A Dude’s Guide

by Richard

I know what you dudes are asking and it’s this: Who? And quite right at that.

J.B.S. Haldane was a British geneticist and evolutionary biologist who died in 1964. A pithy and erudite man, Haldane did a lot to advance the cause of science and the explanation of science during his life. However, it was his quote (and it’s subsequent misattributions and changes) that might be most remembered.

In his 1927 scholarly article, Possible Worlds and Other Papers, he gives us the following little bit of wisdom. “. . . the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” And, yes, I’m sure you dudes have heard this quote or some derivation (reality is stranger than we suppose. . . the universe is stranger than we suppose. . . etc.) whenever someone wants to make a point about something odd in nature.

With that in mind: The ocean is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.” Witness.

Allow me to present Deepstaria enigmatica, a cnidarian. Although it looks like a sheet of transparant, brown rubber, it actually is a living being, a jellyfish of sorts.

That picture comes from a recent underwater video. The deepstaria enigmatica happened to drift by and the videographer, understandably enchanted and more than a little surprised, decided to follow up with the creature. I mean, who wouldn’t?

This is the sort of strange stuff you need to share with the little dudes, no matter how large they get. It is awesome! The world is so amazingly strange. Who wouldn’t want to see more of it?

Luckily for you, I not only have the article linked here, I’ve also got the video for you to stare at. And trust me. You will stare at this thing. Go grab the little dudes and settle in for some giggles and some awe-struck gasps. This is some amazing stuff.

The world really is stranger than we imagine. Thank goodness for that.

by Richard

Remember a couple of days ago, when I was talking to you dudes about proctoring the End of Grade tests at Carmel Middle School?

About how I’d be stuck in a room with no reading, no eating, no drinking and no telephony for more than four hours?

Remember how I scoffed at how dependent some people were on staying in contact with the internet?

Remember how I laughed at those poor, poor people?

Remember the parable about glass houses?

Yeah, turns out I’m one of those poor, poor people.

I’m taking today to recover. And by recover I mean stay with a cable plugged directly from our cable modem into my brain, via my right ear canal and my left nostril. It’s experimental, but I think it’s doing me some. . .

Oooh, look. It’s a unicorn kitty!

And it’s all sparkly and pretty.

by Richard

Perhaps you dudes have heard, but there’s a reason I’m not going back to Las Vegas or, really, anywhere in Nevada for a long, long while.

Turns out, Nevada just agreed to let Google’s driverless cars operate on public streets in that state. Yeah, driverless cars.

Cars controlled by computer systems, just like the computer system that controls your computer. You know, the one that keeps crashing? The one that can’t keep running without a patch or an update every 13.2 seconds? Yeah, that one.

On Monday, Nevada became the first to approve a license for “autonomous vehicles” — in other words, cars that cruise, twist and turn without the need for a driver — on its roads.

In a 2010 post on Google’s official blog, engineer and Google X founder Sebastian Thrun said that the self-driving vehicle project aims “to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use.”

He noted that the “automated cars use video cameras, radio sensors and a laser range finder to ‘see’ other traffic, as well as detailed maps … to navigate the road ahead.” There is no driver needed, though one is typically in the front seat ready to take control if need be.

As of this spring, Google researchers had supposedly logged more than 200,000 miles of test driving for the driverless vehicle, which uses a suite of sensors and cameras, coordinated by collision avoidance software, to monitor the surrounding area and direct the direction and speed of the vehicle.

Other than the fact that there’s no one sitting behind the wheel, the only other way to tell one of these cars is to look for the red license tag with AU on it. The AU stands for autonomous vehicle. Although, shouldn’t that be AV? Well, whatever.

So, yeah. I think I’ll be staying out of the state for a while. I already worry that there’s brain-dead drivers on the road. Now I’ve got to be concerned with the completely, literally, brain-less drivers? No thanks.