More Genesis:




This NASA page has an update, and a

video, both amazing and tragic, of the spacecraft plummeting to earth. If I made the kind of art that involved video clips, I would want to make something based around that little movie. At first you can't tell what you're even seeing, but after a while the tiny, shaky blob starts to look more like an expensive spacecraft, just in time to see it smash into the desert floor.

Space sadness

I'm sad that the Genesis capsule crashed down. This page has some pictures of how it looks now, sticking out of some desert sand. And here's a page about the data Genesis was collecting, and an artist's conception of what the spacecraft looked like in action. When I first read about this mission, I was excited about NASA bringing stardust back to earth. When I heard about the crash, I felt like all that potential magic had crumbled. But maybe the stardust broke free when Genesis crashed in the desert... And maybe even now as I type this, little bits of magic, sparkly stardust are starting to drift around the entire planet, granting wishes for regular people like us. It's sad that the scientists won't get to study the dust, but maybe stardust shouldn't be trapped in a lab anyway.

Robot radio

I know I haven't written much lately, but this morning I came across something cool that inspired an entry. I was searching for some kind of audio entertainment that might make the time pass quicker while I was working, and came across NPR's Studio 360 website. Studio 360 is a weekly radio program "where art and real life collide." Browsing the archive, I found a recent program that focused on robots.



The show's guest was Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab and head of iRobot, the company that makes robot vacuums. He and I go way back, so I thought it would be neat to listen to his thoughts. It was. He talks about preferring "flesh-based companions" over robot dogs, how H.A.L from 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired his work, and My Real Baby, the robot doll he helped create.



Also discussed:



--The Robot Hut, a toy robot museum in eastern Washington that I'd love to visit someday.



--Girl robots, like the ones in Austin Powers and The Stepford Wives.



--Music composed by computers



If you have some time, listen to the program online! Even the interstitial bits, with sound clips from robot songs and robot-themed movies are fun.

Start thinking of wishes

NASA is about to bring some stardust back to earth. A spacecraft is capturing samples of solar wind, which carries electrically charged particles that were blown out of the sun. It never occurred to me before that stardust exists in the real world, and not just in fairytales and Disney movies. This part of the article talks about what the scientists are going to do with the stardust:

Opening the capsule in a modern clean room should allow an analysis with an accuracy unparalleled by efforts from the 1969-72 Apollo missions, says team scientist Don Burnett of the California Institute of Technology.

Since I still kind of think of stardust as something magical, I keep thinking they're studying it to figure out why it has special powers. But that's probably not the case.

bookmark it

Today (after the swimming part of the day), I was eating a fish taco at a place that makes very good fish tacos, and my friend looked at her receipt and pointed out that they had another location. The first thought that came into my head was "We should bookmark it." It was like my brain thought if I "bookmarked" the location of the other good fish taco place, I'd be able to go there anytime I wanted. This is like when I lose something in my apartment and my fingers subconsciously start reaching for "Ctrl-F," which is how you find stuff in most PC programs. I think I'm trying to turn reality into a web browser. Does this mean I'm using the computer too much?

Sometimes the future sucks

Today I went to the beach with some friends and had a really fun time playing on boogie boards and splashing in the waves. The photos I took with my digital camera are the kind that make you nostalgic as soon as you see them. We look so cute and summery and fun.



We were kind of joking about the beach being polluted (it is in Los Angeles after all, and you can see some smokestacks in the distance), so tonight I looked it up in NRDC's Testing the Waters report and Surfrider's State of the Beach report. Surfrider told me there was a pollution warning on this beach yesterday because of high bacteria levels. NRDC told me the beach was closed several times last year, for bacteria and sewage reasons. YUCK.



I hate everyone out there who is making my beach dirty. I guess it's all of us together, using electricity and sewage lines and everything, so maybe we all suck. With all the futuristic technology in the world, you'd think someone would come up with a way to keep the beaches clean.

Graffiti bike

As a former New Yorker who still likes that city a lot, I was annoyed when I first started reading this Wired article about a guy whose bike spray paints slogans on the street. But then I read that the stuff he's spraying is actually washable chalk, so now I think he's cool. Messy slogans painted onto the sidewalk are lame, but messy chalk slogans seem like a fun idea, especially when they're anti-Republican. The project, Bikes Against Bush, is Joshua Kinberg's master's thesis at Parson's School of Design.