Brothers, sisters, friends, and (especially) those who never liked me,

I have been absent for a while. Some may have missed me, some may have been happier while I was away :)

Today I just return for a short remark about the SOPA and PIPA proposed laws.

These laws seriously limit free speech. And I mean seriously. For those who remember me, recall the style of my worst rants, and imaging worse.

In the USA, and in every place in the world, every bit of progress has happened because of people speaking freely. For thousands of years. Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad spoke freely, and the world changed.

Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King Junior.

And for the more commercial side, we also have world-changing people and organizations, for example:

The Beatles, the Yes, the Who.

NBC, the BBC, Sony Entertainment, Disney, MGM, Apple Records, Apple Computers, Microsoft, IBM, Intel.

I do not mind that artists and entertainment companies make a lot of money. Or athletes and their sponsors. They are welcome to all of it.

But I do mind that, in the interest of their short term monetary interests, they damage the very foundation of where everything we have gained over the last few thousand years comes from.

Of course saying this here at TDG is preaching to the converted. But I just felt it had to be said, as I do say it in other venues.

Once again there is an interesting case of something strange happening.

The neutrino detector being built in Antarctica is not detecting neutrinos on occasions when it really should.

These particular (missing) neutrinos are associated with gamma ray bursts. Or rather, they are supposed to be associated with the gamma ray bursts, but the neutrino detector is not detecting any of them, statistically speaking.

The bursts are happening, and since the neutrino detector is detecting other neutrinos as expected, it's very likely not an instrumentation problem. So the culprit more likely is what ever is causing the bursts.

Maybe someone has neutrino scrubbers on their machinery out there, to prevent the harmful neutrino pollution of the universe. Ah, that's not very good, so make up your own reason.

Just when politics has decided we don't need the big expensive Tevatron accelerator any longer, they
find a bump in the data. This bump
could mean a number of things, such as a new elementary particle, or who knows what. I suppose if its a particle, it isn't actually new, it's just one we didn't know about.

Since the article doesn't actually say anything about what the abnormal data are, your speculation is as good as mine. And probably not even much worse than theirs.

In October of 2008, an asteroid fell into Sudan. This was well observed even before the impact, which was a first.

Since then people have gathered a large number of parts of this object and analysed them. Apparently the object was heterogeneous, as reported by NASA viaspaceref.com.

Interesting data.

The amazingly still alive Voyager 1 performed a maneuver on March 7. This is remarkable (a) because it is able to do this, and (b) because of where it is. The boundary of the solar system seems to be somewhat elusive, but it is in the general neighbourhood of Voyager 1 at the moment. Maybe there is not just solar wind and weather, but weather from outside the system as well.

Another bunch of voyagers lived in California 12,000 years ago or so. These people already knew that the only place to hang out in greater LA is the beach, and they were conscious of a healthy diet just as the good looking beach people today.

Apparently Kepler (the telescope) has found two exoplanets in one orbit.

Of course NASA is jumping to the conclusion that this is a natural phenomenon, and they are relating this to the early history of Earth, when it collided with a smaller planet, resulting in the formation of the moon.

However, science fiction readers know that this is much more likely to be an artificial arrangement. Well, maybe not more likely. But more fun.

You see, what happened here was that the green people in that system were complaining every day that their planet was overcrowded and this situation was not sustainable. After getting tired of listening to this, the engineers made them another planet in the same orbit.

Or something like that.

Water ice is interesting. There are a whole bunch of different forms of it, with different physical characteristics.

Recent another form of ice has been
found and examined. This stuff is ferromagnetic, and freezes at slightly above the usual freezing point of water. It is formed under controlled special conditions, which is why your regular ice cubes don't contain this stuff, and are no good as magnets.

Could be useful for making little magnets when you need them and don't have the required metals around. Microelectronics, or shielding spacecraft against radiation, stuff like that.

Some people live in permanent houses. Others prefer to be more mobile, but don't want a very light weight life style with only the clothes on their backs.

Of these mobile people, some live on boats. This allows them to take their home with them when they move. Not too different from these are the folks who live in RVs. A more sedentary variety prefer "mobile homes", which are prefabricated houses that can be transported by truck.

And then there are these people.

Or did you think Larry Niven just made this stuff up? Of course he got it slightly wrong, they are taking their star with them.

Of course Scotty talked about the secrets of transparent aluminum, but this is better.

Not a transparent metal, instead stronger glass.

One of my fearless predictions for 2010 actually was correct, Jerry Brown is now governor or California, again.

The youngest person ever to be elected to this post, as well as the oldest.

Let's see what this does.