Read Ink

Making a splash

2012-02-12T14:50:00.008+04:00

Mrs. Blog and I enjoyed a leisurely walk through Victoria Park this afternoon, soaking up some Sunday sunshine on my last day before I start my new job. Our destination was a small pond in a corner of the park--surrounded today by strollers and picnickers--designated for… racing remote-controlled boats.

And not graceful sailboats, either. Souped-up powerboats that zip around the course so fast they toss a spray of water onto giggling passers-by. At one point there were five guys with boats there, but because they were always taking them out to fine tune (or repair), only two craft were ever in the water at the same time.

I told you they were fast. And I told you they had to be fixed a lot… like that boat that suddenly stopped running at the end of the video. That led to this:

Rescue mission.

And while he was fixing his boat, another racer showed up with something a bit slower, but definitely showier. Note the helicopter on the aft deck, complete with spinning rotors:

Note to readers: A remote-controlled aircraft carrier or battleship would make a great birthday present. Just saying'.

Oh, the places I've been

2012-02-11T07:14:00.002+04:00

Good morning, Readers of the Blog. You have no doubt noticed yet another gap in my writing in this space. That's because Mrs. Blog and I pulled up stakes (i.e., checked out of our hotel in Abu Dhabi) and left the Big Sand for the Big City.

I'm typing this in Hong Kong. Specifically, in a serviced apartment in a neighborhood called Causeway Bay. Outside is a sea of people and neon, and I love it.

We're going to the sheep restaurant because it has such a great sign.

But it was a winding road to get here, people. From the 'Dhabs, we made a four-day trip to Beirut--an amazing, cosmopolitan place in which bulletholes and RPG-riddled buildings share streets with upscale boutiques and bars. Then it was back on tourist visas to Abu Dhabi for a couple of days. Then it was Doha for a half-day (nice museum, terrible taxi service, frustrating airport), then Hong Kong for the Chinese New Year.

Boom. (photo courtesy Mrs. Blog)

And THEN we went to New Zealand for two weeks for a much-delayed honeymoon. We visited some dear friends, I jumped off a bridge, we cruised through an unspoiled fjord that looked straight out of a Peter Jackson movie, we hiked up to a glacier face, we kayaked in the waters of the Tasman Sea, we rode a jetboat.

For those of you keeping score, the day we arrived in New Zealand we had been to five countries in a week. That's a personal record that I don't think I'll ever break.

Now we're settling down to the business of starting work and finding an apartment. We spent nearly eight hours pounding the pavement with a property agent yesterday, and although we arrived home with achy feet, our heads were also full of plans, dreams and furniture layouts.

We might be staying in one place for a bit, but the adventure continues.

Return of the Misc Box

2012-01-09T11:19:00.001+04:00

As I described here, when we left Chicago, all of our careful packing ended with a pile of relatively unrelated items and an empty box. If we couldn't think of anyplace else it belonged, it went in that container: the Misc Box.

Now, as we leave Abu Dhabi, we are left with another Misc Box. (note: the boxes are smaller this time, so there are actually two)

Packing it is a matter of necessity. We can't take everything in suitcases, we don't need everything with us before we find an apartment, so it makes sense to ship it and store it. That's the only consideration.

But I wonder what they will be like to unpack? Will we be wondering why there are a handful of wall socket adapters, some playing cards and a bag of garam masala tucked into a springform pan? Will we be excited as we pull out a game we had forgotten about? Unfurl a poster we were thrilled to find?

I don't know the answer. But I can't wait to find out.

What would you do?

2012-01-08T11:36:00.002+04:00

People living in the UAE consider it very safe. Violent crime is minimal and, for the most part, limited to the rather dismal industrial areas and prefab cities where "laborers," i.e., construction workers, are housed in massive, cramped barracks.

The main reason for this is that the justice system is horribly out of whack and you don't want to get caught up in it, even if you're innocent. If you're guilty (or found guilty), even some of the most minor offenses, like shoplifting, can get you deported. And for most of the blue-collar folks here--in other words, the have-nots, those most likely to commit theft--that's an economic death sentence, as their home countries offer worse wages, worse living conditions and fewer opportunities.

So what would you do if this happened to you?

Paying the taxi, I realised I'd left my wallet in the car. I called the girl at the service centre and headed back to Al Habtoor. I was laughing and joking with her as we got to the car together and I picked up my wallet, which had been relieved of its cash contents, about Dhs400 in all.

It didn't sink in at all until later. Someone had actually taken money from my car. To those of you living elsewhere, this will come as no surprise, you're probably sitting there thinking, 'Like, obviously, duh' and I appreciate why you would. But I live in one of the safest places in the world. We're all of us on the hog's back here, from labourers through to CEOs we're all in the UAE because we're better off than we would be back at home. Any criminal conviction, once you've done your time in El Slammer, means getting sent home and so crime, for the vast majority of us, doesn't pay.

The service centre manager was, I was told, investigating. After a while, he'd drawn a blank and, well, that was sort of that, really. I asked him to call the police. He said they wouldn't do anything, he'd had experience of this sort of thing before. I insisted. He refused. I pointed out it was his secure area, his employee and his responsibility. He said they had internal procedures and he couldn't call the police. I asked him to escalate to someone who could call the police and he ignored me. It all got a little heated. It wasn't really about Dhs400 by now, but about someone who had chosen to steal from me. I called the police myself. After ringing out twice, the 999 number answered. I had tried calling police HQ, but they didn't answer at all. You do wonder sometimes.

The CID chap turned up, a young chap in a baseball cap and dishdash. The service centre manager and I explained (he had no English) and he nodded sagely and took my ID, borrowing a pen and piece of paper from the manager to write down my details. Watching him, I was strongly reminded of our friend captain Mohammed filling out Paul's charge sheet in Olives, his tongue stuck out in concentration...

At this point one of the service staff popped in and put a wad of money on the manager's desk and murmered a name. I got the impression the staff had taken matters into their own hands - nobody really wants CID snooping around their workplace asking awkward questions. The culprit was called for - the most stupid thief imaginable - the man whose job it was to drive the cars around to the storage area prior to work commencing. He had already been through 20 minutes of questioning with the manager before the police were called and had professed his innocence. Now he broke down and pleaded for mercy.

On the one hand, you have been robbed. Dh400 is about US$100, not a ton of money but not trivial either. And there is principle to consider as well; no one likes the idea of a wrongdoer simply getting away with it.

On the other hand, in the U.S. stealing $100 would be a misdemeanor. The offender gets a fine, maybe some community service. Jail time is not likely unless they are wanted for some other crime too. To me, that's appropriate. It's punishment commensurate with the severity of the theft. In the UAE, as we see above, that guy is getting tossed out of the country, whether he winds up in court or not. I'm not sure I would want that on my conscience.

It actually reminds me of something that happened to me and Mrs. Blog the last time we were in the World's Greatest City. While walking back to our hotel on Michigan Avenue, a commotion broke out at a sidewalk restaurant ahead of us. A young man came sprinting out of the crowd, followed by cries of, "Stop that guy! He stole my phone!" I and a couple of other people who happened to be in front of him kind of corralled him and kept him from running. The woman whose phone had been jacked ran up and yelled at him. We let go of his arms and he gave the phone back.

And then everyone kind of unconsciously took a step back as the woman continued to berate him. He apologized, she shouted one last obscenity at him, and then he jogged away.

No one stopped him. Why? Again, I think it is that feeling that maybe holding this guy and calling the police might be a bit too much. He stole something, he got caught, end of story. I'm not sure that was the right thing to do, but collectively, that's what everyone apparently decided. If it happened again--or, more important, if Mrs. Blog or I were the person whose phone had been stolen--I might do things differently and get the police involved.

But here, having seen the way the police and courts operate, I think I would be predisposed toward not allowing them to punish someone for a minor theft. Right or wrong, I think I would rather get my money back and leave it at that. Justice may or may not have been served, but my life would barely be affected by losing Dh400, and it seems disproportionate to ruin someone else's life as a result.

Now you see it, now you... never saw it

2012-01-05T17:27:00.001+04:00

As I put it to Friend of the Blog Chris, it's gratifying to see that science has finally caught up with our imaginations. The science experiment I'm about to describe is pretty mind-bending, and I admit I don't totally understand the science behind it. (Although, it should be noted, that's fair because Dammit, Jim, I'm a writer, not a scientist.)

But wow, is this ever intriguing. I haven't read the original journal article, but based on what I have seen elsewhere, it works something like this: by slowing the speed of light from an event by passing it through a denser material but leaving the light from the event's surroundings unchanged, you can make it seem as though that event never happened.

The entire experiment occurred inside a fiber optics cable. Researchers passed a beam of green light down the cable, and had it move through a lens that split the light into two frequencies, one moving slowly and the other faster. As that was happening, they shot a red laser through the beams. Since the laser “shooting” occurred during a teeny, tiny time gap, it was imperceptible.

My questions--again, writer, not scientist--revolve around what happens to the light from the event itself. Yes, it is slowed down, but it is not eliminated. Doesn't it arrive at the viewer at some point? Does that create some kind of a weird double-image later in time?

In any event, the same article quoted above notes, using present technology it would take a device more than 18,000 miles long to mask an event lasting one second. But still. Think of how many one-second events have changed history: a gunshot, a kiss, a word. This wouldn't let you alter events, exactly, but it would obviously do a number on how they were perceived.

The imagination boggles. Which, I guess, is great if you're a writer... or, it seems, a scientist.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T09:22:00.000+04:00

Well, Friends of the Blog, the holidays have slowed down my posting frequency. I hope you'll understand, and I'll try to illustrate my reasons with pictures if possible.

Christmas is an interesting affair here in the UAE. The malls and big stores are onboard with the holiday 100 percent--hey, it's another reason to spend money! The halls are all decked with boughs of fake holly, massive Christmas trees are erected, banners are hung from the rafters with care, and so on. The mall next to our current hotel digs even had a Santa, and there was always at least a small line of kids waiting to have their picture taken and tell him all about that Red Ryder BB gun they really, really wanted.

But of course, when you're 7,500 miles from home, there is still one crucial thing missing: family. (and snow, if you're into that kind of thing) No long table laden with turkey, no bowl games--yeah, even the crappy pre-New Year's games--no pretending that pair of socks from Aunt Doris really IS the most exciting gift anyone has ever received.

Although I do love a good pair of socks. I have big feet. But anyway.

When you're an expat, you have to make do. You're in unusual surroundings… do something unusual! So naturally we all planned a bowling party in honor of Jesus' birthday at the only alley in town that serves beer. And, as luck would have it, they catered in a turkey dinner too. Win-win-win. What about presents? you ask. Well, we also did a draw-a-number-and-pick-a-gift Secret Santa. That's how I wound up with this lovely ceramic coffee cup:

I love coffee and I love my name. Perfect!

Christmas weekend in general was pretty amazing, too. We had a fantastic brunch on the 23rd that ended up at one of the new beach clubs on Abu Dhabi's newest and betest island, Saadiyat. Saadiyat means "happiness," by the way, and although I have strong suspicions (sorry, Sheikh Mo) that most of its grand plans won't amount to anything, you can see why sitting on a beach out there might make a guy happy:

The sun sets on my last December 23 ever in the UAE.

Christmas Eve was another great get-together at another friend's house, filled with food, fun and Doyle-made Brandy Alexanders. There were Christmas crackers…

Filled with bad jokes and a crown.

… and fond holiday wishes. Also a fair amount of conversation about the caption to the sunset photo.

After nearly three years here, we're leaving the UAE. The National has led us to some tremendous experiences, and we have gotten to explore a region that most people we know will never visit. Fjords in Oman, cave dwellings in Turkey, pyramids in Egypt, ancient cities in Jordan--the list of once-in-a-lifetime type moments is long.

But we're ready to leave desert life, despite some really amazing winters (just LOOK at that sunset photo), behind. So in January, we're hopping a flight to Hong Kong. It's bigger, it's greener and perhaps most important, it's where my next job is, as an editor at what most people consider the leading international newspaper in the world. The move heralds another fascinating step in our lives since I left the Tribune.

Both Mrs. Blog and I are excited about seeing what Hong Kong, China and greater Asia have to offer. Just being in reach of amazing dim sum is enough to bring a smile to my face. There are going to be challenges--it is a tremendously crowded region, and Hong Kong is 95 percent Chinese, meaning there is a much higher language barrier than we're used to--but overcoming them will, I think, be part of the fun.

It will be sad to say goodbye to the good friends we have made here. But moving to Hong Kong means our new year is starting out with a bang--just the way the Chinese like it.

Here's to your 2012 getting off to a colorful, exciting, amazing start. Happy New Year!

It's Christmas Eve, babe (again)

2011-12-25T07:02:00.000+04:00

This is quite a happy--and eventful--Christmas for Mrs. Blog and I. But that doesn't mean Read Ink will stray from its holiday traditions:

Merry Christmas!

Slightly underqualified

2011-12-22T14:43:00.002+04:00

My dream job is hiring right now. Unfortunately, I fall short in a few key areas, like having 1,000 hours of jet aircraft flight time and a degree in engineering, medicine or technology.

On the bright side, I'm the right height and have perfect vision.

I am of course talking about the Astronaut Candidate position being advertised on the government jobs Web site right now.

You get to take cool pictures like this if you get the job.

The Guy Sitting Next to Me is of the opinion of, "How hard a job is that, anyway? All they're doing is just sitting there." That of course is not true, but even if it were, being an astronaut would be the best... desk job... ever.

Remember when stealth technology was mysterious?

2011-12-20T11:23:00.003+04:00

Now it's available for export. Lockheed Martin has agreed to sell Japan 42 of its almost-ready-to-mass-produce F-35 Lightning II multirole aircraft. The F-35 is stealthier than any other production aircraft in the world besides the F-22, and has other fascinating capabilities, like an electro-optical helmet-mounted display that lets the pilot literally look through the bottom and sides of the plane. Neat stuff, and I'm happy Japan is replacing its F-4s with such a capable piece of hardware.

But it makes me think back to the 1980s, when stealth technology basically sounded like science fiction (although the first prototypes were flying in the 70s) and no one knew exactly what it looked like until the F-117 made its debut. And what a debut: The Nighthawk looked like no other aircraft before it (and no other aircraft since)... almost alien, and definitely impressive.

Lookin' sharp. Literally.

Now it is horribly outdated and retired. And its limitations--slow, no air-to-air capability to speak of, blind spots in onboard sensors--have been addressed, and then some, by the Raptor, the world's most advanced fighter.

The biggest sign that the technology has come a long way, and continues to advance in secret, is that the U.S. is building a stealth airframe that has been approved for export. By the end of the decade, the U.S., Britain, Japan and probably South Korea, among others, will all be flying various iterations of the Lightning II. Yes, they are staunch U.S. allies and it is hardly a threat to national security to ensure they have high-tech hardware.

But it also means the U.S., whose Air Force top brass has long adhered to the doctrine that it "never wants to be in a fair fight," has something better up its sleeve.

Can't wait to see it.

When I was 18, it was a very busy year

2011-12-13T11:34:00.002+04:00

For reasons that aren't worth explaining, I just got a copy of my university transcript. I graduated longer ago than I like to think about, so there is a fair amount of stuff that I simply had forgotten about.

Taking 18 hours a semester? Yep--I remember that. The excellent feeling at the start of my last semester when I realized I only needed 13 to graduate and could relax? Also a clear memory.

No problem remembering this, either.

Fundamentals of Physical Anthropology and Elements of Sociology? Not so much. Which is a shame, because I know I learned stuff in those classes, even if I can't remember who taught them.

Not surprisingly, the classes I remember most are the ones in my majors: journalism and philosophy. I have stayed in touch with many of the professors and students in those areas. But there are others that jump out at me as well--Greek and Roman Mythology, for instance, was a fascinating class and very difficult to get into. And although I have forgotten some of the physical attributes of the gods that once made it possible for me to identify them in statue form, there is a lot of stuff that remains tucked in my brain cells. I also remember sitting next to Friend (and eventual Best Man) of the blog Nhan. We were both kind of shocked at how much we enjoyed the class.

Anyway, as far as trips down memory lane go, this one was pretty good. But mostly it shines a light on just how far I have come and how many amazing things have happened to me since then. And it also makes me happy I never have to take Symbolic Logic ever again.

That's no moon, that's a...

2011-12-07T15:46:00.002+04:00

More proof that if you look into space long enough, you're bound to spot something interesting. A NASA/U.S. Navy mission to keep tabs on the Sun's solar flares (using satellites called STEREO A and B) took this video:

Hmmmm. (to see the original, not-so-X-Filed version, go here)

As Gizmodo puts it,

The video shows a coronal mass ejection coming from the Sun and reaching the planet Mercury. Coronal mass ejections are massive explosions of solar wind, radiation and magnetic fields that go well beyond the solar corona, deep into space. They are so big that sometimes they reach Earth.

You can see the gigantic solar wave reaching Mercury but, just as it goes through, something else becomes visible: a very angular shape that seems to be formed by two separate objects joined together. It looks as if the CME wave reveals a volume on impact, interacting with it.

You know, like a cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey being uncovered by the Sun's radioactive fury.

So, digital artifact or planet-sized spaceship? I know which one I want the answer to be. Perhaps it came from our newly discovered sister planet....

There's no place like... wait a second

2011-12-06T15:41:00.001+04:00

It was only a matter of time. Scientists say they have found what might be a true "Goldilocks planet," perfectly positioned around a star so that it's the right temperature for liquid water. It's also sized appropriately for human use--approximately 2.4 times the size of Earth, but there's no telling at this point how dense it is. Nor do we know, at this point, what the composition of its atmosphere is.

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Kepler's results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA's science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe."

Keep in mind, this is 600 light years away. That means if there IS anyone on that planet, and they happen to be looking in our directions, they won't pick up any, say, radio signals for another 500 years.

But it's a start. And an intriguing one at that. There are likely to be many, many planets like this, and if we look at enough of them, we might end up with a Sparrow moment.

Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?

2011-12-04T11:57:00.005+04:00

All games involve solving problems. Sometimes it's just you and some cards, trying to figure out how to get all the suits lined up in order as you play Solitaire.

Sometimes it's you and another person, matching wits as you try to create obstacles for their pieces while simultaneously marching yours into your home base. That's backgammon.

Yet other times, you're talking about dozens of people, all of whom can be utilized in different ways to get an advantage in either advancing or stopping a ball from moving down the field. That's football.

But these days, mostly thanks to the Internet, there are games that involve thousands of people trying to solve a problem. Sometimes it is something as straightforward as an online role-playing or combat games. Other times it is a so-called "alternate reality game," where participants interact in the real world to reach an objective, often the solution to a mystery. Think of it as a Host A Murder dinner party with a million guests.

Those types of challenges can be fun. But they can also be productive. Much as projects like SETI@home use thousands or millions of computers to analyze data, having multitudes of people analyzing a problem can lead to a quick solution.

For instance, how long do you think it would take one person to put this paper-based Humpty Dumpty back together again?

Word spaghetti, served al dente.

DARPA--an increasingly often-cited agency on Read Ink--took the picture above to the masses, offering a US$50,000 prize for whoever could accurately piece back together five shredded documents in roughly one month.

They got a winner, too (solutions here). Some of the 9,000-ish entrants used brute force, simply having a whole bunch of people sifting through strips of paper. But the victorious team created an algorithm that essentially compared all the strips to one another and generated a "probability of fit" score. That meant the human operator could ignore pieces with a low score and examine only the ones that were likely to go next to each other.

And it still took a month to solve.

But besides being an interesting challenge, it is also an effective way to solve a bigger problem. Need a method? Consult the masses. DARPA essentially paid US$50,000 to solve a meta-problem that probably would have taken millions of dollars to examine with a smaller team of dedicated researchers.

And because this is a writing blog, I should of course note the impact this will have on the world's thriller authors. Need your spy to destroy some documents? Better have her burn them... otherwise, no secret is safe.

Well, it looks cool, anyway

2011-12-01T11:36:00.002+04:00

The J-20, China's prototype foray into the world of stealth aircraft, is showing up more and more on the Internet. Confident that it will fly without any embarrassing glitches--like blowing up or crashing--the Chinese military is making sure this impressively large aircraft is getting a lot of face time.

Note that the video was shot from inside the base. This isn't shakycam from a planespotter; this is PR.

To me, the project seems more like a testbed or technology demonstrator. It is too large to be an effective fighter and there are many things about the design, including the engine nozzles, that make it non-stealthy... no matter how many cool angles are designed into the fuselage.

Overall, the J-20 doesn't represent much of a gap-closing with the U.S., even leaving avionics, networking and weapons out of the equation.

But a more cynical man might suggest that this aircraft is being pushed so hard into the spotlight because there is something else in the shadows.

Playing with fire

2011-11-29T11:34:00.001+04:00

I'm not thrilled that this is happening just a few hundred miles away from my (brand-new!) front door, and I'm not celebrating the loss of life, but I have to say I saw it as good news when I read that an Iranian missile base blew up recently.

An Iranian military compound that blew up earlier this month was extensively damaged, the Institute for Science and International Security said after an analysis of new satellite imagery.

ISIS compared a November 22 image from DigitalGlobe to one from September.

"Some buildings appear to have been completely destroyed. Some of the destruction seen in the image may have also resulted from subsequent controlled demolition of buildings and removal of debris. There do not appear to be many pieces of heavy equipment such as cranes or dump trucks on the site, and a considerable amount of debris is still present," according to the analysis posted on ISIS website.

Senior defense officials told CNN's Barbara Starr that the United States believes the Iranians were mixing volatile fuel for a rocket motor for a large ballistic missile on November 12 when the accident occurred.

If nothing else, this is a sign that technology sanctions really do work. A modern economy with reasonable resources can develop stuff like low-performance aircraft and short-range missiles without too much trouble. But long-range rocketry is a totally different beast.

It took the U.S. years of launchpad explosions and downrange failures before it was able to reliably get stuff into orbit. I hope Iran, which has access to a tiny percentage of the human capital and materiel of a 1950s United States and is choked off from buying many of the parts it needs, continues to be a lot farther away from that goal.

A moving experience

2011-11-26T18:33:00.004+04:00

Well, Friends of the Blog, it's been a busy couple of weeks.

Usually I fall off the grid--and by that I mean Read Ink doesn't get updated--when I'm traveling. For about 10 days this month, that was my excuse, as Mrs. Blog and I headed to India for the wedding of two friends. This is the same couple whose nuptials took us to Dallas a few months back, a trip we enjoyed immensely, and not just because it involved huge amounts of barbecue and brisket tacos.

Nom nom nom, y'all.

This was the second time we had been to India, the first being two years ago when I first suggested to Mrs. Blog that she deserved an upgrade from Girlfriend of the Blog. That trip was memorable for a lot of reasons--the Taj Mahal at dawn, climbing through an ancient abandoned city, riding a rickshaw through one of the most crowded markets in the world--and I left so inundated with India that every time I closed my eyes for a few days afterwards, the swirling crowds appeared behind my eyelids. True story.

You would never find Waldo, ever.

This time was a little more sedate. We had a soft landing at one of our favorite hotels anywhere, The Imperial, then took on India from a different angle than our first trip. The sights had been seen, you see. So we focused on food. And, OK, fine, I'll admit it, shopping. The payoff was remarkable. Let me just say that if you ever find yourself in Delhi, go to Hauz Khas market and track down the Gray Garden and Yeti. Thank me later.

But India's real embrace came when we traveled to Siliguri, the bride's hometown, for the wedding. She and her family welcomed us (and several dozen other friends from Abu Dhabi) with a gusto and charm and warmth that you will see in few other parts of the world. They whisked us to our hotel. They ensured that we had delicious, spicy meals waiting whenever we turned around. They treated us like VIPs.

And what a remarkable family, too. The bride's parents, both doctors, have been involved for decades with treating those who society has neglected. We visited a community her father founded for people who had been stigmatized by leprosy--they themselves were healthy but the disease had struck their parents, leaving them outcasts. Through the bride's father's efforts, people who would otherwise have been begging in the streets were learning job skills; their children were attending school just steps from their front doors. That's what having an impact on society is all about. Everywhere around us were people whose lives were better because someone believed in them. It's not the sort of lesson you expect at a wedding. But it was a welcome one.

The wedding, of course, was an explosion of colors, sounds and lights, as Indian weddings are wont to be. It began with a marching band leading the procession through town and it ended with a 2,000-person reception at a water park outside town. There simply aren't enough superlatives to do it justice.

This is where you say, Hey, wait, Gerry--aren't pictures worth 1,000 words? And I reply, Yes, they are, and I haven't gotten them off our camera yet. Settle down. Pictures to come.

Suffice to say we arrived back in the UAE richer in spirit and with suitcases full of well-haggled Indian merchandise. Clothing, mostly. Including leather shoes that actually fit my feet.

But there was a cloud to all this glittering silver.

For reasons that are too boring and frustrating to explain, our apartment in Abu Dhabi went from being company-owned to owned-by-someone-else in a matter of days last month. The people living in the building had more or less six weeks to get out. And the deadline happened to be Friday, just a few days after we returned from India.

Rather than avail ourselves of the frustrating Abu Dhabi rental market (the linked story is old but still remarkably applicable), in which rent is paid for an entire year up front and a one-bedroom place in the good part of town can cost US$30,000, we decided to unload our furniture and move into a serviced apartment.

In a way, this was the perfect week for all of this to happen. Yes, it was scary and stressful to sell all our furniture, pack up and get out in a matter of four days while we both were working full-time. I cannot overstate how little sleep we got and how tired I got of people calling up to offer me one-third of my asking price without even bothering to see what they were buying.

Thanksgiving was Thursday, though, and Thursday was when we packed up and got out. Our Budget Building flat, with paint choices more colorful than probably any other apartment in Tanker Mai, is echoing and empty.

But I am full of thanks. Thankful for Mrs. Blog, who was always there to remind me to breathe when the move hit hardest. Thankful for our friends, who offered help in myriad ways. Thankful for a massive Thanksgiving spread at one of their houses (and for the poker tournament in which we finished in fourth place), and the heaping helpings of fellowship.

And thankful for the relaxing rooftop pool of our new building.

I always miss the fun stuff

2011-11-06T11:01:00.004+04:00

Along with the Chicago Air and Water Show, football and the Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival, it appears I have missed another major Midwestern event by living abroad.

An earthquake.

According to the Associated Press, there was a 4.7 magnitude temblor early Saturday followed by a late-night 5.6er. It could be felt as far away as Kansas City, and of course across the region no one quite knew what to make of this.

My first earthquake actually happened while living here--we felt the shocks of a massive 7.5-plus magnitude quake in Pakistan. Mrs. Blog, being a California girl, instantly knew why our TV stand was rattling. I thought perhaps our TV was vibrating for some reason. If I had known, I might have looked like this:

"On live TV. Must not show fear."

That was football commentator Kirk Herbstreit, by the way, who happened to be on an ESPN broadcast when the late-night quake hit. And although he didn't immediately say anything about it, you can tell he kinda sorta noticed what was going on.

Anyway, I guess living in the Midwest most of my life and never witnessing a tornado, let alone an earthquake, isn't a bad thing. I lived in Florida for a few years too, and you know what? No hurricanes. I guess it proves the truth of that Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

Gimme Some Lovin' (without the lovin')

2011-11-02T12:29:00.004+04:00

Mrs. Blog and I went to see one of the greatest movies about Chicago ever made: The Blues Brothers. It's getting to be winter here, which means people are emerging from their concrete-and-bad-tile caves to do things outdoors. In this case, it was Cinema by the Sea, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was a nice distraction from frustrating issues with the housing "market" here.

On paper, it's a perfect idea. Great weather? Check. Great movie? Check. Beanbag chair seating? Check. They even threw in some fireworks as a bonus.

But, as Mrs. Blog noted, this would not be Abu Dhabi if everything went as it should. About halfway through the show, for instance, workers set up floodlights illuminating an EXIT HERE banner... and half the crowd.

The thing that got me the most, though, was the censorship. It wouldn't be the Blues Brothers without gratuitous swearing, and sure enough, that was untouched. There are two scenes that involve male-female relations, however. Perhaps 30 seconds, total, of footage. And by relations, I mean kissing.

Yes, the pivotal scene at the end where Carrie Fisher confronts her ex-fiancee, Joliet Jake, starts with him pleading with her and ends with her lying in the mud, with no indication of how Point A got to Point B.

Happily, they left in the part where a Nazi henchman tells Henry Gibson, "I've always loved you" as their red Pinto plummets into a crater in downtown Chicago. And I had forgotten how fun the car chase at the end is; legend has it that Lower Wacker Drive never recovered from all the damage done during the movie's filming.

All in all, a fine way to spend a Tuesday night. If nothing else, it's something you couldn't do in Chicago this time of year.

Two wings, no tail, no radar return and no pilot

2011-10-29T14:10:00.003+04:00

Good stuff here. The Navy has been quietly developing what is likely to be a game-changing capability: a pilotless, stealthy combat aircraft that can operate off a carrier.

The technical challenges are pretty astounding. A carrier landing is tough under the best of circumstances for a human pilot. The X-47 requires a computer to do it. And of course there are all the usual issues with operating a unmanned aerial vehicle, compounded with flying them out of a mobile, seagoing base.

But unlike some defense programs, this one is on track.

That was the X-47 flying with its gear up, a project milestone. And the Navy expects these things to be landing on carriers in the next 18 months or so. It's not exactly fodder for a Top Gun remake, but as far as technological impact, it's hard to overstate the value of being able to strike first, undetected, without putting a person in harm's way.

Half-car, half-plane, all funny looking

2011-10-25T16:41:00.003+04:00

So apparently our favorite weapons experimenter DARPA is trying to develop a new light, armored ground vehicle for U.S. troops. But this project has an unusual requirement, too: it must fly.

As Aviation Week puts it,

Transformer is not simply a roadable aircraft - it is a four-seat vehicle that must be able to drive off-road, survive small-arms fire, and rapidly reconfigure into an aircraft that can take off and land vertically and be flown without pilot training.

Yep, that's a tall order, making a flying machine that literally any grunt can get into and flutter away in. Oh, and it also has to be bulletproof. That might be the hardest part, actually. If you shoot up a Humvee door, it will be dinged and dented, but the people inside will be safe, and that's the important bit. If you shoot up a folded-up wing (as in the picture below), the people on the other side might be safe, but good luck getting any lift with that deformed airfoil.

The results, as you might imagine, are a little funny-lookin':

Like an Apache mated with a Pinto.

But hey, if it gets the job done, who cares? The A-10 isn't exactly glamorous, but it makes up for it by being indestructible and indispensable. As with many DARPA projects, it will be fascinating to see how this one turns out. Unlike what you may have seen in the newsreels of the '50s, though, it is unlikely even a successful vehicle will ever make its way onto civilian roads.

The Art of Storytelling

2011-10-16T12:48:00.001+04:00

It's the most cultural time of the year here in Abu Dhabi: the fifth annual Abu Dhabi Film Festival has kicked off, bringing dozens of international movies to malls and hotels across the emirate.

Last night Mrs. Blog and I saw a remarkable piece of artistry called "Almost in Love." The writing was beautiful; as I have complained before, dialogue has always been one of my weak points as a writer, but this movie was filled with strong, natural, engaging conversation.

It is essentially a love story. I won't bother trying to sum up the plot--there are a lot of threads--but the gist of it is the important, difficulty and beauty of finding love.

But the fascinating thing about it is that it was done in two 40-minute takes. That's right: two locales, two groups of actors (some of whom appear in both takes) and two long shots.

The director and writer, Sam Neave, uses some interesting techniques, like occasionally shifting the sound to follow a conversation offscreen while we watch two characters interact silently in front of us. It gives the effect of being at a busy cocktail party, where you tune in and out of the conversations around you.

And none of it comes across as gimmicky or distracting. It's not ad-libbed; the acting is superb and it is clear everyone has a superb grasp of their lines. I'm guessing that like a stageplay, it was rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed until everything is not only memorized, but natural. And then they shot it.

We saw the world premiere. But I urge you, if this film appears at an art house (or, if you're in the Middle East, a mall), go check it out.

As real as it gets

2011-10-13T17:54:00.002+04:00

Apparently there is a movie coming out in February whose stars you have heard about quite a bit lately, but who have absolutely no acting experience. It's an action movie--a genre in which they have plenty of experience.

They are active-duty Navy SEALs.

The project, called Act of Valor, began life as a short military recruitment video; its production team is a well-regarded commercial outfit. But realizing they had nearly unprecedented access to military equipment, they pitched--and won--the idea for a full-length movie. The script is being written by one of the authors of the 300 screenplay.

It sounds like a pretty run-of-the-mill action plot: SEALs rescue a captured spy. But the hook, of course, is that the Navy literally assigned SEALs between combat tours the mission of acting in the film.

Friend of the Blog Chris correctly pointed out that this is much like Top Gun in that it uses a ton of actual military personnel and equipment, and perhaps more important, will have teenagers lining up outside recruiting centers. It is an unabashed rah-rah picture.

I'm not sure what to think about it, honestly. The action sequences will be great, I'm sure. The plot will be largely forgettable. But will the movie as a whole be more than a novelty?

I knew it!

2011-10-11T13:27:00.002+04:00

It seems Boeing — whose X-37 is already flying secretive missions for the Air Force — can easily upgrade the spaceplane to be a man-rated craft.

Grantz revealed Boeing’s plans for an X-37C model, which would be nearly twice as long as the B version, with sufficient capacity for up to six astronauts. The X-37C could be controlled robotically – or by a human pilot. ‘Once qualified for human flight, these vehicles could transport a mix of astronauts and cargo to the [International Space Station] and offer a much gentler return to a runway landing for the space tourism industry,’ Grantz wrote in a report.

Yes, that does give the U.S. another option to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station. But it also affords a capability similar to that of the Dyna-Soar. And as the X-37s only operator, wouldn't the Air Force love a crewed, semi-autonomous vehicle with a decent payload capacity that can pass over just about any spot on Earth soon after launch? Hmmmm.

Talkin' Turkey

2011-10-09T15:52:00.005+04:00

Remember how I kept saying I would have a blog post about Turkey? Well, here it is. I actually wrote a travel story for The National about the first bit of our trip, in a place called Cappadocia. I could have done 1,000 words just on the town...

Photo courtesy Mrs. Blog Photo Agency.

... the mezze...

Photo courtesy Mrs. Blog Photo Agency.

... and the balloon ride...

Photo courtesy Mrs. Blog Photo Agency.

... but here, please enjoy the condensed version of our 48 hours in one of the most beautiful places Mrs. Blog and I have ever visited:

Cappadocia, in central Anatolia, is remarkable from any angle - in the air, on the ground and deep below the surface.

As we fly in from Istanbul, the landscape beneath us is a tapestry of food crops, rocky hills and the famous "fairy chimneys", which begin to reveal themselves as we approach the airport. From the air, these natural rock formations, created by the erosion of volcanic stone over the millennia, look like giant spires rising from the earth.

The airport is near Nevsehir, the regional capital. On the 30-minute ride to our hotel (about €10; Dh50), we notice another striking natural feature: caves. Indeed, our hotel, the Sultan Cave Suites (www.sultancavesuites.com; rooms from Dh370 per night;), was built amid caves in the hills above Goreme and layered over half-a-dozen terraces, with views over the city's red rooftops and chimneys.

Formed thousands of years ago, the hotel's caves were first used by Roman settlers in the first century AD, and have been expanded and modernised in the last few decades. The rooms are rustic and clean, with smooth stone floors, five-metre-high vaulted ceilings, and a seating area around a fireplace that, in July, is purely decorative.

Sultan, the hotel restaurant, is one of the best in Cappadocia and, seated under the stars in the stone courtyard, we graze on mezze, newly baked bread and stuffed squash blossoms, a seasonal speciality (mains from about Dh50). Mezze platters - hot or cold - are delectable everywhere, from the high-end terraces of A'laturca in the town centre (www.alaturca.com.tr; mains from €20 [Dh100]; starters from €150 [Dh30]), to the low-budget Seyah Han on the road to the Open Air Museum (mains from Dh30; starters from Dh10). Testi kebab, marinated meat and vegetables cooked in a sealed clay jar are ubiquitous Goreme dishes but, ultimately, just a distraction on the way to another mezze platter.

The next morning we head out for a balloon ride (www.butterflyballoons.com; Dh780 per person) and, as the sky changes colour, Mustafa, our pilot, shepherds us into a minibus and tells us we'll be taking off from Love Valley, spectacular with its chimney formations.

At the launch site, three colourful balloons are being inflated. We clamber into the huge baskets (each holds up to 20 people), the ground crew unties the support ropes and we are airborne. Within 30 seconds we dip into the valley, lower than the plateau we had launched from, and drift between the chimneys, tinged orange by the first rays of dawn.

By the time we rise high enough to watch the sun peep over the mountain between Nevsehir and the province of Kayseri, the sky around us is filled with balloons. We pass over the mountain, soaring to more than 1,100 metres, and find ourselves surrounded by exotic geography: more chimneys, canyons dotted with hand-carved pigeon roosts, mountains and Erciyes, the still-active volcano that gave birth to it all.

We return to the ground (Mustafa drops the balloon directly onto its travel trailer) and, after a quick break at the hotel, walk the two kilometres to the Goreme Open Air Museum (Dh21 per person).

This Unesco World Heritage Site comprises churches and buildings hand-carved from natural caves. They date from about 400 AD to the mid-14th century, and many examples of brilliantly painted religious scenes and other art still remain. The first occupants, early Christians who deliberately left society to settle in the wilderness, used natural dyes - including shocking blue hues made of powdered lapis lazuli - to decorate their cells and churches.

Unfortunately, visitors won't learn much at the museum; the audio tour, inexpensive at Dh10 per person, mostly describes the obvious, but the churches' visual impact forgives the lack of historical context. Buckle Church is the largest, with room for about 100 worshippers under its 10-metre ceiling. The blue dye is most prevalent here but the passage of 1,000 years, countless worshippers and several invasions has worn most of colour off everything within arm's reach.

The next day is our last in Cappadocia and we need to cram in as much as we can. A bus ride (Dh84 per person) brings us to our first stop, the underground city of Derinkuyu, likely settled between 800 BC and 400 BC. We arrive at 10am but the cramped interiors, 85 metres below, are already echoing with the voices of visitors.

As with other cave dwellings in the region, the natural hollows had been expanded until, in Derinkuyu's case, they could house tens of thousands of people. The caves were widely occupied during the Byzantine era, abandoned, then discovered by villagers using the top rooms as basements. Some signs of use still remain, including soot-blackened walls and 500kg millstones resting in hand-carved grooves, ready to seal passageways.

One hundred and thirty spiral steps, still showing millennia-old tool marks, lead down from the third to the seventh levels of the 11-level city - the deepest part open to the public. The rough volcanic rock never stops pushing inwards and most of the passageways, designed to restrict invaders, are two metres tall or less.

A few hours later we emerge, blinking, into the light and head to Soganli Valley, its steep sides sculpted into homes, aviaries and more churches. After a stop at an active archaeological site, a remote Roman village called Sobesos, we visit Keslik Monastery.

The semi-attached churches, kitchens and living spaces - all hewn from rock and surrounded by fertile soil cultivated since the monks arrived in the fourth century - form a shady enclave, with the beige edifice of the monastery as its focal point. After swinging through Mustafapasa, a neighbourhood in Urgup filled with 15th-century Greek architecture, we return, exhausted, to the hotel.

In the end, we spend only 48 hours in Cappadocia but travel hundreds of kilometres, hike for several more and balloon across nearly 15. Yet, there remains much more to see, all of it intriguing - from every angle.

F-35 landings

2011-10-07T12:37:00.000+04:00

And takeoffs! It appears that sea trials on the F-35B are going well. This is important because one of the main selling points of the fighter was its versatility: there would be versions for every service branch (and foreign partner), including the Marines' STOL carriers.

What is unclear is which general OK'd a hair-band soundtrack that was not Kenny Loggins.

It's interesting how the lift-fan door opens upward instead of clamshelling outward... seems to this armchair aerospace engineer that the resulting drag would make takeoff more difficult than it should be. On the other hand, it seems to take off just fine, which is why I'm a writer and not an aerospace engineer.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T11:40:00.003+04:00

Somewhat interestingly, my family has never owned anything but Apples, as far as computers go.

This was mostly happenstance. Both of my parents were teachers for most of my childhood, and would often bring home school machines--invariably Apple IIs, and later the first generation of Macintoshes. I remember how impressive the black-and-white graphics and speech emulation were, and how intuitive the operating system was.

For playing Wasteland.

The first computer we bought was a Macintosh LC... again, because my mom was a teacher. Apple offered educators' discounts, and that made the decision easy.

For playing Starflight.

The next one I can remember us getting was a PowerMac. A big tower, a big educators' discount, but still no internet.

For playing Marathon.

Then I went off to college. Surprise, Apple also had discounts and low-interest loans for students. So I got a PowerMac of my own.

For playing Mechwarrior.

After college, I headed to Florida for my first job... and my first laptop. I paid cash and walked away with a Titanium PowerBook G4.

For playing Falcon.

I should add that on literally all these machines, I was also writing. The first short story I ever sold--"Rain"--I wrote in high school on the Mac LC. I wrote my novel on my PowerMac 5400. Now I have a newer PowerBook and don't play any games on it at all... just writing, reading and Interneting.

Along the way I (and everyone I knew) wound up with iPods too. I have owned a second-generation iPod, an iPod Mini, an iPod Touch and an iPod Nano. Three of them have been stolen.

All this is to say that as far as CEOs go, Steve Jobs has had more impact on my life than most. I listen to music I love on a machine whose design he supervised and write words I love on a computer that was his brainchild as well. Many of the people I telephone, including Mrs. Blog when we're in the U.S., answer using a device he designed as well.

Steve Jobs seems to be universally viewed as a visionary. And at 56, he likely had a lot bigger plans left unfulfilled. It will be interesting to see where Apple goes in the next 25 years. But looking back over the last 25, the influence of Jobs and his company is pretty clear.

What's in the news

2011-10-04T14:47:00.002+04:00

I was going to write about the first carrier landing for the F-35.

But after checking out the world's news sites this morning, something else grabbed me. Not only is the world obsessed with Amanda Knox, but the obsession has illustrated the way media approaches a case like this.

Everyone wants to attract readers, and that means a compelling story. I have this crazy idea that a good story can stand on its own merits. A college girl is accused of a bizarre murder in a foreign country. Hey, that works for me. But the narrative that developed in the years since the case started has basically split into two storylines: Knox as innocent victim caught in the gears of an unjust legal system, and Knox as the sex-crazed manipulative she-devil. (although to be fair, I think U.S. print media have generally done a good job of playing it straight. TV, though....)

If you did want to portray her as an angel or devil, the lawyers presented a veritable Italian smorgasbord of colorful imagery. For instance,

Knox was ... described as a "she devil," a "liar" and a woman who has an "angelic" side as well as a "diabolic" side.

Or remember "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"?

Defense lawyer Giulia Bongiorno ... compared Knox to Jessica Rabbit, the hourglass-shaped, husky-voiced cartoon character who insists in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" that she's not bad, she's just "drawn that way."

So there were a lot of juicy words out there with which to attract readers. The British media ran with them. "Foxy Knoxy" is one I saw a lot. And the Daily Mail actually went a step further, declaring her guilty, or should I say

GUILTY!

and included a line in display type about how stunned she looked as her appeal was rejected. Now that's dedication to sensationalizing a story.

I don't speak Italian, but the media there have, not surprisingly, reacted badly to the idea that haughty America was casting judgment on its legal system. That resulted in a little bit of backlash in terms of the way Knox was depicted. There also have been some allegations that the Italian media were all too willing to take anything the government told them as gospel ... of course, this is not something unique to Italy.

From the outside looking in, the story appears to me to have all the hallmarks of what many jaded journos call "the cute white girl in trouble" story. It is the kind of news judgment that turns run-of-the-mill kidnappings into front-page news. I don't know whether Knox is guilty. But I do hope that no matter where the truth lies among all the headlines--sensational and otherwise--justice was served.

And now I'll go back to paying attention to other things, like shiny rockets and interesting words.

Trust me: it's not that exciting

2011-09-22T14:20:00.003+04:00

I have written about video games a bit here, mostly in terms of how nowadays the best games are the ones that tell a good story. Well, today I read an article that makes me wonder if gamemakers might be trying a bit too hard. Now they're writing stories about storytellers... specifically, journalists.

In my world, journalism is grit and shoe leather. Most of the time it's a methodical business of tracking information, finding out who can tell you what and making sure it's all solid and clear. It can be exciting--like solving a mystery--as you're piecing together something over the long term and watching its impact. Some guys wrote a book about that once. Breaking news is a different beast, as you enter a story in media res, soaking it up as it happens, mixing in context and letting your readers know ASAP. There is more adrenalin involved.

But enough adrenalin to base a video game on? Er....

Oh, right, of course: war reporting (also the subject of a great book). I haven't done any myself, but from everything I have been told there are fewer better ways to feel alive than surviving a firefight. Surviving a firefight is the subject of quite a few games already. So it should work, right?

Maybe. Not being able to actually shoot anything in a first-person shooter might be a drawback for a lot of players. Which brings us back to the idea of a story. A tale about telling a tale can work as a movie. But when you're playing the central character, shooting video while everyone around you actually drives the plot forward could be about as exciting as calling a school board member.

I hate nuclear warfare

2011-09-21T13:36:00.004+04:00

As should all of you, dear readers. But I do love the dark sense of humor that sprung up in the corps of "missileers," the people whose job it would be to push the button (turn the switch, whatever) during a nuclear war. The combination of boredom and disconnection to the outside world leads to, well, runaway imaginations and "relaxed" attire:

Note the footwear.

It makes sense. If literally my only job was to prevent things being blown up by providing the constant threat of blowing up other things--and getting blown up yourself in the process--I would imagine my sense of humor would get a little on the twisted side too. If nothing else, it might inspire some great apocalyptic fiction.

Welcome to the Terrordome

2011-09-18T13:56:00.000+04:00

Life is full of speculative, pointless and interesting conversations. Often there is beer involved. Which would win, a bear with lasers or a dinosaur? Which U.S. politician would you take a bullet for? What is the most disgusting food you would eat for $1 million? And so on.

Occasionally these conversations have utility in real life. At least if you're a professional athlete. A recent piece in The Onion AV Club reminded me of a discussion I had more than once with Friend of the Blog Erin, who at one time was covering professional baseball in Northern California. Players got to choose their own "entrance music" when they appeared in the game, you see, and that led to the obvious question: what would your music be?

Of course, when most people enter the office--including me--there is no fanfare, let alone music. A grunt from the security guard as we scan our badges is best we can hope for. But if I could arrive at my desk to the thundering chords of the "Indiana Jones" theme song, well, that would get my day off to a much better start. Another classic example is the movie "Office Space", which is filled with inspirational music:

Coming back to the question of athletes, though, it really is a tricky question. Do you want to inspire? Intimidate? Simply play something you like listening to? Ideally, all three. Which is why I'm voting for Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome" for the entrance music in my alternate-universe career as a fireballing closer.

(This would earn bonus points if I played for a team with a domed home field, of course)

What would your entrance music be?

Reno tragedy

2011-09-17T11:40:00.002+04:00

Some weeks this seems more like an aerospace blog than a writing blog.

Today I read about the shocking crash at the Reno Air Races, in which a souped-up P-51 Mustang crashed just short of the box seats where spectators were gathered to watch a race.

F-1 races get a lot of press in this part of the world: people love fast cars and the thrill of a potential crash. In air racing, the speeds are much higher--500 mph or more--and the chances of surviving a crash are much lower. Under most circumstances, however, the super-high maintenance standards, pilot experience, race design and simple fact that being in the air gives you more margin for error make it a remarkably safe endeavor. Until Friday, there had been only 19 deaths in 49 years of racing.

What happened yesterday, however, was horrific. The racing Mustang, nicknamed Galloping Ghost, appeared to lose control on a race leg near the grandstand. After a few seconds of struggle, it hit the ground at nearly 90 degrees from horizontal.

Galloping Ghost, piloted by Jimmy Leeward.

No one knows exactly what happened yet. There is some speculation of a mechanical failure, and given the outcome that would make sense--the pilot, Jimmy Leeward, had been flying since he was a teenager and racing for decades. I wonder, though, if he suffered some kind of medical issue and blacked out; note that in the photo above, no pilot is visible. The end result was three people killed and dozens injured, including at least 25 critically. Some have suggested that Leeward deliberately dived at the ground, knowing his plane would hit the grandstand dead-on if he did not. I suspect that the cause of the crash will be determined soon, as his ground team will have telemetry data and radio transcripts to work with.

Attending the Reno Air Races has been a minor dream of mine for a long time. The crash doesn't change that. But it does make it a little more sad: all those people--as I would--went to watch something they loved. Instead, they witnessed a tragedy.

The Rocket of Tomorrow for the Spaceship of Tomorrow

2011-09-15T13:44:00.003+04:00

Oddly, it looks a lot like the rocket of yesterday. Specifically the Saturn V, which sent Americans to the moon and remains the most powerful launch vehicle ever built.

The new, inspirationally named Space Launch System is designed to toss 70 to 130 metric tons into Earth orbit and beyond. It has the capacity, NASA says, to not just get men back to the moon, but also asteroids (by 2025) and eventually Mars. Neat! I am onboard with that plan.

Despite its conventional look, it uses a lot of state-of-the-art hardware. A lot of that is off the shelf, including the super-efficient Shuttle Main Engines. That's great in that it cuts down on development time--they expect to launch one of these by 2017--but slightly saddening in that at least at the outset, there are not going to be any big technological breakthroughs.

But let's take a moment to see how nifty it would look on pad.

Nifty.

I guess the U.S. space program began with proven hardware, like the V-2, and over the course of a couple of decades built it into the Saturn V. That could happen in this case, as well, especially for interplanetary travel, for which chemical rockets are not well-suited. And to be fair, it is extremely unlikely that we are going to be shooting ourselves into orbit using anything but chemical rockets anytime soon, just because the only foreseeable alternatives involve messiness like deadly radiation or engineering challenges like space-based elevators.

Overall, my reaction is much the same as it was to the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle announcement. I recognize that it is state-of-the-art, but I am mildly disappointed at that the state of the art of today looks much as it did in the late 1960s. The Space Shuttle was an engineering leap and looked the part. Would it be too much to ask for NASA to get Ron Moore involved at some point?

But in the end, I hope to at some point in my life watch one of these things lift off in much the same way that my parents watched Apollo 11: A vehicle carrying humanity off into uncharted--and exciting--territory.

This is not the budget item you're looking for

2011-09-13T12:27:00.000+04:00

Or: How project management is more than Force strangulation.

The good folks at the Pentagon have a sense of humor. How do I know? Because an Air Force acquisitions branch chief decided to make a point about not pouring money into big projects with an uncertain utility using the biggest example ever: the Death Star.

In a well-written article filled with tongue-in-cheek references to the Star Wars universe (and a hilarious illustration), Lt. Col. Dan Ward shows how the Death Star was essentially the victim of bad procurement and project-management decisions.

Utility? It had almost none. It only fired its main weapon once, and the Empire did not actually want to go around destroying too many planets, as that would de facto destroy the empire.

Cost? At 14 times the current U.S. debt, it is hard to argue that it was worth the money either time they tried to build it, given the utility.

Well-managed? As Ward points out, the second one is running behind schedule when it is destroyed, and only Darth Vader's murderous "motivational speeches" can get things moving again.

In his mind, those issues trump even the two Death Stars' vulnerabilities, allowing them to be blowed up real good by a bunch of rust-streaked one-man fighters. (albeit with George Lucas' screenwriting in their corner)

I am a lover of big, fascinating technology programs, but I see his point. The National Aerospace Plane, for instance, was a huge money sink for years before everyone collectively realized it wasn't going anywhere and even if it did, who would use it? A giant, airborne laser, while an interesting technology demonstrator, doesn't have much use in the real world.

So, in all, a fun and interesting read. It is good to hear our military planners have a sense of humor--and the good sense to know that the last thing we want to become is the Evil Empire.

Hiding in plain sight

2011-09-12T11:53:00.002+04:00

I have this theory that the development of technology, not the actual weapons, is what the U.S. tries to keep most secret. It is not a devastating blow for your enemies to know you're building a Mach 4 bomber; it IS a devastating blow if they know how to jam the brand-new death ray you're going to mount on it.

And, it seems, I might be correct in this theory. The Air Force, in a handy timeline chart, laid out at a recent conference how it was going to build that Mach 4 bomber, in what basically amounts to a PowerPoint presentation.

"Superfast... stealthy... slide, please. Robust scramjet by 2015... slide, please."

As you can see, a lot of the basic technology already at least at Technology Readiness Level 3 or 4, or roughly halfway to operational use. The broad needs for such a craft, such as the engines and materials, are well under development. As flightglobal.com speculates, this is proof that the Blackswift project had a bigger impact than anyone thought.

America's (and the world's) only operational Mach 3-capable aircraft was retired years ago. Perhaps by the end of this decade a faster cousin will have appeared in the skies.

Sept. 11, 2001

2011-09-11T11:38:00.002+04:00

In a lot of ways, it is hard to believe it has been 10 years since the attacks. At the time, caught up in the immediacy and horror and destruction, 10 years seemed impossibly far off.

But now here we are. Like most people, I have a clear memory of that Tuesday, and where I was when I first heard.

I had started work at the Chicago Tribune perhaps a week earlier. Tuesday was my first day off. And because I worked nights, I was asleep when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. My friend Chris called, woke me up and told me to run, not walk, to the TV because something insane was happening in New York.

I flipped on the set just in time to see the second plane hit. It wasn't until the first tower collapsed that I began frantically calling friends and relatives in New York; of course, that was about the time phone calls in and out of that state became virtually impossible.

The only other time I can remember watching so much continuous news coverage is in the aftermath of the 2000 election, when I lived in the land of hanging chads. In 2001, it was a blurry stream of information and misinformation. I was told not to come into work because it was iffy whether the El trains were safe. There was a suicide plane headed to Chicago. The Air Force had shot down more airliners. Fifty thousand people were dead, then 20,000, then 10,000, then 3,000. Some things became clearer as the day went on; others just became murkier.

Everyday life intervened, as it always did. Taking a break from the TV, I took the trash out to the alley so I could get some fresh air--and in doing so, I locked myself out of my apartment. In retrospect, I think I was lucky during that day of extreme paranoia that no one called the police as I climbed up into a window on my back porch.

In the end, there was no personal tragedy for me. All of my friends and family were safe. But the gut-wrenching feeling of witnessing mass murder made that relief seem a little paltry.

I don't know that there is any right or wrong way to mark the anniversary of the most traumatic event for America since I have been alive. Just about every media outlet on the planet will be discussing it in some way or another. It has been interesting to see Gulf media take a look at 9/11: interesting to see the perspective but also a little frustrating because so few people seem to be able to accept Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda's involvement. (For a great examination of such conspiracy theories, check this out.)

Living abroad has, in many ways, made me more fond of my home country. And I hope it never has to suffer through a day like Sept. 11, 2001, again.

Before the HTV failed, Dyna-Soar was canceled

2011-09-05T15:30:00.004+04:00

Yeah, I know I have been writing a lot about aviation lately. Sue me. I have immunity under the Airplane Dork Act of 1998.

So here's the deal. The Prompt Global Strike project still hasn't quite figured out how to successfully guide a really fast, really high assault glider to a target anywhere on earth. That's an ambitious program.

But 50 years ago, the U.S. was working on something even more ambitious: A manned version.

The idea was to put a fighter-sized spacecraft at the top of a Titan booster and launch it into a ballistic, sub-orbital trajectory. It had reaction control thrusters that could steer it a bit in space. But the cleverness was in its lifting-body design, which allowed it to not simply fall to Earth, but actually generate enough lift to "skip" off the atmosphere, extending range and bleeding off speed until it arrived at a desired landing area.

It was called dynamic soaring, and that meant the project got the somewhat overly clever name Dyna-Soar.

This spaceplane was intended to be military all the way, either attacking satellites, performing reconnaissance or even bombing missions. A small cargo bay allowed for a variety of payloads. But if they had pulled it off the ramifications down the road would have been tremendous, providing technology for safe, super-fast intercontinental travel. The materials science alone benefitted the aerospace industry at the time, and much of the research went into the design of the Space Shuttle.

A man, a plane, a mostly fictitious scene.

But in 1963, after six years and amid arguments over what rockets should be used to launch it and what its specific mission would be, it was canceled. The astronauts assigned to the program (including Neil Armstrong) went off to do different things, like land on the moon. And Dyna-Soar was no more.

It fascinates me to think about the impact this would have had if it had been tested out and perfected. But like many experimental programs, its lasting legacy is solely in related projects that came later. And, of course, my imagination.

Airlines: You are doing it wrong

2011-09-01T13:48:00.000+04:00

One great thing about living in the Middle East is how much traveling we have gotten to do. One awful thing about all that traveling is the constant boarding of aircraft in airports of all sizes and qualities.

There just doesn't seem to be a good way to do it. We have gotten pretty close to mastering the art of the carry-on, so being denied bin space almost never happens. But wow, it always takes forever to stuff everyone onboard.

It's the kind of thing science can help with, apparently.

A very smart guy who studied the process arrived at some interesting conclusions. Boarding rear-to-front is horribly inefficient. Boarding randomly, Southwest-style, is actually much better because passenger discretion can resolve space conflicts.

And it turns out the most efficient means of boarding the plane is, well, kind of complicated. Window seats get preference, using alternating rows, and THEN boarding progresses...

...from the rear forward: seats 12A, for example, followed by 10A, 8A and so on, then returning for 9A, 7A, 5A and so on, and then filling the middle and aisle seats in the same way.

Here's what it looks like:

Will airlines adopt this? Who knows. Maybe the next time I'm waiting for my boarding group to be called, I can hammer out a few persuasive letters.

The United States of Meh?

2011-08-31T13:46:00.004+04:00

Mrs. Blog and I like to joke when we return to the homeland that we're going back to the United States of Awesome. That's because (especially compared with the 'Dhabs), it is awesome, full of outdoor sports, outdoor beer and that rarest of luxuries, freedom of expression.

But according to a new study, no U.S. city is among the top or bottom 10 most livable places in the world. The best:

1) Melbourne, Australia

2) Vienna, Austria

3) Vancouver, Canada

4) Toronto, Canada

5) Calgary, Canada

6) Sydney, Australia

7) Helsinki, Finland

8) Perth, Australia

9) Adelaide, Australia

10) Auckland, New Zealand

The worst:

1) Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire

2) Tehran, Iran

3) Douala, Cameroon

4) Karachi, Pakistan

5) Tripoli, Libya

6) Algiers, Algeria

7) Lagos, Nigeria

8) Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

9) Dhaka, Bangladesh

10) Harare, Zimbabwe

And somewhere in the middle lies all of America. It is simultaneously easy and difficult to understand. On the one hand, the U.S. is pretty expensive compared to other places in the world, depending on where you are. On the other hand, it's a vast place, and I know first-hand there are cities within its borders that are beautiful, interesting and relatively inexpensive.

I have never been to Adelaide, for instance, but I have a hard time believing it tops San Francisco, Chicago, New York. Smaller cities like Portland, Ore., and Savannah, Ga., should be dark-horse contenders as well. In the end I think cost of living probably plays the biggest role.

But in this case, I think there is truth to the old saw: You really do get what you pay for.

UPDATE: Reading through the entire list again, it's remarkable how little it lines up with my personal experiences. For instance, Istanbul (yes, I know I haven't written the travel posts I said I would. Hush.) is No. 110... below both Abu Dhabi and Dubai. There is literally nothing better about either of the UAE cities, as far as I can tell. Or Manchester, UK, being ranked higher than New York... how does that happen? Similarly, there is no way Detroit (!!!) should be ranked higher than San Francisco. I do agree that Paris beats Atlanta, though.

This is what hypersonic looks like

2011-08-28T13:33:00.003+04:00

Or, The Failed Test of Today; the Cutting-Edge Technology of Tomorrow.

I spotted this on Ares Defense Blog: a video of the hypersonic technology demonstrator launched (and lost) by DARPA a few weeks ago. The HTV-2 was exploring new realms of high-speed aeronautics when it disappeared somewhere between its California launch site and intended South Pacific target.

It is designed to hit a football field-sized target anywhere on the globe within an hour, and cause catastrophic damage simply because of its mass and speed. The speed, of course, is really the crucial factor. It was traveling about Mach 20 when it passed over this observer:

This might be fascinating only to me. But I have often wondered what something going that

fast looks like from the ground. The answer, apparently, is "a lot like a high-altitude airplane." If you don't know how high it is, it looks like it is moving at a reasonable pace.

For comparison, here is what Mach 10 looks like up close (the speed this '60s-vintage anti-ballistic missile LINK hits after about one second):

As I mentioned before, I hope they continue working on this program. Pushing for new technology has benefits outside the weapons world, and if air transportation is going to advance beyond where subsonic airliners have taken it, more stuff like this has to happen. Even if all they get out of it is some data and a glittering failure caught on camera.

Burn, Hollywood, burn

2011-08-20T17:45:00.001+04:00

I don't mean this literally, as I have friends in LA whom I would prefer not to roast.

However. I have just learned that the aforementioned Hollywood is apparently remaking my All-Time Favorite Movie: "Blade Runner."

This should not happen. Not now, not ever. The original (and its many edits) is brilliant. Its imagining of the future--the now quickly approaching 2019, specifically--was nominated for two Emmys. The story is well-paced and philosophically significant; the music is interesting; the cast well-chosen; the acting occasionally brilliant.

This is a bad one, the worst yet. I need the old blade runner, I need your magic.

But of course these days its risky to make a movie with too novel of an idea, I guess, so they're headin' back to the well.

Sometimes this can turn out pleasantly; the Coen Brothers' "True Grit" is a good example. But for the most part, the trend is annoying at best and especially frustrating for people who love the original artwork.

We'll see what happens. Sometimes people say things like "We're doing a sequel to Top Gun," which ultimately go nowhere. Even as an idea, though, this is an affront to good moviemaking.

410 years of "ugh"

2011-08-17T12:42:00.002+04:00

Thanks to a clever Google Doodle, I now know that Pierre de Fermat was born 410 years ago today. He was a lawyer and amateur mathematician.

Amateur mathematician. That phrase boggles my mind. I dislike math SO much it's hard to imagine sitting down with a cold beer on a lazy summer afternoon and doodling through some theorems like they were crossword puzzles. Yet that's exactly what he did.

And he did it so well that his most popularly famous work, his so-called "last theorem,"went unproven for 358 years! I won't pretend to understand all the theory behind it, but the gist is that he jotted down in the margins of a book on math (which he was presumably reading for fun) that he had just come up with a "truly marvelous proof" of the theorem that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two.

Geez, my head hurt just writing that.

Anyway, the kicker here is that according to his scribble, he didn't have room to write out the entire thing in the margins. And if he wrote it down anyplace, it was lost to the annals of time.

That meant that, I dunno, nearly 20 generations--did I mention that math isn't my strong suit?--of mathematicians spent the years between 1637, the year of his scribble, and 1995 trying to prove it.

The answer, OBVIOUSLY, was "a proof of the modularity theorem for semistable elliptic curves released by Andrew Wiles, which, together with Ribet's theorem, provides a proof."

I appreciate the intellectual challenges and pleasures of attacking a problem. I do not appreciate the pleasures of doing math, however. But in the end, I have to applaud a guy who does massive theoretical equations in his spare time for fun--and kept thousands of professionals busy for centuries after his death. Everyone needs a hobby.

Watershed years

2011-08-15T13:58:00.004+04:00

The story of the Iranian revolution is a good one, regardless of what angle you're approaching it from. The most recent depiction I was exposed to was the excellent "Persepolis," which told at least part of that story through the eyes of a woman who grew up there.

The animated film was a novel approach and drew me in from the first frame. It captured the angst and ambiguity of someone who loved her country but was torn about the way it was developing.

That same ambiguity is what intrigues me so much about this project: A video game called "1979" that, according to its developers, aims to embrace the gray areas. They intend to tell the story through multiple viewpoints, handing off a narrative "baton" to a different character in a different part of the Iranian world at the end of each segment.

Moreover, it will use a "sandbox" approach to advancing the plot, in which players can use any means at their disposal to solve a problem. Sometimes you run, sometimes you negotiate, sometimes you shoot the hostage.

This, Khonsari explains, is where gameplay shifts to include some morally ambiguous elements of diplomacy, stealth and bartering. Each time the baton passes to a new character, the style of gameplay changes, too. Some characters will focus more on action, while others will feature vehicles and puzzle-solving.

"Not everyone you meet is going to be helpful," he said. "There are going to be aspects of bribery, making exchanges and turning a blind eye to really bad stuff so you can get the job done.

"Maybe, in order to get the group there, you need to sacrifice some stragglers and let them get captured so the others can get away. And then you'll have some extreme choices to make when you get to Tehran: Are you going to invade the embassy, guns blazing, to try to get the hostages back? Or are you going to try to protect the embassy from the Americans?

"People who might not be completely familiar with the game world look at fancy graphics and polished gameplay and say 'this is cutting edge,' " he continued. "But from what I've seen, it's still quite basic. Very much a checkers mentality -- red against black, good against evil. I'm interested in having good and evil within the same character, and for you to experience both. I think that's true to life, and I think you can design a game around that, too."

Interesting. It's possible that this caught my attention more than it would otherwise, simply because I live a few hundred miles from Tehran. But I'm curious to see whether the game's creator--who grew up during the Iranian Revolution--can pull it off. I love games with great stories, like "Mass Effect", and with a fascinating real-life story to build on, I'm curious to see whether "1979" can turn great history into a great, immersive experience.

The way the ball bounces

2011-08-14T16:03:00.004+04:00

So, yeah, the DARPA test didn't really go the way they wanted. Bummer. I hope they give it another shot.

But meanwhile, another interesting (if unrelated and considerably less explosive) scenario is afoot. The Big 12 Minus Two is now Minus Another One, as Texas A&M makes a play to join the SEC.

What does that mean for the University of Kansas? Good question. As a fan who grew up during the Big 8 era, I would be bummed if the geographic rivalries that made the conference special disappeared into a half-dozen other conferences.

KU's performance in the two big NCAA revenue sports--men's football and basketball--should be enough to make it attractive to any of the remaining power conferences. Basketball is a no-brainer. The football program's occasional brushes with greatness are enough to make money.

But even leaving geography out of the equation, I have no idea where they would be the best fit. KU roughly fits the profile of a Big 10 state school, I guess, but neither the Big 10 nor KU have been anything more than lukewarm about that idea. The ACC has a lot of other good basketball schools. Maybe my vote is with the PAC-10 (or Pac-16, whatever it is now), which would possibly bring the In-Laws of the Blog into the fold as KU fans.

Who knows. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out, and I'm sure that from a revenue perspective, KU and the other Big 12 schools will land on their feet. But I still can't shake the feeling that the diaspora means the Big 8 magic--diluted in the Big 12 years--will now disappear forever.

Weapon of the future delayed by weather of yesterday

2011-08-11T11:43:00.003+04:00

Today's space dork news: DARPA, the United States' "let's think of some crazy technology to blow things up with" agency, delayed Wednesday's test of its Prompt Global Strike system because of rain in the target area.

All of which sounds dry and boring. But the details of this program are actually quite cool--or scary, depending on your point of view.

Prompt Global Strike, at least in this testing phase, uses what is basically a leftover Peacekeeper ICBM launcher to toss a wedge-shaped hypersonic vehicle out of the Earth's atmosphere, where it will begin to glide back down.

What happens next? The hypersonic test vehicle, creatively named "Hypersonic Test Vehicle-2" hits speeds of Mach 20 and uses jets of compressed gas to maneuver and orient itself at its target, which in this case is the Kwajalein Atoll. (I had to look it up--it's in the Marshall Islands, roughly 2,400 miles southwest of Honolulu. The U.S. does lots of missile testing there)

Because of its maneuvering capabilities, the vehicle is expected to have a 50 percent chance of landing within a circle 13 meters in diameter. (roughly 43 feet) That sounds like a pretty big target, but when you're shooting from 3,500 miles away, it's the size of a pea.

Hypersonic test vehicle, glowing with promise.

When I tried this as a kid, by the way, it looked like this:

Slower, bluer, more cardboardy.

Anyway. What makes this whole project interesting is the combination of speed, distance and accuracy. The idea is that if a target anyplace in the world is identified, one of these hypersonic gliders can hit it within an hour. Theoretically, you wouldn't even need a warhead, thanks to the magic of physics: The equation Ke=1/2mv^2 means a four-ton vehicle that has slowed to Mach 15, about 11,000 mph, would hit with about 22 BILLION joules of kinetic energy. That's the rough equivalent of detonating five tons of TNT.

The utility is that what the military calls "time-sensitive" targets can be hit without putting any soldiers in harm's way. GPS coordinates and a button push are all that is needed. Rogue nuclear programs and terrorist meetings are two obvious choices for that kind of action.

But there are scientific issues to overcome, including steering the vehicle; a test last year ended after nine minutes when the first test vehicle began spinning uncontrollably.

Political issues also pose a hurdle. A less-techologically challenging program in which conventional warheads were simply mounted on ICBMs was abandoned after other nuclear-armed countries noted that there was no way to tell a conventional strike from a nuclear one. And no one wants to start World War III.

And obviously the weather is an issue too.

No matter what the technology will be used for, this is a fascinating program. It is collecting data that are nearly impossible to get on the ground.

And by the time most of America is awake, 7 a.m. Pacific time, a Minotaur IV booster will have launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And about a half-hour later, if everything goes according to plan, the HTV will make a big splash in the South Pacific.

Turning the Web page

2011-08-07T15:17:00.003+04:00

There is something a little mind-bending about the Internet wishing itself a happy birthday, (how long will it be before the machines rise up?) but that's what is happening.

On August 6, 1991, a scientist named Tim released into the wild the first Web page. It gave Internet users the ability to connect to a server semi-graphically instead of lines of code. Like most firsts, it wasn't fancy...

... but it worked.

Here is what the same URL looks like today. And now, of course, we have not just text, but graphics, videos... and blogs.

Michael Crichton called; he'd like his reality back

2011-08-02T13:46:00.003+04:00

In a potentially excellent example of life imitating art, a Swedish salvage team has spotted a science fiction story at the bottom of the ocean.

Explorer Peter Lindberg, who has apparently been successful at finding expensive things under the ocean before, says he noticed an anomalous sonar return in about 300 feet of water between Sweden and Finland. It caught his attention for two reasons:

-The object is circular, and regular enough to appear non-natural

-The object appears to have left a trail of scars on the seabed, implying it hit at a shallow angle

Here's what the actual sonar picture looks like:

As a writer and lover of rockets, this is exciting. (although, as the title implies, someone else thought of this scenario first.) The Earth is mostly water and mostly unpopulated, so odds are that if an extraterrestrial ship crashed, it would land in water and no one would see it. It could literally be the most important discovery in the history of mankind.

The realist in me, however, knows this is a remote possibility. Just about every other explanation for the object--from a natural formation to a manmade object jettisoned from a ship--is more likely. And sadly, it would take a lot of cash to go down and check.

But for the time being, I'm going to enjoy the mystery. At the very least, it's refreshing to know that there are still interesting bits of our planet out there to discover.

*Yes, there are blog posts on Turkey coming. Patience, grasshoppers.

This is not a filler post

2011-07-26T15:17:00.002+04:00

Rather, it is something much more noble: a reassurance that I am, in fact, still here. To be more precise, I am back here, having returned from a superlative vacation in Turkey.

Mrs. Blog and I loved it (as in "we need to live here" loved it) and crammed a bunch of amazing experiences into far too short of a time. There are a few that stood out, though. And I promise that in coming days, you'll read about them here.

Just pour yourself a cup of apple tea and be patient....

Top of the World

2011-07-13T12:48:00.002+04:00

That's the headline that I wrote for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as an intern when the U.S. women's soccer team won the World Cup in 1999. It was excellent, thrilling to watch, a source of pride for the country's athletic programs. And of course it led to this iconic shot (which ran on the Journal Sentinel's front page):

Hey, it was a hot day.

Last night, I happened to catch a reply of the most recent big victor for the U.S. women's team in World Cup play, when they beat Brazil. The game was decided on penalty kicks (just like the '99 final game), but the iconic moment was here:

Now that's a hell of a pass. Now the U.S. is in the tournament's final four and plays France today. They have a good shot at winning it all. And with any luck, the team's next two games will be just as thrilling to watch... with identical outcomes.

Great media jobs

2011-07-12T13:43:00.003+04:00

The military is a sprawling organization. Yes, much of it is devoted to blowing stuff up real good. But there are lots of other jobs. Flying in tight formation and impressing airplane dorks, for instance.

Then there's the guy who took this picture:

That's loopy. (for gigantic version, click here)

His title? Mass Communication Specialist. His job? Apparently, taking pictures of awesome things... while flying in a high-performance fighter aircraft. Which might make it the best journalism job in the world.

Cleared for departure

2011-07-07T15:31:00.003+04:00

Well, it's the day of the last planned Space Shuttle liftoff. I already brought the dorkiness in my last post.

So in this one, I'll just let STS-135 speak for itself on NASA TV.

STS-1, or Gerry's First Space Memory

2011-07-07T15:08:00.003+04:00

The Space Shuttle Discovery heads into orbit for the last time tomorrow, assuming the weather holds. It will mark the last of 135 Shuttle missions, the first of which was in 1981.

That was a remarkable flight in many ways. It was the first--and only--time the U.S. had sent a manned space vehicle on its maiden flight with a crew in it. That's right, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo... all those capsules orbited empty a few times to work out the kinks before we loaded them with pilots.

So this was a huge risk, tossing a totally new system into space after rigorous atmospheric testing but with only computer modeling to tell us how it would hold up in a vacuum... or more important, in the hellish conditions of re-entry.

Columbia had ejection seats, a feature that was later removed. Its external fuel tank was painted white to match the rest of the vehicle stack, a decision that also lasted only a few flights because the paint added 600 pounds to its launch weight. It was a test flight, and the entire world was watching.

Looked smooth, right? But this checkride definitely discovered some problems. The most serious--the "overpressure" wave from the ignition of the solid rocket boosters damaged the rear of the shuttle at launch--could have doomed the mission. But engineers used the data from that first blastoff to improve the water sound suppression system and prevent that danger in future flights.

Of course, five-year-old me didn't really see it that way. I just saw a rocket, a graceful piece of machinery, head up into the unknown. That sight has never stopped inspiring me. And it will be sad to see it for the last time.

Happy Birthday, United States of Awesome

2011-07-04T11:17:00.004+04:00

It's the Fourth of July, and here in the UAE, we're celebrating by not shooting off fireworks, going to baseball games or grilling outside. (Actually, there has been some grilling--Thanks to Friend of the Blog Brad, I now know that springbok is delicious. But the rest is true.)

As such, in keeping with Read Ink tradition, that leaves just one way to mark the 235th anniversary of Paul Revere's gun-shootin', bell-ringin' ride: Muppets.

Happy Independence Day!

A crime for Dr. Christine Myers

2011-06-27T13:09:00.002+04:00

Hey, look--another post about writing!

I have been involved in some Christine Myers-related work lately, including coming up with some interesting crime scenes for her to unravel. She's an ace, so it has to be more than just a dead guy bullet hole.

But the "unsolvable" crime scene doesn't have to be fantastic. For instance, I came across this real-life example of a potential novel: Deaths at Dyatlov Pass.

Here's the scenario: 10 young Russians, experienced outdoorsmen, go hiking in the mountains in 1959. One of them becomes ill and turns back--just like he would if Hollywood were writing his story.

The remaining nine push on through the cold and snowy mountains. They set up camp about 5 p.m. on a mountainside after realizing they had gone slightly off course.

The hikers set up camp.

And sometime that night, they all died.

The search for the hikers began about a week after they missed their target date to return from their trek. Their campsite was quickly found. And that's where the Myers-like skills are needed... because the evidence is bizarre.

The tent at the campsite is empty and has been ripped open from inside. Several of the hikers were found about a kilometer away from the campsite... dressed in their underwear and not wearing shoes. Some had tried to return to camp but died of exposure along the way.

The remaining hikers were found months later and, unlike the others, had died of various trauma, including fractured skulls and internal injuries. One woman was missing her tongue.

There were only enough footprints around the site to account for the hikers; it seemed unlikely that enough attackers to kill nine people could have come and gone without leaving tracks. There was no sign of an avalanche; the tent and the initial batch of dead hikers were found uncovered by snow.

So what caused nine experienced snow-trekkers to flee after dark so quickly that they didn't get completely dressed and ripped the tent fabric rather than using the door? Why were some of them physically unharmed and others badly injured?

These questions haven't been answered in more than 50 years of trying. Do you think Dr. Myers could do it?

Big things in tiny (winged) packages

2011-06-20T12:53:00.003+04:00

Unmanned aircraft have been in the news a lot lately, mostly in terms of blowing things up. Air & Space has a fascinating piece in its July issue about the future of combat drones, and this excellent New York Times photo gallery shows some insight into other innovations.

That's where this caught my eye:

Flight of the bumblerobot.

A tiny drone the size--and shape--of a hummingbird. There are several mind-blowing things about this thing. First of all, it flies using the mechanics of an actual hummingbird; this is not a pursuit that has traditionally gone well for humans.

Splat.

Second of all, it is camouflaged in such a way that if you didn't look too closely (or weren't looking for a robot bird, period), you might not even notice it's there. And finally, they made this drone useful: it doesn't just fly around in a novel way, it sends a live video feed. Sure, it's currently "60 Minutes ambush lapel-cam" quality, but that will only improve.

I, of course, am a huge fan of grand aerospace projects. But this pint-sized project is pretty easy to root for, too.

Thinking inside the box

2011-06-13T13:33:00.002+04:00

An interesting article in the New York Times yesterday discussed a theory that has been proven, in different forms, many times over the years: Knowledge is power.

In the 21st Century, "knowledge" almost always seems to translate to "information." Whether you're talking about stealthy reconnaissance drones, soldier-mounted cameras or information warfare, current thinking seems to be that seeing things from more angles than the other guy will help you win.

Now a U.S. project aims to bring that power to areas where authoritarian governments are seeking to cut it off.

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”

The Guy Sitting Next to Me suggested that this wouldn't be a good idea because hostile governments could trace the network signal to its source. But from the description in the article, it seems cleverly designed to avoid that kind of trouble. In fact, at first glance, it appears the only way to disrupt the network is to shut down all cell phone signals, as the system works by piggybacking on cell phones and wireless routers.

At any rate, this is an interesting development. For a long time there was talk that the "briefcase nuke" would be the ultimate weapon. Perhaps instead it's the "briefcase network" that intelligence agencies need to really sweat over.

Cyber-SEALs, Part II

2011-06-02T11:37:00.001+04:00

Less than 48 hours after the U.S. announced that "cyber attacks" would be considered acts of war... this happens.

Hackers in China have compromised personal e-mail accounts of hundreds of top US officials, military personnel and journalists, Google has said.

The US company said a campaign to obtain passwords originated in Jinan and was aimed at monitoring e-mail.

So if it turns out that this is a state action--and if anyone can get to the bottom of it, it's Google--do we send in the cyber-Marines?

A cyber-chopper filled with cyber-SEALs

2011-06-01T16:05:00.002+04:00

It's a brave, new world, folks. The U.S. government, according to a New York Times article, is working to classify "cyber attacks" – online assaults on American assets – acts of war.

"A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response. All appropriate options would be on the table," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters on Tuesday.

All responses are "on the table." So what does that mean? You nuke our server, we'll nuke yours? Specialized teams of Web commandos waiting to deploy against dictators' databases? Bullets and bombs?

Perhaps the next time a despotic country's nuclear program suddenly goes haywire it will be a little more obvious who pulled the e-trigger....

Papa's got a brand new spaceship

2011-05-25T15:01:00.002+04:00

NASA announced yesterday it was investing $3 billion to launch a new deep-space craft for manned exploration. The target remains a little fuzzy--maybe the moon, maybe Mars--but the intention is great. The US remains the world's leader in space launch capability, but after the Space Shuttle is retired this summer, Russia will be the only nation with high-volume manned launch capacity.

The United States' long-term plans for Earth orbit launching hinges on privatization of launch systems. There is already a lot of that for satellite launches, and the promising successes of Virgin Galactic make it likely that those hopes will be at least somewhat realized.

But that's not really possible for deep-space exploration, which demands the resources and funds of an entire nation and doesn't have much near-term commercial viability. I was disappointed when Obama canceled the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, originally designed for this purpose. So it is heartening to see that the technology is being incorporated into Lockheed-Martin's Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.

It is, shall we say, not particularly sexy.

Gumdrops... in... spaaaaaaaaaace....

Now, I like shiny spaceships with wings as much as the next aero-dork. But there are a lot of reasons for returning to an Apollo-like system.

First of all, deep-space exploration doesn't need wings. It needs durability. And building a bullet-shaped vehicle removes a lot of extraneous surface area. Also, if you're going to be in space for months at a time, you need your systems to function well, and that means keeping it simple... especially when it comes to re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. There is literally no easier way to de-orbit than parachuting into the ocean.

In fact, if it didn't need to de-orbit, the thing could be even more ungainly, as there would be no need for streamlining at all. So, flashy and beautiful? No. Exciting? Yes--and for all the right reasons.

I remember watching the Space Shuttle's first launch with my parents. With a MPCV launch date of 2016 or so, it looks like I'll be able to see the space program's next generation blast off too.

The danger zone

2011-05-23T12:02:00.000+04:00

Yesterday, a tornado tore through the town of Joplin, Mo., a couple of hours away from the city where I grew up. Dozens of people already have been confirmed dead, and the damage is massive--neighborhoods destroyed, stores leveled, a hospital gutted.

It is an awful scene.

Yet it is interesting looking at the perceptions of the devastation in the eyes of the world media. Outside the U.S., it almost appears sometimes as though the Midwest United States is just a snakepit of deadly tornados, and every city will be hit eventually. I think that is partially because tornados are so rare outside the U.S., and because they really only make news outside the country when they are horrific.

But in fact, although there 1,266 tornados in the US in 2010, only 45 people were killed. All of those deaths are tragic, but it shows how rarely a twister hits a populated area. (which is simple odds, by the way: most of the country is unpopulated, making it unlikely a city will be hit) Indeed, the Netherlands has the most tornados per square mile in the world... yet rarely are there fatalities.

I recall an exercise from a high school class, in which we were divided up into groups, like tribes, and told to find a place to settle on a big map of a fictional continent. Every area had natural hazards--earthquakes, floods, heavy snows, electrical storms and, yes, tornados.

Everyone worked really hard to place their settlement in an area without any natural hazards. But in every case, that was not only almost impossible to do, but an area without any hazards inevitably lacked resources like water and fertile soil. Then the teacher pointed out the obvious: that these hazards really weren't that hazardous at all in the grand scheme of things. No civilization has ever been wiped out by lightning strikes. And some, like ancient Egypt, thrived by living right on the edge (and sometimes square in the middle) of a flood plain.

The one exception I'll give you is volcanos. They have a long, proud history of wiping out civilizations.

Anyway, my point here is this:

No matter how dangerous "Tornado Alley" sounds, it's actually a pretty safe place and some of the most fertile soil in the world. Living there is not like building your house in the path of a freight train... it's more like betting that a freight train several blocks away won't derail, go airborne and land in your backyard. It has been calculated that any one neighborhood (like a square mile or so) will be hit by a tornado once every 2,200 years. A serious tornado, one with winds faster than 150 mph, is more like once every 7,000 years.

The town of Joplin will recover from the devastation. And cities across the United States and the world will continue to thrive in the face of wind, floods and earthquakes. Human beings are just resilient that way.

Where I get my ideas

2011-05-19T15:30:00.006+04:00

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Yes, it's not just a cliche--it's a song chorus. It's also true, and not fictional.

OK, now that I'm done blowing your mind, let me explain. I find that most of my writing comes from a question. Speculation, like "What would it look like if the end of the world came during your morning commute?" Or "Why are there all these dead people on a submarine?" If I want to find out the answer, chances are a reader will too.

So let me tell you about two fascinating pieces of reality whose existences (and mystery) are a little scary... and are screaming for fictionalization.

Thing Number One: Dead Hand/Perimeter

Dr. Strangelove is one of my favorite movies. And its central tenet is a "Doomsday Device" created by the Russians to deter a nuclear attack.

But, as Strangelove himself points out, it doesn't deter jack if no one knows about it:

DR STRANGELOVE
Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?

AMBASSADOR DE SADESKY
It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.

The purpose of Perimeter, at least as far as anyone knows, is slightly different. It's not about deterrence, per se, because modern technology offers enough advance warning of a nuclear attack that a nuclear-armed state--*cough cough* RUSSIA *cough cough*--has enough time to respond in kind. It's more about giving those with their finger on the buttons more options... more cooling-off time, so to speak. Dead Hand means there is no need for Russian commanders to Launch on Warning--that is, fire nuclear missiles based simply on information that an attack has been launched but without knowing anything more.

Instead, the generals can trigger the system, transferring post-strike control of the nuclear arsenal to people (or possibly a computer) in a hardened bunker who, if everyone else is wiped out, issue the order to retaliate. In other words, it makes a "decapitation strike" impossible and preserves the massive retaliation option.

A New York Times article about the system quotes an expert as saying:

The dead-hand system he [Dr. Blair] describes today takes this defensive trend to its logical, if chilling, conclusion. The automated system in theory would allow Moscow to respond to a Western attack even if top military commanders had been killed and the capitol incinerated.

The heart of the system is said to lie in deep underground bunkers south of Moscow and at backup locations. In a crisis, military officials would send a coded message to the bunkers, switching on the dead hand. If nearby ground-level sensors detected a nuclear attack on Moscow, and if a break was detected in communications links with top military commanders, the system would send low-frequency signals over underground antennas to special rockets.

Flying high over missile fields and other military sites, these rockets in turn would broadcast attack orders to missiles, bombers and, via radio relays, submarines at sea. Contrary to some Western beliefs, Dr. Blair says, many of Russia's nuclear-armed missiles in underground silos and on mobile launchers can be fired automatically.

Scary stuff. But also interesting. Whose job is it man the system? Is it manned at all? How is it kept from being compromised? Does the U.S. have such a system?

You might see the answers someday in a story with my name on it.

But even that apocalyptic mystery is better-understood than....

Thing Number Two: UVB-76

So there is a radio station broadcasting from deep inside Russia on a shortwave frequency. It went on the air in 1982. And except for a few minutes over that entire 29-year history, it has broadcast nothing but unintelligible buzzing.

The exceptions? Seemingly random recitations of numbers, letters and names. One of the most recent, in August 2010, for instance, said:

"UVB-76, UVB-76 — 93 882 Naimina 74 14 35 74 — 9 3 8 8 2 Nikolai, Anna, Ivan, Michail, Ivan, Nikolai, Anna, 7, 4, 1, 4, 3, 5, 7, 4."

How often have those transmissions happened? It depends on who you ask. Some say it is as few as three; others say it is more like 25. But there is no question that it exists and the voice transmissions have happened.

Before we get into the "what the hell is this for?" speculation, there is even more weirdness afoot. For instance, conversations can occasionally be heard in the background, behind the buzzing. From that you can infer that for some reason, the buzzing noise isn't being fed directly into a transmitter... it is being played into a microphone connected to a transmitter. (you can listen here.)

Why? I have a hard time coming up with a non-fanciful explanation. But surely anyone who went through the trouble of setting up a radio station and keeping it on the air for nearly 30 continuous years is doing it for a reason.

The reason for the station's existence is even more speculative. It could be sending instructions to spies or sleeper agents, the way "numbers stations" are supposed to. It could be an important channel, and the buzzing noise is just a way of making sure those who need to know are aware it is still operating. And some have even said it's part of Dead Hand, like a dead man's switch: when the station goes dark, the missiles launch.

Of course, very few things stay secret forever.

Bonus Thing: The Russian Woodpecker

In the late '70s, a high-power, low-frequency broadcast began to be picked up all over the world. There were no words, no information that anyone could decipher: just pings, chirps or clicks, depending on how you interpreted them, a few seconds apart. Always at the same interval, but the frequency shifted occasionally.

The broadcast location was quickly pinned down as being near Chernobyl. And after years of analyzing the signal, the outside world decided it was an over-the-horizon early warning radar. The outside world was correct. It was a huge radar complex called Duga-3.

It went off the air in 1989 and its existence was acknowledged a few years later. Now there are plenty of pictures:

A funny-lookin' woodpecker.

So someday, there may be full, logical and well-evidenced accountings of numbers stations, UVB-76 and Dead Hand. And the explanations may be mundane. But for now, they get the wheels in my brain spinning. I'll start writing when I get the proper instructions.

November. Yankee. Golf. Fifteen. Eight. Sixty-five. Uniform. Fifteen. Juliet. India. Three....

Sun-drenched living space, mere light years from your door!

2011-05-17T15:59:00.002+04:00

Yep, science, or at least big telescopes, are bringing us ever closer to definitively saying that there is a planet other than our own that could host life. An already-discovered body, Gliese 581d, had been shown to be in the "Goldilocks Zone" of a star about 20 light years away--close enough to the star to be warm but far enough that it's not an inferno.

Now, it seems, 581d might be an even better candidate than we thought:

Nice curb appeal.

Now, French researchers have run computer simulations of the planet's atmosphere, arguing that it is likely to contain high concentrations of carbon dioxide.
They contend that conditions could be suitable for oceans of liquid water as well as clouds and rainfall.
However, Gliese 581d's denser air and dim red light from its host star would make for a murky environment that would be toxic to humans.

So yeah, it's still really far away and the soupy environment (not to mention high gravity) means that it's not really ideal for our particular brand of life. But still, it's interesting. Let's just hope the neighbors are nice....

This is the worst flight I've ever been on

2011-05-11T14:10:00.000+04:00

Kids: don't fly on Tu-154s. The one depicted in the video below was on a shakedown flight after years of storage... and just after takeoff, the control surfaces became, well, uncontrollable. The fun starts about 50 seconds in...

A plane with a bad attitude.

On the bright side, though, that was some stellar piloting to bring the plane back down in one piece. How do you say "the right stuff" in Russian?

Math isn't fun: a proof

2011-05-09T13:36:00.003+04:00

When Sudoku first started getting popular in the U.S., it intimidated me. All those numbers, and you were supposed to figure something out. Sounded a lot like math. Ugh.

But as it turned out, it was more of a logic game, and as a journalist and enjoyer of sound arguments, that was fun. Yay.

I learned today, however, of a new game popular in at least one British newspaper. It looks like this:

30 SECOND CHALLENGE NUMBER TRAIL

Start on the left with the numbers given and follow the instructions as you go along. You have 30 seconds to complete each row.

Beginners
60	÷ 10

x 8

+ 2

½ of it

- 7

÷ 3

x 9

+ 2

÷ 7

Answer

Intermediate

100

1/10

of it

x 6

- 6

5/9

of it

½ of it

x 5

+ 6

2/9

of it

x 3

Answer

Advanced

50

3/10

of it

400%

of it

x 2

- 12

1/9

of it

Times by itself

25%

of it

x 1 ½

5/6

of it

Answer

Here's a fun game: spot the obvious misspelling!

OK, do I really even need to say this? This "puzzle" is a math problem made "difficult" by including multiple steps. I did this same stuff in middle school, but it had a different name: Homework. NOT FUN.

QED.

Take the blue pill

2011-05-05T13:16:00.003+04:00

That's right. The Internet has become reality. And here's how.

The series of tubes that make up the Web are filled with vaguely nerdish joke phrases called memes. There are several sites that are devoted to the care and feeding of these things.

And today, a meme that has been around for at least a few years surfaced in, that's right, reality.

This is a quote from a CNN story about one of the many fake photographs of a dead Osama bin Laden:

"I have seen a great number of poorly Photoshopped images in my time as a photographer and I can tell by the pixels that it is a fake," said Kenna Lindsay, a New York-based photographer who works with composite images.

Not a big deal. Pretty straightforward. Except, whether Kenna realized it or not, the quote is basically a word-for-word rendition of this meme:

This won't fly.

Also portrayed thusly:

Something is wrong with this picture.

And thusly:

Old school.

And so on. It won't be long, I'm sure, before some blogger who doesn't live in the Middle East gives this person a call to determine A) whether he or she actually exists and B) whether he or she was giggling while giving the interview to CNN.

Airwolf in Abbottabad

2011-05-04T12:28:00.006+04:00

It may turn out that the raid in Abbottabad is a watershed moment in multiple ways. Possibly a crippling blow against al Qaeda, almost certainly a major dent in U.S.-Pakistani relations, definitely a major intelligence coup.

But on a more nuts-and-bolts level--literally--it may have revealed something remarkable: the first look at a new breed of helicopter.

It has been widely reported that one of the aircraft the SEAL team used to drop into the bin Laden compound was unable to take off after the raid and was destroyed. One picture, the first one released...

Pay no attention to the chopper behind the curtain.

... seemed to show debris that looked a lot like the tail boom of an MH-60 variant. (The "basic model" is the ubiquitous Blackhawk, a utility helicopter used by just about every branch of the U.S. military since the mid-70s.) But it definitely looked strange. I chalked it up to the damage suffered in the landing and the explosives that blew up the rest of the airframe.

But now a few more pictures are trickling out. Yes, the SEALs did a great job of blowing up most of the helicopter.

Er... what helicopter?

The tail boom, however, reveals some mighty interesting things. First of all, smarter people than I have discerned that the paint used is identical to the infrared-quenching stuff used on the V-22 Osprey. That's not standard issue for the MH-60. But looky here:

Anatomy of a stealthy tail rotor.

And compare that to this:

Your garden-variety tail rotor.

If nothing else, you can see that there is no rotor cap and the blades are on the opposite side. And here is another view, where the raked stabilizers are more clearly visible:

If nothing else, they look faster.

And finally, although it's a little more subtle to pick out, the lines and angles of the boom are much different than those of an off-the-shelf MH-60. In fact, they look a little more like this...

Like Blue Thunder, except non-fictional.

... the RAH-66 Comanche, a stealth helicopter developed, built and flown in the early 1990s. It was a successful program but, ultimately, mission planners realized they could do the same work more more cheaply with unmanned drones... a decision that has been borne out with the successes of the Predator, Reaper and brand-shiny-new RQ-170.

Now, "stealth helicopter" doesn't mean stealth in the now-classic sense, in which an aircraft's radar cross-section--the size it appears to be on a radar screen--is reduced to almost nothing. If nothing else, the rotor blades whirring above the fuselage are enough to give air-defense radars a nice, juicy return. But reducing the cross-section somewhat is often enough to make the aircraft effectively invisible, as helicopters are generally used for low-level flight, which obscures them in the "ground clutter": a haze of radar blips caused by objects on the ground like towers, hills, trees and buildings.

A bigger issue is noise, and the military already has quite a bit of experience in making helicopters quieter. Simple steps like adding more blades to the rotor (and you can see that the tail rotor of the bin Laden helicopter has more blades than that of a standard MH-60) make it quieter and less chop-chop-choppy. It is obviously impossible to make a gas-turbine powered aircraft completely silent, but measures such as those can make the noise at least indistinct until it is just a few hundred yards away from the listener.

So, given these facts, it's pretty obvious why they blowed it up so good. Not only was it carrying cutting-edge avionics, such as cameras that give the operators an image in every spectrum of light, but the airframe had never been seen before in public.

I realize that it is neither shocking nor surprising that the military has a few tricks up its camouflaged sleeves. But it's always interesting to see these tricks revealed, even inadvertently, for the first time... and it's always fun to speculate on what might still be out there.

He falls away into the dustbin of history

2011-05-02T13:20:00.006+04:00

It has been a busy spring in the Middle East. Waves of revolution, civil war and regime change have reshaped the region in ways that few would have foreseen even five years ago.

And now there's this: Osama bin Laden is dead. Shot in the head by U.S. Special Forces and, according to some accounts, buried at sea to simultaneously measure up to Islamic traditions and avoid creating a terrorist shrine.

Aftermath.

I can't remember exactly how long it took to identify him as the mastermind of the attacks on September 11, 2001. I can remember how that day felt. Awakened by a phone call in the early hours of the day, I listened groggily as a good friend of mine described a plane hitting the World Trade Center. Then I watched in dismay as the second plane hit the other tower.

The rest of the day I spent on my couch, glued to the TV and wondering what would happen next.

I don't think it's fair to say that bin Laden's death has brought me--and perhaps anyone--real closure, to use an overused bit of psycho-jargon. Yes, he has been the face of global terrorism for the last decade-plus, but in the end, he's just a man. And more important, the ideology he represented has already taken a severe beating this year as mostly non-violent, mostly secular protests have toppled regimes against which al Qaeda has railed for years. Corny though it may sound, it has been a collective desire for freedom and fair representation that shoved longtime dictators from their pedestals, not bombs and extremism.

At the same time, though, I have some difficulty understanding the criticism of those celebrating in the streets of Washington and New York on Sunday night. One BBC viewer wrote:

One of my strongest memories from 9/11 is people celebrating around the world. I remember being disgusted. Now I have just seen Americans celebrating the death of Bin Laden outside the White House, I am again disgusted.

One of my strongest memories was the sense of shock and horror and loss as Manhattan was enveloped in a cloud of destruction. So I don't have much problem with people getting emotional at the death of the man who made that happen.

Here in the UAE, the reaction is that there is no reaction. Business, and life, have gone on as usual; my morning walk to work takes me through a muggy beehive of commerce and it was no different today than it is any other day. Furniture vendors and carpenters, most of them Pakistani, seemed unmoved by the news as they toted couches and ran planks through table saws. Even the government has, for the time being, remained silent.

I think Obama's speech this morning (late Sunday, U.S. time) hit a lot of the right notes and adequately summed up what transpired today.

It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory - hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child's embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.

....

The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens. After nearly 10 years of service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who's been gravely wounded.

So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda's terror: Justice has been done.

And I think that's about right.

As I walk home today, through a city untroubled by the unrest that has gripped the rest of the region, I think it is safe to say that bin Laden's death has no direct impact on my life.

But it does feel like today's news was, if not justice, at least a just end for an incredibly malicious person, who twisted religion and snuffed out innocent life in its name.

The Aerosmith version, not the Gene Autry version

2011-04-28T14:22:00.002+04:00

You know the song I'm talking about.*

Mrs. Blog and I returned to the UAE yesterday from the United States of Awesome yesterday. A country, I should add, that was true to its promises of delicious food and good company. For instance, I had barbecue in four states and margaritas in three. I even saw a bald eagle, soaring on the winds of freedom. And by freedom, I mean eastern Iowa.

Actual Arthur Bryant's sandwich consumed by actual blogger.

How great a visit was it? During an afternoon at my friend's bar I ran into this guy. That's a bonus vacation experience you can't put a price tag on.

It's always a difficult transition back to the Middle East, with the little differences driven home almost immediately. There is simply no way to soften the impact of arriving at an airport festooned with construction barriers and signs that lead nowhere.

Like this but with 150 percent more plaster dust.

The jet lag doesn't help either; I am writing this with the help of unhealthy amounts of caffeine and equally unhealthy amounts of sleep deprivation. On the bright side, though, the imbalances in my body chemistry might help me appreciate the royal wedding a little bit more.

Anyway, dissociative feelings aside, it is good, at least, to not have to consider another long plane ride in the immediate future. Now, if we could just find some way of staving off the onset of the oven-like summer....

*And if you don't, click here.

The story of my life

2011-04-04T13:25:00.005+04:00

It's official. The Internet is now everywhere. On my desktop, my laptop, my phone and even, as it turns out, my childhood.

For the first time in history, every home I have ever lived in is now visible on Google Street View... with the exception of the Budget Building, whose Abu Dhabi locale a) doesn't have a searchable address and b) Google probably doesn't want to bother with anyway.

And I actually had a lengthy post planned out, as you can embed a pannable, zoomable Street View frame in the blog. Wouldn't it be neat to show people all these places, I thought to myself?

Yes, Smarter Self replied, but it would be a lot less neat for anyone with a keyboard to be able to see your entire residence history, steal your identity and use it to start an online brothel in Bangkok.

So never mind.

Suffice to say it was a roller-coaster journey from Midtown Kansas City to almost Abu Dhabi. As I said, Google, like good customer service and excellent club sandwiches, has not yet arrived in the UAE. Perhaps someday it will, and when you type "Muroor Road, after Delma Bridge, opposite Al Wadi Furniture... no, farther down. Yes, stop by grocery" it will pop right up on Street View.

For now, though, I think I'll just enjoy entertaining applications of technology and basking in the fact that I have lived in a lot of great places.

Tournament time

2011-03-22T14:48:00.004+04:00

Yes, the most glorious time of year is upon us. Hordes of fans are huddled in front of their TVs for the days' worth of wall-to-wall basketball known as the NCAA tournament. Of course, in my case, this actually means sitting alone in front of a computer screen because of the obscene eight- to 11-hour time difference between here and the courts where the games are taking place.

Kansas' two games have started at 2:30 and 4:45 a.m. Abu Dhabi time and I, being a big fan of basketball in general and Kansas in particular, have watched both. It's fine at the time but hard not to regret the next day.

As Mrs. Blog can attest, I am not at my best after three hours' sleep. That meant most of Saturday was wasted, dissolved into a blur of recovery, and on Monday my brain cells were powered almost exclusively by caffeine.

A pre-dawn dunking against Illinois.

And I'm not out of the woods yet. Kansas has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, and game time is... 3:30 a.m on Saturday. As long as they keep winning, though, I'll happily suffer a little grogginess--and I apologize in advance for inflicting Zombie Gerry on the rest of the world.

The Muppets have an answer for everything

2011-03-17T12:15:00.003+04:00

Or at least a song. Whether you're talking about the Fourth of July or Christmas, they just have a gift for being able to express the pitch-perfect emotions of the moment.

And so I bring you--shamelessly cribbed from Friend of the Blog Craig--a Muppet St. Patrick's Day.

Animal and I know the lyrics about equally well.

Hope everyone is has a great day of eating corned beef and cabbage and dying things green!

For some reason, I thought this would be more secret

2011-03-01T13:10:00.003+04:00

The Navy has been developing stealthy, unmanned combat aircraft for a while now. It seems like the kind of thing you would want to keep under wraps and then, you know, make a dramatic announcement like "we have invented the sound barrier" or "all your base are belong to us."

But no, here it is, right on YouTube, making its maiden test flight:

B-2 lite?

Besides being neat-looking and, apparently, quite deadly, I wonder whether this is part of a permanent shift toward robotic combat. Not in a Mechwarrior kind of way, but just in the sense that systems like this allow generals to bomb the enemy without putting their own people in the line of fire... will battles eventually be decided by who blows up the most drones? I guess that's not a bad idea. You could certainly come up with worse premises for a science-fiction novel.

The really tall building by that one mall in Dubai

2011-02-16T12:15:00.002+04:00

Conversations involving directions are always a bit comical in the UAE. Taxiese, for instance, exists solely because there is no other way (besides learning Urdu) to navigate via cab.

Food delivery is also an adventure, mostly because there are no addresses. It's all "after Delma bridge" this and "opposite mosque" that. And even navigating by landmark is difficult, as the definition of landmark varies from person to person. Some landmarks, however, should be universal, as illustrated by this conversation related to me by a friend (note--"Du" is one of the two telecoms providers in the UAE):

What is your location, ma'am, so we can send our engineer?

FRIEND

Burj Khalifa.

And what is your landmark?

I live in Burj Khalifa.

Yes, ma'am, but we need a landmark so our engineer can locate you.

I live in Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

But we need a landmark.

Really? OK, Dubai Mall. Are you actually in Dubai?

Yes, ma'am. And how do you spell Burj Khalifa?

K-H-A-L-I-F-A.

S for sugar.

No, F for Freddie.

OK, we will send our engineer to you at Burj Khalisa near to the Dubai Mall.

Now, in Abu Dhabi, they are considering addressing (ha) this problem by using GPS coordinates for mail delivery and, it is assumed, things like emergency services. I guess if you throw enough money at that solution, it could work. Still seems a little more expensive and complicated, however, than just putting numbers on all the buildings....

The optician of the future

2011-02-13T16:01:00.004+04:00

We have been watching a lot of TV these days. Some of it is entertainment--thanks to the miracle of torrenting (and the disaster that is satellite TV in the Middle East, unless you're a Marine) we have watched several complete seasons of some great shows that we missed simply by living here.

A large part of it is also, of course, news. You might have heard of a minor event called the Egyptian Revolution. Well, it most definitely was televised and streamed online... Mrs Blog and I found ourselves glued to the TV or my laptop screen more than once, watching protests convulse Cairo.

It is riveting in two dimensions. But how much would it hurt our eyes in three?

Squint hard and you can see Princess Leia.

Yeah, I get a headache just thinking about that. Not to mention the annoyance of audience members literally seeing the show from different points of view. Villains couldn't lurk in the shadows (because you could see the action from over their shoulder) and a "surprise" bunch of roses held behind the protagonist's back would be visible for the world to see.

So holography is cool and all, but maybe it's better left for things like delivering secret messages and detailing space station plans. In the meantime, we'll rely on the Internet for both news and Glee.

The fiyl* in the room

2011-02-04T14:54:00.003+04:00

The last week and a half has been an interesting one in the Middle East. In what amounts to an unprecedented wave of popular unrest, crowds of ordinary people have challenged established regimes across the region... and won.

Tunisia's Zine Ben Ali is long gone. Yemen's Ali Abudullah Saleh has said he won't run for the presidency again when his term expires.

And Egypt. Oh, Egypt. I have been trying to figure out what, exactly, I wanted to write about the situation there. It has been uplifting to see so many people get involved, asking directly for change in a regime that has the window-dressing of a democracy but the innards of a harsh autocracy.

It has also been saddening, at times, to see evil acts unfold in places where we have actually been and recognize. Mrs. Blog, I, and my parents walked through Al Tahrir Square (and by walked, I mean frantically looked for a way to cross the impossibly busy street) after getting off a train one afternoon. The day before, we had dodged hustlers on the same stretch of sidewalk near the Egyptian Museum where protesters hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at each other this week:

Wednesday night.

So much anger and hostility. I don't know how things will turn out, but I hope the throngs of people who have repeatedly gathered this week in Cairo and Alexandria are able to use their sheer mass to bring about change and a better life for their countrymen.

*Elephant, as pronounced in Arabic

The Internet was right

2011-01-23T15:10:00.002+04:00

Lo these many years ago when I was in college, working as the managing editor for the World's Best Student-Run Newspaper, there was a guy named Aaron. He was a little older than the rest of us, had a family and everything. Smart guy. Nice. Enjoyed baseball. And he was in charge of the fledgling Web site.

University Daily Kansan newsroom, circa 1997.

That's where my confession of wrongness comes in. Getting stories onto the Web site meant an extra layer in the news editing process, which I did a few times a week. Processing stories for online was often done the next morning anyway--why should I gum up the production process with some Web nonsense?

So he and I would have periodic arguments about why I didn't have time for the Internet.

And, of course, he was right and I was wrong. This point is especially clear now, as I am shepherding stories online myself, trying to keep us ahead of the other guys and make sure readers know where they should go to get the goods if they want to buy a newspaper. I'm having to rebut the same arguments that once tumbled from the mouth of a much younger (and less wise?) Doyle.

Aaron--and I apologize for not remembering your last name--you win. And I'm posting it online for everyone to see.

The best kind of earthquake

2011-01-19T16:58:00.003+04:00

Last night, a 7.5-magnitude (depending on whose figures you trust) temblor hit Pakistan. Fortunately, it was a remote part of Pakistan... so remote, in fact, that the area is where the nation has tested nuclear weapons. So ideally the population is not just small, but nonexistent. No one killed, no one hurt.

Not pictured: my apartment.

Pakistan is a long way from the UAE, but people felt the quake here. Including Mrs Blog and I, although I didn't realize it at the time.

Just before we went to bed, the wall unit door--loosely hung glass--was rattling for no discernible reason. Mrs Blog noticed it... it stopped after 20 seconds or so... and that was that.

The next day, reading about the earthquake, we assembled the facts and I realized that, yes, this was a momentous occasion: my first quake. A lame one, at least where we were sitting, but an earthquake nonetheless.

I wasn't expecting this. Mother Nature-dispensed trauma seems to avoid me; I grew up in Tornado Alley and never saw a twister, spent two years in Florida and didn't come within 500 miles of a hurricane. No fires in Chicago, either.

So as far as introductions to natural disasters, this one worked well for everyone involved.

In __________, inspiration

2011-01-16T23:01:00.004+04:00

Writing has always been a fickle thing for me. Sometimes the words flow in a way I can't--and don't want to--control, a river of fire burning through the middle of my head that I just have to get onto a page before it incinerates me.

Other times... well... it's more like trying to pry a nugget of gold from the center of a mass of lead slag.

But you take the good with the bad. That's the way inspiration works too, at least for me. You can't force it. You try too hard to think through a problem (or invent the seed of a great story), and you end up with just a tangle of threads that start someplace promising but end nowhere.

That's why I wasn't surprised when inspiration hit tonight.

While I was doing the dishes.

Like I said, you take the good with the bad. And when I was done scrubbing, I sat down and tried to get as much of this nascent idea out in front of me where I couldn't forget it or otherwise condemn to oblivion. Mission successful... at least until I try to start writing it for real.

And there is no pattern to it. Mrs Blog is busy freelancing; I had a busy day posting stories online (most hits from the section--holla!), a belly full of delicious leftovers, two beers and vague fears about the first day of Arabic class tomorrow. A night like any other, except a beautiful idea fell from the sky and into a suds-filled sink.

Why the "Hey Song" is stuck in my head

2011-01-09T14:41:00.004+04:00

For the first time in forever, the Chiefs have a playoff game that I can watch. And for the first time ever, I will be watching that game in the Middle East. It is just the latest in a long string of moments where ordinary things seem weird when you do them in such an odd place.

I watched a ton of football growing up. It was kind of a weekly ritual: I and several Friends of the Blog, six to 10 or so, would gather at one of our homes. There would be lots of soda. Pizza, usually--the square kind from Little Caesar's, which was cheap and made right down the street. We'd go outside to throw around the football at halftime. There was a heavy punching bag hanging in my parents' laundry room on which we would occasionally take out our frustrations if the game were going badly.

Jamaal Charles was 4 years old when I started watching the Chiefs. Ouch.

Now there aren't really any rituals. Sometimes Mrs. Blog and I go to friends' houses to watch the games. Sometimes there is pizza. Once there was even a football.

The only point here is that I'm happy the Chiefs are in the post-season again, and I'm happy to have so many good memories of cheering them on as a kid. And who knows, maybe someday I'll look back and recall how one year, my favorite NFL team won the Super Bowl when I was living in a part of the world where the halftime ads constituted the best programming of the year.

Ugh

2011-01-03T14:03:00.001+04:00

So let me tell you a story. And let me preface it with a quick explanation of my attitude toward this country.

The UAE gets a lot of bad press. You read screaming headlines about sensational cases in which someone is arrested and jailed for a couple of months for a microgram of marijuana "found" on his shoe (true), or a couple arrested for kissing in a mall at 2 a.m. after a local woman complained it was corrupting her kid (true), or the water taps at the Atlantis gushing nothing but cockroaches (false).

Sometimes the outrage is justified; sometimes it is manufactured. They are not especially common. But the events that trigger that outrage do happen--they are not imaginary or created by paranoid Westerners.

And now I know that first-hand.

Last night, Mrs. Blog and I went to the grocery store to refill our fridge after being away for a couple of weeks. It was crowded. Lots of families stocking up for 2011, I guess.

Oh, what a magical journey it was, wandering through the aisles of imported high-fructose corn syrup. Eventually, we paused by the bread section to consider our carbohydrate options. Mrs. Blog suggested that we should make fondue at some point this week. And because that idea, of eating gooey cheese and bread together in our cozy (if not well-situated) Tanker Mai apartment, made me happy, I leaned in and gave her a peck on the lips.

Do you see where this is going?

Maybe 10 or 15 seconds later, after we had moved on to discussing whether to buy sandwich rolls or a loaf, an Emirati woman in an abaya and burqa arrived at the scene, wagging her finger at us. Surrounded by several other younger women (also in traditional dress), she bestowed upon us some good, old-fashioned self-righteous chastising.

How dare we kiss, she said. You are not in the West anymore, she said. I will call security, she said.

The last sentence, of course, is the one that gets your heart racing. Both of us dived in to placate her. I pointed to my ring finger--look, it's OK, we're married. Mrs. Blog apologized for offending her. I said, there's no need for security to get involved. And so on.

I'm not sure what, exactly, we said that eventually worked. I think it was another apology from Mrs. Blog. But the woman clucked some more, made another threat about security, then stalked off with her friends--none of whom had said a word.

What a depressing experience. At just a basic level, it is really disheartening and angering to be chewed out by someone whose face you can't even see. It just doesn't seem like a level playing field. Kind of like the legal principle of the accused being able to confront their accuser.

The deeper you dig down--and this process lasted, for us, the rest of our shopping trip--the angrier you get. Let's leave aside, for the moment, the fact that although the kiss was loving, it was pretty tame by any standard. A step above holding hands. There's no accounting for what will offend people, and cultural mores, and blah blah blah.

Focus instead on the woman's reaction. It upsets me because instead of simply asking us to stop (which we already had--see above) or telling us we were behaving inappropriately, she threatened to throw us in jail. Or at least Carrefour's version of it. Is there not a way of expressing displeasure or distaste without being accusatory? This seems in the same vein as someone smoking where they shouldn't be--if it's bothering you, you politely ask them to stop. Not difficult.

Focus also on how we reacted. There are, without a doubt, places in the U.S. where someone might threaten to call store security on you for the T-shirt you're wearing, or for the things you're saying in a private conversation, or even for kissing in public. The difference is, in those cases, I know my rights. I'm not going to jail. I'm probably not even to get harassed by security, because THEY know what my rights are, too. No, the correct reaction in that case is to ask your accuser to be a little more polite and, if that fails, to suggest that they can go... well, you know.

But that surety of one's rights just doesn't exist here. Hell, the surety of the law doesn't even exist here. You can be accused of things that aren't illegal while things that clearly are (c.f. the bizarre alcohol laws), are routinely ignored. And in any case where it is one person's word against another's, the expatriate is at a disadvantage from jump street. Get caught up in the legal system, right or wrong, and you're in for a lengthy and unpleasant experience.

So instead of standing our ground, we just said whatever we could to keep her from escalating it--no matter how out of line she may have been. And that's humiliating.

In the end, no security was called, we finished our shopping in uncomfortable silence and vented on the way home. The night got better. We even found a good parking space in Tanker Mai, which in terms of miracles is right up there with the parting of the Red Sea and the Seahawks making the playoffs.

But here's the thing: Incidents like this bury the idea that we're all living as equals here. Until that changes, the UAE is never going to have the type of integrated, productive society that will move it forward into the big leagues.

Congratulations, Carrefour lady, for making that point--whether you realized it or not.

Uncharted territory

2010-12-14T11:13:00.002+04:00

There isn't much of it anymore, at least on Earth. Although we continue to discover new things (like arsenic bacteria!), mankind's boots have pretty much stepped everywhere they can.

Off the planet, though, it's a whole different story. And one of the first space probes is on the verge of taking the biggest step in the history of the species. It's leaving our neighborhood--the Solar System--for good.

Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, has reached a new milestone in its quest to leave the Solar System.

Now 17.4bn km (10.8bn miles) from home, the veteran probe has detected a distinct change in the flow of particles that surround it.

These particles, which emanate from the Sun, are no longer travelling outwards but are moving sideways.

It means Voyager must be very close to making the jump to interstellar space - the space between the stars.

On a separate note, 33 years and it can still send a strong data signal more than 10 billion miles? I want me some of those batteries.

I missed the space-boat

2010-12-12T13:21:00.001+04:00

I lived in Florida for two years. There were many things I did, and didn't do, that went well. Others not so well. But let me tell you my biggest regret: I didn't make the three-hour drive to the Cape for a Shuttle launch.

The video below, pointed out to me by The Guy Who Sits Next to Me, really drives that point home.

Big rocket go whoosh, 1981-2010.

And now, of course, the whole program is being retired. That's a bummer (unless it is replaced with something niftier--a doubtful proposition in the short term).

Read Ink

Making a splash

Oh, the places I've been

Return of the Misc Box

What would you do?

Now you see it, now you... never saw it

Happy New Year!

It's Christmas Eve, babe (again)

Slightly underqualified

Remember when stealth technology was mysterious?

When I was 18, it was a very busy year

That's no moon, that's a...

There's no place like... wait a second

Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?

Well, it looks cool, anyway

Playing with fire

A moving experience

I always miss the fun stuff

Gimme Some Lovin' (without the lovin')

Two wings, no tail, no radar return and no pilot

Half-car, half-plane, all funny looking

The Art of Storytelling

As real as it gets

I knew it!

Talkin' Turkey

F-35 landings

Steve Jobs

What's in the news

Trust me: it's not that exciting

I hate nuclear warfare

Welcome to the Terrordome

Reno tragedy

The Rocket of Tomorrow for the Spaceship of Tomorrow

This is not the budget item you're looking for

Hiding in plain sight

Sept. 11, 2001

Before the HTV failed, Dyna-Soar was canceled

Airlines: You are doing it wrong

The United States of Meh?

This is what hypersonic looks like

Burn, Hollywood, burn

410 years of "ugh"

Watershed years

The way the ball bounces

Weapon of the future delayed by weather of yesterday

Turning the Web page

Michael Crichton called; he'd like his reality back

This is not a filler post

Top of the World

Great media jobs

Cleared for departure

STS-1, or Gerry's First Space Memory

Happy Birthday, United States of Awesome

A crime for Dr. Christine Myers

Big things in tiny (winged) packages

Thinking inside the box

Cyber-SEALs, Part II

A cyber-chopper filled with cyber-SEALs

Papa's got a brand new spaceship

The danger zone

Where I get my ideas

Sun-drenched living space, mere light years from your door!

This is the worst flight I've ever been on

Math isn't fun: a proof

Beginners

60

Answer

Intermediate

100

Advanced

50

Answer

Take the blue pill

Airwolf in Abbottabad

He falls away into the dustbin of history

The Aerosmith version, not the Gene Autry version

The story of my life

Tournament time

The Muppets have an answer for everything

For some reason, I thought this would be more secret