The Curiosity rover has found an ancient stream bed on Mars.

Incredible to see. That’s not the first evidence we’ve found of flowing water on Mars, but seeing a steam bed that easily could be mistaken for one on Earth on another planet is awe-inspiring.

Also, isn’t it great that they released this photo on Twitter?

Automation of more and more tasks is coming. Here’s one more example:

Baxter, the first product of Rethink Robotics, an ambitious start-up company in a revived manufacturing district here, is a significant bet that robots in the future will work directly with humans in the workplace.

That is a marked shift from today’s machines, which are kept safely isolated from humans, either inside glass cages or behind laser-controlled “light curtains,” because they move with Terminator-like speed and accuracy and could flatten any human they encountered.

Better to start thinking through how this new age’s economy is going to work now than later.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says embassy violence around the world isn’t directed at the U.S.:

This is a fairly volatile situation and it is in response not to United States policy, not to, obviously, the Administration, not to the American people. It is in response to a video, a film, that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting, that in no way justifies any violent reaction to it, but this is not a case of protests directed at the United States writ large or at US policy, this is in response to a video that is offensive, and, to Muslims. Again, this is not in any way justifying violence, and we’ve spoken very clearly out against that, and condemned it.

Oh, no, Jay—it’d be crazy to think that protests at U.S. embassies, the storming of them, taking down and burning the U.S. flag and raising Islamist flags would be directed toward the U.S., wouldn’t it? I haven’t a clue what might give anyone that idea.

Totally unrelated, but the administration is very accomplished at digging holes and burying their heads. It’s quite impressive, really.

Patrick Chovanec:

Many in Washington have developed a serious case of China-envy, seeing it as an exemplar of how to run an economy. In fact, Beijing’s mandarins are no better at picking winners, and just as prone to blow money on boondoggles, as their Beltway counterparts.

The Washington Post calls Romney’s response to the protests in Egypt and Libya, and the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, a “disgrace to his campaign” and gives him some advice:

As for Mr. Romney, he would do well to consider the example of Republican former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who issued a statement Wednesday lamenting “the tragic loss of life at our consulate,” praising Mr. Stevens as “a wonderful officer and a terrific diplomat” and offering “thoughts and prayers” to “all the loved ones of the fallen.” That was the appropriate response.

Exactly right. The Romney campaign’s first statement on the events in Egypt and Libya was factually incorrect and should have been rescinded immediately. It’s mind-boggling that his campaign could not bother to fact-check their remarks before putting them out, worrying that their processes are so poor as to allow it, and disturbing if they don’t really care.

U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was murdered by gunmen involved in a protest outside the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

I don’t know what to say other than this is a terrible tragedy and I hope the people responsible are brought to justice.

Minxin Pei argues that by overestimating China’s strength, and the CCP’s grip on power, the U.S. is not thinking through potentialities for China’s future and how we should respond to them:

The most consequential effect of this disconnect is the loss of an opportunity both to rethink U.S. China policy and to prepare for possible discontinuity in China’s trajectory in the coming two decades. The central pillar of Washington’s China policy is the continuation of the status quo, a world in which the Communist Party’s rule is assumed to endure for decades. Similar assumptions underpinned Washington’s policies toward the former Soviet Union, Suharto’s Indonesia, and more recently Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt and Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya. Discounting the probability of regime change in seemingly invulnerable autocracies has always been an ingrained habit in Washington.

Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on a world outside our planet Earth, passed away today.

Let that sink in a little bit. The first human to ever leave Earth and stand on another body. For all of humanity prior to the late nineteenth century, every person that ever lived, that idea would either never have occurred to them or have seemed so absurd, so far behind the possibility for what we can do, it wouldn’t have warranted a moment’s consideration.

And yet.

And yet, in the same century humans finally created sustained, heavier-than-air flight, we sent people beyond our atmosphere and to the Moon. We went from barely being able to leave the ground to setting foot on the Moon 239,000 miles away in less than one hundred years. We went from something being almost beyond our imagination to doing it in that amount of time. Yes, indeed, it was a giant leap for mankind.

When I was a child, reading about what the people of the Apollo program achieved was so incredibly fascinating to me. They were my heroes in the true sense of the word; they worked to do something truly revolutionary, to push the boundaries of human possibilities farther out, to say yes, this is within our capabilities, and it is only the beginning. They did not criticize the work of others or try to tear them down—they only dreamed, dreamed of incredible things, of how they could achieve it, and then they worked to do it, never sitting back and saying that it’s too hard, that if no one else could do it before, why could they? They dreamed, and they made those dreams happen. For a child, there are no better heroes than those people, I think.

It inspired me to learn about our solar system and galaxy. I obsessed over it as a child; I remember bringing with me a book about the Sun, planets and asteroids in our solar system most places I went, and reading it cover to cover, multiple times. I sought out photos of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and found it so incredibly awe-inspiring that there were other worlds out there beyond ours, so utterly alien to Earth, and that we could see them. I fell in love with space as a child because of the work they had done.

After NASA landed the Mars Pathfinder rover on Mars in 1997, my elementary school teacher spent several class periods on the mission, discussing Mars, what the mission’s goals were, and various little exercises related to it. And, of course, I loved it. I loved the idea that at that very moment, there was a little rover driving around the surface of Mars—Mars!—taking photos and conducting tests. Driving around on another planet, and that we had built it. After learning about the Apollo program, the Viking missions, and Voyager 1 and 2, it made sense that we were exploring Mars’s surface. Of course we were continuing to explore our solar system and push our capabilities. As far as I could tell, that’s what we did. That’s how we worked. We pushed farther, to see more, to learn more.

Those years, I dreamed of what it would be like when we sent a manned mission to Mars. I envisioned the lander, astronauts walking or driving about the surface, conducting tests and making new discoveries. I imagined what it would feel like for those men and women, the first people to set foot on another planet. I imagined following the news reports as they hurdled toward Mars, descended through the Martian atmosphere and landed. I thought about how incredible it would be to see the first photos and video they sent back, from the first manned mission to another planet in our species’ history. I wondered who our generation’s Neil Armstrong would be.

And I never doubted that I would see that day. I thought, in the late 1990s, anything was possible. We had done so much already, we were doing so much then, and it seemed inevitable that that day was coming soon. As I stared up into the sky at night, sometimes through my telescope and sometimes just taking in all of the stars, I knew our future would bring us somewhere beyond our atmosphere.

Today, the day that the first man to place his foot on the ground of another body beyond our own passed away, I’m reminded of what I thought about then as a child. I’m reminded of the pure excitement and faith I had that I would see that day, I would see the day when we push our boundaries further out as those men did on that day in 1969. There was no doubt, just a child’s true excitement about the incredible things that lay ahead.

Today, I am twenty-four years old. Today, I worry that day may never come. What seemed like an inevitability fifteen years ago doesn’t seem quite so inevitable today. We are not much closer to seeing that day now than we were then. That saddens me.

We’ve seen incredible advancements in the last half-century, and whatever the reason, I think we’ve become complacent in our technological wonderland of a world. We’ve become used to the idea that we are a people that sends people to the Moon and explores the solar system and builds computing devices that only science fiction could have predicted years ago. But that is not a distinction passed down—that is a distinction earned by doing the same thing that the people in prior generations did, which is dream of truly incredible things, and work to make them reality. It is earned by pushing that boundary further and further forward.

And that is what we must do. Let’s lay awake at night, dreaming up great things, things that could only be dreams now, and let’s build them. It need not be related to space; it could be related to an important advancement with renewable energy, or even with something as comparably small as re-creating education for this new century. But it must be something truly new, groundbreaking and meaningful, something that leaves you with the sheer joy of childhood excitement. Something that will make us better as a people. Let’s dream it, and let’s build it.

I hope one of those things will be a mission to Mars. I hope to see it one day, but let’s make it one of many great projects. Let’s add many more giant leaps to Neil’s.

Here’s the last interview with Neil Armstrong. I highly recommend taking the time to watch it; Armstrong talks about his life, the beginning of his work on the space program, and all the way through to the landing on the Moon. Just excellent.

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, has died.

It’s easy to forget just how awe-inspiring what Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin accomplished was. They were the first humans to step foot off of the planet Earth, and we were all alive to see them walk around back on Earth. May we all remember how truly incredible what they did was, and may we all remember that we are capable of great things.

Gary Gambill argues that the increasing Sunni Islamist presence in Syria’s opposition will benefit U.S. interests:

While there is sure to be regional spillover, it will cut mainly against Tehran. There will be tough times ahead for Lebanon, but ultimately the Assad regime’s death throes can only work against the Shiite Hezbollah movement. Iraq’s ruling Shiite leadership, hitherto sycophantic where Iranian interests are concerned, may find it necessary to distance itself from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s more unpopular Arab clients. With its own restive Sunni minority, Iran itself could be severely rattled by sectarian blowback.

True enough. More radical involvement in the opposition is far, far from preferable, but also probably inevitable. Our best plan, I think, is to make good contacts with the opposition, maintain a good relationship, and hope that the resulting government takes the path Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhoods seems to be taking—moderation.

Last night, NASA’s Curiosity rover made landfall on Mars. Here’s a photo of it descending through the Martian atmosphere.

Here’s to the crazy ones.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a documentary about the Chinese artist and his work to highlight and work against China’s rights violations. Watch the trailer—I think you’ll be moved by it. It’s opening at theaters across the country right now.

(Via Alicia Liu.)

Peter Thiel offers his explanation for stagnation:

So, I think we’ve basically outlawed everything having to do with the world of stuff, and the only thing you’re allowed to do is in the world of bits. And that’s why we’ve had a lot of progress in computers and finance. Those were the two areas where there was enormous innovation in the last 40 years.  It looks like finance is in the process of getting outlawed. So, the only thing left at this point will be computers and if you’re a computer that’s good.

This is from a discussion (loosely used) between Thiel and Eric Schmidt at Fortune Brainstorm Tech earlier this month. Fascinating to read.

Vivek Wadhwa writes about the future of manufacturing:

Neil Jacobstein, who chairs the AI track at the Silicon Valley-based graduate program Singularity University, says that AI technologies will find their way into manufacturing and make it “personal”: that we will be able to design our own products at home with the aid of AI design assistants. He predicts a “creator economy” in which mass production is replaced by personalized production, with people customizing designs they download from the Internet or develop themselves.

Fascinating to think about. A world where manufacturing uses very little labor frees up millions of people to do other things, and would make it even more important that we redesign our education system.