No Asteroid Hit For 2029
I didn't even know there was a possibe suspect, but here it is:

The world can exhale a collective sigh of relief. A newfound asteroid tagged with the highest warning level ever issued will not strike Earth, scientists said Monday. The giant space rock, named 2004 MN4, was said on Dec. 23 to have an outside shot at hitting the planet on April 13, 2029. The odds climbed as high as 1-in-37, or 2.7 percent, on Monday, Dec. 27.

Researchers had flagged the object as one to monitor very carefully. It was the first asteroid to be ranked 4 on the Torino Scale, a Richter-like measure for potentially threatening space rocks. The asteroid is about a quarter mile (400 meters) wide, large enough to cause considerable local or regional damage were it to hit the planet.

All along, scientists said additional observations would likely reduce the chance of impact to zero for the April 13 scenario, but they did not expect any significant new data to allow such a downgrading for days or weeks. Instead, old observations provided the data necessary to rule out an impact. Several groups were looking for the asteroid in past observations.

Jeff Larsen and Anne Descour of the Spacewatch Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, found very faint images of asteroid 2004 MN4 on archival images dating to March 15 this year. Astronomers already had observations in June and from this month.

"An Earth impact on April 13, 2029 can now be ruled out," read a statement issued Monday evening by asteroid experts Don Yeomans, Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA 's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The good news is it ain't happening as thought. The bad news is, it doesn't rule out other similar events.

- Art Neuro

A New Tank
NASA have re-designed the fuel tank of the Space Shuttles to eliminate the debris problem that caused the Columbia to disintegrate during re-entry.

Project managers called the step a major advance in returning the U.S. space program to manned flight after the shuttles were grounded when Columbia broke apart over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003.

The first reconfigured tank is to be shipped by Friday from a NASA facility near New Orleans to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as the space agency prepares for shuttle Discovery's launch in May or early June.

"We are very close. We can taste victory here on shipping the tank," said Sandy Coleman, external tank project manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. The changes are aimed at preventing chunks of insulating foam from breaking off the tank during launch and damaging the shuttle.

Well, it's an improvement that reduces the risks of repeating past disasters.

Back To Luna
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has now received its full suite of scientists.

The U.S. Moon probe is the first spacecraft to be built as part of the Vision for Space Exploration, put into motion earlier this year by U.S. President George W. Bush. LRO is slated for a liftoff in the fall of 2008, under the auspices of NASA's Robotic Lunar Exploration Program.

The LRO underpins NASA's interest in replanting human footprints on the Moon. President Bush has called for the space agency to conduct the first extended human expedition to the lunar surface as early as 2015, but no later than the year 2020.

Not only will LRO characterize future robotic and human landing spots, the spacecraft will be equipped to inventory possible resources for human crews to live off the land -- in this case what's available on the crater-pocked Moon. Another key duty of the LRO is to characterize the lunar radiation environment and its impact on humans.

It's going to be mighty, mighty hard to live off the moon but heck, I'm sure there are plenty of good reasons to go back to the moon. :)

- Art Neuro

Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings And All That
I've been rather slack about this blog lately. Sorry folks.
The demands of December have been rather exacerbated with a wedding and what-not. Still, wishing you all out there all the best.

Cassini Goes to Saturn
Here's the link.

Cassini used springs to gently push the 705-pound probe away late Friday at a rate of one foot per second, sending it on a three-week free-fall toward Titan. Cassini will make a course change next week to avoid following the probe into the moon's atmosphere.

The probe's successful launch from Cassini put smiles on the faces of scientists in the control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "This was a big one partly because we had to do this right or no mission at all," said David Southwood, the European Space Agency's science program director.

A detailed analysis of the release was under way, but there were no indications of any problems, said Earl Maize, the Cassini deputy program manager at JPL. "We are quite confident we had a very clean release," he said.

Best wishes to all Speacefreaks, known and unknown everywhere, whereever you are.

- Art Neuro

Team America: World Police - F*ck Yeah!
Just watched it. It's a lovely film. I just wish I didn't know all the jokes going in. My fault for lagging behind the curve, but even so, EVERYBODY has been informing me of the minutiae of this film's transcendental funniness. I do wish I saw it fresh, unknowing.

- Art Neuro

Tropfest Film Update
The amazing thing about computers these days it that I pretty much had the project cut and sound psted in 48 hours. So we shot it on Friday, I assembled it on Saturday morning, went and played baseball, did a fine cut on Saturday night and then did the sound post-production, music and credits on Sunday. All largely painless compared to the weeks of toiling that my previous ultra-short film, 'Pizza Driver' took back in '95-'96. By Thursday, I had an approval for the whole damn thing from the Producer and that was that.
Sure it wasn't on 'proper film' (as film snobs would prefer), but the product was done in the most bloodless, painless way.

Controlling the means of production is going to change film-making forever. In the olden days you'd think up an idea and say, "Okay, let's see if we can raise money to develop it." In the future, people are going to say, "Okay, let's go make it."
This is so good. If you have not been through the development hell and the barrage of idiotic questions people ask, you don't know how good it is to be able to say, "Worse comes to worse, we'll still make it on ultra-low budget."

Key Psycho Update
Sam is working on the dialogue tracks, Terry P is working on sound effects and Sandy is assisting, but may finish up doing the mix. Yesterday, I went and recorded some baseball into glove sounds with Terry P for the punching sounds.
Last I spoke to jim, he's still beavering away composing music.
From what I can gather from my dedicated sound folk, the project is steadily moving along the sound post-production process. By our modified schedule, we're still aiming for a late January finish.

Producer Brenden is cutting a trailer to be sent out to festivals. He's doing it in the 1940s style. This ought to be fun.

- Art Neuro

Finally A Voice of Reason In The Steroid Scandal
I've written a few times how deplorable it is, how many MLB fans are sitting sedately, coming up with lame excuses why the BALCO scandal doesn't matter.
Well, here' something that indicates not all is lost.

It is right and correct that we, the paying public, be outraged and indignant at this travesty of fair play. We are among the victims of their deception. When we buy our ticket, it is presupposed the competition will be played honorably and by the rules. It is right for us to demand these things, and it is our right to demand that MLB give us the product we want, because it is our interest and dollars that ultimately sustain the enterprise. If we stopped watching and going to games, MLB would soon go away because they could not pay the players and support personnel for their services.

Damn straight, damn right. I applaud The Hardball Times for putting this article up.

- Art Neuro

Does This Count As Space News?
NASA boss Sean O'Keefe might be resigning soon.

In April, a study of the post-Columbia effort to change NASA's culture found many problems remaining and space agency employees still afraid to speak up abou safety.
"The leadership's got to take it on, starting with me," O'Keefe said then.

More recently, O'Keefe has been under fire for his insistence that it's too risky to send astronauts to repair the popular Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA also is struggling to return its aging shuttles, grounded after the Columbia accident, to spaceflight. The agency has been unable to make crucial improvements recommended by the Columbia accident board.

O'Keefe has embraced a new space effort, envisioned by President Bush, that would send manned missions to the moon and Mars. O'Keefe taught business administration and management at Syracuse and Pennsylvania State universities before becoming secretary of the Navy under the first President Bush. He became deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget under the current President Bush before taking over NASA in January 2002. He is from New Orleans, about an hour's drive from Baton Rouge.

And so it goes.
Hardly news until it happens. :)

- Art Neuro

Tropfest Film
Amongst the things I vowed I'd never do and now I have done, is the production of a Tropfest film.

Here's my black-hatted-diatribe against Tropfest films. Tropfest promotes the asking of favours large and small. Most of the time, people ask dirty big favours that are in most instances disproportionate to what is owe to to them in order to make their 7-minute-maximum epic. It's essentially a ruse to make professionals work for nothing. It's a crappy little institution that rewards joke films, and so I was damned if I was going to help it out by heaven-forbid producing something for it.

What changed? Well this year, I accumulated some 'favour debts' to actors who kindly gave their time to doing 'Key Psycho' and one of them sincerely wanted to make an entry for this year as an exercise. She asked me to direct her film - and I tell you, I don't turn down directing gigs as a way of paying off favour debts. We developed a script in about a fortnight and went and scouted locations and shot it; and now it's reached the fine-cut.

Years ago, some dickhead told me that if one comes out of AFTRS, one is prone to making 'masturbation movies'. Well screw him, I am indeed a graduate of AFTRS. The Tropfest film is a love story about a woman who can make herself come without touching herself or using any implements; and a man who wanks constantly.

So in case you were wondering why I haven't been posting and what I was doing this week... That's what I've been up to.

- Art Neuro

Proportionality of Force

Proportionality of force is a protocol that regulates the use of force by police officers, security guards, etc. It's basic principle is that the level of force used must be the minimum required to get the job done. In contrast, military protocol is that the amount of force used should be the maximum possible, so that it is completely overwhelming to the enemy.

Each protocol implies a certain relationship between those that apply the force and those that are subject to it. Proportionality of force applies between people who are basically on the same side, who have a lot of shared interests. Military protocol applies between blood enemies. One of the elements of military protocol is that the life of an enemy has absolutely no value. Military protocol cannot be applied unless the enemy is completely dehumanised.

The US has consistently operated under military protocols in Iraq, most spectacularly in the most recent Fallujah invasion. The force used was indeed overwhelming, the city has been completely destroyed, and it is my expectation that the city will not be a viable place to live until some time after the US departs Iraq.

The immediate military objectives of the attack were accomplished, and from that point of view the operation was a success. The strategic consequences of the battle have yet to be revealed, however, I believe the broad outcome will be quite predictable.

One of the elements of the official, publicly stated US policy in Iraq is the creation of a relationship of partnership between Americans and Iraqis. The unique characteristic of this element, the one thing that separates it from all other official statements of policy, is that it is sincere and it is backed up by efforts on the ground.

The talk of democracy and reconstruction is as cynical as the demonisation of the erstwhile ally Saddam, but the talk of "hearts and minds" is not. There is no way for the US to get out of Iraq unless the Iraqis come to believe that they can cooperate with the Americans. Cooperation can only occur between human beings. It cannot occur between humans and sub-humans. It is the way our minds work and nothing can change this.

Military protocol has been applied in Iraq by the US and it's allies since 1991. It has been applied to relatively small sections of the population for relatively short periods of time. During the ongoing Fallujah operation it has been applied to 300,000 people, for nearly a month. There is no indication of when it is going to end. This is a significant change.

I don't think the military situation in Iraq is going to change significantly as a result of this. Actually, I don't think that many noticable changes will occur. What I think is going to happen is that the US is going to get trapped in military protocol, and it is never going to leave it. The insurgents are not a military force, and cannot be defeated by miltary means. The insurgency is a positive feedback loop, in short, a social problem. The application of military force only feeds a cycle that is very much like the cycle of addiction, every time you use it the problem gets bigger, and the "solution" becomes less effective.

I think that the only way the US can win the war in Iraq is by abandoning military protocol and adopting proportionality of force. I think they are going to lose.

James

Steroid Decisions
The more one reads the reaction to the Jason Giambi steroid situation, the more I feel dismay that MLB will be able to clean up its act. On the one hand there is a consensus building that the Yankees are somehow wrong to try and terminate Giambi's contract, that they are somehow hypocritical because they must have known and they also have fellow BALCO problem player Gary Sheffield on the roster.

First up, anabolic steroids are illegal substances. Using them is illegal. It's not about whether taking steroids is like cheating with the spit ball or corked bats. There are no laws against emery balls an corked bats. There is not a Corked-Bat-Czar looking to indict Mexican traffickers of corked bats. Folks, anabolic steroids are restricted substances.

In Giambi's case, it's a clear case of substance abuse; and in the case of Giambi's testomony to the Grand Jury, we are clear that not only did he acknowledge he knew the substances provided by BALCO were steroids, he knowingly participated in the use; and that he was a long time user of other illegal substances. He was pretty solidly premeditated in his legal transgressions.
Yes, that's enough to put Daryl Strawberry behind bars for cocaine abuse. If Giambi wasn't covered by the immunity granted to him by the Grand Jury, he would/should/oughta be behind bars.

Yes it would seem hypocritical for the Yankees to have knowingly signed Giambi in spite of the strong suspicions of steroid-use that surrounded him in 2001, the but the point is, the landscape has changed significantly since the 2002 Collective Bargaining Agreement between the Owners and Players Association. If the players and owners are serious about ridding the game of steroid abuse, then this is the chance to make a Shoeless Joe Jackson or a Pete Rose out of Jason Giambi, and they should.
Does the CBA have teeth or not? What is the Commissioner going to do about this?

And Bud Selig should. Why? Because every sport worth its salt is out there trying to weed out performance enhancing substance use from their ranks. For baseball and its fans to claim it's a professional sport that accepts that competitors will got to any lengths to get an edge and that it tacitly approves of this act is plain stupid. Yes, I understand it is professional entertainment however it flies in the face of sportsmanship to be condoning it; and last I checked, it was still a sport. If it isn't a sport there is no value whatsoever in being able to claim a player did well or not because of their statistics. I'm very, very very surprised that the sabermetric community is responding rather laggardly to this point, even if it drew 716 posts for the Giambi news.

The Yankees, for what they represent are right to want to rid this player of their ranks right now. If the Yankees are willing to take a no-tolerance stand to steroid use, even belatedly and in order to get out of an onerous contract, it would still send a strong and correct message to the kids out there; and that itself is very important.

Thirdly, anybody who argues that it is questionable what anabolic steroids do for a baseball player and therefore this is no big deal, has their head in the sand. They should look into what steroid abuse has wrought of East German athletes of the 1970's. It ain't pretty. If you care about your team, your players, then you should care enough to say no to steroid abuse, plain and simple.
Giambi was an idiot to take it and continue to take it for so long. But for the future-idiot-Giambi to come, there should be absolutely clear guidleines to stop him taking that step (over and over as Jason did).

My message is still, "Mr. Steinbrenner and Mr. Cashman, dump Giambi now, whatever it takes. Mr. Selig, kick out Giambi from the sport forever."
It ain't hypocrisy when it's the right thing to do. :)

Some Other Remarks
Somebody asked if we should get upset if we find out a male porn star was on viagra or a porn actress' breasts were 'enhanced'?
My answer is still, "yes, if the stats mean anything and it was meant to be sport."

- Art Neuro

Fallujah: Now for the Hard Part

Somehow I don't think that the city of Fallujah is going to have a very rosy future:
'Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, " 'What are your needs? What are your emotional needs?' All this Oprah [stuff]," he said. "They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, 'I'm with you.' We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe.'

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/05/returning_fallujans_will_face_clampdown?mode=PF

File this story under "Winning the battle and losing the war".

James

More Thoughts On The Juice-On-Giambi Steroids Scandal
I never liked the Jason Giambi signing much. It was the first step towards excess in a series of knee-jerk signings that has led to the current Yankee 'decline'. If you can call winnning over 100 games, three years in a row a decline, then it's a heck of a decline to have, but in Steinbrenner-land, we know a year without a World Series Victory is a dead-loss.

Anyway, because I believed in the Yankee NJASDJDH-infield-of-the-future back in 1999 and as late as 2001, I never really thought it was a good idea to sign Jason Giambi and block Nick Johnson. Yes, Jason Giambi was great in both the 2002 & 2003 seasons, plus the 2003 ALCS with those 2 homeruns that set up that dramatic Game 7 come-from-behind-win, but in all honesty, I wanted Nick Johnson to be the man. In a way, it seemed like excess to sign Giambi when one could hand the job to the youngster who was groomed for the spot. They took away the opportunity for Nick Johnson to become the next Lou Gehrig by buying the Juiced One. More so than the A-Rod trade that sent Alfonso Soriano to Texas, the subsequent handling of prospects, rookies and young players by the organisation has been plain wanting.

And now this steroid scandal.
Call me a smartass, but all I can get out of the back fo my mind is 'Told You So'.

There's considerable noise on the BTF boards to the effect that the Yankees are doing something reprehensible by trying to get out of the contract with the Juiced-One, however I feel it is the only honorable thing to do given that they are the custodians of a magnificient, historic franchise. Baseball can take a lot of misbehaviour from its stars; it just can't take the tainting of record books - this specifically means gambling, but it also means steroid abuse.

Addendum: In the aftermath of the ALCS loss to the Bosox, it seemed to me there was no greater target for blame-throwing than Kevin Brown and Tom Gordon, but somehow Juice-on has managed to take away all of that bad karma from those guys; which is sort of unbelievable. It reminds me of that old advertisement where the girl asks, "Does this make my arse look bigger?" to which the boyfriend kindly answers "Well, at least it takes the attention away from your face."
Right now, Keving Brown might be the ugly face (and broken left hand) of the 2004 seaosn, but Jason Giambi is the inflated ass that cannot be hidden.

'Key Psycho' Update
About a week ago, we finished grading the picture. There are some little areas of the picture that need touching up, namely the bits using blue screen, but overall, the picture side of it is now locked off. Hooray.

Head redits and Tail credits have been done. I had to buy a separate programme just to do the tail credit crawl because 'LiveType' simply was too difficult. For people out there struggling with rolling credits, I do recommend they look into the programme 'Rolling Credits' as it does exactly that with minimal fuss.

'Key Psycho' is now going through the painful process known as Sound Post-production.
This is the painful process whereby every clip of sound is inspected closely, checked and matched against every other clip for sonic consistency, and then applied in the sound mix. Believe me, it's not as exciting as lots of other aspects of film-making.

There are some great bits in Sound Post-Production and that is the adding of sound effects. As with all these things, you can pile on a tonne of cool sound effects and it won't rescue a bad picture, but fortunately I think this picture is going to work out fine. :)

Schedule-wise I think we're still about 3 weeks behind schedule, (the same 3 weeks I spent working for that stupid E*** Media and doing a corporate video for IBM) but at least we now have a picture that we could send to festivals early next year.

- Art Neuro

A Day Later...
I finally got onto BTF to find the Giambi thread had reached deep into the 400's. Half of it was tangential stuff about Alaskan mountains, but it made for an interesting read anyway. Part of the thing seemed to me that the "Is Barry Bonds juicing?"that always comes up in BTF threads have been so hashed out by all parties that nobody seemed to want to go through the motions once again. Reading it was as tiresome as re-reading newspapers from 2-3 years ago, looking for a stat.

I'm already over the initial Pavlov's (newshound) dog rush to find out what people think. They think what they always thought and were not willing to change their minds.

Some will argue that steroids doesn't help you get stronger or increase bat speed. What they miss is that most steroids help with recovery, enabling unnaturally greater cycles of exercise-training and recovery, which leads to putting on large amounts of muscle mass as well as not breaking down. In a 162 game season, the value of steroids is possibly higher than the value for say, a 100m sprinter with 40 meets a year.

As for the notion that the Yankees will void Giambi's contract, it seems unlikely, however my gut instinct tells me they might explore it in secret this winter as insurance against a great decline by Jason Giambi in 2005.

What I have Been Doing
I have been helping out the folks at the Japan Foundation in Sydney with their Japan FIlm Festival. I have been interpretting for their guests when they hit the stage and introdcue their movies. I did it last year and I'll probably do it again next year as it is a lot of fun.

It's sort of funny that at the end of the day, the part of my skill-set which most easily draws money and praise is my bilingual capability. It's funny and sad.

- Art Neuro

Say It Ain't So, Jason
We've finally got an admission from Jason Giambi that he was on steroids. Well, that does it. Guilty as charged. I wonder what will happen to his contract with the New York Yankees now, because if anything, this could void that dirty big contract handed out before the new Collective Bargain Agreement which enforced a temporary statsis in player salaries. Giambi is a great hitter, but he's not a great fielder, and most certinaly he is a player whose skills are in decline, going forwards.

Apart from that sort of angle, there's the issue of "You lied to me!" (Hit the guy's head with frying pan) . Not many of the fans who argued for the benefit of the doubt are going to feel too great about being made to look like chumps. Then there's the Nw York press gang who took a dislike to Jason Giambi after he begged out and sat in Game 5 of the World Series in 2003. The guys who have been sharpening their posionous pens are going to have a filed day. Heck, it's going to be such a field day, they'll name the field the Jason Giambi Steroidal Memorial Frield and erect a statue of a syringe.

Just for posterity, here's the AP report in full:

December 2, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi injected himself with human growth hormone in 2003 and also used steroids for at least three seasons, according to his grand jury testimony reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle. The testimony given in December 2003 to the federal grand jury investigating BALCO contradicts Giambi's public proclamations that he never used performance-enhancing drugs.

Giambi described how he injected human growth hormone in his stomach, testosterone into his buttocks, rubbed an undetectable steroid knows as ``the ream'' on his body and placed drops of another, called ``the clear,'' under his tongue, the Chronicle reported on its Web site Wednesday night.

Giambi testified that he obtained several different steroids from Barry Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who is one of four men indicted by the grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. He said he got the human growth hormone from a gym in Las Vegas. Anderson's attorney, Tony Serra, declined comment to the Chronicle, citing a court order. Anderson, BALCO founder Victor Conte, vice president James Valente and track coach Remi Korchemny all have pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include steroid distribution.

On Wednesday, a federal judge said she would not immediately dismiss the charges in response to accusations that prosecutors illegally searched BALCO headquarters and Anderson's house and car. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said she may conduct hearings into the matter in January. Giambi was among dozens of elite athletes -- including Bonds, Gary Sheffield and track stars Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones - who answered the grand jury's questions last year. Bonds, Jones and Montgomery deny using illegal drugs, but Sheffield told Sports Illustrated and ESPN earlier this year that he used ``the cream'' and ``the clear'' from BALCO, which he said unknowingly to him contained illegal steroids.

The Chronicle reported in October that on a 9-minute recording it had obtained, a speaker the paper identified as Anderson is heard saying Bonds used an ''undetectable'' performance-enhancing drug during the 2003 season.

Giambi met Anderson when the trainer joined Bonds on an All-Star tour in Japan in November 2002. Giambi said he wanted to know what Bonds' secret for success was. ``So I started to ask him: 'Hey, what are the things you're doing with Barry? He's an incredible player. I want to still be able to work out at that age and keep playing,''' Giambi testified, according to the Chronicle. ``And that's how the conversation first started.''

After returning to the United States, Anderson told Giambi he could provide him with performance-enhancing drugs and suggested he stop taking the steroid Deca Durabolin that he obtained from the Las Vegas gym because it stays in the system too long, the paper reported. Giambi said he started using Deca Durabolin in 2001.

Giambi said Anderson never told him that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs. ``You know, I assumed because he's Barry's trainer -- you know, Barry -- but he never said one time, 'This is what Barry's taking, this is what Barry's doing,''' Giambi testified. ``He never gave up another name that he was dealing with or doing anything with.'' Prosecutors confronted Giambi with a calendar seized from Anderson's home that detailed Giambi's schedule of drug use. Giambi said he didn't notice a ``huge difference'' in his performance after starting to use illegal drugs.

Giambi came to spring training this year looking noticeably trimmer as baseball began a steroid-testing program that included punishments for the first time. Asked in February whether he had ever taken performance-enhancing drugs, Giambi said:
``Are you talking about steroids? No.'' Giambi won the AL MVP in 2000 for Oakland and signed a $120 million, seven-year free-agent contract with the Yankees after the 2001 season. He hit 155 homers from 1999-2002 and batted over .300 each season, but injuries slowed him down the last two years.

Bothered by a balky knee, Giambi hit just .250 in 2003. Giambi batted .208 and played in only 80 games last season, missing time because of a tumor, which the New York Daily News reported was in his pituitary gland. Medical experts told the Chronicle that Clomid, a drug Giambi said he thought Anderson had given him, can exacerbate a tumor of the pituitary gland.

Giambi's younger brother, Jeremy, who last played in the majors with Boston in 2003, also testified that he used performance-enhancing drugs given to him by Anderson, according to the Chronicle.

*Ugh*.
Makes me sort of sick. You suspected it, but you didn't *know* it in any legally or scientifically adequate way. So you keep dismissing it and play the devil's advocate, but all along, the dope was doping.
I tried to get to the Baseball Think Factory to have a look at the tidal wave of posts but I couldn't get on. I thin there'll be like 500 posts on this topic. I've now tried for 15minutes and I can't even luck onto their server. Wow.

Jason Giambi's argument paraphrased is essentially, "I didn't know what it was specificlly, therefore I thought I had plausible deniability. And it didn't help my performance on the field."
That sucks too. In fact, it's all part of the problem that MLB has long ignored and only recently decided to tackle. If they had been vigilant about steroids years ago, in line with other sports, they wouldn't be in this funk right new where 3 of the top 10 hitters of the last 5 years are identified with a company that supplied illegal setroids.
Clearly, the lack of testing was seen as a tacit approval by some.

Now it's time to ask the question 'What-will-Jesus-do?' except, we're talking about George Steinbrenner instead of Jesus Christ.

- Art Neuro

Any Given Sunday With Drew Henson And Bill Parcells
Here it goes..
Here's the latest report on our erstwhile kid quarterback, but you need registration to sign in. Instead I've copied and pasted the entire article without permission. Very bad of me.

POSTCARDS FROM THE LEDGEPlaying Drew could reap Super benefitsBy Jim ReevesStar-Telegram Staff Writer

Bill Parcells is right. Winning is the ultimate goal. But it's not about winning meaningless games in the midst of a lost season. It's not about going 5-11, or 6-10. It's about winning Super Bowls. He, of all people, should know that. Certainly we know that around here. We've been to the mountaintop. We want to go there again.
You do that by building around a quarterback. The Cowboys haven't had one to build around since Troy Aikman's heyday. What was that, 10 years ago? Nine? Almost too long to remember.

Around here, Super Bowl success has always been associated with a strong quarterback. Roger Staubach won two; Aikman claimed three. What we know, what even Parcells must admit, is that Vinny Testaverde won't take the Cowboys to a Super Bowl. Drew Henson? Who knows? That's what all the complaining is about. It's why Jerry Jones isn't happy. We all want to find out. We need to find out if Henson is the man. The problem is, Big Bill has become shortsighted in his old age. He's focused on winning the next game, not the next Lombardi Trophy. He's trying to get the Cowboys into the playoffs -- where they really have no business this year, anyway -- instead of to Super Bowl (insert whatever Roman numeral you want to shoot for here). It's just not in Parcells' nature not to try to go for a winnable game, like Thursday's, with whatever is at his disposal.

Henson, in his first NFL start, was struggling. Enter Testaverde at halftime. "I think Drew Henson is going to be an excellent player. Bill Parcells thinks he's a good player, too," former Saints general manager Randy Mueller said on ESPN Radio on Friday. "I think he [Parcells] will develop Drew Henson, but not at the cost of losing a game. "At halftime [Thursday], Bill saw how bad the Bears were and knew if [the Cowboys] didn't screw it up, they could win the game."

And they did. Buthow much further down the road would the Cowboys be today if Parcells had put the kid back out there and he had won the game? How much more confidence would Henson have gained? How much closer would the Cowboys be to their next Super Bowl? Closer than they are today with Testaverde stepping in to win it.

Parcells' own words betray him. "Right now, he needs more work," Parcells said of Henson. "The guy hasn't played a lot of football." There's a remedy for both those problems, and it's the same cure: Play him. Parcells also underestimates and dishonors Cowboys fans when he said he didn't care if they booed, that he has "other people's interests to think about." What he needs to understand is that it's not about him. It's not even about the players. It's about the Cowboys as a franchise, and that includes their fans. At least they understand that it's not about winning games; it's about winning Super Bowls.

Hmmm. There you go. Drew Henson might turn out to be a prospect who burned out in 2 sports rather than just one.

- Art Neuro

Artificial Gravitas
NASA are finally working on the problem of low-gravity effects on the body during long service in space. They are calling it artificial gravity, but it's not the stuff of Star Trek, it's the big 'centrifugal' wheel that generates a centripital force simulating gravity. That's right. Just like the one you've seen on '2001: a Space Odyssey'.

A major undertaking in artificial gravity research is being prepared at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston, overseen by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Starting next year at UTMB, a corps of individuals will partake in bed rest studies that reproduce the effects of weightlessness, with half that group also rotated once a day on a centrifuge.

The new centrifuge has been built for NASA by Wyle Laboratories, headquartered in El Segundo, California, for use in studying the effects of artificial gravity as a countermeasure to the negative effects of long-term microgravity on the human body. That newly-built centrifuge has recently been installed at UTMB. "It's a really beautiful device," Young said. Young is co-investigator for the work, teamed with William Paloski, principal scientist, in the Human Adaptation and Countermeasures Office at the NASA Johnson Space Center.

The NASA-sponsored research is divided into two phases. The first phase is using the short radius centrifuge -- which has a radius of 10 feet (three meters) radius to support NASA's Artificial Gravity Pilot Study. A second phase will include significant enhancements to the centrifuge design to provide support for a multinational artificial gravity project that would involve Germany and Russia, Young added. The Artificial Gravity Project Pilot Study involves test subjects being placed in a six degree head-down bed-rest position which simulates the effects of microgravity on a human body. The test subjects are then positioned in the short radius centrifuge and subjected up to 2.5 Gs at their feet to simulate a gravity environment.

"As far as I'm concerned," Young concluded, "the purpose of all these studies is not to show how to use artificial gravity. Rather, it is to determine whether or not artificial gravity is an acceptable solution."

There used to be a a piece of graffiti somewhere: "There is no such thing as Gravity; the Earth Sucks".
Somehow it never left my mind.

A New Style Of Pumping Gas In Texas
This is interesting. They are finally sequestering carbon into disused oil mines, presumably from whence they came. Active sequestration, if successful is a good idea (Obviously, if it doesn't produce more Carbon gasses than it sequesters). There some problems with it, but it's worth trying.

In the depleted South Liberty oil field near the town of Dayton, a University of Texas team successfully pumped 1,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide -- the principal greenhouse gas -- into the reservoirs of briny water more than 5,000 feet underground.

Scientists say those porous rock formations, which extend for hundreds of miles from Mexico to Alabama, could be ideally suited to storing the greenhouse gases widely blamed for global warming.

"We have lot of oil and gas fields in this area that are in decline," Susan Hovorka, a University of Texas geologist and the lead researcher on the pilot project told Reuters. "The Gulf Coast is one of the best places on earth for this." The technology,
known as carbon sequestration, has attracted global attention from industries and governments that are eager to capture and bottle up the gas that can linger in the atmosphere for decades. The gases released by burning fossil fuels, scientists say, are the main cause of global warming, which is expected over time to lift the planet's temperatures and sharply alter weather patterns, raising sea levels and causing devastating storms.

With Russia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol earlier this month clearing the way for the environment pact to come into force in February and the start of the European Union's carbon dioxide emissions trading market just a month away, demand for methods for eliminating or storing the gas are on the rise.

Then there's this bit:

Hovorka said a preliminary estimate of the amount of carbon dioxide storage
capacity along the coast regions of the Gulf of Mexico put the figure at about 300 billion tons -- enough to hold 1,000 years of pollution from the region at the current rate.

Many hurdles -- both technical and economic -- remain before carbon sequestration can develop as a viable enterprise, Christopher said, but much of the expertise and at least a limited transportation network already exists.

Since the 1970s, oil and gas drillers have injected carbon dioxide into oil wells in a process called enhanced oil recovery that increases the output from those sites.

"This is something we know how to do. We've been doing it for 30 years in West Texas," he said. Houston-based energy company Kinder Morgan Inc. ships a billion cubic feet a day of the gas through its 1,100 miles pipeline network, much of it from Colorado into the West Texas oil fields.

That pipeline system would need to be vastly expanded to reach the major carbon dioxide emitters on the other side of the state -- an expensive and complicated endeavor but one the company has considered.

"If the opportunity is there and it's attractive, we want to be a part of it," said Rick
Rainey, spokesman for Kinder Morgan.

So there you go. Concrete, practical steps. We are not done for... yet. :)

- Art Neuro

Translated Transcription of Interview With Hideki Matsui
Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees has been interviewed briefly by the Yomiuri newspaper.
Here's my translation of the transcription if anybody is interested.

- Interview by Fujio Tanaka.
Q: You've started training already.
A: Yes. I'm 30 now, so if I rest too much, I start putting on excess weight.

Q: Will you re-start your training once you return to Japan?
A: Yes, probably. I'll be busy with things like having to go to the bat maker for changes to the bat.

Q: You've been making small changes to the bat each year. What changes will you make this year?
A: Not much this year. I might move the centre of gravity towards the handle a little bit.

Q: But there's great significance even in small changes.
A: Well yeah. If you move the centre of gravity towards the handle, the centre of percussion will move towards the grip as well, and that might make it harder to get jammed on the inside.

Q: Yes, you did seem to get jammed on the inside a lot last year.
A: Yeah, because I'm keeping my timing for the outside fastball. So when you go to swing for the inside fastball from that stance, it gets uncomfortable and you end up getting jammed.

Q: When you were with the Giants you were looking at the inside high pitch.
A: Yeah. If you adjusted to the course where the ball appears the fastest, then it seemed easy to hit the ball on the sweetspot, where ever it came. The opposite, where you look at the outside pitch and adjust for the inside pitch is a lot harder.

Q: Yet you have to keep the outside pitch in mind.
A: Yes, they totally pitch to the outside corner. I figured if they jammed me inside, I'd just have to accept that as a consequence of my approach.

Q: So now you're not satsified with that.
A: Well, actually it's more a change of my thinking. From a situation where I was forced to think about the outside fastball, I want to think about the inside pitch in addition to that, broadening my base. In the end, I want to increase the percentage of the longball.

Q: If you move the centre of the gravity towards the handle, it will increase the swing speed.
A: That may be one outcome.

Q: ...But centrifugal force will diminish, so you need to strengthen more.
A: Actually, I mainly work with strengthening my torso, but if you can hit the ball at a good point, you can actually carry it into the stands easily.

Q: So this is an off-season where you review your approach.
A: Yes. I spent a lot of time last year analysing my opponents. So maybe I've grown in that sense.

It's pretty interesting. Of course there's no such thing as 'centrifugal' force. It's centripetal force. However it's swing speed that's needed. Generally speaking, you hit the ball further with a lighter bat going fast than a heavier bat going slow. So Godzilla is on track.
I'm keeping him for next year. :)

- Art Neuro

Running Hot And Cold When Two Worlds Vanish
Arctic Peoples are trying to team up with Tropical Island folks in trying to raise awareness and combat global warming.

"We are two of the world's most vulnerable areas," Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), said of the low-lying islands -- at risk from rising sea levels -- and the Arctic -- where the ice is melting.

"Linking up makes a lot of sense," Watt-Cloutier, whose organization says it represents 155,000 people in Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Russia, told Reuters on Thursday.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet because of a build-up of gases from fossil fuels burned in cars, factories and power plants, according to a report by 250 scientists from 8 countries this month. That could make the North Pole ice-free in summer by 2100, driving species like polar bears toward extinction and undermining indigenous hunting cultures, the report says.

In turn, a global thaw could push up sea levels by almost a meter (3 ft) by 2100, according to U.N. projections, threatening to sink low-lying Pacific island states like Tuvalu or the Marshall Islands or the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

With their homes under threat, many indigenous peoples in the Arctic and islanders say the United States, the world's biggest polluter, bears much of the blame for global warming after Washington rejected caps on emissions under the 128-nation Kyoto protocol.

I don't know what's worse. The Kyoto protocol is a sticky tape solution to a very complex, humungous problem. It is inadequate and will draw funds away from finding alternatives to fossil fuel energy use. It's a bit like a small room with 128 people marginally promising not to exhale and breathe as much going into the future, promising that their kids who will increase the number in the room will do as agreed. Then there's the inordinately large guy who eats way more than his fair share who says, "No fuck off, I'm not going to agree to that, not even as a symbolic gesture. Me and my kids are going to burp, fart and exhale as much as we like!"

One shakes one's head.
I'm not a Greenie, but this situation plain sucks. Yet, I guess as a civilisation we're hooked on just burning stuff for energy, come hell or highwater, and at the rate we're going we'll be getting both.

- Art Neuro

Complaints Department
The American Physical Society is making its objections to the Moon, Mars and Beyond Initiative. The gist of their argument is that it might cost more than projected and the over-runs might take away from other scientific projects.

Returning Americans to the Moon and landing on Mars would have a powerful symbolic significance, the APS report observes, but it would constitute only a small step in the advancement of knowledge, since much will already be known from exploration with the robotic precursor probes that are necessary to guarantee the safety of any human mission.

The APS report was authored by a 10-person group, with the committee chaired by Joel Primack, a professor of physics and a leading astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

According to their web site, the American Physical Society is the world's largest professional body of physicists, representing more than 45,000 physicists in academia and industry in the United States and internationally. It has offices in College Park, Maryland and Ridge, New York.

The other objection seems to be that the initiaitve is ill-defined. Well, methinks that getting there and anddoing stuff is pretty good enough at this point. As you may all know it is our contention that there are plenty of reasons to go. Not nearly any good enough reasons not to go.

Still, it's a thought-provoking read.

Test Your Space Trivia
Right here. This one is good:

7. In the "Star Wars" films, the Imperial TIE Fighters are propelled by ion engines (TIE stands for Twin Ion Engine). While these spacecraft are fictional, real ion engines power some of today's spacecraft.

Fact or Fiction!?
Go knock yourself out. :)

- Art Neuro

Russia And Brazil
...have signed a pact to cooperate in space. Brazil has the Alcantra launch facility, close to the equator. Why don't we have a luanch site on Cape York? Grrr!!!

The document signed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Russian President Vladimir Putin evokes "development of a modernized version" of Brazil's satellite launch rocket known as the VLS-1 as well as development of new models.

It also calls for joint work on development of geostationary satellites to be used for communication and navigation and for cooperation on improving the infrastructure at Brazil's Alcantara launch facility.

While the memorandum of understanding spelled out no timetable, Lula said it gave Brazil "renewed optimism and determination" to pursue its national plans for launching commercial satellites from the Alcantara site. The Alcantara facility is located near the equator, which makes satellite launches considerably less costly, and Brazil has made clear its intention to become a viable space power.

Brazil! A Space power! Come on Canberra. Where is your vision thing?! Where's 'The Plan' for a Space Industry, goddamnit!
Ugh.

- Art Neuro

Planets X, Y & Z
Here's an interesting one. There might be even more planets belonging to our solar system out there.

Last November, Mike Brown's team found a world at least half as large as Pluto. They named it Sedna, after the Inuit sea goddess. Sedna's elongated orbit is outside the Kuiper Belt, ranging from 76 to 1,000 AU. Sedna was found only because it is currently near the innermost stretch of its travels.

Well past Sedna is another reservoir of material left over from the formation of the solar system, theorists believe. The Oort Cloud is a hypothesized sphere of frozen objects thought to start at about 10,000 AU and extend to 100,000 AU, or 1.5 light years from the Sun.

Nobody expected to find an object like Sedna in the largely empty space between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Theorists are now scrambling to explain Sedna's presence and what it means to the composition of the outer solar system.

"Sedna could be a member of a substantial population of bodies trapped between the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud," says the University of Hawaii's David Jewitt, who made the first accurate estimate of a KBO albedo in 2001.

Brown, who now bets against finding Planet X in the Kuiper Belt, thinks his group's discovery of Sedna portends an even more compelling scenario. "I'd also be willing to bet that there are many objects larger than Pluto out in the region of space where Sedna lives," Brown said last week. Out to about 1,000 AU, he speculates that there could be 10 or 20 Pluto-sized objects, "and a handful of larger things, too."

Some of these suspected worlds could be as big as Mercury or even Mars, he said. I asked Brown if there might be worlds larger than Pluto clear out at the edge of the Oort Cloud, 1.5 light-years away and nearly half the distance to the Alpha Centauri star system.

"Absolutely," he said. "Probably even likely."

More worlds to discover! More worlds to mine!

Tragedy And Disaster
There's an old Latin American joke cursing their military junta el Presdientes of their world. A child is asked in class, "What is he difference between a tragedy and a disaster?"
The child replies, "A Tragedy is if the plane carrying El Presidente and his whole cabinet and their families crashes into the side of the mountain. A Disaster is when El Presidente survives the crash."

In that spirit, I bring to you this article:

A private jet that was en route to Houston to pick up former President Bush (news
- web sites) clipped a light pole and crashed Monday as it approached Hobby
Airport in thick fog, killing all three people aboard.

The Gulfstream G-1159A jet, coming into Houston, went down about 6:15 a.m. in an undeveloped area 1 1/2 miles south of the airport, officials said. The former president had been scheduled to travel to Ecuador for a conference.

"I was deeply saddened to learn of the plane crash this morning," Bush said through spokesman Tom Frechette. "I'd flown with this group before and know them well. I join in sending heartfelt condolences to each and every member of their families."

The names of the three crew members were not immediately released. Bush, who lives in Houston, was going to give a lecture for the Guayaquil, Ecuador, Chamber of Commerce, Frechette said, adding, "It's very sad." He said he was to have accompanied Bush, as was a Secret Service agent.

It's no big deal in the scheme of the world (or space policy for that matter), but I thought I'd share that disaster with you.

More Inuit References, or How Many Words Do We Really Need (In A Time Of Global Warming)?
Not enough by far.
The Arctic is shrinking as global warming continues. Folks, the Inuit who are famed to have so many different words to describe snow, have no words to describe this because they are seeing has simply not been seen in their part of the world before. Check it out.

We can't even describe what we're seeing," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of
the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (news - web sites) which says it represents 155,000 people in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.

In the Inuit language Inuktitut, robins are known just as the "bird with the red breast," she said. Inuit hunters in north Canada recently saw some ducks but have not figured out what species they were, in Inuktitut or any other language.

An eight-nation report this month says the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and that the North Pole could be ice-free in northern hemisphere summer by 2100, threatening indigenous cultures and perhaps wiping out creatures like polar bears.

Then they go on to report this little factoid:

In Arctic Europe, birch trees are gaining ground and Saami reindeer herders are
seeing roe deer or even elk, a forest-dwelling cousin of moose, on former lichen pastures.

"I know about 1,200 words for reindeer -- we classify them by age, sex, color, antlers," said Nils Isak Eira, who manages a herd of 2,000 reindeer in north Norway.
"I know just one word for elk -- 'sarvva'," said 50-year-old Eira. "But the animals are so unusual that many Saami use the Norwegian word 'elg.' When I was a child it was like a mythical creature."

Thrushes have been spotted in Saami areas of the Arctic in winter, apparently too lazy to bother migrating south. Foreign ministers from the eight Arctic countries are due to meet in Reykjavik on Wednesday but are sharply divided about what to do. The United States is most opposed to any drastic new action.

1200 words for Reindeer! One native word for Elk, but they borrow the Norwegian word instead. Times are changing. We are seeing disturbing signs everywhere. A Darkness may as well be rising in the East. I have but one question.
What would Gandalf do? :)

- Art Neuro

Smart One Arrives On The Moon
In what seems like an episode of Astroboy, the European Space Agency's SMART-1 robotic probe has landed on the moon.

More information of the regional lighting conditions will be obtained by SMART-1 for the Moon's north polar region. "The greatest contribution to our understanding of the lighting in this region will likely come from the fact that SMART-1 will image the north pole for at least six months, providing information on the seasonal variations of the lighting conditions in this region," Bussey said.

Although not comprehensive or extensive, Spudis added, Europe's SMART-1 will obtain some new data of great value. It nicely helps to fill the niche on global elemental mapping and the image data makes a small but nonetheless important enhancement to the extensive Clementine image data, he said.

ESA's Foing is delighted that the Moon probe has reached its destination. The spacecraft is ready for action.

"The team is still so excited by SMART-1's first lunar orbit, thanks to the new technologies. We obtained before lunar capture the first European pictures of the lunar North pole and far side,・Foing said. "The spacecraft and the instruments are ready for their lunar tasks: charting lunar minerals, looking at the chemical signature of Earth-Moon violent beginnings, searching for ices at the poles, or prospecting the potential sites for future landing probes and exploration."

The moon is certainly an oft-visited mistress these days. :)

Four years On The International Space Station
We have now had ten crews and four continuous years of habitation on the ISS. Doesn't seem that long ago that they started this thing, but now it's four years gone by. Time flies when you're having fun.

For NASA officials, the anniversary marks the end of a year of firsts for the ISS that included unprecedented repairs and spacewalks for two space station crews.

In February, Expedition 8 commander Michael Foale and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri stepped outside the ISS for the first spacewalk without a human crewmember inside.

A few months later a new station crew, Expedition 9's Gennady Padalka and Michael Fincke, flawlessly performed a risky spacewalk to repair a U.S. ISS component while wearing Russian Orlan space suits and starting from the Russian segment.

"It is a testament that we've learned a lot about adapting to conditions in space," said Mark Geyer, NASA's ISS manager for integration and operations, in a telephone interview.

Humans have lived onboard the ISS since Nov. 2, 2000, when the three-man crew of Expedition 1 set foot inside the orbiting station. "It was a foggy day," Geyer said of Expedition 1's Oct. 31 launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. 的t was a long trip to see a three-second launch."

Geyer stressed that while humans have lived continuously aboard the ISS since 2000, they have lived in space much longer. The Russians had a near-continuous presence aboard Mir since 1996.

Still, 4 years is nothing to be sneezed at.

Drew Henson Makes An Appearance For The Cowboys
Bill Parcells finally let the failed Yankee take the field, but only after his main QB Vinny Testaverde got hurt. Henson completed six passes but the Cowboys haplessly went down 30-10 to the Ravens.

Quarterback Drew Henson replaced an ineffective Vinny Testaverde and completed all six of his passes, including the Cowboys' only touchdown, in a 30-10 loss to the Baltimore Ravens. Coach Bill Parcells was quick to point out that Testaverde injured his right shoulder after throwing his second interception, and Parcells refused to anoint Henson the starter against the Chicago Bears on Thursday.

"I don't know what's going to happen," said Parcells, who has so far ignored calls by fans and media for Henson to start. "Let's just see where he is. If I have all the facts, then I'll make a decision."

Henson said he did not feel overwhelmed against the Ravens' defense. As for Thursday, he said, "If I've got to go, I'll be ready. We'll see if Vinny can come back."

It's still nowhere near as fun as baseball, but there you have it. Drew Henson has sort of arrived. If it were a choice between being the Quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys on any given Sunday or the regular Thirdbaseman for the New York Yankees, you know I'd choose the latter. :)

- Art Neuro

A Self-Contradictory Life
Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the most successful small arm of the century, the AK47 turned 85 on 10 November.

Kalashnikov is the most poignant symbol of the decline. When the Soviet Union began to crumble in 1989, the legendary gun maker was 70 years old, rich in official honors and titles, but ill prepared for the market forces about to sweep Russia.

Kalashnikov makes nothing from his gun designs. The Soviet Union had licensed more than a dozen countries to manufacture his weapons. After 1991 post-communist middlemen began selling stock out of old Soviet armories, and today there are an estimated 100 million AK-47s in circulation. The rifle is featured on the flags of Mozambique and numerous jihadist groups. Knockoffs are everywhere; General Kalashnikov and Izhmash accused the United States this summer of buying pirate AK-47s for the Iraqi police force. And authentic AK-47s remain dirt cheap. "Militarily, the guys who are buying are poor and they're insurgents and they're just going to buy AK-47s," says Old Dominion University professor and small-arms expert Aaron Karp. "They'd be foolish not to."

So there you have it. Mikhail Kalashnikov goes on to say:

The romance is gone for Kalashnikov. He says he has been very careful about lending his name only to honorable products, but less so about the financial details. "I haven't become a billionaire. I haven't become a millionaire," he says. "And I think it's unlikely I ever will."

In another article, we see:

Kalashnikov said the rifle “was created to defend the fatherland,’’ adding, ”It is a pity it was used in other inadmissible conflicts,“ The New York Times reported.

So what we have here is a man who designed commy-tommy-guns, who wishes that they weren't used to kill people; and an old-time commie who laments he isn't going to be a millionaire or a billionaire.

- Art Neuro

Bureaucratic Planning
"The future is uncertain and The End is always near." So sang the late Jim Morrison in 'Roadhouse Blues'.
I am writing this before I forget this very interesting piece of Australian Film history which was told to me most elaborately and lavishly last Friday night as we celebrated the birthday of one Brain A. Williams.

In the 1970's a certain man I shall refer to as MJ, but not Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson found himself in the crucible of the Australian Film Industry's revival. It was 1975, he was the General Manager and co-founder of the now-legendary Sydney Film Co-operative, who was invited to participate in the 1975 'Australia 75' event in the category of Film and TV.

At one of the meetings, he was regaled to The Plan by a group of fifty-something-year old high ranking bureaucrats in Canberra over a lunch. The Plan, was conceived by Prime Minister John Gorton and Nugget Coombs to resuscitate the Australian Film Industry back in 1968. It was a 3-stage plan, consisting of three decades where Australia would put into effect a concerted plan to develop a film industry and cultural industry. The Plan consisted of a decade of reconstruction, a decade of development and decade of consolidation. Simple enough.

What MJ reports is that when he reflects on his lifetime in the film business, the Plan was indeed carried out and there is nothing surprising in that in of itself, but when you look at the details, the events become striking. In 1971, the Federal government created institutions such as the AFC, and AFTS; invested money to the AFI. In 1981, it introduced the 10BA tax concession which opened the floodgates to investment and in 1981; and in 1991 they moved to create the Film Finance Corporation. What was amazing to MJ was not only the fact that the Plan had succeeded in resuscitating a long-dormant film industry to the point where Hollywood came to shoot in Australia, but the fact the plan had survived successive governments.

The way MJ put it, John Gorton and Nugget Coombs conceived the Plan in 1968; and this was not junked by William McMahon ("He wasn't stupid enough to ditch it", as MJ put it). Gough Whitlam obviously saw no problem in continuing a cultural programme, and neither did Malcolm Fraser and then treasurer John Howard. Hawke and Keating obviously did not abandon the Plan and neither has the current Coalition government. In other words (mine) the Australian Government sustained an Affirmative Long Term Plan (ALTP) for the Film Industry. According to MJ, he has seen signs of 'the Plan' or an ALTP in other areas and sectors of Australian life. There has been an ALTP regarding Welfare, taxation, Micro-economic Reform, and so on. And what is truly amazing about this is that Federal Governments of both Major Parties come and go, but in essence, the policies that get carried out are indeed according to the ALTP.

"Think about that for a moment, the scope of this thing," said MJ. "These people are out there voting on politicians thinking there is a choice, but really there isn't. There's just 'The Plan' for everything and the Federal Government is just moving on it, administering it."
MJ went on to cite all the examples; how Keating was planning to do the same thing as the Howard government of completely dismantling the CES and creating a jobs-placement market. The GST was a bone of contention because he couldn't get it through the Labor Caucus as Option C in 1985 so Keating used it as a political stick for the 1993 election instead but the GST was always going to happen (an observation with which I agree). Floating the dollar, the de-regulation of the banking sector, all of these momentous policy shifts opf the past were executed according to plans drawn up by high level policy planners in the various bureaucracies.
That's right.

According to MJ, the high level policy planners of this country are all working to a Plan that is over-arching all the little issues we see day-to-day. Politics as we digest it in soundbites and TV segments and column inches is all window dressing; Which is entirely believable. We live under the rule not of democracy but a polytechno-oligarchy. Elections are the stuff of popularity contests; sort of a puppet show for the gallery.
- All of which dovetails with the Frank Zappa observation that government is the entertainment branch of industry. Its importance lies in looking important and it's only important because it's important to look important. If you thought baseball was smoke, well, politics is no different it seems. So much for the importance of electoral politics. As for the old Left/Right debates that masquerade as policy setting, well we can all consign those to history as something akin to interesting Broadway Musicals of the past.

And so we came to the end of the 30 year Film Industry Plan in 2001. What did the bureaucrats say about the film industry after the 30year plan to MJ back in 1975?
"They said after that, all bets are off."
I am a film maker in the post-ALTP period of the Australian Film Industry. :)

- Art Neuro

Quantum Astronomy Continued
Here's more in the second instalment.

The First Interplanetary Communication Link
Laser comm links to Mars!

The 5-watt laser NASA plans to test at Mars by the end of the decade is expected to transmit data at rates nearly 10 times faster than any existing interplanetary radio communications link. The difference, NASA officials said, will be comparable to moving from a dial-up modem to a broadband Internet connection.

But the new technology is not without its challenges and NASA says it could be decades before lasers are ready to take over as the primary means of communicating with spacecraft.

The U.S. military has plans to field a constellation of optical communications relay satellites in Earth orbit starting around 2012. Those satellites are intended to help the Pentagon deal with a bandwidth crunch that has been heightened in part by a growing fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles that are transmitting data-rich imagery.

NASA faces a bandwidth crunch of its own in deep space as more powerful spacecraft and instruments become reality. Highly reliable data links with fast transmission rates also are deemed critical to the human planetary expeditions NASA hopes to undertake. NASA is tackling some of the technical challenges facing interplanetary optical communications with the Mars Laser Communication Demonstration (MLCD) now in development at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.

It's like reading some sci-fi novel.

- Art Neuro

The Drew Henson Hour Approacheth
... but it ain't here yet.

"The other player gives us a better chance to win," Parcells said of Vinny Testaverde. "We're not running a tryout camp." Parcells said he didn't consider putting in Henson late in Monday's blowout loss for fear of subjecting him to the safety blitz. He compared Henson, who hasn't taken a snap this season, to a young fighter with only five or six bouts.

"It's not like I wouldn't want to find out about the player," said Parcells, "but right now I don't think it's the time." Parcells said he could spend two hours talking about the reasons he didn't want to play Henson yet, but declined to elaborate.

So we await the Cowboys to sink even further before the futur arrives in Dallas Football Land. So much for that.
Hey, it's a kind of star-gazing, okay?

- Art Neuro

Off The Air - A Quick Update Of The Space Freaks...
We're busy folks., and these are trying times.
Some of us are tyring to finish a thesis and this is tough as hell.
Some of us are trying to finish a film; this is tough business.
Some of us are also trying to finish an album. This is bloody tough when you're tyring to finish a film at the same time.
Some of us are considering launching a proper website to replace this meager blog.
Some of us are trying to write a manifesto of our collective position on Space Policy; and this is not going to be easy.
Some of us have Day-Jobs, some of us are tyring to secure one.
All of this and it's bleeding November!
So while we're off the air a bit, bear with us. :)

Politics In the Age of Scumbags
Everybody has a take on politics. It's the natural process of democracy where everybody's opinions (sad and pathetic as they are/might be) are not stamped out by some ideologue. This is a good thing. In the course of time, people start to get frustrated that they cannot convince others of their 'wisdom'. It may simly be the case that the so-called wisdom is simply a matter of being *wrong*; as in mistaken. In other words, it may all be opinion, but sometimes being wrong is being wrong is being wrong, much like Gertrude Stein's rose.

However, it has to be said that the adage, "politics is the last refuge of the scourndrel" was never more true than today.

People assume I am a political animal - I am not. I am an anti-politicial animal in as much as I try to cut out politics from the issue, as I strongly believe that technological solutions which rest on scientific method are far more likely to be useful than political soutions which rely heavily on people's emotional acceptance of unacceptable things. I know people love to say, what is not political, but I beg to say where philosophers seek the abstract sans the idiotic baggage of metaphsyics, I seek space policy sans the moronic baggage of politics. It may be nigh impossible, but anything would be better than the age old crap.

After all, if we are to get to space, maybe we have to take on the *unpolitic* to achieve the long term success for humanity. The way I figure it, politics, in the guise of Left/Right knuckle dusters and the usual he-said-she-said is about as useful as a spare groom at a wedding. And while both sides are into point-scoring over substantial policies, we have to say, it doth suck.
Folks, we're trying for space; not try and win the local election. We're entirely happy to leave politics to the scumbags, the scurrilous, the scoundrels, the scantily clad, the policy squonks, and the unadulterated scum. Just as long as we get the policies and outcomes we want. :)

In the mean time, 'Stick it to the man. '

- Art Neuro

Daisuke Matsuzaka Drops Major Hint
The Seibu Lions Ace, Daisuke Matsuzaka has dropped his first hint that he won't wait out until he earns his Free Agency in 2008 to try out with the Majors.

If you can read Japanese, here's the article. :)
Essentially he says, "Next year I'm with the Lions, but that's talking just about next year."
The indication seems to be that he would use the posting system to see what bids come over the Pacific Ocean for his services. Matsuzaka's got a 96mph Fastball a Slider, a plus Curve and allegedly, a weird screw-ball like 'gyro-ball'.

Mark my words, the Yankees will be in-like-Flynn on this bubba.

- Art Neuro

Inherit the Wind Redux
In what is another chapter in the on-going legal idiocies that are the monkey trials, the US stae of Georgia is hosting another round of seemingly never ending faith vs. science debates at the tax payer's expense. Get your barf-bags now. :)

The stickers, which appeared after pressure from hundreds of parents, many of them religious conservatives, read:

"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

Linwood Gunn, a lawyer for the suburban Atlanta school board, said the stickers only advised students to keep an open mind and did not promote religion in violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the school board on behalf of parents who believed the disclaimers pushed the teaching of creationism and discriminated against non-Christians and followers of other religions. Creationism rejects modern scientific explanations for the origin and development of life, preferring instead the idea of supernatural creation by God. Evolution, which is accepted by virtually all biologists, contends life developed from more primitive forms and was dictated by natural selection.

And yet, I still get people who express their 'doubts about evolution' on the grounds that not all the data is in. Seriously folks, how much data do you these people need? Isn't it good enough that Evolution is the equivalent of the Unfiied Field Theory for Biology?

Rover Report
Opportunity sems to remain opportunistic, while Spirit seems lost without any. Or so we are led to believe in this report.

- Art Neuro

Oh Yeah, There's This Thing Here
The MLB All-Stars are touring Japan again. They are winning 4 games to 2 in a best of 9. However pitching last night for Japan was our fave Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Matsuzaka who defeated Cuba in the opening round of this past August's Olympic Baseball tournament, allowed one-run and five-hits. He walked none and struck out six; he pitched the full 9 innings, silencing the MLB offense.
He's certainly living up to the long tradition of righty Japanese pitching aces.

- Art Neuro

Hey Pluto
Pluto is struggling to keep its status as a proper planet amongst its siblings. Being so far away and undernourished by the sun can possibly do that you. Anyway, Pluto's got good news. It's got Kuiper belt Objects.

"People were finding all these KBOs that were huge - literally half the size of Pluto or larger," University of Arizona astronomer John Stansberry said. "But those supposed sizes were based on assumptions that KBOs have very low albedos, similar to comets."

Albedo is a measure of how much light an object reflects. The more light an object reflects, the higher its albedo. Actual data on Kuiper Belt Object albedos have been hard to come by because the objects are so distant, dim and cold. Many astronomers have assumed that KBO albedos - like comet albedos - are around four percent and have used that number to calculate KBO diameters.

However, in early results from their Spitzer Space Telescope survey of 30 Kuiper Belt Objects, Stansberry and colleagues found that a distant KBO designated 2002 AW197 reflects 18 percent of its incident light and is about 700 kilometers (435 miles) in diameter. That's considerably smaller and more reflective than expected, Stansberry said.

"2002 AW197 is believed to be one of the largest KBOs thus far discovered," he said. "These results indicate that this object is larger than all but one main-belt asteroid(Ceres), about half the size of Pluto's moon, Charon, and about 30 percent as large and a tenth as massive as Pluto."

I'm sure the plaent is pleased as punch.

More Jokes About... Uranus
There are rings around your... Uranus.
Here's the article.

"It's really intriguing, the planet seems to be getting more active as the equinox approaches," said de Pater, who, with colleague Heidi B. Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., has been observing Uranus since 2000 with adaptive optics on the Keck II telescope.

"When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus in 1986, it saw almost no discrete cloud activity -- you could literally count the number of discrete clouds on your fingers: 10! Most astronomers decided that Uranus was a boring, static planet," Hammel added. "What we are seeing now is the opposite, that actually there are changes, and they are visible to Keck and the Hubble Space Telescope."

There you go. Rings around your...

Quantum Astronomy
I'm not an astronomy buff. I'm really not all that interested in gazing at stars through telescopes. I kind of left that behind as a kid and haven't missed it. But there are always interesting developments out there.

Here's one.

A Warm Dark Glow
Again, the straight astronomy aspect of this article leaves me a little bored, but here it is anyway.

- Art Neuro

Like many people I have difficulty understanding how Bush won the election at a time when he was so unpopular. Here, here and here are articles that offer an explanation. GWB fans might not want to read them, because the explanation involves Republican skullduggery and outright fraud.

Then again, there's nothing a red blooded conservative likes more than saying nasty things about "liberals", and I'm sure plenty of cause for that can be found in the material I referenced. So maybe there is something for everyone.

James

An Entry Not Totally About the Yankees
Steven Goldman who pens the Pinstriped Bible for the YES Network has this article this week. He essentially goes through the pros (lots) and cons (nothing) of keeping Jorge Posada in pinstripes. Last week, he jokingly/rhetorically suggested it was better to trade Captain Dreamboat Jeter than to trade catcher Jorge Posada (which is to say, don't trade him at all); to which he recived a lot of e-mails from those who didn't understand him. Some of it was obviously filled with crass invective, and so he had this to say:

Parenthetically, it's hard to imagine something less impressive than being ripped by a reader who hides behind an anonymous online handle. I never have a problem when a reader has a legitimate disagreement with an opinion expressed in this column. We're all about community here, and talking things over with the neighbors is one of the joys of being part of a community. When a reader doesn't make an argument but rather hurls invective from behind a nom de Internet, I don't see a neighbor with a point, but a coward who lacks both a point of view and the guts to stand up for himself.

I wholeheartedly agree with this paragraph so much I wanted to have it framed; instead I thought I'd bung it up here.
They do hang you for irony Mr. Goldman.

- Art Neuro

Weather Patterns Around Uranus
Laugh it up.
Now settle down and have a read:

The new images, from the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, provide insight into some of the most enigmatic weather in the solar system, researchers said today at a meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.

"The cloud features range from small to large, from dim and diffuse to sharp and bright, from rapidly evolving systems to stable features that last for years," said Lawrence Sromovsky of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center.

A large storm in the southern hemisphere seesaws over 5 degrees of latitude during several years. "It's weird behavior that hasn't been recognized before on Uranus," Sromovsky said. "It's similar to what's been seen on Neptune, although there the oscillation is much more rapid. Sromovsky added that it's not surprising to see cloud features drifting in latitude, but models don't predict the movement. "We don't know what makes it keep coming back to its starting point," he said.

The pictures also reveal a long, narrow complex of cloud features that is probably the largest group of atmospheric features ever seen on the planet. Spotted in the northern hemisphere, the 18,000-mile-long complex of clouds dissipated completely over the span of a month.

"These more dynamic systems seem to develop at northern latitudes apparently using up energy and dissipating relatively rapidly," Sromovsky said.

It's amazing how you say 'Uranus' and you get laughs.

Good Idea, Bad Plan
Here's an article about mining on the moon. The idea is of course to utilise resources on the places where we go. As you may well know, we have argued that the moon ain't much of a place to be going to do this stuff.

Renewed support for space resources has been unearthed in large measure by the "Exploration Vision" announced by President George W. Bush last February. Indeed, space resource proposals are now being considered by NASA 's Human and Robotic Technology Program.

"There is a range of possibilities for use of space resources in exploration strategy," even before people are dispatched back to the Moon and off to Mars, said Mike Duke, Director of the Center for Commercial Applications of Combustion in Space (CCACS)at the Colorado School of Mines. NASA, however, has yet to adopt ISRU in blueprinting that strategy, perhaps not willing at this point to take some assumptions・some leaps of faith," he suggested.

"There is a feeling that something is finally going to happen. Much of this feeling stems from President Bush's exploration initiative, which specifically calls for the use of extraterrestrial resources," noted G. Jeffrey Taylor, a professor of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawai'i in Honolulu and chair of the workshop's scientific program.

...Hmmm...
I dunno. Seems to me that we have to concede (again) that the current US President is for space exploration and therefore good for our cause.
Well, no skin off my nose to do so. Props to Dubya on that account.

For US$50 million Bucks You Can Buy...
Another Space Competition.
Rules are set for the new competition with Bigelow Aerospeace Prize money worth US $50million.

Anyone who wants to follow in the shoes of Burt Rutan and win the next big space prize will have to build a spacecraft capable of taking a crew of no fewer than five people to an altitude of 400 kilometers and complete two orbits of the Earth at that altitude. Then they have to repeat that accomplishment within 60 days.

While the first flight must demonstrate only the ability to carry five crew members, the winner will have to take at least five people up on the second flight. And one more thing. They have to do it by Jan. 10, 2010.

Those are just some of the rules that govern who wins the $50 million "America's Space Prize," an effort by Bigelow Aerospace, of North Las Vegas, Nevada, to spur the development of space tourism in low Earth orbit. No more than 20 percent of the spacecraft's hardware can be expendable. It must also demonstrate the ability to dock with Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space habitat and be able to stay docked in orbit for up to six months.

A key ambition of the Bigelow Aerospace cash reward is to break the monopoly on crew transport to space currently held by Russia's Soyuz spacecraft. "This is trying to be an alternative to the bad situation that our country is in with Soyuz," in terms of International Space Station operations, said Robert Bigelow, head of Bigelow Aerospace in an exclusive interview with SPACE.com and Space News.

Yeah. The Soyuz thing is bad... :)
Why don't they come out and say it flat out: it's the Space Shuttle that is bad. If it weren't so, we wouldn't be relying on old Soyuz to support the ISS.
Oh well. It's good news all the same.

- Art Neuro

Wag the Dog
Check this out.
Sort of explains a lot.

Your Parents Are Your Worst Enemies
You know your parents are your worst enemy when they stiff you you on your share.
I recently collected zero from the property-sale that showed 28k net capital gain when my shouldered risk was 40%.
My old man justified him taking all of the 28k on the grounds that it made up for his 'opportunity cost' for having put his momney into the venture when he could have collected the same interest in the bank. Needless to say I'm disgusted.
Afterwards he said I should get a steady job so he can help me with a mortgage again. I gagged and choked on a roasted almond, wishing I could die on the spot.

- Art Neuro

Futility Infielder Laments
In the recent days I have found this article by Jay Jaffe of Futility Infielder. Jay Jaffe is a Yankee fan who also writes for Baseball prospectus and is quite the raconteur on the Net. Normally I wouldn't really cite another blog for an article, but I thought this might shed some light on how people are feeling out there in the USA, just so that we can know they're not all crazy for Dubya.

I try very hard to steer clear of any head-on political content in this blog. An astute reader could certainly cobble together a good idea of where I stand based on the views I've aired regarding, say, stadium finance, gays in baseball, and the politicization of the Hall of Fame. But I started writing about baseball in order to get away from writing about politics and the culture wars, desiring to find a common bond among people who might otherwise disagree and seeing a need to shed the stridency which ran rampant through much of my writing and drained the joy I took from the endeavor. That desire has served me well for the past three and a half years, allowing me to build up a nice little audience and make a fulfilling sidelight out of this site. Despite my better impulses, I cannot let Tuesday's results pass without comment, if only because I know that I won't be able to write about the relatively trivial matters of baseball which capture my fancy until I vent my spleen. Feel free to disregard this post, or to vote with your feet either before or after I've aired my views, but don't expect a knock-down, drag-out exchange in the comments thread. Debating politics via this blog is a far more futile endeavor than the major league career of Enrique Wilson, and I've no intention of wasting further energy once I fire off this volley. Sad to say, it's just as unlikely you'll change my mind at this juncture as that I'll change yours.I'm absolutely devastated, disgusted, and revulsed not only by the thought of four more years under George W. Bush but also by the incredible polarization of this country. While I certainly believe that reasonable minds can disagree on a wide range of policy issues, I simply don't understand how anybody could look at the facts and think that we are safer today after four years under Bush, when 9/11 and the Iraqi debacle are direct results of the man's brazen ignorance and incompetence, and the U.S. is viewed with contempt by the enlightened democratic countries that should be our allies.I used to joke that I lived in New York City to get away from the crazy fundamentalists populating the rest of the country.

Now, it's no laughing matter. I feel far more endangered by what those zealots can produce via electoral politics -- especially with regards to this band of certified thugs who have just "won" and will do ever more to put Americans in harm's way -- than anything I might face on the darkest, most dangerous streets of New York City. Right now, writing about the first flicker of the hot stove flame feels like a hapless attempt at a coping strategy. As I've said before under similarly bleak circumstances, I would give anything to be yawning through a pitching change right now. I would watch a Red Sox victory parade and like it, paint my face and wear Jheri Curl while eating a vat of Boston Baked Beans, if it guaranteed a different electoral result. On that note, as the possibility of a Kerry presidency had dawned, I had imagined scribbling a short post about how such a victory was better -- exponentially better -- than winning four straight World Series. Now, staring at this most bitter and brutal defeat, I feel as though my team has lost, its stadium has been razed, and its players have been fed to the lions in front of a hostile Coliseum crowd. We do live in two different Americas, and I'm less optimistic with each passing day that the gap will ever be bridged.

After that, he goes back to writing about baseball, and it's all good. I have had other e-mails forwarded to me about the tremendous sense of disbelief and forboding that the recent election results have wrought in America. I won't post them because they are not public documents to be released in such a forum like this, but suffice to say, the tone is very similar. The outpouring is so much more amazing than when the Bush family seemingly stole the election in 2000.

At the best of times most of politics is smoke. it's the entertainment branch of the Military Industrial Complex in America, andin Australia it's the debating team competition in the school of Insiders. The only probelm is that it affects us so much on a daily level. John Howard's lurch (nay, charge) to the right has brought out all sorts of racists from the woodwork, allowing them a kind of social legitimacy. To think that we were once headed for a future society where tolerance was the cornerstone now seems remote and we are worse for it.
By the way, there are those who argue that there ought to be tolerance too for the intolerant, but really this is a sordid piece of sophistry.

The upshot of it is this: We live in interesting times. If we don't like what we see, then it is up to us to try and change them. The Sleeper must Awaken. Let the Power Fall. Don't get discouraged by the inert masses, the vicious demagogues, the strident critics, the lousy slogans; do your thing, keep talking, keep reasoning, keep persuading that there is a better way than simply 'more of the same and protect my hip pocket.' We'll be fighitng in the streets with our children at our feet and the 'morals' that they worship will be gone.
IOW, Rock on and stick it to the man.

- Art Neuro