On Fri, 14 Jan 2000, Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 09:51 AM 13/01/00 -0500, Robert B. wrote:
>
> Jesus -- wouldn't some university give him a room and modest stipend for 5
> years as a visiting research fellow? Hasn't NASA got a slush fund for such
> research (especially given the interest of Al Globus and the guys in nano)?
> McArthur Foundation?
>
Robert, like I, tends to be a fairly independent sort with a rather
unusual CV. His primary degree is in law with psychology and physics
thrown in as minors or alternate degrees. More of his work has been
in more "popular" magazines than peer reviewed journals. Getting
Xenology, plus the full text of the NASA self-replication study
available (by spring) in combination with Nanomedicine I think
provides a boost to his credibility. We had applied for a
grant under the NASA Advanced Technologies program to expand
the study of "Dyson Shells" but it didn't get accepted. It
turns out that NASA may be back-peddling re: nanotech, as according
to Ralph (via R.F.), Al Globus is no longer working on computational
nanotech (if he is even still at NASA). That leaves the CalTech
group being the driving force on nanotech molecular modeling.
[If someone knows more about this, I'm sure the group would like to
know. In general, NASA needs a really serious wakeup call vis-a-vis
long term planning and the consequeces of nanotech. There will
be a point in time when it makes no sense to continue planning
non-nanotech missions. When that will be isn't exactly clear.
As something really off the subject, its interesting to consider
that the recent Mars losses might be avoided in the future
if NASA considers installing a set of micro-GPS satellites around
Mars to be able to land the spacecraft more accurately.]
The McArthur Foundation and a few others are certainly worth
considering and we may get to that point. What would be really
nice is if individuals would periodically contribute to the
Foresight Nanomedicine fund (why not everyone consider donating
something on your birthday as a present to themselves???) and
those of us who know "angels" would work on getting them into
the Matching Funds program, so the rest of our funds get amplified
more.
IMO, one of the most leveraged things any of us can do is to
support the writing of Nanomedicine and share it with our
friends, physicians, etc. For those of you that don't know
Robert is planning to write a "popular" condensation of the
Nanomedicine volumes, but only after they are all done. He
chose to take this approach since the order that Eric used
with Engines of Creation followed by Nanosystems created
a lot of negative impressions among the scientists, whom
as Eric put it, "... can't believe anything without an
equation documenting it...". Robert's current production
rate is about a chapter a month. For those of you who
who have a copy of NM, you know that works out to hundreds of
references per chapter that Robert has to organize and
condense each month!
The first printing of NM was 1000 copies. It would be really
nice to push it into its second printing within its first year.
For comparison purposes, Nanosystems has sold 10000+ copies in
the last 8 years.
Robert
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