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Keep your head to the skies

Keep your head to the skies is what the music said, so that was the message I heard. I don't know if that was right. My daughter said keeping all my long for you. I said love baby not long. We laugh at that now. A lot of messages depend on what you already heard for context and reality.

On the Men in Black, they said ever notice how beautiful the stars are? An obvious sign they were tired of their job and wished they didn't have carnal knowledge of aliens. I don't know I never look up. Where's that flashy thing. You do know a laser across the eyes will wipe out memory, careful watching that media, subliminal flashes will.............

In the Matrix Neal said no one remembers when we scorched the sky. Which brings me to my point, why life is so weird. There be multiple drapes pulled over our eyes. Each institution has a stage and we participate in their production according to their script. It is a mental play in which the words define the reality and the cast members all concur and are in cahoots. How angry we get when the cast members of another play acts as if his play has better reviews than ours. He is a star in his own mind, but then so are you, in your mind. Diversity is how to live peacefully with others on different pages of the same book. Reading or insisting on a different book is an act of war.

The scripts are real, we treat them as holy rituals and dress for the part. Meanwhile chem-trails crosshatch the sky. We should say planes are putting out pollutions in mega proportions but chem-trails are urban legend like spacecraft. It's swamp gas or water vapor. I remember the skies of my youth and airplanes of lower technology that didn't make lingering spreading linear clouds. You mean to tell me with today's efficient technology and clean fuels the sky is a woven blanket of harmless visible water vapor?

I used to walk through the same wall out of habit, I stopped because a residue left behind each time started to show signs of organizing into a new life form. LOL! Now I am concerned, is not my form who I am or is there a part of me that can not slip between space or other forms intact. I was thinking of visiting an hospice for superheros to find out what becomes of the aged.............oops, forgot, the comics are another one of those scripts. Stan still and know I am god, who said that? Another script? The powers that be have been applied in a script that disenfranchises 99.9% of the masses. 

The chaos, the still blackness, the buzzing in my ears like when a 3d sensation is produced in my headphones and I can swear the bass player is over there. Hey, it's a wiggly groove on a plastic disc, bits that mimic what was heard via electronic ears. If this present immersion would stop twerking my senses would my soul experience the real reality? Or is this the purpose of reality to inundate my senses so that my soul can experience while my spirit records, god? knows and experiences thru me/us???????? All men together is god. Oooh dude, god needs an upgrade!

I see a pattern here, wonder turns into science turns into religion. Then the question do you see what I see, you must see what I see, understand what I understand the way I do, government. We write the scripts, threaten treason or hell's damnation if we don't act in the play. In my knee-jerk reaction I cock my head back, looking deep into the depths of the hazy blue and twinkly flickers and sigh, prayer.

We think we need the opinion or perspective of a rational alien who can give an unbiased fix for our dementia. Too late, our scripts have said they are neck bitters, brain eaters, viruses, flesh mangling creatures of every sort, with war and extermination agendas and the only English phrase they know is “stupid humanoid scum.” We write the scripts that makes the whole sing, we write the scripts, we write the.....................ooh, you don't know the power of the dark side. Yeah we do!

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The Whitewashing of Hollywood

Whitewashing Was One Of Hollywood's Worst Habits. So Why Is It Still Happening?

It probably won't surprise you to learn that early Hollywood's mainstream films were far from racially, ethnically or culturally sensitive. When minority characters were represented at all, they were typically characterized as immoral, criminal simpletons, used as comedic contrasts to their white protagonists, as outlined in the book Racism, Sexism, And the Media. Meanwhile, Hollywood's mainstream starring roles have long been monopolized by white actors; even though it's meant whitewashing history. What may surprise you is how frequently this still happens today.

Click here for the full story

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SPS Interns...



My youngest has an internship with a Civil Engineering firm in Arlington. That fact fills me with pride, and some financial relief as he pays his own rent this summer.

However, the following both filled me with parental puff, and gave me pause:

STEM learning is critical to a 21st century education, but there remains a serious mismatch of skills for entering the workforce.  According to data from the Ray Marshall Center’s Student Futures Project, in 2012 only 21 percent of students in Central Texas graduated with an interest in an Engineering, Computer & Information Services, or Natural Sciences & Mathematics post-secondary program.  Further, research suggests that students indicating a preference for a STEM career by the eighth grade are two to three times more likely to earn STEM degrees than their peers.

By the ninth grade, he entered and matriculated through something called an "Architectural Passport" program until he graduated. He initially wanted to be an architect or go into architectural engineering. Civil engineering was the closest at UT Arlington, and the firm he works for works in structural engineering, which is essentially what AE's would do. He's having a lot of fun.

This statistic from the STEM council troubles me as employers are starting to hire Central Texans again in STEM fields. To feed this pipeline, it would behoove them to increase this percentage. If you're in Civil Engineering, the ASCE site probably is your best bet. For all us physics nerds, here's a little help below.

Note: For SPS - Society of Physics Students - internships, applications due February 14.
(Valentine's Day massacre? Couldn't resist).

Stipend: $4,500.

Also covers: commuting allowance, coverage of transportation to/from Washington, DC, and support to attend and present at a national physics meeting in the year following the internship.

Meet the 2014 SPS National Interns, who are in the Washington, DC, area for 9.5-week science, policy and outreach internships with organizations including SPS, AIP, AAPT, APS, NASA, NIST, and the U.S. House of Representatives, May 28 - August 1, 2014.


More info:
2014 SPS National Interns
SPS Internships (good luck)

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Quantum Field Theory...

Source of photo, text and lectures: PhysicsDatabase.com

Ok so it seems like a good time to update the lecture section. Here we have a full course on quantum field theory. Ed Witten, when asked about quantum field theory, described it as the hardest theory in modern physics by far. However my friends, don’t be discouraged, there are plenty of great resources online that can help you out in taming this hard theory. One of the best resources is this course delivered by David Tong. The course contains 14 lectures focusing on the basics of QFT. The only obvious drawback is, as you might have noticed, the quality of these videos. Luckily, the videos can be downloaded in various formats (including the slides showing the blackboard) on the Perimeter Institute website. For more lectures visit the links below.
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Solar Sails...

Source: NASA Science News

"Provide ships or sails adopted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will brave even that void..." Johannes Kepler in a letter to his friend Galileo, 1610

Related to the topic (and mentioned in the live stream - see the Space.com link below):



Unlike chemical and rocket systems, which must expell a propellant to create thrust, an electrodynamic tether generates thrust through Lorentz-force interactions with a planetary magnetic field. By using the space environment to create thrust, electrodynamic tether systems can dramatically reduce the cost of many space missions by eliminating the need to launch large quantities of propellant into orbit.



An electrodynamic tether is essentially a long conducting wire extended from a spacecraft. The gravity gradient field (also known as the "tidal force") pulls the tether taut and tends to orient the tether along the vertical direction. As the tether orbits around the Earth, it crosses the Earth's magnetic field lines at orbital velocity (7-8 km/s!). The motion of the conductor across the magnetic field induces a voltage along the length of the tether. This voltage, which is called the "motional EMF", can be up to several hundred volts per kilometer.

Related links:
#P4TC: "Fly Me to the Moon" (and beyond)...March 4, 2011
Planetary Society: Light Sail Update: Of Booms and Pretty Pictures
Space.com: NASA Solar Sail Announcement (live streamed last night)
Sunjammer Mission: The Sun is Us
Tethers.com: Tethers Unlimited

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Rivers and GRACE...

Source: Science Magazine; US Army Corp of Engineers

When ground water saturates a river basin, the risk for flooding goes up. So does the strength of Earth’s gravity in that region, ever so slightly, because of the extra mass of the underground water. By using tiny variations in gravity detected from space, researchers report online today in Nature Geoscience that they can identify basins that are primed for flooding if additional rains come—sometimes with several months' warning. As a test case, the scientists looked at the gravity signals leading up to catastrophic floods in 2011 on the Missouri River (pictured above). They used data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a pair of orbiting satellites that get tugged around the Earth faster in places where gravity is slightly stronger.



Science Magazine: Gravity measurements can predict river flooding, Eric Hand
UT Austin Climate Science Research: GRACE
NASA: GRACE - Earth Missions

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BICEP2: Pro and Con...

Source: Quanta Magazine

The pro...



On March 17, a panel of four astrophysicists held a press conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., to announce that they had discovered features in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that are consistent with gravitational waves from the universe’s first moments. The results agreed with predictions from the decades-old theory of inflation, said panelist Chao-Lin Kuo of Stanford University, providing the first direct evidence that for an infinitesimal instant after the Big Bang, our universe expanded faster than the speed of light.



Kuo had designed the sensitive photon detectors in the telescope responsible for the breakthrough. For three years in the cold, dry atmosphere of the South Pole, the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP2) telescope collected photons from the CMB, the 13.8-billion-year-old residue of the Big Bang. Information describing the intensity and polarization of the captured photons was transmitted by satellite to an international collaboration of 47 researchers working at various institutes. Gradually, a pattern of polarized light emerged. The researchers were initially reluctant to interpret the data as evidence for primordial gravitational waves. They labored to rule out alternative explanations for the signal, including the possibility that the pattern had been generated not by gravitational waves but by dust in the Milky Way.



The con...



In mid-March, a panel of four astrophysicists working on an experiment to probe the first moments of time held an extraordinary press conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass. The scientists announced that a radio telescope located at the South Pole had discovered gravitational waves generated by the Big Bang. They posted a non-peer-reviewed paper on the Internet that proclaimed the beginning of a “new era” in cosmology.



Sharing the spotlight at the press conference were Andrei Linde and Alan Guth, two theoretical physicists who have developed seminal theories of how our universe rapidly inflated at its birth. The new results validated those theories — or so it seemed.



Stanford University and the CfA both distributed press releases calling the discovery a “smoking gun” showing that the theory of inflation is true, a phrase that appeared in international headlines about the findings. A short video of Stanford researcher Chao-Lin Kuo walking up Linde’s driveway to share the news of the discovery was viewed by millions. Smiling physicists and cosmologists nearly danced with excitement in media interviews.



Quanta Magazine:

Early-Universe Explorer Looks for Answers, (pro)
A Bold Critic of the Big Bang’s ‘Smoking Gun’, (con)
both by Peter Bryne

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Resources and Refugees...

Source and background info: Wikipedia

Refugees - whether from climate disaster, or social/political unrest - are fleeing violence and the possibility of personal extinction. That cause ultimately stems from the allocation of resources among the population. See yesterday's Malthusian Musings post.



The approximately 10 million households that have achieved the status of millionaires by net worth is 3.125% of the general population in the US. That estimate is a rebound with respect to the stock market crash of 2008 that affected the many households - not theirs - and propelled some previously in the middle class into poverty.



The crisis at the US border met by protesters at the same in California: there is no "middle class society" in Central America; no leg up as yet from poverty or bridge from that to higher classes, though it has improved. If nature abhors a vacuum, in nations with no official middle class, it is usually filled by crime. The children being callously turned away are going back to a meat grinder that will only ultimately result in their deaths. If you're born poor in such a state, you're likely to remain as such and exposed to the violence of resource allocation. Typical of this irony, it's not well known that the former richest man in the world - Carlos Slim Helú - resides there in Mexico (the crown has been recaptured by Bill Gates - U-S-A!). Trade agreements that suppress wages for the sake of corporate profits are likely to make the Carlos' of the world happy, but not many of the 99% others.



Millionaire - Billionaire - Monarchy: all a recognition of hierarchy and the need to validate it. It's usually validated by the allocation of resources at the apogee of the social pyramid construct. Like good oligarchs, it helps to control the political process and news agencies of the countries you dwell in to reinforce the mantra. Unlike Germany, that's boosted its minimum wage to 8.50 Euros ($11.50 US dollars), there is no incentive in this nation to essentially change this paradigm. Instead there are the Horatio Alger - Ayn Rand myths upon which so many have given oblation and obeisance to. Along with those myths of "pluck" and "spunk" there is the need for self-preservation at the apogee. Thus, those at the top of the pyramid have no incentive to change the structure of how they got there. It would de-legitimize the construct they've worked so hard to preserve/conserve that has passed down from forebears to inheritors.



The other myths that must be fostered are "a constitutional crisis"; "government overreach"; a "need to return to principles" (whatever they are). Along with it, helps to insert in the public narrative pseudoscience like "climate change denial"; "intelligent design" to obfuscate and eliminate the tools a populace can use to question those in authority.



Refugees - whether from climate disaster, or social/political unrest - are fleeing violence and the possibility of personal extinction, may just be for many a cynical Calculus, the cost of doing business; the "noise" in the signal of ever-increasing profitability. Noise ignored, only increases in intensity and ultimately dampens the signal desired: a zero-sum deconstruction.

PBS: Life Beyond Earth: Drake Equation Calculator
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        Black Pulp Heroes are a rare breed... but they are 

       starting to be produce regardless of the lack of

       them... Oh, I know a few of them are out there

       already.

         Yet, the more the merrier.

          All of this and more is featured in Aura, The Art of

           Winston Blakely.

            September is the release month for the book in all its

           glory.

           

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Malthusian Musings...

Figure 1: Changes in a population of Paramecium over a six day period
Each individual in the population divides once per day. Source: Nature link below.

The link to Wolfram leads to the differential equation for population growth.

N(t) = N0ert

N0 = initial number.

r = Malthusian parameter, meaning population growth rate.

t = time



So, if you crank through the math a little:



Global

N0 = 7,176,768,000 (CENSUS.gov is scrolling pretty fast, so this is an estimate)

r = 0.012

t = 2042 - 2014 = 28



N(t) = 10,042,731,534.4143



US

N0 = 318,373,944 (again, an estimate)

r = 0.012

t = 2042 - 2014 = 28



N(t) = 445,513,084.32217



More humans; dwindling resources (bees, food, water, fossil fuel); diminished ozone protection; greenhouse gases; political unrest and conflicts; congressional obfuscation; "blame-the-other," homophobia, racism, sexism, xenophobia; "open carry"; doomsday preppers; tactical nukes in theater; pseudoscience; socially-engineered stupidity in science; same volume of planet under our feet as it was when there was literally "cattle on a thousand hills" (and, way before agribusiness or GMOs):

What could possibly go wrong?


Tomorrow: Resources and Refugees



Nature: How Populations Grow

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SI Facelift...

NIST
Citation: Phys. Today 67, 7, 35 (2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2448

The universally accepted method of expressing physical measurements for world commerce, industry, and science is about to get a facelift, thanks to our improved knowledge of fundamental constants.



Although the present International System of Units (SI, from the French Système International d’Unités) was officially established in 1960, its origin goes back to the creation of the metric system during the French Revolution. Following an idea proposed a century earlier by John Wilkins, 1 the new system of weights and measures took as its starting point a single universal measure—the meter—and used it to define length, volume, and mass. The meter came from a perceived constant of nature: one ten-millionth of the distance along Earth’s meridian through Paris from the North Pole to the equator. 2 Definitions for the units of volume and mass followed, with the liter being 0.001 m 3 and the kilogram the mass of 1 liter of distilled water at 4 °C. Subsequently, in 1799, two platinum artifact standards for length and mass based on those definitions were deposited in the Archives de la République in Paris. In the words of the Marquis de Condorcet, a new system of measurement “for all time, for all people” was born.



The SI is a living, evolving system, changing as new knowledge and measurement needs arise, albeit sometimes slowly when measured against the rapid pace of scientific progress.



The new SI will also have seven base quantities: frequency, velocity, action, electric charge, heat capacity, amount of substance, and luminous intensity. The specific reference quantities will be the exact values of a set of defining constants: the ground-state hyperfine splitting of the cesium-133 atom Δ ν( 133Cs) hfs, c, h, e, k, the Avogadro constant N A, and the luminous efficacy K cd. However, to provide continuity and ease of transition, their values will be expressed in terms of the present SI units instead of in potentially confusing new base units.



Physics Today: A more fundamental International System of Units
David B. Newell

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Improved Isotope Enrichment...

Caption: This is a still frame from an artist's animated rendering of the MAGIS Device (magnetically activated and guided isotope separation). To begin the MAGIS process, unpurified ore is vaporized and enters an optical pumping region where a one-watt laser (red beam) tuned to a specific wavelength magnetizes only the particles of the desired isotope so that they are repelled by a magnetic field. The magnetized and unmagnetized particles enter a curved tunnel lined with permanent magnets, called a wave guide. The particles must follow the curve to make it to the collector at the end, but can only do so if repelled by the magnetic field. Since only the particles of one isotope are magnetized (blue dots), only those particles make the trip and end up in the collector. The MAGIS method was developed by Mark Raizen, Tom Mazur and Bruce Klappauf. The full animation can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIRi-7AxFAM.

Credit: ©Marianna Grenadier, College of Natural Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin.


I don't know what's more exciting - the new discovery, or knowing one of the discoverers.

I guess it's both! Smiley

MAGIS: Magnetically-activated and guided isotope separation:


AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have devised a new method for enriching a group of the world's most expensive chemical commodities, stable isotopes, which are vital to medical imaging and nuclear power, as reported this week in the journal Nature Physics. For many isotopes, the new method is cheaper than existing methods. For others, it is more environmentally friendly.



A less expensive, domestic source of stable isotopes could ensure continuation of current applications while opening up opportunities for new medical therapies and fundamental scientific research.



Chemical elements often exist in nature as a blend of different variants called isotopes. To be useful in most applications, a single isotope has to be enriched, or separated out from the rest.



A combination of factors has created a looming shortage of some of the world's most expensive but useful stable isotopes.



Last year, the Government Accountability Office released a report warning that there may soon be a shortage of lithium-7, a critical component of many nuclear power reactors. Production of lithium-7 was banned in the U.S. because of environmental concerns, and it's unclear whether the current sources, in China and Russia, will continue meeting global demand.



Nuclear medicine in particular could benefit from the new method, the researchers say. Many stable isotopes are precursors to the short-lived radioisotopes used in medical imaging, cancer therapies and nutritional diagnostics.



The new method also has the potential to enhance our national security. The researchers used the method to enrich lithium-7, crucial to the operation of most nuclear reactors. The U.S. depends on the supply of lithium-7 from Russia and China, and a disruption could cause the shutdown of reactors. Other isotopes can be used to detect dangerous nuclear materials arriving at U.S. ports.



Raizen's co-authors on the paper are Tom Mazur, a Ph.D. student at the university; and Bruce Klappauf, a software developer at Enthought and a former senior research scientist at UT Austin.



Now, Raizen's top goal is getting this technology out of the lab and into the world. The MAGIS invention has been issued a U.S. patent, which is owned by The University of Texas at Austin, with Raizen and Klappauf as inventors.



Raizen plans to create a nonprofit foundation to license the technology.



University of Texas at Austin:
Improved method for isotope enrichment could secure a vital global commodity
Contact: Steve Franklin
sefranklin@mail.utexas.edu
512-232-3692
University of Texas at Austin

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The ceremony included a bit of comedy, but there was no denying the significance: For the first time in its history, the Navy promoted a woman on Tuesday to become a four-star admiral.

Surrounded by friends, family and peers, Adm. Michelle J. Howard was promoted to her new rank at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. She’ll take over as the vice chief of naval operations, the No. 2 officer in the service. She is not only the first woman to hold the job, but the first African-American.

It’s the latest achievement for Howard, who previously was the first African-American woman to serve as a three-star officer in the U.S. military and command a U.S. Navy ship. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said her promotion is a “representation of how far we have come, and how far she has helped bring us.”

“She is also a great example of how much we as a nation and a Navy lose if we put artificial barriers in,” Mabus told a crowd of about 150 people. “If we don’t judge people based on their ability, based on their capability. I hope I have always been passionate about that, but I know the intensity has increased since I am the father of three daughters, and I refuse to believe that there are any ceilings for them, glass or otherwise. That they can get to wherever their abilities can take them. And with that, they and countless others in the Navy now have a wonderful role model in Michelle Howard.”

With that said, Mabus added that “there is no news here today,” because the Navy picked the best officer, Howard, for her new job.

Howard is perhaps best known for leading Task Force 151, which oversaw counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. After Somali pirates attacked the cargo ship MV Maersk Alabama and captured its top officer, Capt. Richard Phillips, in April 2009, she devised a plan with others to get him back, dispatching the USS Bainbridge, a destroyer, to help. Navy SEAL snipers eventually opened fire on a small lifeboat carrying Phillips and three pirates, killing the bandits and freeing him.

Click here for the full story

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Space-Based Quantum Cryptography...

Source: Technology Review

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Europe and China are gaining the upper hand in the race to bounce perfectly secure messages off satellites in low Earth orbit.



One of the great benefits of quantum communication is the ability to send messages from one point in space to another with perfect security. Not so great is the fact that so-called quantum cryptography is limited to distances of around 100 kilometers.



That’s because over longer distances, photons tend to be absorbed by the glass in fiber-optic cables and by the atmosphere when beamed from one location to another. That causes errors that are too great for perfect privacy.



But there is a potential way around this–to send photons to an orbiting spacecraft, which then retransmits the message securely when it is over another part of the planet. That’s possible because the photons traveling straight up only have to negotiate a few tens of kilometers of the atmosphere before reaching space.



So it’s not surprising that governments all over the world are keen on exploiting space-based quantum cryptography. Indeed, last year we reported on a Chinese team that had successfully reflected individual photons off an orbiting satellite, to simulate a satellite sending photons to the ground.



Physics arXiv: Experimental Satellite Quantum Communications
Giuseppe Vallone, Davide Bacco, Daniele Dequal, Simone Gaiarin, Vincenza Luceri, Giuseppe Bianco, Paolo Villoresi

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The Party of Science...

Credit: Steve Lovelace

“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.” Jiddu Krishnamurti

"As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter." General George Washington, 1st President of the United States' Farewell Address.

*****


"The GOP isn't a political party: it's a mental condition," Jesse Ventura on Piers Morgan, when he had a show on CNN.

Also here: Actor and comedian Richard Belzer tells “Say Anything!” host Joy Behar why he thinks President Barack Obama is headed for a “landslide” victory in November noting:

“The Republican Party is not a political party – it’s a mental condition. And I mean that seriously because if you are for crushing the poor, unprovoked wars, there is no climate change, immigrants. It’s like ‘who are we’?”



Who are we?...



The National Academy of Sciences was founded on March 3, 1863, at the height of the Civil War.


The immediate roots of the NAS can be traced back to the early 1850s and a group of scientists based largely in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The group enlisted the support of Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson, who helped draft a bill for the incorporation of the National Academy of Sciences. Wilson brought the bill to the Senate on February 20, 1863, where it was passed on March 3. It was passed by the House of Representatives later that day, and was signed into law by President Lincoln before the day was over. The National Academy of Sciences had officially come into being with 50 charter members, who over the years would be joined by the election of the nation's most distinguished scientists. NAS History



We erroneously assume that the absolutely insane, the inane cannot possibly get elected to public office, then surprised when they do.



We assume that we are the grandchildren of Jefferson and his trinity of three greatest men; we assume our Civics and Social Studies is universal and understood by our political leaders.



“To err is human,” wrote Seneca. “To persist is diabolical.” Everyone makes incorrect predictions. But to be that consistently, grossly wrong takes special effort. So what’s this all about? Nobel Prize-Winning economist Paul Krugman opines in the New York Times on the ideological persistence of one party on the "sins" of the Affordable Care Act despite evidence to the contrary.



Who are we, and who do we want representing our views after any election?



1979:

150 corporations control television (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, UHF); radio and print media.

2014:

6 corporations control television (more stations than I can list), radio, print media and Internet and social media. That is a 25X reduction if you wanted the math.



Washington nor Jefferson had to contend with lobbyists or corporations, nor influence peddlers that use marketing firms to direct our thoughts online and convert us into sheep commodities for profit.



It is not just a denial of climate change or science: it's a denial of reality itself; allowing larger forces to manipulate that reality for gain or profit and purposely seed doubt on institutions designed to act in our best interests, getting us to vote or behave not in our best interests.



If one party denies reality, HOW can we extend to it the reigns of power governing the most significant country on the globe? Mutually Assured Destruction was never meant as a goal.



I want a resurgence of the party of science - the previous Republican Party before the current takeover by bigots, extremists, terrorists and apocalyptic zealots. That would be a "return to principles" I think everyone could support.



Tomorrow: Tea, Earl Grey
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Tea, Earl Grey...



The above actually (or, a version of it) occurred 1st on the show:



Picard tries to explain to Ralph Offenhouse from the 20th century that there would be no need for his law firm any longer: "A lot has changed in three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things'. We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions." (TNG: "The Neutral Zone")

Then, reiterated on the big screen:



When Lily Sloane asked how much the USS Enterprise-E cost to build, Picard tells her "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity." (Star Trek: "First Contact"), see: Memory Alpha - Money

At these two lines - somewhat sappy sentiments, really - my conspiracy theorist fellow engineering coworker went into overdrive. It was Austin, Texas and he listened religiously to a certain overweight bloviating local talk show host was then [as he nauseatingly is now via the Internet mostly] on AM radio. I got a lot of rapid fire, staccato Communist-Socialist-New World Order ramblings that left me rather deer-in-the-headlights-dazed and amazed he bothered to memorize all the talking point non-techno-babble. I briefly thought about suggesting we go out to lunch, and maneuvering him towards a blood pressure machine. If you've seen his particular radio muse rant and rave, my friend was a pretty close clone, and closer to bursting a blood vessel on his forehead! I knew his systolic and diastolic readings had to be impressively BAD! It was really hard keeping a straight face.



First observation: Mr. Ralph Offenhouse was fashioned as a general prick in the spirit of a few contemporary billionaire bad examples that apparently instead of being content with swimming in their loot like Scrooge McDuck want to control everything about human choice and existence in the 21st century, especially over alternative energy options (they'd outlaw a Dyson Sphere if it were ever developed; in Star Trek: Federation, Warp Drive was initially opposed by the powerful - you can't rule those who choose to go off-world). Ralph went to great personal expense in the standard economy we all know intimately now to survive his own mortality, and like a good 1%-er, he wanted his lawyer's law firm (its descendant partners, really) to tell him what his returns would be 300 years hence! Can't say I'm sad he's disappointed.

Then I found this term: post-scarcity economy. It means "an alternative form of economics or social engineering in which goods, services and information are universally accessible." [Wikipedia] Essentially, a give economy of non-anal retentive hominids that aren't comparing their bank accounts like boy scouts compare penis lengths at jamborees (not much difference, really). On the Kardashev Scale, that would mean control of some impressive energies and violation of significant physics concepts: mass-to-energy conversion at a whim (E=mc2); making the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle "certain" to get (as I've joked many times): "tea, Earl Grey...hot!" It would also require cooperation politically and socially on a scale we've never seen before in our species, as everyone in their part of the planet thinks "their way" is the only way, and everyone else everywhere else are existentially Martians! There are profound changes in the economy due to technology - robotics, for example has eliminated many jobs that used to require human intervention on an assembly line. Now it requires at least humans with the technical skills to repair them when they inevitably break down. As we advance, we will have to give some consideration to what "work" means and how to pursue it.

In the 24th century, humanity would have some cultural memory of life before Warp, specifically their memories of WWIII and flirting with the apocalypse. Like most cultural groups that have gone through dreadful shared histories - the African Diaspora; the Holocaust - the group says collectively "never again." The group in this fictional case is the human species itself. With that near-miss on mass extinction, there would be motivation to do something radically different than previous economic formulations (sorry Ralph). Their life spans essentially doubling suggests universal healthcare (and low stress since the premise is people work because they want to, not because they have to - see replicator below); their comfort with technology points to an education system (like their health system) devoid of our current political machinations.

So, after reading several theses on the subject (some of them mentioning it outright, see "Related Links" below), I settled on the only thing that made sense from a physics standpoint as a "Federation Credit" in a 24th century economy: a Joule, unlike Bitcoin, actually based on the following physics definition.

Joule (pronounced like "jewel") is a measure of work, defined as force exerted over a defined distance, units: Newton-meter. Dividing by a unit of time (second) and you get a Joule/second = a Watt, or measure of power. For the electrical buffs out there: it's one ampere of current passed through a resistance of one ohm for one second.

It makes sense in this regard: infants and toddlers probably wouldn't get much credit (other than being cute) since they can't do too much in the way of work. Dependent on your occupation and contribution to society, you'd get more Fed Joule creds in your account. It would increase proportionately if you say, discovered a new invention, won the Nobel Prize or solved a crisis on a distant planet. Your creds would then increase and due to the Deus ex machina transporter-replicator-thingy. You could trade it on replicated clothing, Earl Grey Tea, food, furniture or on worlds that still had a banking system - like the Ferengi. As you age - 120 years for the average 24th century human is kind of getting up there - your credits would diminish proportionately. It coincides with Leonard McCoy's complaint in the Star Trek reboot in '09:

"Taking the whole planet in the divorce" suggests a one-way exchange of currency (sounds like it was not in Bones' favor).

So can we say the [now former] Mrs. McCoy "had him by the Joules"? Leonard was obviously "Fed-street-cred-deficient"; "broke" in a society supposedly without what we consider money.

I hope my former coworker reads this, stops listening to AM talk radio; learns to laugh at life a little and calms down hopefully quite a bit...


Smiley



Related Links:

Amazon.com: Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber
Author site: Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty
Bernd Schneider's Star Trek Site: The Economy of the Federation
Rick Webb: The Economics of Star Trek - The Proto-Post Scarcity Society
Slate: Star Trek Economy - (Mostly) Post-Scarcity; (Mostly) Socialism
TED: Conversations - Implementing a Star Trek Economy
Wikipedia: United Federation of Planets - Economics

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Are you a streamer?

So, lately I have been using this program , or rather, online application called Live Stream (there is another called picarto, which I use here and there as well.) It has allowed me to stream work that I am working on, in real time…well, with a couple seconds of lag here and there. In which its a great tool, I think, for on the fly critiquing and just a way to show others how you do what you do because, ever artist is different in their styles to complete their creations. Other than that, it is also a great source for getting yourself out there, marketing and PR…art wise that is. Its not a hard program to use once you have caught on to it and there are ample tutorials and vids on how to get set up (this is the internet age, after all.) However after using the program I began to wonder, who else on BSFS, are streamers? I know of one other person who streams here and there and she (Tanece) and I watch one another streams when we are afforded the opportunity. 

So, I ask, who's a streamer? Who isn't? Who has heard of the fact that you can do this and who hasn't? Ultimately, whose interested. I'll start by posting a stream of my own.

https://new.livestream.com/accounts/8543546/events/3140710

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Crowd-Sourced Sky Map...

Credit: Technology Review

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Astrophotography is currently undergoing a revolution thanks to the increased availability of high quality digital cameras and the software available to process the pictures after they have been taken.



Since photographs of the night sky are almost always better with long exposures that capture more light, this processing usually involves combining several images of the same part of the sky to produce one with a much longer effective exposure.



That’s all straightforward if you’ve taken the pictures yourself with the same gear under the same circumstances. But astronomers want to do better.



“The astrophotography group on Flickr alone has over 68,000 images,” say Dustin Lang at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a couple of pals. These and other images represent a vast source of untapped data for astronomers.



Physics arXiv: Towards building a Crowd-Sourced Sky Map
Dustin Lang, David W. Hogg, Bernhard Scholkopf

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Insania Gigantum...

Einstein and Oppenheimer: Both men in their later years dismissed black holes as anomalies, unaware that they contained some of the deepest mysteries of physics (Image: Alfred Eisenstaedt, LIFE magazine)

For those of you whose Latin is crisper than mine: roughly "the folly of giants"...

On September 1, 1939, the same day that Germany attacked Poland and started World War 2, a remarkable paper appeared in the pages of the journal Physical Review. In it J. Robert Oppenheimer and his student Hartland Snyder laid out the essential characteristics of what we today call the black hole. Building on work done by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Fritz Zwicky and Lev Landau, Oppenheimer and Snyder described how an infalling observer on the surface of an object whose mass exceeded a critical mass would appear to be in a state of perpetual free fall to an outsider. The paper was the culmination of two years of work and followed two other articles in the same journal.

Then Oppenheimer forgot all about it and never said anything about black holes for the rest of his life.

What happened? Oppenheimer’s lack of interest wasn’t just because he became the director of the Manhattan Project a few years later and got busy with building the atomic bomb. It also wasn’t because he despised the free-thinking and eccentric Zwicky who had laid the foundations for the field through the discovery of black holes’ parents – neutron stars.



Thus for Oppenheimer, black holes, which were particular solutions of general relativity, were mundane; the general theory itself was the real deal. In addition they were anomalies, ugly exceptions which were best ignored rather than studied. As Dyson mentions, unfortunately Oppenheimer was not the only one affected by this condition. Einstein, who spent his last few years in a futile search for a grand unified theory, was another. Like Oppenheimer he was uninterested in black holes, but he also went a step further by not believing in quantum mechanics. Einstein’s fundamentalitis was quite pathological indeed.



History proved that both Oppenheimer and Einstein were deeply mistaken about black holes and fundamental laws. The greatest irony is not that black holes are very interesting, it is that in the last few decades the study of black holes has shed light on the very same fundamental laws that Einstein and Oppenheimer believed to be the only thing worth studying. The disowned children have come back to haunt the ghosts of their parents.

 

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky,

It would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.
[I am Mighty, world-destroying Time.]
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

The Bhagavad Gita, the last sentence quoted by Oppenheimer reflecting on scientists' reactions when the atomic bomb was successfully tested.

Scientific American:
Oppenheimer's Folly: On black holes, fundamental laws and pure and applied science, Ashutosh Jogalekar

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ET and Climate Change...



Enrico Fermi, when asked about intelligent life on other planets, famously replied, “Where are they?” Any civilization advanced enough to undertake interstellar travel would, he argued, in a brief period of cosmic time, populate its entire galaxy. Yet, we haven’t made any contact with such life. This has become the famous "Fermi Paradox”.



Various explanations for why we don’t see aliens have been proposed – perhaps interstellar travel is impossible or maybe civilizations are always self-destructive. But with every new discovery of a potentially habitable planet, the Fermi Paradox becomes increasingly mysterious. There could be hundreds of millions of potentially habitable worlds in the Milky Way alone.



So why don’t we see advanced civilizations swarming across the universe? One problem may be climate change. It is not that advanced civilizations always destroy themselves by over-heating their biospheres (although that is a possibility). Instead, because stars become brighter as they age, most planets with an initially life-friendly climate will become uninhabitably hot long before intelligent life emerges.



The Earth has had 4 billion years of good weather despite our sun burning a lot more fuel than when Earth was formed. We can estimate the amount of warming this should have produced thanks to the scientific effort to predict the consequences of man-made greenhouse-gas emissions.



These models predict that our planet should warm by a few degrees centigrade for each percentage increase in heating at Earth’s surface. This is roughly the increased heating produced by carbon dioxide at the levels expected for the end of the 21st century. (Incidentally, that is where the IPCC prediction of global warming of around 3°C centigrade comes from.)



Space.com:
Why Haven't We Encountered Aliens Yet? The Answer Could be Climate ChangeDavid Waltham

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