Another stab at the Drake Equation – from the physics archives

The Drake Equation lies at the heart of one of my favorite hobbies – contemplation of the Fermi Paradox.

We presume, from the absence of Little Green Men in orbit, that there are very few expansionist or communicative technological civilizations in our galaxy. Maybe none.

So either there were exquisitely few to begin with, or they don’t last very long at all.

So we “know” the result of the Drake Equation – a number between 0 and 1. The number can be so small if there are very few technological civilizations like us, or if all technological civilizations are always very short lived.

I favor the always short lived explanation, which is why there’s an upside to President Palin. She would work to end civilization, and if our civilization more or less crumbled we might push world-ending events (sentient machines?) out a few hundred years. Yes, Vote for McCain/Palin – life may be brutish but humanity might last longer.

So it’s always fun to see new attempts to estimate Drake Equation parameters ….

the physics arXiv blog » Blog Archive » And the number of intelligent civilisations in our galaxy is…

Ref: http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.2222: A Numerical Testbed for Hypotheses of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence… [from] Duncan Forgan at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh.

The Drake equation famously calculates the number of advanced civilisations that should populate our galaxy right now. The result is hugely sensitive to the assumptions you make about factors such as the number of planets that orbit a host star that are potentially habitable, how many of these actually develop life and what fraction of that goes onto become intelligent etc.

Disagreement (ie general ignorance) over these numbers leads to estimates of the number intelligent civilisations in our galaxy that range from 10^-5 to 10^6.  In other words, your best bet is to pick a number, double it….

So Forgan has attempted to inject a little more precision into the calculation. His idea is to actually simulate many times over, the number of civilisations that may have appeared in a galaxy like ours using reasonable, modern estimates for the values in the Drake equation.

With these statistics you can calculate an average value and a standard deviation for the number of advanced civilisations in our galaxy.

Better still, it allows you to compare the results of different models of civilisation creation.

Horgan has clearly had some fun comparing three models:

i. panspermia: if life forms on one planet, it can spread to others in a system

ii. the rare-life hypothesis: Earth-like planets are rare but life progresses pretty well on them when they occur

iii.  the tortoise and hare hypothesis: Earth-like plants are common but the steps towards civilisation are hard

And the results are:

i. panspermia predicts  37964.97 advanced civilisations in our galaxy with a standard deviation of 20.

ii. the rare life hypothesis predicts 361.2 advanced civilisations with an SD of 2

iii. the tortoise and hare hypothesis predicts 31573.52 with an SD of 20.

Those are fantastically precise numbers. But before you start broadcasting to your newfound friends with a flashlight, it’s worth considering their accuracy.

The results of simulations like this are no better than than the assumptions you make in developing them. And these, of course, are based on our manifestly imperfect but rapidly improving knowledge of the heavens.

The real question is whether we’ll ever have good enough data to plug in to a model like this to give us a decent answer, without actually discovering another intelligent civilisation. And the answer to that is almost certainly not.

I’ll cavil on the last paragraph. It depends on what you mean by “decent”. We will probably get pretty good at estimating the number of earth like planets in the next fifty years, and, assuming we don’t detect any interesting transmissions, we’ll get more confident that the number of extant civilizations is very low. Which should lead to some cheery predictions about our civilizational life expectancy …

Google - please hire me to create a task list

I've been a Toodledo customer for months, but they're driving me a bit crazy. They don't grok search, their UI is web 1.0, and their web site has lots of advanced tools that aren't designed quite right.

Their multi-edit tool pushed me over the edge into madness this afternoon. When I tried to create a multi-edit search for items dated prior to today, the result included all undated items as well.

If I wanted NULL values, I'd have requested NULL values. #$!$!&*&^%

Toodledo seems to have been created by wrapping a web 1.0 tool around a very generic set of database tables. I love their commitment to data freedom and their Appigo ToDo.app integration, but there's a place for usability too.

So I went back to Remember The Milk to see if they'd improved. I took a special look at the way they handle notes and search.

Yech.

Ok Google, here's my offer.

Donate $1,000 to CARE.ORG and I'll work for free. I'll tell you what you need to make a good, task list integrated with iCal. Clearly you've been waiting for me to crack and make this free offer, because otherwise you'd have added tasks ages ago.

You know where to reach me.

Ok, maybe Appigo will do their own server. Help!!

Update 11/7/08: Appigo hasn't done their own server yet, but they've added search done right to their iPhone Todo app. Lovely work.

Message to Yahoo (and Cloud) customers: Get Out Now!

I like to think of this as an honorable act:

Slashdot | Yahoo Changes User Profiles, To Massive Outrage

... Yahoo decided to massively screw up their entire userbase by changing all user profiles to blank. No warning, no automated way to get data back, and other unwanted changes....

Yahoo is a publicly owned corporation. They can't, legally, put up a giant red announcement on their home page saying...

We're going down the tubes. You need to leave Yahoo now. Remember all that stuff about the Cloud computing? Well, the Price of the Cloud is 90% data lock. Data Lock means we own your data, and you can't move it. If we go down the tubes, you go down with us.

We are entering the the tubes now. The time has come. Salvage what you can, and take to the boats...

So, instead, they wipe out all the user profiles. It's kind of a "dog whistle" message to any customers with brains from Yahoo's inside geeks -- a back channel way to scream "get out now"!

Alas, most geeks have little sympathy for the naive user. They'll get their messages after the fact.

What about Yahoo Flickr? It will be sold. It's worth too much to just vanish. The transition may be rocky though, kind of like having your bank nationalized.

Think of this as one of life's less expensive lessons. We're going to learn the Price of the Cloud. Better sooner than later ...

Shortest lived links: Local movie listings

We've had a local movie review link on our MSP Family Recreation page for years.

Most of the links are fairly stable -- they have a half-life of 2-5 years.

There's one big exception.

Local movie listings have a half-life of about 4 months. The current two links are broken today.

Since this has traditionally been a low margin local newspaper service the short-lived links are probably another, unneeded, indicator that our local papers have one foot in the ICU and one in the crematorium.

I figured, given the failure of newspaper associated listings, that there must be emerging alternatives.

I found two.

Google has a local movie listing service. Not new and I've probably seen it before, but now it will be a rec page link.

Fandango does listings and sells tickets online. Another rec page link.

I'll miss our local newspapers.

Rick Santorum opens mouth, inserts pin

Funny sad ...

Obama hates America and burns flags: The proof is on the Internet

... Just last Thursday, former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum told Fox News that Obama won't wear a flag pin because he is 'not in concert' with American values.

Santorum wasn't wearing a pin that day. Obama was...

Meanwhile the NYT Editorial column is decrying the latest covert Bush attack on our tattered civil liberties. It's another step in the transformation of the FBI into KGB-lite.

They end by saying that the next president will have to review the state of our post-Bush/Cheney civil rights.

I'd say there's a 50% chance that will happen and a 50% chance President Palin will finish off what's left of our liberty.

Fareed Zakaria on the bright side of the Crash of ’08

The lemon yellow Newsweek cover caught my eye. As intended.

Bright side of the Crash of '08?

I couldn't resist. Happily, Fareed Zakaria had some interesting things to say.

Some highlights (emphases mine):

There Is a Silver Lining |Fareed Zakaria | Newsweek.com

... The average household owns 13 credit cards, and 40 percent of them carry a balance, up from 6 percent in 1970...

... Every city, every county and every state has wanted to preserve its many and proliferating operations and yet not raise taxes. How to square this circle? By borrowing, using ever more elaborate financial instruments. Revenue bonds were backed up by the prospect of future income from taxes or lotteries. "A growing trend is to securitize future federal funding for highways, housing and other items," says Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute. The effect on the projects, he points out, is to make them more expensive, since they incur interest payments. Because they "insulate the taxpayer from the cost"—all that needs to be paid now is the interest—they also tend to produce cost overruns...

... Boykin Curry, managing director of Eagle Capital, says, "For 20 years, the DNA of nearly every financial institution had morphed dangerously. Each time someone at the table pressed for more leverage and more risk, the next few years proved them 'right.' These people were emboldened, they were promoted and they gained control of ever more capital. Meanwhile, anyone in power who hesitated, who argued for caution, was proved 'wrong.' The cautious types were increasingly intimidated, passed over for promotion. They lost their hold on capital. This happened every day in almost every financial institution over and over, until we ended up with a very specific kind of person running things. This year, the capital that remains is finally being reallocated to more careful, thoughtful executives and investors—the Warren Buffetts … of the world."

... Curry points out that "30 percent of S&P 500 profits last year were earned by financial firms, and U.S. consumers were spending $800 billion more than they earned every year. As a result, most of our top math Ph.D.s were being pulled into nonproductive financial engineering instead of biotech research and fuel technology. Capital expenditures went into retail construction instead of critical infrastructure." The crisis will stop the misallocation of human and financial resources and redirect them in more-productive ways. If some of the smart people now on Wall Street end up building better models of energy usage and efficiency, that would be a net gain for the economy...

How's the story go? India creates software, China creates hardware, and the US creates financial instruments?

The 13 credit cards/household is so high I wonder if it's really true. On the other hand, I buy the stories of state budget trickery. I wonder how long that will take to unwind.

For me the best part of the essay is Boykin Curry's description of how an economic bubble destroys the leadership of publicly traded companies living in the bubble. In a bubble irrational bets pay off, and rational behavior is a ticket down the org chart. Eventually only the crazies are left at the top.

I would like to read more about the people who are the winners of the financial carnage. I suspect some actors are doing rather well right now.

Update 10/19/08: See the comment from Cathy. The "13 cards" statistic may be true. I believe Cathy is right when she guesses many people collect cards for a transient 10% purchase discount, but then never intend to use them. Of course a number of people will end up using those extra cards when they run into financial trouble, which will lead to misfortune all around.

So are these 10% purchase discounts really a good idea for the stores? I suspect it's marginal, but the risk and incentives have been outsourced through a long and disconnected chain of commerce -- so the true cost is probably hidden. Accounting uber alles, again.

Nostalgia for the Soviets: they made us look good

DI reviews the history of a Soviet atomic weapon production facility: Damn Interesting: In Soviet Russia, Lake Contaminates You.

Millions poisoned. Everything secret. Mopping up plutonium.

The amazing part is that life expectancy fell by "only" 30% in the poisoned region. Humans are fairly radiation resistant.

Sigh. The Soviets made us look so good by comparison. China tries with its melamine poisoned infants, but, really, they don't have their heart in it.

Now, instead of feeling so much better than the Soviets, we contemplate the rule of President Palin.

One can almost feel a perverse nostalgia for the Soviets.

Note to the plumbing obsessed – do not confuse politics with reality

It’s (very) mildly entertaining to read about the “Joe the Plumber” reality vs. fantasy story …

Egregious Moderation: Ed Kilgore: John McCain: Dishonest, Dishonorable, and Incompetent

…A day after making Joseph Wurzelbacher famous, referencing him in the debate almost two dozen times as someone who would pay higher taxes under Barack Obama, McCain learned the fine print Thursday on the plumber’s not-so-tidy personal story: He owes back taxes. He is not a licensed plumber. And it turns out that Wurzelbacher makes less than $250,000 a year, which means he would receive a tax cut if Obama were elected president…

Problem is, this completely misses the point.

It wouldn’t matter if Joe the Plumber were a mass murderer or a visiting alien. This has nothing to do with reality, this is talking-to-the-undecided-voter end-of-the-game politics.

It’s a good thing Obama understands this. His response will be to the Joe-meme, not the Joe human. He won’t bother pointing out reality, because that’s not relevant.

The right response might be to say nice things about middle-class white men, and point out that they’ll do much better with Obama/Biden than they’d do with Bush III (McCain) or President Palin.

I say “might” because I know I don’t understand the “undecided” voter that all these discussions are aimed at.

I think Obama’s team does understand them … fortunately.

David Brooks – Is Obama more like FDR, or more like Ronald Reagan?

Flying pigs are slip-sliding on the frozen fires of Hell.

David Books has written an extended essay praising Barack Obama. He compares Obama to his personal hero (Reagan) and to a man usually placed in the top 3 of great American presidents …

David Brooks - Thinking About Obama - NYTimes.com

… Some candidates are motivated by something they lack. For L.B.J., it was respect. For Bill Clinton, it was adoration. These politicians are motivated to fill that void. Their challenge once in office is self-regulation. How will they control the demons, insecurities and longings that fired their ambitions?

But other candidates are propelled by what some psychologists call self-efficacy, the placid assumption that they can handle whatever the future throws at them. Candidates in this mold, most heroically F.D.R. and Ronald Reagan, are driven upward by a desire to realize some capacity in their nature. They rise with an unshakable serenity that is inexplicable to their critics and infuriating to their foes.

Obama has the biography of the first group but the personality of the second. He grew up with an absent father and a peripatetic mother. “I learned long ago to distrust my childhood,” he wrote in “Dreams From My Father.” This is supposed to produce a politician with gaping personal needs and hidden wounds.

But over the past two years, Obama has never shown evidence of that. Instead, he has shown the same untroubled self-confidence day after day…

I was annoyed when Obama praised Reagan, but I didn’t write anything.

Obama is a brilliant political tactician. True, Palin/McCain will still win, but nobody could do better than he’s done.

Brooks appears to be nerving himself to endorse Obama. Even if he doesn’t, those pigs are still spinning.

The Acorn Conspiracy – The GOP’s war on civilization continues

The GOP is trotting out the FBI to investigate the fearsome Acorn Attack.

That’s a good reminder that reason #45254134 to donate money to Obama/Biden is so we can learn what the h*ll has been going on at the FBI. If, by some miracle, McCain/Palin are defeated, we’re going to find some juicy worms in that can.

The New York Times lead editorial provides some useful background on this latest GOP ploy (emphases mine):

Editorial - The Acorn Story - NYTimes.com

In Wednesday night’s debate, John McCain warned that a group called Acorn is “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history” and “may be destroying the fabric of democracy.” Viewers may have been wondering what Mr. McCain was talking about. So were we.

Acorn is a nonprofit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people and has mounted a major voter-registration drive this year. Acorn says that it has paid more than 8,000 canvassers who have registered about 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor people and members of racial minorities. [jf: ie, black]

In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has accused the group of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid registration forms, including some with fictional names like Mickey Mouse and others for voters who are already registered.

Based on the information that has come to light so far, the charges appear to be wildly overblown — and intended to hobble Acorn’s efforts.

The group concedes that some of its hired canvassers have turned in tainted forms, although they say the ones with phony names constitute no more than 1 percent of the total turned in. The group also says it reviews all of the registration forms that come in. Before delivering the forms to elections offices, its supervisors flag any that appear to have problems.

According to Acorn, most of the forms that are now causing controversy are ones that it flagged and that unsympathetic election officials then publicized.

Acorn’s critics charge that it is creating phony registrations that ineligible voters could use to cast ballots or that a single voter could use to vote multiple times.

Acorn needs to provide more precise figures about problem forms and needs to do a better job of choosing its canvassers.

But for all of the McCain campaign’s manufactured fury about vote theft (and similar claims from the Republican Party over the years) there is virtually no evidence — anywhere in the country, going back many elections — of people showing up at the polls and voting when they are not entitled to.

Meanwhile, Republicans aren’t saying anything about another more serious voter-registration scandal: the fact that about one-third of eligible voters are not registered. The racial gaps are significant and particularly disturbing. According to a study by Project Vote, a voting-rights group, in 2006, 71 percent of eligible whites were registered, compared with 61 percent of blacks, 54 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of Asian-Americans.

Much of the blame for this lies with overly restrictive registration rules. Earlier this year, the League of Women Voters halted its registration drive in Florida after the state imposed onerous new requirements.

The answer is for government to a better job of registering people to vote. That way there would be less need to rely on private registration drives, largely being conducted by well-meaning private organizations that use low-paid workers. Federal and state governments should do their own large-scale registration drives staffed by experienced election officials. Even better, Congress and the states should adopt election-day registration, which would make such drives unnecessary.

The real threats to the fabric of democracy are the unreasonable barriers that stand in the way of eligible voters casting ballots.

Gee, why would low income workers compensated on a per form basis produce fake forms? Do you think they might have something in common with senior executives in publicly traded companies? Do you think they might have something in common with everyone who’s paid by commission? Maybe with the paid-by-commission $100 million/year wall street executives who repackaged toxic debt into slices pawned off on willing fools?

I’m amazed the fake data rate was as low as it’s been.

A conspiracy to destroy democracy? That’s what the John Birchers would say. That’s what the GOP says with their back to the wall.

The “Acorn Attack” will be pressed hard.

I’ve been given senior management (Emily) approval to donate another $200 to Obama. This donation was inspired by the Acorn Attack and the Virginia GOP’s lesson in evil. I recommend this general approach. Every time the GOP pulls out another dirty trick, donate another $100.

It’s the best way to fight back, because if, as I expect, Palin/McCain wins, you’ll regret not having fought harder for the soul of America and, hell, the future of civilization.

Peak Oil? Hell, yes.

The cost of oil is cratering.

Oil Below $70, a Price Last Seen in June 2007 - NYTimes.com

… Oil prices plummeted on Thursday, falling below $70 a barrel for the first time in 16 months, and prompting the OPEC cartel to call for an emergency meeting next week…

… Oil prices have dropped sharply in recent weeks amid the economic crisis and lower consumption in developed nations. In New York, oil futures fell as much as 8 percent to $68.57 a barrel on Thursday, their lowest since June 2007. Oil has lost half its value since hitting a record closing price of $145.29 a barrel in July…

So do I stand by my Peak Oil call of August 2008?

I say Peak oil is here.

I say that despite, in my 1979 chemical engineering class, being told that peak oil was coming in the late 1980s (I think we reviewed the 1957 Rickover speech back then). I say this despite remembering Jimmy Carter's peak oil prediction in the 1970s.

Of course I'm really talking about Peak sweet light oil, and I don't mean "Peak" in absolute, or even demand > supply, I mean Peak in terms of rational market expectation of a > 70% probability that demand > supply within 5-8 years.

Basically I'm claiming that the price increases of this past year were due to praiseworthy speculation on the fundamentals rather than salacious speculation on psychology.

This means I'm expecting oil to go to Dyer's $200/bbl limit at least once in the next five years, though it may transiently fall back to $80 along the way. After 5-8 years it will be very apparent that oil will be a shrinking percentage of our energy supply, and that in the absence of a severe carbon tax (or the equivalent) we'll be baking the plane with burning coal and burning tar sands.

It also means that it's now rational to invest in conservation, and to expect real estate prices to reflect increased commuting costs.

More on Peak Oil later, but I was overdue to make my promised call. (It's been a busy month!)

Definitely. Note I said it may transiently fall to $80 along the way.

Ok, one caveat.

I predicted $200/bbl at least once before 2013, and I thought we’d stay above $80.

That was before we entered the Great Global Recession of 2008.

Hey, I’m not Cassandra. (Who was always right, the curse was not that her predictions were wrong, it was that no-one would believe them.)

GGR  pushes things out a few years.

So $200/bbl at least once before 2016.

This would have been a fantastic time to have had a carbon tax in place, one that kept the cost of oil above $100 a barrel. Alas, that kind of intelligence depends on having a superb President, and we are still months away from even a dream of excellence.

Since we don’t have smart leadership, we have see the Saudi’s can stabilize the price of oil – though not too quickly. That $70/bbl price could shorten the Recession by a few months. [1]

[1] So why would I want a Carbon tax now? Because if it stabilized oil at $100 a barrel we could turn the huge revenue stream into tax cuts and other economic stimulants that would do a better job than low cost oil at shortening the Great Global Recession.

The vote will be incredibly close. Do not stop donating, do not rest.

We know Obama is incredibly smart and politically skilled. He’s not being coy here …

Front-runner Obama cautions against overconfidence - CNN.com

… About 10 hours after debating Sen. John McCain, Obama urged top campaign contributors at the Metropolitan Club in Manhattan to not be overconfident, despite leading in a number of national polls…

Meanwhile, later in the article Palin tries to lulls us into complacency (emphasis mine):

Palin said… “… This year, the name on the ballot is John McCain -- and America knows that John McCain is his own man, he is the maverick."

Don’t be fooled by Palin’s seemingly mindless repetition of a now laughable talking point that was drilled into her by McCain’s handlers. Maybe it’s her way of sticking a fork into McCain, maybe she’s dumber than we think, but maybe she’s trying to lull us to sleep.

I don’t think she’s dumb, any more than Bush is dumb. Deranged, maybe, dumb, no.

Assume Karl Rove has something in his back pocket. Something very nasty that he’ll bring out at the very last minute. McCain’s team has gotten away with some astounding lies, this could be an even bigger one.

There won’t be much time to react when it happens. We’ve seen how the American people have reacted to events since October 2000. We’ve lost our internal rudders, as a people we can turn on a dime.

Obama will need money in the bank. He’ll need a team on the ground ready to respond. He’ll need to have last minute weapons of his own.

To build what will be needed for the last minutes the Obama/Biden campaign needs money now.

Don’t believe the polls. If Obama wins, which I still consider unlikely, it will be by a razor thin margin, the race won’t be decided until December, and the courts will be very busy.

Donate.

Mossberg's gPhone review: Microsoft Mobile dead and keep your data free

It's damned hard to kill a Microsoft product. Exchange server rules the enterprise, and I've always believed Microsoft could kill BlackBerry any darned time they feel like it.

Still, they haven't. Maybe there's some European antitrust rule that's stopping them. If Microsoft can't kill or acquire RIM, then they might as well shoot Microsoft Mobile now and end the suspense. Gates would have done it, he was great at killing products.

It ain't like Microsoft hasn't been trying. They've been doing versions of Microsoft Mobile for over ten years. They just can't get it.

Now they have RIM to the right of them, iPhone to the left of them, and, after reading Silicon Valley Insider's summary of Mossberg's gPhone review, gPhone on top of them. Oh, yeah, and Nokia's somewhere too. (Wandering lost in the Symbian wilderness?)

Four is an unstable number. There will be three.

For those of us committed to OS X and the iPhone, the lesson is to keep our Data Free. Bento, despite being a pathetically weak "tyranny of the mean" product, is good for exporting critical iPhone related data. Non-DRMd AAC music is portable - so don't buy music from the Apple Store. Don't be too attached to your video. Don't put your data in MobileMe unless you can pull it out via the desktop and Bento. Use solutions like Appigo Todo.app, Appigo Notebook.app, Evernote (now reformed), Toodledo (cloud), and Google Apps that all maintain data freedom and avoid data lock.

The iPhone is very good, but Apple has inexplicably omitted some critical functions. The excellence of the gPhone may keep Apple customer-centered, but if it doesn't we'll need to move our data. So keep it free.

We won't be moving data to Microsoft Mobile though.

Thanks Google. Thanks Apple. I don't trust either of you, but the two of you together might just give me what I need.

Understanding evil. Lessons from the Virginia GOP

The Virginia GOP has modified an extreme close-up of bin Laden into something could pass for a distorted and blurred close-up of Barack Obama.

They title it "AMERICA MUST LOOK EVIL IN THE EYE AND NEVER FLINCH".

Yes. Evil.

Yesterday four Minnesota (Lakeville) men savagely tortured a cognitively disabled man for two days, then left him for dead.

That is horror and tragedy. It is not I would say, evil. The torturers were themselves cognitively disabled, walking tragedies, broken and terrible. That brutal crime is tragedy upon tragedy.

Evil requires understanding, or at least as much understanding as humans can have. Evil is knowingly choosing the wrong.

Evil was the Reich. Evil was Pol Pot. Evil was Saddam Hussein. Evil is Zawahiri and bin Laden. Evil is Dick, the torturer, Cheney. Evil is Philip Morris and their smart and skilled executives who choose to serve an evil cause.

It was that kind of evil person who did this bit of work. I'm sure they were delighted by the fruit of their labor.

Yes, America, look at evil.

Do not flinch.

Vote the GOP out of power. There's must be a hard road of reform and rehabilitation, for they are corrupted from the bottom to the top.

Donate to Obama.

MacBook no firewire, MacBook Air no USB 3

Macworld | Live Update: Apple’s Notebook Event

No USB 3 anywhere, no firewire on the MacBook.

Maybe the GPU will help Aperture.

Ho hum.