Mokka mit Schlag

Estigmene acrea, 2006-10-21, Mount Loretto Unique Area

ID not 100% certain

I just noticed that Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman are releasing Bat Out of Hell III, appropriately enough on Halloween. This team’s been vastly underrated by everyone except the listening public. Their solo efforts have never been very good, ranging from bad to pathetic. (Steinman has done great work with other artists such as Bonnie Tyler too, but a singer he’s not.) However, put the two of them together and you get some of the best hard rock ever performed, even if (or perhaps precisely because) it sounds like it belongs in a Broadway theater instead of a football stadium. Now if only they’d released it on a non-evil label. :-(

What Kelley L. Ross and Captain Ed have is a failure of the imagination when examining the economics of Star Trek:

Politically and economically, it operates outside of the realm of science fiction and into fantasy. Nothing in its universe explains how human society manages to build the massive ships that comprise Star Fleet, nor the brilliant technology that enables them. Who builds these things — and how and why? It’s all well and good to say that money no longer exists, but people have to be compensated in some manner — otherwise, the Star Trek society is based on benevolent slavery. The reference to “Imagine” is particularly appropriate; this view of human nature seems particularly flaccid, where all creative impulses have been subordinated and all enterprise has been discouraged, pun particularly intended.

Nonetheless, I think a little thought about the implications of the technologies that exist in the Star Trek universe indicates that the economy doesn’t have to be anything like the fascist state Ross envisions. In fact, it seems likely to be far superior to our own.
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The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has decided to release the Raven Lite sound analysis software as free-beer. Previously it cost about $25. I’d been meaning to try this product out since first hearing about it from Don Kroodsma at the ABA Convention back in June. Now maybe I’ll finally get around to it.

The professional version costs $800, which I think is ridiculous. Academic research software like this should be open source. Not only are Cornell and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology large recipients of tax dollars and charitable donations which I think gives them some obligation to open up more to the broader community. Most importantly, you simply get better science when the software is as open as the data.
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Friday night the Sci Fi channel reran The Girl in the Fireplace, a Doctor Who story in which some alien robots punch a hole through time and space to steal the brain of Madame Pompadour from pre-revolutionary France. This plot makes about as much sense as it sounds. In fact, it makes so little sense that the Doctor repeatedly comments on this fact during the episode. He does save Madame Pompadour of course, and he figures out why the robots needed a human brain, but he never figures out why they wanted Madame Pompadour’s. The audience does get a big clue, though, at the end of the episode that the Doctor never sees; but on reflection I think there’s another meta-reason.
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Melanoplus differentialis, Mount Loretto Unique Area, 2006-10-21