Carrying the Lantern

Bill R.: The sounds are not too spectacular. But did I mention they are coming from almost nine BILLION miles away?!!

Sampling space sounds. David Pescovitz: NASA's Voyager 1 has crossed a boundary that's one of the last milestones before it departs our solar system. You can listen online to the weird plasma wave sounds of the boundary, called the "solar wind termination shock." It reminds me of glitchy minimalist electronica. University of Iowa physicist Don Gurnett designed the the plasma wave instrument that captured the sound. From a news release:

Kurth compares the termination shock to what happens when water is allowed to run from a kitchen faucet onto the center of a dinner plate. The water -- representing the solar wind, a stream of electrically charged particles flowing outward from the sun -- strikes the center of the plate and smoothly flows outward in all directions. Somewhere near the edge of the plate, the smooth stream becomes rippled as it runs into slower moving water. This rippled band of turbulence represents the termination shock and the region where it occurs, the heliosheath. Similarly, the solar wind slows from supersonic to subsonic speed as it approaches the gas generated by stars beyond our sun.

Link to news release, Link to "sounds of space" including the termination shock [Boing Boing]

Bill R.: I posted this comment over on Julie's blog:

Julie,

As always, your writing is enthralling and insightful. I wrote a bit on my blog about Mr. Lessig, and have to take issue with him and you on one point. You opined,

"He (Mr. Lessig) later clarified that the h-word and b-word are hero and brave, two words I am guilty of using in my post. I think I see his point. Calling Lessig a hero implies that he is somehow inherently different from the many other men and women who have been abused. It could be easy to put him on a pedestal and thereby also qualify his behavior - his disclosure - as unique: he's a hero while I'm not. "

I still hope for the day when, through the efforts of many, our children will not be subject to such abuses. When fewer and fewer incidences occur. When the unfortunate few are able to get the help they need and rise above it like Lessig has, rather than be broken for life by the awful experience.

Here's hoping for no more child abuse, but when it happens, I want more brave survivors; more hero's like Lawrence Lessig. I appreciate that he would like us not to use the H-word or B-word. But he has no choice in the matter. It is an honor that someone bestows on you; a label given you by others. You can't give it to yourself (politicians aside ;-)). Lawrence Lessig is a hero in my book for many reasons.

You may be guilty of labeling Lessig a brave person and a hero, but he's guilty of actions that warrant the labels. IMHO.

Again - great blog Julie,

Bill

Virginia

Ordinary people: responding to comments on my previous post on Lawrence Lessig and the American BoyChoir School. A few days ago I wrote a post describing my response to New York Metro's article titled The Choir Boy Since then, I've received comments on my blog. Also Lawrence Lessig has responded on his blog to the article... [Julie Leung: Seedlings & Sprouts]

Bill R.: Fascinating reading and, at my age, most welcomed!

Eleven steps to a better brain. David Pescovitz: New Scientist provides a list of eleven ways to boost your brainpower--from smart drugs to more sleep to training your "working memory"--and surveys the research behind the claims. From the article:

Until recently, a person's IQ - a measure of all kinds of mental problem-solving abilities, including spatial skills, memory and verbal reasoning - was thought to be a fixed commodity largely determined by genetics. But recent hints suggest that a very basic brain function called working memory might underlie our general intelligence, opening up the intriguing possibility that if you improve your working memory, you could boost your IQ too.

Working memory is the brain's short-term information storage system. It's a workbench for solving mental problems. For example if you calculate 73 - 6 + 7, your working memory will store the intermediate steps necessary to work out the answer. And the amount of information that the working memory can hold is strongly related to general intelligence.

A team led by Torkel Klingberg at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, has found signs that the neural systems that underlie working memory may grow in response to training. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, they measured the brain activity of adults before and after a working-memory training programme, which involved tasks such as memorising the positions of a series of dots on a grid. After five weeks of training, their brain activity had increased in the regions associated with this type of memory (Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 75).

Link [Boing Boing]

Standing out from the Blogging Crowd. Robin Good defines online news editors and gives a set of tips for people new to writing online. [BusinessWeek Online -- Blogspotting]