Changes on the surface of Titan...

Changes on the surface of Titan...  The amazing little robotic explorer Cassini has now been poking around Saturn and its moons long enough to have captured multiple images of the same places years apart.  On the giant Saturnian moon Titan, the science team has isolated one particular feature that's exhibited some dramatic changes (shown in the image at right; click to embiggen).  There's lots of speculation about why those changes are occurring, all interesting – but it really is just speculation at this point.

Isn't it amazing that we're looking at the surface of Titan like this?  I remember reading science fiction stories about exploring (and exploiting) Titan, and I don't believe any of them came close to capturing just how weird and wonderful a place it actually is...

The world is a complicated place, part 4,992,527...

The world is a complicated place, part 4,992,527...  Mostly it looks hopeless, too.  The subject this time is Myanmar (Burma to those of us old enough to remember vinyl records).  What a friggin' mess!

I think I'm actually immune now...

I think I'm actually immune now ... to the siren lure of the latest and greatest software architecture fad.  I've been increasingly skeptical over the past 30 years or so as I observed that no architecture really seemed to change the pesky fact that large software projects are complicated and hard, but I believe I have now reached the plateau: complete and total immunity.

Why do I say this?  Because I read this article and my only reaction was to find it amusing.  There wasn't the slightest shred of disappointment over the latest candidate for The Ultimate Software Architecture turning out to be just another way to do the Same Old Thing.

It's a shame I only reached this level after retiring :)

If you're interested in politics...

If you're interested in politics ... and you don't regularly read the Ace of Spades blog, you're missing a real treat.  Not only is it often wickedly funny, it's also chock-a-block full of excellent commentary, sharp observations, and much-needed political memory.  Here's an example from a post made last night, the tail end of a section about Donald Trump in a post grading the Republican candidates' performances in last night's debate:

His answers to questions about Trump University and the budget were somewhat uncomfortable to watch, in much the same way that it is uncomfortable to watch a bus full of circus clowns crash into a school for blind children and even worse the clowns were doing their "Gasoline Comedy" act that day and now all the blind children are on fire and the clowns are trying to squirt water on them with their stupid lapel-flowers but the flowers are just squirting out more gas and the children are crying tears of fire out of their Unseeing Dead Eyes and holy shit a couple of the clowns look like they have boners and they're chasing around the fiery blind children trying to rub up on them with these bobbling clown-boners with big red bulbs on their tips.

In other words, as Trump would say: Not the best. Really not terrific. A real mess!

Grade: I don't even know how to even start grading this. As far as a letter grade, I give a red X carved crudely through the face of a rotting pig with a bunch of stripper-glitter tossed on it.

At this point I consider Ace of Spades therapeutic – because the only sane thing to do in this election is to find some way to make it entertaining!

Old style, new data...

Old style, new data ... for this map of Mars, from an interesting blog that must have set a record for the longest time between posts.  I got to get me one of those!  Via friend, former colleague, and Idaho mogul-of-everything Doug S...