Why Atheists Should Fear the Big Bang Theory

I have to admit, as an astronomer/atheist, I am more than a little curious about this:

Why Christianity explains what modern science tells us about the universe and our origins—that matter was created out of nothing, that light preceded the sun—better than atheism does

How Christianity created the framework for modern science, so that Christianity and science are not irreconcilable, but science and atheism might be

Why the alleged sins of Christianity—the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Galileo affair (“an atheist's fable”)—are vastly overblown

*Why atheist regimes are responsible for the greatest mass murders of history

*Why evolution does not threaten Christian belief, but actually supports the “argument from design”

Why atheists fear the Big Bang theory and the “anthropic principle” of the universe, which are keystones of modern astronomy and physics

How Christianity explains consciousness and free will, which atheists have to deny

Why ultimately you can't have Western civilization—and all we value from it—without the Christianity that gave it birth.Provocative, enlightening

This seems like the usual rhetorical ass-hattery from Dinesh D'Souza, a fellow who beleives that how you talk about science seems to him to be more important than science itself.
In this case, the least of his sins seem to be confusing the existance of god with the correctness of Christianity.

If science can't bat down a fool like this, we deserve to lose the public debate.

The Cuddly Menace

From Mike, A Golden Book!

The Cake is a Lie

I finally got to the end of Portals which sports, among many redeeming features, the funniest AI since GIR. After you blow up the AI, the end credits roll to this song, which I loved (even more than Companion Cube). Apature Science(tm) is the name of the portal comapny and Black Mesa is their rival.




Also, at the end, there is cake.

I wonder if the AI is still alive, and working on a sequel...

Troll

I've done a bad thing. I've thrown a Molotov cocktail onto the grounds of the presidential palace in TJICistan.

I know I shouldn't, but I simply could not resist. Yes, I've somewhat compared apples and oranges, but it seems a little disingenuous to complain about minor government spending on a something you disagree with but use, and not complain about the colossal waste of money on something you like, but dont participate in.

Regardless, we should see some blood-pumping, heart-hammering rhetoric from the last libertarian enclave in Arlington.

viva revolution!

Coming Soon to My Cubical

The perfect office decoration

Perfect

Tom Tancredo has a new ad. It perfectly summerizes the GOP position, and I say More! More! More! Damn those crazy islamic tacos!



Wait, what?

Creation Science Museum Review

First, imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horsehit. An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center, generating explosive levels of methane as bacteria feast merrily on vintage, liquified crap. This is a Herculean load of horseshit, friends, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Augeas.
And you look at it and you say, “Wow, what a load of horseshit.”

Full Report here

The Sweet Spot

Some throw-away art I worked on this weekend.

Our Wonderful Earth

I remember the first science book I learned to read.

I was about 4 and was interested in what caused the seasons (I had a complicated theory involving the Earth rotating end-over-end which I began to suspect was wrong). This was about 1968, and my mother gave me her old grade school textbook, which I poured through day and night for weeks, carving a deep and lasting gouge in my consciousness.

Last night I was having dinner with some friends and one of them mentioned that he found an old book on Amazon he'd been looking for for years. It occured to me that I might be able to find this old book there, which would be cool. I remembered the title and I have a handful of pages memorized (I think) and I remember the distinctive green cover with a picture of the Earth on it. I figure since it was my mothers elementary school textbook, it was probably published 1948-1950. I could not remember the author.

So I typed "Our Wonderful Earth" into Amazon.

I got this. ACK!

No good.

I also got a bunch of other hits, but without cover shots.

One was from 1951, so I tried google.

Got it on the first hit!

$10.95 and 2 weeks delivery. :)

Scientific?

Is this a real equation?

4δ161 x Λ³Жญ5,6,1,8Φ-4 = {(ΣΨ²Њyt3 - 14๖P9) x 49}/2β x ⅜kxgt -§

Some say yes, some say no.

Also, There are Dragons

My afterlife

UPDATE:I liked this so much, I gave $100 to Dresden Kodak. Because of the way my luck works, this ensures, forever and always, the comic will never update again.

Confound You!

A Physics joke

Colossus

I'm kind of a jerk, and sometimes this has unexpected consequences.

I had a long web cast to set up this morning, with a lot of prep-work to do with the participants in the hour before the call. Due to timing issues, this meant getting into the office at 6:30am and opening the call about 90 minutes before the actual web cast. In our system, when anyone dials into a conference call, they have to give their name and they get announced when they come online. This is okay when the call has 4 or 5 people, but in an hour long call with 100 people, it can get very annoying. People come in and drop out during the whole thing, and every time their name gets announced into the channel and it interrupts the flow.

More on this in a minute.

Because I was the first one on and I knew that no one would hear my announcement, I said something silly to entertain the other folks in the room. The call opened, I was the first one in, no problem. I forgot about it.

There were some technical glitches getting the call set up, synchronized with the webcast and displaying the proper content, so I was very busy until we started the call. A number of folks joined, 70 or so, and we started a few minutes late. About 20 minutes in, the constant drop-ins, drop outs were annoying, so I wanted to silence them. There is a code to do this, but I couldn't remember if it was *6, *9 or *3. I asked, no one knew, but one guy thought it was *9. I thought it was something like this, so in the middle of a presentation I hit *9 on the master phone.

That was not the correct code.

Instead, in the middle of the presentation, it started listing *all* the people on the call. Starting with me. Using the recording I made hours earlier when I thought I was alone.

"THIS IS COLOSSUS! THIS IS THE VOICE OF WORLD CONTROL!!!" came blaring out of every phone on the call, at 75db. In my voice. In the middle of the EMEA Directors report.

This was followed by all the other names, and dozens of messages on IM from call participants runningthe full gamut from laughter to angry laughter.

2 mins later, the list ended.

Thankfully, my career did not.

Afterwards my manager asked me, "what did you learn from this?"
I replied, "that I could replay this accident to hilarious effect on someone else's call?"
"good man"


The line, btw, is from the Forbin Project


YouTube has the whole quote. It's more appropriate than I remembered.

Rocky, The Flying Squirrel

(via)

I definately want to try it, but I am a bit unnerved. The video doesn't show anyone actually landing and walking away....

Digging

Some people, when trapped at the bottom of a deep well, just can't help trying to dig their way out!
Wonkette provides:

New details have emerged in the generally scuzzy case of Florida legislator Bob Allen (R-McCain Campaign Co-Chairman) who was arrested after allegedly offering to both suck off some guy in a park bathroom and give the guy twenty bucks. Wonkette readers who are experts in such matters have argued that the whole thing sounds like entrapment, but today’s Orlando Sentinel offers a new excuse from Allen himself: He was just scared of a scary black guy, like anybody would be!

Closeted, racist and in over his head, I'm sure he feels he can still make a strong contribution to governing the country and ensuring the Permanent Republican Majority, or the Fourth Reich or whatever the Bushies call it these days....

If We Take 4 Turning Points, Have we Gone in A Circle?

Joe Lieberman yesterday:

“I’m proud to say that the tide has turned in Iraq and we’re winning that war,” Lieberman said. “And if we don’t let down our troops, they’re going to bring home a victory that will protect us here at home from today’s threat — totalitarian terrorist Islamism that’s trying to take our liberty from us.”

and in the past:


– “Overall, I would say what I see here today is progress, significant progress from the last time I was here in December. And if you can see progress in war that means you’re headed in the right direction.” [5/30/07]

– “The last two weeks…may be seen as a turning point.” [12/17/05]
– “Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do.” [11/29/05]

– “We have to stay the course in Iraq now. … If we do that, we will…have won a victory in the war on terrorism.” [1/4/04]

The rest here

Here's a Shocker!

Your Inner European is Dutch!

Open minded and tolerant. You're up for just about anything.

Who's Your Inner European?

(via)

Conversations With My Son

Me: Oh look, new research shows there's a genetic switch for sexuality. You could turn women into lesbians.
Geoff: Yes, it's called "Getting them drunk".

I Don't Know Where We are Going, But I See What We Are Coming To

No Photos on the train, dammit!

The train is a half hour west of New Haven when the conductor, having finished her original rounds, reappears. She moves down the aisle, looks, stops between our seats, faces the person taking pictures. “Sir, in the interest of national security, we do not allow pictures to be taken of or from this train.” He starts, “I…….” but, without English, his response trails off into silence. The conductor, speaking louder, forcefully: “Sir, I will confiscate that camera if you don’t put it away.” Again, little response. “Sir, this is a security matter! We cannot allow pictures.” She turns away abruptly and, as she moves down the aisle, calls over her shoulder, in a very loud voice, “Put. It. Away!” He packs his camera.

It gets worse for the guy.

There are a lot of things puzzling about the story, including the silly idea that taking pictures from a moving Amtrak train is some kind of threat to national security. I'm still trying to figure out if a) this is a TSA rule, b) this is an Amtrak rule or c) it's just the conductor being a jerk.

(via)

Batshit Crazy

But, I am glad someone is showing folks what to do.

New Art Completed

My latest image Tourbillon is complete. Thanks to all for the feedback! Here's hoping I dont end up getting sued by Uniroyal...

Graffiti

Photographer Peter van Agtmael has made two trips to Iraq and one to Afghanistan in the past couple years. Among his work over that time is a series, the idea of which is eminently logical, but which I haven't seen before. To capture a more raw if performative picture of the U.S. soldier's experience, Peter photographed graffiti on the bathroom wall at a major traffic point for U.S. troops, the Al Salem Air Force Base in Kuwait.

Full article here

A Sane Analysis of Hillary and the Right

This is actually very good.

That might be one reason the Right can’t rally against Hillary. Conservative division has led to depression, a sense that a Clinton restoration is inevitable, and that the best plan going ahead is to wait for her election and watch as, like her husband, she stumbles and seeds a GOP comeback. A mid-July CBS News poll revealed that 53 percent of Republicans thought it was very or somewhat likely that Clinton would win the presidency. Few Republicans think the party can win back Congress in 2008. Combine that with the anger that between one-third and one-quarter of the GOP base feels toward George W. Bush, and the relentless negativity starts to make sense.

There is another reason conservatives can’t count on Hillary: she offends and irritates them so deeply that they have trouble actually strategizing against her. They launch attacks, but compared to the carefully plotted Swift Boat strike on John Kerry or the years-long effort to spotlight Al Gore’s strange bragging and fibbing, the anti-Hillary attacks are erratic, grabbing early media attention and then fading out of the picture. Conservatives fixate on long-dormant scandals, like Bill Clinton’s treatment of Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick, without appreciating that reporters no longer want to chase those stories and that their very mention stokes sympathy for Clinton’s wife.

But it’s all some anti-Hillary agitators know how to do. In July, Sean Hannity told professional Hillary slayer Dick Morris the question he wanted some intrepid hack to ask the candidate: “Do you believe the women that claim that your husband serially abused them? Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones. Is that a legitimate and fair question?” Morris repeatedly shook his head and tried to explain where Hannity was going wrong: “Whenever anybody hits Hillary on her personal life, her marriage, or whether she is a lesbian or not, it plays into her hands.”

I'm no fan of her's and I think it's unlikely I'll vote for her, but no because I think she's evil incarnate. It's ironic that the GOP has spent a lot of the last 7 years trying to dumb down the civil discourse to a few black and white catch-phrases (For us or against us! The smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud!), and now seems to be paying the price.

The 8 Best Simpson Episodes Ever

Here.

It's a lot of fun if you have a working knowledge of Simpson's quotes. I agree with most of the entries, although maybe not the order. IMHO the Chilli Episode is the best ever, if only for the line, "C'mon Marge, less artsy, more fartsy!"

Also, Homer's Phobia for the scene with "the Anvil"
Bart: "Why did you bring me to a gay steel mill?"
Homer: "I don't know!!!"

Cons I Wish I had Thought Of

I was watching TV and saw an ad for Kinoki Detox Footpads. They are basically gauze pads you put on your feet while you sleep that supposedly pull "toxins" out of your body.

They are debunked here, and there is even a water-based foot bath version (even more bogus).

A $0.10 pad covered with $0.01 worth of salicilic acid sold for $19.99, genius!! I really wish I had the kind of devious mind that could come up with this kind of con. Alas, I am more of a mail tamperer than a poisoner...

And people wonder why I am a fan of the FDA...

Get Your Ass Kicked...

with these outstanding fashions in the J.C. Penny Catalog circa 1977!

Trippy!

Actually, it's a map of the Earth's magnetic field anomoly (difference from the dipole geometry). More here.

No More Red States?

The President's popularity is no longer above 50% in *any* state in the Union.

Wow. I have to admit, I did not see that coming.

Mine's Dry, FTR

Something I really had no clue about this morning:

There are two types of earwax, wet and dry. Wet earwax is common in Africa and Europe, while dry earwax is characteristic of East Asian populations. South and Central Asian populations are half wet and half dry. Native Americans tend to have dry earwax. Recently, the New York Times reports, Japanese researchers have isolated the gene responsible for earwax differentiation. The curious thing is that earwax doesn't seem to be terribly important to human survival:
Since it seems unlikely that having wet or dry earwax could have made much difference to an individual's fitness, the earwax gene may have some other, more important function. Dr. Yoshiura and his colleagues suggest that the gene would have been favored because of its role in sweating.
They write that earwax type and armpit odor are correlated, since populations with dry earwax, such as those of East Asia, tend to sweat less and have little or no body odor, while the wet earwax populations of Africa and Europe sweat more and so may have more body odor. Several Asian features, like small nostrils, are conjectured to be adaptations to the cold. Less sweating, the Japanese authors suggest, may be another adaptation to the cold in which the ancestors of East Asian peoples are thought to have lived.

(via)

New Art: Late Draft

Everyone who does digital art hits a few familiar themes, once of which is The Watch. I passed this way back in 2002, but have always wanted to do a pocket watch, with some geers and stuff. I'm still tweaking this, but I'm mostly happy with it. I'll probably finish the render this weekend.

Fall Colors

The US Housing Data is out, and Wow! is it colorful!

There are the bursting-bubble metros, which on the chart start with L.A. and end with New York. Within that group there are some pretty interesting differences: L.A. and Miami peaked higher and later than the rest; Phoenix was just moseying along well outside the bubble zone until mid-2004, after which prices almost doubled in just two years; San Francisco and New York saw steadier (and possibly less bubblicious) gains than the rest.
Then you've got Seattle and Portland, which have seen substantial if not staggering price gains and are still living in their own happy, Northwestern alternative reality in which the real estate bust is just something you read about in your favorite newsweekly.
Then there are the three mini-bubble metros: Boston, Chicago and Minneapolis.
Finally, there are the metros, all in the South and Midwest, that never really participated in the post-2000 house-price boom. Most are doing okay, but Detroit and Cleveland--for reasons that have more to do with problems in the manufacturing sector than with problems in the real estate business--are not.

more here

Doing Better at Halloween This Year

This year I actually have candy to give out, trying to avoid last year's disaster. Last year I forgot completely. There was a knock at the door, which is rare in a condo building, and I was confronted by a 6 year-old in a ghost costume, a 4 year-old dressed as Spiderman, their mother, and the glowering spectre of my own stupidity. I couldn't find any candy in the house, so in complete desperation I grabbed a few things off the spice rack, ran back to the door, reached deeply into their plastic pumpkins and dropped them in. I smiled, said Merry Halloween or something and sent them on their way.

Somewhere in Seattle, a mother was wondering where her child received a shaker of cumin for Halloween.

This year will be different, though, I promise.

David Horowitz Attacked!

The founder of Islamofacism Awareness Week is physcially attacked at the closing ceremonies on the Columbia Campus!



or, whys *isn't* anyone hanging a noose on my door? C'mon guys! How can I claim persecution if you all won't play the game????

Someone?

Anyone?

C'mon, tase me Bro!

Is "The Golden Compass" Athiest Enough?

Good Christians appearently say "No!"

But the removal of the Godless themes from the movie has some Christian organizations seething.
"They’re intentionally watering down the most offensive element,” Donohue said. “I'm not really concerned about the movie, [which] looks fairly innocuous. The movie is made for the books. ... It's a deceitful, stealth campaign. Pullman is hoping his books will fly off the shelves at Christmastime."

here

I guess there is no pleasing some people.

If they want to put more godlessness inthe movie, great! I never found Pullman to be all the subversive, but I read it as an adult. And, to be fair, I guess then god dies of old age and his lifeless corpse crashes to the ground, that could be seen as some kind of metaphor or something. I guess.

Thanks to Action Jackson for pointing this out.

A Blast From the Past

Jeff Gannon, the man who gave male prostitutes a bad name by dressing up as a reporter and phallating the President on national television, is in the news again. Apparently the boys at FEMA took a page from his book and held their own fake press conference, all in the interests of being fair and balanced.

Jeff has written a book and paid to have it made through a vanity press (iUniverse! Let that roll around in your noggin a bit as a name for a vanity publisher.). The book itself is not interesting. What *is* interesting is the page at Amazon where you can see "Customers Who Bought Items Like This Also Bought", which is a list of right-wing masturbatory authors who believe OBL is a master terrorist who will never be caught and is probably hiding under your chair right now!(tm), Jesus will make All Things Right by coming down and killing all those hippies in congress, we should repeal the 19th amendment before things get worse, and anyone who disagrees with a war president should be shot without trial.

Republicans! I will miss them when they are gone...

Fun With Imaginary Friends

When I was a kid of about 7, I found the best way to annoy one of my cousins was to take his G.I. Joe dol...errr action figure, and make it do non-millitary things, like sit in his sister's Barbie Dreamhouse and be the pool boy or get a law degree and become a property lawyer. It would tick him off instantly and provide me hours of fun.

30 years later, TJIC ups the ante.

Wait until they discover fan-fic! PZ Myers gets in on the action today as well.
Jesus is quite versitile as a mythic figure.

Update: I'll claim stupidity and cryptomnesia on that one.

What You Know About Math?

Also

Buy Low, Sell HIgh

The price of a particular stock I own has been in the doldrums for years, hovering around $27-$29/share. I put in a limit order to sell about a third of it if it ever hit $35 (and another third at $40). With small orders such as mine, the price is usually a "best guess", i.e. I told it to sell at $35, but my expectation is that when the stock actually sells on the market, it will have dropped back down below $35.

Last week, the order triggered. The stock peaked at $35.97 for about 10 minutes. When I got the confirmation this weekend, I found it sold at $35.85.

Sweet!

It's now back around $34. When it drops back to $29 I'm going to buy it all back.

Ben Stein Gets Beat By A College Sophomore

Well said.

If Stein and his ilk really want to leave their mark on the debate between science and intelligent design, the absolute best move on their part would be to define intelligent design in unambiguous terms, outline exactly what the theory predicts and explain how it can be tested. Until then, apparently, 90-minute "documentaries" filled with soundbites and rhetoric will have to do.

Red Sox Nation

with authority!
...but not with The Authority.

Cocktail Party Physics

Awesome website with some of the most insightful commentary on physics I have seen in a long time.

Dubious Moments in Comic Book History

From Lileks. Say what you want about his politics, he's a often hilarious on culture.

Dark Matters

As long time readers know, I am not wholly convinced about the existance of Dark Matter, and favor a more intuitive approach that modifies gravity at large distances.

Another log on that fire can be read here

A detailed analysis of the November 15, 2006 data release (Clowe et al., 2006) X-ray surface density Sigma-map and the strong and weak gravitational lensing convergence kappa-map for the Bullet Cluster 1E0657-558 is performed and the results are compared with the predictions of a modified gravity (MOG) and dark matter. Our surface density Sigma-model is computed using a King beta-model density, and a mass profile of the main cluster and an isothermal temperature profile are determined by the MOG. We find that the main cluster thermal profile is nearly isothermal. The MOG prediction of the isothermal temperature of the main cluster is T = 15.5 +- 3.9 keV, in good agreement with the experimental value T = 14.8{+2.0}{-1.7} keV. Excellent fits to the two-dimensional convergence kappa-map data are obtained without non-baryonic dark matter, accounting for the 8-sigma spatial offset between the Sigma-map and the kappa-map reported in Clowe et al. (2006). The MOG prediction for the kappa-map results in two baryonic components distributed across the Bullet Cluster 1E0657-558 with averaged mass-fraction of 83% intracluster medium (ICM) gas and 17% galaxies. Conversely, the Newtonian dark matter kappa-model has on average 76% dark matter (neglecting the indeterminant contribution due to the galaxies) and 24% ICM gas for a baryon to dark matter mass-fraction of 0.32, a statistically significant result when compared to the predicted Lambda-CDM cosmological baryon mass-fraction of 0.176{+0.019}{-0.012} (Spergel et al., 2006).

Comet Holmes in Outburst

Something to do this weekend, if the skies are clear:

Comet 17P/Holmes stunned comet watchers across planet Earth earlier this week. On October 24, it increased in brightness over half a million times in a matter of hours. The outburst transformed it from an obscure and faint comet quietly orbiting the Sun with a period of about 7 years to a naked-eye comet rivaling the brighter stars in the constellation Perseus. Recorded on that date, this view from Tehran, Iran highlights the comet's (enhanced and circled) dramatic new visibility in urban skies. The inset (left) is a telescopic image from a backyard in Buffalo, New York showing the comet's greatly expanded coma, but apparent lack of a tail. Holmes' outburst could be due to a sudden exposure of fresh cometary ice or even the breakup of the comet nucleus. The comet may well remain bright in the coming days.

Fanning the Flames of Fear

More on how folks like Fox take a second rate threat who got lucky, and tried to turn him into the boggy man.

Did al Qaeda start the California wildfires?
As more than a million people escaped the flames, Fox News anchors couldn't help speculating about a terrorism link to the blazes ravaging southern California.
"I've heard some people talk about this a little bit to me, but have you heard anybody suggest that this could be some form of terrorism," Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy asked Wednesday morning.
Correspondent Adam Housley said he's received "hundreds of comments" from readers of his Fox News blog speculating about a link to terrorism.

At some point, even the most ardent support has to admit that what they do on Fox isn't news.

David Gerrold has a Blog

here

David is one of my favorite authors and wrote The Man Who Folded Himself, which irrevocably warped me when I read it at age 13 (it's a fable on the dangers of narcissism).

His novel, the Martian Child, has been made into a movie and is coming out in the next few weeks.

World Net Daily

Did you know the Earth is only 6010 years old? Did you know that atheists are the greatest threat to our Christian nation. You're obviously not reading World Net Daily!

Also, this little gem:

"How to outlaw Christianity" by Chuck Norris, who says 30 million Americans profess there is no God, and shows how atheist organizations are working to undermine Christianity .

(via)

Superlative Photos

From Africa. Amazing work.

Another Reason to Root for the Red Sox

Does this mean, if the Sox take the trophy, god doesn't exist?

"You look at some of the moves we made and didn't make," general manager Dan O'Dowd said in the only interview he has given on the subject, long before the Rockies' remarkable ascension over the past few weeks. "You look at some of the games we're winning. Those aren't just a coincidence. God has definitely had a hand in this."
Anyone who fancies the Almighty has better things to do than determine the outcome of baseball games might want to consider just what the Rockies have achieved. At the beginning of September, they were fourth out of five in the National League Western division and seemingly headed to yet another cold Colorado winter chewing over another disappointing season. Then they started winning, and didn't stop. They won 13 of their last 14 regular-season games – a freak occurrence in a sport that has always been more about failure than success, where even the strongest teams usually win no more than six games of every 10.

(here)

Probably

It's probably against some policy at work to use a phrase like "I already have the vision thing worked out and will sibmit it 6 weeks early. The rest will be [person X] trying to get a hand job from Accenture."

That doesnt' make it untrue.

Something About Cats I Did Not Know This Morning

...and I am reminded of the motto of Transylvania Polytechnic University, "Knowledge Brings Fear"

What's the Word I am Looking For??

"Crushed" I think will fit the bill.

11-2, Yikes!

If Susan were alive today, I'm sure she would be jumping up and down about it. As it is, I didn't care too much about it until I heard from a co-worker they were in the play-offs. As he is a Cleveland fan, I sensed an opportunity for some gain and bet $100 on Boston

"You realize Cleveland is ahead 2 games to 1", he said.
"Yes, but if they can be down 3-0 against the Yankees and win, they can do anything."
"Okay, it's your loss..."

and thus a bet was made.

Tonight's dialog:

"Smell that? It smells like Victory!"
"Smells like ... shut up."
"I'm just glad I finally made a bet that doesn't end up with me mowing someone's lawn in a wedding dress..."

The Chrome Age

I finally finished the new art I started last weekend, The Chrome Age.

The Three Phases of Labor

Holy Beavers!

Speaking of the Universe

PZ Myers talks about a question he was asked, "What is the purpose of the universe?". My first reaction was, "that's a nonsense question, the universe is a natural phenomenon, it doesn't have a 'purpose'". PZ does one better though

Near as I can tell, the primary purposes of the universe as discerned from the casual expressions of religion's proponents are 1) to bias victory in local football games, and 2) to regulate the appropriate orifices into which certain people are allowed to place their penises. How the creation of Betelgeuse, the concentration of planetary material in our solar system in one body which we can't reach and which is uninhabitable to us, and the ubiquity and success of bacteria all play into these purposes is unknown to me … it must be one of God's mysteries.

The Big Rip

When I was a kid and, in fact most of the way through grad school, the Standard Model held the universe was going to end in a cyclic "Big Crunch", the reset button would be pushed, and a new universe would be created. It smacked of such elegance that everyone assumed it would be true once the evidence came in. Some in the spiritual community even held that it was evidence of an intelligent designer, or of a vindication of the wisdom of past thinkers.

It seems we were all way, way wrong on this one.

Cosmologists have long wondered whether the Universe will eventually re-collapse and end with a Big Crunch, or expand forever, becoming increasingly cold and empty. Recent evidence for a flat Universe, possibly with a cosmological constant or some other sort of negative-pressure dark energy, has suggested that our fate is the latter. However, the data may actually be pointing toward an astonishingly different cosmic end game. Here, we explore the consequences that follow if the dark energy is phantom energy, in which the sum of the pressure and energy density is negative. The positive phantom-energy density becomes infinite in finite time, overcoming all other forms of matter, such that the gravitational repulsion rapidly brings our brief epoch of cosmic structure to a close. The phantom energy rips apart the Milky Way, solar system, Earth, and ultimately the molecules, atoms, nuclei, and nucleons of which we are composed, before the death of the Universe in a ``Big Rip''.

In other words, the universe is an exploding bomb and we are trapped inside.

Full paper here, a good read on a Sunday afternoon.

Laaaaaaaand of the Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost...

From SciFi Weekly:

Universal Pictures has given a green light to a comedic take on the SF TV series Land of the Lost, starring Will Ferrell, which begins production in March, Variety reported.Brad Silberling (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events) will direct the adaptation of Sid and Marty Krofft's children's show of the same name. Jimmy Miller is producing, along with the Kroffts; Julie Wixson-Darmody and Daniel Lupi will executive-produce.Ferrell has been attached to Land of the Lost for several years. The adaptation, by Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas, revolves around a disgraced paleontologist, his assistant and a macho tour guide who find themselves in a strange world inhabited by dinosaurs, monkey people and reptilian Sleestaks.(Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.)

The Pope Is On Fire!

Here!

Lots and lots and lots of jokes about Hell I could make here, but I am taking the higher road...

Heavy Ink

Travis has launched another new business, an online comic book order company called Heavy Ink. If you're into comics you should check it out. I've collected stuff since I was 4, although the titles have changed significantly. I plan on moving my sunscriptions over and taking advantage of the home delivery system.

Great Balls of Fire!

Neat! A small, low torque motor made from ball bearings and electricity!

When current passes from the outer ring of the ballrace to the inner ring via each ball, heat is generated at the point of contact due to the increased resistance. This localised heating causes the ball to expand in the hot area, causing a slight elongation of the ball, pushing against the inner and outer rings of the race. If the ball were stationary, this would cause the bearing to stiffen and sieze up, but when it's rotating (from the initial spin), this elongation causes the ball to push itself further round in the direction of rotation, sustaining the movement. This action happens as a continuous process on all the balls which are in electrical contact with the inner and outer rings.

(via)

Jesus Walks into a Bar..

Highly amusing!

"Groundbreaker"

The Bush Administration was trying to do it's warentless wiretapping 6 months before 9/11.

Jesus Shitballs!

here

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.

...

Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.

There is no end to just how morally bankrupt the Bush Administration seems to be.

Wierd Cough

I've had a persistent cough for the last 2 months which has been getting gradually worse. By cough, I mean I cough fairly loudly every 20 minutes, wake up in the middle of the night coughing and have coughed long and hard enough to cause me to vomit *and* cough (and then the fun *really* starts).

I have, as usual, been ignoring this.

however, I am annoying enough that the folks around me have noticed and been bugging me to go see someone about it. I was reluctant, in part because of a childhood incident which taught me an important lesson.

When I was a kid, I stepped on a bee. A big, nasty bumblebee with a stinger the size of Ford Falcon. I didn't notice it. Rather, my foot hurt a little and I thought I had a rock in my sandal, which was annoying, but hardly a crisis to a 5 year-old. I played with my friends for the better part of 20 minutes being a little annoyed with my foot but not really noticing. Finally, I thought to take the rock out, grabbed my foot, took off the sandal and saw a giant bee stuck in my foot, half squashed and very angry.

and then the world exploded in pain.

I was fine until I saw the bee, after that, after I knew what it was, it was agony. To this day I swear I could watch my foot swell up as my brain figured out I had been stung. The lesson? I would have been fine had I not known what had happened.

Hence, I am not ever in any rush to head to the doctor.

That said, I figured something had gone wrong and went yesterday. Much to my surprise, my GP knew immediately what was wrong. I was having a drug interaction with my meds, one of which is an ACE inhibitor called Lisinopril. For reasons I can't say I understand, my body was building up an overabundance of a chemical which was causing the cough. He changed my meds, told me to stay off planes for 3 weeks and told me I'd be fine in about 10 days, the length of time it will take to have the drug wash out of my system.

Which means a) it’s all minor with no larger meaning and b) I have to cancel my Japan trip, at least until January.

Baby Gordon

From Susan's brother, Stephen

Pictures of the first 4D ultrasound are at http://eskimo.moink.org (no, we are not thinking of naming her Eskimo)

Warning: pictures are of a naked baby, so may be Not Safe For Work.

Hitchens is Definately Off My Ramadan Holiday Gift List!

He seems to have made something of an ass of himself:

Later that evening, someone in the FFRF was handing out an open letter to the freethought community, one that protested the inclusion of Hitchens and opposing any future speakers of his sort. I sympathized with the sentiment (and if the writer wants to send me an electronic copy, I'll post it here), but I think it was useful to have Hitchens stand up there and tell us what he thinks — and there was absolutely no reticence in his comments, which I admire. But while I agree with his goal of working towards a rational, secular world, a triumph of enlightenment values, I disagree entirely with his proposed strategy, which seems to involve putting a bullet through every god-haunted brain. To have a clearly stated position to which we can respond with clearly stated opposition is actually a kind of gift.

Hitch has always been a strong supporter of the war, a position I found a little puzzling until now. I guess he is, as one guy put it, "he's a highly entertaining nut job who happens to hold a few views similar to mine"

What is this "The Vagina" and Where Do I Get One?

Christian Sex Ed Video

Don't Date Robots!

Jesus Christo!


"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it.

Oh, a prediction by a grad student about his thesis topic having worldwide social and moral implications! Whew! I was worried there for a moment.

Still, it does one well to remember this dire lesson: Dont Date Robots!

Some New Art

A new piece I've been thinking about since Sibos-Boston. Comments welcome!

Pastafarians v. Senator David Vitter (R-Adultery-Hetro)

We need to teach *all* sides of the story!

Senator David Vitter, R-La, earmarked $100k in a spending bill for a Lousiana Creationist group that has challenged the teaching of Darwinian Evolution in the public school system.
The bill specifies the payment is "to develop a plan to better promote science education."
Clearly, this is important to Pastafarians, because we ALSO have a creation theory that challenges Darwinian Evolution - and our theory is backed by many in the scientific community.
Let's contact Senator Vitter and let him know that the Pastafarian creation theory is the one that should be taught.
You can email Sen. Vitter using this form.Phone:(202) 224-4623Fax: (202) 228-5061

Also in news from the CotFSM:

I’m sorry if Christians find the belief that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe “lame,” but –correct me if I’m wrong- Christians believe that a cosmic Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat an apple of discernment from a magical tree. And they think the idea that a decrease in pirates caused global warming is ridiculous?

(here)

Nerd God

I am a Nerd God (appearently)





Everyone who is surprised by this raise your hand.

uhhh hmmmmm..... I thought not.

(via)

Left v. Right Brain

Does she spin CW or CCW?

(if she isn't spinning, click on her. there have been some problems with blogger)

There is some suggestion that the direction of spin you see tells you which brain hemisphere is dominant. I can see her spin either way, but when I first look I see clockwise. I'm pretty skeptical of the left/right thing since object roation is a full right brain function, i.e. you don't seem to have two seperate centers in your brain for CW and CCW spinning objects, each in a different hemisphere. OTOH, I know almost nothing about actual brain function, so don't listen to me. I'm ambidexterous and my brain dominance was shown to be evenly split in my neuropsych evalstwo years ago, so my perceptions may be unusual with this.

via here, here and here.

Chapter 1

of my book tenatively titled, How to Think for Yourself, is underway. I'll try and get an excerpt up this week. The first chapter is called, Theory v. Doctrine or because I Say So!

I was a little bored on the 20 hour flight home.

Nanny State Powers, ACTIVATE!

Form of, Regulation!
Shape of, a baby!

"Paul arrived in Amsterdam looking forward to a weekend with his friends. Instead, the 24-year-old Australian stayed holed up in his hotel room, too frightened to walk the streets after taking magic mushrooms.
``We had to lock ourselves up in case we would do something crazy,'' said Paul, who asked that his last name not be used because he didn't want acquaintances to know about his drug use. ``There is no way this should be legal.''

..

In Amsterdam, where the fungi are sold in so-called smart shops, local officials agree. The city council last month approved a three-day waiting period to cut down on tourist use. The national government is considering an outright ban after a French teenager leapt to her death in March. Health Minister Ab Klink will release a statement on the hallucinogens this week.



So, you go to a foreign country with more advanced ideas about personal responsibility than your own, get in a bit over your head and, rather than reflect on your own immaturity and lack of growth, you call for the Nanny State to rescue you.

Pathetic.

I'm not a user or fan of most hallucinogens, mostly because my brain gets more than a little weird and I dont enjoy them if they are strong. OTOH, I'm pretty sure it isn't my business if you do enjoy them.

Ugh. I'm starting to sound like Travis.

Back

FTR I'm back from Barcelona and in Seattle today, hooray! To those of you who were on my case over the last 2 weeks, I am headed to the doctor's tomorrow afternoon. For those of you who have not been on my case, well, thanks! I've had a weird cough for the last 2 months and people have been getting insistent I go get checked out. It's minor, but annoying.

The next leg of my trip is scheduled to start 28 Oct when I head to Tokyo.

Creationist Cartoons!

Pretty good!

30 Rock

I bought Season 1 on DVD, you should too, it's hilarious!

Oh? Canada!

An idea has been rolling around in my head for a little while, dual citizenship with Canada.

Advantages:
Shorter lines at the international airport
Healthcare for life
A rich cultural heritage including one of the few bloodless revolutions in human history
Being a member of a respected member of the international community again
Legal pot
Avoid voting for either Hillary or Rudy
The French may no longer spit in my food (unless they think I am from Quebec)

Disadvantages:
Taxes

I'll leave this to the readers. Vote in the comments.

Bungie

I got this today:
Kicking bungie to the curb just because all the senior management quits enmasse? That's cold, man.
Refering to this, appearently: http://www.gamersyde.com/forum_8_22985_1_en.html

So heres my big secret. You should google Bungie + Microsoft + separation this week.You know that big ol BILLION dollar franchise Bungie has created for Microsoft, to show their appreciate Microsoft is letting Bungie leave. Of course Microsoft gets to keep all rights to the Halo franchise, but as today Bungie no longer part of Microsoft. Ask anyone who works there to search the global address book, they're no longer in there. Microsoft was supposed to release the press release today but if they wait till the 10/6 the impact wont effect the quarterly results. However today is the actual official date and the day the NDAs expire, however you still didn't hear this from me.""Apparently MS just wants Bungie to make Halo for the rest of their natural days, and Bungie doesn't like how MS is constantly trying to "handle" everything they do; the way they market their games, the way they interact with their fans (basically the fact that they do appreciate their fans), and how stingie they are with the profits (comparable to the rest of the industry). So as of today they are their own independent entity. They'll probably make Halo 4 for Microsoft, however hey are also free to create new intellectual properties for whatever system they want. (Even though they prefer the xbox platform)"

I have no idea if it's true, and thought it a mildly interesting rumor. I'm at a a large industry trade show in Boston (hooray!) this week, doing a fair bit of press around our new payments product and offically launching the Capital Markets strategy I've been slaving away on for the past 9 months. Up until now I;ve had a lot of good questions about High Performance Computing and some arcane questions about how to write (and run) parallel code in automated trade alogrithms for buy side firms. Out of the blue I got asked by a reporter (I think for her own curiousity since her publication has nothing to do with the gaming industry).

"Any comment on the Bungie spinout?"

GAK!

I answered simply with, "you obviously know more than I do!"

AFAIK, it's just a rumor. There is no internal info to which I am privvy, but that's par for the course.

Details as events warrent.

gak!

A Real Conversation with My Son

Geoff: "I'll know! I'll waterboard them!"
Me: "No! You cannot go on Kid Nation and waterboard children!"
Geoff: "Their parents signed a release!"
Geoff: "It'll work for sweeps week"

This isi one of many horrible conversations we have. In an unusal twist, I am the voice of reason.

Phoney Soldiers

Pretty much, this says it all.

More War!

I suggest reading Glenn Greenwald's column on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. It's a bit strident, but given that the momentum is strong for creating a war with Iran, I don't think a little hyperole is much of a vice.

In an excellent comment, Thomas C elaborates on Jim Webb's warning about the danger of the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment. Specifically, contrast that Amendment's finding that "Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps" is a "foreign terrorist organization" with the declaration under the 2002 Iraq AUMF that "the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States," and one could make a strong case that the Senate has just agreed that President Bush has inherent authority -- i.e., authority under the Constitution -- to attack Iran, given that its military unit is a "foreign terrorist organization."

To those handful of folks who came back to me and said I was right about the problems in Iraq, I say this: we will look back wistfully at the sunny summer days when our biggest problem was a needless war with Iraq, if we bomb Iran.

Non-Verbal Memories

Interesting experiment on evidence of early memory development in 2 year-olds.

I have 2 or 3 very early, non-verbal memories I've managed keep all this time. One from when I was about 9 months old and learning to walk, and one from when I wandered out of the backyard and down the ally behind the house when I was 2. I've got dozens of memories of being 3ish and remember my early childhood pretty well. I still find it odd that most people claim their memories don't start until 4 or 5 and am actively offended when people tell me any earlier memories "can't be real".

I know, for example, that my memory of being 9 months old is real. When I was 18, I (unknowingly) went back to the place the memory formed and immediately recognized the room, the fireplace etc., and had noticed the color of the rug was different. When I asked how long the rug had been there, they said 15 years, but it had been blue (the color I remembered it being) before that. Ergo, it was a real memory.

The Logical Conclusion

A long time reader writes in:


"It stands to reason, though, that once men enter the Kingdom of Heaven, they will be one with God, and will no longer be lonely and in need of mortal companionship"

So, doesn't also stand to reason that in the afterlife men will need to fuck god? Because I don't think that requirement will cease just because they are dead.......

Women Probably Don't Have Souls!

You read it here first! errr...second...

"The absence of either salvation or condemnation for women finds extensive support in the Word of God." He reported. "Jesus said that the sole reason God created women in the first place was to provide company and service to men (1 Corinthians 11:9), God determined that men would be lonely living alone, so he created women purely to keep men company and serve their needs (Genesis 2:18-22). Women are therefore completely subordinate to men (1 Corinthians 11:3). It stands to reason, though, that once men enter the Kingdom of Heaven, they will be one with God, and will no longer be lonely and in need of mortal companionship. Thus, the reason behind having women will no longer exist. Women, like the members of the animal kingdom, will fall by the wayside."

Pastor Deacon Fred warned the congregation that there was no reason to be alarmed. "Dr. Neiman's conclusions still need to be formalized," he assured. "I am certain that our team of religious experts will find some way around these Scriptures." Some of the women present were visibly shaken by the report. A teary eyed Sister Taffy Crockett said through choked sobs, "I've heard of colored women not having souls... but me? NO! This is outrageous!"

It's nice to know that women are just like the rest of us, not possessed by imaginary ghosts!

BTW, Landover is one of my favorite religious websites.

Take a gander at their mailbag!

Spoiled

So I bought my cat Bitey some "Sheba" brand cat food as a treat. There used to be three cats in the house, Buster, Sam and Artemis (Bitey), but alas, Sam and Buster got very old and passed away over the summer (I got a rather suspecious look from the folks at the pet morgue when I brought the second one in a few weeks after the first one died. If Artemis snuffs it, I'll have to send her out of state for sure). While she fought constantly with the other two (she fights constantly with *everyone*), she has been a little lonely lately. I thought some high-end cat food might be a treat for her, but she's mostly uninterested. Which is a pity, because it has rich, thick hunks of tender, slow roasted breast meat, soaked in a creamed gravey sauce.

A real pity. It was just sitting there on the plate. Untouched.

Unwanted.

Juicy.

Big Hunks.

Just waiting....

I have to say...

It's fucking delicious!

Assignment

Geoff gets his assignment from the Army:

"I'm in charge of a platoon"
"Cool! That's awesome! How many people is that?"
"It's like 40 or so."
"So this is combat?"
"It's a tactical UAV platoon"
"UAV? Urban Assult Vehicle?"
"No... Unmanned Arial Vehicle"
"... ... you mean like those things on Stargate? You're sending RC planes through the Stargate? This is a real assignment?"
"No, no Stargate! But yes, UAV Platoon..."
"So wait a minute. You're in charge of 40 RC geeks who fly toy planes around? *This* is what you trained for??? Oh son, I am ...
...
...
I am very happy for you and your friends!"
"NOOOO!!!!"

Media Smackdown

The penny may have dropped on the GOP in the media. Pretty much until this point, most GOP talking heads have gotten a free ride on Iraq, issuing their talking points mostly unchallenged, making their points to will hosts etc.

This link goes to an interview on Tucker Carlson's show where an unsuspecting congressperson stumbles into an ambush. From a media training POV, Rep. Blackburn does a terrific job. She stays on point, she keeps trying to bridge back to her talking points and, while she comes off a little smug at the beginning, she does not drop into a defensive crouch when the interview goes off the rails. Host David Shuster plays an old reporters trick on her, asking her the name of the last soldier from her district to die in Iraq, one she should have been prepared for, but she does a professional job of trying to extricate herself.

All in all, a facinating exchange.

The Noncommutative Frobenius Problem is Solved!

Now how am I going to stay awake at night??

here

Consider the famous "Chicken McNuggets problem": if Chicken McNuggets are sold at McDonald's only in boxes of 6, 9, or 20 McNuggets, what's the largest number of McNuggets you can't buy at McDonald's? The answer happens to be my favorite number, 43. (Why it is my favorite is a story that will have to wait for another day.) Notice that you can buy any number of McNuggets greater than 43.

For example, 44 = 4*6 + 1*20, 45 = 5*9,46 = 1*6 + 2*20, 47 = 3*6 + 1*9 + 1*20,48 = 8*6,49 = 1*9 + 2*20, and any number greater than 49 can be obtained by adding an appropriate multiple of 6 to these.In general, you're given a set S of integers, and you want to know the largest number that cannot be expressed as a non-negative integer linear combination of the elements of S. This is called the Frobenius number because Frobenius is supposed to have mentioned it often during his lectures.

...

Unfortunately, the general problem was proved NP-hard (under Turing reductions) by Ramirez Alfonsin in 1996. Roughly speaking, this means the problem is at least as hard as many classical problems for which we still have no efficient solution, such as the traveling salesman problem.

About 6 years ago, I suggested generalizing this problem from numbers to strings of symbols (sometimes called "words"). This kind of generalization is a typical activity in mathematics and theoretical computer science. You take a well-studied problem over one kind of domain, and see how the problem translates in another. The classical Frobenius problem dealt with positive integers, so we'll replace them with strings. Now S will be a set of strings.
...

No One I Know

The Goons certainly have *someone's* number, but it's no one I know. Good argument for me to get my own though.

"You can't spell 'arguement' without 'gun'"
-Me to my son

"Lightning Rod"

ZAP!

Biker's penis hit by lightning

A Croatian motorbiker's penis was zapped by lightning as he stopped beside the road to take a leak.
Ante Djindjic, 29, from Zagreb, said: "I don't remember what happened. One minute I was taking a leak and the next thing I knew I was in hospital.
"Doctors said the lightning went through my body and because I was wearing rubber boots it earthed itself through my penis."
Djindjic, who suffered light burns to his chest and arms, added: "Thankfully, the doctors said that there would be no lasting effects, and my penis will function normally eventually."

"eventually"

The McCollough Effect

Weird illusion seemingly based on brain function. I couldn't'get it to work the first time, but I only did the standard 30 seconds or so you do with optical illusions. When I looked at the colored boxes for 4 or 5 minutes it worked perfectly.


(via)

Update: 20 mins later and it still seems to be working, although a little less maybe.

Work is essential, the rifle is near.

This and other dittys at Soviet Poster of the Day
(via)

It's Tough To Soar Like An Eagle When You Are Surrounded By Turkeys

Wake Up America!! From the WaPo

James Choate came to Washington last night from Birmingham, Ala., joining five friends on a mission to save the lives of American elementary school children.
Choate, who works in an advertising mailhouse back home, flew through scary thunderstorms to attend the Gathering of Eagles, where he and others stood wearing buttons that said "Never Trust Democrats with National Security."

Choate said he and his friend felt compelled to come to Washington because most Americans refused to believe that "the terrorists have got people planted all over the country from Al Queda who are preparing to go on one day into many elementary schools in our country and kill our children. We have this on good authority, we have sources."

Choate said he was disappointed to see how few people turned out to the Gathering of Eagles. "Most of the country doesn't want to believe it, " he said. "Everybody's getting a false feeling of security. Every morning, I wake up and just hope another 9-11 hasn't happened overnight."
Choate said he and his friends, who he called true patriots, are doing their duty to spread the word that "most Muslims are out to kill us or convert us to Islam."

Choate and his friends said the poor turnout was "disturbing," but said they nonetheless were stirred by the support of those who did attend; the group from Birmingham plans to spend the rest of the weekend seeing the sights of the nation's capital .

Emmy

Unbelievable.

Really. I didnt beleive my son when he told me this was an Emmy Award winning video. I'm ... speechless.



Actually, it's kind of catchy...

Random Bits of Conversation with my Son

Me: "...thats not a gun, it's a Wand of Ambulance of Summoning!"
Geoff: "+3 vs. trolls, orcs and muggers"

Geoff: "How about the National Terrorism Center?"
Me: "They can't call it that! They'd have to call it the National Counter-Counter Terrorism Center"

Geoff " ...on Fox!"
Me: "Fox is just a base propaganda channel"
Geoff: "Why do you think that?"
Me: "I heard it on the John Stewert"

Kathy Griffith is my New Hero

Wonderful!



In her speech, Griffin said that "a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus."

She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, "This award is my god now!"

"Kathy Griffin's offensive remarks will not be part of the E! telecast on Saturday night," the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences said in a statement Monday.

First Pavarotti Joke

Pavarotti arrives at the Pearly Gates and rings the bell
to be let in. St Peter opens up and says, "Oh it's you
Luciano, come on in, squeeze through".
Pavarotti says, "Hold on, I've got an envelope for you,
from the Pope". St Peter opens it up and reads it...

..HERE'S THAT TENOR I OWE YOU'

(say it out loud if you dont get it)

Arecibo to Close??

Sad if true

The National Science Foundation, which has long funded the dish, has told the Cornell University-operated facility that it will have to close if it cannot find outside sources for half of its already reduced $8 million budget in the next three years -- an ultimatum that has sent ripples of despair through the scientific community.

While I strongly agree that we need to do more hard science and I understand that something has to give to fund new projects, it would be a shame to close Arecibo.

Chaos Hawks

Well said:

Having admitted, however, that the odds of a military success in Iraq are almost impossibly long, Chaos Hawks nonetheless insist that the U.S. military needs to stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Why? Because if we leave the entire Middle East will become a bloodbath. Sunni and Shiite will engage in mutual genocide, oil fields will go up in flames, fundamentalist parties will take over, and al-Qaeda will have a safe haven bigger than the entire continent of Europe.

Needless to say, this is nonsense. Israel has fought war after war in the Middle East. Result: no regional conflagration. Iran and Iraq fought one of the bloodiest wars of the second half the 20th century. Result: no regional conflagration. The Soviets fought in Afghanistan and then withdrew. No regional conflagration. The U.S. fought the Gulf War and then left. No regional conflagration. Algeria fought an internal civil war for a decade. No regional conflagration.

Maybe It's My Lack of Imagination

MIT re-invents the billboard with the Hyposurface!

(via)

Reaction to the Hyposurface usually evolves quickly from "What could this be used for?" to "What couldn't this be used for?"

Color me pedestrian but I dont see much here. Sure it's cool and all, but this looks like any number of trade-show gimmicks one can see at Sibos, SIFMA or any other tradeshow where folks have more money than sense.

Like the digital waterfall (here running for Jeep)