Links for 2010-04-22

Why didn't I try-- oh, right. Because Kate has integrity, as do I. That's why.

"I think of the future frequently - and more often than not I think it could come sooner. But sometimes I am stunned when I read things I've been talking about actually become reality."

At what point does "New planet completely unlike anything in existing models of planet formation" stop being a good hook for a news release?

"Email has existed in some version since the 1970s, as have pagers. If Chief Justice Roberts doesn't understand the difference by now, he never will. There's no reason to expect Justice Stephens (who celebrates his 90th birthday today) to be expert in these technologies, but it is to be hoped that whoever comes to replace him will have that knowledge. The expectations of privacy associated with new technologies like Facebook, access to ubiquitous encryption, and the growing mobility of internet appliances, to name a few, are issues sure to confront the Court in years to come. The next Justice will play a key role in ensuring that the Court keeps on top of these developments, and that the rulings of the Court neither hinder new technologies nor allow corporations or the government to abuse citizens and our rights online."

I'm pretty sure this was part of my undergrad thesis project.

"The blogosphere represents a new kind of deliberative space that is both enlarging and constraining public discourse in unprecedented ways. The key factor about this space, the issue this workshop seeks to explore, is its lack of norms. It is an unruly space in the sense that there are no rules of entry, access, or conduct, except for extreme forms of behavior that are positively illegal. The consequences of this unruliness have been specially severe for scientific communication, which depends on common standards of truth-telling and civility for its progress. In turn, the erosion of scientific standards destabilizes the foundations of democratic deliberation. Can norms of discourse be inserted into the blogosphere that would advance science and democracy? Can blogs induce deliberation or must they encourage extremism and rage to the detriment of public reason? Is science helped or hurt by the new media?..."

"I'll just state the conclusions [from the Virtuosi]: if the laser pulse has energy roughly comparable to a bullet, the momentum imparted to the gun will be tiny - on the order of 10^6 times smaller than that even of the gently-recoiling .22 LR. But the emission of the light happens over a very short period of time, perhaps a few nanoseconds in the case of the "typical" movie laser with a beam of visibly short length.* Force is change in momentum divided by time (say, a few nanoseconds), so carrying out this calculation gives a force of around 15 N, though only for those few nanoseconds. This is macroscopic, and perhaps comparable to the force on the butt end of a .22 rifle. But on the other hand, the rifle is applying this force for a few hundred milliseconds, not for the factor of a million shorter time that the laser is firing. Can this still be felt?"

"I bloody hate Earth Day. No offense to those of you who love it, and I know there are some awesome Earth Day programs out there, but by the time we get there, I'm spending my days hiding under the covers, because every freakin' time I open my email inbox a wave of the most nauseating spew of greenwashing comes flowing out."