catdynamics | March 19, 2007Bee follows up the legendary Science and Democracy and Science and Democracy II: the Hierarchy Problem with
...Science and Democracy III in which we find that there are actually types Ia, and Ib and Ic which are really part of type II before natural selection is applied to the whole process for part III
It is interesting stuff, and should provoke a lot of comment.
catdynamics | March 19, 2007The Department of Justice has released 3000 paper documents in response to the House judiciary committee request investigating the dismissal of federal US attorneys.
The committee staff have started posting the documents in 50 page blocks of scanned PDF files!, but the interesting thing is...
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is organizing a swarm of volunteers to rapidly read the documents and highlight which are of interest and which are padding
They are amazingly fast.
Glancing across the pages, it looks like about 1/3 of the documents are up, with staffers presumably putting the rest…
catdynamics | March 19, 2007via NASAwatch we have the promised March 15 statement
on how the new budget request impact NASA actuals
read 'em and weep
Highlights: 15% cut in Research and Analysis continues
GLAST and Kepler launches slipped
SIM demoted to tech development for foreseeable future
Astrobio 50% cut continued
Explorer opportunities deferred
Earth Science also gets hammered.
This is not the final word - Congress may do something, although NASA is not likely to be a high priority, and the new Science Mission director should have some discretion to shuffle priorities, but it is a very painful budget.
Why is…
catdynamics | March 19, 2007I am counter to the old saying that you can't squeeze blood from stone, having been a proud member of the Red Cross "gallon club" and counting.
But I am now not permitted to give blood in the US, as I found out on the afternoon of September 11th, thinking myself re-eligible to donate, after a minor hiatus...
Harry at Crooked Timber explains:
I too fail the following eligibility test:
From January 1, 1980, through December 31, 1996, you spent (visited or lived) a cumulative time of 3 months or more, in the United Kingdom (UK)
Now, unlike Harry I am not a vegetarian (I have reasons to…
catdynamics | March 19, 2007Chad has news of newbies at Crooked Timber
Béreubé is back!
More Dangeral Than Ever.
Cool.
As long as he doesn't start blathering on and on about hockey again.
As is well known, that is a game for girls, in skirts, on grass.
And I can say that since I am approximately 2600 miles from downtown State College and almost as far from the Canadian border.
So Phbt.
catdynamics | March 18, 2007The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a billion++ $ experiment designed to look at cosmic rays (and to have the absolutely worst set of project web pages yet discovered).
In particular it will look at the anti-matter content of cosmic rays, and angle to see if it can detect some signature of dark matter.
It is almost ready to be delivered, and will almost certainly never fly...
as reported in Science
...see, it turns out that the remaining Shuttle schedule, which is dedicated to deliveries to the International Space Station, except for the one Hubble refurbishment flight, does not actually…
catdynamics | March 17, 2007Interesting article in Science on the challenge facing Dr Stern in taking over NASA's Science Mission Directorate
Bottom line is that he is stuck with a zero-sum game and that except for some innovative cost cutting it is a game of trade-offs. Something will be cut.
An accompanying article on science and the Moon is even more brutal - there is none.
The focus is on exploration, not science, and the Lunar program will not contribute to science done on the Moon or based on the Moon - which is a pretty nasty surprise for the lunar science community who were rather happy about the return to the…
catdynamics | March 15, 2007It is friday, sunny friday, so we spontaneously ask the Mighty iPod: do we actually have Free Will?
Woosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Cry for Love - Iggy Pop
The Crossing: The Boy Done Good - Billy Bragg
The Crown: A Lover Sings - Billy Bragg
The Root: Ashes to Ashes - Bowie
The Past: Heil dir Prinz! - Mozart
The Future: Everybody Loves You Babe - Billy Bragg
The Questioner:While My Heart is Still Beating - Roxy Music
The House: Estampe - Soiree dans Grenada
The Inside: Riders on the Storm - Doors
The Outcome: Seamus - Pink Floyd
Love, Fate, Death.
But, for the zodiacly…
catdynamics | March 15, 2007MC Hawking raps
How can you compete with that...
Hrynyshyn did it first, I figured some sciblogger had to have seen it, but I heard about it over coffee...
catdynamics | March 14, 2007In the building where I usually work, there are four doors on the ground floor.
The main front door, that I usually exit during the day; a back door that I usually enter and leave at the ends of the day; and a left and right side door.
The door to the left leads to a parking lot, with no sidewalk right where the cars turn into the lot entrance, but it is closer to the post office and coffee; the door to the right leads to a nice sidewalk, but it is set back from the main road, and closer to the downtown restaurants.
Two summers ago, the front door was blocked for many weeks by road…
catdynamics | March 14, 2007I feel slightly ambivalent about this, but New York Times "Select" content is now available free for students and faculty with valid university e-mail addresses
click here if your need to read Krugman hot off the presses exceeds your moral qualms about giving NYT the info and sustaining the silly business model represented by TimeSelect
catdynamics | March 14, 2007note to self: check who else is giving talks in town that day before picking dates...
so my talk at Berkeley (LBL) was relatively lightly attended, turns out some other vaguely astro like person was speaking on campus later that day, some Brit called Stephen something, talking about cosmology, of course
the amusing thing is that the senior people tended to come to my talk, the students apparently went to Hawking's talk - I'd have done the same... and it is hard to go to two talks, especially during proposal season.
And in California it is always proposal season!
catdynamics | March 12, 2007The NASA ROSES-2007 is out.
This is the omnibus announcement of opportunity/request for proposals for most of th in-house activities for the science mission directorate - everything from evolutionary biolology through test of relativity via the moon and mars - but it doesn't include the great observatory proposals - Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra have their own solicitations and support structure.
One of the few surviving fundamental science categories, as distinct from mission oriented proposals, is the Astrophysics Theory Program - which basically covers theoretical research which is not mission…
catdynamics | March 12, 2007flicking across cnn.com, I see a propane train derailment and an oil well fire in Texas
is it heigtened awareness, broader reporting to fill cable news shows, or is there a higher incidence of petrochemical and industrial chemical accidents this year?
The EPA RMP*Info list of industrial accidents and sites is apparently confidential, although it was originally compiled for public information, but there is a summary of five year incidence in the late 90s in a public report.
Glancing through the data, there seem to be refinery/extraction accidents about once per week and transport/LNG…
catdynamics | March 12, 2007In my previous sunday night ramblings on world non-events I said there was no sign of a surge in submarine deployment
I was wrong.
Status of the Navy this morning shows a sharp increase in the number of attack submarines underway (30 now vs 18 before) and an increase in the number deployed (18 vs 14).
For those keeping count, that means 12 subs left port but are not yet "deployed" ie are in transit to somewhere. Could be a quick swirl around outside the harbour to shake off the barnacles, of course.
More than half the attact subs are underway, by the way.
That is ever so slightly worrying.…
catdynamics | March 11, 2007Bee asks: "when you write: but we missed on the deep guiding principle which tells us how to select the true theory (such as it is) and where the exact theory came from and leads to. Do you have anything specific in mind? "
Uh, yeah, sure...
er, well, I did, but the boxes of this 'ere blog were too narrow to fit it...
(I should note that one of Backreaction's recent blog entries is on an apparently non-existent topic
Bother that.
I don't know, honestly, obviously I have some ideas, but if they were even half-baked I'd write them up for GRF or something. So, here is the half-assed bloggy…
catdynamics | March 11, 2007Curious, the Iranian news agency say the Bushehr nuclear reactor is to be operational (but not fueled) on tuesday and that the fuel is to be delivered within two weeks!, but...
MEN claims Russia is co-ordinating with the US to delay startup of Bushehr (there's been this weird dispute where the Russians claim the Iranians have not paid for construction and the Iranians claim they did - cheque got lost in the post?) and the Moscow Times claims talks over the funding dispute have collapsed and that fueling is now delayed beyond Sept 2007 with no delivery this month.
Weird, something going on…
catdynamics | March 11, 2007I see the Sciblings are reading most significant science fiction and fantasy
I've read 46 of the 50 for what it is worth, never could finish "Little Big"...
I see most people are missing Cordwainer Smith, his work is mostly out of print, but the New England Science Fiction Association has a nice new edition for sale online
It is well worth reading, the short stories include some of the best written.
catdynamics | March 8, 2007It is friday morning, and happy birthday PZ!
So, we approach the mighty iPod and we ask... what does the iPod have to say about PZ?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Wie? Wie? Wie? - Mozart (Magic Flute)
The Crossing: Frosty the Snowman - Cranberry Singers
The Crown: In the Bleak Midwinter - King's Choir
The Root: Englishman in New York - Sting
The Past: Search and Destroy - the Stooges
The Future: Homenaje, Pour le Tombeau de Claude Debussy
The Questioner: Skip to My Lou
The House: Apollo 7 - Stravinsky
The Inside: This Guitar Says Sorry (Alt Version) - Billy Bragg
The…
catdynamics | March 8, 2007Nifty, nifty, nifty!
PZ now'll be fifty!
We all a poem must produce
Proper homages as we choose
Sean gets all astro logical on us so to compensate, and in honour of PZ hisself, we go to the true mystery:
what does "PZ" really mean?
And the number of the PZ is 6
And SIX shall be the number of the PZ.
Not five, or four, and absolutely not seven
Perish the thought.
Venus is the ruling planet (duh).
Best suited profession: alchemist
Body Chemistry: Mucus!
Psychic number: ...balanced yet paradoxical...
Destiny number: ...fair minded... vulnerable to criticism...
That's our PZ.
BTW I don't know…