My daughter, the guinea pig.

 Well, the little one will soon enter first grade... at her fourth school.

She spent a year in the "kinderhale" program at the local Waldorf school (that's Rudolf Steiner to you Europeans) as a 4-year-old. Then a semester of Kindergarten at Voyager Charter School in Honolulu, and the second semester of Kindergarten at Chiefess Kapiolani elementary here in Hilo.

But the folks at Kapiolani told us repeatedly that we needed to get her into a better school, one that wasn't constrained so much by the Every Child Left Behind legislation, with less rigid reading and math programs and more challenges and opportunities and so on and so forth.

So we put her name on the list a couple places. Last week, one of them, Connections Charter School, called to say that sorry, there wouldn't be any space for her when school starts up in a couple more weeks. Today, they called to say that there unexpectedly would be a space.

Connections partners with the Curriculum Research and Development Group at the main campus of the state university system, and as such gets to try out the shiny new educational theories and curricula. They're one of three pilot sites for some math curriculum from Russia (it's been translated... I think!) and are also using a cutting-edge science, health and technology program.

So... she'll be a guinea pig. She'll also probably be scarily brilliant, and I hope when she takes over the galaxy she won't treat me too harshly for the times I scolded her.

Kung Fu Hustle

The first reviews I saw for this movie claimed that it was something like Jackie Chan meets Buster Keaton meets Bugs Bunny meets Quentin Tarantino. It sounds crazy, but they were exactly right. This movie has:

1. Tons of kung fu, some of it humorous a la Chan
2. Lots of physical comedy and Keatonesque pratfalls
3. Some ridiculously fast movement and crashes like a cartoon
4. Over-the-top stylized violence a la Tarantino

If you're wondering why you haven't already seen fifteen other movies that combine these kinds of elements... well, the results can be pretty bizarre. "Hilarious" meets "disturbingly violent" and it's hard to know whether to laugh or cringe.

This movie manages to make the combination work, skewering all manner of stereotypes in the process, and even offers a happy ending. If you're looking for something different, this might be a good one to see, as long as you're not easily offended or squeamish.

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D

El Mariachi. Desperado. From Dusk Till Dawn. Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Spy Kids? And now... The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D??

No, Robert Rodriguez hasn't gone completely insane - he just has kids, and he makes films for kids sometimes. This particular one is based on a story one of his sons, Racer Rodriguez, created at age 7. Yes, really.

The bad news is that audience members older or younger than age 7 may have a hard time really getting into the movie. The plot feels like a story being made up on the fly by a 7-year-old whose parents forgot to renew a ritalin prescription, and the acting and dialogue aren't likely to wow adult audiences.. The good news, of course, is that kids who are (around) 7 will probably really enjoy the movie.

So: enjoyable movie for its target audience, but if mom or dad has to tag along, a matinee, second-run, dollar movie house is definitely the way to go.

Having an Impact

 Since last August, I've occasionally run a telescope for the university. A lot of the observations over the last academic year involved comet P9/Tempel-1, which had been selected as the destination for NASA's "Deep Impact" mission. One of the members of the NASA Science Team for the mission is a professor at the university, and she's had quite a few postdocs and grad students observing the comet for her.

For several months, I've known that there would be some public outreach surrounding the mission. Public outreach is nothing new -- the university's Institute for Astronomy has a person who specializes in science education and public outreach. There are frequent public talks at the local campus, often by rather well-known figures in the field of astronomy, which draw anywhere from 50 to 150 people. But this... this would turn out to be a little different.

Initially, I was going to be in the control room of the telescope I run, facilitating video links to the lecture room where the outreach program would take place. Nice. Easy. Familiar.

But then... plans changed a little. Instead of an outreach program, the Institute became involved in four of them - one on this island, one on Maui, one at a museum in Honolulu, and one on Waikiki Beach. And I was assigned to "run the show" technologically on Maui.

Saturday, I flew over to Maui with my trusty PowerBook (with iSight video camera for iChat AV video chats), my backpack of cameras, and a box full of goodies. Several other boxes had already been shipped over ahead of me. Little did I know how quickly the goodies would vanish. The outreach officer met me there, and we caught up with local professors and astronomers who would be involved, started hooking up technology and testing various things. By the time I left the campus at 10 PM Saturday, I knew some things worked, knew a couple didn't, and, after being accosted by a half-dozen youth wanting to know where the comet event would be on Sunday, knew we might get a bit of turnout from the public.

Sunday morning, I went to the summit of Haleakala, said hi to an observer at one of the Institute's facilities, and checked things out.

Faulkes Telescope North enclosure on Haleakala

I came back down, got things all set up for the program, then had to rearrange furniture and make the room smaller (partitions) at the last minute.

The program was... well, I've been describing it as "like Woodstock. A chaotic mess, but a huge, public, impressive chaotic mess."

Our room occupancy limit was around 150 people. In my half of the room, I estimated 300. The facilities guy was nervous because the air conditioning couldn't handle that many warm bodies in one place. He ended up opening up two more rooms to show the same NASA TV feed that was being shown in the other half of the main room.

In my half of the room, NASA TV only showed up right around impact. The rest of the time was spent doing the following:

- Showing a DVD from NASA containing information on the mission, animations of the impact, and footage of the launch.

- Video chatting with Mike Martin of Boeing (which supplied the Delta II launch rocket for the mission), who was on the summit of Haleakala for the impact.

- Showing Mike's presentation on the integration, launch and trajectory of the mission, with Mike narrating over the video link from Haleakala.

- Video chatting with Mike Maberry, Assistant Director of the Institute, who was on the summit of Haleakala with Mike Martin.

- Video chatting with Bill Giebink of the Institute, who was on the summit of Haleakala to make sure the Faulkes Telescope worked well.

- Video linking upstairs to the room where a group of students from Hawaii and Iceland, and educators and astronomers from Hawaii, England and Iceland were observing with the Faulkes Telescope, to see one of the astronomers explaining to the students how their observations would work.

- Showing a presentation by astronomer Jonathan Williams of the Institute, who also fielded questions as part of a panel along with fellow astronomers Shadia Habbal and J.D. Armstrong and educator Sharon Price.

- Video chatting with Hiroko Shinnaga at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory on Mauna Kea.

- Video chatting with Glen Petitpas at the Harvard-Smithsonian-Taiwan Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea.

- Showing near-real-time images off the Faulkes Telescope on Haleakala.

- Showing a little bit of real-time streaming footage from Japan's Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.

This was all done in a semi-scripted manner, with the audience, our in-person panelists and our videochat guests all interacting over the video chat links. Those of us working the event thought it was crazy... the audience seemed to think it was great. I don't think I've been asked for an autograph before.

The scene in Hilo - where my family went - was similar. Crowding. On Waikiki Beach, the crowd was estimated at 10,000 people. Maybe we've underestimated the popularity of astronomy?

I flew back the next afternoon - and went right back to the control room, to operate the telescope for another 4 nights. The science collaboration is impressive - as I type this, a video monitor near me is displaying tiled live connections to Kitt Peak in Arizona, La Silla in Chile, and multiple observatories on Mauna Kea. The amount of data being gathered by each telescope is huge, and when it's all put together, I don't even want to think about how many lifetimes worth of man-hours will go into analyzing it.

Here's a photo of the comet, which I snagged from the Faulkes Telescope web site. You might also read the local newspaper stories about the events on Maui and in Hilo.

Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow

One of the greatest scientific mysteries of the last 50 years may have finally been solved by Jonathan Corum, through analysis of kinematic data on swallows.

And there was much rejoicing!

Apple, IBM, Intel - Missed One!

 Like everyone else who hasn't been living under a particularly large rock for the last couple weeks, I've become aware of a couple things.

Firstly, Apple has committed to moving its systems from PowerPC chips to chips from Intel over the next two years.

 

Secondly, the media is terribly excited about this.

I have both PowerPC hardware from Apple and Intel-based hardware from another vendor. It all runs Linux or OS X. I personally don't find this transition to be anything that I have to worry about. But the announcement, and the ensuing media coverage, have left me wondering a few things. Fortunately, I had a flash of realization this morning.

The media has consistently portrayed this as a move away from IBM and toward Intel by Apple. And that's not at all untrue - this does represent a win for Intel, and a vote of no confidence in the future roadmap of the G5 family.

But why, I ask, would Apple announce this now, when Intel's chips don't really offer any performance advantages over the G5? Won't changing from the G5 to the Pentium be a step backward, in fact, from 64-bit to 32-bit? And, says the media, won't this hurt their sales?

The answer, of course, is that it's not about IBM, and not about the G5. Not now. Not next year. Not until 2007.

Remember, Apple is starting at the low end, and won't go Intel on the high end until 2007. The G5 is only used in the Power Mac, Xserve, and iMac. And IBM doesn't make the G4. Freescale (formerly Motorola) does, and Apple's been discontented with Motorola for years - after all, that's why they went with IBM for the G5. G4 speeds haven't kept up with Intel, and memory bus speeds of G4 systems are woefully slow.

So this year, and next year, this isn't about IBM. It's about Freescale getting one last firm kick in the butt from Apple on its way out the door. And that is a huge win for buyers of Apple's low-end systems, even if the media ignores it.

Since IBM only makes the high-end G5, their arrangement with Apple probably won't end until 2007, when those systems go Intel. And that also means the G5 won't be getting replaced with current Pentiums - it will be getting replaced with something Intel's fabbing two years in the future. Something we may very well not even know the details of until 2006.

So... this isn't just about Apple and IBM. It's about Apple and Freescale right now and for at least the next year. Sure, IBM's been told its days as a chip supplier for Apple are numbered, but Freescale is first against the wall.

My Future in Academia: Or, Why I Won't Become a Professor

Some time ago, I mentioned to someone that at least one of the professors at the local university campus had, prior to becoming a professor and teaching people about a field in which I work, held jobs in that field quite similar to my own.

She responded by enthusiastically encouraging me to become a professor too.

Honestly, though, I don't see it happening, for a few reasons.

Firstly, I can count all my college credits without running out of fingers.
Secondly, I am not known for my rigorous pursuit of academic excellence.
And finally, professors in this university system tend to be at the top of the field.

A quick read of the graduate faculty shows that we are blessed with quite a few graduates of places like Berkeley, CalTech, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Cambridge, and so on. There are only two people on the graduate faculty lacking PhD's - a librarian and a computer person.

The odds of me getting a PhD at all are slim, and the odds of me getting one from a school of as good repute as those listed above are, well, basically none.

So... I could take several years of my life and work on getting degrees, probably from some lesser school, and wind up as a professor, almost certainly at some little backwater college.

Or... I could stay where I am, maybe try to advance a little here and there, but remain a low-profile if somewhat vital cog in the works of a program that's widely regarded as one of the top 5 in this field, worldwide.

Fancy papers with my name on them versus being surrounded by the best and the brightest, with all the shiny toys?

The choice seems obvious to me.