Why is This a Big Deal?


From Reuters

A divided Senate will begin a fifth week of debate on Monday on legislation to create the department, as Democratic and Republican negotiators try to strike a compromise on a dispute over labor protections for the 170,000 workers that would fall under the massive proposed agency.

"I'm for workers rights ... but in the name of national security this administration, future administrations, need flexibility to put people in the right place at the right time in order to protect America from an enemy which still wants to hurt us," Bush told political donors in Denver.

Okay. What is the big deal? I mean, what is so special about the Department of Homeland Security [I mean, aside from the facist name, initial legislation creating it passing at warp speed with little to no oversight, and general Bad Idea-ness(tm), IMO] that the anticipated 170,000 workers to be employed there should be denied certain labor protections already enjoyed by other government employees?

The implication in Bush's remarks is that the Homeland Security Dept is the only government agency with a chance of "protecting America".

What is this, the Army? Because if it is, let's be up front about it.

More News Bang for Your Buck

I am in love with Google's new Google:News service. This is fabulous. Go on, show me headlines from around the world, culled automatically from 4,000 different sources. I dare ya.

Gimme, gimme, gimme.

It's still in beta, but this is definitely a winner.

Ecstatic Parkinsonism


The recreational drug Ecstasy may trigger Parkinson's.

Ew. Ew. Ew. Double-ew.

Solar-Powered Surgery

Oh, now this is just darn cool.



SOLAR SURGERY. Even some large hospitals find laser surgery too expensive. So physicists at the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research in Israel resort to nature. They collect and focus sunlight, and then transport it in an optical fiber to a surgery theater where it can be brought to bear on tissue (figures at http://www.aip.org/mgr/png/2002/163.htm). In general, the advantage of using laser light for surgery is not its coherence but high power density at adequate power levels. In this regard the solar unit can match typical surgical lasers in terms of power (8 watts) and power density (10 watts/mm^2). Jeffrey Gordon (jeff@menix.bgu.ac.il, 972-8-659-6923) and his colleagues report that tests on chicken breasts and chicken livers have been successful and that the next step will be to perform surgery on live mice with the solar optical fiber system. The goal for the project is to deliver cheap sunlight for killing human cancers with minimally invasive procedures. (Gordon et al., Applied Physics Letters, 30September 2002; homepage, www.bgu.ac.il/BIDR/research/staff/gordon.html)

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 606 September 25, 2002 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James Riordon

Read A Book!




Hot damn, it's banned books week! How could I have forgotten! Time to read a banned book. Of course, it's always a good time to read a banned book.

How about some Harry Potter? Or Flowers for Algernon? Or James and the Giant Peach? Or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? The Handmaid's Tale, perhaps?

Get to the library, there's books to read. This week, every week.

Being Human

You see it on TV all the time, in films, on the news, everywhere. When disaster strikes, we all pull together as a community. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes. Famine relief. Whenever there's an event no one could have anticipated.

We have to help. We're a helping species. We build communities, and those communities are vital to us -- to our survival as individuals, to our survival as a species. It's part of what makes us human, this desperate need to help.

We pull together as human beings, as members of the same species, and cultural, gender, even religious differences cease to matter. Because the disaster is so large in scope, that nothing else makes a difference in the face of it, except for us standing together, helping one another, for the simple fact that we are human beings, and here is a fellow human in need.

Homeless because of an earthquake. Lost because of a tornado. Wounded by extremists who have walked away from what it means to be human, who are so outside our understanding of the world, they and their actions are literally inconceivable.

It drives us crazy when we can't help, or when we don't know what to do. And those are the times we must be most careful. Do I swear eternal vengeance on terrorists? Do I give 3 billion US in aid to the Red Cross (ok, that seems like a no-brainer)? Do I invade another country? What to do, what to do...

What to do, is, think compassionately, remembering that you are a human being, think heal, not hurt. Think, before all else, do no harm. Think with care.

What to do, today, right now? Pull off the road when you see a stranded motorist, see if you can help. Buy jumper cables and keep them under your passenger seat. Give a bum your french fries and bottled water, he needs them more than you do. Smile. Make a stranger laugh. Donate blood every 2 months.

It's not hard to be helpful, and it's easier every time you do it.

Lunar Objectives/Objections

Dennis Laurie, CEO of San Diego-based TransOrbital and Dr. Jim Arnold, Professor emeritus of Chemistry at USCD and a Co-Founder of the California Space Institute were guests on KPBS's These Days this morning [09.19.2002]

I only caught the latter half of the program, which means I missed all the juicy fact-filled setup at the top of the hour, and had to settle for the idiotic questions of a call-in talk show instead. I hate call-in talk shows. (No one ever calls in and asks questions. There were two questions the half-hour I listened. There were more than two callers.) I only forced myself to listen because I'm obsessed with the idea of commercial space exploration.

One final query from host Tom Fudge resulted in Laurie discussing TransOrbitals "seconday objectives", business objectives that are actually going to make them money in the long-term. His response was the most practical thing I've ever heard. Data storage, backups and archiving.

The lunar environment as physical host for failover and backup servers is an excellent idea. There are only two threats to something mechanical on the moon: temperature, and impact damage. The moon is dead: there's no earthquake-inducing tectonic movement, volcanoes, mudslides, lightning strikes, tornadoes -- any of those irritating little things that make seamless data management so touch-and-go for extremely large organizations, like, say, telecommunications providers.

Practical, practical, practical. I love it.

Don't Tell Me What You Know, Tell Me What You Know I Want To Hear

Caught this at Medley yesterday, of course:


HHS Seeks Science Advice to Match Bush Views

The Bush administration has begun a broad restructuring of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy in areas such as patients' rights and public health, eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with handpicked choices.

One of the things an HHS spokesman remarked on in the article linked above is that this degree of change is not necessarily out of the ordinary, saying they, "don't think there is anything going on here that has not gone on with each and every administration since George Washington."

You know what? I don't care if every leader throughout history does it, has done and wants to keep on doing it. That's bad science, for one, and bad management for another. You're responsible for a nation? You surround yourself with the best people you can find. And then pray they give you a piece of their mind. It's what they're for.

"Hey, boss, this dam idea is a no-go."
"But I like the dam."
"Well, I know you like it, boss, but look at these numbers."
"I don't want numbers, I want my dam."
"Boss, the only way for the numbers to work is if the specific gravity of water changes."
"Can't we change it?"
"No, and we'd all die if we did, so that's a good thing."
(thinking about re-election) "Well, okay, no dam, I guess."
"Sure, Boss. Now, about this highway infrastructure..."

Resounding Silence

I have nothing to say. Oddly enough. Wait! Wait! I've got something...did you notice that in the mid-to-late '90's there was a plethora of adaptations of classic plays or novels targeting the youth market? (Well, maybe not plethora...)

Cruel Intentions, Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You. None of the marketing I saw played up the facts that these were ultra-hip versions of Les Liaisons dangereuses, Emma, and The Taming of the Shrew. Not that the period adaptations got short shrift in the past decade, I'm happy to report.

Of course, critics noticed.

I just think it's neat, though I have the occasional mind-boggle over the difference in experience between watching these as 'simply' films versus as adaptations of a story I already know.

I have to ask this question: is it assumed that the younger generation, which I am, gladly/sadly, no longer a part of, won't be interested in quote, period films, endquote? Or was it just a fad? Is it the costumes? The scary History(tm)?

Show *me* an ad with someone in pre-revolutionary France costume and I'm going to say to myself Ooooo! sex, subtly worked revenge, dire plots, honor, duty, duels, manipulation, and great hats. I am so there. But what about "these kids today", huh? Is the assumption that they won't have that burst of recognition, and thus won't want to see something like Dangerous Liaisons or Valmont, unless it gets remade in their image? (Not that I'm panning Cruel Intentions, I loved it, although I could've cut the very very very end.)

Hell, either way, who's up for Wuthering Heights, 2002?

Time for Some Country Music

Oh, whatever, I just needed a good title.

So, I get this spam email today asking if I'm "Tired of looking for love in all the wrong places?",

and I thought -- what if I wrote back and said "no"?

I'm not tired of looking for love in all the wrong places. For all I know, love really is wedged in between the sofa cushions, along with a beer bottle cap, 67 cents, a packet of hot sauce, and a sock. So, hell, yeah, I'll take a chance and look. And who is to say what the wrong places are, anyway?

Being as it's my blog, I guess I am.

Some Wrong Places To Look For Love:

• Low Earth Orbit.
• 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
• A POW camp, during any war or "police action".
• In the middle of a neutrino detector.
• In an Active Volcano.
• In the utility closet at the Rose Bowl.
• Dangling from a bunjee cord off the Empire State Building, about 7 floors down. On the right.
• In the general vicinity of Hastings, 1066 A.D.
• In the southeast corner of the dumpster at 5th and Main. Under the rotten coleslaw.
• In the air conditioning ducts at your building.
• Underneath the last roll of toilet paper.
• Tucked in the freezer, wrapped in butcher's paper, labelled "Moose - 1998".
• At the top of the CN Tower in the middle of the night.
• At the bottom of a 50-gallon drum of toxic waste.

Of course, having not looked in all these places myself, I could be wrong.

Turbulence Ho!

From the American Institute of Physics News No. 603.

HOW JUPITER GOT ITS STRIPES. A new study of turbulence in the atmosphere around a rotating sphere is helping to explain the dramatic stripes on Jupiter, Saturn, and the other giant planets. On Earth, turbulence caused by solar heating and friction with the ground disrupts atmospheric flows and dissipates the energy provided by the sun that might otherwise lead to the formation of circulating, global cloud bands. In the thin atmospheres of gas giants, however, energy dissipation is small, and some of the sun's energy is gradually collected in stable, global jets that trap clouds and form planetary stripes.

Researchers at the University of South Florida and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) have now developed a model that shows how planetary rotation and nearly two-dimensional atmospheric turbulence may combine to create large scale structures. Scientists have long suspected that the interaction between planetary rotation and large-scale turbulence governs the banded circulations on giant planets. The new research has quantified the phenomenon, leading to an equation that characterizes the distribution of energy among different scales of motion, and to simple formulae that describe basic energetic features of giant planets' circulations. The model helps explain the paradoxical observation that the outer planets have stronger atmospheric flows, even though the energy provided by the sun to maintain such flows decreases with increasing distance from the sun. The researchers (B. Galperin) have found that the atmospheres of distant planets dissipate even less energy than their warmer sisters. Although the outer planets receive less energy from the sun, they keep more of the energy they receive. As a result, the model shows why Neptune has the strongest atmospheric circulation of all the gas giants even though it is the farthest of the bunch from the sun. (S. Sukoriansky, B. Galperin, N. Dikovskaya, Physical Review Letters, 16 September 2002)

Lathe of Heaven

Watched the new A&E production of "Lathe of Heaven", with Lukas Haas, James Caan, Lisa Bonet, and Sheila McCarthy last night. It was good. There were decisions made to cut some material out [and try to compress one role into another] that I understand, if not completely agree with.

On the one hand, it was a good movie. On the other, it was not the most faithful adaptation it could have been. I'm not even sure a really faithful adaptation could even be made. But, hey, Peter Jackson's use of flashbacks made FOTR a hell of a lot better than a more rigid adaptation might have.

I wouldn't mind trying, though. "Lathe" is an amazing idea and an amazing book and I'm thrilled to see another film version. I think if I hadn' t read the book REALLY RECENTLY I would have had my mind blown clear off its pilings.

By all means, see this one -- especially if you've never read the book. Then, go read the book.

Vacation Bible School

More properly, The Vacation Bible School Fiasco. I say "fiasco" because I'm sure it was for the people running the school.

I try to picture the experience from their perspective. Two heathen children [twins! which has got to be a sin, somehow] of around, oh, age 10ish, show up one summer who have -- really -- NO CLUE WHATSOEVER about this Christianity stuff. No, really. Really. It's difficult to picture in America but squint hard and bear with me. No. Clue.

Not having any idea what we were getting into at the time, when Matt asked us if we wanted to go, we shrugged and said, "Sure".

So, heathen godless children, who've never seen the inside of Sunday School in their entire heathen godless little lives, much less know what Sunday School is, show up at this place for "vacation bible school".

We're going to pray to Jesus, now. Bow your heads.

Come again?

Jesus Christ, our lord and savior.

Jesus Christ? Wait, you mean, that guy my stepdad yells at when he hits his thumb with a hammer?

And we're going to what, pray to him? What's that?

Well, you ask him for stuff.

Why?

Does he have stuff? Why would he have stuff? He's dead. And this is a dead guy from 2000 years ago -- it's not like they had TVs back then.

You people are engaged in a bunch of seemingly useless acts.

Every time someone opened their mouths it was to inform us heathen godless children of some new, frankly incomprehensible, fact, that apparently made perfect sense to them. Being moderately bright children growing up in not the full-tilt boonies, but out in the woods -- we knew from experience that dead stuff doesn't come back to life. It stays dead, decomposes, and there's a gross smell. So, this coming back after three days business, oh, that just reeks of some "zombie" episode from The Twilight Zone. Pun intended.

What I remember about the experience best is the sense of utter and total confusion about the whole thing. There's this big old guy with a long white beard who lives up in the clouds -- well, where does he go when it's not cloudy, then? And then this dead guy stapled to some big sticks who died for my "sin" things. Bad stuff, only I haven't done the bad stuff yet, and it's not at all clear why he should get punished for my bad stuff.

This makes no sense.

And could someone please explain why I'm cutting fish out of construction paper? For children who've internalized the ideas of conservation of mass and energy at a tender age -- the tales of loaves and fishes sound like sheer fantasy. Or science fiction. I mean this is the point at which I'm liable to open my heathen godless little mouth and say "you people are making this up, aren't you"?

Pretty much the only thing I recall us being good at was memorizing bits of this Bible thing -- although I do recall being concerned that since I didn't understand everything we were being told to parrot, I might accidentally say something not entirely true. And I may not get this sin business, but lying? That's wrong.

the Beginning of the Future is Here

The first commercial lunar mission has been approved and is scheduled for launch in 2003. Trailblazer is a basic probe intended to capture biblical proportions of video up close and personal, during a lunar surface atlas survey. Trailblazer is on a one-way trip, after completing its mission -- which will include some even-more-detailed video of specific areas [Apollo landing sites and polar regions] -- will crash in a selected location and end it's glorious! wonderful! future-affirming! little life.

I am almost speechless. I've been waiting for the first commercial venture -- the first indication that outer space -- not just low-earth orbit -- can be business. Because that's what'll get humans off the planet. Not government space races. I'm so thrilled by this I can't actually type without fumbling.

I also have the distinct impression I attended a conference in LA with Karsten B. and saw a presentation from these people. I'm probably wrong.

More on the company, Transorbital: http://www.transorbital.net/index.html

Science Fiction as Romance

There. That ought to raise an eyebrow.

An intriguing article by Debra Doyle posits that SF novels fall in the category of "romance", a term guaranteed to make SF-girl-cootie-fearing readers run screaming from their dark glowing computer screens, into the night.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

Fear not, Doyle simply [simply? simply!] brings up the dictionary definition of romance as involving heroic, adventurous or mysterious adventures in remote times and places, a definition that fits SF quite well once you think about it.

The bulk of her remarks address realism, and in SF, the two primary areas where one can strive for it -- physical realism [where "hard SF" shines] and psychological realism [where, to put it midly, "hard SF" can often fail to shine]. Great stories -- SF and otherwise -- can exist where either one or both of these are not met...the decision to not strive for physical or psychological realism is as valid an artistic decision as to strive for such. That's not her point.

What Doyle notes is that two ideologies are butting heads in an effort to look for methods of improving SF as a genre. One is a push to be more like "modern realistic prose fiction", and the other to recognize that SF is "romance", and to model that form. That's not the same thing as sprinkling sex croutons all over one's fiction, because romance, remember, in this context is not sex or personal relationships per se, it's the heroics, adventure, and mystery, in a different time and place. The whole point of an sf or fantasy story is to ask what-if?

What if we colonized Mars?

What if it was a gazillion years in the future and the sun was going out?

What if a girl followed a white rabbit down a hole?

To deliberately and consciously seek out/create a remote time and place to set adventures in. That's unrealism at its very core, none of which absolves an author from keeping their let's-pretend world from being internally consistent -- it seems counterintuitive, but in order to get a reader to believe in your off-kilter world, you must answer the other side of the what-if, and then ask and answer again.

I think Doyle has hit the nail squarely -- SF is romance. We don't read it to see Joe Blow, CPA, walk to work in the morning looking at his loafers, thinking about his upcoming divorce...unless of course it's 2173 and he gets hit by a bus on the way to work and has his brain transplanted into the body of a surgically modified dog with a larynx and oppposable thumbs and then has to steal a spaceship with the help of his soon-to-be-ex so he can get away from the HMO before they repossess the dog's spine because a now-dead genetics researcher hid a new form of life in an inactive viral shell in the dog's spinal cord somewhere, only now the "inactive" virus got turned on after exposure to some nasty solar radiation during the escape and so Joe the Dog is fighting to keep control over his body from the new "intelligence" trying to spread through it.

That, friends, is an adventure in a remote time and place.

I might just have to write that story, too.