This Is Our World

This is some of the unbelievable crazy news just from today–check this out:

– Russia accuses U.S. that the rallies of masses of people seeking freedom and human rights in Hong Kong and Ukraine are really CIA plots.

– Ebola enters the U.S. ten days ago by a man who arrived from known, striken Liberia.

– “The Earth lost half of its wildlife in the past four decades.”

– Oklahoma man, who recently tried to convert colleagues, beheads one of them at work. 

– Man who is armed felon (with “three felony convictions for assault and battery”) gets within feet of and potentially endangers President on elevator within days of another man with a knife, who climbs fence, enters White House and skips about and into the East Room.

– Report that if just a “100-meter wide asteroid hit Washington, D.C….’it could wipe out everything within the Beltway.'”

So in case you didn’t have enough to worry about..this is our world and what we are doing to it. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Chicken Big And The Asteroids

The story of Chicken Little running around yelling that “The sky is falling” has become the epitome of those who “cry wolf” about the world ending–falsely worrying about and predicting catastrophic events.

However, the reverse can be true as well–where people say, “The sky is not falling,” when it really is. This is a “Chicken Big” event–where people are afraid “big time” of admitting the truth and so they hide themselves and others from it. Sort of like saying “What I don’t know can’t hurt me!”

Yesterday was just such as Chicken Big–hide your head in the sand–moment.

Asteroid DA14 passed just 17,000 miles from the Earth–less than the distance from New York to Sydney! It was 140 foot long and 143,000 tons, and possessed the destructive power 700 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. According to the Wall Street Journal (13 Feb. 2013) it was able to devastate a region the size of the San Francisco Bay area.

While, thank G-d, this dangerous asteroid missed us, just a few hours earlier, a meteor about 55 feet long and 10,000 tons exploded over the Ural Mountains in Russia, with the destructive power of 33 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs injuring 1,000 people and damaging 4,000 buildings.

Of course, it is a frightening reminder of what could’ve happened had asteroid DA14 hit as well.

The Guardian reported that according to The European Space Agency “No link between the events is thought possible,” and the Wall Street Journal (15 Feb. 2013) declared that it “was just a coincidence”.

Interestingly, the Journal itself states that a meteor event such as that which exploded over Russia yesterday happens “every 100 years,” and even more, the chances of the asteroid that passed very close overhead actually hitting Earth occurs “once every 200 to 1,000 years,” with the next close pass over earth not expected again until 2046. Thus, these types of events don’t happen exactly every day, do they?

So what are the chances of these 2 events (one exploding overhead and the other a near miss) occurring simultaneously yesterday–just hours apart!

People need to know–deserve to know the truth about the dangers we face–not to cry wolf–but rather to help us as a society and civilization recognize the genuine dangers we face, so we can adequately take precautions and prepare ourselves.

Interestingly enough, the WSJ states, “We have the technology to deflect these asteroids” with spacecraft to impact into them and “gravity tractors” to change their trajectory–the one thing we need is “years of advance warning.”

Let’s acknowledge the meteor explosion yesterday in Russia and be grateful that it wasn’t over a heavily populated major urban area, where the effect could’ve been much worse, and of course the same with the near flyby of the asteroid–and resolve to invest in the monitoring, tracking, and defensive technologies to keep us safe from a future catastrophe where the sky really is falling.

Calling the two cosmic events yesterday a “coincidence” is a Chicken Big event–buck, buck, buck. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Sascha Grant)

Federal Leadership Is A Journey

There were three news articles in Federal Times this week (17 December 2012) that highlighted some disappointments for the time being, but that offer hope for the future:

–   Conflicts of Interest at DARPA: The previous director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investigated by the Defense Department Inspector General for conflicts of interest related to the award of “hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to a company she co-founded and partially owned.” The hope for the future—the new DARPA director has “sent a full list of her financial assets to all of the agency’s employees.”

–   Missed opportunity for use of mobile devices, BYOD in the Federal workforce: The CIO Council’s report on “Government Use of Mobile Technology: Barriers, Opportunities, and Gap Analysis” was required by the Federal Digital Strategy (May 2012); however, while there is clarity of the need for greater mobility in the workforce, instead of a clear architecture forward, the report calls for more guidance from the administration on “how to handle the tricky legal, privacy, and financial implications.” The hope—the report looks toward  a government-wide or agency policy and guidance to support more flexible use of mobile devices and a cross-functional team to evaluate Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for the future.

–   NASA doubts commitment of getting to an asteroid: NASA, which has been criticized by some for not having a clear direction, has been charged with “sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025,” yet there is not consensus that this is “the next step on the way to Mars.” The hope—NASA can restructure, engage in cost-sharing partnerships, or otherwise increase budget or decrease scope to right-align and achieve clear focus on the next great goals for outer space.

Lesson learned: leadership does not have all the answers nor do they always do everything right, but leadership is a journey. So while today, we may not always be making the best acquisitions for advanced research, achieving clarity of a mobile strategy, or landing people on Mars—we are on the way—through one small step for leadership, one giant leap for the rest of us.

(Source Photo: here with attribution to NASA)

Existential Threats–Real or Imagined

Should we worry about something that hasn’t happened to us yet?

Wired Magazine (Sept. 2012) has an interesting article called Apocalypse Not.

Its thesis is that “people freak out over end-of-the world scenarios” and they should know better because despite all the fear and predictions of catastrophe, nothing ever really happens.

It categorizes the doomsday cataclysms into 4 types:

1) Chemicals–these come form things like pesticides (like DDT), smoking, and CFCs, and result in air pollution, acid rain, ozone depletion, and climate change.

2) Disease–recent fears of pandemics were associated with bird flu, swine flu, SARS, AIDS, ebola, and mad cow disease.

3) People–we can cause our own hell through population explosion and famine and although it didn’t mention this, I would assume the brutality and wars that can wipe entire races out.

4) Resources–Peak oil theory, metals and minerals, and other resource constraints have been causes of consternation leading us to look for alternative energy sources and even recently consider mining minerals on asteroids.

The article goes so far as to poke fun at those who are concerned about these things even stating that “The one thing we’ll never run out of is imbeciles.”

Wired does acknowledge that while “over the past half-century, none of our threatened eco-pocalypses have played out as predicted. Some came partly true; some were averted by action; [and still] some were wholly chimerical.”

What the author, Matt Ridley, has missed here in his logic are a few main things:

– Smaller things add to big things–While each individual issue may not have reached the catastrophic tipping point been yet, these issues can certainly progress and even more so, in the aggregate, pose dangerous situations that we may be unable to contain. So you can choose to live with blinders on for today, but the consequences of our choices are inescapable and may only be around the next bend.

–Recognizing the future–just because things like death and final judgement haven’t happened to us yet, doesn’t mean that they aren’t in store for us in the future. This sort of reminds me of this Jewish joke that no one leaves this world alive.

– Destructive powers are multiplying–many destructive forces were traditionally local events, but are now becoming existential threats to whole civilizations. For example, how many people globally can we kill with weaponized pathogens and how many times over now are we able to destroy the world with our thermonuclear stockpile.

– Learn from the past–Apocalypses and terrible events have already befallen humankind, whether the bubonic plague in the middle ages, the destruction of the ice age, the flood in biblical times, and even more recently the Holocaust and the World Wars in the 20th century.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of bad things that can happen to people–individuals or many people–and if we are not conscious of the things we are doing, their potential impacts, and generally act smart and ethical, then bad things can and will most-definitely happen.

Wired ends by saying that things like policy, technology, and innovation can solve the day. However, while these can surely help and we must always try our best to have a positive impact, some things are also out of our control–they are in G-d hands.

Finally, while not every event is an existential threat, some surely can be–and whether it’s the impact of an asteroid, the death toll from the next horrible plague, natural disaster, cyberwar, or weapon of mass destruction, or even possibly when aliens finally come knocking at your door, it would be awfully stupid to think that bad things can’t happen.

(Source Photo: here with attribution to tanakawho)

Living The Limits

 

Almost two decades ago, when working towards my MBA degree, I read the book, Beyond the Limits(1992) about how between growing world overpopulation and our disposition to living without regards to our limited resources, we were in danger of depletion and ultimately face an existential disaster. 

Now this theme continues with the movie, Surviving Progress(2012) warning that our unabated consumerism and overproduction is leaving in its wake diminished environmental resources and leading eventually to a collapse of our global ecosystem. 

In between the book and the movie, I have followed the warnings of well known and respected leaders, such as former Vice President, Al Gore on global warning, former Comptroller General, David Walker on our spiraling national debt, oil magnate, T. Boone Pickens on peak oil, and that is just to name a few. 

Yet, the warnings of our unsustainable living keep running up against our impressive technological progress–for example, oil and natural gas is being discovered and still plentiful, agricultural productivity keeps rising, and computers and automation allows us to continuously do more with less. 

So what are we to believe–are we on a unsustainable collision course with mother nature that threatens our very existence or is our innovative prowess and technological progress going to keep us ahead of the curve and out of any danger? 

As a technologist, and someone who promotes innovation, entrepreneurship, hard work and sound supporting ethics underlying everything we do, I am a firm believer that we can make a difference. Yes, with G-d’s blessings, it is possible to shape our destiny, so that we can continue to not only sustain ourselves, but also actually improve our standard of living. 

On the other hand, I cannot help but notice a generally gluttonous lifestyle in our society–where people almost always seem to buying bigger and better homes, cars, and even now yachts and private planes, and where buying and throwing things out is a vicious and endless cycle, where we live for the moment, rather than plan ahead. 

Despite initiatives to reduce, reuse, and recycle, we are still very much a single use society (use and discard), where compulsive shopping and a “mine is bigger and nicer than yours” mind-set and motive prevails. 

Now as humankind plans for Earth’s ultimate resource depletion, companies such as Planetary Resources  are researching and developing robotic spacecraft to mine asteroids to get water, extract raw materials, and find new sources of precious minerals, and government agencies like NASAare exploring orbiting space settlements as well as the permanent colonization of the moon and Mars. 

At the end of the day, the Earth–no matter how large and bountiful–is a finite resource and we should use innovation and technology to extend its use and at the same time reach out to find our next hospitable home. 

Watching two seasons of a Discovery television series called The Colonyabout how people in a simulation of a global catastrophe, survive–I saw that no matter how well they did for a number of weeks living off of existing resources where they were, eventually, they had to plan and creatively build their escape to a new sustainable living place. 

Unfortunately, this is not just TV fiction, but this is our reality–to thrive in our world today, but also to plan and build for the long-term–a new home for mankind.

Asteroid Killer–That’s A Relief!

For those of you who have seen any of the numerous movies about asteroids hitting Earth–such as Armageddon, Deep Impact, and Asteroid to name a few–you know that in most cases this is considered an Extinction-Level Event (ELE).In other words, what the impact of the asteroid and the resulting tsunamis do not destroy, the dust and debris causing a deep freeze over the earth will. This would be like the Ice Age, although this time, we would be the dinosaurs!

However, a new supercomputer at Los Alamos National Lab running 32,000 processors has been able to demonstrate our ability to explode a 1 megaton nuke near the asteroid on a trajectory with Earth and literally blow it to smithereens.

The shock wave from blast would smash the composite rocks of the asteroid against each other, and this would shatter them, and disrupt the pending destruction here on Earth.

All this talk about destroying Asteroids makes me remember back to when I was a kid and used to play this Atari game called Missile Command, where we would shoot down thermonuclear missiles–they could’ve been asteroids for all we knew–before they hit us.

However, in the game, you eventually missed–and your base stations and ability to shoot were destroyed after being overcome by the number of incoming missiles–that was certainly a bummer, even though the game was fun especially with friends.

I am relieved to see the new simulations and projections that indicate that given enough warning, we have the ability to take down an incoming asteroid.

Life imitating art–I certainly hope Los Alamos’s new calculations are right and that if and when the time comes, we can get a very good shot at it!

Seeing Is Believing

This robotic seeing eye dog from Japanese company NSK is an incredible display of how technology can help the blind and was profiled in PopSci on 9 November 2011.

While there are reports of many advances in returning sight to the blind through such breakthroughs as stem cell molecular regeneration and camera-like retinal implants, there will unfortunately be medical cases that cannot be readily cured and herein lies the promise for robotic guide dogs.

These dogs do not provide the same companionship that perhaps real dogs do, but they also don’t require the same care and feeding that can be taxing, especially, I would imagine, on someone with a handicap.

The Robotic Seeing Eye Dog can roll on flat surfaces and can climb stairs or over other obstacles.

It is activated by a person holding and putting pressure on it’s “collar” handle bar.

The robotic dog can also speak alerting its handler to specific environmental conditions and potential obstacles, obviously better than through a traditional dog bark.

The dog is outfitted with Microsoft Kinect technologyfor sensing and navigating the world.

It is amazing to me how gaming technology here ends up helping the blind. But every technological advance has the potential to spur unintended uses and benefits in other areas of our life.

Recently, I saw an advertisement for MetLife insurance that proclaimed “for the ifs in life” and given all the uncertainties that can happen to us at virtually anytime, I feel grateful to G-d for the innovation and technology that he bestows on people for helping us handle these; sometimes the advances are direct like with Apple’s laser-like focus on user-centric design for numerous commercial technologies, and other times these are more indirect like with the Kinect being used for helping the blind, or even the Internet itself once developed by the military’s DARPA.

I imagine the technology cures and advances that we achieve are almost like a race against the clock, where people come up with counters to the ifs and threats out there, adapting and adopting from the latest and greatest technology advances available.

Advances such as Kinect and then taking us to the robotic seeing eye dog, bring us a little closer–step by step, each time incrementally–to handling the next challenge that calls.

This week, I was reminded again, with the massive asteroid YU55 speeding past us at 29,000 mph and within only 202,000 mile of a potential Earth collision (within the Moon’s orbit!), how there are many more ifs to come and I wonder will we be ready, can we really, and whether through direct or indirect discoveries to handle these.