Buck Rogers

We all used to chuckle at the robots depicted on television sci-fi shows. Buck Rogers’ sidekick, Twiki (”A-beedy-beedy-beedy-beedy… Nice going, Buck!”), and Daggit the robot dog on Battlestar Galactica. These were outcroppings of C3PO and R2D2, who in a twisted kind of way were descendents of the positively hilarious Robot from Lost In Space.

Kids were led to believe that this was the future we had to look forward to. Well kids, we’re close…

As soon as my teenager heads off to college I’m getting one of those robots that will mow my lawn. I have also promised my wife a “Roomba” robotic vacuum cleaner as soon as the budget will allow it. Those, plus an army of cute but ultimately just entertaining robot dogs, are the ways that robots are touching our lives today. That is about to change.

Hop on YouTube.com and check out the cute (ha!) little toy Boston Dynamics has in prototype form nicknamed ‘Big Dog’. It’s a four-legged, autonomous robot that can climb hills; navigate snow, ice, sand, gravel, and uneven rock surfaces; hop over reasonably-sized obstacles and chasms; and do all of this with a payload of over 300 pounds. It has self-leveling gyroscope (I assume) technology such that when you roundhouse kick the thing, it stumbles in reaction to the force, but then regains its balance (!!!) and keeps on heading towards its intended destination.

There is ‘Little Dog’ too, a less impressive but still worthy descendent. There is additional video of a scorpion-like device about a foot across that climbs smooth vertical surfaces. Hello…

In real-world (actually, extra-terrestrial) action at this moment is Dextre, a robot that now lives on the exterior shell of the International Space Stations. Those crazy Canadians who brought us the robotic arm that is used in the Space Shuttle cargo bay developed this little sucker, who after a small power problem was resolved, was put through its paces just days ago by the Endeavor crew who delivered him to his new home orbiting the earth. There he will live, carefully crawling around the outside of the Station, at first assisting astronauts performing space walks.

But the day will come when he and perhaps some yet-to-be-delivered robotic colleagues can perform safety checks and routine maintenance on the Station. This will all but eliminate the need for dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive space walks using living, breathing astronauts. Depending Dextre’s success at such duties, he may see the list of tasks performed by him and his brethren expanded in the future.

And that’s why advances like this are important. It’s not the first step that you can see that is mesmerizing, it’s the next ninety-nine that you can’t see.

Take Big Dog. Right now this is a robotic mule. It was developed with a grant from the Defense Department, so Big Dog itself will see use as a way to haul heavy equipment and supplies into remote areas quietly. To get an artillery unit onto the side of a mountain with a 30-degree slope: nine guys with a dozen Big Dogs set off at dusk, and by morning you have an emplacement that takes some Taliban outpost completely by surprise. Additional uses could be search and rescue, counter-terrorism, bomb retrieval and neutralization, and just plain old hauling stuff over rough terrain. Plus, arm the thing and give it some “vision”, and you’ve got a pretty bad-ass way to clear a house of bad guys without endangering soldiers or police.

But then think non-military. We have the Segway which balances on two wheels when powered up; Big Dog could be turned into a two-legged device very easily. So then that raises the possibility of it becoming a very practical, very functional set of legs for a double-amputee. Miniaturize the thing to a unit 8 inches tall and it becomes something very useful in small mine shafts, particularly in emergencies. I’m sure if I sat here for more than thirty seconds I could come up with a dozen of them.

And what about Dextre? Well, we are approaching the day when the Space Elevator will be a reality. See my related post on that topic here. So when you have the ability to move large amounts of cargo to low-earth orbit, what do you do with it? Well, you have to field a team of space-walking human workers to move it, inventory it, and put it to some use. But if you have a team of Dextres instead, that team of human workers becomes reduced to a few operators and supervisors. The robots can retrieve and inventory your supplies, then scramble over whatever structure you’re building, performing perhaps a single task before moving on, just like assembly line workers, free of the constraints of environment suits or oxygen supplies. The work goes faster, cheaper, and safer.

That scorpion thing that scales vertical surfaces? I envision a team of window-washing scorpions living on the side of skyscrapers and running on a constant schedule (except when it rains). Or else single-seat rescue vehicles dispatched during a high-rise fire to get people out of the building safely. Scale the building, find an open window (or smash one out), take on one person and lower them to the ground with a retractable basket on heavy-duty cables. Then yank the basket back up and go again until everyone is down, then go to another floor.

Once the physical limitations are breached, once the scaling or balancing or crawling has been achieved, the tasks these critters perform are butt-simple computer programming. Those limitations are about to go bye-bye, which means you will be seeing commercial applications appear very soon. As with any technology, when mass production is engaged prices will come down. So I fully expect to see some of these neat little gadgets influencing our lives before I log out for good. Certainly my kids will.

Just remember, there was a day when everyone thought it was impossible to have a phone that you carried around in your pocket and would work anywhere you went. Now look at us. Buck Rogers, indeed.

We All Have A Say

As we head down the back stretch of this political campaign, and get ready for what will undoubtedly be one of the most acrimonious and unpleasant presidential races in American history, I found myself today thinking about some important matters that bear repeating.

My wife leads a Girl Scout troop, and they have decided to “adopt” a couple of soldiers serving in the Middle East. This amounts to sending some goodies by mail and corresponding with them, not much else one can do. My wife is also getting ramped up with an organization called Sew Much Comfort which sews customized clothing for disabled and amputee veterans who have unique clothing needs. Both of these efforts fall into the category of supporting our troops. Which is to say, giving thanks and assistance to the front-line soldiers and supporting personnel who are actually doing the dirty work overseas. The phrase has taken on a different meaning among a certain segment of the population, and it’s time to set the record straight once and for all.

Supporting our troops and supporting the politicians who started this mess in the first place are not, I repeat not, the same thing. One needs to be distinguished from the other in a meaningful way, and the cowards who are hiding behind that phrase while harboring a genuine support of the political motivation behind the military engagement need to sound off like they have a pair. If you support the decision to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, get that yellow ribbon bumper sticker off your pickup truck and replace it with something that truly reflects your attitude about this situation.

I don’t think there is a living, breathing American who doesn’t support our troops. Those brave men and women either volunteered to go put themselves into a dangerous and impossible situation, or they were yanked from their jobs and their families and thrust into it against their will — if they had wanted active duty they would have notified their Reserve unit commander and been re-assigned. Either way, those patriots are over there in the sun and sand amongst millions of people who want to see them either die or leave. They’re doing it because our government asked them to. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who did not wish them the best and support their efforts on our behalf.

Supporting this military action, however, is a different story. And you’ll notice that I have refrained from using the word “war”. These actions overseas are not wars. Wars are when you invade and take over, or repel an invading force. What we are engaged in is policing in the absence of a native force that can do it for themselves. In both Iraq and Afghanistan we are propping up the “democratically” elected government (tough to get an accurate paper ballot from somebody who can’t read or write in any language, now isn’t it?) until it can raise a standing army that won’t turn against it.

Meanwhile the elements of those countries who want the government to fall are doing everything in their power to make things miserable for the government, any citizen that dares support it, and the temporary police force (our army). So our men and women are there to keep the Iraqis and Afghanis from killing each other, while the radical elements in those countries are trying to kill the Americans so they can get about the business of killing each other again.

We hear President Bush and his supporters in Congress talk about victory in Iraq. There is no victory in Iraq, any fool knows this. There is only graceful and swift exit with minimal loss of life. For every student of Middle Eastern culture, politics, and history can tell you what the next 12 months has in store for Iraq after we leave. I’ve said this before, I’ll repeat it now. Ethnic/religious tensions will boil over, the leader(s) of the standing government will be assassinated, and civil war will break out. The winner of that war will be the group least likely to believe in truth, justice and the American way, and we will have another dictator in power in Baghdad.

This should not be surprising. Iraqis have lived for literally thousands of years under the rule of whichever individual held the most military power over the region where they lived. How on earth do we think that we can change all of that and implement a functioning democracy just by showing up and passing out leaflets? Their culture will take decades, maybe hundreds of years to wear down the elements of this feudalist existence. And folks, it’s not America’s job to try to accomplish that.

Kudos to those who support our troops. Poll after poll shows that Americans feel there is little justification for supporting the politicians who continue to keep our forces engaged overseas. There is no benefit to be realized from keeping them there, and that’s becoming obvious. How many more body bags with America’s sons and daughters will have to arrive home in secret before we put a stop to this idiocy?

We all have a say in this. November is right around the corner. Educate yourselves not only about the presidential race, but about the politicians representing your district on a state and federal level. Make sure you are there and you are prepared. Make sure your vote counts in every race this fall. Make sure our troops can hear you all the way overseas. Let’s make this one of the turning points in American history that we can look back on proudly.

What Goes Up…

Lots of sour faces on Wall Street and around the country today, as it appears the Fed’s panicked, ground-breaking intervention in the last three business days was not enough to keep the markets from taking a nose-dive after all. I can bet you the analysts weren’t the least bit surprised, as the evidence of an extended and substantial decline is as plain as Mount Everest.

Quick review. Bear Stearns finished last Friday at $30 a share, but near the brink of insolvency. Investors spent Friday trying to extract any of their funds out of the beleaguered Wall Street mainstay in what resembled a good old-fashioned “bank run.” The Fed coaxed J.P. Morgan to assume the investment house’s outstanding debt in a stock swap valuing the company at $2 per share. Yikes!

The deal would not be possible, however, without a new Fed policy that allows investment firms and stock brokerages to belly up to the Discount Window for loans, a privilege previously reserved exclusively for banks. This will come back to haunt the Fed, as they will find that every weasely Wall Street speculator will go on a spending spree with government-borrowed money, then come looking for a bail-out when the ferret farm they dropped a hundred million bucks on comes down with fleas. But I digress.

Then, yesterday another three-quarter point cut in interest rates, the second this year, a first in the history of the Federal Reserve. Markets soared on the news, adding over 400 points to the Dow.

All of this is to ensure that markets are liquid and able to meet short-term obligations. That’s the friendly version. The truth is that the money is to pacify jittery investors looking to pull their holdings into cash and precious metals. They’ve got the right idea, and it doesn’t take repelling gear to figure it out.

Hard-core traders follow market signals. P/E ratios, moving averages, debt to equity, and charts. Bazillions of charts. One of the tried-and-true chart signals market mavens swear by is called the “triple-top”. It’s when a stock goes up, then retreats a bit, then goes up just a little higher, then retreats, then goes up not quite as far, then plummets. So three peaks with a tall one in the middle, and watch out — the party’s over.

Go get a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average for a five-year period, and look at the most recent year. Oh boy…

There’s the reason the Dow tanked nearly 300 points the day after a 400 point gain. The market couldn’t help but go down, gravity isn’t selective. Yesterday’s exuberance was just like somebody playing, “You Shook Me All Night Long” three minutes before closing on Ladies Night: those guys who don’t realize the party ended an hour ago are still trying to squeeze the last few ounces of fun out of the thing, but when it’s over and the lights come up it’s just them, their buddy’s ugly sister, two fat waitresses and the janitor. That was the floor of the NYSE yesterday at 4pm.

Party is over, people. I’m saying we have the Dow below 10,000 by this time next year, and that may not be the bottom. Safe bet is in Euros right now, as the U.S. dollar is sinking with no end in sight. Gold also looks good, however these levels aren’t sustainable and investors with large holdings will start taking profits at some point. When gold goes south it goes like lightning, and you won’t know until it’s all over. So be careful.

I hate giving out this kind of advice, it’s depressing. But it’s a public service. You need to understand that the pundits on TV can’t tell the truth about this kind of thing, they’ll get sued and the government will pull their broadcasting license (don’t think for a second that doesn’t happen). All they can do is report on what has already happened and try to keep a stiff upper lip. Every one of those pukes had their Blackberry just beneath the anchor desk, frantically e-mailing their online brokerage with sell orders.

Anyhoo, they can’t sue me, and I don’t have a vested interest in anything one way or the other. Where else are you going to get unbiased advice?

Go. Be smart. It won’t last forever, it never does.