Why bother with the maths?

An absolutely essential part of science is observation. So the theorists give us some idea (pretty good ones most of the time) about what to look for and the rest is about trying to observe those things. Of course, you could stab in the dark for something interesting. I think it's a far better use for time to actually have some idea about what you are looking for. So for this you'll need some sort of theory about roughly where you should be stabbing! But there are fundamental problems to the observation stage.

For starters, our senses are limited. Take studying electromagnetic radiation as an example. We "see" electromagnetic radiation as "light" Our eyes are sensors that pick up radiation in a very narrow range of values. We actually "see" a range outside that which our eyes can detect. This is the heat we feel coming from objects. This is just infrared radiation. We don't see it with our eyes but can sense it. To visualise the full range of electromagnetic radiation, we need machines that convert the stuff we can't directly sense to something we can.

Another problem for observation is that our intuitions are flawed. For example, our intuitive sense of space is in three dimensions. Up/Down, Left/Right, forward/back. However, we experience a 4th dimension, Time. We talk about direction of time by saying "Future and Past". We cannot intuitively sense time in a backward direction because we have no experience of it. Try to imagine 5 or more dimensions I guarantee you will fail. Our brains just cannot do it.

one area where intuition is some help though is in the sense of Beauty. A scientific theory or result is often seen as simple and beautiful. This beauty is often only apparent to those people who understand the universal language of beauty, Mathematics. It does not limit us because it does not rely on our senses or our intuitions. It liberates us from the shackles of human experience and allows us to see nature in all its glory.

But wait! isn't mathematics a human invention which will suffer from all the limitations of human intuition and sense? The answer lies in wether you believe we invented or discovered mathematics. Personally, I believe we are discovering although we have to be careful that our definition of beauty is not based on Human experience alone. Mathematics provides a description of beauty that steps away from what we perceive with our senses. This is what makes it such a valuable tool and why we should bother with Maths.

Progress to date on the Beagle 2 challenge

 

Lots of good work is being done by the team to try and get as much fresh information as we can muster. The Google group has had a few articles posted researched and written by group members. These will accompany the final model if we can get approval to use some of the content which is most likely copyright. It's a shame that the Beagle2.com site seems to have been abandoned and there is very little information there about what happened after the lander was lost and the lessons learned. Also, I posted an item about a possible "Beagle 3" lander that was suggested in a few places and hinted at by Colin at an event I attended. Not much follow-up information about that anywhere beyond a couple of press releases. As the proposal was to include launch in 2009. I think this is quite unlikely now as we have heard nothing since.

I, along with a colleague, visited the Walton Hall Library at Milton Keynes to see if we could un-earth some schematic diagrams from which was can scale the model inworld. At first, it looked like we hadn't really found anything that would fit that bill, but I was very grateful to receive a copy of Colin Pillingers book "The Guide to Beagle 2" from the Science Faculty at Walton Hall, which turned out to have some fantastic information contained within it. I also borrowed "Beagle - From Darwin's Epic voyage to the British Mission to Mars", This also has some great material, and 3 VHS tapes containing the BBC series that followed Beagle 2's early progress. I didn't realise that a major part of the lander was built in my home town by EADS Astrium. I'm hoping perhaps they can help us with some finer details about the lander itself.

For now, I have found out that :

Closed Lander Dimensions	660mm (About the size of a bicycle wheel)
Diameter	110mm Deep at the centre.
Open Lander Dimensions	1600mm measured across the Solar panel > Lid > Solar Panel axis   1900mm measured across the Base > Lid > Solar panel axis
Circular lander base compartment	600mm internal dimensions 80mm Depth Volume of 22 litres.
Solar arrays	Pentagon shaped. Rounded at the angles. 570mm diameter four panels take up a 1m^2 area made up of 78 solar cells each 69.2mm x 31.3mm

 

So it turned out to be a pretty worthwhile trip after all.

Authors that don't get enough recognition

I'm re-reading Richard Feynmans "The character of Physical Law". Why isn't this a standard text book on the curriculum of every school? Although this is really a transcript of a series of lectures given by Feynman, his style of delivery still comes across in print. I can see him in my minds eye and the the smile that would have been on his face. I remember watching one of the lectures in the Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures series in New Zealand. The way he reacted when the audience laughed when he described that "Theoretical Chemistry is really Physics at the deepest level". He got quite upset and said "it wasn't a joke". He would have been talking about a particular topic and get carried away and become very excited, agitated and sidetracked. Finding someone with that level of passion is rare these days. To be able to talk about things in an understandable way and not in the least tied up with how others think you should be explaining something.

He was not afraid to say he did not understand some aspect or other.  He had a strong belief that Mathematics was the real way to "visualise" physics where human experience let you down. You cannot visualise the strangeness of the Quantum world or more then 3 dimensions for example, so don't even try. Although he was fond of using everyday analogies to re-enforce a point, he had a knack of doing it without clouding your view of the world. I have always hated the fact that the Rutherford-Bohr model of atomic structure made me see the atom as a set of electrons orbiting a central nucleus rather like the planets orbit the Sun. It's an image I can never erase from my mind whenever I read or hear about an atom.

I also have an affinity with Richard Feynman for purely sentimental reasons. He reminds me of my father both physically and in his actions. We also share a name Richard PHILLIPS Feynman.

How the hell is Physics done anyway?

As a late developing physics undergraduate, I often gaze at the papers I see physicists publishing and wonder how they ever got to the stage of producing the mind blowing bits of work contained in them. Now I'm not saying that I come close to even remotely understanding even a small part of the content of these papers. I am, after all just starting out on my formal education in the topic. I haven't yet completed my "Basic training". I can say though, that the more I study, the more I am beginning to recognise little snippets. I guess it's like learning a language. One day you are sitting in your car repeating after the linguaphone cd, not really knowing what the hell it is you are saying. Next thing you know, you are in a shop in a foreign country understanding totally what the foreign speaking shop keeper is saying to you. You suddenly get a realisation that you actually can understand more then you were giving yourself credit for.

This seems to be how all learning experiences work and that includes Maths and Physics (for me anyway). I look back on things I didn't understand 3 years ago before I embarked on the Maths I have been recently doing and realise that I actually understand it now.  Those little twiddles and curly things actually say something to me. So now my training is actually starting for real (it is no longer preparation), I wanted to know what it is like to be at the other end of the pecking order and actually be working on the cutting edge of Physics research. So I have been asking some questions.

One of the things I have learned and surprised me just a little is that Physics research actually seems to be quite a social thing to do. It's about group discussion and interaction as much as it's about lone research, theory, experiment and observation. The Genesis of an idea is often flushed out and molded by more then one person. This means you have to learn not to be precious about what you come up with. You have to accept that you are going to be challenged.

After chatting with a MICA member about this recently, He pointed me to blog, called "Cosmic Variance" and a three part piece called "The anatomy of a paper". It's well worth a read if you are interested in how the actual work of a theorist is carried out.

"How well are we doing?"

I recently had dinner with a friend and a few others and a conversation we had has been bugging me ever since. During the meal, I got a tap on the shoulder from another friend who I haven't seen for almost 2 years. I spent a little time talking to her and her husband at their table then rejoined the group I was sitting with originally. I recounted part of my conversation with the couple and was a little surprised at the response.

My friend and her Husband care for their autistic son. They also have a Daughter. Our conversation was partly about the lack of help the local authority give the family despite overwhelming need. They do amazingly well considering their son never sleeps. He gets into all sorts of problems including constant attempts to climb out of windows and often he self harms by banging his head on a table or even the floor or a wall. As a result, he needs almost 24 hour care and attention. The couple have to have separate holidays so that each can take care of their son while to other gets a little rest from the routine. It also gives them the opportunity to spend some quality time with the Daughter, who, despite being a teenager, helps out immensely so has had a weight of responsibility on her shoulders since a young age. Local authorities only step in if a family is "in crisis" and then the help is often so far in the future that is next to useless.

So this brings me to the conversation that has been troubling me. I mentioned to my the friend when I returned to my table that they had been asking for an extra night a month respite care. They currently get 18 days a year.Their son is now 16 and he is getting very big thus harder to handle and more aggressive as puberty kicks in. For every extra nights respite they get, they will have 1 day removed from the care they already receive. This is extra help??? This is robbing one area to pay for another. SO I expressed my disgust to my friend and she thought the authority were doing the right thing. "Other people don't get that much annual leave" , and "There is only so much money in the pot" was her response. WHAT! Is this how people see respite and is this why Local authorities are so reluctant to help family's BEFORE they reach crisis (despite helping them afterwards is always so much more costly)?

Imagine, if you will, the scenario. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in the shoes of those parents. You're son will never grow into independence. Every day, you get 2 hours sleep and are woken from that sleep with either a scream, kick or a crash. Maybe even some days a trip to the hospital because your son has found something to cut himself with or has thrown himself against the wall so hard, has broken something. You have to deal with his needs like they where an extension of your own. Wash him, feed him, wipe him after the toilet, dress him. He can't tell you what he wants, you have to guess if he is in pain, needs a drink, wants the toilet. You have to find things to occupy him every day and fight for the treatment, therapy and care he needs every step of the way. You are told that he can only attend school 3 days a week because the help isn't available. If this were a mainstream child, you would be imprisoned for not taking to them to school 2 days a week yet for a disabled child this is acceptable. You can see the REST OF YOUR LIFE stretching before you with this the prospect for every single day.

You love the child and you do not see this as a burden but you yourself need time to to contemplate and replenish to allow you to continue this unrelenting regime day after day. Yet you cannot get the help you need because some IDIOT who sits in an office and has never lived this life or had contact with people that do, has decided that the money is better spent on building a new road, paying some executive bonus or an advertising company to tell the public  "How well we are doing". Perhaps the idiot has had contact. But it was an interview for an hour with you. You were having a reasonable day that day. You had got 3 hours sleep because a friend had looked after your son for an hour because she saw your exhaustion. So you are upbeat. Things aren't so bad. Idiot sees this in your so takes away one of the days respite you have because you obviously don't need it! Besides, you cannot express in words how bad things can get to someone who really just wants the day to end so they can go down the pub or to the gym. Something you haven't done for years or even been able to think about.

This is not a little extra holiday for these parents. It is a life line The only thing that separates us from being barbarians is our humanity and sympathy for others in situations less fortunate then ours. So perhaps you aren't doing so well after all.

Course set for next 9 months

I finally signed up for my next course yesterday. It begins on the 4th October. It's so nice to see it listed on my home page. I've waited quite a while to get to this point. There is a residential school associated with this course which I would really like to sign up to but there are a number of problems with that. Not least of which is that it is a week away from home at a time when a) the exam for the main course is due and b) the colleges are on summer vacation. Both these events add an extra burden. In addition, the local government elections are likely to be in June sometime and my workload will shoot through the roof at that point. It also depends on how well my progress is on the main course. I won't really know this until at least January/February.

I finished Dominic O'Brians "Learn to remember" finally this lunch time. It provides a number practical ways of retaining information. They actually do work too! Using both the PEG and Journey methods, I'm starting to retain more information then I thought possible. The trick is associate things with visual memories that create interest and the best ones  are those that are a little odd. For example. On the radio this morning was a news article about the world food shortage and how this would become an acute problem in the next 20 years or so. The program was detailing a variety of novel ways the world can meet demand and most of them where turning to science for the answers. For example, growing meat in a dish. Which brings me to the thing I wanted to remember. They talked about "invitro meat" and I wanted to look into this further. I would normally write this down or voice memo it on my phone but instead, I associated it with a vivid picture of a pig using Microsoft Messenger. Thus the association, Invitro Meat = Instant Messaging, Meat=Pig (The meat they where growing in the dish consisted of a clump of pig cells). Viola!  I now remember, and will probably always remember Instant Messaging as Invitro Meat. Ooh, I hope this is a good thing.

So, the next few weeks will be about putting Dominic's suggestions into practice and also tidying and de-cluttering my life and mind in preperation for the next 9 months of sheer hard work.

2008 London.

I try and get to the science museum at least once in a year. Today was 2008's trip. I had a good reason for going this time of course. Which reminds me. If you are an OU or Schomer, you can now read the new Schomebase Science blog at http://schomebasescience.blogspot.com/. Unfortunately, for this first posting, you'll get this one again. However, there will be a handful of contributors so you should get different perspectives on the topics we are covering.

I was actually quite surprised that the Science Museum wasn't as busy as it has been during the school summer break in previous years. A sign of the recession? OK , It's free to get in but a day on London for a visitor with travel and food can be quite an expensive outing.

The main purpose for my trip was to get  some detailed images of the Beagle exhibit for our build group. I felt quite upset that it was tucked away towards the back wall of the "exploring space" exhibition hall. You have to walk around the back to really see it properly. I was struck by some of the comments from some of the people who were looking at it. A few had no idea about what its purpose was. Comments like "It went to the moon"! The vast majority of people though seem to know that it was the lander "that they lost". It heartened me to hear that they didn't say this in any mocking sense.

So I got my images (several tens of pictures actually). And a few of other exhibits too. I was looking around to see if there were others that we could possibly tackle in the future. There really wasn't. They had one launcher as far as I could see but they did have contributions from UK establishments for NASA funded missions. Which reminds me - Where was the Huygens probe??? Not even Cassini. They need to update there exhibits I think. So, they had the SpaceLab 2 X-ray telescope which was built at the University of Birmingham.  It was designed to make a map of X-ray sources as they where detected through a mask (picture opposite). It mapped the x-ray sources at the centre of our galaxy. It even detected what was considered a micro quaser (an object that emits very high energy x-rays).

Couple of other things worthy of note. They now have a gallery for the history of science on film (OU, where are you)? I watched a movie from the 50's in which the Astronomer Royal (who's name escapes me), expressed his opinion on Manned space flight. He said it wouldn't happen for hundreds of years! a mere 10 to 15 years later, Russia put a man in space. In the same film, a very young and less eccentric Patrick Moore. An exhibit that is Science Art is the "Listening Post". IT takes real time snippets of chat from the Internet and displays them in a large bank of little displays and also converts the test to speech. it's quite hard to explain so you can look at a video of the exhibit here (youtube). I sat in front of it for nearly an hour. It was a very odd but strangely calming experience. You have to try it for yourself if you find yourself there.

Building group begins!

One of the projects I've just kicked off in Secondlife is a collaboration to build virtual models of some European space exploration vehicles. We are going to start with the Beagle 2 because we are all from the Open University and that was an OU project. It's terrible that often when you mention the Beagle2, people mock the fact that it got to Mars and then contact was lost. This is seen as a failure for the whole project. This belies the fact that building and flying Beagle2 was a magnificent feat in itself even though the science was not done. Credit should be given to all those dedicated people that worked on it. The very fact that the budget was next to nothing for this project makes you begin to see how amazing the achievement was.

So the group will convene next week. I'm taking a day out from study on Sunday to visit the Science Museum in London to photograph the Beagle exhibit they have there. I'm hoping I might be able to get some measurements too. The idea of the group will be to test how easy/difficult it is to collaborate on a build in secondlife. Not only will we build the model, but we will research it too. As well as secondlife for the build, we will also up date a Wiki, share relevant documents using Google Docs and possibly (a member of the group has suggested) update a blog on the progress of the project. The final product, if the group agrees, will be handed over the over International Space Museum. They really don't have too many European exhibits and I'm hoping our group, if the experiment is a success, will continue and build other models. I personally think it will be nice to see the finished product with all it's associated research on display somewhere.

In secondlife, a way to get really good results is to use "Sculptured prims". For this, you really require a 3D modelling package. They are expensive and freebies often watermark the drawings. BUT, those fantastic people at Google have done it again! I found Google SketchUp. I have no idea how this will work or even IF it will work with our project. If we decide to do some sculpted work though, it may well be a free alternative to other very high priced alternatives. Watch this space!

Science and the n-Body SIM

I've seen and heard some inspirational things today about science. Firstly, listening to the CERN podcast whilst I was peddling away on my "bike to nowhere", Brian Cox suggested that a scientist is someone working at the limit of their knowledge. That makes all humble students scientists then. The goal whilst studying is to push those limits further and further back until we finally reach a frontier where we are no longer learning from others but setting the syllabus ourselves. I guess besides the ultimate goal of truly knowing something fundamental, aiming to be a giant upon which others stand would the pinnacle of a scientific career.

Whilst attending the MICA VW meeting this afternoon, I saw a Machinima of an OpenSim nBody simulation. The more I see of gravitational simulations in virtual worlds, the more I'm beginning to love and appreciate their beauty. I'm going to use my experience with M257 to play around with some Java applet versions. They will be limited but I won't let that stop me.  What better way to learn about them then by doing.

I register for S207 on Friday. A course buddy said the material despatch is on 22nd August! That means we will have nearly 2 months to get ahead with the reading. Is this an indication of the volume of work the course team expect you to get through? There is a course revision weekend in September I may attend. I'm in two minds at the moment. Attending the M208 tutorial tonight was really excellent. I understood a surprising proportion of the material and I'm not studying that course!

We have about 8 names on the list to do the models for the European  Space exploration project. I had a go at building a prototype Beagle 2 last night. It looks more like road kill! This may be harder then I thought.

My grand day out!

I'm still without my car. The petrol tank fell of the other day and it's in being repaired at the moment. It was quite scary realising that the strap that holds the tank in place under the car had fallen off and was dragging on the road producing all kinds of pretty sparks. A friend of mine who saw me coming down the street said it reminded her of a bumper car at the funfair. Worryingly, at the same time, the dropping tank had ruptured a fuel line and petrol was spilling out on to the road. How close I must have come to a firework display I would not want to be part of.

So the weekend was all about discovering the wonderful world of public transport with all it's exciting twists and turns. How people do that all the time in this town beats me. If you lived in a city (central London or Paris say), then it would not be so bad. The Tube and Metro in these cities are an excellent way to get around. The buses though are hell! Irregular, smelly and uncomfortable. The people that drive them seem a little unfriendly too with English a distant fifth language. Perhaps if they mumbled a little less through the glass that now surrounds them, they would be vaguely intelligible.

All this actually allows me to put my proposed new fitness regime into practice. So, as I had a meeting in the next town over from me this afternoon, I decided to go by Public transport and walk back. This morning I bought a Pedometer so I could see how much exercise I actually did. So, I walked from the meeting to the train station. Stopped off and watched a movie on the way home. Then walked from the cinema to my home. The pedometer read 6,478 steps. After Googling how many miles that was it turns out to be just over 3 miles! I have to say it didn't feel like much and although I tried to walk it at a fast pace, I didn't really even breath heavier. Still, I feel fitter for it. Tomorrow it will be "bike to nowhere" day.

Walking is a bit boring if you have nothing else to do. I listen to podcasts a lot and I found an pretty decent podcast from Dr Brian Cox on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Worth a listen although it did get a little repetitive after a while. I also discovered that I had made a slight error on my Science Discussion page and typed the heading as  "Large Hardon Collider". Spot the deliberate mistake? I'm sure CERNs pages would get a bigger hit rate if they typed that!

Here comes the new plan

In about a months time I start a new course. This one is very very important to me as it marks the beginning really of the reason I started to study in the first place. Pretty much everything else has been preparation for this and the ones that follow. It has taken me nearly three years to get to this point. So you can imagine that I want to try and maximise the information and techniques I get from it. To this end, I started to put together a plan to help me achieve that.

One of the most important things will not only to be able to understand the content of the course but remember and apply it. For this, I need a good memory. I've noticed over the past year or so that I am finding it increasingly hard to remember things. I put this down to age. That's what happens as you get older right? To make sure this was the case I started to look into the memory and how I may be able to improve it. I got hold of a book by Tony Buzan and another by Dominic O'Brien (Learn to Remember). The Tony Buzan book details some interesting ways to visualise and Memorise "data". Oddly, these techniques are a large chunk of Dominic's book too. This seems to tell me that the techniques are pretty universal and, so far, they really do work.

Dominic talks about the brains need for Oxygen, time to consolidate and freedom from stress. To try and increase the Oxygen flow to my own brain and decrease stress I am going to start a better fitness regime and begin meditation again. Today, I'm thinking about what form that fitness regime will take and how I can fit it in to an already quite hectic schedule. That's going to be a feat in itself.

Lastly, In preparation for my course, I am going to give this blog a little more focus. I am going to try and use it to write mainly about my progress, how things are developing with the course and what I'm learning. I am going to keep writing about things outside that but that will be the main focus. I realised the importance of focus after reading several other blogs lately, not least of which was the one written by my cyber friend, Andy Males. I am also going to try and improve my writing style which, to date, has been pretty loose and undefinable.

You have to learn something new everyday

I learned today that hiccups are an evolutionary hangover to our amphibian past. Apparently, Amphibians, such as frogs, gulp air and water in a motor reflex. This predates the development of our lungs into the form they now take. Hiccups can be inhibited by elevating your CO2 intake. Perhaps the "old wives tale" of breathing into a bag to cure hiccups has some basis in fact then. The longest bout of hiccups was 68 years! and you think 10 minutes is bad!

Do people talk louder these days? Sitting in the staff restaurant at lunchtime, I noticed that I could hear conversations that were going on way across the room. I don't think my hearing has improved so it must be that people are talking much louder these days. Perhaps it's because I'm so used to working from home and being in a peaceful environment that I tend to notice these things more. Or perhaps we are just so much more used to socialising in these environments and being in over crowded spaces that we have learned to "zone out" those around us. It's a skill I need to relearn I think along with my memory retention skills (Save that for another day)

Our conversation was based on a much more mundane level. Haven't wagon wheels got smaller? The old classic :)

The singularity is definitely closer then you think.

If you have the time and inclination, I would recommend two books that may go some way to answer those questions you have about the future of humanity (what do you mean you never thought about it?????). The Singularity is near - Raymond Kurzweill and Radical Evolution - Joel Garreau. So depending on what scenario you end up subscribing to, Hell, Heaven or Prevail in Garreaus book or simply the Singularity in Kurzweills, you may find that the outcome is a mix of both enhanced humans that have longevity and built in technology that contains our entire knowledge. Who need Google or a wiki. Neither book seems to hold out much hope for a time when machines will overthrow their evil parents but I probably find this more appealing then the "grey goo" potentiallity of letting Mankind develop itself into destruction. In humanities final cut, organising information will be the least of our worrys, we will simply know it and won't need Google or a Wiki at all :) Incidently, according to Kurzweill, you won't have to wait long to find out - He thinks the Singularity, the moment we realise mankind is changed forever, is at most 30 years away. My head will no doubt have an "Intel Inside" sticker on it by then.

Technorati Tags: Singularity kurzweill gerraua grey-goo

"Reply to all" should be banned for stupid people.

"Reply to all" on email clients should be banned! I thought I worked in an environment where most people knew better. But no -  we had a group notice that went out for people to respond if the notice was relevant to them. In return, some absolute numptys replied :

"I don't know what this is or why you have sent me this" (Then possibly it doesn't apply to you?)

"Yes I do and my username and password is......" (Oh - that's why phishing is still popular).

These replies where sent using the "Reply to all" button getting maximum "Dimwit" coverage for the sender and also exposing the email addresses of every other person who got original email.

Earth to email users..... Try not to hit "Reply to all" unless you mean it.

Also, please don't "reply to all" saying "don't use reply to all".. That's even more annoying :)

Communication with a capital "C"

I think this year will be the year when the "C" in "ICT" becomes dominant. OK,  Communication in Technology terms has been a big thing  a while but what's the tipping point? Finally, 3G networks are being widely offered by TelCos in both dongles and handsets. The latter are becoming far more useable and reliable for data transmission. Also the  price of access and the technology is dropping all the time. The iPhone has had a big part to play but as I blogged yesterday, other manufacturers are catching up with SIM free handsets giving consumers a wider choice then just the locked down iPhone. Soon they will overtake the iPhone unless Apple open up access and unlock devices from one network. Things are really going to start hitting the mainstream and become ubiquitous. It will become more normal to be connected 24 hours then it has ever been.

Phone Lurv

I'm a little skit when it comes to technology :( Last week, I was in love with my laptop. then at a conference it blue-screened - twice! So I'm a little annoyed with him right now. But I got my new phone on Thursday. I'm in Lurv again :) I wanted and iPhone but didn't want to sign up to another lOOOOOng contract so I bought a HTC Touch Cruise. I have to say so far, I love it! And another bonus despite me hating my service provider I got a 3g unlimited data plan for £5 a month with only a 1 month minimum term! They might just win me over with plans like that!

 

Education is wasted on the young

Most of my weekend has been taken up with studying towards several assignments and some end of course work for University. I'm not getting any younger so why do I do this to myself? Maybe, despite the feeling of exhaustion, because I really enjoy it! In fact, that has to be the driver for almost all OU students. All of us would be out of the education system if it where not for the Open University. Participating in events in, for example. Secondlife, only makes it all the sweeter. It gives me access to people and teaches me new skills I wouldn't have the opportunity to practice elsewhere. For example, I'm running a discussion group inworld on Wednesday about "Life on Mars" - How cool is it that I get the opportunity to hone skills like that :)