Excellently done. The universe is not your friend.
(via)
Friday, November 10, 2006
That's Pure Distilled Evil Coming Out Your Ass
Don't let Satan tempt you!
The part where they handed him the newspaper after chruch had me in stitches!
The part where they handed him the newspaper after chruch had me in stitches!
Once and for all, it's called Pop!
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop." | |
| The Northeast | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The South | |
| The Midland | |
| North Central | |
| Boston | |
| The West | |
| What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes | |
I'll Miss You Pink Sugar
She was the gift that kept on giving, the Dan Qualye of her generation and I, for one, will miss her.
Bye Kitty!
Bye Kitty!
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
All of the People, All of the Time
I thought it was P.T. Barnum, but it turns out to be Lincoln
What can I say about the election? It matched my highest, rational expectations. It was the right verdict, for the right reasons and I couldn't be happier. However, as my son has pointed out, it's just a question of time before they dissapoint, and I start voting GOP again.
A few notes:
The Diebold people at my conference were up all night. I predict the VA race will go to Webb because they have explained to Sen. Allen that they cannot produce new paper ballots. Many, many, many times, they have explained it. He's starting to get that "live by the sword, die by the sword" thing. He'll concide within 24 hours.
Civility may return to politics. Some things may again be off limits. I hope the dems dont impeach President Bush unless there are actual crimes. Lying to Congress is a crime, btw, even if that Congress winked and nodded at the time.
The president is, in fact, fucked. 2 years to go and a hostile environment. He may rise to the challenge, but his history says otherwise. I hope, for all our sakes, we don't make him the focus of the next 24 months. The best possible way to repudiate his actions is to deny him the attention and perfrom admirably.
Lincoln Cafee, I'm so sorry. I like you, I think you deserve high office, but I would have voted against you if I were still in Rhode Island. You are a co-dependent enabler and, despite your hihgly respectable positions, you allow the GOP to use you. If it were less close in either direction, I would have recommended a vote for you, but it's not.
The real tragedy is.... you would do the same.
That's it. In my opinion, America woke up, at least for a brief time. It's up to the Dems to govern for get voted out, Good Luck folks.
What can I say about the election? It matched my highest, rational expectations. It was the right verdict, for the right reasons and I couldn't be happier. However, as my son has pointed out, it's just a question of time before they dissapoint, and I start voting GOP again.
A few notes:
The Diebold people at my conference were up all night. I predict the VA race will go to Webb because they have explained to Sen. Allen that they cannot produce new paper ballots. Many, many, many times, they have explained it. He's starting to get that "live by the sword, die by the sword" thing. He'll concide within 24 hours.
Civility may return to politics. Some things may again be off limits. I hope the dems dont impeach President Bush unless there are actual crimes. Lying to Congress is a crime, btw, even if that Congress winked and nodded at the time.
The president is, in fact, fucked. 2 years to go and a hostile environment. He may rise to the challenge, but his history says otherwise. I hope, for all our sakes, we don't make him the focus of the next 24 months. The best possible way to repudiate his actions is to deny him the attention and perfrom admirably.
Lincoln Cafee, I'm so sorry. I like you, I think you deserve high office, but I would have voted against you if I were still in Rhode Island. You are a co-dependent enabler and, despite your hihgly respectable positions, you allow the GOP to use you. If it were less close in either direction, I would have recommended a vote for you, but it's not.
The real tragedy is.... you would do the same.
That's it. In my opinion, America woke up, at least for a brief time. It's up to the Dems to govern for get voted out, Good Luck folks.
Tradesports Election
So I missed several opportunities last night to make some money on the GOP Senate control options. It swung wildly between 50-70% in favor of GOP control during the evening, and was at 86% when I went to bed. This morning, it's at 15%. This is based on the outstanding races in VA and MT, both of which are very close. VA I'm predicting will go for the Dems based on the uncounted absentee ballots which were tending strongly Dem. MT, no prediction.
Many opps to short the GOP last night, but alas, I let them slide.
BTW, the Diebold people were a little worried yesterday. I think today they are going to be more so. In VA and MT it's going to go to a recount, both of which in the past have worked to GOP advantage. In their paperless machines, "recount" just means re-checking the totals. I suspect if the GOP starts losing recounts, we are going to see bipartisan calls for the re-tooling of the Diebold machines.
It was an interesting night
Many opps to short the GOP last night, but alas, I let them slide.
BTW, the Diebold people were a little worried yesterday. I think today they are going to be more so. In VA and MT it's going to go to a recount, both of which in the past have worked to GOP advantage. In their paperless machines, "recount" just means re-checking the totals. I suspect if the GOP starts losing recounts, we are going to see bipartisan calls for the re-tooling of the Diebold machines.
It was an interesting night
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Odds
Currrently tradesports has the election handicapped as a 80-85% chance of a Dem house and a 30% chance of a Dem Senate. So, assuming these probabilities are independent (they are not) and that the Central Limit Theroem holds, (it definately does not), the odds of a Dem Congress are .8*.3 = .24 or about 4 to 1 against. The odds for a GOP Congress is .2*.7 = .14 or about 7 to 1 against. That leaves a 62% (.56 for Dem house, GOP Den, .06 for GOP House, Dem Senate)chance of a split congress.
I can live with that.
Unfortuantely all the assumptions of independence are wrong.
I can live with that.
Unfortuantely all the assumptions of independence are wrong.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Diebold
Looks like I will be spending Election Day with the Diebold security team. Should be very, very interesting. Details Wednesday.
Wired
I've been on he road all week and had exhausted the two books I brought with me, The Laides of Grace Adieu and Fragile Things. With 3 hours of plane travel ahead of me, I picked up a bunhc of magazines including the seldom read(by me) Wired. Not too shabby actually. I bought it for the article on atheism, but was delighed by the following: 6 word stories
The online article has a bunch of versions which didn't get printed, but the print version has them presented in some very interesting artisitic styles. Overall, I think the print version wins.
The online article has a bunch of versions which didn't get printed, but the print version has them presented in some very interesting artisitic styles. Overall, I think the print version wins.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Worst Websites... Ever!
We get suchs gems as:
An endoresement from a dog
ALL CAPS TEXT
A nice picture of a pig's nose (I think)
bareass HTML
and a recipe for "Easy, Killer Margaritas"
My Space? no. AOL? Perish the thought. Craig's list? they wish they were this sophisticated. No, these are people running for office!
An endoresement from a dog
ALL CAPS TEXT
A nice picture of a pig's nose (I think)
bareass HTML
and a recipe for "Easy, Killer Margaritas"
My Space? no. AOL? Perish the thought. Craig's list? they wish they were this sophisticated. No, these are people running for office!
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Michael J Fox Ad
I've always had a secret affinity for Michael. We're about the same age, approximately the same build and he's always played characters I could relate to. I was more than a little surprised and saddened when I found he's got Parkinson's, then a few years later was more than surprised when it became a possible diagnosis for me.
He's running an ad in Missouri on an issue he backs, stem cell research, to which I say, "good for him". The question in the media is, was he off his meds when he did it?
The answer is: absolutely not. This is what you look like when the treatment for Parkinson's is successful. When it's not, you look much, much worse. Depending on how far down the path he is, he might not be able to move or speak at all if he were off his meds.
Take a good look, this is the difference between a treatment and a cure. Just like diabetes, just like Alzheimer’s, just like MS (but unlike ALS where there isn't even a treatment), it's a long term, disabling disease, and the treatments are quite crude.
Will stem cells cure him? No. Will they help? No. Do we know that they will ever work? No. Stem cells might be a dead end, like so many other kinds of scientific research. Still, it's the best we have at the moment.
Do I think he should have made the commercial? Sure, why not? It's a cause he believes in, presented in an honest way. Let the marketplace decide.
And, btw, I think the whole "meds" question is a red herring. The presumption is that if he were "on meds" he'd look just fine and that if he were off he'd be somehow "faking". This is the Fallacy of False Choice. Off meds he looks bad, on meds he looks bad differently, either way there is no deception here, just his choice of how to appear.
He's running an ad in Missouri on an issue he backs, stem cell research, to which I say, "good for him". The question in the media is, was he off his meds when he did it?
The answer is: absolutely not. This is what you look like when the treatment for Parkinson's is successful. When it's not, you look much, much worse. Depending on how far down the path he is, he might not be able to move or speak at all if he were off his meds.
Take a good look, this is the difference between a treatment and a cure. Just like diabetes, just like Alzheimer’s, just like MS (but unlike ALS where there isn't even a treatment), it's a long term, disabling disease, and the treatments are quite crude.
Will stem cells cure him? No. Will they help? No. Do we know that they will ever work? No. Stem cells might be a dead end, like so many other kinds of scientific research. Still, it's the best we have at the moment.
Do I think he should have made the commercial? Sure, why not? It's a cause he believes in, presented in an honest way. Let the marketplace decide.
And, btw, I think the whole "meds" question is a red herring. The presumption is that if he were "on meds" he'd look just fine and that if he were off he'd be somehow "faking". This is the Fallacy of False Choice. Off meds he looks bad, on meds he looks bad differently, either way there is no deception here, just his choice of how to appear.
E.T., Where are You?
There is an interesting debate over at PZ Myers site on the development of extraterrestrial intelligence. It's quite illuminating in a lot of ways, but I was struck by this insight:
What Percentage of Planets on Which Life Has Originated Will Produce Intelligent Life?
Physicists, on the whole, will give a different answer to this question than biologists. Physicists still tend to think more deterministically than biologists. They tend to say, if life has originated somewhere, it will also develop intelligence in due time. The biologist, on the other hand, is impressed by the improbability of such a development.
Personally, I remain optimistic about the chances of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, especially in light of progress in the last century on gravity. I would like to believe (but cannot objectively prove) that we're only a few decades away from a theory of inertial mass. Should such a formalism arise, we'd be well placed to build vehicles capable of interstellar flight.
However, this is an article of faith, not one of reason. The full critique is interesting and, although I can pick apart some of it, I reach a similar conclusion when I rebuild the argument with my corrections: i.e. intelligent, space-faring civilizations may not overlap in terms of space and time. The galaxy may only hold one or two at a time, separated by vast stretches of astronomical time. A million years is nothing in terms of astronomy, yet I can't imagine what future, if any, the human race has in that timeframe.
They may be out there, and they may be far more advanced than us, but if so, I can’t imagine them wanting to talk.
What Percentage of Planets on Which Life Has Originated Will Produce Intelligent Life?
Physicists, on the whole, will give a different answer to this question than biologists. Physicists still tend to think more deterministically than biologists. They tend to say, if life has originated somewhere, it will also develop intelligence in due time. The biologist, on the other hand, is impressed by the improbability of such a development.
Personally, I remain optimistic about the chances of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, especially in light of progress in the last century on gravity. I would like to believe (but cannot objectively prove) that we're only a few decades away from a theory of inertial mass. Should such a formalism arise, we'd be well placed to build vehicles capable of interstellar flight.
However, this is an article of faith, not one of reason. The full critique is interesting and, although I can pick apart some of it, I reach a similar conclusion when I rebuild the argument with my corrections: i.e. intelligent, space-faring civilizations may not overlap in terms of space and time. The galaxy may only hold one or two at a time, separated by vast stretches of astronomical time. A million years is nothing in terms of astronomy, yet I can't imagine what future, if any, the human race has in that timeframe.
They may be out there, and they may be far more advanced than us, but if so, I can’t imagine them wanting to talk.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Chuck Norris isn't as dumb as a Brick, He's as Dumb as ALL the Bricks in Boston!
Appearently, Chuck doesn't get it:
"While I have as much fun as anyone else reading and quoting them, let’s face it, most “Chuck Norris Facts” describe someone with supernatural, superhuman powers. They’re describing a superman character. And in the history of this planet, there has only been one real Superman. It’s not me."
Sadly, he’s not talking about Superman. Though I suppose he could be, since the rest of this article is how he believes in magic because he saw it in a book somewhere. Just not a comic book. Though it might have had illustrations.
Chuck Norris Facts
(via)
"While I have as much fun as anyone else reading and quoting them, let’s face it, most “Chuck Norris Facts” describe someone with supernatural, superhuman powers. They’re describing a superman character. And in the history of this planet, there has only been one real Superman. It’s not me."
Sadly, he’s not talking about Superman. Though I suppose he could be, since the rest of this article is how he believes in magic because he saw it in a book somewhere. Just not a comic book. Though it might have had illustrations.
Chuck Norris Facts
(via)
Monday, October 23, 2006
and Any Day in Which You Learn Something Cant Be Bad
so any day in which you learn more, must be better!
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Antimatter Driven Sail for Deep Space Missions
NIAC was one of the projects I worked on in grad school in my Advanced Planetary Sciences class. My proposal was a combination of 3-body gravity assits (i.e. slingshot effects) and solar sails. It got you to the outer solar system in about 3 years and to the ISM in about 15.
This idea though, seems exceedingly clever and takes the solar sail idea up a notch. The basic idea is to build a sail embedded with fissile uranium, build an antimatter source and then throw antiprotons at the sail to cause the uranium to undergo fission. Total amount of antimatter needed to reach the ISM? 30 milligrams. (that seems small, but truthfully it's an enormous amount. 30 milligrams is ~ 2x10^21 antiprotons, and a typical accelerator will produce 10^5 or so per reaction).
The primary question relative to the performance of this concept is the momentum delivered to the sail by the fission of the uranium. If just the two fission products are released then the momentum is determined by the velocity and mass of one of the products. The antimatter induced fission of uranium produces a spectrum of masses. The width of this distribution, however, is relatively narrow and can be approximated by using palladium-111 as the average fission product. The energy released in the fission is taken to be 190 MeV. Thus, the velocity of the fission product is 1.39x10^7 m/s and the mass is 1.85x10^-25 kg/atom. The velocity would equate to a specific impulse of 1.4 million seconds.
It's actually more complicated than that, and the proposal goes into much more detail. I have some questions though about the secondary particle decay chains.
It's an interesting concept.
This idea though, seems exceedingly clever and takes the solar sail idea up a notch. The basic idea is to build a sail embedded with fissile uranium, build an antimatter source and then throw antiprotons at the sail to cause the uranium to undergo fission. Total amount of antimatter needed to reach the ISM? 30 milligrams. (that seems small, but truthfully it's an enormous amount. 30 milligrams is ~ 2x10^21 antiprotons, and a typical accelerator will produce 10^5 or so per reaction).
The primary question relative to the performance of this concept is the momentum delivered to the sail by the fission of the uranium. If just the two fission products are released then the momentum is determined by the velocity and mass of one of the products. The antimatter induced fission of uranium produces a spectrum of masses. The width of this distribution, however, is relatively narrow and can be approximated by using palladium-111 as the average fission product. The energy released in the fission is taken to be 190 MeV. Thus, the velocity of the fission product is 1.39x10^7 m/s and the mass is 1.85x10^-25 kg/atom. The velocity would equate to a specific impulse of 1.4 million seconds.
It's actually more complicated than that, and the proposal goes into much more detail. I have some questions though about the secondary particle decay chains.
It's an interesting concept.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Candidate seeks textbooks as shields
wow
OKLAHOMA CITY --A candidate for state superintendent of schools said Thursday he wants thick used textbooks placed under every student's desk so they can use them for self-defense during school shootings.
"People might think it's kind of weird, crazy," said Republican Bill Crozier of Union City, a teacher and former Air Force security officer. "It is a practical thing; it's something you can do. It might be a way to deflect those bullets until police go there."
Crozier and a group of aides produced a 10-minute video Tuesday in which they shoot math, language and telephone books with a variety of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9mm pistol. The rifle bullet penetrated two books, including a calculus textbook, but the pistol bullet was stopped by a single book.
---
Crozier's experiment began with shots fired at a calculus textbook from an AK-47 Russian-style assault rifle. The shot penetrated two textbooks at once.
"We need to look at protection of young people that sometimes people may think you are a little smarter than everybody else or a higher IQ or whatever. They need to look at what the end result would be," Crozier said.
My suggestion: Give the candidate a calculus book, give his opponent a gun, and test this! Seems only scientific!
Video of Republicans shooting science books here
I have a better idea, lets give them bibles for this instead.
OKLAHOMA CITY --A candidate for state superintendent of schools said Thursday he wants thick used textbooks placed under every student's desk so they can use them for self-defense during school shootings.
"People might think it's kind of weird, crazy," said Republican Bill Crozier of Union City, a teacher and former Air Force security officer. "It is a practical thing; it's something you can do. It might be a way to deflect those bullets until police go there."
Crozier and a group of aides produced a 10-minute video Tuesday in which they shoot math, language and telephone books with a variety of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9mm pistol. The rifle bullet penetrated two books, including a calculus textbook, but the pistol bullet was stopped by a single book.
---
Crozier's experiment began with shots fired at a calculus textbook from an AK-47 Russian-style assault rifle. The shot penetrated two textbooks at once.
"We need to look at protection of young people that sometimes people may think you are a little smarter than everybody else or a higher IQ or whatever. They need to look at what the end result would be," Crozier said.
My suggestion: Give the candidate a calculus book, give his opponent a gun, and test this! Seems only scientific!
Video of Republicans shooting science books here
I have a better idea, lets give them bibles for this instead.
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