That’s a pretty decent explanation for the hats, at least.
Phil Plait has a video NASA put out re how they’re going to land the nearly one tonne of Curiosity on Mars.
It’s… impressive. We start out with a heat shield and some aerobraking in the thin Martian atmosphere…
Then the chute. A really freaking big supersonic chute…
Then the rockets, starting with a snazzy maneuver to fly out from under the chute…
Then there’s this sky crane deal beneath the rockets…
Then the descent stage bit full o’ rockets detaches from the rover, and buggers off in high style by flying off into the wild blue-or-possibly-kinda-reddish yonder…
… all automated, natch, with the computer using radar to finesse the last bits and arrange for the thing to touch down properly where the crust actually happens to be, since it takes 7 minutes to land, and the radio round trip back to mission control would be like 28 minutes.
No, I’m not kidding. That’s really what they’re gonna do. Go. Watch.
Question: does it somehow help if I say out loud, bad TV-writing style: ‘It’s just crazy enough to work’?
It’s… impressive. We start out with a heat shield and some aerobraking in the thin Martian atmosphere…
Then the chute. A really freaking big supersonic chute…
Then the rockets, starting with a snazzy maneuver to fly out from under the chute…
Then there’s this sky crane deal beneath the rockets…
Then the descent stage bit full o’ rockets detaches from the rover, and buggers off in high style by flying off into the wild blue-or-possibly-kinda-reddish yonder…
… all automated, natch, with the computer using radar to finesse the last bits and arrange for the thing to touch down properly where the crust actually happens to be, since it takes 7 minutes to land, and the radio round trip back to mission control would be like 28 minutes.
No, I’m not kidding. That’s really what they’re gonna do. Go. Watch.
Question: does it somehow help if I say out loud, bad TV-writing style: ‘It’s just crazy enough to work’?
27/06: Among other problems
From the CSI’s Austin Dacey, we’ve a bit more more commentary on the generally problematic nature of ‘religious feelings’ laws. Among the problems mentioned, of course:
Quite.
I might charitably add: I’m not sure the framers of such laws are necessarily being consciously malicious when they let that happen. With regard to the problem for secular people of conscience: to some folk, I suspect, at least, disbelief of and skepticism on broad matters relating to the dominant religions are virtually invisible. So it may be they don’t even stop to think that yes, actually, telling someone with the force of law they have no right to speak from their conscience on this, if their conscience is mostly saying ‘but you people are preaching nonsense’ is, actually, incredibly nasty.
Which is one more reason, of course, people whose conscience does so demand need to speak up more. And one more reason others quite definitely consciously malicious will try to silence them, knowing full well (but not at all caring) how nasty this is, by whatever means they think they can get away with.
The law of personal blasphemy comes to the defense of “religious” feelings but provides no equal protection for the sensibilities of secular persons of conscience or adherents of unrecognized minority faiths. Under the Indian Penal Code, rationalists like Sanal Edamaruku might as well have no feelings.
This inherent failure of equal treatment under the law is one powerful reason why we should welcome any challenge to this colonial-era law in secular democratic India and to similar laws wherever they are found.
This inherent failure of equal treatment under the law is one powerful reason why we should welcome any challenge to this colonial-era law in secular democratic India and to similar laws wherever they are found.
Quite.
I might charitably add: I’m not sure the framers of such laws are necessarily being consciously malicious when they let that happen. With regard to the problem for secular people of conscience: to some folk, I suspect, at least, disbelief of and skepticism on broad matters relating to the dominant religions are virtually invisible. So it may be they don’t even stop to think that yes, actually, telling someone with the force of law they have no right to speak from their conscience on this, if their conscience is mostly saying ‘but you people are preaching nonsense’ is, actually, incredibly nasty.
Which is one more reason, of course, people whose conscience does so demand need to speak up more. And one more reason others quite definitely consciously malicious will try to silence them, knowing full well (but not at all caring) how nasty this is, by whatever means they think they can get away with.
23/06: Yes, it happens here, too
So Jonny Scaramanga put out a question to his readers: who here has experienced the ‘Accelerated Christian Education’ program—a bizarre fundamentalist ‘curriculum’ used in certain especially dodgy religious schools, and by some fundamentalist homeschoolers—and can tell us what that was like?
A Canadian responded, at length. Money quote, if y’ask me:
Lovely.
Originally picked up via the first Pharyngula podcast, where it is pointed out: some of the schools pulling this crap do, in some nations, in fact, receive public funds, through voucher schemes. Your tax dollars at work.
Bonus material: an older thread on the Cult Education Forum, also with reports from some of those put through this garbage.
A Canadian responded, at length. Money quote, if y’ask me:
The worst thing I learned was how NOT to learn. How NOT to think critically, how NOT to question authority, and how NOT to come to my own opinions using objective source material. For someone who does actually love to learn new things, it was torture. It was like a 7 year S&M session, with “Jesus” as my safe word.
Lovely.
Originally picked up via the first Pharyngula podcast, where it is pointed out: some of the schools pulling this crap do, in some nations, in fact, receive public funds, through voucher schemes. Your tax dollars at work.
Bonus material: an older thread on the Cult Education Forum, also with reports from some of those put through this garbage.
21/06: Superearths vs. subneptunes
John Matson at Scientific American has commentary on preliminary results attempting to narrow down at what diameter a planet larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune is likely to be more like the former or the latter. Answer so far: at somewhere between one and two Earth radii and below, you get a terrestrial; above, and it’s more likely to be an ice giant.
… Meanwhile, for reference, and as a ‘you are here’ moment, The Exoplanet Encyclopaedia now lists 778 confirmed exoplanets, and the Kepler candidate list is now at 2321. Our universe is getting a lot more interesting, and rapidly.
… Meanwhile, for reference, and as a ‘you are here’ moment, The Exoplanet Encyclopaedia now lists 778 confirmed exoplanets, and the Kepler candidate list is now at 2321. Our universe is getting a lot more interesting, and rapidly.
20/06: Communications 101
Ahem (taps podium). Class is in session. Quiet in the back, please.
Yes. Now, reviewing: yesterday’s take-home problem was: you’re arranging a conference, and there’s a perception that’s afoot here and there that this venue isn’t particularly a welcoming space for women. There’s a story going about that some hammerhead was wandering about a crowd at your event—a crowd containing persons of the female persuasion wearing skirts—and said numbnuts was carrying a camera on a pole at ankle height, and certain folk took exception. Also, the attendance of women is generally down since recent years, and there is this feeling your cause has been a bit of a male domain traditionally, that women do get hit on kinda heavily and obnoxiously in your spaces, so on… So the question is: how do you send a message that this isn’t the case?
Yes. You there with the ‘Shrek’ t-shirt?
Tell ‘em ‘This is too a safe space for women and we’ll beat up any women who disagree?’
Erm. Right. What did you say your name was, fella?
(/Well, on the bright side, I guess that achieves the ‘Get your audience’s attention’ requirement, sure…)
Yes. Now, reviewing: yesterday’s take-home problem was: you’re arranging a conference, and there’s a perception that’s afoot here and there that this venue isn’t particularly a welcoming space for women. There’s a story going about that some hammerhead was wandering about a crowd at your event—a crowd containing persons of the female persuasion wearing skirts—and said numbnuts was carrying a camera on a pole at ankle height, and certain folk took exception. Also, the attendance of women is generally down since recent years, and there is this feeling your cause has been a bit of a male domain traditionally, that women do get hit on kinda heavily and obnoxiously in your spaces, so on… So the question is: how do you send a message that this isn’t the case?
Yes. You there with the ‘Shrek’ t-shirt?
Tell ‘em ‘This is too a safe space for women and we’ll beat up any women who disagree?’
Erm. Right. What did you say your name was, fella?
(/Well, on the bright side, I guess that achieves the ‘Get your audience’s attention’ requirement, sure…)
So there’s this rather-capable-at-self-promotion dive team that’s been going on about some apparently terribly exciting ‘mystery object’ at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. And the usual suspects (net X-Files fans and their favourite publications, mostly) are happily giving them attention and coverage…
But then we get this absolutely beautiful ‘let’s cut the crap’ headline from the LA Times:
‘Baltic Sea ‘alien’ discovery! Odds are, it’s a rock’.
Y’know, we really need more writers (and headline writers) like that.
But then we get this absolutely beautiful ‘let’s cut the crap’ headline from the LA Times:
‘Baltic Sea ‘alien’ discovery! Odds are, it’s a rock’.
Y’know, we really need more writers (and headline writers) like that.
17/06: Heron in the Glebe
I twittered this one out earlier today from the phone, figured I’d add it in here, too:
There’s a Great Blue Heron who hangs around Brown’s Inlet Park, quite near here.
Brown’s Inlet is this little inlet off the Rideau Canal—technically now separated from it by Queen Elizabeth Drive. It’s a very pretty little pond—willows on the shore. And there’s a park set up around it. In the winter it’s a toboggan hill, and in the summer, our little ones like to climb the trees, and a lot of people come to sunbathe, bring their dogs to walk, play some frisbee, so on…
The heron, according to a Holmwood Avenue resident we talked to, has been coming back each summer, usually for a week or so, for some twelve years now. Normally, it’s pretty shy, as herons usually are—you come within a few tens of meters, and it’s outta there. I had seen it the previous year, too.
Today, for some reason, it wasn’t acting shy at all. Quite the contrary: it was hanging out at the busy end of the pond, wading around, close to the ducks some folk were feeding, and just doing what herons presumably do with most of their day: fishing. We saw it catch a few small ones, one larger one, while we were there. And it was doing all this regardless of the crowd of mostly hairless formerly-arboreal* apes that were gathering on shore to watch it.
And when I say it wasn’t bothered by us, I mean it really wasn’t. My little guy was impressed by the great big bird (it looked around as tall as him, seriously, standing on shore), but he also wanted to keep climbing his tree, so I hung out nearby, too, with him…
… and at one point, the heron took one of those short little flights out of the shallow water and landed maybe eight feet from me, and just stood there, on shore, next to me, a minute or two, completely unconcerned…
Dunno what gives with that. Cool as it was, I began to wonder if the guy/gal** was feeling quite right. Very odd for a heron.
(Mebbe s/he was getting to think: well, geez, these odd creatures are feeding the ducks… Mebbe if I stand here and look impressive, someone’ll spring for some sashimi?)
But I got some great pictures and video, anyway. Can’t complain about that, I guess. A few are above. I may upload/add a few more later.
Oh, and about the cormorant: we’re watching the heron, and this woman who’d been watching it with us comes along and says something like: ‘Umm… Female herons aren’t black, are they?’
I answer in the negative (I mean, they’re not, unless they’ve just been drenched by the Exxon Valdez or somethin’, anyway—they actually look a lot like the males, if a smidge smaller, and the one we were watching could have been either, really), and she explained, and there in the middle of the inlet, a bit too far for decent phone photography was something that was probably a comorant…
I mean, honestly, I just think. It was a bit far to be absolutely certain, but it was a waterfowl of about that size and shape, with that slight crook in the neck, and it was very definitely black with an orangeish bill. So, y’know… Probably.
My daughter opined since these are both among my favourite birds, perhaps they’d just come over to give me a nice treat for Father’s Day. Kind of them.
(*/Technically, I guess, my kids were still being a bit arboreal, themselves, and at that very moment.)
(**/Pretty hard to tell; see also above.)
(**/Pretty hard to tell; see also above.)
17/06: Meanwhile, in Indonesia
… you can get two and a half years in prison for pointing out on Facebook that the invisible sky fairy is only make-believe.
(/No word on the sentence for mentioning the sun isn’t pulled across the sky in a chariot, nor that that the sky is not a big tent with holes in it, held up by the Tree of Life.)
(/No word on the sentence for mentioning the sun isn’t pulled across the sky in a chariot, nor that that the sky is not a big tent with holes in it, held up by the Tree of Life.)
17/06: Same shit, different century
So someone points what you had claimed as a ‘miraculous statue’ is, in fact, oozing water from its feet because there’s a drainage pipe leaking nearby. Do you…
a) Thank them, somewhat contritely, for pointing out how silly you were being about this?
b) Demand the police arrest them for ‘offending your religious feeling’?
Well, see, if you’re the Catholic officials up the hierarchy above the Church of Our Lady of Velankanni in Vile Parle, in Mumbai, you go with (b), all right. See, there’s this handy law, right here, and as if we’re going to stand for someone pointing out what nonsense we’ve been spouting, when we can threaten them with this bullshit law. As if.
So… You’re offended, you say, my lovelies? Offended someone pointed out what absurdities you were peddling?
Good.
Furthermore, here, ye human pestilences, ye craven monstrosities: here’s a little more:
You’re full of it. Not only on this, but on every word of your creed. Always were, always will be, always have been. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re offended.
No. Scratch that: I hope you’re fucking offended. People like you need to be offended, regularly, and publicly, and vocally. People like you need regular reminders that no, you can’t just bully people into being silent when they point out your flim flam. Please. Be offended. See red. Burst a blood vessel, I implore you, being so offended, thanks, and do the world a favour.
Oh. Also. I’m offended. I’m offended rat bastards like you get away with this. I’m offended an honest man who called you out is now being harassed by the police for his troubles. I’m offended you’re still in business. I’m offended no one arrested you for being such a bloody fucking embarrassment to my species.
Oh, but I’m not gonna demand anyone arrest you for that offense, of course…
Yet.
But where’s my damned apology, huh? Where? Shall I call you daily as you’re having the police do, and harass you, until you give that up? Shall I call you daily and insist you give yourself in, or just say you’re sorry for being such pathetic, pushy assholes? Huh?
Oh, but seriously, no, of course I’m not doing that…
But then, I guess, I’m not quite that much a bottom feeder as these goons.
Oh, and to the legislature of India:
Repeal this disaster of a law. It’s a bad idea. The reality is, and always has been, there are far too many who believe their religion should innately be protected from criticism, regardless of how that criticism is offered—or who will attempt nonetheless to demand it should be so protected—and who will be such cowards as to use legislation as this. You can’t give them this lever. They’ll wear out the handle. And freedom to call bullshit what it so clearly is, is, I think you should recognize, a vital and fundamental human right.
(/See also the petition, here, and the defence fund, here.)
a) Thank them, somewhat contritely, for pointing out how silly you were being about this?
b) Demand the police arrest them for ‘offending your religious feeling’?
Well, see, if you’re the Catholic officials up the hierarchy above the Church of Our Lady of Velankanni in Vile Parle, in Mumbai, you go with (b), all right. See, there’s this handy law, right here, and as if we’re going to stand for someone pointing out what nonsense we’ve been spouting, when we can threaten them with this bullshit law. As if.
So… You’re offended, you say, my lovelies? Offended someone pointed out what absurdities you were peddling?
Good.
Furthermore, here, ye human pestilences, ye craven monstrosities: here’s a little more:
You’re full of it. Not only on this, but on every word of your creed. Always were, always will be, always have been. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re offended.
No. Scratch that: I hope you’re fucking offended. People like you need to be offended, regularly, and publicly, and vocally. People like you need regular reminders that no, you can’t just bully people into being silent when they point out your flim flam. Please. Be offended. See red. Burst a blood vessel, I implore you, being so offended, thanks, and do the world a favour.
Oh. Also. I’m offended. I’m offended rat bastards like you get away with this. I’m offended an honest man who called you out is now being harassed by the police for his troubles. I’m offended you’re still in business. I’m offended no one arrested you for being such a bloody fucking embarrassment to my species.
Oh, but I’m not gonna demand anyone arrest you for that offense, of course…
Yet.
But where’s my damned apology, huh? Where? Shall I call you daily as you’re having the police do, and harass you, until you give that up? Shall I call you daily and insist you give yourself in, or just say you’re sorry for being such pathetic, pushy assholes? Huh?
Oh, but seriously, no, of course I’m not doing that…
But then, I guess, I’m not quite that much a bottom feeder as these goons.
Oh, and to the legislature of India:
Repeal this disaster of a law. It’s a bad idea. The reality is, and always has been, there are far too many who believe their religion should innately be protected from criticism, regardless of how that criticism is offered—or who will attempt nonetheless to demand it should be so protected—and who will be such cowards as to use legislation as this. You can’t give them this lever. They’ll wear out the handle. And freedom to call bullshit what it so clearly is, is, I think you should recognize, a vital and fundamental human right.
(/See also the petition, here, and the defence fund, here.)
13/06: Today's fun fact
The number of stops (due to the NYPD’s ‘stop and frisk’ policy) involving young black men in 2011 (168,124) exceeds the city’s population of young black men (158,406).
(/I think the guys who are getting it more than once should just say ‘Thanks, man, but ya already got me.’)
I’m not sure I can suitably express my contempt for the efforts of the ruling thugs in parliament to rewrite substantial portions of the legislation of the country in the redeye hours, principally by ramming it all through in one marathon session, restricting votes, and making, y’know, actually sensible discussion and negotiation effectively impossible.
There’s something picturesque about it, tho’.
Daylight is no friend of these sleazy little cockroaches. So they’ll do their business in the dark, of course. And in a hurry and a rush and hope no one notices, and that those who do notice can’t stop them, nor even push out to the people a properly coherent sense of just what damage has been done.
Helluva way to run a country, you endlessly unprincipled wanks. Helluva way. But then, government by legislative shock, with too much happening too fast for anyone fully to appreciate the ramifications of what has been done has so long been a neocon tactic. It’s made a mess of rather a large count of nations and smaller jurisdictions, now. We’re just the latest.
And this will be their legacy, as it generally is, following such manipulative, theatrical stupidity: they fucked stuff up, fumbling around in a haste and in the dark, careless and foolish, heads full of hubris and little more. Red-eyed and in an ideologically-fueled hurry, determined to have their way whatever the cost, verily, they didst make an utter hash of the business of government. And pushed short-term and poorly thought-through resource extraction projects to the forefront, turned one more yearning middle power into a banana republic, for the duration of their term and long after.
There’s something picturesque about it, tho’.
Daylight is no friend of these sleazy little cockroaches. So they’ll do their business in the dark, of course. And in a hurry and a rush and hope no one notices, and that those who do notice can’t stop them, nor even push out to the people a properly coherent sense of just what damage has been done.
Helluva way to run a country, you endlessly unprincipled wanks. Helluva way. But then, government by legislative shock, with too much happening too fast for anyone fully to appreciate the ramifications of what has been done has so long been a neocon tactic. It’s made a mess of rather a large count of nations and smaller jurisdictions, now. We’re just the latest.
And this will be their legacy, as it generally is, following such manipulative, theatrical stupidity: they fucked stuff up, fumbling around in a haste and in the dark, careless and foolish, heads full of hubris and little more. Red-eyed and in an ideologically-fueled hurry, determined to have their way whatever the cost, verily, they didst make an utter hash of the business of government. And pushed short-term and poorly thought-through resource extraction projects to the forefront, turned one more yearning middle power into a banana republic, for the duration of their term and long after.
Sign the petition to criminalize the peddling of bleach enemas as a ‘cure’ for autism.
(/Via Ophelia B, via Twitter.)
(/Via Ophelia B, via Twitter.)
06/06: Immortal, huh?
Honestly, my first reaction to Vibrams was more or less the same.
That said, I do now own a pair, and they did work out pretty well for sailboarding.
Speaking of: I really have to do more of that this summer. Somehow. But I may have to clone myself to make the time.
(/Related: I’m confused, tho’… Would wearing sliced bread on your feet actually be comfortable? Or is the implication here actually the converse? Help, I’m stuck in an ambiguous sarcasm loop and cannot exit.)
That said, I do now own a pair, and they did work out pretty well for sailboarding.
Speaking of: I really have to do more of that this summer. Somehow. But I may have to clone myself to make the time.
(/Related: I’m confused, tho’… Would wearing sliced bread on your feet actually be comfortable? Or is the implication here actually the converse? Help, I’m stuck in an ambiguous sarcasm loop and cannot exit.)
06/06: Venus' presence
So I did see the transit yesterday. Had been planning on dragging the kids out to the scopes at the science and technology museum, but on stepping outside toward doing so, saw a neighbour had set up his refractor—kitted out with a solar filter—on the sidewalk.
So I strolled over, asked nicely, and I and the kids saw it there, instead, which was much more convenient.
It’s very neat seeing the disk of Venus that way. It’s funny how much more it seems to make it a real object—and never mind that it’s visible as a slightly more than starlike point quite regularly, and never mind there’s countless photos available now from various ground and space telescopes and from robotic craft that even went so far as to land on the thing. Seeing with your own eyes through the eyepiece that actually-not-so-little very round disk in front of the substantially larger disk of the sun, Venus suddenly seems that much more solid and that much nearer—a real thing, a real place. A planetary neighbour swinging by real close and showing up in stark silhouette.
We weren’t the only ones nearby stopping to look, either. Walking later over to the pharmacy, I met a guy who was using his binoculars to project the image onto a sheet of paper—which he reported was also working fairly well.
So I strolled over, asked nicely, and I and the kids saw it there, instead, which was much more convenient.
It’s very neat seeing the disk of Venus that way. It’s funny how much more it seems to make it a real object—and never mind that it’s visible as a slightly more than starlike point quite regularly, and never mind there’s countless photos available now from various ground and space telescopes and from robotic craft that even went so far as to land on the thing. Seeing with your own eyes through the eyepiece that actually-not-so-little very round disk in front of the substantially larger disk of the sun, Venus suddenly seems that much more solid and that much nearer—a real thing, a real place. A planetary neighbour swinging by real close and showing up in stark silhouette.
We weren’t the only ones nearby stopping to look, either. Walking later over to the pharmacy, I met a guy who was using his binoculars to project the image onto a sheet of paper—which he reported was also working fairly well.
