Earthquakes are generally considered to be nasty, rather destructive events, but after a recent earthquake in Seattle, someone noticed some interesting patterns produced by a sand tracing pendulum (or Foucault Pendulum). The entire pattern resembles an eye (some say Poseidon’s eye, for the god of the sea is also the god of earthquakes), but the pupil of said eye, the part of the pattern created by the earthquake, looks very much like a rose (and thus, it is called an Earthquake Rose). It is really quite pretty, and it’s fascinating that “such a massive and very destructive release of energy can also contain such delicate artistry within its chaos.” [found somewhere I don’t remember the name of].

“Bionic Tower”: A 300-story supertall building originally proposed for Hong Kong is now being considered by China’s leaders for Shanghai. Its European designers describe it as a “vertical city”. It would house 100,000 people and contain hotels, offices, cinemas and hospitals, effectively making it possible (not necissarily preferable) to live an entire life in one building. “Dwarfing Kuala Lumpur’s twin Petronas Towers, the world’s tallest buildings at 1,483ft high, it would be set in a gigantic, wheel-shaped base incorporating shopping malls and car parks.” The designers have devised a root-like system of foundations that would descend 656ft, surrounded by an artificial lake to absorb vibrations caused by any earth tremors. Amazing stuff; it reminds me of the gigantic cities of The Caves of Steel, where cities spanned hundreds of miles and were ultimately self-contained (which caused a nasty fear of open spaces). Such an undertaking is an engineering nightmare. If attempted, it could quite possibly fail miserably – there are so many factors and pitfalls to be avoided, that there are bound to be some unforeseen consequences…[via /.]

If this venture is successful, however, it seems like it would be the world’s first successful arcology. From the Arcologies egroup discussion:

Arcology is Paolo Soleri’s concept of cities which embody the fusion of architecture with ecology. The arcology concept proposes a highly integrated and compact three-dimensional urban form that is the opposite of urban sprawl with its inherently wasteful consumption of land, energy, time and human resources. An arcology would need about two percent as much land as a typical city of similar population. Arcology eliminates the automobile from inside the city and reserves it for use outside the city. Walking would be the main form of transportation inside an arcology. The miniaturization of the city enables radical conservation of land, energy and resources. Arcology would rely as much as possible on the sun, the wind and other renewable energy so as to reduce pollution and dependence on fossil fuels. Arcology needs less energy per capita thus making recycling and the use of solar energy more feasible than in present cities.

Commander William Shepherd kept a mission log during the initial 136-day shift aboard the International Space Station. The log is fun reading, and you can’t help but sympathize with many of the frustrations they are constantly facing. As the Laboratorium notes, many of the problems were computer related, and funny as hell. Its a fairly comprehensive list of computer problems, and its quite funny.

While many of those computer systems did have problems, it’s important to note just how well NASA’s aerospace applications work:

This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats: the last three versions of the program — each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.

Which is really how it should be for something that pilots a space shuttle, but then, writing software for such an focused set of criteria makes things somewhat easier to implement:

Admittedly they have a lot of advantages over the rest of the software world. They have a single product: one program that flies one spaceship. They understand their software intimately, and they get more familiar with it all the time. The group has one customer, a smart one. And money is not the critical constraint: the groups $35 million per year budget is a trivial slice of the NASA pie, but on a dollars-per-line basis, it makes the group among the nation’s most expensive software organizations.

And that’s the point: the shuttle process is so extreme, the drive for perfection is so focused, that it reveals what’s required to achieve relentless execution. The most important things the shuttle group does — carefully planning the software in advance, writing no code until the design is complete, making no changes without supporting blueprints, keeping a completely accurate record of the code — are not expensive. The process isn’t even rocket science. Its standard practice in almost every engineering discipline except software engineering.

The shuttle software group is one of just four outfits in the world to win the coveted Level 5 ranking of the federal governments Software Engineering Institute ( SEI ) a measure of the sophistication and reliability of the way they do their work. [Thanks to the Laboratorium and norton for all the info]