100 Billion Galaxies

According to the Hubble IMax film at the Kennedy Space Center, the wide angle camera on the Hubble Space Telescope has given us imagery that suggests there could be as many as 100 billion galaxies. Each galaxy with billions of stars. Many of those stars with planets. The thought of that is humbling and a little bit frightening.

But it's also inspiring. A lot of science and technology, theory and application created an unbelievably sophisticated telescope. But it isn't just the telescope. The Shuttle that launched and repaired it, and the computers that receive and render the imagery are no small accomplishments in themselves. This is an amazing ecosystem for creating amazing technologies, putting them up, keeping them there, and making them useful. Still fragile and not without problem, but testimony to what we are capable of doing. And we've created that ecosystem in roughly 60 years. That's not long given the few thousand years that people have inhabited this rock.

Of course, our greatest achievements discover just how much more we have yet to learn than we know. And at 100 billion galaxies, the technology we have is woefully inadequate. But it means our greatest achievements that will lead to our greatest discoveries are yet to come. Technology is advancing at an accelerating rate, giving us entirely new ways to explore. There's so much more that we'll do and discover in my daughter's lifetime than in mine.

I hope that she'll want to be part of making those discoveries.

Coming Home

The interesting thing about being out of your family's life for an extended period of time isn't the separation, it's the re-entry. The initial euphoria of homecoming quickly gives rise to being a nuisance in their daily routines, even marginalized while you find your way back in. Even with daily emails, phone calls and text messages, the's still going to be a gap between where you each left off and are today. You don't bridge that gap by trying to describe everything you did during the time apart, you get on straight away by doing new things in your time together.  

Changing Paradigms

There's an episode of Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson says he prefers a 20 year old Ferrari F40 to their more recent vehicles. Among his reasons is the gap between driver and machine. With older supercars, driver and machine were in direct contact, with driver commands relayed directly to the engine, brakes, wheels, and so forth. But with modern supercars, the driver gives commands to a computer, which translates those commands into actions taken by car. This introduces a layer between person and machine, which (to Jeremy Clarkson, anyway) is less satisfying.

This is not to say that computers aren’t helpful, even necessary, in the modern supercar. The latest generation are so incredibly powerful, driver’s aids such as launch and traction control are necessary just to make them drivable. Not to mention less terrifying for the driver: when harnessing the power of 500+ bhp, there’s a very thin margin between driving on the limit and turfing the car.

Even when we drive ordinary cars, more and more we're talking to a computer that will tell the car what we want the car to do. Which raises the question of whether the driving paradigm that we use - foot-pedal throttle, gear lever shifting, foot braking, steering – has become an anachronism. If we're going to talk to a computer, these mechanisms for interaction are extremely primitive given both the computing power and sophisticated human-computer interfaces we have today. In that light, it comes as no surprise that smartphones are becoming increasingly integrated with cars; perhaps a new paradigm for interacting with our cars lies there.

It's also more than just a simple "command interface." The driver-car dialogue is not a one-way phenomenon, because driving is no longer as simple as driver instructing the car. The automobile can interpret multiple simultaneous commands (e.g., steering and braking) to try to understand what the driver is likely trying to accomplish and implement the right kind of steering with the right kind of braking. The car can also interpret those commands with some degree of situational awareness: things like road conditions, obstacle detection and satnav can enable a computer to interpret why we might be sending a combination of commands, and act accordingly. This makes the act of driving an all together different exercise: we don't control the car, as much as we describe what we want the car to do.

This isn’t an unprecedented shift. Commercial airplanes went through a similar phenomenon, and it changed the nature of what it meant to pilot a commercial airliner. It took several years, but stick and pedals gradually gave rise to fly-by-wire. The Airbus A320 was a clean break from the prior paradigm, making pilots feel more like computer programmers. Boeing still includes a stick in their aircraft, but pilots talk to a computer which talks to the ailerons, engines, landing gear, etc.

All told, we're likely very close to witnessing a shift in what it means to "drive". The way we control a car stems from function more than form. The underlying function is changing, and with it, so must the form.

One thing is for certain: the next generation of drivers will have a far easier time accepting a new paradigm than older generations will have in letting the previous paradigm go.

Pain from Parenting

It hurts to be a dad.

At this age, it's just the physical pain that comes from trying to keep up with an 8 year old. Things like tossing her around in a lake, blocking her soccer kicks, or building a zipline in the back yard. It’s a lot of cuts, scrapes, muscle aches and bruises. All outdoor stuff, and although it’s great to be outdoors, one person’s sweetly perfumed air is another’s pollen nightmare. Every now and again, it gets to be a bit much: it took a bit of time to recover from a controlled fall on my knees after losing my balance while tossing her back and forth on my shoulders. But it heals, and we do it all over again.

Today she’s bruising my muscle tissue (especially when I try to block her soccer kicks). Before too long, of course, she’ll break my heart.

'Twas ever thus between fathers & daughters. Between now and then, we have a zipline to finish, and countless other adventures to have.

Cuts, bruises & sneezing fits be damned.

Moving

Children are fairly resilient to change. They adapt easier, in no small part because even with their overloaded routines, they're not so firmly set in their ways.

But a house move is a pretty big change, even in the same town, even for a little person. All those routines are no more. A key source of consistency, security, comfort is upended.

The emotion of loss of the familiar can be eclipsed by the excitement of discovery of the new. New walking paths. A new park to play in. New neighbors. New places to go cycling... like the ice cream parlor. And old things, no longer stored away for lack of space, become accessible and new all over again.

Maybe someday my daughter will make the opportunity for herself to make a big move, maybe out of her home country. For all the adventure that it promises, a big move can be frustrating: things that you took for granted can become marathon struggles. On top of it, the loss of the familiar can wear you down and be outright demoralizing. The adventure is hard to enjoy if it's overwhelmed by enormous effort necessary just to do the basics.

Maybe this little move we've made will give her a few tools or patterns that will help her adjust to the unfamiliar later in life.

Or, more modestly, simply how to overcome the stationary interia that settles in with age.

Maybe we have to tell our kids they're winners...

Perhaps because we're borrowing so much from our kids (in the form of massive public debt), we have no choice but to tell them "you're all winners" all the time: if we don't, they might cut us off.

That's one small step...

Our first model rocket launch together was a success. So were the next 4.

Rocketry seems like a pretty good use of time:

• She may learn a bit of physics and aerodynamics.
• She may gain some appreciation for precision and attention to detail, e.g., as flight patterns are affected by the alignment of the fins.
• This might point her in a direction of a career path she should pursue.
• It may become a hobby.

Of course, it may turn out to be something we do a few times before she loses interest completely.

However it turns out, building things that we can launch a thousand feet up in the sky, recover, and launch again is a whole lot of fun for us both right now. But it's more than a way to kill time. It's got her wheels turning. It's got her thinking about things she'd never thought of before: she created a launch vehicle that goes high in the sky and returns for another round. It's a spark.

It's one small step for a little girl, one giant leap for her imagination.