The Manlius Formation

Jules Verne saw a future where man would conquer the seas in submersible watercraft. We are navigating the seas of that future.

Arthur C. Clarke envisaged the use of space-based communication satellites. That reality is here (over).

William F. Nolan followed Logan as he tried to escape his Lastday execution. There is pending legislation in Congress to make Lastday a reality.^[1]

We now bear witness to the frightening future of H.G. Wells’ Food of the Gods in all its massive glory.

Behold! A giant 5 year old attempts to wrest the Washington Monument free from its base:

Having no luck there, he tries to take the Lincoln Memorial home to use as a toy garage:

He eventually shrunk back to normal size and lived happily ever after.

The end.

Click through to the gallery for more photos of our most excellent trip to DC to visit with the Seidel and Barsky clans, and our subsequent visits to the Air and Space Museum and the National Mall.

1. Well, not really, but wasn’t it fun when the talking heads were pushing that nonsense? [back]

My 9-mile, one-way commute to work today cost me about 90 cents in fuel costs alone.^[1]

I paid 16 cents for a Central/South American banana at the supermarket this morning.

So it costs 6 times as much to transport me 9 miles - mostly downhill - than it costs to grow, pick, pack and ship a banana from South America to Syracuse.

[Editorial addition: At my weight (175 lbs), and assuming that the 1/3 of a pound banana traveled here from Ecuador (about 3000 miles) the dollars per pound per mile is about 3.5X higher for my one-way commute than for the banana's.]

1. Using 27MPG as my average fuel efficiency and my last fill-up price of $2.70 a gallon [back]

John Sokolovic received notice today that he is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics. This award was given for the extraordinary turnaround he has accomplished in the international community for the support of cold fusion research. While hasn’t actually achieved cold fusion yet, he has published papers and given speeches over the past nine months or so about how important it is.

The Nobel Prize Committee said that this award was given to Sokolovic primarily for the incredible potential he exhibits. However, the committee also praised him not only for who he is, but rather for who he is not; namely, his predecessor, an unpopular research scientist who thought his own lab’s theories were the only path to achieving cold fusion.

Sokolovic’s predecessor refused to enter into cooperative research efforts with other labs, and often criticized the primitive techniques of those other institutions, slowly eroding the credibility and financial health of his own lab.

As for Sokolovic, he started out as a rebellious physicist at community-based physics labs. He quickly gained leadership positions in larger and larger labs before bursting onto the international scene two years ago with his memoir, “Dreams of Mr. Johnston, My Physics Professor: A Story of Quarks and Neutrinos.”

Since that point Sokolovic hasn’t actually achieved any great gains in cold fusion, but still, the potential is there.

The question on everyone’s lips is: Can he live up to it?