All posts by Dale Connelly

Science, Uncategorized

Asteroid Busters

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NASA has issued an “all hands on deck” call for assistance in finding possibly threatening asteroids and developing plans to confront them. This “Grand Challenge” acknowledges the power of crowd sourcing to solve difficult problems. If two heads working on a conundrum are better than one, two billion heads applied to the same stumper are a great marketing opportunity for your brand.

The deadline to respond to NASA’s Request for Information is July 18th.

That’s coming up fast – almost as fast as a careening out-of-control asteroid bent on Earth’s destruction! So you’d better get started on your schematics. Get out a sharp pencil and a big piece of paper. All you have to do is design a system that will …

“… capture and de-spin an asteroid with the following characteristics:

  • a. Asteroid size: 5 m < mean diameter < 13 m; aspect ratio < 2/1
  • b. Asteroid mass: up to 1,000 metric tons
  • c. Asteroid rotation rate: up to 2 revolutions per minute about any axis or all axes.
  • d. Asteroid composition, internal structure, and physical integrity will likely be unknown until after rendezvous and capture.
Image: NASA/Advanced Concepts Lab
Image: NASA/Advanced Concepts Lab

Simple, eh? Maybe so.

The beauty of crowdsourcing is that there are brains out there that will see this problem from just enough of a skewed angle to come up with an approach that no one else could think of.

The ugly of crowdsourcing is that millions of others will mimic each other with the same obvious but impractical and flat-out dumb idea.

NASA has given us a head start, releasing this image of one possible approach to creating a super-sophisticated space vehicle that could capture and transport a speeding space rock.

The idea has its roots in childhood play. It can’t be a coincidence that it looks so much like this extremely simple ball-in-cup game. Who didn’t play this as a kid? Or as an adult?

ball-in-cup

My problem with this approach is that I hated the ball-in-cup game. I found it incredibly frustrating and ultimately (because I couldn’t do it), boring.

I would never go this way with the Grand Asteroid Challenge. I’d go back to the solutions we tried on the hot, muggy, buggy nights of my youth and launch a giant sheet of super-sticky double-sided Asteroid Fly Paper. NASA could partner with 3M on this one. Building a thin but tough, mobile, super-sticky landing strip and putting it in the path of an onrushing asteroid wouldn’t be simple, but I believe it would be extremely satisfying. And the larger you make your sheet of Asteroid Fly Paper, the greater the chance you’ll get the asteroid you don’t expect – the one that wasn’t on your radar.

Once they’re trapped in the goo, we can examine freshly humbled space rocks to our heart’s content.

And no, I don’t know how we’ll get them off the paper, or even get close to them without getting stuck ourselves. That would be a DIFFERENT Grand Challenge.

How would you capture and control dangerous asteroids in space?

Uncategorized

Beechly’s Betrothal Brainstorm

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Today’s guest post is really a travel pitch from a partisan player, tourism-wise. I usually refuse to take these blatantly promotional offerings, but it’s late and I’m stuck for a blog entry. Plus, the writer is well known to us all as Minnesota’s 8th district Congressman, Loomis Beechly.

Beechly Officiates While Couple Canoedles.
Beechly Officiates While Couple Canoedles.

Greetings Constituents,

This is the time of year when Minnesota’s picturesque 9th district fills up with temporary new residents.

Welcome, cash cows!

I say this in the most loving way possible because we do rely on you to drop a bundle of dough while you are visiting the district. Our people are both desperate and grateful for your support, so whether it’s a wildly expensive lunch on a dock or an overpriced boat excursion or an extremely costly but smallish cup of earthworms, I hope you’ll be quiet and gladly fork over the bucks whenever we ask and not make a fuss about it.

After all, you’re on vacation! What’s the point of getting mad?

I also want to acknowledge that this is Pride Weekend in the Twin Cities, and coming as it does at the end of a week that included the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act, now seems like the perfect time for someone to suggest in a public forum that a group of people who really set the tone for style in our culture ought to initiate the yet-untried concept of in-the-lake weddings.

And I don’t say this merely because I represent all the water surface area in the state or because gay weddings are bound to be outrageously spendy affairs or because religious people might think they’ve cornered the lake ceremony market with their baptisms and making shallow water the go-to place for gay and lesbian unions would be a subtle but delicious in-your-face move, but just because this is something that could become amazingly stylish and it hasn’t been tried before.

As far as I know.

I would love it if two people getting hitched with their four feet in six inches of water at some Minnesota resort became a genuine GLBT (Gay Lake Betrothal Tradition).

Of course we’d have to think of some way to make this work in the winter, too. Possibly involving chainsaws, waders and heated tents.

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

Describe the classiest (or most memorable) wedding you’ve attended.

Uncategorized

Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

Ann_Landers baboon 2 copy

Summer has just begun and I feel like its already over.

The rain has been constant and the mosquitos have been huge. I’ve been working like crazy at my job and spending the rest of my time cutting up trees knocked over by the violent storms we’ve been having. Plus, I had to eat the entire contents of my freezer in one afternoon last weekend because the power went out. I still feel dangerously overstuffed and on the verge of exploding, I can’t sleep and I think I gained 40 pounds in spite of all the physical activity.

What’s worse, I made a bet with my sister-in-law that the Supreme Court would uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, and now that I’ve lost I’ll have to pay her by watching every minute and taking detailed notes on every episode in her boxed-set collection of Season 3 of Glee.

I haven’t done any of the enjoyable warm weather stuff I said I was going to do back in February when I was dreaming about right now, and I can feel the time slipping away.

This might be the worst summer ever.

Dr. Babooner, I know my attitude stinks and I’m focusing on all the wrong things. How can I deal with my frustration, guilt and regret, and still have a good summer in the (almost no) time that remains?

Sincerely,
Fallen Behind

I told Fallen she should resist the temptation to grade her summer. Once you establish a set of expectations you become too much like the stock market – everything is measured against what you thought would happen rather than what actually does happen, and you become tiresome to other people who are not in on the secret reasons for your suffering.

In Summertime, adding any project to your “to-do” list should require Congressional Action – that’s the only way to keep your schedule clear.

And you should never, ever make political bets with anyone. Especially not a relative. But if you have to wager with punishment by “Glee,” choose Season One, which was much better than Season Three.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner.

Uncategorized

Charged Up!

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

drained_battery

Hey Mr. C.,

I’ve really been loving the power outage we’ve had since last Saturday. I know my plan for summer was pretty much to sit in the basement at our house and play video games with my buddy Oscar other losers who also don’t have jobs. But all that gets thrown out the window when the power dies and your devices don’t work.

Then I realized this was a business opportunity!

So I grabbed my dad’s gasoline powered generator and went down to the nearby strip mall and found a table outside the Starbucks and put up a sign that said “charge your phone for $5”!

You wouldn’t believe how popular that was!

I ran the generator all day and using a power strip from the garage I was able to charge six cell phones at a time. It took about 2 hours to charge each phone, and I worked a 10 hour day, so do the math!

No, I mean literally, do the math, because I have no idea how to figure this out.

All I know is that running the generator all day long took ten gallons of gas at 3.54 per gallon and I think I wound up with more money than I had when I started. But it also cost me something in explaining time, since I had to argue with people pretty much nonstop about the noise and the fumes.

I think what with our infrastructure breaking down and all these mega-storms popping up, this could be my career – cell phone charger mogul. I hear they do it all the time in those “third world” countries, and my Uncle Dan says that’s what we’re turning into.

He’s kind of sour most of the time.

He also says that the word to remember for a young person looking to find a career used to be “plastics”, but today it’s “batteries.”

So anyway, I think this is going to be my great strategy – to charge batteries in places where the power has gone out.

Or I could just try to meet this girl I saw on CNN and convince her to marry me. Then I’d be set for life because she’s going to be rich. I’m pretty sure she’d like me a lot, though it would take some effort on her part because people say I’m not easy to know or understand.

But that’s OK – she seems like the type who isn’t afraid of a little work!

See you on Easy Street!

Your Pal,
Bubby

Describe a Get Rich Quick idea of yours that didn’t pan out.

Uncategorized

Blackout Haiku

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Power_tower

I was just a kid delivering newspapers along Sunset Road in Montrose, New York when the power went out across the Northeast and parts of Canada back in November 1965.

Lots of Minnesota kids had a similar experience this weekend, as power outages from storms on Friday darkened large parts of the Twin Cities and central Minnesota.

The blackout I experienced as a ten year old was memorable for the way adults reacted – up to that point I had never seen my parents so helpless. And of course every blackout, no matter how long it lasts, reveals to us just how completely we rely on having an uninterrupted power supply. Habits are exposed and we realize how fragile our infrastructure is the moment we flip that switch and nothing happens. It takes a blackout of several hours before I can begin to change my expectations.

Whether you have power or not, I’m guessing you’ve had enough experience with outages to summarize it in three lines – with five syllables, seven syllables and five syllables.

I.
I enter the room
anticipating a light
that does not come on

II.
Every appliance
gets its button pushed again
before I say “duh”

III.
Refrigeration
Doesn’t happen without help
on Summer’s first day

Share a Blackout Haiku.

Songs

Burn On

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Burning_water-1-

This is one day out of several in its history when Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.

The year was 1969, and we remember it today because someone at Time Magazine decided to write about it and Randy Newman processed it in a way that’s simply unforgettable.

The song only lasts two and a half minutes but it says as much about man’s ability to foul his environment as all the words that have been applied to the topic in the 44 years since. That’s the beauty of a great topical song – it can deliver its message quickly, discreetly, and in a way that gets inside your head.

Of course many topical songs become obsolete by the next news cycle, but for me, this one endures.

Apparently there are no known photos of the Cuyahoga burning that day, but Newman’s song is vivid enough to drive home the point that it is ridiculous and fundamentally wrong for a river to catch on fire.

Even if you are a pro-jobs, anti-regulation, big-industry loving, right wing Ohio voter, you could be tempted to sing along with this charming ditty about the smokin’ Cuyahoga. That’s the real power of a well-crafted piece of musical commentary.

What song do you love to sing, even though you don’t necessarily believe the words?

Songs

Opening A Northwest Passage

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On or about this date in 1940, the first successful west-to-east navigation of the Northwest Passage began, starting in Vanouver, BC and ending in Halifax, Nova Scotia, two years later.

The Northwest Passage is a sea route above the North American continent. For many years and quite a few explorers it was an elusive prize. Searching for it brought pain, despair and death to too many adventurers, who wound up with their vessels trapped in sea ice very far indeed from any hope of rescue.

shipwreck

It seemed the Northwest Passage was a myth, like Bigfoot or the Easter Bunny. But With our relentlessly progressing climate change, the ice has gone out and stayed out longer, and what was once thought impossible is now increasingly common. So common, nations have started arguing about who controls the route, which, when open for commercial uses, will save shippers an enormous amount of time and money.

Is this a silver lining in the saga of global warming? Ask a polar bear who is swimming and searching in vain for something solid to stand on.

I can only guess how members of the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition might have processed the news that their goal could be reached with no trouble if only they were willing to wait 160 years. The bravery of a handful of long distance travelers willing to sacrifice comfort and life itself could not accomplish what billions of less valiant people have done simply by choosing to ride down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes. The Northwest Passage is destined to be opened by those of us who don’t mind idling in front of the neighborhood convenience store.

Of course it reminds me of this favorite song.

Back in the 1970’s when Stan Rogers wrote about tracing the Northwest Passage over highways in a car, little did he know he was talking about the very activity that, multiplied many times over, would cause a Northwest Passage by sea to finally open up.

When have you found your pathway blocked?

Poems

Poetry Futures Slip

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America’s singsong Poet Laureate Tyler Schuyler Wyler found himself moved to the rhyming dictionary at the news yesterday that a handful of comments from one person can send financial markets into a spin.

trading-floor

It has always been his dream to utter strings of words that change the world. But rather than wallow in jealousy and resentment over the ease with which a mere Economics PhD can upend powerful people using only his voice, TSW decided to immortalize the irony of the situation with some insightful lines.

When words issue forth from Fed Chairman Bernanke
the tycoons of Wall Street all reach for a hanky.
These captains of industry – lords of the deal
become delicate flowers when Ben starts to spiel.
They cry “sell”. They feel faint. Gurgling rather queasily.
Aghast at the thought of cash flowing less easily!
Money was loose because Bernanke freed it.
A discouraging thought – that we still don’t not need it.
We were deep into stocks but now that cash is walking
And won’t turn around until Benny stops talking.

I’m afraid the instant reviews are in and the Sing Song Poetry Community’s expectations of this work were not met by the unsightly word clump that TSW produced. His imagery is lacking. The subject matter is non-universal. Even though the meant-to-be-clever turn of phrase “… we still don’t not need it” is technically correct in describing some attitudes toward an endless stimulus, it was thought by the analysts to be a clear example of Trying Too Hard.

Based on this single effort, Tyler Schulyer Wyler’s global value has slipped. But we were already aware that he was not a real poet because he spends too much time thinking, foggily, about finance. A true artist is aggressively ignorant when it comes to money. You can be Rembrandt or you can be Rockefeller, but you can’t be both. Who knew word choice could matter as much for the banker as it does for the bard?

When are you most careful about the words you use?

Uncategorized

Pirates and Their Preferences

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Today’s post was scrawled on a soggy boot that was fished out of a holding pond for parking lot runoff in Inver Grove Hights.  The lab analysis is incomplete, but apparently it comes from the outlaw commander  of the Muskellunge, Captain Billy.

Artists Approximation of Captain Billy
Artists Approximation of Captain Billy

Ahoy!

I is writin’ this here missive in an effort to clarify a few points regardin’ a new study of pirate behavior.  It simply ain’t correct that true pirates favors one African coast over another when it comes to choosin’ a location from which to plunder vessels an’ plague civilians.

The very idea that lawless fellas such as ourselves would take local ordinances an’ crime fightin’ techniques into account when establishin’ our bases of operation suggests that we recognizes th’ authority of shore-based entities t’ regulate our activities.

We don’t.

Bein’ lawless don’t mean simply bein’ in the habit of breakin’ laws!  Rather, we holds an abidin’ disdain fer th’ very activity of law makin’ an’ enforcement!  Now it may be th’ case that that certain rank amateurs has entered into pirate-like activities an’ favors a particular area as bein’ close t’ home.  So be it, but don’t confuse such characters with actual pirates, for whom the very concept of “home” is unfathomable.

Th’ entire world is our home, an it ain’t allowed by our Code of Conduct t’ foul it without good cause. Th’ outlines of our code is confidential only t’ us, in order t’ keep it from bein’ misinterpreted by unworthies. An’ them what would point out that havin’ a code of conduct runs counter t’ th’ very thing I just said about “disdain fer law makin'” is exactly the sort of individual I has in mind when I says “unworthies”.

Suffice it to say that stories of cruelty perpetrated by impostors claimin’ t’ be pirates is certainly regrettable.  Me and me boys would never be cruel t’ another human unless they truly deserved it!

Likewise, we shows no particular preference with regard to riches.  I sometimes overhears folks sayin’ “Oh, my booty’s too big,” or “nobody is interested in my booty on account of it ain’t sufficienly well rounded.”

Me and the boys says “hogwash”.   All booty is equal in our eyes, an’ equally subject t’ appropriation.

Let that be a warnin’ t’ ya’s, an’ a guarantee!

Yer humble swashbuckler,
Capt. Billy.

It appears the Captain sees himself as a moral man, as measured by secret standards of his own design.

What would be a principal tenet of your Code of Conduct?

Science, Uncategorized

Your Name Here

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I love this new picture from NASA of the surface of the planet Mercury.

Image of the Day from NASA
Image from NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

This past March, the Messenger spacecraft (launched in 2004), achieved its goal of photographing 100% of Mercury’s surface. Since it is the closest planet to our Sun, I assumed Mercury’s surface was nothing but a molten mess of bubbling goo – not too inviting as a tourist destination. But now I can see that the surface is solid and it has craters. What’s even better, a naming convention has been established to pair Mercury’s pockmarks with dead writers, painters, musicians and other artists.

One of the most recent names approved for a surface feature on Mercury honors the Hawaiian slack-key guitarist Gabby Pahinui. Alvin Ailey, Bela Bartok, Glinka, Goethe, Goya, Grainger and Grieg are other names attached to similar Mercurian blemishes .

There are more standards when it comes to bestowing space names. On Venus, the International Astronomical Union names craters for women no longer on our planet, who, while they were here, made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their chosen field.

If you want to get your name on a crater of our very own Moon, you need to be an astronaut, cosmonaut, scientist or polar explorer. All dead, I’m afraid. It appears you can’t plant your name on a distant planet as a living person, which makes sense. Otherwise everything out there would already be tagged with the names of politicians and tycoons.

There are other guidelines for naming features on various bodies in outer space, though to qualify you would have to be, among other things, a mythological deity, a character from Shakespeare, or a coal field.

I’m guessing, were you able to take a survey of those who have received this unusual honor, only the astronauts, cosmonauts and some of the scientists might have taken a moment to consider that their life’s work would someday cause their name to be permanently attached to a crater. But I’m fairly certain it never crossed Vivaldi’s mind.

Walt Whitman, however, probably knew it was going to happen for him. And it did!

What in the world (or outer space) should be named after you?