Kottke wrote a bit about the Pioneer probes this morning, and it got me reading about them elsewhere. A cursory introduction: the Pioneer space probes 10 and 11 are among the furthest man-made objects from Earth. They both exceeded their missions by spectacular degrees (staying in radio contact far longer than anticipated) and returned extraordinary amounts of information about our solar system in the process. For example, there is Pioneer 10, which was launched in 1972. And then, over 30 years later:

The last, very weak signal from Pioneer 10 was received on January 23, 2003, when it was 7.5 billion miles (12 billion kilometres) from Earth.

Traveling at the speed of light, that signal took over 11 hours to reach earth. What I thought was particularly neat was the decision to attach plaques about humans and Earth on these deep space probes. The idea is that, against spectacular odds, perhaps something will find these probes one day, and decipher what we have engraved on these plaques.

Check out the reactions to the Pioneer plaque, though:

According to astronomer Frank Drake, there were many negative reactions to the plaque due to the fact that the human beings were displayed naked. The Chicago Sun-Times retouched its image to hide the genitals of the man and woman. The Los Angeles Times received “angry letters” from readers that accused NASA of wasting taxpayer money to send “obscenities” into space.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I don’t want to come off as elitist here, but if that little quote isn’t a testament to limitless human stupidity, I don’t know what is. I mean, we’re talking about potential communication with extra terrestrial beings — there’s a good chance that this plaque will be the last remnant of human kind, still flying through space, when the Earth itself is gone. And we’ve got people complaining that humans are shown naked.

I’m feeling a bit pessimistic about humanity this morning.

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Again, a tree above was providing some fantastic diffuse lighting, which really helped soften this shot.

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This American Life tackles the sub-prime housing market. I’ve read economists writing about this crisis… and it’s rather difficult to understand. I mean, all this talk of AAA overrated paper, etc. — I got a vague idea of the topic, but I wanted something more. Soo, I read a glowing recommendation of This American Life’s coverage of the topic. A quick summary:

What does the housing crisis have to do with the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.

I hope to give this one a listen soon.

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The lighting was perfect in the yard a few houses north of here.

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Lighting provided by a street lamp — good job, street lamp!

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There’s something about this video of panda babies that makes the little ones look animatronic or something. Don’t get me wrong, they’re astoundingly cute, but they look like youngsters in suits or something. It could be that their movements resemble toddlers so much that it looks odd.

There’s more information and tons of pictures here, including this:

Human pregnancies can be revealed by ultrasound, the telltale expanded belly, and home-pregnancy tests, but panda pregnancies are highly difficult to detect. None of these work for pandas. They won’t generally sit still for ultrasounds, their babies are born too small — the size of a stick of butter — to create any noticeable belly, and their pregnancy hormones remain a mystery.

And yes, you might want this picture of handlers corralling about seven baby pandas on your desktop.

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On a recent walk with Mykala.

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In this lovely classic Sesame Street video, Kermit sings about how to tell if something is alive. The song is great and the concept is rather timeless, but I implore you to watch and see what the Sesame Street version of a cow looks like. For some reason I think it’s hilarious.

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I take a picture like this just about every year, each time a little different. I love grass and sunsets, so here you are.

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