Human Achievement Hour vs. Earth Hour: Need There be Conflict?

The Earth at night: the perfect symbol of our progress or our wastefulness depending on your opinion.

Today, as many people all around the world know, brings Earth Hour, a worldwide event wherein people all over the globe are encouraged to reduce their energy usage for the purpose of saving natural resources and, in general, the planet. However, there is another worldwide even going on at the same time, as a direct challenge to Earth Hour.

This is Human Achievement Hour.

By visiting the Human Achievement Hour's website, one reads that, “On March 31, some people will be sitting in the dark to express their "vote" for action on global climate change. Instead, you can join CEI and the thousands of people around the world who will be celebrating Human Achievement Hour (HAH). Leave your lights on to express your appreciation for the inventions and innovations that make today the best time to be alive and the recognition that future solutions require individual freedom not government coercion.”

Needless to say, the whole idea of Human Achievement Hour goes contrary to Earth Hour, which serves as a rallying point to encourage governments to adopt policies that are more environmentally-friendly and lean in the direction of saving natural resources, while Human Achievement Hour champions the technology that those celebrating Earth Hour have vowed to spurn for 60 minutes.

Continuing on Human Achievement's home page, one reads that “Human Achievement Hour (HAH) is a celebration of individual freedom and appreciation of the achievements and innovations that people have used to improve their lives throughout history. To celebrate Human Achievement Hour, participants need only to spend the hour from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm on March 31 enjoying the benefits of capitalism and human innovation: Gather with friends in the warmth of a heated home, watch television, take a hot shower, drink a beer, call a loved one on the phone, or listen to music.”

So, come this evening's newscasts, it will be interesting to see how the mainstream media approaches coverage of these pair of hour long celebrations, ones that, when viewed in the extreme, are sure to cause some elevated blood pressure levels in the people who champion the opposite cause. Personally, I had never even heard of Human Achievement Hour before yesterday and seeing a story about it on the Internet. Earth Hour? Well, it's gone from a regional event to a worldwide phenomenon.

In the end, the middle path is the best course to take.

There is no doubt that we humans are using up our natural resources at an ever-increasing rate. Global warming? Well, several of the hottest years on record have come during the past decade but, at the same time, the planet has been an ice ball, a greenhouse, and everything in between during its 4.5 billion year history. At the same time, though, there is no conclusive way to prove that we humans are impacting the climate, only correlations. On the other hand, there is no doubt that technology has greatly enlarged man's footprint on the natural world.

On the other side of the coin, there is no doubt that science, technology, and the focus on the individual are making the world better every day. Think of it: if it were not for science and the inventive spirit that Human achievement Hour seeks to celebrate, we would still be in the Dark Ages. Think of it: there would be no real medical knowledge, no mechanical means of transportation, no mass dissemination of knowledge, no electricity, no space exploration, no computers, no Bodzash Photography and Astronomy, but a lot of mass superstition, ignorance, death and disease, starvation, and millions upon millions of fettered minds without the slightest aspiration to achieve higher goals than an animal-like existence of living from one day to the next.

Yes, the world is undoubtedly walking a tightrope when it comes to planet Earth, this pale blue dot that is, so far as we know, the only world in all of creation that supports life. Man has become God, having created for himself the power to preserve or destroy worlds by way of his technology. The choice is before us: life or death. Hopefully, we will choose life through wise use of our technology which, for the most part, has improved the world in incalculable ways ever since our distant ancestors first strove to make a better life for themselves all those tens of thousands of years ago.

 

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Are Technologically-Advanced Civilizations Destined for Self-Destruction?

There may be 10 billion habitable planets, but there's no guarantee of life anywhere in all of creation.

It's a situation that scientists, politicians, philosophers, and dreamers all consider at some point: is all of this modern technology a good thing or not? The thought processes as well as viewpoints are near limitless.

It is an undeniable fact that technology can work miracles, such as: organ transplants, genetic engineering, discovering properties of planets light years away, and generally making life easier than it was in the past. On the other hand, there are some serious dangers that go along with technology, which include: weapons of mass destruction, increasing the ability of governments to play Big Brother to citizens, and the opening of a new avenue for the commission of crime.

Obviously, there is a lot of good and bad that comes about via high technology, so what does this all mean for scientists' search for alien life?

Yesterday, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced the result of a 6-year research study involving the hunt for alien planets around red dwarf stars which, according to some, could make up as much as 80% of the Milky Way's stellar population. The finding: there could be upwards of 10 billion habitable planets in our galaxy alone.

In the Milky Way Galaxy alone there are (according to the most optimistic of estimates) about 400 billion stars and this number may rise as the galaxy, as science has progressed, has gotten increasingly populated as estimates of star counts have risen steadily over the decades. With so many stars, there are probably many times more planets, some of which are suitable for life as we know it. On some of these distant worlds, life may have arisen.

So, with all of these planets, where are the aliens?

One view of this paradox was explained by the scientists Enrico Fermi, one of the men whose research directly lead to the construction of the first atomic bomb. Fermi, upon witnessing the destruction the thing he helped create had wrought, got to thinking about the possibilities of alien life and the role technology could play in helping, or hindering, our search. Living in the era of the Cold War, Fermi realized that, should aliens come upon high technology, there was the very real possibility that they, like us, were teetering on the threshold of planet-wide self-destruction.

Thus arose the Fermi Paradox, which simply states that, because there are so many stars and there has been no alien contact, chances are that, upon reaching levels of high technology, the tendency of civilizations is to destroy themselves. So, could the Fermi paradox be true?

Answer: a definite 'yes.'

Ever since the industrial revolution, we humans have accelerated our technological capabilities at an exponential rate. Yesterday's science fiction is today's science fact. With all the great things brought about by the industrial revolution, such as: jobs, increased wealth, more time for leisure, and spin-off technologies came some not so good things: pollution, filthy, over-crowded, crime-ridden cities, and social problems including class warfare. So, by the end of the 19^th century, mankind had already acquired the technology to make the world a much dirtier, unhealthy to live in place.

With the arrival of the 20^th century, the Industrial Revolution was in full-swing all over the world. However, unlike in the 19^th century when technology was employed with intentions to better the world, that same technology would soon be put to use for the creation of death and destruction in the cataclysm that was World War 1. Machine guns, submarines, aerial bombing, poison gas, and all of the filth created by war would, in 4 years, leave over 8 million people dead. For the first time, technology was changing the world, undeniably and intentionally, for the worse.

With the ending of WW1 in 1918, the same science and technology would once again be brought to peaceful usages, at least for 2 decades, as the peace-loving nations sought to bandage their wounds and move on with existence. During the same times however, other nations with sinister intentions were, at the same time, using the same technology to prepare for a new war that would wind up being far more destructive than the last: World War 2.

However, even more so than in WW1, WW2 would see an even more devastating marriage between science and military in the creation of the atomic bomb, whose dropping on Japan brought the war to a swift conclusion. Unfortunately, while the bomb initially brought peace, it would soon spawn a decades-long arms race that would leave the entire world in constant fear of a nuclear holocaust: the Cold War.

During the Cold War years, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union would be forever racing to build bigger bombs, longer-range missiles, and better ways with which to spy on each other. The result of this arms race was a doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which had the appropriate acronym of MAD. The most troubling aspect of the Cold War was that both sides knew the whole situation was madness but, despite having reasonable people on both sides whose greatest concern was national preservation, the hostilities continued until the communist economic system of the Soviet Union caused the superpower to fall and the nuclear standoff to end. During the years of the Cold War, besides nuclear weapons, deadly, yet cheap to produce, chemical and biological weapons were also developed as further deterrents to aggression.

Numerous times during the Cold War years of 1945 to 1991, the superpowers nearly came to direct blows. Between standoffs like the Berlin Blockade and Cuban Missile Crisis to proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, the world could have,if something had gone differently, spiraled into a nuclear holocaust that would have destroyed not only the two global superpowers fighting each other, but the entire world civilization itself. Fortunately, during the 4 ½ decades of the Cold War, this never happened. However, with the end of the superpower standoff, the world entered a much more dangerous stage of international conflict.

With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ronald Reagan's 'evil empire' was a thing of the past. However, all of the USSR's weapons were not. With the sudden breakup of the Soviet Union and the formation of many different new countries, all of those old weapons suddenly found themselves with new owners, and some, with no owners at all. The trouble here is obvious: with all of those nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons unsecured, some of them, if the price was right, found themselves up for sale on the black market.

It is this proliferation of WMDs into the hands of small, rogue states and terrorist organizations that leads us to the current state of international problems we face today.

Come 2012, instead of economic systems, the world is most threatened by war over religion. Islamic terrorists, not global superpowers, are now the greatest threat the world faces. Unlike in the Cold War where the object of soldiers, both American and Russian, was to survive, the Islamic terrorist has no such desire, seeing death as martyrdom and a direct ticket to heaven. With such irrational fanaticism and no central government to control them, terrorists are the most insidious threat faced in the history of the civilized world. Needless to say, if WMDs were to fall into the hands of such people, there is no doubt that they, unlike the Soviets of decades past, would have no hesitance in using them.

This is the current state of our world, and it shows no sign of changing anytime soon, either.

So, taking this world, the only inhabited one of which we know, as a model, the search for alien intelligence does not bode very well if technologically-advanced aliens take the same path on their planet as we humans have taken here on Earth. Yes, so far, anyway, we have managed to avoid man-made catastrophe. However, that could all change tomorrow and there is no doubt that the same day-to-day existence is true on other worlds around other stars all across the known universe.

Yes, it's a depressing scenario, but it is a very real possibility that, at this current point in time, we may be all alone in the cosmos, huge as it is.

Fermi may have been right.

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It's a UFO, it's a Alien, it's a . . . Shark?

Is this a UFO or a flying RC shark?

In an interesting tale from my neck of the woods, a 12-year old girl shot nearly a minute of video depicting a metallic UFO hovering over her neighborhood. Local police couldn't identify it and neither could the feds. So what was it? Well, after the video went viral, a plausible answer emerged: an inflatable, remote-controlled shark. Don't believe it? Want to see the video? Well, go here and see for yourself!



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RAW vs. JPEG: Which is Better?

 
Which is better: RAW or JPEG file format? Well, for people who are serious about their pictures, ther answer is simple: RAW. But why is this? First of all, RAW is not an acronym, RAW (I have no idea why most people put in all caps) is simply raw data as recorded by the camera. Simply put, RAWs are to digital as what negatives are to film. Sure, there are inconveniences: special software needed for viewing (comes bundled with RAW-capable camera) and mandatory post processing (at the very least to convert to a "normal" format), but the benefits far outweigh these minor hindrances. White balance doesn't matter:
In JPEG (or anything else), if the camera is shot in the wrong white balance, you're screwed. In RAW, simply click a button to have the picture looking as it should.
The finer things in life
When the camera process the raw data into another file format, post-processing that you cannot control takes place as the camera tries to make an image appear as noise-free as possible. The result: blurry looking images. This is even true of cameras known for doing good jobs at balancing detail retention and noise. RAW? Fine details are retained very well. Want proof? See the dramatic difference between RAW and “cooked” pictures for yourself

Expanded ISO.
With RAW, it is possible to, essentially, expand the ISO range of your camera. So, if a lack of insanely high ISO capability may lead you to buy a new camera, it may be time to reconsider.

Ease of post processing
In JPEG (or any other in-camera format), post processing, especially in regards to color cast, can be a tedious pain in the neck. In RAW, simply move a tool bar and you're good to go.Hate the thought of post processing? No problem! You can have it both ways at once!

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Nikon Jacks Up Its Prices on the D800 and D4

In case you haven't heard, Nikon UK has just raised the prices on the D800 (undeniably the greatest camera in the world) and D4 by about $400 and $1,000, respectively. The reason for the jump in cost: an “unfortunate mistake” wherein the wrong prices were published in the initial press releases (and the fact that no one managed to notice the error for two months!). The good news: for anyone who ordered before the price hike, the original price will still be honored. For all my American readers, if you want either camera, just go preorder one now before Nikon USA decides to get in on the act and screw us over (maybe), too.

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Amazing New Photos of the Titanic to Appear in National Geographic

The Titanic before it met its doom.

Less than a month from now, the world will mark the 100^th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. When the 'unsinkable' ocean liner hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank with a loss of over 1,500 lives (making it the worst maritime disaster to that point), man's, at the time, almost unshakable faith in new technology was shattered as it was proven that, no matter how great man's creations were, we humans are still subservient to nature and our own hubris.

After the ship went down in 1912, no one probably ever (certainly at the time) imagined that the great ship would ever be seen by human eyes ever again. However, with advances in submarine technology, by the 1960s, people began to ponder the idea of finding the Titanic wreck. Problem: there were a lot of confused coordinates given by both the Titanic herself and other ships in the area that pinpointing an exact location for the sinking was just about impossible. Result: anyone looking to find the wreck would have to search a large area of ocean floor more than 2 miles beneath the surface.

Then, In 1985, American oceanographer Robert Ballard, using, for the time, state of the art technology, discovered the ship not by looking for the wreck itself, but the debris trail. Stumbling in on the debris, Ballard's team then followed the trail to the ship itself, which had broken in half, thus conforming eyewitness accounts from the night of the sinking. Returning with a manned submarine the following year, Ballard recorded hours of video footage and hundreds of still imaged of the wreck. Since then, countless teams followed to investigate, photograph, and recover items from the wreck site.

Now in 2012, 26 years after the ship was found and 100 after it sank, researchers using technology that was unimaginable in 1986 have pieced together the first complete picture of the Titanic wreck site (your half a dozen shot mosaic that you think is so wonderful can't hold a candle to this). For researchers, these images freeze in time a wreck that is quickly disintegrating and may collapse into a pile of rust in the next couple of decades. For the curious, the pictures offer never before imagined detail on the wreck of a ship that has become a worldwide obsession.

Go here to read more from National Geographic



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Poof . . . It's Gone!

The Holy Grail: here one moment, gone the next.

The Holy Grail has vanished! Yes, just like in the legends of King Arthur, the Holy Grail made a brief appearance to the disbelief of our eyes only to disappear, without warning, just as fast as it materialized. No this isn't talk of that Holy Grail, but the 13mm f5.6 AI Nikkor that made a brief appearance on Ebay on Monday. So yes, anyone with butt loads of cash who wanted to (probably) spend $30,000 on the rarest, widest 35mm/FF digital-capable Nikkor optic ever produced is out of luck, sorry.

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