Thu, 24 August 2006 9:01 pm Comments (0)

The politics of Pluto

While it was interesting to see astronomy be front-page news for a few days, I can’t help but shake my head over the tribulations about the status of Pluto over the past few days. For what it’s worth, I think the IAU’s draft proposal that would have granted Pluto, Charon, and ‘Xena’ planet status was a valiant attempt to craft something that was reasonably objective…yet I also see the merit in its redesignation since it certainly seems a breed apart from the ‘official’ planets.

Yet, I wish the IAU had done a little more of this behind closed doors, announcing the final decision rather than the dramatic, back-and-forth of ‘yes, we think it is’ followed by ‘nah, never mind, it isn’t’ just a few days later. Granted, this is how science works: discussion, debate, and often decisions based on less than clear-cut criteria. However, many in the public expect that scientists have definitive answers–indeed, that a clear definition of planet had never been established was news enough to many people! This expectation is perhaps unjustified, but I’m mildly fearful that this recent squabble may muddy the waters and give further ammunition to those anti-scientific groups who already are showing a distressing amount of influence.

Hopefully it will all blow over. Besides, many will continue to look for Pluto, Ceres, and other dots in the sky no matter how the IAU decides to classify them.

Reading list

Categories: astronomy
Thu, 2 March 2006 10:56 pm Comments (0)

Links, lauds, and lashings

Categories: astronomy, Chicago, politics, imagery
Wed, 11 January 2006 10:56 pm Comments (0)

Scientific beauty

Early in the day I came across a nice rundown of the top ten most beautiful science experiments. An impressive list, albeit the beauty is perhaps of an esoteric nature (nifty animated graphics aside!).

It got better a little later, as over at the AAS meeting was revealed a new Hubble image of sidewalk-astronomy favorite M42 sure to impress the intelligentsia and masses alike:

HST image of Great Nebula in Orion

Wow, stunning! Who needs absolute answers to everything when there’s stuff like that to enjoy…and explore!

Categories: astronomy, science, imagery
Sun, 8 January 2006 12:24 pm Comments (0)

Apropos of little but themselves

The prospect of moving in the next few months has made apparent just how much five years’ worth of life in one apartment has led to overflows in our closets and storage spaces. My list of links has gotten the same way. In both cases, rather than categorizing and sorting into the major areas, the easiest place to start is to examine the little trinkets that have little connections other than my own sense of Hmm or Ooh or Heh…

Actually, I suppose those last few are related. What advocates of intelligent design, pseudosciences, and fundamentalist religious views seem to lack is the sense of wonder and excitement of ‘gaps’–it seems they are terrified by the prospect of not having a definite answer for everything right now. Real scientists and thinkers know better: the root of understanding is not knowledge but questions and analysis.

Categories: astronomy, Chicago, physics, politics, science, technology, web, wine, humor, society
Sat, 31 December 2005 11:57 am Comments (0)

Ending 2005 in Saturnian style

I thought about ending the year by going through the various clippings I’ve collected and tossing out some rants, but there will be plenty of time (and material) for that in 2006. Better to finish up with something a bit happier. Astronomy Picture of the Day pointed out that 2005 was a wonderful year of imagery and science from Saturn, so what a fitting way to end with yet another stunning colorful picture:

Categories: astronomy, imagery
Thu, 17 November 2005 11:41 pm Comments (0)

Glass musings, realistic visions

Ah, today’s the day for Beaujolais Nouveau…grape jelly in a glass, with a kick! The smooth ease of Boone’s Farm–or Kool-Aid–but with the pedigree of actual wine.
  • Last weekend’s Trib had a good article about the need for the city to work with architects and developers to ensure a proper sense of aesthetics is maintained, and I saw a good example of its lack today. On a stroll to the bank, I noticed that the stretch of Wacker across from the Merc is now dominated by four consecutive glass-and-metal towers. (Um, yeah, I’ve worked in one of them for several years and the remainder have been up for at least several months now. It’s not really news. Just you nevermind that.) Individually, each one is fine: all but 111 S Wacker have setbacks and/or curvilinear profiles, and they all have decent landscaping and atria at ground level. Yet it struck me today how overwhelming it is to have a two-block wall of polished metal and glass, it’s a bit much. Okay, so I’m biased in that I strongly prefer masonry, matte metal, and window divisions to the glass-box look, I’m sure there are those who really like the shiny-streetwall effect. But it’s hard to argue that variety is good, and it just seems a shame that the builders plunge forth with their vision without really considering how it will connect with it surroundings. Ever notice that the renderings for the next great skyscraper, office tower, or condo block always show the structure with little else but a few trees and cars about? Maybe that’s plausible downstate or in the sprawling west, but urban developers should be a bit more honest.
  • Found some impressive imagery over at Antonia Cidadao’s Lunar and Planetary Time-lapse Animations page. Definitely check out the one entitled Lunation–definitely gives the sense that the Moon is an entity, a place, not just a light in the sky.
  • More economists like this, please:
    the link between cause and effect is often not easy or obvious. Economies are constantly being affected by a myriad of economic forces, both external and domestic. As such, it is dangerous to casually say that any one particular economic force must be causing any one particular economic outcome. The world is extremely complicated, and there’s no reason to think that economic relationships are anything but extremely complicated as well.
    Is it foolish to hope we’ll every get to the point when people will stop believing the pol who claims that propserity was caused–or will be restored–by the amazing grace of policy X?
  • Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science
Categories: astronomy, Chicago, science, wine, commentary, quotes, observations, architecture, economics
Tue, 25 October 2005 11:44 pm Comments (2)

Telemarketers, crackpots, political sensibility, Saturn satellites

  • From Eric’s links comes this gem of ananti-telemarketing EGBG counterscript. Almost tempting to drop off the Do-Not Call List to try it out. Almost…but not really.
  • Here’s a nice crackpot index to help weed the good physics from the bad. Maybe we should generalize and start applying the same analysis to the nonsense spewing from the mouths of politicians, CEOs, etc.
  • Senate Rule XIV Procedures for Placing Measures Directly on the Senate Calendar
    Septemter 19, 2005:
    Mr. FRIST. Now I ask for its second reading and in order to place the bill on the calendar under rule XIV, I object to my own request.
    Okay, legislative bodies are often where common sense goes to die but…wow.
  • Kansas Law on Gay Sex by Teenagers Is Overturned
    Kansas has been in the crosshairs of ridicule for recent intelligent design silliness, but the state’s Supreme Court showed some wisdom in a ruling against a horribly discriminatory gay-sex law. From the unanimous (!) opinion:
    The moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate state interest.
    That statement needs to be engraved on the desk of every legislator, prosecutor, and judge in every jurisdiction in this country.
  • Via Kos came this set of excerpts of Brent Scrowcroft critiquing Dubya and the neocons. In reading I came to the intriguing, if somewhat disturbing, realization that the neocon ethos espoused by Paul Wolfowitz and others is less an imperialist, modern-day manifest-destiny idea than it is simply an extreme form of a mentality that most U.S. politicians–and many citizens–posess. Two of its essential concepts are that everyone loves freedom and democracy. What American could possibly argue with those points, huh? Except…well, to many people, including right here at home, the most important freedom they desire is the freedom to ensure that no one else–at least no one else they’ll ever have the need or opportunity to deal with–thinks and acts in ways of which they disapprove. Moreover, democracy isn’t necessariliy the ideal form of government, perhaps just the least bad. Arguably public affairs could be better handled philosopher-kings of proper temperment and training than by those chosen by the whims of the public at large, but in a stable, balanced society democracy has the advantage that extreme views tend to be voted out of office before they have a chance to do permanent damage. However, it works out this way because our society has long had the sense of balance and desire for consensus, not the other way around. In a society with a strong bent towards allocation of authority based on pure power or the absoute moral superiority of one group over another, democracy by itself has no mechanism to prevent tyranny of the majority. Where one group claims divine mandate to subjugate another, or multiple ethnic-religious factions have enmity dating back centuries, the introduction of a formally democractic system and the belief that the vast majority are just yearning for the freedom to live in an open, laissez-faire society are hardly guaranteed to suddenly result in well-behaved, friendly nations. We really could use less Pollyanna and more realpolitick in our foreign policy.
  • More Saturnian visual goodness, courtesy Cassini-Huygens:

Categories: astronomy, physics, politics, humor, society
Thu, 6 October 2005 9:37 pm Comments (0)

Sydney, $2 rides, wine driving, Field’s, Hyperion

My gripes and swipes return after a long Oz-induced absence! Reports of my trip Down Under start here, or if those are too much reading you can just go look at the pictures.
  • The rumblings began again today about the CTA’s desire to raise the standard fare to $2. Anyone surprised? Anyone not see this coming last May, or January, or last fall? Just raise the damn fare like should have been done last year and be done with it so we can at least have a couple years of peace before the CTA faces its next budget catastrophe! At least that way there may be some time to actually put some clueful management (and government officials) in place.
  • A Wine of Character, but How Many Miles to a Gallon?
    This wouldn’t be much of a story except for the mental picture of the French getting all tied in a knot over sandbagging some wine (and of course blaming it, at least in part, on those damn Americans). How is it that a bottle of cote-du-rhone goes for $1.40 there and $9 here? Anyway, I also found it amusing–althought slightly exasperating–to read descriptions of putting chardonnay, champagne, and pinot noir into the fuel tank, nevermind that all the good tasty bits that make any of them wine are completely removed by the time the ethanol comes out.
  • A Time For McCain?
    So the small-government right and the big-government left are equally exhausted. The only appealing political platform is good government.
    A great idea to rally behind. Unfortunately, between the legions of what’s-in-it-for-me voters and those who aren’t savvy enough to differentiate good public officials from bad (whether by analysis of rhetoric or performance), I fear that there won’t be enough collective gumption to vote proper people into office and accept the necessary sacrifices to move us from current state to ‘good government’.
  • ArchitectureChicago Plus Blog Overrun - The Death of Marshall Field’s and the Dissolution of the Sense of Place
    What saddened and irritated me about the Field’s decision was the absolute triumph of cold corporate mentality over any sense of cultural goodwill. The management decided that the intangible specialness felt by generations of Chicagoans simply couldn’t compete with the possiblity of the masses of non-Chicago management and shareholders could save a fraction of a penny per share in advertising costs. Instead, they absolutely know that I would rather save $1 per year with a much more nationally homogenized set of offerings. Wow, in the face of such amazing consideration of the wants and desires of the Chicago consumer…why would I want to give these people my business again?
  • An idea doesn’t have to be right to be important, so long as it gets people thinking in a new way.
    – Michael S. Turner on Alan Guth’s original inflation theory, S&T, November 2005
  • Cassini-Huygens flyby of Tethys and Hyperion
    Once again, Cassini provides us fantastic imagery!
Categories: astronomy, Chicago, politics, wine, rants, transit, quotes, imagery, business
Sat, 10 September 2005 4:15 pm Comments (0)

‘Discoveries’, sweetness, snack power, openness, and obscurity

Categories: astronomy, science, technology
Sun, 28 August 2005 8:52 pm Comments (0)

Second looks and double-takes

  • Women’s Rights. Gay Rights. Healthcare. Anti-Torture. Pick One.
    A good if longish rant on how the idealistic approach to politics favored by single-issue groups (and Third Parties, in my view) is fine for generating discussion but a terribly impractical method for making that final decision in the ballot booth:
    That’s all this single-issue, not-single-issue argument is about. That choice, right there, and how to make it. It’s not about “disrespecting” people, or “abandoning” people, or “not understanding the severity” of the issue. It’s about the fundamental problem with representative democracy: if you’re not your own representative, you’re by definition going to have to figure out who should be. And it’s a brutally imperfect process.
  • The prize for the worlds most redundant book title
    Scary that there’s enough demand for the book for a major house to publish it.
  • Age-Old Cures, Like the Maggot, Get U.S. Hearing
    And why not? Much of medical and pharmeceutical research amounts to finding ways to concentrate or control naturally occurring compounds and processes to affect human physiology in beneficial ways. If the natural operation of some creatures can do exactly what we want in certain situations, why shouldn’t we use these ‘medical devices’? The eww factor should only apply when such critters show up in uncontrolled ways.
  • Brain’s Own Pain Relievers At Work in Placebo Effect, Study Suggests
    Aha, it’s not just psychosomatic then. Methinks that a firmer understanding of the mechanisms by which this works could have great potential for medicine, especially for the treatment of pain.
  • In Asia, the Eyes Have It
    Always interesting to read research that yet again confirms that people’s cultures and personalities have significant effects on how they observe the world. (It underscores how much training is required to even approach looking at anything ‘objectively’.) On the other hand…why does this continue to surprise people? Taoism and Buddhism (among others) have been pointing out this effect for millenia, and quantum theory has laid it out more ’scientifically’ for nearly a century.
  • We’re No. 17! We’re No. 17!
    Um, okay, anyone who says that Chicago’s being midway down the liberal-conservative spectrum is ’surprising’ hasn’t really paid attention to this town’s politics over the last century or so. Democrats control the town because ward-machine politics gets things done, and the Dems got there first. The ‘liberal’ tendency towards lots of public services exists because providing those services helps bring in the votes. Chicago Democrats have never really staked out policy positions that strayed very far from moderate, especially in comparison with their party brethren on the coasts.
  • Medics attack use of homeopathy
    It has been established beyond doubt and accepted by many researchers, that the placebo-controlled randomised controlled trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy
    Wow…that’s pretty much an admission that homeopathy is doomed to fail any tests that follow our silly ‘conventional’ ideas of how logic, science, evidence, and data analysis. Well then, if a controlled and randomized study isn’t appropriate, what pray tell is an appropriate method?
  • GnuCash - Open Source Accounting Software
    Astounding how many questions can be answered and annoyances allayed by actually bothering to read the documentation.
Categories: astronomy, Chicago, politics, science, technology, quotes
Sat, 30 July 2005 11:14 am Comments (0)

Planet X, manned mission musings, paper fingerprints

  • Astronomers Discover “10th Planet”
    Objects of significant size in the Kuiper Belt, and even the Saturn-to-Neptune region, have been found with increasing frequency recently, and now we’ve got one that appears to be bigger than Pluto. The distinction between major and minor planets will almost certainly need to be revisited, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Pluto loses its ‘major’ designation once the generation of astronomers who keep it there for sentimental (political?) reasons have been replaced.
    Planet X amateur image
  • Over the Moon
    It behooves NASA to send the shuttle up a few more times to repair HST and maybe ferry a few more items to the space station, but after that I think it’s time to scale back our manned space program–including Moon and Mars missions–in favor of unmanned missions that provide vastly more science and engineering knowledge per dollar. Tierney puts it as succinctly as I’ve seen it:
    Sending astronauts on the shuttle isn’t worth the risk, and not simply because of its design flaws. For all its problems, the shuttles have safely returned from 98 percent of their missions, which may well be the highest success rate of any exploration program in history.The real problem with this exploration program is that it doesn’t explore anything. Three decades after going to the Moon, NASA is sending astronauts a few hundred miles above Earth to conduct high school science experiments. Can you name anything - besides repairing the Hubble Telescope - they’ve accomplished?
  • Paper’s Natural Fingerprint Could Be Built-In Passport Protection
    Just think of all the efforts we spend on technology for encryption, ID protection, and the like…yet simple things from nature not only put our efforts to shame but do so in plain sight. Ain’t science grand?
Categories: astronomy, science, technology, imagery
Wed, 6 July 2005 10:18 pm Comments (0)

Comet crash, profits for good, silly science secrecy

  • Deep Impact encounter with P/Tempel 1

    movies: impactor view   flyby craft view
    Yeah, something about them seems like cheap animation or a child’s flipbook movie, yet the real science and engineering that generated them is fascinating.
  • Profits, A Penny At a Time
    Something seems slightly dirty about looking to the poor as a profit source, but just a moment of thought reveals that it’s not such a terrible idea–and might be the most pragmatic way to get needed goods and services to the low end of the economic scale. “These success stories begin with a recognition that poor people are like everyone else — they just have less money.” They’re no less inclined to allow someone else a profit, but the price points simply must be lower. Too bad–for all involved–that most First World business types seem too enamored of margin (and unacquainted with the concept of ‘enough’) to see the value of total profit.
  • Science Sunday: “security by secrecy” and biological research
    It never ceases to amaze–or exasperate–me how unenlightened people can be regarding the implications of open, honest analysis and debate. One of the most vital steps towards understanding a subject, even (especially?) a dangerous one, is to lay out what we do and don’t know. Anything that the Bad Guys can use against us can just as easily be used for us–perhaps more so if there are more of Us than Them. Besides, it’s not like the Bad Guys are simply waiting around for us to give them ideas before they start planning their damnable plots…
Categories: astronomy, science, commentary, imagery, business
Sat, 2 July 2005 10:48 am Comments (0)

Science questions, melting ice, marketizing, Oyez

Categories: astronomy, physics, politics, science, USA, commentary, law
Wed, 22 June 2005 11:10 pm Comments (0)

Science lost, demons, sacred symbols

  • Report Says Space Program Is Lacking Money and Focus
    Not surprising, given that American exploration of space is driven by politics rather than science and engineering. At least the new NASA head is a scientist, perhaps that will at least staunch the bleeding.
  • Eye of Sauron?? Nah, just pretty clear evidence for a planet around Fomalhaut
  • No One to Demonize
    I’ve thought for a long time that the 1960s antiwar movement, at least the memorable aspects that seemed steeped in pollyannish excesses, planted the seeds for the right-wing resurgence over the last thirty years. That the lack of a similar organized movement now may contribute to the current administration’s problems is thus a fitting irony. Of course it will be years before anyone could properly gauge the impact, but its not a possibility to be lightly dismissed: political and military leaders have known for millenia that often the most effective way to defeat the opposition is simply to patiently wait for its actions and decisions to catch up.
  • House Passes Constitutional Amendment to Ban Flag Burning
    Sen. Orrin Hatch:
    I think acts of flag desecration are offensive conduct we ought to ban in the interest of protecting the greatest symbol of our country.
    Funny, I always felt that the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were the greatest symbols of our country. I certainly hope all the people who valiantly fought and died in American service did so for those things–and what they represent–rather than a particular arrangement of colors and shapes.
Categories: astronomy, politics, society, commentary, law, imagery
Sun, 12 June 2005 9:49 pm Comments (0)

Saturn, baseball, tinkering, bombast

  • Nature’s canvas: Saturn, its rings, and Mimas
    Wow! Yet another stunning image from Cassini. I especially like the color contrast between the rings and atmosphere.
  • Total Baseball
    Lots and lots of MLB stats of various kinds.
    Of all the various thoughts that could have kept me awake for a while the other night…it was the inability to remember the full lineups and rotations of the 1998 and 1984 Cubs playoff teams (inexplicably, I had the most trouble remembering CF Bob Dernier, even more than immortal righty Dick Ruthven! :). Three cheers for the World Wide Web for providing an easy way to resolve such burning issues!
  • A New Magazine’s Rebellious Credo: Void the Warranty!
    Nice writeup on O’Reilly’s Make magazine and especially the tinkerer’s spirit it attempts to channel. The zealots in the OSS-vs.-commercial software battles, from Stallman to the Microsoft marketroids, would do well to recognize that the true power and importance of Open Source is its maintenance of the spirit of curiosity and creativity.
  • No Smoking Gun
    Nevertheless, I am enjoying it, as an encouraging sign of the revival of the left. Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes a certain amount of ideological self-confidence. It takes a critical mass of citizens with extreme views and the time and energy to obsess about them. It takes a promotional infrastructure and the widely shared self-discipline to settle on a story line, disseminate it and stick to it.
    Hey, the Downing Street Memo indicates that the tactic worked for the neocons, so there’s no reason to think that other sociopolitical stripes can’t successfully use similar tactics…
Categories: astronomy, baseball, politics, technology, USA, commentary, imagery