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Commodifying the Pale Blue Dot

Image via Wikipedia

Technology Tuesday

Pale blue dot. I have loved that phrase as a description of Earth since I first came across it years ago. It refers to an iconic image of earth we've all seen and Carl Sagan used it as the title for one of his books (probably referring to the image to the right, as opposed to th more famous blue marble image). (Here's the wikipedia description of that book and the wikipedia description of the photo.)

Al Reinert wrote up a short history and discussion of the blue marble image over at The Atlantic recently.

It was the first photograph taken of the whole round Earth and the only one ever snapped by a human being. You can't see the Earth as a globe unless you get at least twenty thousand miles away from it, and only 24 humans ever went that far into outer space. They were the three-man crews of the nine Apollo missions that traveled to the moon between 1968 and 1972, six of which landed there successfully (three men went twice). But only the last three saw a full Earth. In order to see our planet as a fully illuminated globe you need to pass through a point between it and the sun, which is a narrower window than you might think if you're traveling at 20,000 miles an hour.

There's an ongoing dispute among the astronauts on the mission as to who actually took the picture. Rienert points out that it doesn't really matter:

Both men are certain they snapped The Blue Marble Shot and can't believe the other won't admit it. They can get rather snarky about it and that's a shame. They each deserve to be remembered better for their uncontested moments. Schmitt discovered volcanic rocks that proved to be the oldest samples returned from the moon, while Cernan was the last man to walk there, an exit he dignified with humility and grace we can all be proud of. It doesn't particularly matter who took the picture as long as we have it.

The photo itself is lovely.

A Mindful Moment

Therapy Tuesday
Photo by: dcjohn

Indulge me. As author of today's blog post, I'm calling on all parents to create a "mindful moment" for himself or herself. A moment is something that lacks strict definition in terms of a quantity of time. It can be a second; minutes, hours...I will leave the time allotment completely up to you.

So what is a "mindful moment"? After all, shouldn't you understand what I'm asking you to do? That is another beauty in this concept: it's whatever you think it can be.  For some, it might be getting a chance to read the paper without doing a hundred other things. For others, it might be all out bliss in a yoga class. It could be a hot bath, time alone, driving and listening to the music YOU want to. There is no strict parameter for how you define how you spend your moment.

Why am I even asking this of you? Well, for your health. Part of your health includes your sanity. More and more studies are confirming what yoga enthusiasts intuitively know: yoga makes them feel better. The ability to be present and perform a task (whether it is a yoga pose or breathing rhythmically) shows positive effects on mood.  Additionally, meditation (of which yoga is a type of) can actually increase your brain's gray matter. Anyone with children knows that they can take their toll on your level of patience. Hence, my call for a "mindful moment."

Still not sure how to accomplish this task?  Here's a quick suggestion. Sit in a quiet place and allow yourself to get comfortable. Close your eyes. Focus on your breathing. Inhale while slowly (and silently) counting to 3. Hold that inhalation for 3 counts. Then exhale for a count of 3.  Repeat this cycle at least 5 times.  

There, that was a mindful moment. Not so hard! 

 

Understanding Energy and Radiation

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Technology Thursday

It is hard to wrap my brain around the scale of the human tragedy in Japan. This is especially so coming on the heels of a spate of such large-scale disasters including Katrina, Pakistan, Haiti, the Gulf Oil Spill, and so many others that slip our minds once the news cycle turns. So I tend to think about things that maybe I can get my head around, such as nuclear power, methods to improve disaster response, funding for earthquake, volcano, and tsunami monitoring (don't get me started), and so on.

Like many, I'm fairly conflicted about nuclear power. While I usually hate couching things in an wishy-washy anodyne "middle" ground (it's often just a lazy copout), I think it's neither as safe as its proponents would like us to think, nor as easy to avoid as its detractors would like. I don't believe there is any way to realistically satisfy the anticipated energy demands of the United States without the use of nuclear power. At the same time, I have grave reservations about whether we're making appropriate forward progress toward a cleaner energy future. And it's abundantly clear we're not doing a jood job at all figuring out how to manage and store waste products.

Awhile back Jon Udell wrote about how our conceptions of energy usage are poor, or really, non-existent. What does it mean that a device will use 9 Watts an hour?

Three Quick Thoughts

Image by Lyn Millett via Flickr

Technology Thursday

I'm traveling again, so I will just quickly share a few quick, unrelated sci/tech thoughts today.

First, the obvious. The iPad 2 has been announced, with the usual glitzy Apple fanfare. Which, yes, I get a kick out of - but let's be honest - it's a gadget. It's not actually magical. And like other companies who outsource manufacturing, there are issues. (See my post from last week about Mike Daisey's important work on labor conditions for those who build these beautiful devices.) Still, it is an impressive piece of design and engineering. And I will probably get one.

Second, I'm in Silicon Valley right now and yesterday I wandered into ... a Google store. Did you know there was such a thing? I did, but what I didn't know is that you can also buy Google-branded merchandise online. And in a mark of how much I've kind of ignored Droid phones, it took me several hours before I figured out that the reason there are lots of little robot toys in the Google store and scattered around the Google campus is because of the mascot. Android. Get it? Yeah. I can be slow sometimes.

Third, I was sad to see that Space Shuttle Discovery is on its last mission. It turns out I know a couple of people who were nearby in Florida to watch the launch in person. And, coincidentally, my husband was also in Florida on launch day and caught a glimpse of it - an orange smudge in the sky - from his hotel in the middle of the state.

I'm stuck in a meeting for the rest of the day and back on a plane tomorrow. Back with hopefully a more substantive entry next week - drop me a note if there's some technology topic I should address in this space.

Toxic Chemicals and Where the Burden Should Be

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Technology Thursday

In recent "booga-booga-scare-the-moms" news, we learn:

A major 2011 analysis of typical pregnant women across the US found widespread evidence of toxic chemicals in their blood, often at levels that have been linked to higher risk of developmental and reproductive problems in babies in other studies. Beyond this, the pregnant women in this study were typically exposed to mixtures of various toxic chemicals at one time, with effects we have yet to understand.

So, on one level, this is scary and alarming. But on another level, is anyone really surprised that there are all kinds of toxic chemicals in our systems? Does anyone think this phenomenon is unique to pregnant women? And, perhaps most importantly, does anyone really think there's much that any individual woman can do about it? Short of moving to an isolated island and subsisting on water and organically grown fruit her entire life?

That's what bugged me about some of the coverage I saw--the notion that somehow if we're all just a little bit more careful about what kind of lipstick we use and what kind of soaps we keep by our kitchen sinks that we can do something meaningful about our individual situations. I don't buy it. I think the real change has to be made at a policy level. We have to greatly reduce the toxins we allow into our environment, food, air, and water supplies. No amount of individual effort will make that much of a dent.

So whenever I see these articles that talk about "what you can do", I become grumpy. It puts way too much of an onus and burden on women (note the opportunity for yet another mother-guilt complex) to fix these urgent, system, widespread problems themselves. Check this out: