McCain hates science

So I kind of missed the presidential debate earlier in the week, but it’s generated a lot of comment from science blogs because of the criticism about Obama supporting a “$3 million overhead projector.”  Andrew Kravtsov from the University of Chicago sums it up beautifully in this comment to a New York Times article on the story.  Quoted because I’m not sure if that’s a perm. link.

I am an Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Chicago (the University that today has added yet another Nobel Prize winner in the sciences for the US). I would like to comment on Sen. McCain’s statement during the today’s debate that Sen. Obama has earmarked “$3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Ill. My friends, do we need to spend that kind of money?”

The way Sen. McCain has phrased it suggests that Sen. Obama approved spending $3 million on an old-fashioned piece of office equipment (overhead projector).
The 3 million is actually for an upgrade of the SkyTheater – a full dome projection system, which is probably the main attraction of the Adler Planetarium and is quite sophisticated and impressive piece of equipment.

I find it appalling that Sen. McCain would call a science education tool for public (largely children) for
a historic planetarium with millions of visitors a year a wasteful earmark. The planetarium’s focus, as stated on their website (http://adlerplanetarium.org) is “on inspiring young people, particularly women and minorities, to pursue careers in science.” Is an investment in such public facility at the time when US
competitiveness in math and sciences is a constant source of alarm a waste?

“American’s ability to compete in a 21st Century economy rests on our continued investments in math and science education,” said Rep. Brian Baird, Chairman of the Research and Science Education Subcommittee in Congress, after the passage of The 21st Century Competitiveness Act of 2007.

Considering such investments “wasteful earmarks” today, even in the face of the financial crisis, will severely cripple US economic competitiveness in the increasingly high-tech world down the road.

— Andrey Kravtsov, Chicago, IL

The other thing worth briefly mentioning is that there are oranges out there with THC in them.  I’m not sure how you get your hands on them, but it’s pretty interesting anyway.  The story of why the scientist in question developed them is even cooler (check the link 🙂 )

If politicians were trains

Title

Bit of delay between posts as I have been away.

I have a better option for the US president – Big Foot.  Whatever happened to that guy?

This is also an awesome pony.  I want one.

In more serious news, this article from rolling stone has been getting a lot of attention everywhere.  It’s basically a massive attack on McCain and worth a read from anybody who cares about the upcoming election or has the opportunity to vote.

Leaving politics and returning to the more interesting subject of science, this is a really interesting article from this months SEED about human evolution.

Some recent research published in the journal Neurology show that some specific types of headaches can be cured by LSD.  Now Harvard Medical School is doing some experimentation to confirm the results.

Interesting post on Kevin Kelly’s blog, The Technium, about the expansion of ignorance as a result of the expansion of information.  Of course he really means that we’re turning more “unknown unknowns” into “known unknowns” – ie. we’re expanding the amount of things we know that we don’t know, rather than actually becoming more ignorant.

Nikon’s Small World photo competition is amazing.  Here are some of my favourites from last year;

There are so many more good ones worth looking at as well.  I would be here forever if I kept posting the ones I like.

Finally, and still on the subject of photography, the Boston Globe “The Big Picture” is always stunning.  The current set is from photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and are all arial photos.   Favourites posted of course (but really they are all amazing).

Ralph Steadman

I loved his last picture in the Independent.

 

Wednesday

Apologies for a break in posts, I’ve been too caught up in other things.  Especially researching the economic crisis that has apparently hit.  I’m glad I don’t have any money invested in banks at the moment 😛

 

I’ve also been reading through the finalised Garnaut report, which you can find here.  It’s impressive in it’s scope and rationalism, although horribly interpreted by the media.  Just a few corrections.  Garnaut has never recommended a 10% reduction in emissions.  In both this report and the previous draft he recommended a 25% reduction.  However he also recognises that the level of our emissions needs to match global agreements because we need global agreements to solve the problem and he analyses the current political climate and tries to make a prediction about what we can expect to occur.  A 10% reduction and a target of 550ppm is not a recommendation, it’s a prediction.  He’s not saying that’s what we should aim for, he’s saying that’s what it looks like will actually happen.  It is amazing how many people have misinterpreted that part of the report.
 

Apparently it’s been snowing on mars!  I thought that was pretty cool.

 

It’s now been pretty much conclusively proved that glucosamine doesn’t work at all (for arthritis and joint problems).  I’m sure this won’t affect the market at all.

 

Stephen Harper (Canada’s PM) apparently plagiarised a John Howard speech, it has emerged.  What was he thinking?  (actually it sounds like a mistake by his speech writer, although he may just be the scapegoat.  There seems to be a bit of confusion from the Liberal Party though, as I’m fairly sure Stephen Harper supported the war in Iraq.

Best website ever

Klingons For Jesus.  Soooooo funny!  Images related;

 

 

There’s a great set of photos from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which launches space shuttles here.  My favourites posted 🙂

 

There are some more cool ones, but I didn’t want to clutter the post too much 😛

 

New Scientist also has a good gallery from a recent science visualisation prize.  Again, my favourites included;

 

 

Squid suckers 🙂

 

References in the Bible to other parts of the bible.

 

Image created using other microscopic images.

 

Google has announced a new project, called Project 10¹⁰⁰ 

Here is a youtube video about it.  Looks pretty cool.

 

Finally there is a pretty good in depth interview with Will Wright about Spore here.  Will Wright’s a fan of E.O. Wilson too.

A comment about Australia’s Refugee Policy

There’s an interesting topic about Australia’s shameful refugee policy (which has now been significantly amended), at ABC online, and I found the following comment particularly noteworthy.

 

In 2001 I escorted 49 mainly women and children from Larrakeyah to Fossey’s Pavilion, Darwin. Most of the men of these families would follow and remained at Ashmore Reef. The boat was the “Samson Explorer.”

That’s all I’ll say here about it.

The way these people were treated was poor – I will not elaborate here – because to do so may identify me, and I reveived 3 death threats, or threats against my family if I carried out my plan to report the behaviour of those charged with the escort’s security. I have a witness to this.

After 3 days I received a visit from a higher-ranking person from Villawood, who asked me about the episode, and insisted I write my report – I had 6 foolscap pages of notes – and still do have them – which I drafted the night I got back from Woomera, of everything that happened.

I wrote the report at this insistence, but abstained from making it an emotional blurb. Instead, while noting the incidents and events, I also made recommendations to attempt to prevent further such things.

I later found out that my “report” was in the bin somewhere! I received (and still have) a “thank-you” letter from the then Centre Manager, but that was it.

No one has ever asked my about my experiences at Woomera, and if they did I would hesitate to become embroiled. This is because I am cynical about anyhting good coming from it.

Rather I am more inclined to believe this would be fodder for the media, and leave me exposed, unprotected, and seen as disloyal to mates. 

However I would be happy to give a photocopy of the report on this section of my rotation to Woomera to an appropriate enquiry, under strict conditions that would protect myself and family from the threatened recriminations.

Needless to say I did not return to Woomera for another rotation after that. Few would remember me, or even care, but I did care, and I did speak up. I did keep some notes which I still have. 

I sat on my bunk in the old “six-pack” buildings on quite a few nights and cried – speaking out loud at how God could allow this to happen in my country.

And if anyone is listening, I can tell you that the seeds of malcontent were sown the minute the refugees made contact with Autralian security personnel who abused their station. 

But apart from the media – no one will notice … and in time this too shall pass.

I still have no idea where to tell my story, or indeed even if it is relevant anymore.

 – Anonymous

A Space Elevator!! (and some other stuff)

Japan has announced that it’s going to try and build a space elevator!!  Pretty awesome stuff.  I’m unsure if it’s really possibly or not, but $9 billion is a lot to be investing on potentially nothing.

 

Ever wondered how big China’s population is?  This map gives a better idea, with each province labelled with an equivalent sized country.  Initial source here.  

 

This is a little old now, but a really cool machine that’s been built that can essentially build itself (and pretty much anything else, so long as it’s made from plastic :P).  Unfortuantly it needs a person to do the actual construction, but maybe that will change.

 

113 new species of sharks and rays have been “discovered” in Australia!  Pretty exciting, although many are very rare and straight onto endangered lists.  One has only ever been found inside the stomach of another shark.  Here is one of the new sharks.

 

 

Interesting article by George Dyson (son of Freeman) about economics in the 13th Century! Ok, only interesting to a select group of people I guess 😛

 

Finally here is an excellent summary of the environmental positions of Obama and McCain.  I don’t think there is any doubt that I’d be a very strong Obama supporter if I were American.

 

Oh and my camera has arrived, so I’m pretty much going to spend the next month just taking photos and reading about how to take photos 😛

The challenge is on for Moderate Catholics

Everytime I complain about the influence of religion in politics and on the lives of people who hold different or no religious views I am told that the actions and opinions of those bringing religion and politics closer represent just a minority of people with that religious view, and the majority are happy to let people behave however they like.

Well in Victoria the Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart is attempting to blackmail the government into dropping abortion legislation by threatening to close all Catholic hospital maternity wards, and possibly all Catholic hospitals.

It’s important to note that the position taken by the Archbishop is entirely ideological.  His opposition is due to the fact that the law will require doctors to refer people to hospitals who do offer abortions if they do not wish to carry out the procedure themselves.  Whether or not the doctors offer referals will not impact on the number of abortions carried out at all, it will just save the miniscule amount of time it would take to find a hospital that gives people the choice of having aboritons.  In fact a patient wanting an abortion could randomly choose any other hospital and have a strong chance of being able to get an abortion there (there are 15 Catholic hospitals in Victoria, and at least 48 hospitals in total – probably more).

So whatever your opinion on abortion is, the Archbishop is attempting to blackmail the government over a part of the legislation which will make no difference to the number of abortions carried out and will allow the Catholic church’s hospitals to continue a policy of not allowing people the choice to have abortions.

 

The challenge to moderate Catholics is this.  I don’t believe it’s true that the majority of religious people are “moderate” at all, or that they believe in people’s right to freedom from religion.  I believe that all “moderate” religious people are complicate in the actions of all religious people.  So prove me wrong moderate Catholics.  Let’s hear a vocal opposition from the moderate Catholics.  I’m not asking you to support the legislation, I’m asking you to oppose this ridiculous blackmail.  Lets have the legislation decided on the merits of the legislation and the actual issues, rather than on threats from religions over meaningless details.

If there is no vocal opposition from moderate Catholics to this religious blackmail, I’m going to go ahead and keep assuming that these “moderates” don’t really exist.

Monster Pigs and pirates

While this story is rather amusing, I detect a definite dropping in the quality of news at ABC online this year.  I need to quote the story it is so amusing;

 

Monster pig holds woman hostage

A pig the size of a shetland pony is holding a woman hostage on a property in northern New South Wales.

Since when do journalists use such literary licence in their reporting?

 

There is some very cool research happening at MIT (US) in building a network of sensors in trees, that are powered by the energy generated by the trees (apparently a bit like how you can generate power from lemons and potatoes).  The research is aimed at fire detection and weather monitoring.   

 

As if the conspiracy theorists didn’t need more meat, the secretive Catholic organisation Opus Dei is spending $44 million USD on a biomedical science laboratory.  I hope the conspiracy theories take into account the alleged link between Opus Dei and Nazis.  

 

I really liked this image by the guy who created the popular Obama Hope image.

 

 

Jano Caro is amazing.  If you haven’t read her book The Stupid Country: How Australia is Dismantling Public Education yet then you need to.  Anyway I really enjoyed this article by her on religion in schools.  She’s also affiliated with the Secular Party of Australia :D.

 

I don’t really understand the law in the UK.  Some Greenpeace protesters were aquited of damaging a coal fired power station to the cost of about $76,000 AUD because the judge ruled that the potential damage caused by the power station in terms of global warming justified their actions.  Not that I’m saying that I disagree with their actions, it’s just a hard to understand legal decision.  I guess it also needs to be said that the damage they caused was just painting the word “Gordon” on the power station, which apparently costs a lot to remove (they must have made it really really big).  If you’re legally allowed to damage coal fired power plants because the damage they cause is greater than the damage you’re doing, why are they legal at all?  Not that I’m saying they should necessarily be immediately banned either – it just seems like there are two very conflicting views being presented by this decision.

 

Oh and finally, if you have facebook and you go to settings/languages you can change your language to English (pirate) and it rephrases everything in pirate speak.  Not sure if this is a permanent thing, or just hasn’t been removed from talk like a pirate day, but it’s cool in a retro geeky kind of way.