On this day…

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… in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, and in doing so set in motion a chain of events which eventually led to the Internet (because it spurred the US government into setting up ARPA). See here and here for the gory details. Sputnik weighed 184 pounds. It was 23 inches in diameter and was made from steel.

I was 11 at the time, living in Kerry, and I remember the day vividly. I spent the evening glued to the radio listening to recordings of the satellite’s strange, disembodied beeps from the Jodrell Bank radio observatory and from amateur radio operators. (Later, we learned that the Russian designers originally wanted the device to broadcast a message in morse code, but weight limitations precluded all but the most elementary oscillator.) The signal continued until the transmitter batteries ran out on October 26.

I also remember feeling frustrated by cloud cover which prevented us from scanning the night sky.

Babies and restaurants

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A re-run of a lovely Dave Barry column…

If you’re a new parent, there will come a time when either you or your spouse will say these words:

”Let’s take the baby to a restaurant!”

Now, to a normal, sane person, this statement is absurd. It’s like saying: ”Let’s take a moose to the opera!”

But neither you nor your spouse will see anything inappropriate about the idea of taking your baby to a restaurant. This is because, as new parents, you are experiencing a magical period of wonder, joy and possibility that has made you really stupid.

You are not alone: All new parents undergo a sharp drop in intelligence. It’s nature’s way of enabling them to form an emotional bond with a tiny human who relates with other humans exclusively by spitting up on them. Even very smart parents are affected, as we see from these two quotations:

Albert Einstein Shortly Before The Birth Of His Son: ”To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms — this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”

Albert Einstein Shortly After The Birth Of His Son: ”Daddy’s gonna EAT THESE WIDDLE TOES!”

Lots more where that came from. Go to it.

That Louisiana purchase

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A satirical posting circulating on the Net…

BATON ROUGE, LA. – The White House announced today that President Bush has successfully sold the state of Louisiana back to the French at more than double its original selling price of $11,250,000.

“This is a bold step forward for America,” said Bush. “And America will be stronger and better as a result. I stand here today in unity with French President Jack Chirac, who was so kind to accept my offer of Louisiana in exchange for 25 million dollars cash.”

The state, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild.

“Jack understands full well that this one’s a ‘fixer upper,'” said Bush. “He and the French people are quite prepared to pump out all that water, and make Louisiana a decent place to live again. And they’ve got a lot of work to do. But Jack’s assured me, if it’s not right, they’re going to fix it.”

The move has been met with incredulity from the beleaguered residents of Louisiana.

However, President Bush’s decision has been widely lauded by Republicans.

“This is an unexpected but brilliant move by the President,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. “Instead of spending billions and billions, and billions of dollars rebuilding the state of Louisiana, we’ve just made 25 million dollars in pure profit.”

“This is indeed a smart move,” commented Fox News analyst Brit Hume. “Not only have we stopped the flooding in our own budget, we’ve made money on the deal.”

The money gained from ‘The Louisiana Refund’ is expected to be immediately pumped into the rebuilding of Iraq.

Footnote: The original Louisiana Purchase (in 1803) involved far more territory than the state of Louisiana. Indeed, according to Wikipedia,

the lands purchased contained parts or all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Rocky Mountains, the portions of southern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta that drain into the Missouri River, and Louisiana on both sides of the Mississippi River including the city of New Orleans.

In fact, the land included in the Purchase comprises over one-quarter of the territory of the modern continental United States. And all for $3 per square mile!

The real impact of broadband

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Yesterday I was trying to remember how to adjust something on my venerable Hasselblad 6×6 camera. I knew I had the manual which came with it when I bought the camera many years ago, but it lay entombed somewhere in the chaos of my study. So instead of spending ages searching for it, I looked for a copy on the Web. Even though the Hasselblad site denied all knowledge of the publication, Google found it — buried deep in the site’s archives. So I downloaded the document, located the pages I needed and solved the problem. In minutes. This is kind of simple thing was was inconceivable before the Web (and Google?).

Later… When putting the camera away later in the evening, I found the missing manual — exactly where it should be!

Is Microsoft’s enemy our friend?

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My Observer article about the long term significance of Google…

A few months ago Bill Gates let slip an interesting thought about Google in an interview. It reminded him, he said, of Microsoft in its honeymoon period – ie. the decade 1985-95. This is the first time in recorded history that Gates has dignified a competitor by actually naming it in public: generally, he speaks only in paranoid generalities. But the Microsoft chairman knows trouble when he sees it, and Google does indeed pose a long-term threat to his profitable monopoly.

That’s par for the course in the capitalist jungle. A more important question is whether Google spells trouble for the rest of us in the long run. And the answer to that could well be yes…

My colleague Conal Walsh goes into more detail on the privacy front.

The end of telephony as we know it?

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This morning’s Observer column…

You know the scenario. For years, nothing much seems to be happening. There’s a lot of excited muttering among geeks about a particular technology, but no evidence that would compel a sensible man in a suit to pay attention. Standard market research, for example, fails to detect any important trend. Consumers profess complete ignorance when approached by persons with clipboards. The graphs meander along, hovering just above the X-axis like the Donegal mountains seen from a distance – sometimes rising slightly, sometimes falling a little, but essentially not going anywhere.

Then suddenly one day all hell breaks loose. What looked like the silhouette of foothills has abruptly turned into the vapour trail of a rocket. The graphs – of take-up, media column inches, consumer adoption – have gone through the roof. Now the aforementioned suits are hollering from the same hymn sheet: ‘What the hell is going on?’