the future soon

Neal Stephenson talking about REAMDE

2011-12-18T22:07:00.003Z

Neal Stephenson is a writing hero of mine - who else can right a gripping, 200 page long gunfight?

No one, that's who.

And a couple of months ago I persuaded CBC Books to let me interview Neal about his latest novel, Reamde.

In short, this novel is about what happens when billionaire gaming executives, Chinese hackers and the Russian mob, as well as a few jihadists, collide over a simple little computer virus.

Or - GUNS, VIOLENCE, POT SMUGGLING, ESCAPING CHINA, GOLD FARMING, WORLD BUILDING and CRAZY FANTASY WRITERS!
(Whoa, a little upper case crazy but I HAVEN'T POSTED IN MONTHS!)

I also touch on his online co-authored book - the Mongoliad.

If you have read Neal Stephenson, than you know why he is awesome.
If you haven't, GO READ HIM!

Here's the interview (ps. the Strombo blog liked it.)
Also check out Neal's site.

Spark 143 - They let me do a thing on couponing

2011-04-03T20:17:00.004Z

I'm on Spark this week, talking about the online community of coupon hackers and how we actually trade paper coupons through the mail, and how we teach each other how to get the best deal.

If you are wondering why there is a picture of a baby playing with pill bottles, take a listen.

Now for a few tips for those just starting out in the world of coupon hacking:

1. Look for coupons you will actually use. If you are trying to save money, there’s no point getting coupons for items that you wouldn’t regularly use. However, be open to breaking your brand loyalty, and experimenting with similar products.

2. Use coupons on sale items. You will save a lot of money if you combine a coupon with an item already on sale. Which leads me to this point – when you collect coupons in a store, NEVER use that coupon in that store. In store coupons tend to only appear on regularly priced items. Take those coupons, and find the best deal.

3. Keep organized – coupons will save you money, but if you don’t know where your coupons are, or when they expire, you are throwing money away.

4. Watch the forums – hundreds of thousands of Canadians are crowd sourcing deals every day. Take advantage!

Special thanks to Opera Bob Gibb for taking time out to talk about Air Mile hacking.

This is what happens when you read too much science...

2011-04-03T20:09:00.005Z

You end up doing a spoof on the reversal of the magnetic poles on public radio because a friend knows you're a nerd.

This is what went to air on the CBC Iqaluit morning show, Qulliq, with host Abraham Tagalik.

Probably the only time I will ever be called a doctor, but not the last time someone says my name wrong.

And if you didn't like that, it's Peter Sheldon's fault.

Prepping the "Planet Hunter" with Les Saddlemyer

2011-02-12T00:41:00.008Z

The Gemini South Observatory by moonlight, home of the GPI.

Planets, planets everywhere, but what do you use to look at them with?

Telescopes. Or more specifically, the multi-million dollar plug and play instruments that telescopes use.

You see, telescopes are platforms for equipment.
Electromagnetic radiation (light, x-rays, radio waves, etc.)is gathered in for other devices to record the data.

Picture a telescope, like the big optical telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Big mirrors and lenses focus light onto a focal point. That light is then looked at by multiple devices that are searching the skies for different things.

One device might be calibrated to figure out the difference in emissions across a stars surface, others might be looking for specific wavelengths of light in nebulae.

And others will look for planets in other solar systems.

The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) will provide near InfraRed adaptive optics-corrected coronagraphic high contrast imaging to enable searches and characterization of extra-solar planets.

And it will be hooked up to the Gemini Observatory, with it's telescopes in Chile and Hawaii.

Built by Americans, Brits and Canadians, this device will change how we view the universe.

We are now at the radio part of the post.

In early January I went up the hill to the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, on Vancouver Island, BC, to check out the Gemini Planet Imager.

In a basement lab space sat the device, a big blue metal box that looked about the size of a large welding rig pulled behind standard truck.

(Sorry, no pictures. I have a hard enough time handling my microphone.)

I met up with Les Saddlemyer. He's the HIA Project Manager and Systems Engineer for GPI. Or, the excited guy who is 6 years into a project that will take another few to complete, but man when it's done, we'll have a whole new galaxy!

Les and his team and his team were prepping the big blue box for it's move to UC Santa Cruz Laboratory for Adaptive Optics. THe GPI should be up and running by late 2012

Big geek that I am, I was really excited.

Take a listen.

In case you're interested, this is a simulation of a GPI image

Caveman tweeting and SPARK

2011-01-23T22:52:00.004Z

No better reason to blow life into this cadaver of a blog than a national piece of radio.

Spark this week is featuring, amongst other great radio pieces, my story about Caveman tweeting and the beginnings of writing.

So what is the basics of the story? Humans have been on the road to writing for a long time. Conventionally, we have placed the origins of written language to between five and ten thousand years ago in China ( check out ancient Chinese Neolithic writing.)

But, for many years archaeologists have had niggling suspicions that the roots of writing go back tens of thousands of years.

A deep time when humans were just getting by in a world of new neural pathways, big carnivores and climatic change.

Now, Genevieve von Petzinger, a PhD student at UVIC, is changing our view of our ancient world.

TAKE A LISTEN

For more info on Genevieve and her work at the Bradshaw Foundation.

Bug Highway in the Sky - an exemplar of science radio

2010-10-03T19:48:00.005Z

Robert Krulwich is a master of storytelling.

He's one of those few people who can take almost any piece of information and turn it into intelligent, and fun, radio. As someone who hopes to continue in the radio craft, and one day actually get to focus on science storytelling, Krulwich is an example.

Take his radio piece "Bug highway in the sky." Krulwich crafts a five minute piece that not only brings the sky alive, but also brings the scientists who do the research alive. This a rare thing.

When science gets on tv or the radio, the research is prominent, like it should be. But the motivation of researchers are often left behind. This is a problem. As a veteran CBC radio doc producer once yelled at me, "People are the story." By combining the facts with the scientists voices of wonder, an echo of how we interact with the world comes alive. Why talk about the world if we do not include ourselves in it?

But enough of my radio pontificating - here's the story

And then there is this fancy little adaptation.

Check out all the bonus features at Krulwich Wonders...

What a lack of understanding about science will do to you.

2010-07-07T01:44:00.004Z

It might be fun, but rainbowing can lead to permanent brain damage.
And drugs and new age crystals, that will do it to you, too.

A rainbow is the refraction and reflection of light within a droplet of water suspended in the atmosphere. This refraction and reflection is happening all the time, but only at certain angles can our eyes perceive them. Rainbows are a product of observational aspect.

For me that beats anything some god, spirit guide or dead relative can do.

Six for Science

2010-06-30T23:27:00.003Z

1. When Sperm Whales ruled! Or, The precariousness of being the biggest predator in a changing world.

2. The deep dark Atlantic is a living hotbed of biological diversity.

3.The whales are screaming over noise pollution.

4. In the rush to protect the Gulf Coast, sea bird nests are being trampled.

5. The best map of the night sky yet, and what it can tell us about the formation of the universe.

6. How blogs by scientists (not geeks like us) can help science.

Science Hero: Hedy Lamarr

2010-06-25T22:17:00.005Z

Having a young daughter has changed how I view the world, and how I view science.
Many of the most important discoveries in science and technology have been made by women.
Radiation, the basic structure of DNA, the foundations of modern mathematical theory are just a few.

I've never thought of myself as sexist, but when I try to think of the names of women in science, I can't name more than a handful. This will not do when I am trying to inspire my daughter to follow in the path of the smartest people in the world.

And there were few people smarter, or more charismatic, than the actress Hedy Lamarr.

Not only was she the first star to appear naked in film, but she also invented the technology that underscores our wireless world - frequency hopping.

Heres a primer on Hedy from the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

Information Pioneers: Hedy Lamarr from Information Pioneers on Vimeo.

Hedy Lamarr, inventor and multi-faceted intelligence. Hedy Lamarr, Science Hero.

Six for Science

2010-06-09T22:36:00.003Z

1. This is how you do shark science! Live capturing Great White Sharks! I know it's a promo, but just look at that picture.
2. The diplomacy of dolphins
3. In Australia, even the crocodiles surf.
4. The scariest/coolest thing I've seen all day - Parasitic wasps can clone themselves inside of a host.
5. The moons of Saturn are the children of the rings.
6. Super physics envy - when sharks are looking for food, they behave more like swirling gas molecules than animals. Brownian motion come to life.

Seamounts and synthetic life

2010-05-26T00:26:00.007Z

Bowie Seamount. Photograph by Emory Kristof

Big year, huh?

Well, definitely.

2010 is the year we finally start to hack the language of life. Craig Venter, Science Hero, has announced the first working synthetic genome.

Sure, Venter has already proven that he can create a synthetic strand of DNA, and re-jig a bacteria with the genes of another one. But he has never done both at the same time, and neither has anyone else.

What this means for all of us, is that we will be able to change and construct the very basis of biology.

Eventually.

By being able to make a genetic structure, we will be able to learn from 3.5 billion years of life to make better medicines, technology, foodstuffs, power production and, well everything.

Eventually.

Over the next decade, Venter and the legions of other scientists working in molecular biology will get us to a place where we start to play with genes.

And that's a good thing.

To understand how to manipulate/create life, Venter has sailed the world in his sloop, the Sorcerer II. Sampling ocean water for his Global Ocean Sampling Expedition, Venter has cataloged species not know to science. Venter has been sampling the surface, but beneath the waves there are continents of life yet to be discovered.

Last week I did a piece for the MotherCorp about seamounts.

Seamounts are those underwater mountains that heave from the ocean floor. Covered with a vast diversity of sponges, corals, fish, invertebrates, bacteria, and most other things, seamounts are oasis of the seas.

And although every one of them is unique and incredibly rich in unknown diversity, there are hundreds of thousands of them.

Last month, Dr. Peter Etnoyer of NOAA co-wrote a paper that added up all the area of seamounts, and found that they equal the size of a continent.

Take a listen.

Map of known seamounts, 2001.

Check out his pdf for a better look at seamounts

2010 will be a big year

2010-01-04T18:09:00.002Z

Two considerations of scale:

This is the ever growing immensity of our universe, found via Digital Universe Atlas.

And here is the surging hormonal growth of our digital world -

Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

SO, all aspects of our reality seem to have a never ending vastness that we, as mid rank intelligences, can never hope of knowing, or understanding it all.

This is an amazing thing. No matter how hard you look, study, contemplate and work, you will never know everything. And since the universe is constantly evolving, eroding, creating, expanding, interacting with other realities, there is always an infinity of new things.

This year we will try harder.

Welcome to the Future Soon.

Please stand by.

Merry Christmas from the Future Soon

2009-12-23T22:12:00.002Z

My favorite Christmas song from Jonathan Coulton

Watch out for your friendly neighborhood robot overlords... I mean protectors.

SCIENCE CLIPS - SWARMING NEMATODES OFF THE ANTARCTIC

2009-12-18T01:55:00.007Z

From the BBC's Natural History Unit's new series Life, here's a clip of Antarctic aquatic biota ripping apart a dead seal.

There's a lot going on under the ice.

Those giant nemertean worms are the real stars, don't you think?

Norway's weird spiral sky lights

2009-12-09T20:39:00.004Z

This footage was taken early this morning in Norway, and nobody seems to know what it is. The crackpots are out there talking about UFOs, 2012 and the Large Hadron Collider. But nobody seems to know what is it.

The Russians are denying that it was the result of a rocket test.

It really doesn't look like the aurora borealis.

Any theories from any of you?

Personally, I'm hoping it's a test of some tech based on Tesla's work. Death ray, anyone?

Or maybe a wormhole opened up!

UPDATE: Occam's Razor is a pretty useful thing. It's also often disappointing. The most likely explanation for the spirals in the sky was a failed Russian missile test. Now New Scientist is reporting that, despite Russia's earlier denials, a failed missile test is exactly what cause the strange sight.

I Like Wordle

2009-11-29T09:51:00.001Z

A wordle of the future soon for November 29, 2009.

Saganpunk

2009-11-10T02:19:00.004Z

Image hacked, with reverence, from Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time, #4

The first full price hardcover I ever bought was Carl Sagan's (and Ann Druyan's) book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. It cost me $29.95 with tax. I was fourteen and living in a town at the end of the road on Vancouver Island.

Usually, I survived on books from the library or cast-offs from the school. And once a year I would spend the money I had saved up for months to buy books in Vancouver.

But in the middle of the winter, on a rainy day, I found myself with forty dollars from my Grandma. In a local tourist/stationary/new-age store called the Crow's Nest, there was a small shelf of books. Mostly they were new age books, nature porn, and the wannabe ethnobotanist books that were first coming around in the early nineties. On the second shelf with it's spine sticking out was a golden green book that stuck me.

"Carl Sagan," I thought.

I had just spent the last month going over, and over, and through his book Comet. The idea dirty slushy mountains in the sky may have helped foster life on Earth, and may be a new home in the future blew my little teen mind.

Before Comet , all I knew about Sagan was that an alien handbag impersonated him in "My Step-mother Is An Alien," and that he was on the Tonight Show every once and a while. Sure, I knew he had something to do with Mars and those nifty plates on Voyager that had a naked woman on it, but that was all.

So I picked up "Shadows," scanned the table of contents, and was hooked.

With chapters titled "Snowflakes fallen on the Hearth," and "Life is just a three letter word," and "the Archimedes of the Macaques," a world of genetic and geological intrigue, a world where the amazing was found in very simple things, a world where god had no place, because he wasn't needed.

It was Sagan that told the world that we are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.

Incredible words for a kid mired in pseudo-science and latent religion.

And then I was on to other science writers, books, movies, girls (well, one girl really) and Carl Sagan kind of drifted out of my life.

But he was always there in the background, reminding me of our early ancestors and the comet trees of Freeman Dyson. in the last year or so, I've started to notice Carl again. Like a short period comet that is nearing the inner solar system again, Carl is coming back.

From comics, like Atomic Robo, where Sagan reconfigures a lightning gun to destroy a fourth dimensional Lovecraftian hero, to the mash-ups that use his voice, to days named in his honor, Sagan seems to be on a wave that could take him up to Richard Feynman levels.

And so he should. Sagan brought the stars down to the public in a way that has yet to be matched.

Carl Sagan is a future soon science hero

"We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos."

Carl Sagan

The Sci-fi Art of Franco Brambilla

2009-10-08T02:44:00.007Z

It's really cool to be liked, especially by an artist who knows hot to make an airship look cool.

But I'm partial to airships.

Franco Brambilla is an Italian sci-fi artist who got a lot of play with his mutations of vintage postcards. These pictures are Twilight Zone with a big budget.

But Franco has an incredible ability to make big giant spaceships look like big giant spaceships that you would actually see in the future. Too often, sci-fi art can get lazy, but Franco really gets the idea of scale. If you want someone to draw a Big Dumb Object, got to Franco.

Plus, he likes our site.

Check out Franco Brambilla.

Science Chaser Back to Back!

2009-09-16T05:32:00.002Z

Why have one post, when you can have two?

Here's the Science Chaser, Volume 2, Episode 2.

What's in this one? Moon bombs, green cities and rocking Australian weather forecasters!

More to come.

The Return of the Science Chaser

2009-09-16T05:21:00.002Z

Hey people!

Some of you might remember that little radio thing I did in journalism school. Well after two years of working for the Mother Corp, I finally sat down and started to take them seriously again. In a bid to get these radio pieces to a radio station near you, I've been putting together a few of these little monsters over the last two weeks. One way or another, I will continue with this. So, if anybody out their has advice, a critique or well wishes, send them on my way. I'm a craven attention getter.

Now for the Science Chaser, Volume 2, Episode 1.

More to come.

A Post for Chris: Crop Circles

2009-09-15T18:52:00.004Z

Thought I'd jump on the Google bandwagon and spread performance tech of crop circles.

From National Geographic.

MY personal favorite crop circles are these two. Chris, the one on the right is called the Tesla Crop glyph because is looks like one of his transistor designs.

A lesson in the creation of an artificial paradise

2009-09-15T04:41:00.001Z

ARTIFICIAL PARADISE,INC. from Jp Frenay on Vimeo.

Bubble-up on Mars

2009-09-14T20:03:00.006Z

So, by the end of the day I'll have the first new Science Chaser in about two years up, and the rest of the week will see me putting together another three while I try to get this thing to a radio near you.

But in the meantime, here's a strange radio ad promoting pop on Mars.
http://www.oldtimeradiofans.com/old_radio_commercials/Bubble_Up.mp3

Started in 1917, Bubble up was one of the first pop companies around selling lemon lime fizzy drinks. And that includes all those space cadets in the fifties and sixties who believed that they'd be the next Commando Cody, Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon.

Now I think the only beverage companies that use space as a sales gimmick are beer companies, and I that hasn't been for a long time.

Six for Science

2009-09-04T22:23:00.002Z

Here we go:

1. The web algorithm that helps Google find your name is now being used to figure out which species are most at risk of going instinct.

2. The next ice age has been put on hold by our current global warming. Sure, nobody wants to have kilometre tall chunks of ice obliterating their country, but the global heat wave that we're heading into doesn't look all that great either.

3. Will NASA's Kepler mission ever find habitable moons? And when can I go visit?

4. Augmented reality right on my EYEBALLS!

5. There's a new velcro in town that is made of steel and can hold 35-tonnes!

6. It's National Honey Month in the US. Check out these numbers.

Building life size pterosaurs with Mark Witton

2009-09-04T16:50:00.004Z

The future soon is a big fan of Mark Witton and his exciting work on pterosaurs.
And now he is building a set of life-sized models that will roam the Southbank Centre in London next summer.

The BBC will be touching base with Mark and his build over the next year. Here's the clip (because the Beeb doesn't allow embedding.)

To find out more about Mark's work check out his flikr, and/or follow his close friend Darren Naish on the Tetrapod Zoology blog.

I must find a reason to be in London next summer.

Favorite robot of the day - Le Petit Prince

2009-08-30T20:40:00.003Z

A robot that searches out the best place for it's little vegetable symbiont is my pick of best robot of the day.

But what if instead the plant wasn't a passenger, but actually part of the robot itself? The plant would be a central feature in it's bio-feedback system, controlling the robot to work with the rest of a cybernetic grove that migrate along the high Martian plateau.

A new species of green intelligence for the old planet of Barsoom. Now that's a grove-intelligence construct that I want to see.

found via core77.com

A lesson in mimicry, predation and fantastical Victorian greenhouses

2009-08-29T16:30:00.002Z

found via Gobelins

A Lesson in Biology and the mating habits of ornithomorphised humans

2009-08-29T16:25:00.002Z

Found via Gobelins

Six for Science

2009-08-03T17:22:00.003Z

More science, please.

1. Twittering the apocalypse - how many tweets before that asteroid destoys us?

2. Jelly fish shake the ocean - new ideas about ocean current circulation.

3. Exploring the Giant-Ocean Trash Vortex.

4. Brevity is the soul of wit... and dolphin movement.

5. Boiling stars.

6. We now know how your memory is damaged by smoking pot. Chronics won't care, but it could lead to better medical care.

Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla.

2009-07-10T16:02:00.003Z

Nikola Tesla, the man who invented the future.

In January of 2008, Studio 360 put together a remarkable show about Tesla. Everything from his scientific method, his long friendship with Mark Twain, his fight with Edison to his eerie relationship with a white dove at the New York Hotel where he died (and was possibly assassinated - Chris would not let this go unmentioned.)

But one of my favorite moments of the show is when playwright Mike Daisey performs part of his one man show about Tesla, where Tesla discusses his Death Ray. Tesla believed that the Death Ray would bring world piece, because if every country had one, mutually assured destruction would keep everyone friendly.

And for another take on Tesla, read "Home Again, Home Again," by Cory Doctorow, where a boy meets an immortal Tesla in a future Toronto.

And run an aget Matt Fraction's Five Fists of Science.

Six for Science

2009-07-09T02:41:00.003Z

Here we go:

1. The newest way to get out of a damaged shuttle looks like a lot of fun and it could work.

2. How green was your Precambian? Pretty green.

3. Old Woman River - the Amazon is 11 million years old.

4. Monkeys can recognize bad grammar, but will they correct each other?

5. Urine as a clean power source.

6. Sperm travels faster when chicks are hot - especially when you're a red jungle fowl.

Neil Armstrong and the music of the Ether

2009-07-07T02:54:00.004Z

Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, is incredibly humble and was potentially the best pilot that has ever lived. You'll hear a lot about Neil this month, but this little info-bite from the BBC is possibly the most wonderful:

And then there is Armstrong's apparent eccentricity.

"The music he took on the mission to the Moon was deeply eccentric," says Andrew Smith. "Most astronauts took one classical piece, and one country and western.

"Armstrong took Dvorak's New World Symphony. But the other was theremin music - that eerie, wavy sound associated with sci-fi movies that goes 'woo woo'. On one hand it was the most perfect thing he could take, on the other it is massively eccentric - and that's kind of him."

Awesome.

Prohect Nomad - Robotic Riding Cats!

2009-07-07T02:08:00.006Z

So, when we do finally go Mars, I think we have the new rover.

Project Nomad by Canadian designer Jason Battersby, is the dream of every 80's kid who wanted a Battlecat.

Picture this mechanized cat jumping, stalking and running down Martian antelope game. Just give me another two ft in height, green skin, a couple tusks and another set of arms and call me Tars Tarkas.

The concept is that the vehicle would eat grass/algae/dung/road kill to power itself. I love it, but to make it through the first few decades of terraforming on Mars, it will probably need to a fuel source, probably bio-waste/algae growth from the founding colonies.

With a partial atmosphere already, maybe the exhaust could be used as part of a terraforming project, like the giant nuclear steam trains of Ian McDonald's 'Desolation Road."

When the first rains fall along the northern Martian plains, and altered gorse and sage grass takes hold, this cyber predator will be carrying the first nomads across a marvelous desolation.

And then they'll go feral.

Found via coroflot

Forty years on the moon

2009-07-06T21:09:00.005Z

We're just two weeks away from the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and tv, magazines, radio and newspapers are starting to capitalize on it.

Don't get me wrong, July 20 1969 is one of the most profound moments in human history. Not only did we send two men to lunar the lunar surface for the first time, but we did it live on tv with over 600 million people watching.

The promise of the Apollo program inspired a generation of engineers, scientists and explorers to push beyond, to push further. Millions of people looked at the moon and KNEW that the space age was coming.

But after Apollo 11, people got bored, started changing the channel and didn't care anymore because the Russians couldn't match the US trick. And after Apollo 17, with it's moon buggy and three days of scientific discovery on the Moon, the whole program was shut down.

Instead of pushing out for the territories, like uber-engineers Von Braun and Korolev craved, the manned missions stayed in the suburbs of low earth orbit. The Eastern and Western space consortium's abandoned any plans of humans getting back to the moon or going out to Mars.

We now send robots out to the frontier.

Is this wrong? I don't know. Sure, it's astounding that people were on the moon. I get emotional when I watch all of the moon landings, and whenever I tune in to the launch of a Soyuz capsule or a shuttle, I go a little numb. I still have one of the many maps of the moon I drew when I was thirteen, and to this day I recite the lunar oceans to myself when I catch a glimpse of Luna in the early evening skies.

And my only true piece of lunar memorabilia is an autographed picture of Astronaut Jim Irwin, lunar module pilot for Apollo 15. Yes, Jim came back to Earth and became a raving evangelical who tried to find Noah's Ark, but if he hadn't, my preacher grandfather would have never gotten me this picture.

But, manned missions are expensive, and with the last thirty years being dominated by that flying brick of a compromise, the space shuttle, it's easy to see why manned space went away. The best science has been gathered by the science robots - Viking, Voyager, Hubble, Cassini and the hero rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, to name a few. And with every robotic mission, we learn how to build better automated explorers. The future of space is robotic.

Even with the new space ports being developed, Virgin Galactic getting ready to take off, and India, China and Japan stepping up their programs, it will be a long time until people are in space in a big way. NASA is scaling back even further, with Obama looking at a restructuring of the organization. And although Russia is now the premier launcher of people and product into space, Baikonur Cosmodrome is still a rough Cold War settlement in Kazakhstan.

Still, I hope every day that eventually we'll go to space for more than a few days on the lunar surface of a half-year lock-up on the space station. To homestead on a foreign surface or settle down in hard vacuum is still a dream. It could still happen.

Until then I'll hold on to my moon maps and astronaut signatures, and look up at the oceans of the moon.

Six for Science - Countdown

2009-07-03T16:41:00.007Z

Check, check. Is this blog still on?

Here's the Six for Science Countdown:

6. Early steps on the road to bringing back the extinct Moa.

5. "Diamond Dust" snow falls nightly on Mars - more new from the Phoenix.

4. Shrinking sheep in Scotland blamed on evolution and climate change.

3. Super-predator salamander hybrids are getting ready to take over California.

2. New pictures from the Moon thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

And number one on the Six for Science Countdown is ROBOTIC HUMMINGBIRDS!

Walking with Dinosaurs

2009-06-22T17:16:00.007Z

Dinosaurs have always been a big part of my life. From cheap Chinese toys and old books of sluggish semi-aquatic brontosaurs, to ridiculous creationist tracts and the marvel of Dinotopia, to dinosaur mummies and the incredible work of pterodactyl specialist Mark Witton, I can not think of a time that I haven't been crazy about the prehistoric.

I've helped dig up bones, have been up and personal with fossils, and been entranced by mounted specimens.

But to get up and close with a real dinosaur is the true dream.

Well, a few weeks ago I got as close as I ever will without the use of a blue police box, when I went to see "Walking with Dinosaurs." Based on the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs series, this show has been in development for years. From the first moment I saw the behind the scenes feature, I've longed to see this show.

There were hundreds of kids in the audience, who from the first moment the first dinosaurs came out, were on the edge of their seats, or hiding in fear. The kids loved this show, and were more than willing to see these terrible lizards again.

And all these multi-tonne creatures were being operated by a highly coordinated and skilled team of puppeteers.

I spoke with head puppeteer Raymond Carr during the intermission to find out what it's like to be the brains behind a dinosaur puppet.

That was Raymond Carr talking about dinosaurs.

After the interview, I had a backstage tour.

Standing in front of a herd of giants was like living out a scene from Burroughs or Gurney.

And having a raptors head on my shoulder was pure Jurassic Park.

Interview with Iain McCaig

2009-06-11T23:44:00.007Z

Iain McCaig is one of the most influential concept designers in the world. Maybe best known for his design of Darth Maul in the new Star Wars I, Iain is always in demand for his work. From the Harry Potter films to work on the new Princess of Mars, to his most recent cinematic offering of Outlander, Iain's work is everywhere.
To me, Iain is comparable to Moebius, Syd Mead, Ralph McQuarrie and James Bama.

And, just my luck, Iain lives only a kilometre away from me.

In a small cramped corner in Legends Comics, Iain and I had this conversation. Iain was signing copies of his book Shadowline.

Iain's energy is infectious. Before you could ask a question of him, he would spend five minutes wanting to know what you were doing. And he'd get you excited about your own projects, especially when you were just making something up to keep up with his barrage of infectious smiling and interested questioning.

If this film thing doesn't pay off, Iain can always become a motivational speaker.

Shadowline is a big, beautiful book that was worth everyone of the eighty dollars I spent on it.

Video from Parka Blog.

When Iain's site finally goes live, check it out.

If you find this post to be fan-boyish, well, it is. I've been a fan of Iain's for years, and with an off hand remark in my local comic shop that Iain lived in Victoria, I started a long process of trying to set up a meeting. The interview you heard was the product of 11 months of trying to match a very busy movie guys schedule to my relaxed Mother Corp time frame. Now, I see him all the time.

800hp strapped to your back

2009-05-14T19:24:00.002Z

Where can I get some of this environmentally-friendly awesomeness?

Six for Science

2009-05-05T04:25:00.003Z

T-Minus....

6. For Argentine Ants, when you cease to stink, you cease to live.

5. Infospace has it's own black holes. I wonder how bit-rates change on a computational event horizon?

4. In one week, Hubble get's it's next tune-up.

3. Deep in the bright of our newborn universe there were strange blobs, strange blobs that could be primordial galaxies. But why do they glow? Stay tuned.

2. Igniting a star with lasers.

1. The fastest camera on Earth can take pictures at 6 million frames per second. The reason? When you are looking at ultra-fast movement, like neural activity or shockwaves, blurry images just don't cut it. And to get an idea of how fast six million frames a second is, count to six million. If you count one number per second, it will take you 69 days. Now live those two and a half months in one second.

Poyekhali!

Giant Robotic Spiders take Japan...

2009-05-01T04:06:00.003Z

...and the thing so many mech-heads have dreamed of finally comes true.

Here are two, steampunk giants that I would travel around the world to see. Until I can travel guilt free, I'll have to settle for life-sized robotic dinosaurs.

This is a lazy post, on a lazy night, after, let's face it, a lazy year of posting.
But I have to get back on the horse sometime.

found via botjunkie

Robo penguins

2009-04-23T05:48:00.004Z

One day, I'll paddle my kayak-sub along the sunken coast of North America, with only my uplifted sea otter and a flock of robo penguins to scout the bacterial growths of sunken agricultural fields.....

The robopenguin by the incredibly named German company FESTO is grinding it's way through the internets, making flocking robodrones both more lifelike and something much more than meat-biology.

IF the eyes had been red, would you still think these beauties cuddly-wuddly?

And these drones aren't stuck to just water, they can fly too!

If it's floating pengu-droids that will shepherd in the new age of airships, I welcome it. But I hope the eighties cool guitar doesn't come back with it.

Now all we need are magma-surfing bio-mechanical King penguins that keep the deep basalt lords in their place to make me a completely banish that christian nonesense from my brain.

Six for Science

2009-04-15T16:14:00.002Z

The Good News Edition;

1. There is a "Lost World" of orangutans on Borneo - 2000 more and counting.

2. Colony Collapse Disorder might be on the way out.... maybe.

3. There's nothing like running on the Colbert treadmill in space!

4. It's not too late to save arctic ice... we just have to decrease emissions by 70 percent by the end of the century. Maybe.

5. Hey dude, which way to the exo-planet beach? Scientists look at how land/sea borders reflect light, in the hope we'll identify exo-planets.

6. Move over, Jacques Coustea. It looks like sea-scorpions were the first to create a portable breathing apparatus, 500 million years ago!

The Coast Wolf

2009-04-09T16:23:00.006Z

The wolves of the North American west coast are a different breed. They're smaller in size, dark in colour and eat primarily shellfish, salmon, carrion and the small black-tailed deer. They don't take down large game like other gray wolves, and they don't venture away from the coast.

Once, these wolves roamed a narrow strip of land from northern California to coastal Alaska. But now, many of these populations are extinct, with only two strong populations: Southern Alaska and Vancouver Island/the Great Bear Rainforest.

Swimming from island to island, these wolves thrive on the rocky shores and deep old growth.

Now, new research has shown that these wolves are genetically distinct from their closest gray wolf cousins. And this is important for a number of reasons. One, this research shows the incredible diversity within a species and gives us a better understanding on special adaptation to specific habitats. This lets us better manage species protection plans. And two, if a wolf that can roam hundreds of kilometres adapts to a specific environment, than the potential for other animals in this ecosystem to be unique is great.

The following is a piece I did for work on the coastal wolf. I interviewed Dr. Chris Darimont, an ecologist from the University of California Santa Cruz.

Chris was also one of the authors of the paper, "Human Predators Outpace Other Agents of Trait Change in the Wild", which gave evidence that humans have become an agent of evolution.

In this piece, I point out that the research was paid for by the Rainforest Conservation Foundation, a conservation group that is calling for the protection of the Great Bear Rainforest.
This is important, because many science stories do not question who is paying for the research. Do they have special interests that are clouding the science? By just putting their stories out their are you simply re-gurgitating press releases?

In this circumstance, I think that the science is clean, because the report was published in a respected journal, there were researchers from many universities, and no protests were associated with this release.

Nothing hurts science coverage more than when people hype the issue, falsify the data or refuse to have their work scrutinized. And an associated protest is never good.

Two Robots I Found Today....

2009-04-09T04:55:00.004Z

Robot 5drg-773 feeding the raptors.

Two things that would complete my life: robots with bubble domes and dinosaurs.
Check out more of Jake Parker's extraordinary work.

And now for a bubble-domed robot that looks like it could be right out of an airtight garage.

Check out more of Betteo's work.

Cleaning the bones of a Blue Whale

2009-04-06T21:53:00.009Z

The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever existed on this planet.
How big? Try over 170 tonnes in mass, and more than 33 metres in length. Think of the blue whale as a mountain of meat.

Still not sure how large one of these cetaceans can be? Check out this infographic:

This is from National Geographic's "Kingdom of the Blue Whale," a two-hour look at the life of this mysterious leviathan.

My tape, on the other hand, is about prepping one of these whales for display in a museum.
I went down to the boatyard in Victoria, BC to speak with Michael deRoos, a master skeleton articulator who is in the process of de-greasing and cleaning the bones. The skeleton comes from a 27 m long whale that washed up on a Prince Edward Island beach in 1987.

After being buried for twenty years, this whale was cut-up, put into two refrigerated containers and shipped to Victoria. The bones were then placed in giant vats filled with a bacterial culture to draw out the hundreds of litres of grease in a whale skeleton.

And this is where my story begins...

This piece first aired on On the Island, and later on the PEI morning show. The voices you hear are Gregor Craigie, me (Sterling Eyford,) and Michael deRoos.

This blue whale articulation is unprecedented, because never has a corpse of a blue whale been cleaned and mounted. Sure, you can see skeletons, but they were never saved and handled from the graveyard to the museum.

To find out more about this project, got to Project:Blue Whale at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum.

The next time I go to see the bones, I promise to take some pictures.

Check out the whale being buried in 1987.

Now, watch them dig it up!

When robots deliver...

2009-03-18T03:59:00.003Z

Do you remember playing with little toy helicopters? The type you would spin with your hands and watch fly for a glorious 5 seconds?

Do you remember feeling the wind from the blades caress your child-like face, and revel in the whirling hum it made, like some caught tropical fly?

And do you remember thinking that if only you could attach a robotic monkey to it, you could one day terrorize the world and become a shipping magnate?

Was that just me?

Well, now my dream has been realized with this concept delivery-bot by Matthias Schmiedbauer.

The Cargonaut is "a humanoid flight robot, comes to your current position to relieve you of your loads. After placing your bags or luggage in one of the publicly available sky boxes, Cargonaut delivers within minutes to a chosen destination."

Like a cybernetic flying monkey from a time traveling L. Frank Baum, who carried around the works of Syd Mead in a emerald-crystal optical parasite.

I want one.

And I should do more strange posts on this blog.

found via coroflot

Keep it simple, stupid

2009-02-24T19:47:00.002Z

Wow, a webcomic just turned me on to the simple wikipedia and I have been blown away. It's like wikipedia, only not for people who are already rocket scientists.

Sure, it may be lacking some detail, but if there's a really complex subject you just want to learn the basics about, simple wikipedia is the way to go. Take, for example, the entry on the large hadron collider:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's biggest and highest-energy particle accelerator, used to make some very small things called particles hit each other.

There's more info than just that in the entry, but how much more do regular folks need to know?

I strongly recommend everyone give this site a look.

p.s. In case you were wondering, here's the comic that inspired this post:

The Imperial March with Tesla Coil accompaniment

2009-02-14T18:58:00.004Z

Found via Geekdad

ArcAttack uses Tesla Coils to produce music.
How it works:

These high tech machines produce an electrical arc similar to a continuous lightning bolt which put out a crisply distorted square wave sound reminiscent of the early days of synthesizers. The music consists of original highly dance-able electronic compositions that sometimes incorporates themes or dub of popular songs.

Which leads me to ask, would Nikola Tesla have imagined his tools to become musical instruments? He envisioned radio, particle guns, ion-propelled aircraft, death rays, theories of gravity and, of course, alternating current. But music?

I think that when he stood in the cross-arcs of his lab, he felt the hum of electricity. To Tesla, his designs were music enough, but it's too tempting to not think of him with a DJ rig, throwing out beats to crazed youth underneath the crushing power of Niagara Falls.

Happy Darwin Day!

2009-02-13T05:36:00.002Z

David Attenborough and the Tree of Life.

Remember people - CREATIONISM MAKES YOU STUPID!

Methane on Mars - Old news, but good news

2009-02-07T06:34:00.004Z

Great NASA scienceprop on how a blip of gas is changing the way we conceptualize the red planet.

Sure, everybody knows about the methane on Mars... but if you haven't figured out by now, this blog is mostly about us, not you.

Coming up tomorrow - how not to pitch a science story for a local current affairs radio show.
Here's a hint: try not to say menopausal whales more than three times in one sitting.

NASA video found via Colony Worlds

Six for Science

2009-01-28T03:28:00.004Z

Here we go,

1. There are no boys from Brazil - all those freakish blonde twins are the work of inbreeding, not the Nazis.

2. Converting the the moon program to run on biodiesel - is there nothing that the agricultural corps can't get there dirty hands into?

3. New evidence pointing to a giant flood that trashed the Black Sea after the last ice age. Or, why yes, there is proof of Noah's flood, but evangelical grandpa, you won't be happy about it....

4. Mountain Gorilla numbers are increasing in the Congo, despite human civil war.

5. Computer modeling raises doubt on how planets formed in the proto-solar system.

6. Plants developed the ability to hold themselves up before they ever made it to land. There's lignin in some seaweed, people!

Streaming Wi-Fi Internet Radio.... finally... maybe?

2009-01-28T02:47:00.005Z

I work in radio. I aspire to do keep working in radio. And most of my future media plans involve some form of radio.

But there has been a big disconnect between radio content and digital radio availability.

Sure, I can stream radio over the internet, or receive satellite radio, or listen to podcasts on my ipod. But what I can't do is stream radio over a handheld device that doesn't need the gatekeeper of a home computer.

For years there have been designs, and some experiments, but nothing has really hit the market.

Hopefully, that will soon change.

My friend Grant Surridge covers media for the Financial Post. In a recent story, he spoke with a couple guys in the radio business. The hope is that broadcasters will push to provide wi-fi capability and build a market for wi-fi radio. The concern is that wi-fi will only be available in cities, and new devices will cost hundreds of dollars.

But there is another way - hack the system and provide apps that will take/clone streaming sources onto your wi-fi enabled phone or player. The idea that a separate device is essential is top-heavy and doesn't mesh with radio history.

As for worries that wi-fi radio would be city centric - so what? Digital radio is only available in cities, Satellite radio is only really available in urban areas, and you can't get high-speed internet in the bush.

Radio started out big when all you needed was a transmitter and people to buy expensive living room sets. But when the handheld portable radio took off, radio became a colossal titan that ate away at government broadcasters and started the pirate radio network in Europe.

The ipod has done a similar job, except it's controlled by the Apple Oligarch.
But bandwidth, if not free, can be super cheap- I'm broadcasting a wi-fi signal right now. And production of code is open source.

Audio streaming is already out there. It just has to be liberated.

The radio picture is a National Panasonic Radio model RF-93, circa 1970. Found via galessa's plastics'

More on the domestication of dogs

2009-01-27T17:46:00.005Z

Sterling's post on the salish wool dog brought up some interesting points about how dogs became domesticated in the first place. I couldn't let this topic fade away without bringing up the case of the tame silver foxes at a farm in Siberia. But first, a couple of things.

The Nova video at the end of the post put forward two theories:

1) Ancient peoples went through thousands and thousands of trial-and-error attempts to domesticate wolves by raising pups.

2) Wolves domesticated themselves when the tamer individuals started eating from garbage dumps created when human villages first sprung up.

The proponent of the second theory seems to do a pretty good job of poking holes in the first theory, but we never hear a rebuttal of the second.

Personally, I think the second theory is very sound, but that it doesn't go far enough.

If you haven't read the New York Times story linked above about the silver foxes, I'll give you the coles notes version now: Essentially, for 40 years, a Siberian fur farmer has only allowed the tamest of his foxes to breed. The end result is that over the course of 35 generations, the farm has created a domesticated fox. Interestingly enough, it's not just the behaviour of the animals that's changed, their appearance has as well:

Dr. Trut wrote that by breeding the tamest animals from each of about 35 successive generations, the final offspring were not only tame from early puppyhood but also looked different from their wild forebears.
The normal pattern of coat color that evolved in wild foxes as camouflage changed markedly in the genetically tamed fox population, with irregular piebald splotches of white fur appearing in some animals. The tame foxes sometimes developed floppy ears in place of the straight ones of wild foxes. The domesticated foxes generally had shorter legs and tails than ordinary foxes, and often had curly tails instead of straight, horizontal tails.
Moreover, the faces of adult tame foxes came to look more juvenile than the faces of wild adults, and many of the experimental animals developed dog-like features, Dr. Trut reported. Although no selective pressures relating to size or shape were used in breeding the animals, the skulls of tamable foxes tended to be narrower with shorter snouts than those of wild foxes.

To me, this research goes a long way toward backing up the first theory in the Nova video: That humans, through trial and error, domesticated dogs. I can't get over the nagging doubts raised about that theory, specifically that humans, when they were spending so much of their energy on day-to-day survival, didn't the time or effort available to go through the trouble of domesticating a wolf, especially since by bringing a wolf into their lifes, they were bringing with them a very real danger if they failed in taming the animal.

So this, presented as someone who has very limited training in the field of animal psychology and watched an eight minute video and then read an article on the topic, is my theory:

Tamer wolves started hanging out in dumps. Not being as scared of humans, tameness started to be selected for in a certain group. After many generations, and the animals becoming much tamer, humans started bringing the tamest of the wolves (could they even really be called wolves at this point?) into their homes and from there, finished off the long domestication process.

Phew. Yes, I did just write a long post that essentially could have been written in one line saying "It's a combination of the two!" but that wouldn't have been very interesting at all, would it?

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Please, poke holes!

The Salish Wool Dog

2009-01-27T04:15:00.006Z

Camp dog (left), Wool dog (right). Drawing, CJ Pye.

Before Hudson Bay blankets were available to coastal first nations,
a special breed of dog filled the niche of the domesticated sheep.

The Salish Wool Dog was a small, fluffy, white animal that was kept for it's long, thin hair.

Just picture it, longhouses along the beach, war canoes above the high-tide zone,
and pen with white dogs in them. And when it came time to harvest the wool, the people sheared them like sheep.

Imagine, shearing a dog, in a time when metal razors and electric clippers were non-existent.

But keeping the dogs, and making sure they kept pure, was hard work. So when yards of wool were only a good trade away, this little white dog was left to interbreed with the camp dogs.

The last known wool dog died out in the early 20th century.

To find out more about the now extinct wool dog, I had a conversation with Susan Crockford, evolutionary biologist and dog specialist.

She spoke with me in a room filled with bones while I handled the skull of a now extinct domestic breed.

Susan is a really interesting scientist. She has published a theory that simple changes in they thyroid can change to drastic and lasting changes in a species.
She says this explains the way that most species are domesticated.

And the really interesting part? This theory explains how dogs domesticated themselves.

Check out this video from Nova:

Remembering a V2 rocket

2009-01-23T05:17:00.006Z

The V2 rocket is the progenitor of modern rockets, but they started as a weapon of war.

Over 1400 of these rockets were launched at England in 1944 and 1945.
One of these rockets struck Geoffrey Voss's farm. The rocket caused massive damage, but a few pieces of german tech made it through the explosion. More than sixty years later, Geoffrey still has a few of the bits, including a working, electric fuel-pump from the rocket's motor.

I first met Geoffrey while searching for story ideas. In my business, you need stories everyday to fill the maw of broadcast time. And I had nothing. So I googled "Victoria"and "rockets." Two days later, this piece aired on the Mother Corp.

Music - Django Reinhardt - Nuages

Your own personal flying machine

2009-01-15T18:32:00.004Z

Ever wanted to be a pilot, but didn't want to go through years of flight training only to have your actions in the air restricted by what air traffic controllers tell you can or can't do? Well friends, that future is soon.

The Icon A5, a small personal aircraft with wings that fold up for easy storage, is the answer to your prayers. And it can be yours for a cool $139,000. Seems expensive, but for what it is, you can't really get a better deal anywhere (not yet, anyway.)

via Wired

The hallucinogenic powers of everyday drugs

2009-01-14T16:52:00.003Z

By now, I'm guessing most of you have heard that U.K. researchers have linked large daily intakes of caffeine to an increased risk of hallucinating.

I'm also guessing that there at least a few of you are reading this after a Google along the lines of "how do i use caffeine to get high." If that's how you got here, let me tell you a short story.

In high school, a friend of mine was just the type of guy who would have typed the above phrase into Google if the internet had been as all knowing as it is today. Not having the Internet to guide him, but looking for new and exciting ways to get high, he crushed up a coffee bean and smoked it in a pipe. The following is not an exact quote, but it's how I remember him telling me about his experience:

It was good for about a second, exciting even. Then I lost my peripheral vision, it was wasn't there anymore. Then the blackness starting spreading and I had real tunnel vision. Pretty soon I couldn't see anything. I didn't feel high, I just felt like I was going blind. I was scared. Then, about 20 minutes of freaking out later, My vision started coming back.

I'm never doing that again.

So I guess if you want an answer to the question-mark-less question "how do i use caffeine to get high", I guess the answer is that you probably shouldn't.

* The future soon does not advocate the use of drugs illegal or otherwise. You should talk to a medical professional about anything you want to put in your body. We assume no responsibility for any stupid decisions any reader may make, whether that decision involves drug use, financial matters, poor relationship decisions or anything else.

Six for Science

2009-01-13T03:12:00.003Z

All is Science!

Here we go:

1. Hunting is speeding up natural selection... and it's not a good thing.

2. Get ready to strut your stuff in your chicken feather suit.

3. Where the bison roam, domestic cattle are kept safe from disease.

4. Galaxies are formed around the ultimate destruction - black holes form before galaxies.

5. Bats and wind turbines don't mix.

6. Why getting rid of some invasive species can cause bigger problems - when the cats away, the rabbits destroy everything.

The History of the Internet

2009-01-11T01:53:00.003Z

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

It's been a while since I've posted an infographic.

A great primer on the history of the internet from graphic artist Melih Bilgil.

From timesharing to filesharing and from Arpanet to the Internet, this film has it all. It's the best 7 minute short you'll see all day.

Found via Infosthetics

ART NOUVEAU STEAMPUNK - The way the revolution should have been

2009-01-09T02:41:00.005Z

This fantastic short animation by Adrien "CaYuS" Toupet, Clément Delatre & Looky is a perfect gem of revolutionary naivete, dystopianism and art noveau design.

The story of a revolutionary poster artist who designs Alphonse Mucha inspired agitprop, this five minutes is better than any full length steampunk film.

And it uses a design premise which it too often associated with the non-industrial - Art Nouveau.

Art Nouveau was inspired by what the machine would allow society to produce. Born beside mass production, this art form shunned the idea of a single craftsman for the utopian dream of human ingenuity paired with technology and new materials. Art Nouveau wasn't an art movement that coddled the artist and kept them in the past, but a basis of thought that questioned what was possible and strove the designer to innovate.

Sure, the character Cheri draws the product by hand, but by hooking her mind up to the steam-powered fabricator, she is using high technology and bypassing the one-off construction. She uses the tools of oppression to creat her art, and later die for it.

Before I sound too bolshi, the steam guns of the armoured police rock. And the thought of industrial wastelands lurking in the heart of Hausmann-like city blocks has a strong Mieville-like feel.

This film feels revolutionary.
It feels real.
And it leaves me wanting more of this story.

La Main des Maîtres
by -CaYuS-

La Main des Maîtres

Interview with La Main des Maitres Team

THE MARS PHOENIX LANDER IS GONE

2008-11-11T02:21:00.007Z

My life with the Mars Phoenix Lander started with a green laser beam in the sky.

It was early fall in Halifax in 2006 when I looked up in the sky one night and saw a green beam shooting up into the night sky. I'd never seen anything like this before, so I asked the locals what it was, but no one could give me a straight answer. I was told it was either a communication test for extraterrestrials, part of an advertising campaign for Moosehead Lager or a weapons test by the American military to shoot down satellites.

Instead of slacking off and believing the ridiculous, I called the Dalhousie Department of Science and found out the green beam was part of a LIDAR experiment run by a group of astronomers/climatologists.

What's a LIDAR? It's kind of like sonar - you shoot a beam of light into the sky. When the light hits water vapour, dust, animals, the light bounces back to the emitter, telling you the composition of the atmosphere. By studying how the light reflects, and how much of it bounces back, you can tell what is going on in the sky. This let's you know how much water vapour is in the sky, what the temperature is, density of pollutants and even air movement. All this by using a big powerful laser, a team of at least four people, and a lot of computing power.

So, being a science geek, that was enough for me to be interested. But I wasn't expecting what I found out next: that the green beam was the bigger brother of a breadloaf-sized piece of kit that was going to be launched to Mars! And it was Canadian tech!

The next day I took a video camera, a beautiful camera-girl, and every ounce of science geekery to speak with Dr. Tom Duck of the Atmospheric-Optic Laboratory. Check out the video to find out more. Generally, what I found was that the Mars Phoenix Lander would let us know if there is water in the atmosphere of Mars, and give us an idea where the water in Mars oceans went.

I did the video piece a year before the launch. And then I watched the launch live on NASA TV. And then I live blogged the landing.

I watched the Mars lander almost everyday. I cheered the landing. I yelled out when the robotic arm dug up ice. And when the LIDAR detected snow I was shocked. In that instant I realized that Mars was so much more interesting than even I had thought before. With water ice falling from the sky Mars became so much more like Earth. And this means that not only does the geology of Mars make more sense, but life on Mars suddenly looks a lot more likely.

When a beam of light shot up from the Phoenix, our perception of the universe changed.

And now the Phoenix has shut down, unable to keep itself warm against the cold Martian winter.

The Mars Phoenix lander has set the standard for future projects, changed the nature of how we view Mars and proven again that Canadian tech is as as good NASA and the ESA.

But to me, the Phoenix was my first story and made me realize that I could become a science journalist.

Phoenix, you will be missed.

Wired - Mars Phoenix lander runs out of juice

Official- Mars Phoenix Lander

PHOTO FEATURE - JUMPING DOLPHINS

2008-10-12T17:33:00.003Z

When you're spending a lazy day reading science books on the West Coast, putting up an astounding picture is about the limit of possible blogging.

And surfing dolphins fit's the bill.

This is a wallpaper from the National Geographic International Photography contest.

This photo was taken by Andrew Wong off the coast of South Africa.

Found via Dark Roasted Blend

Solo Jet-Copter for the adventurous

2008-10-10T04:34:00.004Z

This craft is what every Science Pirate needs when exploring the ruins of ancient skycraypers, or keeping up with a flock pterosaurs!

And then when you need to chase down arctic 'roos, our escape the Icelandic Steppe Skaters, try this little baby out.

Yutaka Igarashi, you are my hero!

Found via Core 77

Six for Science... IN THE SKY!

2008-10-08T02:39:00.006Z

Let's go fly with science!

1. Giant ocean going geese with teeth - Canadian geese have nothing on these guys.

2. Robo-pterodactyl's are on their way. And I for one welcome our new paleo-cyborg masters.

3. Penguins are flying to the south pole thanks to the Brazilian Air Force.

4.Killer asteroids can be tracked from Earth, and this explosion over the Sudan proves it! Now all we have to do is stop them!

5. Cannibal eagles of the Alaskan coast - will BC eagles be next?

6. India is going to fly above the atmosphere towards the moon in a little robotic spacecraft. Awesome.

Video - One Rat Short

2008-10-07T05:00:00.002Z

I saw this short film on the Tor Saturday Morning Cartoon and couldn't help posting about it.

"One Rat Short" by Alex Weil is like a re-telling of the city mouse country mouse, with a street rat and a pharma-rat thrown in to juice up the story.

Imagine a bit of Secret of N.I.M.H mixed with an episode of Regenesis.

Enjoy.

Future soon will resume regular scheduled blogging tomorrow.

Snow is falling on Mars!

2008-09-30T14:32:00.004Z

The Mars Phoenix has discovered all sorts of nifty things - water, atmospheric dynamics and now snow!

From NASA:
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. Spacecraft soil experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth.

A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.

The technology is Canadian and was designed under the watchful eye of Dalhousie prof Tom Duck.

It's beginning to feel a lot like a science christmas around the future soon... except for the baby Jesus bit.

Crows make monkeys out of chimps

2008-09-25T20:09:00.005Z

The headline's so nice it had to be used twice.

It's well documented that we here at the future soon have a strong admiration for birds of the corvid family. Especially the crows. Well, New Scientist has given us even more reason to love the noisy little buggers.

Any non-human that can outperform a chimp on an intelligence test rates high in my book.

That photo is supposedly of a monkey being chased by a crow. But I don't know.

Thanks to Sterling for sending the link!

Six for Science

2008-09-18T04:06:00.002Z

Science up, people!

1. First potential visual of an exo-solar planet!

2. If you're dying to find out where Mars's atmosphere is going, you'll have to wait until 2013. New robots to Mars, yeah!

3.The energy source of the future will resemble alpine meadows with flowers caressed by wind. Except nano-scale and made by Chinese researchers...

4. Cubans in Space! Welcome to 70's socialist sci-fi.

5. Blind ants of the Amazon rainforest.

6. Nothing alive on earth is faster than a fungus spore.

Worried about the LHC?

2008-09-10T20:45:00.002Z

Check this site for updates on whether CERN's experiment has caused the world to end.

The world is not going to end

2008-09-09T18:38:00.007Z

100 metres underground, crossing the border of Switzerland and France is a 27-kilometre cavern. Inside this cavern lies the greatest experiment humankind has ever undertaken. So great, in fact, that some crazies -- and some religious folks who don't believe in science -- believe it may cause the end of the world.

And the experiment begins tonight.

Yes, there is a chance that the Large Hadron Collider is going to create some small black holes. But that chance is extremely remote and, even if black holes are produced, no less than Stephen Hawking himself believes that nothing bad will come of them.

Hawking also, in the above-linked article, says that the LHC is at least as important as the space program. I don't know about you, but I'd take Hawking's word over that of a man in Hawaii who claims to be a botanist.

What the LHC can offer in terms of scientific discovery, if divided by the risks it poses, would be approaching infinity. But I'll let some much more qualified sources explain that:

• New Scientist (the first possibility, while supremely unlikely, would be quite amazing)
• Scientific American LHC Countdown

If you'd rather listen to a rap explaining the LHC, here's New Scientist freelancer and US/LHC Kate McAlpine collaborating with Future Soon favourite, MC Hawking:

Previously on the Future Soon: A theory of everything

Giant Mechanical Spider

2008-09-06T03:57:00.002Z

Chris, can I have one?

This is a giant mechanical spider called "la princesse." Designed by the same people who brought you a giant elephant.

One day, Chris, one day the future soon will have such a noble beauty.

And the earth shall be confused.

Six for Science

2008-09-02T02:07:00.002Z

It's a good month for posting, let's post too!

1. It pays off when you go looking for primates in the deep bush - first gorillas, now gibbons and langurs.

2. I can't believe there is only one dog in the world that's trained to find bees - my dog used to eat them.

3. Bad news - Tasmanian facial cancer is evolving into a more dangerous strain.

4. Coastal wolves prefer salmon over venison - although I'm sure a little surf and turf platter goes a long way to soothing the alpha male.

5. Where comets swarm is a great place to colonize - and HD 181327 is only 150 light years away and lousy with the iceballs.

6. Opportunity rover is out on the open Matian plain, and better for it.

Fun with Wordle

2008-08-09T22:53:00.004Z

I stumbled across wordle, an graphic imager of website content. As you can see, I probably got a little carried away. But to throw futuresoon into an imager was too tempting.

The only thing I don't like about the site is that you need an rss feed for the program to work. I tried putting both Origin of Species and the works of Kropotkin into Wordle, with no success. I guess I'll have to wait for mark 2.

Which one of these images should I make into a t-shirt?

Six for Science

2008-08-03T19:43:00.003Z

August will be better 'cause there's WATER ON MARS!
Here we go:

1. In the time before time the stars were Titans

2. The tropics were once frozen

3. Smallest snake in world discovered - vertebrates keep getting smaller!

4. Two arm transplants in one surgery - that's a bargain...

5. Reasons why medieval Italians danced themselves to death - the rhythm really did get them.

6. And just in case you missed it, the Antikythera mechanism keeps coming up with new uses.

Happy birthday, NASA

2008-07-29T17:41:00.005Z

50 years ago today, U.S. President Eisenhower signed a very important piece of paper. The paper was legislation that, with the president's signature, brought the National Aeronautics and Space Administration into existence.

I was planning a big post about why NASA is so important, but most anybody reading this blog already knows. Also: Wired beat me to it.

Last year I was lucky enough to visit the Kennedy Space Center. If you're one of the people who doubt the sheer magnitude of NASA's accomplishments, I suggest you do as I did and visit one of the locations where a Saturn V (pictured above) is on display.

UPDATE: The BBC, in honour of NASA's golden anniversary, has posted a collection of videos marking some of the Agency's milestones. Definitely worth a look.

Six for Science

2008-07-29T15:34:00.004Z

Wow, where have you been the last ten days?
Here we go:

1. Diamonds are life's best friend.
2. Drunk shrews know how to deal with a hangover.
3. Working on Mars time leaves crew astro-jet-lagged.
4. Cooling the ocean 400 million years ago is the reason why the Earth is bio-diverse.
5. Big blimps to the Arctic - let's not talk about the Italia...
6. Leopard vs Crocodile - this is old to the net, but new to me. Check it out.

Designing the future - Moebius

2008-07-18T02:20:00.007Z

There are a number of people who have seen the future, and then made everyone else make it.

Moebius, aka Jean Giraud, is one of them.

A French designer, Giraud was one of the founders of Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal in the English world,) a comic that re-invigorated North American sci-fi art. Throw in his comics Airtight Garage, Arzach and the deeply influential western series Blueberry, and you have the basis for a master of visual art.
He is also the concept artist for Tron, Willow, the Fifth Element, the Abyss and influenced the look of Star Wars and every otherworldly sci-fi film out there.

If you watch animated shows, read comics, enjoy movies or love Westerns, you have seen the work of Moebius.

That's why you should watch this doc on him called Moebius Redux.

Next in this series - Syd Mead

Six for Science

2008-07-11T14:56:00.002Z

Science to the weeked:

1. A microbe is better than communicating than you are.

2. I hope I don't drown in the water on the moon...

3. NASA to sail into space.

4. Jovian climatic siblicide.

5. Yep, that galaxy's a breeder - 4000 stars a year!

6. The mournful cry of the melting iceberg.

Banding Cooper's Hawks - The Urban Hawk

2008-07-07T22:26:00.014Z

A few weeks ago I went out to catch a Cooper's Hawk.

We ended up catching five.

The Cooper's Hawk is the most common raptor in the Victoria area. Only about the size of a crow, this hawk can often be seen flying over city parks and sidewalks.

Unlike some raptors, like the Northern goshawk, the Cooper's Hawk actually prefers the urban habitat, because our yards, playing fields, gardens, back alleys and rooftops provide an ideal habitat to catch starlings, sparrows, rabbits a rats.

Andy Stewart is the Cooper's Hawk Guru. A retired Ministry of Environment biologist, Stewart started researching Cooper's Hawks as a hobby 14 years ago. And he discovered something incredible - Cooper's Hawks breed very well in the city. So well, that by this year there are at least 28 Cooper's Hawk nests in the city, with all of these nest bearing between three and five chicks.

These are picture of 18 day-old Cooper's Hawks. They are about the size of a rabbit, fluffy, and completely helpless. That was two weeks ago. Now these little demons would be fully feathered, active and very aggressive. And told me that if I was able to hold a fledging hawk, the bird would rip into my hand, attack my face and try to ruin my day.

But when I did this piece for CBC, these little birds made a peep. That's because when a chick is 30-metres up in a nest, the less it moves and the less sound it makes will help hide them from predators.

But not researchers.

Fourteen years into his "hobby," Stewart has found that Cooper's Hawks are breeding fast, successfully, and the population in on the rise.

However, not everything in the city is great - over 40% of dead hawks found died after flying into windows. And traffic hitting hawks on the ground near roadkill doesn't help either.

Stewart is optimistic about the species population, and with his banding of dozens and dozens of birds each year, he knows that there is more to find out about this hawk that is called "The Urban Bird."

Listen to this tape to find out more.

Six for Science

2008-07-04T01:09:00.003Z

Post Number 500!

Here's to 500 more:

1. Melt water might not speed up the death of a glacier. I hope they're right.

2. Volcanoes discovered on Mercury.

3. Lions use roads to kill giraffes.

4. The ultimate solar system is very oval.

5. Using a clutch to control flagellum - nature and engineers think alike. But don't go thinking god is involved.

6. The ez-bake oven on the Phoenix lander is damaged and might not be able to cook life out of sand after all.

Trade Waiting, Episode 01

2008-07-02T04:06:00.003Z

Here it is, a week late and with wonky sound.

Still, it’s a great listen.

What you’ll hear about in Episode 01:

New comics, how mainstream is winning, ‘Nam, and how Dan Dare is the father of Red Sonya.

Also, how not to mike a third person.

So, here you go.

Trade Waiting Episode 01

Music:

Hip Hop Violin

Have You Had Enough - Rickie Lee Jones

Trade Waiting - Paul Dateh

Robotic Water Snake

2008-06-27T05:13:00.003Z

Watch the future, right here

This is the ACM-R5 from Hirose Fukushima Lab in Japan:

"ACM-R5 is equipped with paddles and passive wheels around the body (Fig. 5). To generate propulsive force by undulation, the robot need a resistance property as it glides freely in tangential direction but cannot in normal direction. Due to the paddles and passive wheels, ACM-R5 obtains that character both in water and on ground."

The designers are still having a few issues with control and motion, but as you can see, it would take a robotocist to notice.

I can't wait to get one.

found via grinding.be

Popo and Finnegan better watch out for this thing...

Science heroine - Hedy Lamarr

2008-06-26T04:09:00.002Z

Hedy Lamarr - actress, dancer, scientist.

Called the most beautiful woman of her day, Hedy was much more than just a silver screen starlet.

She was an inventor.

In 1941, Lamarr, along with George Antheil, created the frequency-hopped spread spectrum invention.

What is this device? Simply, it is the basis of our wireless world.

Listen to this piece that ran on Studio 360 to find out more.

Nothing to do with Science...

2008-06-25T05:15:00.002Z

or maybe everything.

This is Christopher Walken doing, possibly, the best dance routine in movie history.

Who would have thought a dancing pimp was in a movie called Pennies from Heaven?

I saw in an interview with Walken that after the premiere of Pennies from Heaven, two men came up and told him he was the best dancer they had ever seen.

Those two men? Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.

You'll never think of that Fat Boy Slim video again!

Sunday is...Ant day

2008-06-22T20:09:00.003Z

Stumbled across a few ant videos, thought I would put them up...

Ants Engineering- Building A Bridge Within No Time - video powered by Metacafe

Trade Waiting, Episode 00

2008-06-22T01:26:00.002Z

Hello,

Sterling here. I just want to let you know that future soon radio has expanded! We now have a co-production with Legends Comics called Trade Waiting!

We talk comics, comic history, odd and ends. And I try to top it off with the best music around.

So check out Episode 00.

note: Odeo is acting up on me, so you'll have to wait for the player in blog.
Also, the Science Chaser isn't dead, and a logo for future soon might not be that far away!

WATER ON MARS! WATER ON MARS! WATER ON MARS!

2008-06-20T02:05:00.002Z

From The Mars Phoenix site:

Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.

"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

On Sol 24, Phoenix extended the first trench in the middle of a polygon at the "Wonderland" site. While digging, the Robotic Arm came upon a firm layer, and after three attempts to dig further, the arm went into a holding position. Such an action is expected when the Robotic Arm comes upon a hard surface.

Meanwhile, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is preparing a software patch to send to Phoenix in a few days so scientific data can again be saved onboard overnight when needed. Because of a large amount a duplicative file-maintenance data generated by the spacecraft Tuesday, the team is taking the precaution of not storing science data in Phoenix's flash memory, and instead downlinking it at the end of every day, until the conditions that produced those duplicative data files are corrected.

"We now understand what happened, and we can fix it with a software patch," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. "Our three-month schedule has 30 days of margin for contingencies like this, and we have used only one contingency day out of 24 sols. The mission is well ahead of schedule. We are making excellent progress toward full mission success."

Six for Science

2008-06-17T04:29:00.003Z

And in Science Weather today -

1. Dowsing for water.... FROM SPACE!

2. Three super Earth's in distant solar system - how long until a mere mortal Earth is found?

3. Diptrodon is not eight species, but one...maybe.

4. Steam + Solar = free power.

5. Spiders can use silk to mess around with the reality of flies.

6. Paleontologists searching for "the megafauna" in the Yukon.

Bonus - what Giraffe's would look like if they lived like North Americans.

Planning a trip? Don't forget to check the weather

2008-06-16T19:49:00.005Z

As we've blogged about before, the Phoenix lander has landed on the red planet. And now, since their main contribution to the Phoenix was a weather station, the Canadian Space Agency is providing updates on the latest Martian weather conditions.

The Volcanic Metropolis - Project Indigo

2008-06-16T04:37:00.006Z

Project Indigo is the most fantastic thing I've seen all week. An inverted, vertical city in the middle of the ocean with a literally stratified caste structure.

It's like living in a faded Venice while the Ottomans take over with the threat of Vesuvius as your bases of reality.

Jesse van Dijk is a genius.

Airship dreams - Airship City

2008-06-13T05:29:00.002Z

A living city of an alternate today - living buildings, honey-combed domesticity and a great view of downtown.

Compton looks like a great place to catch a sky-ship.

Illustration by bioLINIA

Six for Science

2008-06-10T14:58:00.004Z

Science in the brine.

1. Deep sea squid are toxic, and it's our fault.

2. The robotic fish can school - is the Singularity far away?

3. 95% of our coastlines are not doing so well.

4. There were two types of mammoths - I wonder which one was a leaner burger?

5. How to spot moons in distant solar systems - a new hobby for a new century.

6. Darwin was a genius, but we have Alfred Russel Wallace to thank for the Origin of Species.

Art: Dangermarc's Kraken.

He's really cool.

Airships - because it's my birthday

2008-06-07T18:09:00.002Z

This is a tiny part of an amazing ABC series on the history of the airship.
Watch them all!

Sincerely,

FuturesoonAirshipControl

What technology promised - Dance

2008-06-05T05:25:00.002Z

Weapons of death = beautiful movement.

And not in the usual "I like how it kills" sort-of way.

French "Mirage" fighter jet team performs truly spectacular show in the sky in June 2006. (Alphajet and a Mirage flying across Europe. 19:42 min long).

Found via Dark Roasted Blend

Six for Science

2008-06-03T04:51:00.002Z

Into the deep we dive:

1. The Titanic was found because Ballard was looking for sunken nuclear sub's.

2. Now dolphin's are getting sick from the sewage we pump out.

3. Big wigs at NASA wanted you to think global warming wasn't too bad. It didn't work.

4. China just can't catch a break - now they're being blamed for New Guinean deforestation.

5. When you are a nautiloid you don't need specialized brain sectors for memory.

6. Phoenix is digging!

Phoenix on Ice

2008-06-01T23:16:00.002Z

From JPL/NASA:

The image received Friday night from the spacecraft's Robotic Arm Camera shows patches of smooth and level surfaces beneath the thrusters.

"This suggests we have an ice table under a thin layer of loose soil," said the lead scientist for the Robotic Arm Camera, Horst Uwe Keller of Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany.

"We were expecting to find ice within two to six inches of the surface," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for Phoenix. "The thrusters have excavated two to six inches and, sure enough, we see something that looks like ice. It's not impossible that it's something else, but our leading interpretation is ice."

It keeps getting better and better.

Six for Science

2008-05-29T14:24:00.003Z

Keeping you in the know, six stories at a time:

1. Bees and satellites track global climate change.

2. The cyborg monkeys are now among us....

3. Chimps like their food cooked as much as we do.

4. Giant vegetables from space!

5. Living computers can do math.

6. Sci-fi on Mars.

Alien Planet

2008-05-29T05:35:00.001Z

Since I referred to the autonomous blimp-bots from Alien Planet, I thought I should link to the doc.

Here it is.

More Mars Pics!

2008-05-29T05:09:00.004Z

A view to the North West.

Phoenix lander descending over Heimdall crater.

Panoramic view

The Phoenix is back in contact and ready to unleash the arm. Pretty soon we're going to dig hole, cook dirt and shoot lasers in the sky!

Try and stop us! I mean, try and stop the lander.

No, I'm not fantasizing I'm the Phoenix lander.

Well, maybe a little bit... but mostly I'm a martian airship.

Welcome to the New World of Pterosaur research!

2008-05-28T14:14:00.008Z

This is a murder of azhdarchids, giraffe sized pterosaurs, hunting the filed fare as they stalk the land in the deep past.

I have gushed about Mark Witton's work in recreating the dynamic past of the pterosaurs.

And now his work is getting a little more notice - it's on Science Daily and New Scientist!

From New Scientist:

The giant pterosaurs may have waded at times, but their small padded feet were better adapted to land, and most fossils come from inland areas. Their huge beaks and towering height would have given them plenty to eat on land.

"If your skull is over two meters in length, then bite-size includes everything up to a [baby] dinosaur the size of a fox," says Witton.

That may have helped them survive and become a common part of inland fauna during the last 10 million years of the Cretaceous period, before they died along with the dinosaurs.

Giant, carnivorous storks stalking across the land before they take wing to find their next meal.

Fantastic.

But how about we hear from Witton on this:

"If your skull is over two meters in length, then bite-size includes everything up to a [baby] dinosaur the size of a fox," says Witton.

That may have helped them survive and become a common part of inland fauna during the last 10 million years of the Cretaceous period, before they died along with the dinosaurs.

In our concluding image, then, you’ve got 750 kg of monster azhdarchids, Quetzalcoatlus, marauding around a Cretaceous fern-prairie in search of food. The one on the right has grabbed a baby titanosaur, the parents of whom are known from the same deposits that yield these giant pterosaurs. Personally, I reckon this is much better than my last reconstruction of azhdarchids engulfing a baby dinosaur, and, on reflection, it’s vaguely reminiscent of the iconic ‘Hills are Alive’ scenes in The Sound of Music. You know, with the rolling hills and mountains in the background and all that. Replace Julie Andrews with 5 m tall pterosaurs and it’s like you’re watching the same movie.

The hills are alive with baby-eating pterosaurs.

Mark Witton and Darren Naish are two young scientists I have been watching for a few years now. They have both completely altered my perception of the pterosaurs, and I thank them for it.