brit to do this! Generations of my ancestors are already spinning in their graves no doubt..
Here’s the finished product: what’s yours?
Here’s where you need to go.
(Via Friendly Atheist)
I know, I know - I haven’t lived.
I came across the classic comedy sketch “Dinner for One” in YouTube over the weekend and laughed myself silly. So, if any of you have been hidden below ground for your whole life as I seemingly have, this will be quite a treat.
Part 1
Part 2
Hands up who isn’t familiar with these problems! Real nuggets of wisdom here…
One of the great things about being a parent is that every evening I get a chance to read night-time stories to young children. These books vary greatly in quality. Many children’s books (particularly the ones with toys and teddy-bears on the cover) are insipid, formulaic, manufactured and quite forgettable . Kids get bored by them just as much as we grown ups do. However there are some books that I still love reading to my younger ones whenever I get a chance.
So, in no particular order, here goes:
1) Hairy Mclary from Donaldson’s Dairy (Lynley Dodd)
“Out of the gate and off for a walk went Hairy Mclary from Donaldson’s Dairy”
This is a terrific little book about a gang of dogs who get more than they bargained for when they all head off for a walk down town. The drawings are superb, the rhythm in the lines is mesmerising and the “MEEEOOOWFFZZZZ” twist in the end has kids jumping with delight. Very soon, even small kids can recite the lines of the book along with you. Superb. (I am indebted to Teuchter for introducing me to this book..)
2) The Gruffalo (Julia Donaldson)
“Silly old snake, doesn’t he know, there’s no such thing as a Gruffal…”
This extremely well-illustrated book recounts the adventures of a clever little mouse, beset on all sides by predators, and how he manages to outwit them all. The book is written in a gentle, rhythmic verse that is a pleasure to read out loud. Three quite similar stories are recounted before the plot twists and the mouse is confronted with the monster of his nightmares. What happens after this is an act of genius on the part of the mouse. I always shout out the Gruffalo’s lines in a very angry gruff voice - my kids love it.
3) Some Dogs Do (Jez Alborough)
“His paws just lifted off the ground”
This is a rhyming story about a small dog named Sid who discovers one day that he can fly. When he tries to tell his friends in school, nobody will believe him. The miserable pup is comforted by his parents, who let him into a secret. I particularly like the drawings of Sid’s face - the faraway stare - when he is confronted by opposition on all sides. It’s a captivating, delightful tale that the kids want me to read again and again.
4) Green Eggs and Ham (Dr. Seuss)
“That Sam-I-Am, That Sam-I-Am! I do not like that Sam-I-Am”!
No list of good children’s books would be complete without a title from Dr. Seuss. This story tells the tale of a grown-up creature who is pestered by the much smaller and younger Sam into eating a seemingly disgusting meal of green eggs and ham. Despite his protestations, Sam never gives in and finally the adult takes a bite. The whole tale is a reversal of the usual story where an adult is forcing a child to eat something that the kid doesn’t like the look of. Like many of the tales here, the story is recursive, repetitive, rhythmic and rhyming. Soon the child will be reciting the tale along with you.
5) How to Catch a Star (Oliver Jeffers)
“Once there was a boy and the boy loved stars very much”
This story concerns a small boy who wants to catch a star from the sky so that they can be friends and have fun together. He tries reaching for it and climbing trees to get it, but to no avail. Eventually he is drawn to the sea-shore where he finds what he is looking for. This is a wonderfully creative tale that talks volumes about the ways small children see the world. The simple cartoons that complement the story genuinely add to the tale. As an adult you can’t but help feeling for the little boy as he tries to understand a mystery of life.
What makes these books special?
All of these stories are quite similar in that they blend poetry, colour, artistic detail and repetition into a coherent whole. All of the storys take about 3 to 5 minutes to recite. Neither are they “fluffy”: They grapple with quite deep topics concerning relations with adults, friendship, fear, disappointment and making sense of the world. If you are a parent of young kids or are wondering what to give your young niece or nephew for their next birthday, I would wholeheartedly recommend all five titles.
Do you know of any other children’s books that you would add to this list?
Now this book is quite amazing. I had heard about it some weeks ago, so I made a special point of attempting to find it when I went shopping in the US.
Anderson’s central thesis is this: with the introduction of the internet and new ways of working we now live in a time of abundance and practically infinite choice. And as a result, the rules completely change. No longer are we constrained to think in terms of “hits” or “blockbusters” or “top selling brands”. We can now buy anything we like, and it’s available for us to do so in just a few seconds of clicking or calling someone. And, what’s more, it’s happening all around us today.
What fascinates me most is how it seems to overturn one of the most powerful “laws” of doing business. A long-standing rule of business is the Pareto Principle, commonly known as the 80:20 Rule. Put simply, it means that, to make money, companies should only concentrate on their highest selling products or services. The slow movers and niche items are too expensive to store, and so they should be ruthlessly excised. The result, if you haven’t already seen it around you, is uniformity, blandness, lowest-common denominators and a staggering lack of choice.
These days are coming to an end.
The Long Tail hypothesis says that the action in the future will be in the lower selling categories. People are increasingly seeking out those things that they want to buy - the niche music tracks or clothes, the arty Spanish films, the British comics from the 1980’s. Whatever you are in to, you can find it quickly and buy it for a cheap price, thanks to Ebay, Google, Amazon and a host of smaller sites and blogs. The Long Tail idea says that hits will decline in importance as interest in niches grows and grows and grows.
This is nothing short of a crisis for traditional big media organisations, whose job it has been for a century to sell a consistent message to as many people as possible. Now, with the explosion of new channels of communication, people are turning off their radios and TV sets, reading blogs instead of newspapers, downloading indie music instead of going to the record store, ordering customised T-shirts, footwear and jewelery over the web instead of accepting the limited offerings in the local shop. The message, loud and clear, is “Blandness and Hobson’s choices? No thanks”.
Mega celebrities, big-name TV shows, best-selling newspapers, hit pop bands, blockbuster movies: all are beginning to show significant drops in their market-worth and the trend is getting more pronounced with each year. The world of mass communications is splintering into a million pieces, and no-body seems to be able to put this Humpty Dumpty together again.
Does this mean that the age of the hit is well and truly over? Of course not. Just look at the recent global racism furore on Celebrity Big Brother for instance. However hits will possibly be more random in the future - arising from anywhere, and disappearing back into obscurity once their time in the spotlight has passed. It’s likely that hits will be much harder to achieve, and more limited in their impact. Marketing’s problem will be in getting their message out to a truly fractionalised audience, with no-one consumer quite using the same channels of communication.
Over the past week I was away in Chicago. I had a fairly quiet time there, so during that period I was able to catch up on some reading.
First of all, I finished reading “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. This is a great read - very interesting stuff. His central thesis is that social changes (business trends, fads, crime rates and other memes) tend to behave in a manner somewhat similar to epidemics - often there is little progress followed by a sudden exponential jump - the idea catches fire, as it were.
According to Gladwell, three factors are needed - the right people, the right messages and the right environment. What makes the book exceptionally interesting are the case studies used: everything from crimes on the New York subway to Sesame Street to the sales of footwear. It’s packed full of interesting tales: the bit on the 150 rule was fascinating. Essentially the idea behind this is that no social or business unit should be bigger than 150 people. Go beyond this number and you lose control. The manufacturers of GoreTex are cited as a good example of this. They build a new factory and restructure once the population of any of their units goes beyond the 150 mark. Radical stuff indeed.
If I had any reservations it is with the first area - finding those elusive “right people” who will seed the epidemic, as it were. These right people, known as Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople, are required to guarantee success. While I accept that there are people around with such exceptional skills, I wonder how common they are in practice. There is something super-human about it which doesn’t quite ring true. It all seems a little too simple - too packaged. A well working team would seem to me to work just as well, if not better.
The book Freakonomics challenges his assertion that small changes, on the margin, resulted in a sudden drop in the New York crime rate. It’s a debate that will go on for a while, I imagine.
So, I now know a bit more about “stickiness”,the dynamics of cigarette smoking, Paul Revere’s ride and the influence of peers. It’s an enjoyable read and highly “sticky” in itself, but nevertheless I have a few misgivings.
My next review is coming up soon.
This is a wonderful read. It’s got everything - friendship, betrayal, shame, honour, bravery, hatred, grief and redemption - the whole gamut of human experience.
The story revolves around the central character’s two most important relationships - his father and his best friend, set against the backdrop of the troubles in Afghanistan. Saying any more about the plot might lessen your enjoyment of the book, so I will refrain from doing so!
Parts of the book are painful to read. It’s not a story for those who want an easy time from their novels. The author does not spare his readers from the more disturbing aspects of human life particularly in the context of war and unheaval - the casual cruelty, the killing of innocence, the sickness of fanaticism.
However, for readers looking for depth and complexity in their characters, you cannot easily find a better example. Although a grotesque villain is brought to life in the novel in the guise of Assef, betrayal and cowardice are present in the book’s central figures. In fact, it’s this betrayal and cowardice that forms a central theme in the book, making it such a fascinating read.
A strong emotional bond with Afghanistan is painted in the book. Afghan people are portrayed as proud, generous, talkative but sometimes hypocritical and stubborn. I noted strong parallels with the Irish way of life, or at least a way of life that used to exist in Ireland, but now, perhaps, is in rapid decline.
When all is said, there is a gripping story to tell here. The denouements in the text are wonderful - I frequently found myself gasping as the plot twisted, sometimes in the most surprising of ways.
I absolutely loved the book and would gladly recommend others to read it.
The Wisdom of Crowds is an enlightening book, particularly at the beginning where he spells out his thesis: that, under certain defined conditions, the views of many can often trump the views of one single person, no matter how influential or how much of an expert that person may be.
The book justifies the opinion that forecasting and estimating are better performed by many people from different backgrounds instead of just a single elite. These types of problems, referred to as “cognition” problems, are commonplace - who is going to win the 3.40 at Newmarket, what will our sales be for the next quarter, when will the project be completed, etc.
He then tackles more complex problems, called “coordination” problems and “cooperation” problems, and arrives at a similar conclusion that, left unhindered, crowds of diverse people, acting independently, can arrive at an elegant solution to very complex problems.
In some ways, the book is nothing new. Adam Smith promoted the basic idea over 200 years ago when he talked about the “invisible hand” guiding the market and economists and politicians have been discussing this ever since. Surowiecki asserts that some of the rules of the free market have applications way beyond finance - the inner workings of the Google search engine and the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) are examples that are mentioned.
But, you might be saying, what about stock-market bubbles, group-think, decision by committee, mass-hysteria, riots and all the things that one would attribute negatively to crowds? His view is that crowds work best when a highly diverse group of individuals are able to make independent choices with levels of influence minimised as much as possible. In this way the maximum amount of information can be gleaned from the environment and an aggregation process can then happen which may yield a good answer to the problem at hand. Influence and persuasion are seen as disrupting factors in this process.
If you are looking for a “how to” manual, then the book will be somewhat disappointing. For instance, many business managers face challenges in getting groups to come together to make good decisions. This book provides some tantalising evidence that group decision making is indeed superior, but the reader is left to figure out for themselves how to apply it to their own particular situation.
The book is very readible. It contains a large body of fascinating research material and conveys the conclusions elegantly.
I went to a very interesting lecture last night presented by Leo Enright, the Irish broadcaster and science journalist. He talked to us about the two NASA robot probes, Spirit and Opportunity, that are currently making their way across Mars. Spirit is currently holed up in the Columbia Hills in Gusev Crater, while Opportunity has come up to the edge of the impressive Victoria Crater on the Meridiani Planum.
They both landed there in January 2004, and were originally expected to work for around 3 months. Nearly 3 years later, they are still operational, sending back pictures almost every day. Spirit celebrates its 1,000′th “sol” on Mars today. To celebrate the occasion, a panoramic 360 degree view of the Columbia Hills has been released on the internet.
The view from the Victoria Crater is, if anything, even more stunning. The crater is about a kilometre wide, and in a few week’s time Opportunity will descend into it. (How it gets itself out is another question entirely).
Leo demoed a free application known as “Midnight Mars” that downloads the latest photos from the rovers onto your PC each night. Because the rover cameras are about the same height as an adult human, you get the distinct impression you are standing there yourself.
The probes have bolstered the case that Mars was once covered in water and they have provided an insight into the geology and stratigraphy of the planet. Looking at the photographs from Mars, I got the distinct feeling that we know very little about the place. There is a treasure trove of information waiting to be discovered by future robot probes, and maybe some time in the distant future, people themselves.
Update: My question about how Opportunity gets out of Victoria Crater has been answered: it doesn’t. It’s fate is being decided as we speak.
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