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And now for a slightly different take on the Columbia disaster, and the recriminations that started soon after.

After the Challenger accident in 1986, a commission was convened to investigate. One of its members was the Physics Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman, who recounts the commission’s work, and the obstacles entrenched NASA administrators put in its path, in his second book of memoirs What Do You Care What Other People Think? (a sequel to Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, both make for a rollicking good read and are included in the anthology Classic Feynman).

I am sure many of Feynman’s trenchant observations will remain relevant as the various commissions reveal the tensions between (expensive) safety requirements for the shuttle (specially in terms of the shuttle project’s human infrastructure), and the cost overruns of that white elephant in the sky, the International Space Station…

Many NASA critics question the need for human involvement for tasks that could be done just as well by cheaper and expendable robots (no life support systems needed). But apparently NASA’s bureaucrats have decided only the drama of humans cavorting in space will hold the public’s attention long enough to fund the space program. To quote Jerry Pournelle (I don’t usually agree with his politics, but here I think he is right):

Saturn was the most powerful machine ever made by man; and NASA took two working Saturns and laid them out as lawn ornaments so that they would not compete with Space Station and Shuttle. This was deliberate destruction of the people’s property, but those who did it were promoted, not sent to prison where they ought to be. Perhaps that is too strong: but they ought to be dismissed with prejudice, barred from ever working on any government or government financed or government approved project whatever. It was done for pure politics to ensure the need for Shuttle. And it was criminal.

I shot a sample roll of Kodak’s new Ektachrome E100GX film. It is marketed as a fine-grained and sharp film, clearly to challenge the current dominance of Fuji Velvia and Provia 100F (RDPIII), with similar specs to Provia, at least on paper.

Here are a few small 256×256 crops of 2900dpi scans I made on my Nikon Coolscan IVED scanner. I deliberately exaggerated the grain structure by applying equalization in Photoshop.

Velvia	E100GX
Provia	Provia pushed 2 stops

Keep in mind this test is highly unscientific since the crops represent different scenes with different contrast levels and colors.

I used Bluetooth for the first time today, to Hotsync my Palm Tungsten T with my laptop using a D-Link DBT-120 USB Bluetooth adapter. Pretty spiffy, and not much slower than standard USB synchronization.

Update (2003-01-30):

I have also synchronized my new SonyEricsson T68i Bluetooth-enabled cell phone with Outlook, as well as with iSync on my iMac G4. The process is painfully slow (probably due to sluggish software), but the end result is pretty cool. It seems Bluetooth is where USB was in 1995, i.e. barely functional drivers and not that reliable (my Sony phone has a tendency to unpair itself from my Tungsten T or my PC), but it has potential. You will just have to wait a couple of years until driver support migrates deep into the OS (unless you use a Mac, of course).

If you read the Photo.net Leica forum, it’s striking to see how many people are trying to sell off their Leica gear, some of them apparently to finance a digital SLR purchase. I come from the opposite direction, but an interesting phenomenon to be sure. The Leica has taken the status of a fetish among certain photo snobs, what with all the special collector editions and all, and one would think it would be immune to purely practical considerations… Or maybe some people anticipate the resale value of these fine cameras will fall as photography goes digital and are trying to realize it now.

A wacko sect called the Raëlians claimed it has successfully cloned a human being. When I was an undergraduate in Paris, I saw some posters of the then nascent sect, with such fascinating captions as “Raël – the stars’ messenger” and such amazing feats of circular reasoning as “If Raël is not a major prophet, the equal of Christ, Muhammad or Buddha, his revelation is false. That is impossible.” Poking fun at them used to provide us with hours of entertainment in our dorm (granted, we were easily amused).

This isn’t amusing any more. While these people are not homicidal maniacs like the Aum Shinrikyo sect (which launched Sarin nerve gas attacks against the Tokyo subway), they must be stopped, and a comprehensive, global ban on reproductive cloning instated by the United Nations.