October 2004 Archives
I never, ever learn.
If you haven't taken part in a previous PuzzleDonkey, be warned... they're frustrating as hell, and mindbogglingly addictive.
SpaceShipOne makes its second official Ansari X-Prize attempt today. If it's a success, then the X-Prize has a winner and a new chapter in the history books begins. I watched the live space.com webcast of last week's flight, and it was incredibly exciting and dramatic. I'll definitely be glued to today's broadcast this afternoon (UK time), and I urge you to do the same.
A few years ago I was publically sceptical about the chances of the X-Prize being claimed at all. The impressive advances made by the teams -- this one and several of the others -- made a believer out of me some months ago. Good luck to the SS1 team -- millions around the world are cheering you on.
Update: The flight was a success, and the prize has been claimed. This flight went without a hitch -- no drama this time. It looked almost routine, but the significance of the achievement should not be underestimated.
Ironically, on the same day that a new era began, one of the pioneers of manned spaceflight died. L. Gordon Cooper was one of the Mercury Seven, the original group of astronauts selected in 1959 from the best test pilots the USA had to offer. He was the sixth American in space. He died yesterday at the age of 77.
(Disclaimer: This is a short entry about the US presidential election, and although barely anybody I know cares about American politics, I'm pretty interested in it... so nyah.)
There are no end of pseudo-statistical methods of election outcome prediction, and most of them sound like nonsense. Nevertheless, occasionally you'll hear one that sounds like it may, by some freak confluence, actually be plausible.
One of them goes like this: in almost every Presidential election since television became popular, the tallest candidate has won. It's called the Presidential Height Index or PHI. (I said almost -- Ford lost to the diminutive Carter in 1976, and Bush beat the taller man Gore in 2000 -- for some value of 'beat'.) It could be a big coincidence, but the evidence says that height is a big voter turn-on. And when you bear in mind the composition of the American electorate, that doesn't even sound particularly implausible.
I bring this subject up because it gives me hope. The first debate aired last night and it's not until you see them side by side that you realise that Kerry's not just taller than Bush... he's so much taller that it's comical. So come on, PHI, don't fail us now.
(By the way, it's now October, so don't be surprised if there's a... uhh... surprise.)
Photos
