As a psychology graduate working in animal- behaviour labs, Seligman discovered "learned helplessness" and became a big name. Dogs who experience electric shocks that they cannot avoid by their actions simply give up trying. They will passively endure later shocks that they could easily escape. Seligman went on to apply this to humans, with "learned helplessness" as a model for depression. People who feel battered by unsolvable problems learn to be helpless; they become passive, slower to learn, anxious and sad. This idea revolutionised behavioural psychology and therapy by suggesting the need to challenge depressed people's beliefs and thought patterns, not just their behaviour.

Now Seligman is famous again, this time for creating the field of positive psychology. In 1997 the professor was seeking a theme for his presidency of the American Psychological Association. The idea came while gardening with his daughter Nikki. She was throwing weeds around and he was shouting. She reminded him that she used to be a whiner but had stopped on her fifth birthday. "And if I can stop whining, you can stop being a grouch."

Seligman describes this as an "epiphany". He vowed to change his own outlook, but more importantly recognised a strength — social intelligence — in his daughter that could be nurtured to help her withstand the vicissitudes of life. Looking back on "learned helplessness", he reflected that one in three subjects — rats, dogs or people — never became "helpless", no matter how many shocks or problems beset them.

"What is it about some people that imparts buffering strength, making them invulnerable to helplessness?" Seligman asked himself — and now he's made it his mission to find out.

Excellent article on controlling your own reality.

So what do you have to do to find happiness?

LiftPort Group Inc., of Bremerton, Wash., has successfully tested a robot climber — a novel piece of hardware that reeled itself up and down a lengthy ribbon dangling from a high-altitude balloon.

Furthermore, the company has created LiftPort Nanotech in Millville, N.J. That company is delving into mass production of nanotubes, focused on creating super-strong materials, “because, ultimately, that’s what leads to a long and strong ribbon in the sky,” Laine said.

“We’re not a PowerPoint company anymore … we’re a hardware company,” Laine concluded.

This is great to hear. Michael Laine did several very interesting talks at DragonCon this year. I was quite impressed. Hopefully everything will work well for them as they push their climber designs to the one mile limit.

Space elevator robot passes 1,000-foot mark - Space.com - MSNBC.com

That sounds like a reason for us to be the first.

Glen Reynolds misses a key point. The Space Elevator will need to be built in international waters, and as a result its not going to be controlled by a particular country. You could go out and build it without asking permission from anyone else, but it would be illegal and not worth the cost in terms of political capital. A government effort to construct such a system is most likely to be a multi-national partnership after the lawyers are finished with it, and likely a beaurocratic one at that. It may, however, be controlled by a single entity if that entity is a private enterprise, which is what the article meant when it discussed first mover advantage.

The other difference between this project and NASA's proposal is that this project has basic unsolved engineering problems related to the manufacture of carbon nanotubes and high longevity mechanical vehicles whereas NASA's proposal is a straight forward application of technology that has already been invented. In that sense NASA's approach is far more, ehm, down to earth.

The government ought to pursue the low risk approach and let private enterprise pursue the higher risk approach, with some support in the form of federal research grants for the basic technology required.

Having said all that, I would like to see space elevator technology backed by an Administration level initiative that directs grant funding to appropriate projects.

TCS: Tech Central Station - Is This the Right Way to Return to the Moon?

History suggests that the line between creativity and madness is a fine one, but a small group of people known as schizotypes are able to walk it with few problems and even benefit from it.

Print Story: Fine Line Revealed Between Creativity and Insanity on Yahoo! News

“If we could land the space shuttle on the moon, fill the cargo with canisters of helium-3 mined from the surface and bring the shuttle back to Earth, that cargo would supply the entire electrical power needs of the United States for an entire year,” he said.

US: UW scientists want to mine moon energy | EnergyBulletin.net | Energy and Peak Oil News

Before the end of the next decade, NASA astronauts will again explore the surface of the moon. And this time, we're going to stay, building outposts and paving the way for eventual journeys to Mars and beyond. There are echoes of the iconic images of the past, but it won't be your grandfather's moon shot.

NASA - How We'll Get Back to the Moon | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

Some pics of NASA's new moon rocket concept.

A New Era of Space Exploration

The White House has approved NASA's plan to replace the nation's aging fleet of winged spaceships with a new generation of vehicles meant to carry human explorers back to the Moon and onward to Mars and beyond, aerospace experts said yesterday.

White House Backs NASA Plan for Vehicles

The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005. Several hundred images, taken with the wide-angle camera in MESSENGER’s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), were sequenced into a movie documenting the view from MESSENGER as it departed Earth.

MESSENGER: MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging

flynn23 wrote:
I find it interesting that people will spew forth about string theory (even using the word theory to describe it), and then write 10 page diatribes about how intelligent design shouldn't be taught in schools.

I don't think that ID should be taught in schools. I think that its OK to discuss String Theory in schools. (Whether it SHOULD be taught is a different matter which relates to the importance and suitability of the material that I don't have an opinion on. ) The reason is subtle, but critical.

Intelligent Design is not a mathematical model. Neither is the Theory of Evolution. String Theory is. Bringing String Theory into a discussion about Evolution and ID is really an Apples to Oranges comparison. Physics is a completely different pursuit then zoology, which has different constraints and methods.

Mathematical models provide a way of thinking about processes that cannot be observed. They are accepted to the degree that they explain experimental evidence, and they are useful for correctly predicting results of future experiments and phenomina related to the model. Almost all of the "knowledge" that we have about physics and chemistry consists of mathematical models designed to fit experimental results. Very few of these things are referred to as Laws, and only in the context where mathematical proofs can be presented which eliminate alternative possibilities.

Quantum phenomina are hard to understand. Ultimately it is not something that we can ever know anything about, because the phenomina are too small to directly observe. All we have are experiments, and models that fit those experiments. This is true even of 100 year old ideas like what atoms consist of. We really have no idea what atoms consist of. There is no way to know. However, we have experiments, and models.

One such model is the Bhor Model. The Bhor model has been taught in school for nearly 100 years. At the time it explained all of the experimental evidence available. It is also totally wrong, and everyone knew that from the start. The model includes this number called the Bhor Radius that Bhor literally pulled out of his ass because it balanced all the equations. There are newer experiments that invalidate the Bhor Model, and there are more mature models that explain those experiments. We're still asking questions.

There is no one the in world of physics who actually thinks we know what atoms consist of. We don't. We will never know. But we have models that work. We have vast Chemical Engineering and Materials Science industries that produce lots of real stuff that actually works that rely heavily upon mathematical models like the Bhor Model and String Theory.

Now, Quantum physics is strange. We have a lot of trouble with it primarily because the experimental results seem completely preposturous. Information moving... [ Read More (0.8k in body) ]

RE: Dark matter highlights extra dimensions