Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Monday, September 08, 2003

  Planetary sciences, Science Fiction, Star Trek and Instant Gratification (lack thereof)

I spent two days at last week's planetary sciences conference in Monterey. Fascinating paper after fascinating paper was presented on every topic of the universe. Everyone I met was enthusiastic, interested, brilliant, with a name number one on google. Steven Ostro was awarded the Kuiper Prize. Ostro did amazing things with radar on imaging the solar system. He gave a great speech summarizing all that - talking about about everything from early radar to the space probe Muses-C.

I came home early friday night, outlined a half dozen talks I wanted to write about, and checked the news sources to see if anyone else had scooped me. The outlines grew longer, and longer. I kept checking the news sources. Nothing... Nothing... no coverage at all. Cool, I thought, maybe I will get something into somewhere....

Passive voice attacked my writing ("was presented","was enthusiastic","had done") - and I'm still shaking off the assault.

I reached a stumbling block on my first piece - my notes were unreadable - and I went back to the website to see if that talk was available so I could make sure I wouldn't make a mistake. No luck. Only the abstracts are available. An abstract is a real tease, I want the conclusions right here in front of me so I can think and write about them coherently and... no way...

I realized that of the twenty-something talks I'd seen, only 3 were on the web. Fine, fine, I remembered one talk's title off the top of my head - so I searched altavista for: Dynamics of the Kuiper Belt and the origin of the Planets. Altavista - literally - told me to go fish.

I found it on google, but I have to say that the real strength of this presentation was Hal Levison himself. I would have liked to have had an mp3...

I kept checking the news outlets... No coverage. No coverage. Hmmm. I kept writing, but my pace slowed to a crawl, and I got discouraged. Most meetings I've attended recently A) - I could look up things up on the internet in real time - and B) I have a copy of the presentation right in front of me.

There were few laptops in the audience. There wasn't working wireless except within a few feet of the computer cafe'. I didn't see any recording devices in use except at the plenary sessions. The sound-guy said they hadn't asked for a tape recording off the board, either. I guess that electronic distribution of anything in planetary science but the abstract remains the province of for pay services, and the researcher.

The value of making recordings is outweighed by... what?

Three days later - 13 stories on google. Maybe there's a link?

So, anyway, today Spider Robinson posted an editorial on the decline of science fiction, and doc talked about a link to a study that unsurprisingly found that (three otherwise random events in the web/blogosphere)... and I figured I might as well get the above, and this, off my chest, before I struggle to turn another abstract into english.

Spider wrote:


 
David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.


Resume,Songs,
My new blog, NeX-6, My facebook page
Orgs I like
The EFF - keeping free speech in the world
Musical stuff I like
Jeff, Rick, Ardour, Jack
Prior Rants - Sharing your home network better in a time of covi... Designing for the disconnect Email lists going down the memory hole Instituting saner, professional source code manage... Wireless and Wifi in 2015 - not what I dreamed of Saving wifi! Fixing Bufferbloat! Fighting the vend... Virgin Media - Fixing the epidemic of bufferbloat ... 49... and trying to find my navel Wheels down on mars! Tracking the landing of Curiosity, from Seattle
Best of the blog:
Uncle Bill's Helicopter - A speech I gave to ITT Tech - Chicken soup for engineers
Beating the Brand - A pathological exploration of how branding makes it hard to think straight
Inside the Internet Mind - trying to map the weather within the global supercomputer that consists of humans and google
Sex In Politics - If politicians spent more time pounding the flesh rather than pressing it, it would be a better world
Getting resources from space - An alternative to blowing money on mars using NEAs.
On the Columbia - Why I care about space
Authors I like:
Doc Searls
Where's Cherie?
UrbanAgora
Jerry Pournelle
The Cubic Dog
Evan Hunt
The Bay Area is talking
Brizzled
Zimnoiac Emanations
Eric Raymond
Unlocking The Air
Bob Mage
BroadBand & Me
SpaceCraft
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My Pencil
Transterrestial Musings
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Callahans
Pajamas Media BlogRoll Member

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