Horgan has been going on about stuff like this for years. He wrote a book in 1997 called "The End of Science" which I read and thought was completely ridiculous. My recollection (possibly faulty as it's been quite a few years) is that he came across as very anti-science and wandered off into religion later in that book. It feels to me as though he WANTS science to fail at some point.

I don't know why he seems hell-bent on convincing everyone that we're going to run out of things to discover, but I just don't buy it.

Even if we manage to get to the "bottom" of Physics some day that's cool and all but it's hardly the end of much. The biology of even simple cells is fantastically complex and there's lifetimes worth of discovery left there. Also even if some day we we know most or all of the "rules", the possible applications of these simple rules are virtually infinite, so no scientists or technologists or explorers are likely to be unemployed any time soon.

Every time humanity thinks it knows everything, someone thinks up a clever new idea for measuring things and boom, a whole new world of complexity opens up. There might be an end to the turtles at some point, but I'm not worried :)

G.

Yes, that could be. But it seems clear that the plane was not being controlled by anyone who wanted the plane or its passengers to be rescued, so "oh, I've just flown the plane as far away from civilization as possible and I've just run out of fuel, yet I think I'll try at the last moment to make a successful water landing so as many people as possible can be saved" just does not seem likely. Either the plane was not under control, or those in control were not trying to save anyone.

And more specifically I strongly suspect the life-rafts were equipped with EPIRB satellite transmitters, none of which were activated. So that sort of suggests there aren't a bunch of people floating in a raft somewhere (which likely would have shown up during the satellite debris search I suspect).

Even having a rough idea of where it went down might still mean that the wreckage is not found for a long time. There's a lotta damn ocean out there, and I don't think the range of the "pingers" on the data recorders is that huge.

One thing I've been curious about is the cockpit voice recorder on the 777, specifically what the recording duration is (is it just a 30m circular buffer) and can the pilots disable it and/or the flight data recorder by pulling circuit breakers?

G.

I first remember hearing you as a recurring guest during the Mike Hodel era of Hour 25 on KPFK in LA.

Any great memories of those days that you'd care to share?

G.

Yeah, but just think of the ad revenue from putting the resulting video up on YouTube for us all to laugh at.

POW! Ha ha, that never gets old.

G.

Pretty soon there will be a $399 version that's 10x better than the first generation.

If you can get $1,500 worth of fun showing it off to people in the first year then sure.

G.

Google with their insistence on a camera-based social-media augmented-reality creepy-invasive experience is going to set back the cause of direct human-computer interaction by years.

Honestly I don't want a camera in my "glass". I want a link to something like my desktop computing resources. It's an intimate experience between me and the computer, not between my computer and the environment around me. Sure there are some cute apps you can do with the camera, but the creepy factor is going to make people as self-conscious and obvious as a Segway rider (and we know how that turned out).

When I can PAY for a device that has MY interests at heart rather than the latest data power grab by Google then I'll be interested.

Connect me with the Internet then get the fuck out of the way. I don't need you to mediate every interaction I have, not only with information from the net but with the real world around me.

G.

Going fast...

G.