catdynamics | October 15, 2008Joe the Plumber
h/t deLong
Wonder if the dood ever heard of slashdotting
catdynamics | October 15, 2008NASA is powering HST control electronics up again, right about now
cf nasaspaceflight.com and spaceflight.com
short version: the telescope is communicating, diagnostics look good and the switch over was today.
Science operation expected to resume by friday.
Now, if I counted correctly, even if NICMOS comes back on after its warmup (ie if the ice suspected of blocking the detectors has sublimated), the science pipeline is still going to run out - just not enough WFPC2, NIC and FGS targets queued up if the SM-4 doesn't go until Feb '09 or later.
STSCI is going to have to either revisit Cycle…
catdynamics | October 14, 2008so what happened in Iceland, where are things headed, and is it a one-off microsystem gone off the rails, or a bellwether for the developed world
Iceland was a dirt poor fish+agriculture economy, under external Danish rule until 1944 when it unilaterally declared independence, the Danes being otherwise occupied.
Over the next 40 or so year it grew a modern economy, very slowly, building a tight Scandinavian social democracy, with currency and import controls and a developing industrial economy. The export driver was fish - and fishing was, and is, relatively tightly regulated to sustain…
catdynamics | October 14, 2008Brad deLong is 'causing me to lose sleep.
The problem is theoretical economists.
As a theorist, I know that almost all theory is wrong.
Economic theory, unlike physics, only kills people indirectly, but can impact oh so many people in each experiment.
Brad outlines the Theories of the Great Depression, and the current falsification status of those theories
The good news is that Bernanke may have been right, in which case his proposed solution may help head of a depression.
Modulo Unintended Consequences and non-linear responses by people who read Bernanke's thesis and incorporate that…
catdynamics | October 14, 2008A literal reading of the NASA Authorization Act implies a significant cutback of astronomy conferences in 2009.
Warning e-mail, pending clarification, has gone out, and people have already done some canceling of planned travel.
Something bad snuck into the H.R. 6063 NASA Authorization Act (2008) [static link to pdf] during Senate/House conference (see original text here).
Specifically section 1121.
SEC. 1121. LIMITATION ON FUNDING FOR CONFERENCES.
(a) IN GENERAL- There are authorized to be appropriated not more than $5,000,000 for any expenses related to conferences, including conference…
catdynamics | October 13, 2008renowned blogger, Paul Krugman, won the Nobel Prize in Economics
for his excellent outreach effort
for being consistently mostly correct but ignored on US economic policy since 2000
for some theoretical modeling on international trade in Asia back in the '90s
Hm, I wonder if he has a permanent gig or if ScienceBlogs could sign him up, I hear he has sometimes got almost as many comments as Pharyngula... 'course he'll probably be too important and busy to blog now :-(
I'd ask if he does international consultancies, for small nations in dire economic straits, but I don't think we can afford him
catdynamics | October 12, 2008Conjure Report 1 - fixing LIBOR is out.
Something to ponder.
'cause linking is good.
catdynamics | October 10, 2008Wild friday finally at an end.
What, oh Mighty iPod, for Iceland now?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: God Only Know - Beach Boys
The Crossing: Dead Souls- Joy Division
The Crown: Two Seconds - Laura Cantrell
The Root: Mathematically Safe - Half Man Half Bisctuit
The Past: The Card Cheat - Clash
The Future: The Selecter - The Selecter
The Questioner:Lullaby (All through the night)
The House:I'm Free - Violent Femmes
The Inside: Sumar í Reykjavík
The Outcome: New York Skiffle - Half Man Half Biscuit
Wise is the iPod One.
because I'm free...
every day in every way
I'm…
catdynamics | October 10, 2008select links to ponder:
Krugman ponders lack of leadership and consensus at G7 meeting
Naked Capitalism ponders the Lehman Bros CDS auction
Steve Hsu at Information Processing has more on Lehman CDS auction - somebody is paying a couple of hundred billion or so to other people by Oct 21 - if they don't have the cash to do so, then there will be cascading defaults due to counterparty failures. Basically people making bets without having the reserves or assets to honor them in case the bet goes bad.
ex-investment banks tightening hedge fund margins?
catdynamics | October 10, 2008Julianne at CV has the latest news
To cut a long story short, they think they know what the problem is and they're going ahead with the switch to the spare "side B" electronics.
Fine Guidance Sensor astrometry programs are contuing, and I hear that NICMOS will be warmed up and they think it will come back on when the Science Data Formatter is functioning again.
Given the delay to Cycle 17 and Servicing Mission 4, don't be surprised if there is a small mid-cycle call for proposals for NICMOS and WFPC2 science only to fill the observing schedule. I'd guess either before christmas or just after…
catdynamics | October 9, 2008someone is coming to Iceland and bringing dollars!
Yoko Ono is giving the Peace Prize to the Nation
$50,000 - that's pasta for another week!
In other news:
I overlooked the obvious, there's hoarding of tampons
and, I still haven't figured out if Bills of Attainder are actually constitutional in Iceland, I'm pretty sure they used to be, but it is the kind of thing that one would think had been fixed in the last century. Or not.
catdynamics | October 9, 2008so the Astrophysical Journal, Letters has gone online/print-on-demand
and I kinda miss it, though I don't think I've actually picked up a printed copy for years
the one thing us old fogeys keep reminiscing about, is how the old paper journals were nice for browsing.
We'd wonder down to the library or reading room, and actually pick up the new journal and browse to the articles.
The nice thing about that, is that you see the other articles in the issue, or some of the adjacent ones anyway. Those may be interesting, surprising and informative in a serendipitous sort of way.
Can't do that if…
catdynamics | October 8, 2008Kaupþing, largest and last of the Icelandic commercial banks goes under
Landsbanki went under earlier this week - classic depositor run on its UK subsidiary, Icesave.
The problem came because the UK has a cap on depositor insurance, and Icesave depositors with over 50,000 pounds stood to lose their funds. The Icelandic government offered a guarantee for domestic depositors but could not offer an extended guarantee for foreign depositors - nor to should it, they took the risk when they went for the higher rate of return offered by Icesave.
The people screwed are the wholesale depositors -…
catdynamics | October 8, 2008Adler Planetarium is getting a new projector.
They are not amused that the appropriation they got to upgrade their good ol' Zeiss Mark VI projector is being used as political bait
Adler is a very nice planetarium, really, I visited them during "Pale Blue Dot III", and they deserve a Universarium IX like the Hayden or Beijing planetariums.
It is a jolly nice projector and not to be proxmired. This was a very silly thing for McCain to do.
Jotman has some more
catdynamics | October 7, 2008 [world: /$] root% fsck -f
are you sure? y
checking
6,034,932,778 files, 5,843,314,092 used, 1,253,913,456 free (67 frags, 173 blocks, 54.6% fragmentation)
bad blocks fsck not able to repair
filesystem is NOT clean
BAD SUPER BLOCK: MAGIC NUMBER WRONG
/ ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
volume America appears to be corrupted
volume Asia appears to be corrupted
volume Australia appears to be corrupted
volume Europe appears to be corrupted
unrecoverable error
please repair the system manually
[world: /$] root% fsck -f -y
reboot?
system will reboot in 27 days
waiting... waiting.... waiting…
catdynamics | October 7, 2008The people who told us
That two and two is ten
Are now trying to tell us
That two and two is five
We're trying to spend our way out of trouble
You keep buying these things but you don't need them
But as long as you're comfortable it feels like freedom
catdynamics | October 6, 2008Small asteroid hits Earth.
As predicted.
Asteroid 2008 TC3 was just discovered and found to have 99.8% probability of hitting the Earth, most likely above Sudan, this morning. As reported widely on the news.
Here is a nifty pre-impact track image of TC3 and another one
Spaceweather.com reports, after dutch meterorologist Jacob Kuiper (any relation?) notified KLM crews to lookout for fireballs, that a crew reported a flash north of their track, possibly consistent with impact.
With nifty image of plane location and possibly impact location (click through to see proper image)
h/t syzdekistan