mondojohnson

I never tire of the Apollo 11 story, even in this 40th anniversary year that produced a deluge of memorial films, books and articles. It (and the birth of Sesame Street) remains a distinct childhood memory, though I was only four years old. Rocket Men is an excellent and authoritative retelling of the amazing achievement, a must-read for space freaks.

Hardcore Apollo nerds like myself will already know most of the mission details recounted in this book, but that doesn’t stop it from being a gripping page-turner — even when it dips back into history to review Operation Paperclip and the frantic poaching of Nazi scientists after the war. The story all unfolds at a gripping pace, using the official mission timeline (“T-minus”, etc) often in the voices of the engineers and astronauts that made it happen.

In fact, that’s one of the best aspects of the book: the engineers are given a more complete voice than they are usually afforded on those “History Channel” shows. Another commendable feature of Rocket Men is the respectful depth given to the portrait of Mike Collins — the affably humble Command Module pilot who is so often eclipsed by Buzz & Neil in accounts of the Great Leap.

The book ends by reminding us of our baffling abandonment of manned space-flight, though it does so in a way that inspires rather than scolds.

Perhaps with the discovery of all that water, we’ll finally go back? I hope so. The next humans on the moon are more likely to be Chinese or Indian than American, at this point. I don’t care which, I just hope they build a little campground that can be visited by mere mortals like me.

Hats off to the physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who have demonstrated a Turing-machine-like “universal” quantum computer. Prior to their breakthrough, quantum computers were only programmed to do very specific tasks, like the “Postman problem.” Their work presents a quantum computational model that could work with any conceivable problem that could be expressed in “qubits”.

This brings us one step closer to having all current cryptography rendered crackable, though the physical challenges of building a large enough quantum computer remain daunting. But this is a little moment of history, it seems to me!

Photo by J. Burrus/NIST

Due to seismic events on the homefront, I have not been able to post to the blog lately.

But I can’t let today’s significant anniversary — the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon — go unremarked. I was only four years old, but I remember it well. It remains the bravest, most audacious engineering effort in human history. I never tire of the recollections, in fact they still give me chills.

Well done, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, you lucky bastards

On June 4, Simon Singh announced that he will be appealing the pre-trial judgment in the libel case brought against him by those Sultans of Snakeoil, the British Chiropractic Association.

The Sense About Science web site has stepped up to serve as a main organizer of information about the case. It provides breaking news on the legal case and lets you know what you can do to support our man Simon (who is fighting the costly battle at his own expense). One of the things you can do right away is add your name to the list of supporters, which is now in the thousands. “Keep the Libel Laws Out of Science!” goes the slogan; you can do so by signing here!.

The New Humanist reports on Monday’s event in support of Simon Singh and his libel battle with the quacks of chiropractic. Singh did not announce whether he’d be appealing; his lawyers are still working out the best course of action.

But it sounds like it went extremely well. Comedian Dave Gorman writes about the evening in his blog post Chiro-Bullies.