I watched Stargazing Live tonight and their talk of the plaques sent out into space on Voyager’s 1 and 2 reminded me of a Next Generation episode, the one where the crew suffered non-REM sleep and went slowly mad. Deanna had recurring dreams that said “one moon, circling”. It took them a while to decode it (they started looking for planets and moons) but eventually they worked out it referred to hydrogen.
I’d link you to the Wikipedia page on hydrogen at this point but unfortunately it’s shut for the day. More on that later. So for those who don’t retain random info like the internal structure of atoms in their head (or the length of the solar year for Mercury – 88 days btw), hydrogen is one proton and one electron – the electron being the ‘moon’ that circles the proton.
The Periodic Table and our understanding of it is perhaps the basis for our communication with other worlds – it’s something we must have in common, because, at some point, the big ball of burning gas at the centre of the relevant solar system must be investigated, and that leads automatically to the discovery of hydrogen (since hydrogen is what stars are initially made of, and what stars fuse together to form helium (2 protons, 2 neutrons, 2 electrons) in the production of energy). So if we can summarise hydrogen as a diagram that other life is able to recognise (assuming they have eyes and are able to perceive what we view as diagrams) we have a starting point for communication.
Interestingly the closure of Wikipedia has meant that instead of going “hydrogen (link to Wiki)” I’ve spent a paragraph telling you about it. And I think this is better than me just linking you to Wiki. Maybe I’ll make efforts in future not to just send you on research missions.
So! The Great Wiki Shutdown (and other sites). What’s it all about? I’ll admit to being ignorant before today – my android news widget told me it would occur, so I made sure I checked what I needed to know about the complete Sherlock Holmes publications before it shut down, but beyond that, I had to do my research today. It’s all about two bills to be passed to the US (and only the US) government; Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protection of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Unsurprisingly, if you look these two terms up on Wiki, it does work.
In a nutshell, it appears that SOPA is intended to provide courts with a way to action against sites that infringe copyright. All good, one would think, except it would in essence mean that much of the content of Cheezburger.com would be illegal (use of photos without original photographer’s permission). Whether this would really have the ‘chilling’ effect on You Tube, Facebook, Wikipedia and even Cheezburger etc. that is forecast would very much be down to whether and how the Act was enforced; if it was only used in extreme cases a la Napster etc. then that’s one kettle of fish, whereas if it bans the use of images of Alan Rickman as Snape as an avatar or use of a cat as a method for expressing a concept then it is a whole other kettle of entirely different fish. However, even if it was planned only to be useful in high profile cases, if you make it applicable to petty squabbles, you make it a tool for use in those cases. If an Act/Bill is needed to ban specific actions, then make the damn thing specific to those actions.
I’m reminded by the Animal Welfare Act 2006 – although a welcome and overdue amendment to the Protection of Animals Act 1911, the new act is very vague in comparison. Yes, it gives new and welcome powers which were beyond necessary, but it does not dictate the extent of those powers. And that is dangerous ground to get on. Once the big fish have been sorted, do you move on to the small fry?