Reading while I Drive

It started as an experiment. At first, I wasn't sure that it would be enjoyable. I wasn't sure that it would sufficiently pass the time.

On Feb 15, I downloaded two "Free Audiobooks" from the Internet. They were free because I didn't have to pay for them, as opposed to "The World is Flat" Audiobook which had cost me about $30 last summer. This is the now-famous "The Thread" e-mail post from Feb 15, describing my reading choices.

I'm driving to New Jersey tonight, and instead of hoping to get a strong enough signal with my portable satellite radio (which lacks a powerful receiver for such things), I am hooking up the iPod to my Auxillery input and (sic) reading some choice literature.

Free Audiobooks:

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
read by Cory Doctorow

Go to the download page from archive.org

I figured y'all might be interested in downloading it for your own pleasure. You might also be interested in novels by the reader, which are also digitally free.

One of which, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is available as its own audiobook (as read by Mark Forman, who is just some random blogger).

Download Down and Out:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In any case, I have become a believer in Audiobooks as a means of storytelling during long car trips, and I have mainly Cory Doctorow to thank for it. During the month that has past since that inaugural experience, I have even more good news. It turns out there is a HUGE project on-line which has the goal of establishing an Audiobook archive of literature that they are legally permitted to record. Librivox: acoustical liberation of books in the public domain

After a brief search through their selection of completed works today, I have found a good selection of pieces that I would be interested in. First, there is Fiction. Then, there is Non-Fiction.

Fiction

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
   Read by Annie Coleman, Total runtime: 13:25:01
   
2. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
   Read by Denny Sayers, Total runtime: 13:55:12
   
3. Robinson Crusoe in Words of One Syllable by Mary Godolphin (adapted from another author)
   Read by Denny Sayers, Total runtime: 2:59:18
   
4. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
   Read by Chip, Total runtime: 01:23:23
   
5. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
   Read by David Barnes, Total Runtime: 2:34:25
   
6. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
   Read by Stewart Wills, Total Runtime: 24:37:50
   
7. Anthem by Ayn Rand
   Read by Chere Theriot, Total Runtime: 2:12:02
   
8. The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe
   Read by Reynard T. Fox, Total Runtime: 1:34:21
   
9. Richard of Jamestown a Story of the Virginia Colony by James Otis
   Read by Laura Caldwell, Total Runtime: 3:08:09
   
10. Treasure Island by Robert Loius Stevenson
    Read by Adrian Praetzellis, Total Runtime: 7:32:32
    
11. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
    Read by John Greenman, Total Runtime: 18:06:33
    
12. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
    Read by Lizzie Driver, Total Runtime: 11:10:32
    
13. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
    Read by Steve Andersen, Total runtime: 13:42:35
    
14. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
    Read by John Gonzalez, Total Runtime: 6:19:46

Non-Fiction

1. Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
   Read by D.E. Wittkower, Total Runtime: 3:29:09
   
2. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
   Read by Jeanette Ferguson, Total Runtime: 4:02:45
   
3. Three Great Virtues Three Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
   Read by Robert Scott, Total Runtime: 3:31:40
   
4. The Autobigraphy of Benjamin Franklin
   Read by Gary Gilberd, Total Runtime: 7:30:39
   
5. Of the Injustice of Counterfeiting Books by Immanuel Kant
   Read by D.E. Wittkower, Total Runtime: 0:27:05
   
6. Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
   Read by Christian Pecaut, Total Runtime: 6:30:48
   
7. Wage, Labour, and Capital by Karl Marx
   Read by Carl Manchester, Total Runtime: 1:42:26
   
8. Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind by Jean Jacques Rousseau
   Read by ej, Total Runtime: 2:45:45
   
9. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
   Read by Gord Mackenzie, Total running time: 1:21:19
   
10. Roughing It by Mark Twain
    Read by John Greenman, Total Runtime: 16:56:20

OCW: System Safety

Lately I have been undertaking the task of becoming interested in the AeroAstro programs at MIT. This is mostly due to my job at a company which is involved with Project Constellation and which has an affiliation with MIT, which I have discussed here in the past.

At some point I will write in more detail about the specific labs which interest me, but for now I have concluded that a good way to learn more would be to pick a course that interests me and read the lecture notes on MIT's OpenCourseWare.

Thus, the first class at MIT which I am reading about is System Safety offered by Nancy Levenson who is the Director of the Complex Systems Research Laboratory.

It actually correlates to a course I took at Stevens that was taught by Linda Laird called Software Reliability Engineering, and it turns out that Laird is using Levenson's book in addition to her own these days.

In any case, I expect it to be interesting.

Colonization

A topic that is of great interest to me is the concept of colonizing a celestial body. According to some, we have a Darwinian imperative to inhabit the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Moreso, we pretty much have the technology and when you get down to it, it would be pretty freaking cool.

The most interesting thing is that NASA actually has real plans to steer their future missions towards the establishment of a Lunar(1) Outpost(2). In 12 years, they are supposed to make it back to the Moon. During that time, it is conceivable to construct a living environment to support human life for extended periods of time. Certainly, a look at the International Space Station Resupply Calendar easily demonstrates that we can support the lives of a limited number of human lives with resources that can be launched to them. Additionally, current research through the academic world and the Mars Society are answering questions about what it would be like to simulate life on Mars (the isolation, the limited resources) and they are blogging about it.

My question is, "What are the plans to create permanent, independent colonies?" Specifically, when the British tried to establish the Roanoke Colony in Virginia (1586), it failed (more less famous failures here). Jamestown (1607) and Plymouth (1620) were successful.

What I think we need is a plan to make the Lunar and Maritan Outposts self-sustainable. We all remember when Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated into the atmosphere and caused a 2-3 year period while NASA investigated the problem. Thankfully, the Russians were around to resupply the ISS program with resources during those years. But with life on the Moon or Mars, I think we can't afford to assume that resupply missions will always be possible. I believe in providing the astronauts with a system to produce their own resources.

I think that the hardest question for celestial colonization is how to design that system.