The Gamma Point

Some Updates on PG&E and the Public Utilities Commission

2012-02-02T21:26:00.001-08:00

A trio of articles from today's San Francisco Chronicle:

PG&E should pay for gas upgrade, agency says

PG&E wants customers to pay almost 90 percent of the cost, adding nearly $2 to a typical customer's monthly bill by 2014. The Division of Ratepayer Advocates [an independent division of the California Public Utilities Commission] said changes to the plan could lower the price tag to $621 million, and contended that shareholders should foot the entire bill.

Heads should roll if PG&E ends up succeeding at passing off any of the cost to its customers. Their management chose profits over minimal safety standards and now expect us to foot the bill? I can't imagine any California resident not being outraged. Meanwhile, PG&E is playing Russian roulette with our lives, as we sit on miles of pipeline that could erupt at any moment.

Speaking of pipelines...

PG&E finds more gas lines that weren't checked

PG&E said in December that it had undertaken a systemwide review after workers found gaps in its maps of distribution lines in Pittsburg, Brentwood, Concord, Danville, Byron and Discovery Bay, which meant that entire neighborhoods were never checked for leaks. Federal law requires distribution lines to be inspected once every five years.

(When was the last time that those lines were checked, if ever?)

Let's end on a positive note:

Lawmaker blasts PUC president over PG&E inquiry

"I ask that you step aside to ensure the credibility of the proceedings in the PG&E case," Assemblyman Jerry Hill told President Michael Peevey during the public comment portion of a commission hearing in San Francisco.

"By refusing to do so," Hill said, "you would be sustaining a culture of complacency that you have pledged to end."

After the meeting, Peevey said he would not recuse himself from the matter, and said he had no more conflicts of interest than people on the commission's staff.

Did I say "positive"? I meant "infuriating."

Latest on Occupy Oakland

2012-01-30T20:05:00.000-08:00

I suppose I've been negligent posting links about Occupy Oakland, though the national media has covered it to a degree where I didn't really need to mention it. The protest over the weekend might not get the same level of coverage, so I'll do my part to promote news about the protests. I haven't participated in any of it; the closest I've come has been when I walked by Ogawa Plaza on an afternoon a few days before the infamous police reaction occured, and further when I walked by the Occupy Cal encampments at the steps of Sproul Hall, a few hours after the confrontation with police (which made the Colbert Report).

Reading today's local news, it appears that 400 (!!!) people were arrested Saturday night. Some protesters responded violently to the police, and some even vandalized city hall. These actions, perhaps wrongly, make it easier for people to write off the entirety of the protesters as extremists and hippies and knuckleheads. The advantage of a centralized movement, as opposed to a viral one such as this, is that participants can be held accountable for not following the tenets of non-violent protest.

That said, it's also quite easy to vilify the police after reading five more journalist arrests. Gavin Aronsen of Mother Jones has a report on his experience as a member of a group that was corralled and then arrested en masse, or "kettled." Also on MoJo is this collection of photos by a journalist who apparently narrowly avoided arrest.

Caturday Kitteh Comic... Kind'a

2012-01-28T13:41:00.001-08:00

How Nice of Them!

2012-01-21T14:46:00.000-08:00

"Pepper-sprayed UC Davis activists won't be charged," SF Chronicle.

District Attorney Jeff Reisig said there was insufficient information in UC Davis police reports to charge 10 protesters who were arrested in the demonstration. Of the eight men and two women who could have faced misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly and failure to disperse, seven were students, authorities said.

Caturday Kitteh... OMG!!!

2012-01-21T14:24:00.000-08:00

"Cupid the Cat" survives arrow impalement.

PG&E Lost Track of 300 Miles of Pipeline

2012-01-18T08:59:00.001-08:00

First paragraph from the SF Chronicle article:

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. admitted Tuesday that it had lost track of development around more than 300 miles of its gas-transmission lines - nearly twice as much as the company earlier estimated - a violation of federal law that could result in still more fines being imposed on the company.

Caturday Kitteh Comic

2012-01-14T10:41:00.001-08:00

Since I accidentally deleted this entry...

That Didn't Take Long: PG&E Broke Laws

2012-01-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

The California Public Utilities Commission did indeed find that Pacific Gas and Electric broke laws leading up to the San Bruno gas line explosion in 2010.

A summary by the San Francisco Chronicle:

Testing: PG&E violated U.S. law by not conducting pressure-test inspections of the San Bruno pipeline after the company spiked gas levels in 2003 and 2008. Such tests would have revealed the substandard condition of the pipe and averted the 2010 disaster.Video: PG&E destroyed a video of events at its gas-control center in Brentwood the night of the explosion, violating a state order.Upkeep: PG&E diverted over the years more than $100 million collected from customers for pipe maintenance, replacement and safety to other purposes, including profit and executive bonuses.Money: PG&E's gas transmission and storage operations collected $430 million over what the PUC authorized from 1998 to 2010.

And, for good measure, here's a second article by the Chronicle.

From the San Jose Mercury:

Noting that it can fine companies up to $50,000 a day per violation, the commission said it would consider such penalties "for the full duration" of the violations, which the report dates to the 1950s.PG&E also is facing the possibility of millions of dollars in civil penalties stemming from dozens of lawsuits filed by victims of the blast.

Let's do some arithmetic: 62 years x 365.25 days/year x 50 000 dollars/day = 1 132 275 000 dollars. I'll be disappointed if PG&E ends up paying much less than $1 billion. Maybe I'm hopelessly naive here, but I think that public utility monopolies should only be run at cost and not for profit. As I understand it, a for-profit corporation with shareholders is going to do whatever it takes to increase its value. That being the case, capitalism is fine for selling iWidgets but terrible for public interest.

Aliens

2012-01-12T20:05:00.000-08:00

(Hehe, just off to the side of my home desk is a poster for the movie Aliens.)

Biologist Jerry Coyne is on some professional travel, so colleague Matthew Cobb is filling in over at the Why Evolution is True blog. His recent post has engendered a lively discussion in the comments thread: At the time of writing, there are something like 120 comments. That's up there with Dr. Coyne's posts about religion or free will.

Anyway, besides quality contributions from the usual suspects, user "moochava" (what's with these whimsical user names!?!) had this to say:

Boring, likely answer: there is no other life in the universe, or if there is, anything nearby is scummy monocellular gunk.

Awesome science-fiction answer: At some point in the past (and remember, there’s billions of years of “past”), alien life got multicellular, got intelligent, and started making long-term plans for existing in Deep Time. With an eye toward efficiency, it optimized itself and the world around it to maintain its existence for as long as possible by exploiting various loopholes in the laws of physics so subtle we probably can’t even understand them yet. We don’t notice aliens because they’re not little gray men or even cool postsingular computronium shells floating around stars; they’ve built themselves into the fundamental substrate of reality and operate as efficiently as possible–so efficiently that we can’t distinguish them from natural phenomena. SETI isn’t going to detect anything, because SETI is built to detect waste energy (radiation); life that focuses on maintaining itself across Deep Time doesn’t give off enough waste energy to detect.

That's so cool! I'm not sufficiently well-versed in sci-fi to know if that's an original idea or borrowed from some author. The only thing that comes to mind is Alan Moore in an old Green Lantern comic ("Mogo Doesn't Socialize," for what it's worth) having a character mention various increasingly abstract entities belonging to the Green Lantern Corps. The final mentioned member is an equation. It's possible that Moore and moochava have the same reference work in mind.

Speaking of aliens and the movie Alien(s), I predict that I will shell out $10 to see just three movies this summer: The Avengers, Batman (out of obligation more than anything), and Prometheus. Prometheus began as Alien director Ridley Scott's idea to make a prequel addressing the so-called Space Jockey from the 1979 movie. Then the entertainment press reported that it was not going to be related to the Alien franchise. Then the trailer came out, and it's more "Alien" than Sigourney Weaver in underwear.

Update on San Bruno Explosion

2012-01-12T17:53:00.000-08:00

News regarding the 2010 blast in San Bruno due to faulty gas pipes and infrastructure installed by Pacific Gas and Electric has been trickling in over the last few weeks. The California Public Utilities Commission is now investigating if PGE broke any laws (or determining the number of broken laws) leading up to the explosion. Some more information from CBS San Francisco over here.

Weather Bloggin': Dry Spell

2012-01-10T18:17:00.000-08:00

I will shed no tears over our unusually dry winter after having endured three straight miserable ones. This article has a SoCal bias, but we're dry up north, too.

This sounds about right:

But California faces no imminent drought threat, according to Jeffrey Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District. He credits the storage of water from last winter's bountiful runoff, noting that the MWD's largest Southern California reservoir, Diamond Valley Lake near Hemet, is well over 90 percent of capacity. The MWD is planning for the possibility that this could be California's driest year on record. But even if that proves to be the case, Kightlinger said there is enough stored water to see us through "three tough years in a row" before cutbacks would be unavoidable.

Caturday Kitteh Comic

2012-01-07T13:35:00.001-08:00

Starting the New Year Right

2012-01-03T18:58:00.000-08:00

I don't announce blog breaks, but it's pretty obvious that I more or less took the last two months off. I expect to have at least O(10) posts this month, not all of them LOLcats.

Anyway, since I know that I get most of my traffic from searches for either "gnu atheism," "gnu atheist," or "Soren Bowie," I'll link to a recent hilarious article from Cracked.com columnist Soren Bowie. (The more times I write "Soren Bowie," the more likely this page will show up as a search result for the term "Soren Bowie.")

"Occupy the Senior Parking Lot: A Manifesto"

Choice passage:

We hope the Academy acts quickly for the sake of its student body, but we understand if classes and tests must be canceled as the school works to meet these demands. We believe that given the current economic climate, it's completely unfair of Buckfield to expect its seniors, the role models to the rest of the school, to study while they are working to fix the precipice of a broken country. Particularly when the faculty is being paid to come to school every day as pawns of the corporate machine, yet we are never paid a dime and we are here just as often. That kind of backwards thinking is exactly why the country is in this mess in the first place and no one is going to change anything just by sitting around. Metaphorically speaking. Physically, sitting around is the basis of our movement. We hope that is clear.

I believe we've found an exception to the adage that no one makes footprints in the sands of time by sitting down.

C&H on Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

By now, most tributes to Hitchens' life have been linked to and discussed everywhere else on the atheoblogosphere. Missing from the list, though, is the Cyanide & Happiness comic that came out a few hours after his death:

ANOTHER Caturday Kitteh Comic

2011-12-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

Well, flowchart:

Caturday Kitteh Comic

2011-12-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

From Cheezburger:

Bill O'Reilly on What Can Not Be Explained

2011-10-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

via Meme Generator

In case you haven't seen it:

Caturday Kitteh Comic: Early Halloween

2011-10-22T12:07:00.001-07:00

via http://catversushuman.blogspot.com/

Caturday Kitteh Comic

2011-10-08T08:57:00.001-07:00

Today, the creator of "Cat vs. Human" (source of the above) is holding a book signing in Alameda, CA, at 7pm.

Another Semester, Another Protest

2011-09-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

I'm sympathetic to peaceable assembly, but the recent Berkeley protests have been needlessly violent. My involvement with this round of protests solely consisted of me walking by the Sproul Plaza demonstration on my way to lunch.

The Daily Cal: "Two non-UC Berkeley students arrested during Tolman Hall protest"

DeCoulode said there was a scuffle at the door at about 9:04 p.m. and Clemons, who appeared to be leaving the building, allegedly assaulted an officer from behind and pushed him. During Clemons’s arrest, police used physical force and batons to take him into custody, for their own protection and because he was resisting arrest, DeCoulode said. He was booked for felony on a police officer and resisting arrest. [...] This incident escalated the action, according to DeCoulode. Right after the struggle, protesters outside threw a chair, pieces of concrete and a large base of a traffic cone at police officers, he said. A window was broken, and one officer was hit in the head with an object and sustained a concussion.

SF Chronicle: "UC Berkeley students protest tuition hikes, cuts"

A group filled ground-floor hallways before UC police ordered them to disperse about 9 p.m. Protesters outside Tolman Hall began throwing rocks, bottles and chairs at officers, police said. Two people - both male - were arrested, according to UC police Lt. Marc DeCoulode.

One was arrested for an altercation earlier in the day with a UC police officer, whose .40-caliber magazine went flying.

Officer Donna Chapman, who had been trying to order students to clear the building entrance, ran to pick up the cartridge before protesters could grab it. Around her, students shouting, "No cuts! No fees! Education must be free!" flooded into the education and psychology building.

The second person was arrested after chunks of concrete and a chair were thrown.

More College Republican Antics

2011-09-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

Last time I blogged about Berkeley's College Republicans, I was amused by their clever gimmick. This time, though, I found out about one of their planned fundraisers via the SF Chronicle:

A Facebook post announcing plans by a UC Berkeley Republican group to sell baked goods priced according to race, gender and ethnicity - "White/Caucasian" pastries for $2 and "Black/African American" pastries for 75 cents, for example - has drawn outrage on campus.

The campus Republicans, who expect to go forward with their "Increase Diversity Bake Sale" on Tuesday, say the event is meant to mock an effort by the student government to drum up support for SB185, a bill to let the University of California and the California State University consider ethnicity in student admissions. It's awaiting approval or veto by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Meanwhile, a white ex-convict has a better chance of being hired for an entry-level job than a black non-offender. Just putting that out there.

Caturday Kitteh Comic

2011-09-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

Book Bloggin': Blackford's "Freedom of Religion and the Secular State"

2011-09-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

Longtime "Hellfire Club" readers will recall that Dr. Russell Blackford's been working on a book on freedom of religion and the secular state (with that as its title) for some time. Earlier today, he posted the cover (solely upon which we may base our opinions) and the back-cover blurb.

...Or, if you don't like clicking on stuff:

Religious freedom is the prototypical liberal freedom, a cornerstone of modern political rights. Freedom of Religion and the Secular State examines the concept of religious freedom, focusing on today's hot-button issues, including blasphemy and religious vilification; the teaching of biological evolution in schools; the health and welfare of children (particularly where religious beliefs clash with modern forms of medical treatment); claims by some religious organizations for a right of conscientious objection (e.g. doctors who refuse to perform abortions); and the recognition of Sharia law in Western societies.

Such issues are topical, controversial, and intransigent. Somewhere at the core of contention lies fear of overweening government power, used to impose a favored understanding of the world - or another, transcendent, world - or to persecute those with a different understanding.

With a background in legal and political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and moral theory, Russell Blackford traces the historical background both of religious persecution and the modern liberal state's embrace of secularity and religious freedom. Engaging in contemporary debates, he argues for a balanced view of what religious freedom is about, and how the state should approach it.

I believe we should expect it to be available for purchase in time for the holiday season, though I can't say for certain. Keep your eyes peeled for an announcement on his site (and then a fairly delayed parrot-post over here!).

The Oatmeal on Coffee

2011-09-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

From The Oatmeal:

15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee

No mention of high-end (rear-end?) civet-assisted coffees...

Wired Magazine Feature Article on LED Bulbs

2011-09-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

Wired magazine has a lengthy feature article on the "Switch" LED light bulb, and LED light bulbs in general, available here. (It doesn't quite make up for being the publication responsible for "New Atheism," though I'm not sure what would.) Here's the introductory description of the company Switch Lighting's LED bulbs:

Though there are countless 60-watt LED prototypes in evidence at [LED trade show] Lightfair, few are available for side-by-side comparisons with incandescents. Most are sealed inside display cases or exist only in press releases or PowerPoint presentations. The Switch bulbs are out in the open: crystalline shells of clear, faceted glass, with aluminum prongs holding yellow-tinted LEDs that shine through the cooling liquid to cast a warm, living-room-quality glow—and draw only 13 watts to do it.

Cool stuff. The bulbs will be out in October, apparently, at a cost of $30 each. That's a bit pricey for home consumers, but the energy savings over a decade would lead to an overall cost of about $40 versus about $70, what one would spend with a traditional incandescent, if the reported numbers hold up.

"Ziggy" Creator Has Died

2011-09-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

Story here.

Earlier this year, the webcomic Let's Be Friends Again recreated every single Ziggy strip, ever:

Sfoof's Went "Poof"

2011-09-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

My favorite source of unconventional waffles has been closed for some months now, apparently. I noticed a few weeks back that some other business usurped its spot off of campus on Bancroft when I was hankering for a waffle. Per the Sfoof's Woofles facebook page, some of its batter mix is available for online purchase:

Sfoofs will miss all the wonderful customers we were proud to call Friends, but we have sold the business. We hope to continue to supply our Gluten Free Cookies and Waffle Mix to you through our website.

Berkeley will be a slightly less bizarre place for not having you, Sfoof's.

A Widening Gyre: More California Tuition, Loan Default News

2011-09-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

This week, UC President Mark Yudof proposed that the system increase its tuition yearly from eight to 16 percent, for four years. In the worst case scenario, in-state tuition would increase from the current ~$12,000 to ~$22,000. Tuition in 2006 was ~$6000. The UC Regents declined to consider the deal, at least for the moment. Here's more from the San Francisco Chronicle.

California graduates now have defaulted within two years on their student loans at a rate of 7.8 percent, up by 1.1 percentage points from the previous figure. Nationally, the rate is 8.8 percent. The bad economy is an obvious factor. Another source of blame is for-profit colleges. In my estimation, one would be far better served by a community college than a for-profit college, where default rates can be as high as 28 percent (Institute of Technology, in Clovis, CA). More over at California Watch.

Comics Bloggin': Terrible X-Men

2011-09-12T12:01:00.000-07:00

While I'm at it, I would be remiss if I didn't post the dudes at Let's Be Friends Again's take on X-Men Schism/Regenesis:

Oddly, Marrow somehow avoided being listed among the Eight Worst X-Men Ever. There have been several. (In all fairness, Grant Morrison fully intended Beak to be a "terrible" character. Maggott plain sucked.)

More LBFA/X-Men goodness:

The History of Charles Xavier (Xavier is kind of a jerk.)

The History of Rachel Summers (80's Rachel was awesome)

The History of Xorn (Ignore all of the retcons!)

Xorn and Rachel will make your head explode if you try to read too much at once, so be warned.

Hat Tip Bloggin': Dr. Blackford and X-Men

2011-09-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I decided to e-mail Dr. Russell Blackford, philosopher and sci-fi writer, about the full unveiling of the "Regenesis" series of covers of all eight(!!!) Marvel X-Men titles, since he's blogged about X-Men just about every week for the past several months, and about the "Schism" event in particular. To my delight, he gave me a deliberate hat-tip in his latest "Sunday Super-villainy" post.

As far as my X-Men cred goes, I suppose I'm somewhere between "n00b" and "hard c0re." I've read all of the "Uncanny" comics from the first "Giant Size" up through, currently, half of "Inferno" (That's something like 150 comics) via the "Essential" line of cheap collections and plan to go straight through the end of the Jim Lee era with the about-to-be-released Claremont/Lee Omnibus volumes. In the Lobdell era, I've only read X-Cutioner's Song (and always hated the title, even as a seven year old) and the Age of Apocalypse. The most modern stuff I've read has been Grant Morrison's bizarre, uneven, but ultimately "sublime" New X-Men run, and Joss Whedon's fun Astonishing X-Men. I'm going to pick up the "sequel" to Whedon's Astonishing arc this Wednesday, the "Breaking Point" paperback.

Some of the best superhero writing, though, is coming from Peter David's five-plus year run on X-Men spin-off title X-Factor. David is in my estimation one of the top five current writers in comics, period, and I think most comic fans will put him in their top ten. I've planned on writing up some more on most of the specific "X" events mentioned, so that may be forthcoming. On the other hand, comic bloggin' is a particularly well-flogged horse, and I'm not entirely sure if I have a sufficiently fresh take to merit my jumping in, large stick in hand.

Blog Bloggin': "The Tuition is Too Damn High!"

2011-09-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

Well, apparently I'm far from the only clever enough to come up with that title. A quick Google search reveals numerous other independent creators of the phrase, and I'm several months late to the party. Ah, well. It's obvious, basic, and funny. Instead of thinking of myself as unoriginal, I'll elevate all of us to the status of "great minds" by the scarily efficacious power of self-delusion.

Acoustics Bloggin': BBC/QR Diffuser

2011-09-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

If you've seen photos of recording studios, you'll likely have noticed panels of styrofoam hanging on the walls and ceiling. These panels, of course, are present to absorb sound waves so only the sound from the instrument of speaker reaches the microphone and not its reflections, which make an echo. Another approach is to install diffusing panels; instead of absorbing sound, they reflect the waves in an irregular fashion. This reduces the echo effect of reflection and allows for more sound to reach the microphone, compared to the absorbing panels.A popular diffuser design is the "Quadratic Residue Diffuser" (QRD), which is sometimes referred to as the BBC diffuser. The theory is interesting, based on the notion that the diffuser should reflect waves from all frequencies equally. Mathematically, the statement becomes, "find the function whose discrete Fourier transform has constant magnitude."The resulting panel looks like this:

Source

The function is a complex exponential (standard for waves) with a phase that depends on the square of an integer divided by some prime number. The panel is constructed on a grid so that the depth of each square element gives the incoming and reflected waves the appropriate phase.The famed BBC paper gives a much more readable presentation here, though you might want to Google "Fourier." (You should do that, anyway!) It's understandable for a curious undergraduate physics, math, or engineering student, or someone with some amount of training in any of those fields.Unfortunately, many of the original theory papers were published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, which I don't have access to.

Labor Bloggin': Labor Day

2011-09-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

First up, Greta Christina at her new locale:

Happy Labor Day, everybody!And since it’s Labor Day, I want to take a moment to think nice thoughts about labor unions.They’re not just the people who brought you Labor Day weekend. They’re the people who brought you the weekend. Period.They’re the people who brought you the eight hour work day, and time and a half for overtime if you work more than that. They’re the people who brought you workplace safety laws. They’re the people who brought you child labor laws. Etc. Etc. Etc. If you’re not working under 19th century working conditions, you have labor unions to thank. (And if you are working under 19th century working conditions — maybe you should unionize!)

The Eight-Hour Workday has a long and interesting history. In the US, the movement begain in 1791 (first for ten hour workdays) and fought well into the 20th century. President Wilson signed into law an act that required an eight-hour workday for railroad workers, and FDR signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which also outlawed child labor. (Maybe that would have happened sooner if that particular demographic had the right to vote.)Two interesting stories about the labor movement in the US. Until Teddy Roosevelt, the US government was essentially the enforcer for the wealthy industrialists (totally unlike now). The Haymarket Riot makes for a fun wiki-read:

After the appeals [on the ruling sentencing seven of the eight accused to death] had been exhausted, Illinois Governor Richard James Oglesby commuted Fielden's and Schwab's sentences to life in prison on November 10, 1887. On the eve of his scheduled execution, Lingg committed suicide in his cell with a smuggled dynamite cap which he reportedly held in his mouth like a cigar (the blast blew off half his face and he survived in agony for six hours).

But the Haymarket Riot is the reason for May Day becoming associated with the Labor Rights movement. It's the Pullman Strike that gave us today off (if you're lucky).

The strike was broken up by United States Marshals and some 12,000 United States Army troops, commanded by Nelson Miles, sent in by President Grover Cleveland on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. Mail, violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and represented a threat to public safety. The arrival of the military and subsequent deaths of workers led to further outbreaks of violence. During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded. An estimated 6,000 rail workers did $340,000 worth of property damage (about $8,818,000 in 2010 dollars).

Pullman would probably have been deemed too nasty of a villain for a Charles Dickens novel. Get your blood boiling by reading this Cracked article on the "Six Most Horrific Bosses of All Time." Pullman is underrated at number six, though check out the rest of the list.Speaking of Cracked, here's "Six People Who Single Handedly Screwed Entire Economies."What say you, Gang of Four, you post-punk socialists, you?

The Tuition is Too Damn High!

2011-09-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

MSN Money has an article about student loans, predicting that that could very well be the next source for a future financial crisis. Check out this graph:Tuition, for whatever reason, is far outpacing housing, general inflation, and even healthcare.Here's a list comparing tuition from 2010-2011 with 2005-2006 for several state schools. UC Berkeley increased something like $6500 to $11 000, and this year, it's even higher, bringing it to roughly twice the cost in only six years. The University of California pins the blame on lack of state support, which is entirely fair, as tuition now contributes more to UC revenue than state support.I don't know what the excuses are for the other schools, and by the graph depicted above, the large slope began sometime around 2004, well before the recent economic crisis.

Gas Explosion in Cupertino

2011-09-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

Just to make sure that PG&E gets as much negative publicity as possible, a gas pipe exploded in Cupertino two days ago. Cupertino is famous for being the central location of Apple. No one died in the blast.

Federal investigators are looking into the explosion of a leaky Pacific Gas and Electric Co. gas line that devastated a Cupertino condominium, officials said Thursday.It took PG&E crews about an hour and a half to cut the flow of gas after the explosion and fire ripped through the condo at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, just 15 minutes after its owner had left for lunch.No one was hurt, but the condo is a total loss.When crews examined the 2-inch plastic distribution pipe feeding smaller lines running into and around the condo at 20299 Northwest Square, they found a total of seven leaks, PG&E said.Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/01/BAL51KV1LO.DTL#ixzz1WoaqPemH

Bay Area Utilities Company Responsible for San Bruno Pipeline Explosion

2011-09-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, a pipe ruptured in Bay Area city San Bruno, killing eight people and destroying a neighborhood. (I haven't toured the damaged area, but that could make for a good Saturday.) I've been on the lookout for updates every so often, and this morning, a picture of a towering inferno caught my eye as I passed by a San Francisco Chronicle newspaper box.The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has been reviewing the case and announced that utilities company Pacific Gas and Electric ("PG&E") is responsible for the blast. There are something like 70 lawsuits against the company, so I hope they managed their money well during the last year.From The San Francisco Chronicle:

A seam weld in the pipeline segment that ruptured Sept. 9 in San Bruno was so obviously deficient that it would not have passed even a cursory visual inspection when a PG&E crew installed it in 1956, investigators with the safety board said. The weld flaw, and PG&E's failure over more than 50 years to conduct an inspection that would have detected it, made the line's rupture inevitable, they [the NTSB] said.[...]PG&E's final mistakes happened the day of the blast, the safety board said, as a botched repair job set the disaster in motion and control-room operators failed to recognize what had happened for several precious minutes as the San Bruno neighborhood burned.Homeowners paid the price for PG&E's longtime resistance to installing automatic pipeline shutoff valves, as it took the company more than 90 minutes to close manual valves and cut the flow of gas to the inferno. When the flames finally were extinguished, 38 homes were destroyed and 70 were damaged.Read more: Full article

A related article from The Chronicle has the following:

Cost estimates for major changes such as pipe retrofitting or expanded pressure testing are fuzzy because federal regulators have never kept track of where older pipelines are located and how many miles of them are in use, the board said."We do know that half the nation's (gas transmission) pipelines were constructed before 1970," said Robert Hall, an investigator for the agency.

Awesome.And here's the obligatory Wikipedia article.

I Don't Like Rick Perry's Politics Much

2011-08-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

Or his religion, for that matter.

Here are ways he would like to change the constitution, if he could. You really just have to read the first one to figure out he doesn't have much respect for those hallowed Founding Fathers.

He's also the current leader in the most recent Gallup poll, which I hope we can all have a laugh about in a few months.

There's been coverage the past week about his opinion of evolution, which, besides getting a Cool Story, Bro from me, earns a pair of links. Paula Kirby takes Perry to task and notes that evolution does indeed pose a threat to Christianity. Richard Dawkins, among other things, suggests we use Perry's knowledge on the subject as a proxy for his general competence, or as Dawkins puts it, "a politician’s attitude to evolution [...] is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy."

And, finally, a trio of links about Perry's purported religious tradition, the New Apostolic Reformation:

Alternet's coverage of NAR and the Perry Prayer Convention.

A smaller article from NPR on the same.

And some more history from a blog post that I believe Ophelia Benson had linked to from "Butterflies and Wheels," though I could be mistaken.

Acoustics Bloggin': Flat Speakers

2011-08-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

This new speaker design looks like tin foil bought from a grocery store. Weird.

The technology was first developed by Duncan Billson and David Hitchens, professors at the University of Warwick with early trials using just two sheets of tin foil and an insulating layer of baking paper to product the sound.

Oh, that's why.

If there's any peer-reviewed literature on this, Warwick Audio Technology has not made it easy to find!

Berkeley College Republicans Dunk-Tank Fundraiser

2011-08-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

The Fall 2011 semester began last Thursday, and Sproul Plaza was correspondingly active with multiple campus group booths lining the walkway up to Sather Gate. One such booth was for Berkeley's College Republicans (the plural indicating that there are at least two), who had also set up a dunk tank with the title "DUNK A REPUBLICAN"! They had photos of Barack Obama for feet markers and a photo of George W Bush as the target. Very clever, except I hope that anyone who was tempted by the opportunity realized they would be putting money into their ideological competitors' pockets.

Acoustics Bloggin': Ported vs. Sealed Cabinet Design

2011-08-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

Physicist turned engineer Francis Deck (of music forum Talk Bass) has written up a few PDF's explaining the physics of speaker cabinet design. It turns out that there's more to it than screwing a speaker into a box.

The physics is relatively simple, if you're comfortable with driven damped harmonic oscillators. Introducing a port in the enclosure turns the system into a pair of coupled oscillators, one being the speaker and the other being the column of air in the port.

The long and short of it is that the port increases the energy delivered to the low frequencies, which is why, I suppose, that most modern electric bass speaker cabinets have a port. Guitar speaker cabinets often have a rear port, but it's not clear to me how that is different. I suspect that it is; I'm simply not sure.

Physics done here.

Worked example done here.

Hat tip Talk Bass "Amps" forum

Onion Bloggin': Man Somehow Overcomes Alcoholism Without Jesus

2011-08-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

I'm sure AA is not amused.

"It hasn't been easy, but I took a hard look at myself and made some important lifestyle changes. I'm sober almost three months now, and I never could have done it without [wife and non-supernatural-entity] Susan." Reached for comment, Wendt's aunt Clara, who spent years praying for her nephew, remained steadfast in her insistence that Jesus most likely had something to do with it.

That's ...about half of the entire article, right there.

Acoustics Bloggin': Line Arrays

2011-08-24T08:59:00.000-07:00

If you've ever been to a large concert, you've surely seen a pair of arrays of speakers at the top of the stage rigging. There's usually something like a dozen boxes stacked together, with the bottom few curving downward a bit.

Here's a paper from Meyer Sound on "line arrays" (and curved line arrays), which includes nice graphs, illustrating how sound is projected. It looks to me like the performers on stage have to deal with backward-projecting low frequencies, which could be annoying. I haven't performed with such considerable PA support, so I wouldn't know from first hand experience.

Hat tip to the TalkBass Amps forum.

Qualia Soup's Series on Morality

2011-08-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

Youtube user Qualia Soup has planned a three-part video series on morality, two videos of which are complete and posted at present.

Part 1: The secular nature of morality, including thought-experiments useful to anyone who has forgotten playing schoolyard games with kids who cheated.

Part 2: The holy books are not the source of morality, as they contain in a rather arbitrary combination both moral and immoral aspects.

Part 3 will be released soon, hopefully.

Comment Bloggin': The Abundance of Oxygen in the Universe

2011-08-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, blogger James Sweet asked Why is oxygen the third most common element in the universe? That's a question that stumped myself and a few of my cosmology/theoretical astrophysics-y friends, so I went poking around some peer-reviewed literature and found a very readable review article, which I suggest in my second comment to that post.

The article is "Origin of the Biologically Important Elements" by Virginia Tremble (1996). As I say in the comment, it is available via SpringerLink.com, though it was originally published in the journal ORIGINS OF LIFE AND EVOLUTION OF BIOSPHERES.

The article is informative and funnier than it has any right to be. As fellow commenter Karl Withakay mentions, oxygen is made during helium-burning, including the super-awesome-sounding triple-alpha process. Dr. Tremble's article also holds the secret as to why nitrogen is far less abundant than its neighbors carbon and oxygen.

A full understanding, though, still eludes me, though I suppose I would only be satisfied after being able to estimate to some reasonable degree the abundance of the first few elements, and that would require me to spend a bit more time learning astrophysics than I justifiably can afford.

Turtle Bloggin' 3: The Manhattan Project

2011-08-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

The title to this post is, naturally, a reference to the third NES Turtle game.

It looks like James "Angry Video Game Nerd" Rolfe is done -- has been done, really -- with his "Turtle Tuesdays" on his Cinemassacre website. I've watched most of his stuff between Turtle Bloggin' 2 and this post, but I soon suspected that I'd only be interested in mentioning a few of them and decided to let the series reach its end before further comment.

The best video is the review of the cartoon series beyond the first season. I recall losing interest in the show after the climactic, gargantuan (bloated?) third season, after which Michelangelo traded in his nunchucks for a grappling hook, and the show moved from Fox to CBS. The show survived long enough, apparently, for April to learn about the Internet(!!?!), but it seems to have petered out into anticlimax, succumbing to "never ending story syndrome." (The term is comic author Brian Clevinger's, though I can't find the article in which he coined it -- something like ten years ago.)

Rolfe reviews the Eastman and Laird TMNT comics here. It looks like there's going to be a new hardcover collection coming out this November. Radical.

And Rolfe and friends decided to try out some of Michelangelo's terrible pizza flavors, most of them -- believably -- tasting horrible.

Comment Bloggin': William Lane Craig vs. Jerry Coyne/All of science

2011-08-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

In one of today's posts, Dr. Coyne notices that William Lane Craig had called the former out some time ago, though he just recently noticed. Coyne successfully addresses Craig's concerns -- or, in a possibly appropriately cynical interpretation, purported concerns.

I've turned up in the comments a few times, since Craig makes some tortured argument regarding scientists having faith that the one-way speed of light is constant, despite measuring its speed by having light take a round-trip. I address this in a response to a Ben Goren comment, with user "Buzz" (who I don't recall seeing before, though that may be an oversight on my part) chiming in with some interesting stuff.

I also link to some appropriate Jesus 'n Mo cartoons, so look out for those, as well.

Also, this video pops up in a comment, which looks like interesting viewing. The video's title is "Hector Avalos: How Archaeology Killed Biblical History."

No Escape from Physics: Ground Loops

2011-08-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that whenever I turn on my electric water boiler, the nearby refrigerator starts to hum a bit differently. This can be understood through the concept of ground loops. The physics in the Wikipedia article requires a second-semester level of circuits, if you want to follow along with the equations (Ohm's Law, Kirchoff, etc.).

When two electrical devices share a common path to ground, they might influence each other, since there is a small resistance between ground (zero volts) and their common point of connection, making the voltage at that point some degree higher than ground, determined by the higher-power device.

In the audio world, some equipment comes with a "ground lift" switch to deal with hum that comes from ground loops. The Wikipedia article includes a reference to the interestingly titled PDF document "How Not to Kill a Performer On Stage." Good to know.

No Escape from Phyiscs: Sweetwater's Microphone Buying Guide

2011-08-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

I came across musical instrument retailer Sweetwater's Studio Microphone Buying Guide yesterday morning, and it was interesting to see that the various microphone designs work with physics that's straight from a second semester course. Check it out:

The condenser microphone is a very simple mechanical system, with almost no moving parts compared with other microphone designs. It is also one of the oldest microphone types, dating back to the early 1900's. It is simply a thin stretched conductive diaphragm held close to a metal disk called a backplate. This arrangement basically produces a capacitor, and is given its electric charge by an external voltage source.

A dynamic mic is one in which audio signal is generated by the motion of a conductor within a magnetic field. In most dynamic mics, a very thin, light, diaphragm moves in response to sound pressure. The diaphragm's motion causes a voice coil that is suspended in a magnetic field to move, generating a small electric current.

A ribbon mic works by loosely suspending a small element (usually a corrugated strip of metal) in a strong magnetic field. This "ribbon" is moved by the action of air molecules and when it moves it cuts across the magnetic lines of flux causing a signal to be generated. Naturally ribbon mics have a figure 8 pick up pattern.

Then there's a frequency response diagram of a Shure SM-57 microphone, and reading semi-log plots is science, all the way! A semi-log plot has one of the two axes set so that the increments are set by increasing powers. Evenly spacing the frequency axis would make the chart extremely large, since it has to cover 20Hz through 20kHz (or 20 000Hz). Instead of spacing the axis by every 100Hz, say, it's spaced from 0-1000Hz and 1000-10 000Hz, plus a little extra to allow for data up to ~20kHz.

I honestly have no idea what sort of magic goes into the various polar patterns. Funny story: I'd been looking at those sorts of diagrams since early on in middle school, when I got big into recording (and still am), which certainly helped out late in high school and early in college when I encountered polar coordinates.

Dinosaur in the Kitchen: Crock Pot BBQ Pulled Pork

2011-08-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to pretend that this is an original recipe. Here's the appropriate link to follow.

My roommate and I are making this as I type. We decided that the author could very well have meant one teaspoon of liquid smoke instead of one tablespoon, so we went with the former.

It's very easy to get snobby about BBQ sauces, but I picked up Bull's Eye Carolina Style. I can't vouch for the accuracy to which it represents Carolina BBQ, though I figure that it will be less blasphemous to use than some other style.

I also prefer my pork sandwiches to be made from potato buns and topped with cole slaw. And I suppose I'm obligated to post the infamous PORK CHOP SANDWICHES GI Joe PSA:

My God, did that smell good!

It Are My Birfday Again!

2011-08-19T01:15:00.000-07:00

George Carlin Bein' Awesome

2011-08-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

I suppose as a contrast to Patton Oswalt's take on Christianity, here's George Carlin, who minces no words in his criticism.

PhD Comics: A Window Into The Grad Student's Life

2011-08-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

Several of my few readers are relatives or are otherwise non-technical individuals, so I am obligated to refer them all to PhD Comics, a web comic by Jorge Cham, former Stanford grad student in mechanical engineering, then CalTech faculty member, and now full-time cartoonist/web nerd celebrity.

The first strip came out in October 1997, so you have some reading to do. (For comparison's sake, I was in my third month of middle school at the time.) There are four co-protagonists: The unnamed lead (presumably modeled after the artist); Cecilia, the perfect engineering grad student; Tajel, the outspoken humanities grad student; and Mike Slackenerny, the stereotype of the grad student who stays in the department and never graduates (though he finally has, within the last few years).

Most of the strips are expressions of the multitudinous frustrations of grad student life, but several concern the interactions of these highly specialized individuals and their family members or the general public, which should provide insight on how these go on my end.

Cham has built up a sizable audience by successfully capturing the grad-zeitgeist, so it should be insightful to anyone who has a PhD student in her life.

Logic Bloggin': Begging the Question

2011-08-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

I know I'm fighting a losing battle with this one, but I would like to make my case for the preservation of the proper usage of the phrase "To beg the question" (and its grammatical variants).

Colloquially, this phrase has come to mean, "raises the question," based on interpreting the "beg" part as meaning "this question is just begging to be answered." Strictly speaking, words only mean what we intend them to mean and understand them to mean, which in turn is based on popular usage. In time, then, the phrase "begs the question" can become synonymous with "raises the question," but before the conversion becomes complete, the former phrase has a strict, technical definition that I believe is worth preserving.

"To beg the question" in an argument means to assume as true the very premise whose truth you are attempting to prove. It's very much like opening a dictionary and reading some entry for a word, to find the same word used in its own definition.

All of my posts feel incomplete without an embed of a Youtube rap music video, so here's an infamous example of begging the question, presented by MIMS in his sole hit (to my knowledge, anyway):

The claims made in the above have long since been impugned by Rob of Cyanide and Happiness:

Patton Oswalt Being Dumb

2011-08-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Patton "Ratatoullie" Oswalt is good for funny bits about food (Black Angus and KFC), but I woke up this morning (cue the chords G-A-G-Em....) recalling the following bit that I'd been meaning to bring up for a while:

That's some lazy revisionism that, I guess, goes over well with the ecumenical, with its fable of a tolerant, gentle, diversity-loving Jesus. It's a poor retelling of any of the canonical gospels, though. Just take a look at John 15:6.

If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

That sounds very much like just one brand of "sky cake" to me. This isn't cherry-picking, either; look through all four gospels and try to quote Jesus as saying something inconsistent with this. (As Stephen Colbert says, there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior.)

The notion that humanity was only allowed to flourish after the development of religion is ill-informed, as well. Social species like early humans are going to develop some amount of moral behavior that conflicts with short-term might-makes-right behavior. Brutality and fair-mindedness alike are a part of human nature, as should be readily apparent at all times.

Here are a few links to relevant articles from WEIT (which I will stop referring to once Dr. Coyne is no longer worth reading, which will never happen):

True altruism versus reciprocal altruism

More on altruism, killing, and religion

The kin selection kerfuffle

Oswalt fans may try to defend his routine as just a joke, but that's weak. The humor is based on a whimsical analogy and exaggeration of actual behavior, but the underlying premise is presented as factual. The truth as we presently understand it, though, is much more complicated and much more interesting. Appropriate attitudes toward religion ought to be based in fact and not wishful thinking, which is, after all, the domain of religion.

On the positive side, I just found out that there's a Black Angus in Walnut Creek.

Rocket (Feet) Stegosaurus

2011-08-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

I few seconds ago, I googled my nom de blog and found this on Deviant Art. Nice work, Deathwyrm.

Parrot Bloggin': Being New Age-y a Possible Health Hazard

2011-08-12T15:02:00.000-07:00

I read this from the East Bay Express over a week ago:

In general, the public isn't aware of what's released into the air when incense is burned. Most brands are manufactured in India and China and they combine plant resins, wood powders, perfumes, and oils with glue containing formaldehyde and phthalates. When burned, this combination releases polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — highly carcinogenic compounds — into the air, along with various gases like carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. Incense burning also produces volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, toluene, and xylene, which have long been known to cause respiratory irritation and can even trigger DNA mutations. The gases and particulate matter permeate rapidly through indoor spaces, leaving toxic residue long after the flame has gone out. This is certainly not the purification process advocated by religious mystics.

Incense is ritually burned in some Christian churches, and is a daily habit for Hindus and Buddhists making offerings or meditating. Lila Singh, who works at Kathmandu Imports on Solano Avenue where traditional Nepalese incense is sold, lights a stick every morning. "It brings luck and purifies and cleans the air," she said.

Purify the air. Sure.

Full article here.

WEIT 3:16

2011-08-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

I left this comment over at Dr Jerry Coyne's ~~blog~~ website:

Dr. Coyne so loved science that he gave his time to theology, that whoever reads his ‘site shall not become accommodationist but have a gnu life.

Maybe should have gone with just "have gnu life," but oh well. Also, I apparently have been linking to a null page for months over at WEIT. I would like to think that at one time, the URL over here was "blogspot.rocksteg.com" and not "rocksteg.blogspot.com," but maybe it never was, thus prohibiting units and units of potential readers from seeing this ~~website~~ blog.

Meme Bloggin': Nyanch 0-22

2011-08-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's, kitteh-centric post that was at least tangentially related to a notion in logic and argumentation that I had written about before, I couldn't shake the following out of my mind:

Well, there is a fairly adequate Nyan Cat precedent, for whatever that's worth.

I also recommend viewing the fifth panel while listening to Epona's Song from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time instead of the usual Nyan theme, which is the aural equivalent of a Japanese cartoon-induced seizure.

Kitteh Kettle Logic

2011-08-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

Maximum PC's Geek Quiz 2011

2011-07-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

The title says it all, really. Here's the link.

I got a 15, putting me just into the second-to-lowest tier. Considering that I've never built a computer before and don't play graphics-intensive PC games, I'll take it.

Kvetching About 3D

2011-07-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

I saw this article yesterday on Maximum Technology about 3D smart-phones causing headaches, and I found it exceedingly easy to believe.

The Journal of Vision published a full-on study that examined what effects stereo 3D devices had on 24 adults. Martin S. Banks, professor of optometry and vision science, and author of "The Zone of Comfort: Predicting Visual Discomfort with Stereo Displays," the title of the article, noted that mobile phones and other 3D devices caused viewers to experience headaches, fatigue, eyestrain, and eye irritation.

The MaxTech article provides a link to the original study, but it also appeared to be a potential cause of headaches and fatigue in its own manner. The study has a small sample size of 24, so I don't think it's on the level of a study to determine governmental regulation. Still, the results are worth keeping in mind before buying 3D-capable technology.

It seems that after Avatar came out, the entire entertainment industry went 3D-crazy, pushing 3D-versions of movies(often converted from 2D in post-production), TV's, and all other displays on consumers, while the health effects were not fully taken into account. Seeing this fools-rush-in scenario play out over the last year and a half troubled me, even more than the zombies and vampires fads (which I also hope will blow over soon, but for artistic and not health reasons).

I played around with a Nintendo 3DS a few weeks ago, and I had a headache after just a few rounds of Street Fighter 4. This past weekend, I saw Captain America in 3D (another example of post conversion), and I found it uncomfortable for my eyes to figure out where to focus. This sort of anecdotal evidence, for what it's worth, is entirely consistent with this Roger Ebert article on why 3D movies are, simply put, a bad idea. As a bonus, Ebert wrote a sort of follow up piece on another unintended consequence from the proliferation of 3D projectors.

Does Hollywood need to remake The Jerk in order for the execs to realize that their short-sightedness might make them liable parties?

Blog Bloggin': Which Type of Blog Is Mine?

2011-07-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

From today's Cracked: The Eight Worst Types of Blogs on the Internet. It is left as an exercise to the reader to determine which categories The Gamma Point falls under.

Tech Companies in the Bay Area

2011-07-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

Here is a useful map of the locations of tech companies in the Bay Area. I'm sure it is incomplete, but they already number in the low 100's. Also note how most of the companies are in the region extending from San Francisco to San Jose.

And here's the mandatory Wikipedia article on the San Francisco Bay Area. The picture depicting the seasons is entirely accurate: There's a green season, and there's a brown season.

Energy Bloggin': Silicon Ink Photovoltaics

2011-07-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Department of Energy Blog has a post on silicon ink photovoltaics ("PV") winning an "R&D 100 Award."

From the blog post:

Innovalight's silicon ink technology takes a proprietary mix of silicon powder and other chemicals and liquefies them into an ink. Using a conventional, industrial screen printing technique, thin layers of silicon ink are then deposited onto crystalline silicon wafers to produce highly efficient solar cells. Depositing the ink adds only one low-cost step to an existing solar cell production line, yet this simple upgrade boosts the bottom line of a typical solar production plant by about 20 percent. For an average-size factory that equates to more than $100 million per year.
[...]
“Key technical challenges were overcome and the product was fully defined during the period in which Innovalight was under the PV Incubator subcontract. During the 18 month PV Incubator project, we increased cell conversion efficiency from 14% to over 19% and developed Silicon Ink capacity to over 250 MW. In the same period, Innovalight increased its full-time staff in Sunnyvale by 50% and originated more than 10 patents.”

The theoretical limit for single-junction photovoltaic devices is about 33 percent. It seems that gallium-arsenide (GaAs) devices are further along at present, reaching over 27 percent efficiency.

I haven't read any cost-benefit analyses on PV cells, so I don't know yet the details on the relationship between efficiency and per-unit cost, and the critical values at which the technology becomes commercially viable. The DOE target figure, though, is $1 per Watt, and we may be well on our way. Solving the energy crisis will require full-bore innovation in all alternative energy channels, though this particular channel is the one I'm most partial to (excepting Superman-based technology.)

Blog Bloggin': Blog Braggin'

2011-07-03T19:00:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, I found the "Stats" tab on the blogger site. Maybe it's always been there and I just never noticed. Maybe it's a new feature. Maybe I saw it but had previously assumed it was about baseball or something, then suddenly realized that it's the way I can see how many people have viewed my blog, or at least how many times my parents have.

It turns out that my blog has gotten some views, despite being squarely in the z-list. My blog gets most of its traffic from searches for "gnu atheist" or variations thereof; my slap-dash post on the term from August 2010 has by far the most views of any particular post on the site. In fact, the link to that post is something like the fourth result if you search on Google.

For sake of comparison, Richard Dawkins's site shows up on the second page of results, and Pharyngula is on the first page of results only by way of wiki. So that's weird.

While I'm discussing "The Gnus," the WEIT reader Hamilton Jacobi, who coyned (hehe) the term, is pseudo-named after a relatively obscure formulation of classical mechanics. Sure, it's covered in Landau and Lifshitz, but I've never used it, even for a homework problem. Turns out it's similar to the Schroedinger equation, in the limit that h-bar goes to zero (go figure!).

The Gnu Atheist Symbol. Source

And let me link to the gnu anthem, "The Gnu Song" by Flanders and Swann.

Outside of the gnu-sphere, I also get traffic from Cracked fans searching for Soren Bowie, since I collected some of his best work a few months ago, eliciting a response either from the writer himself or someone impersonating him. Since it wasn't mean, I will assume that it's from the genuine article.

And that's pretty much it: Gnu Atheism and Soren Bowie. There have been a few searches for "Gamma Point," but I suspect that many of those are from undergraduate solid state students stumbling across this somewhat sneakily named blog. (Sharing the name with an obscure technical concepts is a guaranteed way to differentiate oneself through specific searches, compared to, say, using a part of some well-known quote from literature.) That my traffic comes from those sources makes it that much more difficult for me to write about topological insulators and some other miscellaneous physics stuff.

UC Student Health Insurance and Alternative Medicine

2011-06-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

My roommates and I received fliers in the mail today regarding changes in UC's Student Health Insurance Plan. Being a responsible adult, I put on a free-form jazz record and nodded approvingly at phrases such as "Increased co-insurance coverage" and "Decreased generic prescription co-pay." Before I got to read the thrilling bullet-point regarding major dental service coverage (*APPROVING HEAD NOD*), I came across this:

Increased coverage for acupuncture, chiropractic, and podiatry services.

Podiatry seems legitimate, but acupuncture and chiropractic certainly are not. For shame, Berkeley. While under most circumstances, the Tang Center ain't nuthin' to mess with, I am definitely going to express my disapproval to any possibly relevant authority. If UC cuts this crap out of our coverage, we might be able to get even more actual benefits. Let dumb people waste their own money.

Burglary Bloggin'

2011-06-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Hopefully this will be the last of the "Burglary Bloggin'" series, as well as the first.

I had left my car parked in a slightly different location for about a week, with the front door accidentally unlocked. I noticed a mess on my drivers side passenger seat--a bigger one than usual--and feared the worst. After some bit of panic, I found none of my CD's missing, or anything else, for that matter, except for the change in my change drawer. The drawer had been torn out of its socket and unceremoniously tossed aside on the passenger seat, three lone pennies remaining from the original stash.

In fact, the entire contents of the change drawer had been pennies. The lousy thief stole maybe a dollar's worth of pennies from me. I'm not sure if that's theft or a favor.

Funniest of all, on the floor of the passenger seat, I have a sandwich bag full of change, not all pennies. And it's still there.

Physics Bloggin': LED Droop

2011-06-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

On the job, I check out the NERSC website whenever I'm suspicious one of their systems is down. In other words, I check out the NERSC website a lot. One such time, I found this article on the front page of the site (it has since been moved back). I clicked on it, since I'm interested in LED research. It turns out that one of the main physicists involved in the work is someone I've met on a few occasions.

The NERSC article does a great job at explaining the basics of LED's and the "droop" effect: The more power you give an LED, the less efficient it becomes. The fancy graphic at the bottom of the article, though, doesn't appear to make a lick of sense. If you have access to Applied Physics Letters, the diagrams in the article are much more evocative. There, it's easier to see that indirect Auger (something like "aw-zhay") recombination involves a conduction electron losing energy and causing the lattice to vibrate, which then causes another conduction electron to gain energy, energy that was supposed to go into creating light.

This is an exciting example of the type of research that I'm involved with: calculating properties of materials based on little more than the types of atoms that go into them, and their position in space. I do not suspect, however, that my work will get this kind of publicity, which is still fairly narrow.

Physics Bloggin': Cosmological Inflation

2011-06-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

One of the great mysteries of the universe is where it all came from. I don't believe I've heard of a civilization that had not thought of the question, "Where did the universe begin?" though this perhaps betrays an ignorance of anthropology. Most civilizations, anyway, formed the question and thought up of some stories as placeholders for actual knowledge.

In modern times, we have the benefit of centuries of rigorous research and observation (the most significant occurring within the last one), enabling us currently to extrapolate the universe backwards in time -- in some degree -- within a fraction of a second after the purported Big Bang Event.

Physicist Sean Carroll of Caltech long ago wrote the post "Does the Universe Need God?" to discuss the relationship between the Old Testament creation myth and modern cosmology, what the Big Bang is and evidence thereof, inflationary theory, and the anthropic principle, the latter two topics melding together quite nicely. It takes a bit of time to read, and you may not care for the religious discussion, but if you get through the article, then you know just as much as I do about cosmology.

A popular quote:

A provocative way of characterizing these beginning cosmologies is to say that "the universe was created from nothing." Much debate has gone into deciding what this claim is supposed to mean. Unfortunately, it is a fairly misleading natural-language translation of a concept that is not completely well-defined even at the technical level. Terms that are imprecisely defined include "universe," "created," "from," and "nothing." (We can argue about "was.")

The above quote was also presented by Dr. Jerry Coyne in his blog post about the same article.

After reading that article, whether it takes you an hour or a week, you should check out the webcast of the Dr. Alan Guth's colloquium delivered to the Berkeley physics department in mid-April. The introduction in the beginning is not mic'd, frustratingly, so skip a few minutes into the video to start with Dr. Guth. He reviews the evidence for the Big Bang model of cosmology and then gets into the tentative successes of inflation. (He also provides a definition for inflation, which I am hesitant to do, for fear of butchering it.)

A Mild Indication of the Religiosity of America

2011-06-19T18:42:00.000-07:00

NBC played a montage before a golf tournament today, part of which consisted of children reciting the pledge of allegiance. Possibly by accident -- or possibly by Gnu sabotage! -- the phrase "under God," along with some other phrases, was omitted. This minor gaffe of no real import has made national news after angering many viewers.

Such events remind me that, despite the great gains in numbers of non-religious Americans, we are still far from our vision of a truly secular America.

For whatever it is worth, I dislike the status given to the Pledge of Allegiance as a quasi-mandatory, daily affirmation of loyalty. I doubt that daily recitation has any effect on instances of treason and sedition, and only serves to engender nationalism, which I do not at all consider a virtue. Rote recitation is something akin to brainwashing, and I believe that our principles are debased by such techniques.

New Design

2011-06-19T14:32:00.000-07:00

To commemorate the approximate two-year anniversary of this blog, I've changed the cosmetics slightly with the purpose of being able to fit in youtube videos without the right edges getting chopped off by overly narrow boundaries. A quick glance through my archives indicates success, even with extra-large display windows from youtube. Expect more pictures and more videos, as I'm now much more confident that it won't look terrible any more on the original site, though, as always, I encourage you to use a blog reader to manage this and, say, your LOLcats.

200th Post Extravaganza! or The Ethics of Belief

2011-05-23T21:33:00.001-07:00

To celebrate my 200th post (an average rate of just over one post per week, which I'm fine with), here's William K. Clifford's essay, "The Ethics of Belief", mercifully in the public domain. Some choice quotes below.

No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever.

Then it [belief] helps to bind men together, and to strengthen and direct their common action. It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendour to the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self-deception which allows them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us.

It is not only the leader of men, statesmen, philosopher, or poet, that owes this bounden duty to mankind. Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race. Every hard-worked wife of an artisan may transmit to her children beliefs which shall knit society together, or rend it in pieces. No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.

This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation. [...] But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town.

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

And finally

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it—the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.

Ain't no party like Stegosaurus party.

Tragedy Bloggin': Sophocles Sunday

2011-05-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

Just about every educated Westerner knows the plot of "Oedipus Rex" (or "Oedipus the King", depending on how much ground the translator was willing to cede to the Romans), and most of us have read that or "Antigone" in high school. But there's a third 'Theban play' that, as far as I know, isn't foisted upon American high school students, and Sophocles has four complete remaining plays besides. I always found Sophocles easy to read (in English translation of course -- I'm something less than a dilettante), so the quality-to-difficulty ratio is through the roof. Thus I read the famous Three Theban Plays followed by the other four a few months back, shame that it is that I can read the surviving body of work by one of the all time greats in two or three weeks at a leisurely pace.

I purchased the Robert Fagles translation of the Theban plays (Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus) and was disappointed to find my favorite lines in "Antigone" were translated differently. The Fitts/Fitzgerald translation, which I read in high school, has

CREON

The generation of prophets has always loved gold.

TIRESIAS

The generation of kings has always loved brass.

Fagles instead has

CREON

You and the whole breed of seers are mad for money!

TIRESIAS

And the whole race of tyrants lusts for filthy gain.

So I regard Fagles to be inferior, regardless of which translator was more faithful to the literal script.

I feel like I should spend a few sentences discussing "Oedipus at Colonus," the misfit of the three. It concerns Oedipus finding a suitable place for dying, after spending his disgraced life wandering. He settles on Colonus, just outside of Athens, while his feuding sons want him buried near Thebes. It's a bit moot, anyway, since he ascends to the heavens in a flash off-stage at the end, anyway. (Haven't heard that one before, eh?) I found it fairly dull -- its chief purpose is for classical Athenians to lay some claim on Oedipus for themselves.

What of the other four? "Women of Trachis" is about the accidental death of Heracles (or Hercules, if you like). I honestly hate the character of Heracles. Far from the gallant hero in the Sam Raimi TV series or in the animated Disney movies, the Heracles of Greek myth is a marauding, rapacious brute, the epitome of the "might makes right" mentality.

"Philoctetes" is about a wounded archer who Odysseus had marooned, though now is needed for the Greeks to win the Trojan War. Achilles' son Neoptolemus tries to convince him to come along, but Philoctetes' hatred for Odysseus is too intense for him to allow himself be rescued. The irresolvable dilemma ends with a quintessential deus ex machina, so any potential impact is severely blunted.

Each of the three major Attic tragedians have some surviving version of "Elektra"; comparisons of the three are for theses in Classics departments. The aspect of Sophocles' version that I find most compelling is the struggle between justice and expediency, viewpoints typified by Elektra and Chrysothemis, respectively, which makes for captivating drama. (Echoes of "Antigone," here.)

A notable quote that I marked in my book:

ANTIGONE

You are nothing at all,
Just a crack where the light slipped through.

Leonard Cohen, approximately 2500 years later, would go on to sing the hell out of that image in the song "Anthem."

"Elektra" must certainly be a play to see on stage, especially to hear the lead actress shout "OTOITOITOI!" as I have no idea what that's supposed to sound like.

My favorite of the bunch is "Ajax" (or "Aias," to be more faithful to the Greek). The plot, well known beforehand to the ancient audience: Agamemnon and Menelaus award Achilles' armor to Odysseus over Ajax; Ajax then kills himself. That decision, of wily Odysseus over strong, honorable Ajax, marks a stark change in the values possessed by the ideal Greek hero. Ajax in the play eloquently laments this change, and all change in general, and decides that his sturdy, static nature can't bear to endure the vicissitudes of his changing world. It gives us a great monologue, a small amount I quote below (translation by Golder and Pevear):

AIAS

Great, unfathomable time
brings dark things into the light
and buries the bright in darkness [...]

I know now to hate an enemy
just so far, for another time
we may befriend him. And the friend
I help, I will not help too greatly,
knowing that one day may find him
my enemy. [...]

Wisdom from the ancients.

One serious bit of confusion: It seems that the classical dramatists abhorred Odysseus. Apparently, his mostly positive depiction in "Ajax" is atypical. (In "Philoctetes", he's his usual lying, despicable self.) Yet Homer thought so highly of him so as to make him the star in The Iliad's sequel -- he was the culture hero of Homer's era, as far as I understand. But Ajax is purported to represent The Last Homeric Hero, as explained in Golder's introduction. That term must certainly not possess its obvious meaning if this is true, since Odysseus should be considered a Homeric hero since he is, after all, a favorite hero of Homer.

I've yet to give Aeschylus' "Oresteia" a real go, since Richard Lattimore's translation reads much like Shakespeare, which I find very difficult to read. I will give it a go sometime after I finish The Iliad (MUCH easier to read!) and re-read Eric Shanower's "Age of Bronze" series (the portion of it that exists, anyway -- I might be Dr. Stegosaurus by the time it's all done).

Rapture Bloggin'

2011-05-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

The latest East Bay Express has an article about the American Atheist's Rapture Party this Saturday. Fine stuff until Rachel Swan tries to make what she thinks is a clever point:

Ironically, atheism appears to work best among people who have a strong understanding of Christianity. Perhaps that's an indication of how oddly similar the American Atheists are to their Christian counterparts — at least on a structural level. Both organizations rely on top-down hierarchies, adherence to a certain dogma, conversion narratives, gatherings of the faithful, and evangelism. Atheists might not have a covenant with God, but they certainly have their own catechism. In fact, the hilarious thing about hard-core atheists is that they treat their lack of religion like a religion.

This is dumb. These sorts of arguments merit no more than a link to this comic.

In any event, I'm not sure if I'll make it out to Oakland: I've been sick the last few days, my car is acting up, I've already seen Greta Christina's talk, and I'm cheap.

Templeton is antiscience

2011-05-14T11:26:00.000-07:00

h/t Ophelia Benson at Butterflies and Wheels. (Her most recent post, as of right now, is also Templeton-related.)

The Templeton Foundation was founded with the intention of obscuring the anti-scientific nature of supernatural beliefs, and it apparently also funds anthropic global warming denialists. Wonderful.

Within the link:

They’ve [The Templeton Foundation] funded the Heritage Foundation, the John Locke Foundation, AEI, the Manhattan Institute, Alliance for the Family, the Jesse Helms Center Foundation,… And if you insist on emphasizing that, well, they fund many things, I will insist on the fact that you’re recklessly and irresponsibly naïve. [...]

They promote a religious-right neoliberal agenda that cares about science only to the extent that it can be manipulated, twisted, distorted, and denied. They and the think tanks they fund are antiscience to the core, and there’s no excuse for pretending this isn’t the case.

The Silliest Story Ever Told

2011-04-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

From PZ Myers, a year ago. (I do miss his Sunday Sacrilege series.)

Excerpt:

Jesus isn't saving us from anything real, and he made no change in the world with his death. Ask a Christian, and they'll tell us he's saving us from Original Sin, our flawed, weak, inherently wicked natures. But what that sin is is an act committed by a pair of mythological ancestors (they didn't even actually exist), and the sin was being willful, curious and disobedient to an imaginary man in the sky — it was a non-existent crime. I don't believe in being held accountable for my ancestor's weaknesses (as Patti Smith sang, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine"), and in this case I don't even consider what they did to be wrong. So Jesus suffered for an act that I would consider a virtue, committed by myths against a myth? That's no hand grenade, that's a fairy tale. Nobody needs to die to protect me from a fairy tale.

My Tribute to Cracked's Soren Bowie

2011-04-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

Soren Bowie has written several great humor articles at Cracked.com. Despite the risk of missing out on the next potentially hilarious article tomorrow, here's a list of my favorites.

Six Tips for Photography (At Your Ex-Girlfriend's Wedding). Notable excerpt: "A good sense of priorities, it turns out, is admirable quality that women look for in men. In fact, a lack of priorities may even be a reason why two people, who were goddamn great together, split up in the first place, two and a half years ago."

A Guide to Giving Blood and Winning Back the Woman You Love. A sequel to the above article. Notable excerpt: "If the note she left me before moving out was to be trusted, a willingness to face fears is a powerful trait in a spouse. So powerful, in fact, that it ruined a great relationship, and with any luck, it could ruin two."

Not all is loneliness in Soren's life. Here he recounts "My Sexual Encounter with Ke$ha." Notable excerpt: "She straddled me on the couch while pushing the nest of hair out of her face. An owl freed itself from the mess, flapping wildly around the living room."

Additionally, fictional elementary school teachers adore him. Eight Letters from the Elementary School Where I Guest Lectured. Notable excerpt: "That courtroom sene was power full. I hope you come back some time. Mrs. Meyer cries all the time without you."

Another epistolary adventure, this time about his time-traveling, dog-napping efforts to win over Sandra Bullock. I only picked up on the Demolition Man and Speed references (fortunately), though the premise is largely based on The Lake House, apparently. Notable excerpt: "I recently watched 'Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous' and the experience was something very much like enjoyment, despite never having seen the first one." [Later: "I did see Miss Congeniality 1, I was lying earlier because I didn't want to scare you."]

An example of his investigative reporting in Infiltrating a Gang Based on My Knowledge of 'West Side Story'. Notable excerpt: "I took a rhythmic step toward her with each snap. Carl and Esteban could no longer breathe they were in such awe of my quick assimilation into their culture."

Lastly, my favorite of his, which I recall whenever my roommate receives a letter from Heifer International, Using Charity to Help The Third World (Worship You as a God). No excerpt, for fear of spoiling the plot.

Columbine Day

2011-04-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

April 20th means a few things to a few people. Most popular is the unofficial holiday regarding marijuana, a practice founded on popular numerology. Nazis and neo-nazis (or are there just neo-nazis nowadays?) celebrate their fuhrer's birthday, presumably by watching American History X and shutting off the VCR* before Edward Norton learns the moral of the story. Lastly, this was the date in 1999 during which Dylan and Klebold massacred their high school teachers and schoolmates. Most of my friends' facebook statuses only re(e)ferred to the first significant interpretation of today's date. I'm not at all surprised about the lack of the second one, as my friends all know what my guitars do to fascists, but no one brought up Columbine. Well, it has been 12 years, but, especially for people around my age (mid-20's), it was a rather formative experience, even for those of us who were far away from Colorado, by virtue of being in middle or high school.

*Nazis hate DVDs!

That's a rather long preamble for this: I've been meaning to check out a book that I'd read a review of a few years back, released near the 10th anniversary of the shootings that purported to cast the event in a new light, revealing one of the shooters as an innate psychopath and the other as a depressive romantic. (I'm paraphrasing from a review, though I certainly do recall the word "romantic" being used, so direct your raised eyebrows away from me, thank you.)

A few minutes on Amazon, I found a lengthy, well-written user review of the simply-titled Columbine by Dave Cullen. This book appears to be both popular and controversial, with some Amazon users identified as parents of Columbine victims rebutting the fore-linked review.

There's no shortage of books written about Columbine, the quality of which seems to vary. One apparently quality work that gives a perspective different from Cullen's is Comprehending Columbine by Ralph Larkin. Here is a review by a user who has read (or at least has claim to have read, if we are to be perhaps overly skeptical) Cullen's as well as Larkin's work, as well as others.

After all of this time--and perhaps because of it--the role of bullying versus innate psychopathy is poorly understood. As with any event, we may only learn about it filtered through various lenses, never really having perfect information, and thus never fully understanding it.

Turtle Bloggin' 2: The Secret of the Ooze

2011-04-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

As predicted, James Rolfe posted the first in a three-part review of the TMNT 1987 cartoon series. He discusses the basics of the turtles and the supporting cast and summarizes the first season, which apparently was only five episodes. His favorite turtle, as was so many others', is Michaelangelo (now spelled, more correctly, "Michelangelo," though Eastman and Laird's original spelling is what I grew up with). And just like a Mikey fan, he calls Raphael an "asshole," a characterization my favorite turtle would likely roll his eyes at before making an awesome sarcastic comment.

Here, in case you haven't seen it, is Rolfe's infamous review of the 1990 NES Turtle game. It's "Not Safe for Work." In fact, if you don't chuckle at the phrase, "An S-load of F," then... you might not want to watch it. Hehe.

More videos:

College Humor hates Donatello.

Another College Humor video: Raphael is cool, rude, and murderous.

Finally, one of my favorite videos: Michelangelo, Party Dude.

Rocket Rainbow Poptart Cat

2011-04-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

aka "Nyan Cat."

One of the best youtube videos ever.

Also a t-shirt! The color choice for men: "Intergalactic Cobalt." The color choice for women: "Pop Tart Berry Blue." They're both the same color!

Tax Faxts

2011-04-18T20:17:00.000-07:00

This article by David Cay Johnson has been making the rounds; locally, it was picked up by the East Bay Express and even made the front page story. In it, the lauded journalist, formerly of the New York Times, argues that the tax policies favored by the Republicans since Reagan's time place the burden on the poor and working-class families.

Of course, nowadays any suggestion to remedy this situation will be met with cries of "SOCIALISM!", halting any potentially useful discourse. My opinion on such taboos, if it's not clear by now, is constantly chipping away at them by being vocally and unapologetically critical.

Some more facts about the distribution of wealth in America from Mother Jones ("MoJo").

First day of Passover

2011-04-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

I suppose I'm somewhat fond of Passover: The Rugrats Passover Special was the first time I'd heard of that story and was subsequently shocked at the obviously fantastic aspects of it.

Less obvious, though, is that the entire premise behind the story is ...a bit of an exaggeration, since the Jews were not enslaved in Egypt during that purported era. Moreover, the first Jews arrived in Egypt as part of the Persian Empire, a fact that forces me to envision Charlton Heston as King Leonidas in the film adaptation of 300 despite its blatant ahistoricity.

Wonder Showzen, how could you lead me astray?

The concluding paragraphs of the article linked previously in this post:

The pseudohistory of ancient Egypt is disrespectful to both Jews and Egyptians. It depicts the Jews as helpless slaves whose only contribution was sweat and broken backs, when in fact the earliest Jewish immigrants were respected allies to the Pharaoh and provided Egypt with a valuable service of both trade and defense. The pseudohistory also takes away from the Egyptians their due credit for construction of humanity's greatest architectural achievement, and portrays them as evil, bloodthirsty slavemasters. Pretty much every culture in the world at that period in history included slavery and conflict, and the Egyptians probably weren't any better or worse than most peoples.

Understanding history is essential to understanding ourselves. Although a story like Exodus is profoundly important to so many people throughout the world, the history it describes is false; and the faithful are best advised to seek value in it other than as a mere list of events. Doing so opens the door to a better comprehension of who we are as humans, and it's that shared history that will always unite us — no matter our race, color, or culture. It's just one little more service provided by good science.

Last Supper and other fan-fic

2011-04-18T12:57:00.000-07:00

This morning, I saw this article, promoting the idea that disparate accounts of the events around the Last Supper are made compatible upon presuming the use of different calenders, as necessary.

Good thing that that was the only inconsistency in the Gospels. Anyway, just three more words: David Friedrich Strauss.

Turtle Bloggin'

2011-04-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

A pair of strange coincidences:

First, Cracked posted this video in its "After Hours" series, about the Ninja Turtle's as "teaching kids the primary colors of personality that they would have to deal with the rest of their lives." Other examples noted include the cast of Sex and the City, Seinfeld, the Beatles, and the Fantastic Four. The FF are the most obvious other example, since each character is based on one of the four Aristotelian elements. Interestingly, it seems like turtle Raphael's personality for the famous 1987 cartoon series was modeled after the "cool but rude" Fantastic Four counterpart, The Thing. Raphael (my favorite turtle, for what it's worth) was presented in the comics as the "star," irascible and volatile -- the 1990 movie faithfully recaptures that essence of the character. The Thing, though, was always surly and spouting off gruff one-liners since 1961. Anyway, an interesting point.

Second, James Rolfe of CineMassacre/Angry Video Game Nerd fame is posting a Turtles-related video every Tuesday ("Turtle Tuesday") from now through the summer. He claimed in a post that he was watching all of the old episodes over again for the series, and I really hope that he reviews the show season by season. During the original run, the series lost its incredibly strong grip on me after it switched from Fox to ABC, which was around the time Fox picked up the X-Men cartoon. (And I suppose I must point out that philosopher Russel Blackford is a long-time X-Men fan, posting about them or other Marvel characters once every week or so.) So I have no idea how the series that in part defined my childhood even ended!

While I'm bringing up all things Turtle, I must note that two weekends ago during WonderCon, I spotted a vendor with the original toys in their packaging, on sale for $100 each. I still actually remember standing in line at the Toys R Us while my mom was buying my brother and me the original several toys in the series, which would go on to grow exponentially in time, unfortunately for my parents.

Countdown to Easter

2011-04-17T19:46:00.000-07:00

Sam Harris's Project Reason website linked to this amusing bit of stupidity. Jesus and Mo tackled the same line of reasoning some months ago. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to pick out the remaining fallacies, assuming you've first put on galoshes and a good raincoat before you wade through all the crap.

March Meeting Madness

2011-03-27T20:14:00.001-07:00

The Final Four for the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament has been set, thus ending the "March" component of "March Madness"--the remaining games will actually be played in April.

Correspondingly, last week was the American Physical Society's annual March Meeting, this year held in Dallas, TX, and this year, unlike any before, attended by myself.

The locale offered a much-needed respite from the dreary cold rain of the Bay Area's extended winter season, with a North Texas dry heat. Every time I felt it was a little too hot, I recalled walking home (from work, of course) at 10:30pm in the rain on the previous Saturday night, hours before catching the van to take me to the airport. Miserable stuff. So I could spare a degree here and there, despite wearing dress slacks during my stay, having packed no shorts.

To get an impression of the conference itself, take a look at the schedule of sessions. These are sessions, mind you, each comprised of multiple talks. Each letter corresponds to a set of concurrent sessions. Ideally, one would plan one's day one talk at a time, jumping from session to session as needed, perhaps allowing a little wiggle room for the most interesting talks. There apparently was an iPhone app to facilitate this sort of conference optimization. My approach was to note two-ish interesting sessions and bounce between the two as appropriate, using the phone book-esque physical schedule of talks as my guide. (In the future, when smart phones are every bit the norm as dumb phones are today, such tree-wasting won't be necessary, I suppose.)

Evenings consisted of walking to the region in Dallas closest to the convention center which had the highest density of nice restaurants and trying to make the most of my rather generous per diem, only once seriously threatening to use it all. I avoided buying steaks, since I know how much they go for at grocery stores, and I don't particularly care for fancy stuff on'em: Just heat'em up and give me a big knife. The remainder of the evenings either consisted of polishing off my talk or sleeping, depending on whether the particular night was before or after my talk.

Anyway, the real fun stuff. I present the First Inaugural Tin-Foil Hat Awards, celebrating individuals who at the very least submitted "unconventional" posters; some even showed up at the conference. Follow the link in each corresponding index for the author list and abstract... though the titles are really all you need.

Monday's Award Winners:

C1.00285 Blowpipe Mineralogy for Physics/Environment: Highest-Possible-Tc SuperConductor (Beyond: (but via!!!) MgB2, Cuprates, Pnictides) Quest; BOTH PERMANENT FOREVER Carb-IDES SOLID-State Sequestration AND Drought(s)-Elimination

C1.00286 Consciousness can reduce the voltage of the output signal of solar cell

C1.00287 FLYING-WATER Renewables-H2-H2O TERRAFORMING: PERMANENT Drought(s)-Elimination FOREVER!!!

C1.00288 FRAUD/SABOTAGE Killing Nuclear-Reactors Need Modeling!!!: "Super"alloys GENERIC ENDEMIC Wigner's-Disease/.../IN-stability: Ethics? SHMETHICS!!!

Wednesday's Award Winners:

S1.00263 Both Perelmans Thrown Down Gauntlets Versus Would-Be "Science" But Alas Sadly Mere "SEANCES" Put Jargonial-Obfuscation Sociological-Dysfunctionality(S-D) Ridden/Dominated Would-Be "Sciences" But Alas Sadly Mere SEANCES in "Peril, Man"!!!

S1.00264 Jargonial-Obfuscation(J-O) DISambiguation Elimination via Siegel-Baez Cognition Category-Semantics(C-S) in Siegel FUZZYICS=CATEGORYICS (Son of TRIZ)/(F=C) Tabular List-Format Dichotomy Truth-Table Matrix Analytics

Honorable Mentions:

S1.00261 and S1.00262, which require one to read through at least part of the abstract before one's eyebrows become raised.

Dinosaur in the Kitchen: Epic Meal Time

2011-03-06T12:48:00.000-08:00

I've long delayed several post ideas for various reasons (laziness), and now I regret not posting my "Bad Idea Burger" recipe post haste, since the guys at Epic Meal Time make my grilled-cheese-sandwich-as-the-cheese-on-a-BBQ-bacon-burger look like a little b-*SQUAWWW!*.

The below video, in particular, made me give up on my unsuitably monstrous creation.

Darwin Day

2011-02-12T13:26:00.000-08:00

To celebrate Darwin Day, here's a video of Jerry Coyne's "Why Evolution is True" talk. I was planning on reviewing his book, but the video features most of the examples I would have brought up. The book is highly recommended, as his writing is fantastic.

And here's the cover of the fictitious LOLcat edition of WEIT.

Periodic boundary conditions and video games

2011-02-05T17:31:00.000-08:00

While playing Sonic 3 a few years ago (but not so many years ago), I had an epiphany regarding the nature of that game's special stages, shown in the video below. (Don't watch if you're susceptible to motion sickness!)

Note that Sonic is jogging on some checker-board surface and can only move in two perpendicular directions, say "x" and "y". One might assume that Sonic is jogging on the surface of a large checker-board sphere, as the gentle, visible curvature suggests. But take a look at the maps to the stages, toward the bottom of page in the link. Sonic is running along a flat surface, a square!

But if you go across the boundary at the top of each map, you simply arrive at the corresponding point at the bottom. (Play the game or watch the video if you don't believe me.) Imagine holding one of the maps in your hands. Connect the top and the bottom together to take into account the effect of crossing either of those boundaries--you just wind up on either side. You now have a cylinder instead of a square. But what of the two ends of the cylinder? Surely when you cross one of those boundaries, you just wind up on the other side, like before. So now you have to connect the ends of the cylinder together. (This isn't very neat with actual paper.)

The resulting shape from performing the above actions on the map is to render the square map into a torus. The torus-map does a better job than the square at conveying the message that there really is no "edge" at all to surface that Sonic is running along. However, the circumference values don't neatly correspond to the period in either the "x" or "y" direction, plus it would be next to useless for a gamer looking for help.

The compromise, then, is to draw the map as a square, as that treats the Cartesian directions simply, and then understand that you must apply periodic boundary conditions to the edges of the map. That is, if you go across the top edge of the map is connected to the bottom, as right is to left.

So a square (or even rectangle) with periodic boundaries is equivalent to a torus. And what other character is most associated with torii than Sonic*, whose dependence on rings is well documented (mildly NSFW).

This isn't the last time periodic boundary conditions are used in a Sonic-related game: The stage select screen in the obscure 32X game Knuckle's Chaotix is a long hall that somehow winds back into itself, which we now should recognize as simply a straight line segment with periodic boundaries, or a ring, in some abstract sense.

Another example of this sort of square map can be found in Final Fantasy 7 (or 6, but let's stick with 7). After you acquire the Highwind airship, you can fly around the game's planet and keep track of your location on a square map at the corner of the screen. But we now know that such a map is really a torus, used to simulate a sphere. But spheres and torii are different beasts topologically, as the former has no holes and the latter has one, rendering the two inequivalent. This is done because it is far more easy for the programmers to draw a square map and apply periodic boundary conditions than it is to worry about Mercator projections and all that nasty business with spheres.

All this said, Sonic 2 is still the best of the original Genesis Sonic trilogy, and its halfpipe-based special stages are more fun and significantly less nauseating. Plus, true masters can unlock Super Sonic by the end of the first level (as I was able to do at one point).

In physics, period boundary conditions pop up all the time due to the prevalence of traveling waves in anything involving quantum mechanics. So all the time I spent playing games as a kid, I was partially building up some intuition for physics... but mostly not.

*Well, Homer Simpson probably is more popular, and I must acknowledge now the episode of The Simpsons when he proposes a "donut-shaped universe" to guest-star Stephen Hawking. Same idea, there, and Homer is also strongly associated with that torus-shaped foodstuff. That sort of universe, though, would be a three-torus, which has instead of a square has a cube as its basis. Try visualizing all the boundary-connecting for that! Don't let yourself be bothered that you can't, since being able to would require being able to visualize a three-dimensional object embedded within a four-dimensional space. No one can do that, so let's just stick with the cube.

Greta Christina will speak at Berkeley!

2011-02-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

Link for the deets.

Finally, I will learn why I'm so angry all the time! HUURRRRRGGGGGHHH!!! *Throws chair across the room.*

Why Mercury is Liquid at Room Temperature/The Colors of Noble Metals

2011-01-25T11:32:00.001-08:00

Ever wonder why mercury is a liquid at standard temperature and pressure? And, no, juggalos, it's not magic.

Lars Norrby wrote this explanation in the early 1980s. The short version: relativistic effects make the 6s orbital much lower in energy, rendering Hg much like a noble gas (and gold much like a halogen!). This is also related to the explanation as to why gold has its famous yellow appearance, as the lowering of energy of the 6s and the raising of energy of the 5d orbitals makes it strongly absorb blue light, whereas silver doesn't get such a strong relativistic kick and therefore absorbs in the ultraviolet. (Copper doesn't need Einstein's help, apparently. See Ashcroft and Mermin, Ch. 15).

Shankar Silliness

2011-01-24T11:20:00.000-08:00

From R. Shankar's Principles of Quantum Mechanics 2nd Edition, pg. 301:

In some movies they get a big laugh out of the audience by showing cars and people zooming in reverse. As a serious physics student you should not laugh when you see this since these motions obey Newton's laws. In other words, it is perfectly possible for a set of people and cars to execute this motion. On the other hand, when a cartoon character falling under gravity suddenly starts clawing his way upwards in thin air using sheer will power, you may laugh since this is a gross violation of Newton's laws.

Note that in this section of the book (11.5 Time-Reversal Symmetry), Shankar discusses how complex conjugation is built into the operation of time reversal in quantum mechanics but skips out on discussing the full anti-unitary time reversal operator. For that, I recommend Sakurai's Modern Quantum Mechanics, whose current edition has the decidedly un-silly cover of the block-diagonal form of the full rotation group.

Blackford reviews "The Moral Landscape"

2011-01-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

The long-awaited review by philosopher Russel Blackford of Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape is now available. It is, as expected, long, technical, and essential.

In the concluding portion of section "Conclusion," Blackford writes

In the end, Harris provides a compelling argument for selective intolerance toward harsh moral traditions. He argues via a kind of moral realism, linked to a form of utilitarian ethic, but I submit that these are not doing the real work. To reach a similar conclusion, we can rely on much weaker premises. It’s enough that we have a non-arbitrary conception of what morality is for, and what sorts of things we can rationally and realistically want moral traditions to do. Where they divert from that conception, moral traditions merit our critique and opposition. These should be every bit as severe, absolutely as passionate, as Harris evidently wants, but that does not commit us to his total picture of morality's landscape.

Like it or not, morality is a much trickier phenomenon.

I recall in high school asking my English teacher if there really was any intrinsic moral conflict in Ibsen's "Doll House," reflecting the influence of post-9/11 liberal influenced relativism (as it was 2004 at the time). Thankfully, I've come a ways philosophically, and hopefully the left, and possibly even the right, can, too, due to the impact of Harris on our moral consciousness, disagree as we may about aspects of his ideas.

Berkeley Physics Colloquia

2011-01-15T15:22:00.000-08:00

The Berkeley Physics department has a strong line-up of colloquium speakers for Spring 2011, and they will be posted to this site shortly after their Monday presentation. I'm particularly looking forward to Sally Ride, Joel Fajans (one of our own, and of "CERN antihydrogen" fame), and Lisa Randall.

Must-watch colloquia from Fall 2010 include Irfan Siddiqi, Eugene Commins, Mike Crommie, and William Happer. The first three are Berkeley professors; the latter, I've blogged about before (twice, in fact).

Looking Back at 2010

2011-01-15T15:14:00.000-08:00

Or just its weather.

First up is Dr. Bill Chameides summary of the extreme weather events of the past year.

And here's one that Dr. Chameides missed: the melting of Russian permafrost.

Besides greenman3610, another fantastic youtube source of climate discussion and debunking is potholer54.

On "Rock Stars of Science"

2010-12-17T18:11:00.001-08:00

Once again, I'm fashionably late in bringing up to my readers/parents on the goings on in the science blogosphere, but today, mercifully, Dr. Jerry Coyne brought up Rock Stars of Science.

The background: Chris Mooney, science journalist/blogger/Gnu-punching-bag, and clothing company Geoffrey Beene ran a promotional piece in GQ magazine with the hope of promoting science. No one really knows if it is effective, but the photos struck me as laugh-out-loud awkward.

Check out The Guardian's take, where Martin Robbins wastes no time calling it, "[an] isochronal cavalcade of embarrassment."

Even more scathing is blogger ERV's post. (She really doesn't like Mooney.) Here's the climax:

Every scientist I know has 1, cool research and 2, a 'cool' aspect of their lives. If you genuinely want scientists, as a profession, to become 'cool' like rock stars, you need to start with getting scientists to connect their research to their 'cool' selves. As in, going out and being a part of their communities. Most people dont know a scientist, so get out there and mingle.

Or you know what? Maybe just accept people how they are, cool or not. Appreciate their science and their contributions to society and humanity, just like I appreciate the girl helping me find the toothpaste on sale at CVS, or the guy changing the oil in my car (I DO NOT UNDERSTAND CARS), or the cops trying to find my stalker.

Not everyone has to fucking be 'cool'.

'Cool' is superficial crap that means nothing when contrasted with the ability to help people, in any capacity.

While Mooney has made it perfectly clear that superficial crap is his area of expertise, if you want to be cool, I really wouldnt take advice from him.

Good stuff, there. (NB: This is the same blockquote in Jerry Coyne's post from last month, which I credit as my hub for this topic.) Also in her post is a must-read block-quoted exchange between Robbins and Mooney.

My contribution, I suppose, is to point out the funny situation (of both the "ha-ha" and "uncomfortable" shades of meaning) in the comments section of the Guardian article: At some point, Mooney responded to Robbins' critique, which, I gather from subsequent comments, consisted of accusations of elitism. However, the website deleted Mooney's comment, as though he were a run-of-the-mill Internet troll. Guess Robbins doesn't like him much, either.

Mark Silverberg's "Origins of Islamic Intolerence"

2010-12-12T16:26:00.000-08:00

This rather spartan website contains a summary of the history of Islam from the Moorish Empire through present times. A select quote below.

[Bernard] Lewis argues that the success of Muhammad in establishing not merely the Muslim religion, but also a state dominated by that faith, served to create a society that was totalitarian by its very nature, bound by rules and strictures that made it "too static to adapt and compete with a West where Christianity, after the Reformation and the Renaissance, did not demand control over the political and economic spheres."

In short, Islam, by never separating church from state retarded the development of a freethinking, educated, secular middle class - the foundation stone upon which modern technology, invention and enterprise are built.

Because of this non-evolution, the Islamic faith itself became implicated in the decline of Islam relative to the West.

Clash of Cultures in Europe

2010-12-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

MSN has an article about militant Islam in Europe. It isn't at all comprehensive, ignoring the push for Shariah law in the UK and Germany shutting down a mosque responsible for harboring extremists, as it focuses on the particular extremism of Anjem Choundary.

Spencer Hall Channeling Christopher Hitchens

2010-12-07T19:55:00.000-08:00

Football blogger Spencer Hall is the primary force behind the best college football blog, Every Day Should Be Saturday. One of his running gags was a rapping Mark Mangino who would crash through walls at inopportune times to impart his rhyming gifts to a reluctant audience; of course, that gag will only resurface if Marky M gets rehired as a head coach... or, first, gets through anger management classes, then gets hired as a head coach.

In addition to putting words in obese coach's mouths, Spencer Hall has written two satirical posts in the spirit of Christopher Hitchens. I'll leave it up to you to decide how successful the impersonation is.

Hitchens covers the Florida/Oklahoma championship game in Miami

Hitchens gives his impressions of the 2010 football season in October

Literal Textbooks

2010-12-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

~~The next step~~ A random data point in taking the world literally: literal math textbooks.

(~~The previous steps~~ Other data points were literal music videos and literal trailers, in that order.)

Actually, performing a quick date check, Amir posted the textbook gag about half a year before Toby started making literal trailers, so it's not "the next step" so much as it is "random data point." I've corrected/butchered this post as necessary.