The Art Neuro Weblog

500 Days In A Cage
The Russians are planning a project to lock crew into a cage for 500 days to simulate the isolation that a manned Mars mission would entail. I guess this is when reality finally dawns upon us that it's a long way to Mars and back.

During the 500 Days study, six volunteers will depend on a preset limit of supplies, including about 5 tons of food and oxygen and 3 tons of water. A doctor will accompany volunteers inside the module to treat illnesses and injuries. Volunteers will only be allowed to quit the experiment if the develop a severe ailment of psychological stress. But experiment participation is not solely reserved for Russian volunteers, institute officials added.

"We have informed our American colleagues that we plan to start an imitation of a manned flight to Mars with the help of volunteers in 2006," Yevgeny Ilyin, deputy
director for science at the institute, told Russia's Interfax news agency during a recent Russian-American working group meeting in Moscow.

NASA has been invited by Russian scientists to join in on the Mars mock mission, but a final decision by the U.S. space agency is pending, said NASA's Guy Fogleman, NASA director of the Office of Biological and Physical Research's Bioastronautics
Research Division, to Russian reporters.

The space agency has not yet decided whether it will participate, though a decision is anticipated some time in the next few months, Beasley added.

Makes sense that you would have to run a simulation of the experience at least once before you send out a crew. The funny thing is that not many space agencies have actually attempted let alone table a plan for this simulation until now.
I hope who ever goes into the module keeps a blog we can read. :)

Baseball Armageddon II Begins Today
The Red Sox play the New York Yankees in a seven game play-off starting today. I'm actualy exhausted by the nervouse energy I've expended following the yankees this season. It's just been a really tense season unlike previous years. I guess that's just how much better the Red Sox have become since their Game 7 loss in the ALCS last year.

Here's an interesting analysis from Steven Goldman. In it he makes one claim that most other people have not made, which is, in neutral parks, Hideki Matsui might be just a little better than Manny Ramirez in Left Field. He's the only one who has made this call; though Win Shares tells us Matsui was 1 WS better than Ramirez this year. Indeed, Matsui's bat is 26.9 to Manny's 25.1.

Most analysts are thinking Red Sox in seven. Here's The Hardball Times' Aaron Gleeman's Red-Sox-In-Seven analysis which is indicative of general analyst consensus. Goldman alone goes it with Matsui being better than Manny, and Yankees to win in 7.
Bill Simmons has his own crazy match up which is funny, as does Larry Mahnken with his hilarious parody of a typing-challenged homeboy that finishes with "Yankees to win in 3" (LOL, you need 4!).
Me? I'm fearful as any man facing the apocalypse, but I say Yankees in 5. It seems inevitable that they'll lose 1.

- Art Neuro