Technically Incorrect

Is all this space travel worthwhile? Will it really contribute to our civilization or our touchingly naive way of life? Will it even lift our spirits?

I cannot be sure about the first two, as I feel these might be permanently floating somewhere out there. But I have some space-sourced spirit lifting to share.

Japan's Sapporo Breweries, the entity that brings you those large silver tins of beer to complement your rainbow roll, announced this week that it is launching space beer.

According to Reuters, Sapporo "Space Barley", with its cute outer-space sparkling starred label, has been created using barley grown on the International Space Station.

I am not sure what revolutionary taste values barley grown in the black beyond brings to a beer, but I'm concerned that it can't possibly be as fine as the Redhook ESB that got me through another abject Golden State Warriors performance Thursday evening at Oracle's most depressing arena.

I know you'll be wondering how to get your fingers around Space Barley's neck. It seems you will have to trust your good fortune and your, um, trust fund. There's a lottery. The 250 winners will enjoy a six-pack. Just one. The approximate price of being able to drink in a little space is $115. Which works out to about $19 for each 330 milliliter of celestial flavor.

You will be relieved to learn that this project is not for profit. Instead, all the proceeds will go to an educational science charity for Japanese children.

You will be even more relieved that the noble forces of science are finally being put to this most elemental of human uses. Indeed, if Space Barley reveals itself to have a taste somewhat superior to Coors and Budweiser (which I know is terribly tough to imagine), perhaps we might soon see an increase in space beer production.

It is surely many a human being's dream: the Unidentified Flying Brewery.

I can understand why people are so keen to find alien life. It isn't so much a scientific fascination with what might be out there. It's more a pained hope that what is out there might be more enjoyable than what is down here.

So I am wrestled to the ground by a certain sympathy for Brad Niesluchowski.

According to the Arizona Republic, Niesluchowski was asked to resign after allegedly using his position at the Higley Unified School District to exercise his own (and our) need for an alien encounter.

This was not a case of uploading pictures of potential lady friends from Eastern Europe. No, this was a rather more imaginative downloading of software that searches for extra-terrestrial life.

The Republic's sleuths got their hands on documents that suggest Niesluchowski was encouraged to resign after he downloaded free University of California (the terribly forward-thinking Berkeley branch) software that uses idle computers to examine information collected by radio telescopes.

This would be information that might indicate that ET is, indeed, flying around in a bike basket somewhere out there.

Might someone out there try to correct this situation?

(Credit: Cc Joka2000/Flickr)

Niesluchowski, you see, enjoyed the authority to purchase all sorts of technology for his district. And his alleged downloading of alien-hunting software might well have used additional energy resources and caused other related damage or accelerated depreciation to the hardware. The school district estimates these losses at between $1.2 million and $1.6 million.

Specifically, Niesluchowski stands accused of downloading a program called SETI@home to every computer in the school district.

You might rather enjoy perusing the SETI Web site. One of its recent small steps for man was to launch a site for Iran so that Iranians might also co-operate in accelerating the incidence of Klingon contact.

However, SETI might not have been the only software Niesluchowski donated to Higley. The school district also claimed it had found another program, with the heavenly name of BOINC, that also emanated from Berkeley.

Perhaps Niesluchowski's alleged behavior was not entirely thought through. Perhaps he simply hoped no one would ever notice. But, using the moniker "NEZ" he had reportedly become one of the most active and admired alien hunters. The Republic suggests that he earned 575 million "credits,", representing the enormous hours he spent in the search for the next world.

I would, however, like to offer an alternative theory as to why he might have behaved in the way he allegedly did.

The Polish roots of the name "Niesluchowski" are the words "not" and "listening". It seems perfectly possible to me that Niesluchowski merely wanted to prove that, despite his name, he was doing more future-focused listening that anyone in the world.

I have nothing against smoking, save for the difficult odor that emanates from every part, breath, and piece of clothing belonging to a smoker. I could no more live with a smoker than I could live with a third ear perched off the end of my nose.

However, I am embalmed in a curious sympathy after reading a report from The Consumerist concerning two Mac users whose AppleCare warranties appear to have been voided due to the presence of cigarette smoke in their homes.

One, named Derek, recounts the tale of his overheating black MacBook. He took it into the Apple store in Jordan Creek, West Des Moines.

He told The Consumerist: "Today, April, 28, 2008, the Apple store called and informed me that due to the computer having been used in a house where there was smoking, that has voided the warranty and they refuse to work on the machine, due to 'health risks of secondhand smoke.'"

He continued: "Nowhere in your AppleCare terms of service can I find anything mentioning being used in a smoking environment as voiding the warranty."

Will a Marlboro Lights habit makes this cute thing inoperable?

(Credit: CC Galaygobi/Flickr)

Derek's resulting appeal to the office of Steve Jobs bore him no joy, so he resorted to blowing some compressed air at the machine, leading it to restart its wondrous functions.

Then along came Ruth, who took her son's iMac to an authorized repair center. After five days, they apparently told her they couldn't work on it because it was contaminated with cigarette smoke and was therefore a bio-hazard.

Tiburon, Calif., is a twee little place. If you aren't familiar with the old-country colloquialism "twee," it means, well, something like "precious." Like one of those dogs Paris Hilton used to carry in her purse.

When one wanders through its little streets, just north of San Francisco, one gets the sense that a few of the residents, on seeing someone who appears not to be from around those parts, reach for their handkerchief and hand sanitizer.

How can one, therefore, be surprised that a meeting of the Tiburon Town Council voted on Wednesday by 4 to 0 to install cameras to photograph every single car that enters or leaves this little Disneyland?

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that this may be the first community in the country to have defended itself with cameras in such a way. The idea is to photograph the license plates of every car that treads Tiburon's hallowed roads and compare the information with the police's list of the stolen and nefarious.

Tiburon. Such a tranquil place.

(Credit: CC Stewart/Flickr)

The Tiburon police chief, Michael Cronin, told the Chronicle: "I think it makes the community safer."

There are certainly even more definitions of the word "safety" than of the word "twee." However, it is heartwarming that the Tiburon police--inspired, perhaps, by Google--promise that the information will be kept for only 30 days.

The strange thing is that Tiburon, a northern suburb of San Francisco, isn't exactly Oakland. It doesn't enjoy high crime figures. Indeed, some might say that the most criminal elements in the place are to be seen on the racks of its clothes stores.

The town is fortunate, however, in that it is on a peninsula, from which there are only two roads. So the total cost of putting up six cameras is estimated to be no more than $200,000, which works out at something near $20 per resident. (Tiburon residents enjoy, by the way, a median income somewhere above $125,000.)

I know there will be some who believe you can never have enough security cameras in this heinous and half-witted world. But perhaps some will worry that the police might make rather instinctive judgments about the provenance of certain cars and their intentions.

Others will wonder whether this decision might affect businesses in Tiburon. Still others will ponder whether the police might be willing to offer a Web site showing the movements of all its officers.

I merely wonder how many people, knowing they might have to go to Tiburon for a meal of organic Kobe beef, rosemary ice cream, and plenty of Stags Leap cabernet, will choose to remove their front license plates. You know, just to be on the safe side.

I am all for discovering the Meaning of Life. And though I was once concerned that you could never trust scientists enough to find it, many wise people persuaded me that we should still try.

However, I am concerned with the news reported by the Guardian that a hungry bird has halted testing on the Large Hadron Collider.

The Collider, positioned on the increasingly sensitive border between France and Switzerland, has been quiet for more than a year after electrical faults and helium leaks.

What does it all mean?

(Credit: CC Mark Hillary/Flickr)

It is now being tested to prepare it for action and reaction. However, a de-beaked piece of bread that dropped into the machine appears to have caused a power outage.

CERN spokesperson Christine Sutton told the Guardian: "The problem related to the high voltage supply. We get mains voltage from the grid, and there was an interruption in the power supply, just like you might have a power cut at home. The person who went to investigate discovered bread and a bird eating the bread."

I know there will be some who might suggest that the bird was actually French, as the bread has been identified as being of baguette form.

However, shouldn't we be more concerned with the metaphysics of physics?

There are, according to the New York Times, some scientists who believe that this God particle experiment is being interfered with by time-traveling particles from our own future.

We need surely to be told not whether the bird was French but whether it was real, or whether it was some strange messenger from a future time, warning us not to mess with things we don't quite understand.

It was a fullish moon when I picked up a new book called "The Lights in the Tunnel," thinking that the title was sure to lift my spirits on All Souls Day.

Perhaps I should have picked me up some Dostoyevsky.

It's not that "The Lights in the Tunnel" isn't thoughtful or interesting. The author, Martin Ford, is a computer engineer who has clearly spent many hours considering the true effects of technology on society.

It's just that a rough summation of those effects might be described as "really bloody terrible."

Essentially, he believes that technology is the direct cause of job losses that will never return. In fact, his fear is that even in those industries that are currently still labor intensive, job losses are inevitable. Which just might mean that there will be vast numbers of people all over the world who will have no money to spend at Zara. Not even at Old Navy.

Naturally, Ford has found himself in a spirited debate with economists who seem to think his arguments border on loonism.

A chap named Robin Hanson seems rather hurt that Ford isn't in the thrall of economists' thinking--you know, the optimistic stuff about how technology will always produce more jobs and more wealth because we humans are, well, so clever.

Perhaps I paraphrase a touch, but economists such as Hanson tend to believe that economic inequality might be a politically difficult thing, but it doesn't portend economic disaster: because, as Hanson says, "producers can focus on giving the rich what they want, and innovation and growth is just as feasible for elite products as for mass products."

(Credit: CC Firepile/Flickr)

Now of course, I'm not going to argue with economists about human behavior because it's generally akin to arguing with a hockey color commentator about creme caramel.

However, Ford, the techie whom economists dismiss, has a very interesting solution to his rather bleak human scenario. He seems rather keen on a consumption tax, or a direct tax on business that would attempt to capture the income that people would have earned if they had had a job. Then he would incentivize the unemployed to contribute to society according to their own talents and society's needs.

You need a strong heart and stomach to read Ford's book, but some small part of me cannot help but wonder whether his rather miserable prognostication might have some truth to it.

"Glenn Beck would scream," Ford told me in an e-mail. Which made me immediately wonder why his publishers hadn't put that quote on the book cover.

Strangely, Ford isn't some sandal-wearing socialist wagging his finger at the money lenders.

"Capitalism has worked out fairly well for me, and I'd like to keep it around. If the ideas in the book are correct, then I really wonder if the system will be sustainable without some type of intervention," he told me.

Here is a computer engineer who's genuinely worried about, well, human beings.

"If that underclass increases relentlessly over time, and if you start seeing more educated people getting dragged into it, then we are going to have a huge problem. I think that may happen as machines and computers keep getting better until eventually they can do the jobs of even people with lots of education and training. At that point I think you have to do something," he added.

Unfortunately, the history of the world doesn't necessarily offer too much hope for the implementation of the kind of intervention that Ford is suggesting.

So one day, you, me, Ben Affleck, Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Liv Tyler might be seated in a devastated landscape muttering: "How were we to know we were supposed to listen to bloody Martin Ford? He was just some computer engineer."

Perhaps, like me, you always turn to your left when you board a plane.

Not because first class is that way, but merely to take a quick look at the pilots to see what they're doing and whether there's the faintest whiff of spliff or Johnny Walker wafting from their cabin.

So I am fascinated beyond excitement at what two Northwest Airlines pilots might have been doing on their laptops Wednesday night.

You see, these experienced men, Richard Cole and Timothy Cheney, were piloting a red eye from San Diego to Minneapolis when they seem to have forgotten to take in the final Minneapolis part of the journey.

They were somewhere over Wisconsin when, according to The New York Times, a flight attendant happened to call them, with a vaguely relevant question about the time of arrival. The time of arrival at Minneapolis, a city they had already overflown some time before.

You might imagine that the pilots had fallen asleep. Your suggestion is supported by the fact that they seem not to have responded to repeated entreaties from air traffic controllers for a chat.

Tests have reportedly shown that the pilots were not drunk. In interviews with concerned members of law enforcement, Cole and Cheney reportedly said they were on their laptops discussing a new scheduling system.

You see, they are Northwest pilots who now are under the Delta banner. And Delta does things a little differently.

I suspect you might scoff at this explanation.

You see, they had allegedly pulled out their personal laptops, which is a violation of Northwest policy, Delta policy and, one imagines, the policy of every airline bar. (Except, perhaps, Southwest, whose pilots wear leather jackets, strut through airports as if they have just returned from the Battle of Britain, and always seem to be having a jolly good time.)

We should therefore wonder what Cole and Cheney might have been doing. I have canvassed some of the brightest minds to come up with these suggestions.

One very lucid mind suggested quite simply that they were watching a ballgame. Another offered that they had uploaded a "How to lie effectively" video. And a third feels sure they were watching the classic Hilary Duff video "Wake Up," which I have embedded here for your delectation.

I fear some of you might be tempted towards the heinous thought that they were watching material of a sleazily sultry nature.

I cannot be so cynical. It is simply not in my nature. It seems so obvious to me what happened here that I cannot believe no one with a right mind and a left brain has reached the same conclusion.

Cheney, the pilot, was quite clearly a PC user (I just cannot imagine a Cheney using a Mac), while his Cole-pilot was a firm fanboy of the Mac. Like little boys comparing their trading card collections, they whipped out their laptops so that they could convert each other.

We all know just what a long conversation this will have been. The obstinacy of both sides is often so extreme that the parties might forget they are in the air, in a plane, or even flying a plane.

As Cheney proselytized about Windows 7, Cole counter-punched with some Snow Leopard. And before they knew it, Wisconsin waved at them from below while their passengers wondered what time they might descend from on high.

I feel sure that the next "Get a Mac" ad will feature Messrs. Hodgman and Long as Northwest pilots who want to settle this debate once and for all. By the end of the spot, they will be grappling in the cockpit and the plane will be ready to land in Minsk.

One can dream, can't one? Just as pilots do when they inadvertently fall asleep.

Perhaps you might be one of those who believes that there should be a very remote and unremitting island, somewhere in the Northern Baltic Sea, reserved for all those who act in an utterly inconsiderate manner.

You know these people well: those who sneeze and don't cover their mouths; those who come to your house for dinner and don't bring a bottle or a smile; and those, at least for members of the rescue services, who have bought a personal locator beacon.

According the the Associated Press, as these beacons have become cheaper, there appear to have been more cases of people setting them off to alert rescue helicopters of imminent disaster.

Imminent disaster such as post-thunderstorm stress disorder or rather salty water drinking syndrome.

You may think this cannot be true. But here is a story the AP offers from the National Park Service in Arizona.

A few dads took their sons for a hike somewhere around the Grand Canyon. They ran out of water, so they activated their beacon. Soon, rescuers found the party. Oh, what joy they experienced to discover that the dads and boys had found a stream. Help was not needed after all.

After a couple of beers, might someone alert the services for a refill?

(Credit: CC Besighyawn/Flickr)

However, they set their beacon off again a few hours later. Had a dad been devoured by a Bigfoot? Had a son become lunch for a bear? No, the hiking half-formed were worried that they might soon suffer dehydration because the water they had found tasted salty.

Which was a shame, as the rescue services were so concerned that they sent out a helicopter that was rather well equipped with night vision capabilities.

Your throat may temporarily cease to function when I tell you that this experience did not deter the fathers and sons from having faith in their beacon. The next day, they set it off again. Which caused the authorities to have them removed and cited for being utter and total morons who should never be allowed near the ACG section of Niketown ever again.

I'm sorry, that might not be quite accurate. The actual words were "creating a hazardous condition."

This might be an extreme incident. However, someone did once activate their beacon when they were frightened by a thunderstorm, the type of event that caused the top man at the California Search and Rescue operations to create a rather fine name for these personal locator beacons: Yuppie 911.

Matt Scharper, who co-ordinates rescue efforts in California, told the AP: "With the Yuppie 911, you send a message to a satellite and the government pulls your butt out of something you shouldn't have been in in the first place."

The people who risk their lives by flying helicopters and allowing themselves to sometimes get far too close to people with the mind and body odor of a desperate rodent, think that inexperienced hikers are buying these beacons--they can be had for as little as $129.99--in the belief that they can negotiate terrain that is far beyond their minds and bodies.

But what can you do? How do you know that a piece of technology is in the hands of a decent citizen or an utter offal-muncher?

Surely some brilliant engineer might solve this conundrum. Otherwise, let's vote for a two-strike rule and it's off to the northern Baltic with you. Sans personal locator beacon.

They tell us not to drive Hummers.

They tell us to disconnect our cell phone chargers, once our cell phones are juiced. They tell us to switch off our laptops, burn candles rather than electric light, and sail boats rather than fly planes.

But do they ever tell us to wean ourselves off the animals that we cynically use as substitutes for our failed relationships with other humans?

I only ask because an article from the New Scientist has wafted in front of my breakfast bowl and slapped me about my flappy jowls.

Quoting such luminous organizations as the Stockholm Environment Institute at York, UK, the article purports to suggest that our pets have all the eco-friendliness of that Northwest Airlines flight that forgot to land in Minneapolis and just kept on going to Wisconsin.

Please, I understand that dogs and cats are lovely beings that just want to love you and lick you as long as you feed them and wash them.

However, the SEI seems to believe that a cat has almost the same carbon footprint as a VW Golf.

Here is a sentence from the article that I know may make some of you rather unwell: "As well as guzzling resources, cats and dogs devastate wildlife populations, spread disease and add to pollution."

Buddy, if you can't carry the family to the mall, you'll have to go.

(Credit: CC Mike Baird/Flickr)

Yes, I know you thought it was only multinational corporations that do that. So please imagine that there is a book, written by Robert and Brenda Vale, called "Time to Eat the Dog?: The real guide to sustainable living."

Because you are more numerate than me, I will leave you to examine their figures in lascivious detail. However, the Vales estimate that a 4.6-liter Toyota Land Cruiser has an eco-footprint that is less than half that of a medium-size dog.

It is largely to do with the amount of meat and cereal that dogs chow, but this is surely a vale of tears for those who need their dogs in so many different ways: to get exercise, to get companionship and to become attractive to members of their target sex.

In case you are not quite thoroughly depressed by this estimation of our ultimate demise, might I offer you two further calculations from the Vales?

Well, should you own two hamsters, that is the eco-footprint equivalent of your plasma. And one goldfish? Well, it's the energy-sucking equivalent of two cell phones.

To continue this cheery mood for just a little longer, please hark these words the New Scientist quotes-- they were uttered by David Mackay, a physicist at the University of Cambridge: "If a lifestyle choice uses more than 1 per cent of your energy footprint, then it is worthwhile reflecting on that choice and seeing what you can do about it."

The average cat, he estimates, represents 2 percent of a human's footprint. And as for dogs, oh, it really doesn't bear thinking about.

It seems to me, therefore, that you have some harsh choices to make in order to save our world.

Your goldfish or your family plan? Your hamsters or, at the very least, the plasma in your bedroom? Your dog or your Audi?

Your animal companions or your technological ones? Life just doesn't get easier, does it?