Stochastic Scribbles

I can’t believe that Bush would preach responsibility when he is the great dodger of responsibility. Or is he planning to admit responsibility to all the screw-ups that happened during his administration? Really, he should be the first one to follow his own words, otherwise he’d never even try to fix things. Not that he could do much with less than a year left.

The Mars Phoenix Lander may have taken pictures of a surface of ice instead of just a dinky little rock that might be ice. This is a bit more impressive.

The image above is from NASA.

The Mars Phoenix Lander may have taken its first close-up look at ice on Mars. While it’s been known for a while that water exists on Mars, this would be the first time humans have been able to take a close look at actual water on Mars, assuming that it’s not just some rock that looks like ice.

The image above is from NASA.

Hearing about the death of a woman due to the failure of her iron lung inspires both sadness and respect. Being forced to live within an iron lung from almost when she was born because of polio, it is awe-inspiring that she still managed to live a fulfilling life despite her almost claustrophobic environment. It is sad that such a woman had to die because of the simultaneous failure of the normal power grid and the emergency generator.

This makes me think how good it is that polio has almost been wiped out. Otherwise we would have many more people who would have to live in such a restricted condition, ranging from being paralyzed to having to rely on an iron lung. Considering that this is thanks to vaccines, I find it incomprehensible that some people are against vaccination because of their bogus belief that it can cause autism.

It might be different if there were any evidence for such a belief, but when multiple high-quality studies show no link between vaccination and autism, they’re just trying to spread suffering and death from disease. I have no idea if this is out of malice or out of stupidity. While it’s my nature to assume the latter, their vitriolic persistence in their belief despite strong evidence to the contrary sometimes makes me suspect the former.

If you like photography, then Tips from the Top Floor is a nice podcast to listen to. It has a rather cozy feel to it, in that the podcast is very community-driven, and it often gives out nice tips and background knowledge that budding photographers can appreciate. The semi-regular Tech Guy episodes, which are actually recordings from a separate radio show done with also the host of the Tips from the Top Floor podcast, are also great for learning basic photography techniques and other tidbits.