Author: Zane Selvans

A former space explorer, now marooned on a beautiful, dying world.

Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • Is it actually possible to get an overnight wilderness permit to backpack into the Cottonwood Basin in the White Mountains? #
  • A surreality TV idea: Bright Green. Like Wa$ted, except ppl go fully sustainable, eventually requiring transformation of entire city/state! #
  • not sure which is worse: the thought that the Iranian elections were rigged, or the though that they weren't. It all seems so… Y2K. #
  • And now a recount! I think Iran is making fun of us. Why *didn't* Florida look like this in 2000: http://is.gd/13GYj #
  • I'm drinkin' tea out of a big ol' jar. Ah, Hugh. #
  • This guerilla art project was probably worth getting arrested for: http://is.gd/14DsX #
  • This is the kind of housing I want to build in Boulder: http://is.gd/14Ejt #
  • Frustrated by code. Again. Sometimes I wonder why I even try. #
  • has an audience with Peter Goldreich. Gulp. #
  • Okay, brute force it is then. Where's my hacksaw? #
  • yeehaw, my data is demonstrably not just noise. Signal this strong randomly has chances of something like 1 in 50,000. Whew! #
  • going to pretend I'm backpacking in some post-apocalyptic Caucasian republic… olives, sheep's cheese, dried fruit, lavash bread. #
  • Okay computer, it's up to you to do the science while I'm gone. And don't run out of memory again. Or download any kiddie porn. Mmmkay? #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • Yann Arthus-Bertrand's HOME is gorgeous, but all such films need a more concrete vision of their preferred future: http://is.gd/TMtI #
  • O Brave New World, Where Are You? http://is.gd/TXGN #
  • EarthDesk is *almost* awesome. Needs (much) higher resolution images: http://is.gd/VINA #
  • momentarily confused by cross dressing co-worker at the urinals. I love Caltech. #
  • Last year's Terry Lecture at Yale looks interesting: The Scientific Buddha http://is.gd/WiTO #
  • Headache. Must dissolve myself into the quiet darkness. Ugh. #
  • still unclear whether two mugs of black tea is enough to stave off a no-coffee headache… #
  • In Pasadena, about 20 people are killed each year in car "accidents". Seems strange it doesn't make more news. #
  • I'm not shaving until I'm done with grad school. #
  • LA Metro finally getting on board with Google Transit: http://is.gd/Z5un #
  • Anyone else out there search for both "naked gardening" and "k-dimensional search tree" today? I didn't think so. #
  • kd-tree seems to be functional. Now if only I could have done this in my sleep. #
  • Congrats to all the new Caltech PhDs! I wIsh commencement weren't so early. Good luck getting tenure… #
  • I love the June gloom. Hope the tomatoes and cucumbers don't freak out and wilt when the sun finally appears. #
  • Okay, maybe 1L of black tea is sufficient to get me through the day. #
  • watch out for TV riots this evening, when the masses realize their analog idiot boxes have stopped working. #
  • Well dang it, this doesn't make it any faster either. Maybe I should have known that? #
  • still sooo sleeeepy… #
  • biking from Pasadena to Griffith Park, on what appears to be a gorgeous summer day, but one that came from Seattle or Portland, not LA. #
  • Rode 35 miles across northeast LA, through Griffith Park and back. Friends, picnic, bocci, and a temple to the sky. Near to heaven #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • I was born January 41st of the Martian year 12 http://is.gd/LKM4 #
  • Apparently I’m growing a beard, just in time for summer. #
  • Share a short account of your favorite bicycle road trip with AASHTO here: http://is.gd/LQZq #
  • my office is so lonely. #
  • help, help! The GOogle is down! #
  • going to be on the local CBS news tonight with http://bikewise.org #
  • Can anybody out there record the http://cbs2.com 11pm news tonight and send/upload video of the http://bikewise.org segment? I have no TV! #
  • 2 minute CBS segment on http://bikewise.org available here: http://is.gd/MZcU #
  • Obama & Congress seek to permanently suppress release of images of detainee abuse under FOIA. See: http://is.gd/NoQs & http://is.gd/NoQs #
  • saturating a 100Mb/s network connection for like the first time evar. #
  • Watched another good @longnow talk, on their 1000 year old system of sustainably farming rice. How can the west avoid overconfidence? #
  • Er, that would be the Balinese who did the rice farming, not @longnow #
  • found a hummingbird nest in our courtyard, made of spiderwebs, hair, lint and fluff, built on a string of xmas lights. #
  • thinking about golden section min/max finding while bicycling up and down a hill. #
  • watching a movie about Earthships: http://www.garbagewarrior.com #
  • This paper seems done, and yet, somehow, unsatisfactory. #
  • Screw the golden section. Brute forcing it will be faster than re-writing to optimize. #
  • homeward with groceries and to crack the whip at the lappy. Compute! #
  • hey world, go screw yourself. #
  • especially you, cops. #
  • We don’t want to believe what we know. #
  • Hmm. Somone in Washington DC looked at my resume. That can’t be good. #
  • meat or pets? #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • heading back to my nocturnal phase. #
  • making like a social animal… #
  • looking forward to having a sustainability reading group! #
  • disappointed with California voters, but not with our court. #
  • squandering another beautiful California spring day in front of a computer. #
  • Thermus thermophilus hard at work once again: Compost at 150F 3 days after turning. #
  • 摸着石头过河 #
  • voy a tratar de mostrar que en verdad las tazas de Caltech hecho con maiz estan compostables. #
  • Hay unas semanas cuando haciendo nada es un dolor. Porque? #
  • I refuse to be the crazy person. Obviously it’s everyone else who’s nuts. #
  • Hallelujah! Let the collaborative bicycle map annotations begin!!! http://bikewise.org/ #
  • twilight bike ride. #
  • adding some more data to http://bikewise.org #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • incredibly, flying to SF from LA emits the same CO2 as driving to SLO from LA. #
  • Tired of crappy metadata. Unsure about having kids. I think these are unrelated issues. #
  • esta usando Facebook en Espanol tambien. #
  • regresando a mi jardin para beber un poco y conversar con la chica rosa #
  • pinche afidos #
  • Michael Pollan gave an incredible talk at the Long Now. If only he could stop with the “um” and “uh”. #
  • would have voted NO on everything, if the hadn’t moved my polling place. #
  • los patios de Andalucia que estan llenos con habitabilidad. Las ciudades del pasado estan las ciudades del futuro. #
  • o talvez, estan una parte del futuro. #
  • went to Pasadena bike master plan mtg. It could have been worse. I felt like my input was received, but may get disregarded. #
  • Well, at least Pasadena isn’t being invaded by the mongol hordes. #
  • Yesterday was a civics triple threat: voting, public hearing, *and* a jury duty notice! #
  • My take on the goals and objectives of the Pasadena Bicycle Master Plan that were proposed at yesterday’s public workshop: http://is.gd/BMVD #
  • Even with Firebug, I still kind of hate CSS. #
  • going to the dollar store to get dish soap and TP. I hate the dollar store, but there it is. #
  • Happy that people are using the SatStress library! Sad that they don’t seem to know what a library is. http://code.google.com/p/satstress/ #
  • Woo hoo! All votes are in and Wikipedia (actually, all Wikimedia projects) will change licensing to CC-BY-SA 3.0: http://is.gd/BX7F #
  • done writing about the eigencrap, heading to Altadena Food Fair Market for Levantine foodstuffs. #
  • ready to enjoy a little of the SoCal weather. #
  • this is the 10th time I’ve seen the jacaranda trees bloom at Caltech. I think that’s enough. #
  • going to bed with Karl Popper and Michelle. #
  • fertlizing cucumbers and tomatoes #
  • Turned some compost, had some sex, need some coffee. #
  • popcorn popped in chili oil is extremely tasty. #
  • “The” rat has officially become “a” rat. As in, one of “the rats”. This is war. #
  • escuchando a cabeza radio #
  • What will cities be for in 50 years? I say conviviality, and the efficient utilization of material goods: http://is.gd/D1kn #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • Maybe I should have gone to grad school with Peter Ward? #
  • Dealing with a bunch of paperwork. At least half of it doesn’t actually involve any cellulose. #
  • Adopting a 5 year old would kind of be like hiring a live-in nanny… a really, really cheap nanny. #
  • Why not adopt a person you actually know and like, instead of a random individual? http://is.gd/z4it #
  • In the time it took 150 people to die of swine flu, 65,000 died of TB. Yikes. #
  • This kind of thing makes me wish I could read Arabic, Russian, and Chinese too: http://is.gd/zgFV #
  • Wow. Richard Rhodes actually wrote me back. #
  • Need to get milk for coffee. Early morning. #
  • Even TSA is annoyed by the arbitrary and ever novel regulations. #
  • On the ground in sf. Need coffee. Ugh. #
  • Found sir karl at green apple. I love used bookstores. #
  • roasted chicken a la Mendiratta, chardonnay and cassis, salad, chocolate-prune-coffee cake. #
  • Just to show off, today I’m going to be a pedestrian. #
  • could you write a wholly new play by copying lines from Shakespeare’s complete works? My analogy for synthetic biology: http://is.gd/A4O9 #
  • computationally enabling the elderly is a labor of love. #
  • Walking back to sally’s from fort mason #
  • Certainly after correcting for age, Sally creamed me in our walk today. We maybe tied without the normalization… #
  • Getting a swing lesson with wine #
  • Playing dress up… uh, I mean, dressing up. For a wedding. #
  • had fun dressing up, but boy was it hot. Liked Renny’s aussie fam, especially Annie and Peter. Need to visit London. #
  • whew, hard morning of personal computation… #
  • The smell of subways reminds me of living in st petersburg #
  • Just now getting on the plane. Hope I make the last gold line train. Ha, that rhymes! #
  • Once again stranded by los angeles and its strange ideas about public transportation. #
Categories
journal

The Once and Future Friend

At some point growing up I thought that all the “old” people were so different from me.  Actually, I thought just about everyone in Sanger and the Central Valley was different from me, but looking across generations it seemed most obvious.  I think the first hint I had that there were people like me (whatever that means) from the past were Hugh and Dianne in Davis.  But it didn’t really get through.  Caltech wasn’t any better – the inter-generational divide (student to teacher mostly) was too wide to really see the faculty as people.  Nevermind the unpleasant schooling experience and all its baggage.

Continue reading “The Once and Future Friend”
Categories
journal

Another way of breeding

More and more I suspect that short of some kind of existential catastrophe, in the near future the human genome is going to start getting re-written de novo every few generations.  This makes the already shaky argument for propagating my own personal genome all the more ridiculous.  Queen Elizabeth, for instance, in all likelihood carries exactly zero genes passed down to her from William the Conqueror, and that’s without genetic engineering.  Far more important today will be the ideas and technologies that are passed forward.  Add to this my deeply held belief that virtually all of the dangers and problems we face in the near term as a species, and a biosphere, stem from the enormous and rapidly growing human population (and it’s unending desire for material goods), and actually reproducing biologically becomes not only unnecessary, but morally dubious.

But there is still a powerful attraction to having kids.  To experiencing that kind of persistent mentorship, from the point of view of the mentor.  To watching, and hopefully guiding, another human being on the path to self-awareness, and an awareness of the world.  To having a visceral and deep connection to the future, through a person who will live in it.

Continue reading “Another way of breeding”
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • is going to submit his thesis before heading into The Maze. #
  • Ahh, the first bite of the first peach. Summer in California isn’t all bad. #
  • Dubugging. #
  • Long overdue photo uploads… http://is.gd/wLGu #
  • Oh crystal ball, what paleopole maximizes the amplitude of the apparent NSR induced lineament formation history? #
  • Reply hazy, try again. #
  • turning the moon upside down #
  • jjjkkk?tile(dwi Ha ha, that’s what vi command-mode looks like with the wrong application selected… Is this too nerdy to be funny? #
  • Hmm. My front page makes me look like some kind of burgeoning eco-terrorist, or an intelligence analyst. (or both…) #
  • homeward to scrounge dinner, read about nuclear power, and drink a bit of scotch ale, while the lappy calculates. #
  • Coffee just isn’t what it used to be. #
  • I wish the Red Cross would take my blood. Maybe I should get a new SSN. #
  • Maybe instead of having kids, we should just periodically host exchange students. #
  • I challenge you to an energy duel! http://bit.ly/cZqca #wattzon #
  • How inevitable is the development of synthetic biology, and who will develop it? Do we even get to decide? http://is.gd/xA3g #
  • Now slower and with more bugs! (vegetables, not code) #
  • Tix for O’Reilly #ETech & #SXSW 2010 (and others) on auction to support http://worldchanging.com here: http://is.gd/xQRJ #
  • I forget how much work I’ve done until I go and try to write it up. #
  • I just discovered a wonderful tree to nap and eat lunch under! #
  • Hopefully Miss California won’t have to return her free boob-job for allowing a pre-implant topless photo to surface on the internet. #
  • If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. #
  • From now on I’m only going to read Google news in languages other than English. #
  • Biked up and slept out under the full moon on a fire road in the San Gabes last night. Got checked out by a fox. Hooted at an owl. #
  • In 50 years, what are we going to think cities are for? #
  • Every time I go out I am reminded of why I never go out. #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • cooking with things from the garden. #
  • I really wish Worldchanging had per-author RSS feeds. #
  • Okay, here we go. #
  • Damn, I go away for the weekend and a pandemic breaks out. How weird is that? #
  • obsessing about the economics of information. #
  • Just listed myself in the http://localtweeps.com local Twitter directory in ZIP/Postal Code 91107 #
  • I wish this job involved more being outside. Like, as in, any. #
  • Thoughts on Josh Spurgeon’s Everhart Lecture at Caltech on Si microwire PV. I can’t belive he got it to work in one PhD: http://is.gd/vtCk #
  • Hokay, enuf o this. Alaska can come to. #
  • Tell your CA assemblyman/senator to support AB 1186, making the cost of parking more transparent: http://is.gd/vGIL #
  • I have reprints from Icarus of my first paper! How archaic. #
  • a headache is definitely a productivity damper. #
  • Mayday mayday mayday! Chrysler’s now a (55%) worker owned business! Of course, it’s also bankrupt… #
  • I love Netflix, and I am such a sucker for nature documentaries. Must be that PBS childhood. #
  • The more I read, the happier I am I wasn’t born in Afghanistan: http://is.gd/vWmi #
  • My thanks to Richard Rhodes for writing The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and a suggestion that the BBC serialize it: http://is.gd/w1Gq #
  • Good grief. I just broke into tears reading my own letter to Rhodes. #
  • I want to go for a bike ride that isn’t in LA. #
  • had a crappy day. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. #
  • today is definitely better than yesterday. #
  • holy cow I’m white and nerdy. #