Square Orbits

Why do some galaxies have barred centers?

Because the stars at the center are in an orbit which closely approximates a square. It a not-all-that-uncommon solution to the restricted three body problem.

Edit: I started to do some drawing for how this works but, of course, the web knows all. Here is a treatment done much better than mine of some of the complicated shapes an orbit can assume in the 3-body problem. One bar producing solution is the Ice Cream Spoon orbit

Unfortunately, the orbits themselves aren't all that stable. What you see in a galatic bar is a statisitical sample of a large number of stars, most of which spend some of their time in a bar-like orbit, but none permanently so.

The best analogy in every day life for square orbits is the Tilt-A-Whirl. There is a central point point around which the arms orbit, and a second point further out around which the cars rotate.
If the central rotation were off, but the roation of the cars was on, you'd just spin in circles. Add it the central roation though, and you get a little circle, swinging around the end of a great big circle. The result is a pattern that, for large parts of the motion, is a nearly straight line followed by corners of high curvature (and high g-forces!). The pattern of this motion strongly resembles the orbits of galactic bar stars.


Which, all in all, is pretty cool. And, these kinds of orbits are not limited to squares. In general almost any polyhedreon can be simulated with the right set of masses and forces, although orbital stability in the general case is not assured.

Except Yours Of Course

From the viewpoint of the outsider, every religion looks pretty silly or awful:


A little heavy handed. I dont see this as persuasive so much as in the category of "feeling good about a decision you have already made, not adding anything new, and making fun of the people you disagree with"

This must be what it feels like for those people who read Instapundit. Except with more words.

(Heh! Watch the whole thing)

Pluto

I'd find it hard to care any less than I already do that Pluto got moved to "dwarf Planet" status. It's had the same impact on my life as say, finding out that owners of Walt Disney's Cryotube have switched from regular liquid nitrogen coolant to decaf.

What kind of Training? Army Training, Sir!

I have avoided posting this, in part because I thought I might be able to change things, and in part because I wanted to avoid dealing with it.

Geoff has finally managed to cajole his way into the Army. He is canceling his co-op work and starting ROTC next semester, joining for 2 more years after he graduates in June 2008. Short of poisoning him and causing him to have a massive asthma attack, there is little I can do to change this course of events.

I’m happy for him in that he’s found a way to do what he wants to do in a way which will make him happy. I am… somewhat less than thrilled that he’s risking his life in a war started for the sole purpose of expanding presidential authority, but it’s his choice.

My advice to him was this, “Negotiate your position up front. Tell them you’ll join but you want to come in as a Major. Now, in the back of your head, be prepared to take Captain or something. Do they still have Sergeant Major?”

“Dad…They..”

“I’m just saying! It much harder to negotiate after you’ve signed a contract. Do the work up front. You wont regret it it”

“No Dad. I will be a second Lieutenant. That’s how it works”

“Screw that! That how it works for other folks. Negotiate now!”

“No. It’s non-negotiable”

“Really?”

“Yes”

“Oh. Then we’ll go with plan B. I’ll get the paper work started”

“No! What’s plan B? What paper work? No! No!”

“You can’t say ‘No’ before you hear the plan!”

“I can with your plans Dad”

“I’m not sacrificing my only son to presidential power-grabs…”

“Fine! Fine! Not again with this! What’s your plan?”
“It’s simple! We’re going to change your name!”

“No!”

“ You’ll like it, it’s very clever!”

“No!”

“Very clever…!!”

”Change it to what?”

“Colonel Powers”

“I told you I can’t be a Colonel! I’ll be a lieutenant.”

“Yes!, but yout first name will be Colonel! They will call you Lieutenant Colonel Powers! Then later, Major Colonel Powers, then Colonel Colonel…”

“Dad! No!”

"Why not? That one guy chnages his name to Optimus Prime for Christ's sake!"

"... you have a valid point but ..."

“Oh! Wait! Forget that! I have a better idea! We’ll change it to General Relativity! That works even better!”

We debated this pros and cons’ of this a while longer. The name change will not be occurring immediately, but I am still hopeful.

It Brings All the Boys to the Yard

And they're like, it's better than yours.



Damn right! It's better than yours!

Rolling My Own

My current computer is almost 4 years old (which nearly 106 in human years!). Moore’s Law seems to have broken down, so there hasn’t been the usual pressure to buy a new machine. My current server is a 3GHz Powerspec box with a lot of trimmings, 1GB mem, 600GB storage, Nvidia 7300 graphics card etc. Not bad at all by current standards, but not the powerhouse it was in 2003. Given the processor speeds are “supposed” to double every 18 months, I expected to be at 10-12 Ghz now. Instead processor speeds are still hovering between 3-5Ghz for single core systems. There are many reasons for this, but from a physics point of view, I suspect the pseudo-optic limit has finally reared it’s head and quashed further progress . The limit occurs when the frequency of electronic signals (usually in the 10s of GHz) implies a wavelength which starts to be of scale with electronics themselves, i.e. the point where things are fast enough that you need to switch from wires to wavesguides.

Intel came out with their new Duo technology which effectively skirts the issue by adding a multiple processors linked together through a high speed bus. This has a number of architectural advantages for multiapplication systems, although 2 3Ghz chips put together is not the same performance as a single 6Ghz chip. There are volumes of reasons for this, but the new technology is pretty good.

In my usual way, I designed up a state of the art system with new process, lots of memory plenty of disk space, a top-of-the-line graphics card etc.
Net cost for the system (via Dell, Gateway and HP) ~$5000

My reaction: “hmm… that’s kind of higher than I wanted to pay”
Geoff’s reaction, “No way! You’re out of your fucking mind! I *need* that money!”

So I challenged Geoff to come up with a spec that met all my criteria for less.
And… he did!
The catch: I have to assemble it myself. From scratch.
Now I haven’t actually done this since …. 1998. A while.
Can I? Probably? Should I? Definitely!
Cost of Geoff’s spec (with 2 day shipping) ~$2500

So, I am going to build a PC sometime in the next few weeks.
Spec below: I’m looking for comments or (god forbid) mistakes of commission/omission

Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128017

Processor:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115002

Processor Cooling:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835186134

Memory:
2x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146118

Power:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817163109

Harddrives:
3x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144423

Case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811133138

Video Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143066

Sound Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102190

DVD:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827152058

How Big is the Earth?

Delightful illustration from a co-worker:

The Armor of God

This is eventually going to cost you or your children (or more likely Blue Cross/Blue Shield) quite a bit at $100/hour as they explain to the therapist, "yeah, my parents dressed me up in felt armor every night to make me feel better. Why do you ask Doc? Do you think that has anything to do with me being a Furry?"

World's Rarest Pez Dispenser

Up to $25,200.00

Isn't the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville TN the home of the famous Wigsphere?

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Lemma 2) Every action will have some effect you were not expecting.

Warning: political post

The Lieberman debacle, which in my mind was a pretty transparent attempt by Lieberman to put himself ahead of his party and keep his perqs, seems to have had an unintended consequence: Other candidate are beginning to say, "to hell with a party affiliation, I don't need one to run"

Today's example come from Mr. Tom DeLay's Houston district.

At least three GOPers have thrown their hats in the ring, and the local Republican leadership is scheduled to meet Thursday to make the call. One, perceived frontrunner David Wallace -- also mayor of DeLay's (former?) hometown of Sugar Land -- says he's running no matter what party says.

This is, in my mind, an untrammeled Good Thing. The two parties have tried everything imaginable short of a constitutional amendment to entrench themselves as the only way to power. And they have had tremendous success. This has led to more than a century of kleptocratic bad government. I'd really like to see more candidates eschew party and run as independents. Who know? It might lead to better policy and a saner nation.

Naaahhhhh.....

Your Superpowers and You!

Meet Jimmy

The David Stone

Here's an interesting idea for keeping the Earth as an "Asteroid Impact-Free Zone" , keep a sizable stone in orbit and then swing it around to hit an incoming object.

Such an asteroid could then be moved as needed to absorb the impact of any collision that would otherwise hit the Earth. The work of Didier Massonnet and Benoît Meyssignac (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, France), the paper argues that an asteroid between 20 and 40 meters in diameter, which the two nickname ‘David’s stone,’ could destroy a much larger incoming object under proper targeting conditions. The problem becomes finding the right asteroid.

...

Another benefit is that with the installation of proper equipment, a nearby asteroid could be exploited to produce propellants for manned exploratory missions. Producing fuel like liquid oxygen in such a location would dramatically alter the lifting requirements for long-range flights and could be practical even factoring in travel requirements to retrieve the fuel.

Very cool. I leave it to the communists and libertarians to tell us how to set up utopian governments on such objects.

Second to Last

Yes, the United States is second to last in public acceptance of the theory of evolution. OTOH the graph doesn't show african nations, so I am sure we are not seond to last in the whole wide world. PZ Myers has the full story.

The total effect of fundamentalist religious beliefs on attitude toward evolution (using a standardized metric) was nearly twice as much in the United States as in the nine European countries (path coefficients of -0.42 and -0.24, respectively), which indicates that individuals who hold a strong belief in a personal God and who pray frequently were significantly less likely to view evolution as probably or definitely true than adults with less conservative religious views.

...
Second, the evolution issue has been politicized and incorporated into the current partisan division in the United States in a manner never seen in Europe or Japan. In the second half of the 20th century, the conservative wing of the Republican Party has adopted creationism as a part of a platform designed to consolidate their support in southern and Midwestern states—the "red" states. In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in seven states included explicit demands for the teaching of "creation science". There is no major political party in Europe or Japan that uses opposition to evolution as a part of its political platform.

Are Americans really this dumb? Do they really just beleive whatever they are told at church?? I have had more confidence in my fellow americans until now, but this kind of data is pretty depresing.

Son, Can You Honestly Deny This?

Son,

I imagine you read the headline and said some form of "Good God! What's he done now!". In fact, I'd be willing to bet good money that you didn't want to read this post at all, much less this far into it. Congratulations on your courage and fortitude. I know it could not have been easy. It would have been simpler to ignore this whole post and get on with your life...

Well, simpler perhaps, but not easier. You would have been curious as to what I had done. Dreading perhaps the humiliation that could spring upon you unawares as you became a reluctant internet celebrity, or worse, having to explain to the Mormons on a bright Tuesday morning that while yes they are very nice, no you are not interested in finding out more about the Lord (as promised to them in that nice latter your father sent), and yes, he really does have some kind of brain problem about to be solved by you, your friend Remington Model 600 Magnum and the second amendment. Or perhaps it was simple curiosity to see just what the old man thinks normal adult behavior looks like these days. Certainly that discussion he had with the judge was illuminating if not, ultimately, productive.

Well, enough about that, you know how I go on. Now to the heart, as they say, of the matter.

Son, can you, in all honesty say to me that you've never done this???

Can you?

I thought not.

Ignore Me!

My New Motto

Thanks PZ

Blogging the Bible

When I was a Freshman in college, I decided to read the Bible for myself. As a newly minted atheist, I was partly convinced that it was actually quite tolerable and it was the priesthood that screwed everything up by trying to monopolize power. In other words, I was willing to give agnosticism another go if there was some hint that god might really, objectively exist and it was religion's fault the worked was so messed.

The experiment ended a few months later with me firmly and irrevocably in the atheist camp, Having read the Bible, it seem completely unarguable that it was written by humans trying to justify their rule over other humans by playing on their fears and prejudices. Yeah, Jesus had some good ideas waaaaay ahead of his time, but he was really the first Homo Sapiens among the Cro-Magnon.

This is an interesting passage in Slate’s Blogging the Bible series that illustrates the point perfectly.

This may be the first recorded example of what has become the fundamental conflict in all religions: religious elite vs. the people. (See, for example, the pope vs. Martin Luther.) Korah asks an essential question: Why should the few priests and prophets monopolize God? What's so great about them that they control access to the divine? In the 3,500 years since, many religions have come down on Korah's side of this question, deciding that God belongs to the masses, not an anointed elite. But the Bible doesn't. It rules emphatically—smitingly—for Moses and Aaron, for the few rather than the many.

Moses challenges the rebels to a divine duel. Korah and his 250 followers are to show up (at dawn, of course) with their firepans. Then, Moses says, the Lord will choose who is holy. The next morning, they all gather outside the Tabernacle—not just the 250 rebels, but also the entire Israelite community, which now supports them. This is a very bad mistake on the Israelites' part. Again, the Chosen People face the prospect of being seriously Un-Chosen. The Lord cautions Moses and Aaron, "Stand back from the community that I may annihilate them in an instant." But Moses once more steps in to save them, rebuking God exactly as Abraham did about Sodom: "When one man sins, will You be wrathful to the whole community?" God agrees not to kill everyone but orders the Israelites to stand back from the tents of Korah and two other rebel leaders.

No question about it. Humans writing for other humans. Nothing divinely inspired here. It reminds me of a version of the crypto adage, “Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by simple stupidity”, in this case, “Never ascribe to the Divine what can be explained by the Corrupt”

The Cult of Skaro

Perfect.

If you don't get it, dont worry. It just means you're normal.

Pushing the Reset Button

This is a very cool animation of what would happen if the Earth were struck by a large asteroid. If anything, I think it underestimates the damage, although just about the time I thought, "hey! there won't be any liquid water left!", the seas dried up. I'm also not sure the post-collision shape of the planet is correct. The relaxation time for the collision should be a few thousand years I think.

Anyway, enjoy!

Bleaaaauuurrrrrrgh!

Here's what you should do:
1) Click the link below
2) Look at the picture
3) Study the picture to figure out why it's so familiar and notice the lacy bra on the statue
4) Realize who this is and what it means (perferably while reading the text)
5) Bleaaaauuurrrrrrgh!

6) Laugh

Ready?
Go!




You're still here. You dont trust me, do you?
Wise.

Also, if you get the Dr. Manhatten reference without clicking the link to wiki, take 2 points from my "hold them in higher esteem" jar.

Lesbian Ann Coulter

and this time I dont' mean my son's roommate*. Remember folks, you heard it here first almost 2 years ago!

Tammy Bruce — conservative writer, former president of NOW in Los Angeles, former KFI-AM radio talk show host — is said to be a lover of Ann Coulter. Bruce has always disclosed on her radio show that she is a full-on lesbian. It’s said that Coulter and Bruce were seen at a women’s bar on “little Santa Monica Blvd” called Palms just west of La Cienega in West Hollywood. For her to trash Bill Clinton about him being gay seems strange, unless you recall Newt Gingrich pushing “family values” when he has had three wives and was dating his third wife while married to his first wife.

I guess the fact that I'm quoting Wonkette isn't really a plus here, is it?

*as part of a long standing joke, I refer to my son's straight, male roommate as "Lesbian Ann Coulter". The roommate is, as far as I know, completely unaware of this name and really has nothing to do with the joke. Further proof that's it's harder than it looks to be my child.