tqa | February 2, 2009
Google just released a major upgrade to Google Earth that includes some features that science enthusiasts are going to love. Besides the regular Earth stuff, new layers have been added that cover Earth's oceans and the planet Mars.
Image copyright Google 2009)
The new stuff is undoubtedly going to chew up thousands of person-hours in the workplace over the next few days, resulting in a major drop in productivity and sending the economy spinning further into recession going to be a lot of fun to explore. Just trying to use the flight simulator feature in Google Mars could be a major time…
tqa | February 2, 2009
Both the economic stimulus plan passed by the House and the plan passed by the Senate have quite a bit of funding for scientific research. As most of you know, scientific research is near and dear to my heart, and I'm generally in favor of spending lots of money trying to learn new things. For today, though, I'm going to set aside my usual criteria for evaluating scientific spending (more money = more better), and look at some of these proposals in terms of their effect as economic stimulus.
There are quite a few different sections of the stimulus that contain funding for science. For now…
tqa | January 31, 2009
The first thing I thought when I saw the "Lawsuit argues Clinton ineligible for state post" headline was, "what group of wingnut wackaloons suffers from a case of Clinton Derangement Syndrome severe enough to cause them to file this suit?" The very next thought to cross my mind was "gotta be Judicial Watch." Surprisingly enough, I was right.
tqa | January 30, 2009
I'm rereading "Guards! Guards!" right now, and I just came across this quote:
But incompetents with possibilities, nevertheless. Let the other societies take the skilled, the hopefuls, the ambitious, the self-confident. He'd take the whining resentful ones, the ones with a bellyful of spite and bile, the one who knew they could make it big if only they'd been given the chance. Give him the ones in which floods of venom and vindictiveness were dammed up behind thin walls of ineptitude and low-grade paranoia.
Is it just me, or is this a good description for a large chunk of a current…
tqa | January 30, 2009
Pareidolia - the phenomenon where our brain is somehow tricked into recognizing vague shapes as significant features - gets mentioned now and then on ScienceBlogs. The usual trigger for this occurs when someone tries to sell the Wonderbread Virgin Mary on Ebay before the blue mold completely erases her from the slice, or when one of our more monomaniacal colleagues sees something that he can associate with the New Atheism.
Interestingly, it seems that human-programed face recognition software may be as subject to these issues as our own face recognition is. The latest version of Apple's…
tqa | January 30, 2009
In his Inaugural Address, President Obama announced that he will "restore science to its rightful place." And scientists around the world wept for joy. The era of government meddling with science is over. All we need to do is fund embryonic stem cell research, take decisive action to curb global warming, protect more than three or four endangered species, reverse a couple of other little problems, and everything will be good. Right?
No.
Restoring science to its proper place in public policy does not mandate that we make any of those changes. In fact, it doesn't require that we make…
tqa | January 29, 2009
In today's political news, Karl Rove just compared himself to an aggressive and hard-to-harpoon whale.
tqa | January 29, 2009
Over at the Bad Astronomy Blog, Phil highlights a picture of one of our neighboring galaxies. If you don't click on any other link today, you should go look at this one - it's absolutely gorgeous.
As part of the ongoing International Year of Astronomy celebration, the Hubble Telescope folks are letting people vote on a target. There are a bunch of choices, they all look good, and I can't wait to see the final result. Go vote.
tqa | January 28, 2009
I might have mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again: if you want to know what got me actively working on a political campaign last year, it was the cumulative "final straw" effect of some Congressional Republicans who saw fit to question the "Americanism" and "patriotism" of their political opponents. Well, I'm definitely an opponent of the Republicans, and I was really, really, really sick of having my patriotism and commitment to America questioned, so I finally got off my butt and started to work for change.
I mention this because I just found the following gem of a…
tqa | January 28, 2009
Yesterday, I had to modify a post on this blog shortly after publishing it. I had quoted material from a Politico.com story, and it turned out that Politico had made a very large error. Georgia Rep. Phil Gingery had given them a quote that was highly critical of Rush Limbaugh, and they somehow or another managed to attribute that quote to Rep. Tom Price instead.
Not only did they get the quote wrong in the article, they also apparently told Rush that Tom Price was talking about him. Here's a paragraph from the original version of the Politico article in question:
Asked to respond to…
tqa | January 27, 2009
Remember how people were talking about it being a bad idea for Obama to single out Rush Limbaugh by name? As it turns out, the President seems to be walking away from that one clean. The political right? Not so much.
Politico just reported that a full-on pissing match between the radio commentator and Congressional Republicans seems to be developing:
Responding to President Obamaâs recommendation to Republican congressional leaders last week that they not follow Limbaughâs lead, the conservative talkmeister said on his show that Obama is âobviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch…
tqa | January 27, 2009
After reading a lot of different smart people try to explain why President Obama's attempts to reach some sort of bipartisan deal on the stimulus bill is a bad idea, I started to think about writing a post explaining why this really does make sense. Fortunately for me, Al Giordano was writing while I was thinking, which saves me a lot of trouble:
Rather, he's setting them up under the glare of the mass media to be seen as the unreasonable party in contrast to what everybody watching him on TV is going to view as reasonable and respectful. In sum, he's using them as props, and turning their…
tqa | January 27, 2009
A little while ago, while I idly browsing through various mentions of the weatherizing provisions in the economic stimulus bill, I came across this beautiful example of compassion:
Nothing stimulates the economy like government funding, at the expense of working Americans, for layabouts who can't be bothered to weatherize their own homes.
For the time being, let's set aside the assertion that a family of four making $30,000 per year are "layabouts", and not "working Americans". Instead, let's look at the "can't be bothered" thing.
As I pointed out earlier, a family that spends $2,500…
tqa | January 27, 2009
Back at the end of last week, I took a couple of minutes to make fun of House Minority Whip Eric Cantor's rather bizarre assertion that providing money to help poor people weatherize their homes won't stimulate the economy or create jobs. Since then, I've taken a much more detailed look at the program, and I've begun to realize not only just how good an idea this particular part of the stimulus package is, but also just how many different ways this is smart.
Here's the proposal as it stands right now:
$6,200,000,000 shall be for the Weatherization Assistance Program under part A of title…
tqa | January 23, 2009
Dear National Republican Congressional Committee:
After reading a couple of very interesting blog posts today, I took a look at your website. It only took me a minute or two to identify some of your party's biggest problems. I know you didn't ask for my advice, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. I have to. I firmly believe that a healthy and loyal opposition party is vitally important to the success of any democracy, so I would be failing in my patriotic duty if I did not.
Your first and most obvious problem may be the hardest to fix: You Have No Issues!!!
Seriously, that's not…
tqa | January 22, 2009
I understand that the following might not be exactly in tune with President Obama's desire for increased civility in Washington, but then I'm not in Washington.
It would appear, based on news reports, that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor is objecting to part of the economic stimulus plan for a reason that strikes me as a bit odd:
Cantor said Republicans worry that much of the plan that Democrats are pushing "does not stimulate the economy." He singled out a provision for weatherizing poor people's homes, causing it a worthy goal but saying it does nothing to create new jobs.
That's…
tqa | January 21, 2009
My last prediction seems to have worked out OK. Let's try another one. President Obama re-swore the oath of office tonight just to be safe and head off the tinfoil hat brigade. According to the pool report, he did not use a Bible for the do-over.
Would anyone like to bet on which right wing blog is going to go the most completely insane on that the fastest? Also, would anyone like to make any wagers on how long it will take for the no-bible retake to be touted as evidence that (a) Obama really is a secret Muslim; (b) Obama really is the anti-Christ; or (c) both of the above?
Note that I'…
tqa | January 20, 2009
Some predictions:
1: Within the next week, at least one member of the tinfoil hat brigade will start to pitch a fit about how Obama's not really President, because he didn't really take the real oath.
2: It's more likely than not that someone (maybe the same person, maybe not) will claim that this is somehow or another tied to the whole "he's not a real American citizen" lunacy.
3: At least one of the nuts will try to file a lawsuit, and will probably try to demand that Roberts recuse himself due to his own involvement.
Anyone want to bet against any of those?
tqa | January 20, 2009
I don't know what says "change" better to a geek than this:
11:10 am
12:02 pm:
tqa | January 20, 2009
MSNBC is reporting that, as of 7 am, over 200,000 people had taken the DC metro in to the city. The mall is so well filled that I'm having a hard time seeing any empty space between the capitol and the Washington Monument.
I'm going to do some very conservative crowd size estimates right now. I'm going to go to Google Earth, and look at the space available. I'm just going to include the grassy areas on the mall (not the paths), and I'm only going to measure as far back as the Washington monument.
Space available (in square feet):
3rd Street to 4th Street: 89,250
4th Street to 7th Street…