Random Thoughts

Watch the videos in this YouTube channel carefully: http://www.youtube.com/user/SaveLibya?feature=chclk and you will realize that the people being mowed down in the street are by and large kids, 35 and younger.  Young people, students wearing hipster clothes.  They are dressed like us.  Wearing the same shoes as us.  Remember the days when you were young, probably growing up in suburbia, or the city, trying not to get caught smoking cigarettes, or paying that homeless man to buy you a bottle of liquor.  Hoping the cops didn't catch you in the act and throw you…

What do you get when you are against fighting and for talking with crazy dictators while you are running for high office, yet decide to fight the elected leader of a country which is no threat to anyone outside its own borders and did nothing against anyone in NATO? You get SCIENCE! But there is precedent in calling 'hammering a small country' something besides 'war' - the Bush administration, which apparently did not get enough credit for its endorsement of science and engineering, it seems, came up with an engineering-y way to describe war; "kinetic military action". Kinetic energy, of…

The New York Times has not just gone astray with its payment scheme; it’s gone completely off the deep end, gotten lost in the forest, fallen off the cliff and into a pit, and is knee-deep in any other mixed and fractured metaphor you can devise... linguistically. See, they have recently updated their style guide, removing, according to editor Philip Corbett, “some aging or outdated technical terms,” such as “CD-ROM, floppy disk, Dictaphone, Usenet, newsgroups, VHS, CAD-CAM and I.S.D.N.” Yes, they used to use periods in “ISDN”, as they still do in “I.B.M.”, “I.P. address”, “C.P.U.”, and…

As we are already talking about light bulb jokes, the many useless comments to my rather more serious articles lately got me to compile the answer to the following question, although it is certainly not a joke: Question: How many in favor of nuclear energy does it need to change a light bulb? Answer: Only fear mongers misinterpret the bits of glass and filament on the floor in those totally abstruse ways. Whenever experts have shone their torches onto the bulb, it has appeared quite bright. This proves that the glass on the floor cannot be possibly from the bulb, because if it were, the bulb…

Friday night a storm moves in. Raindrops start to lazily fall. Lightning lights the night sky (but eludes the camera). The clouds reveal their power. They loom overhead. The clouds remain on Saturday. But have mostly moved on by night. This morning, the moon hangs in the western sky. But the sun hides behind clouds in the eastern sky.

I'm not sure which is worse;  the arrogance of these people actually thinking that they speaking for God or their belief in a God that can only bully people into submission. “Because the Japanese people shun God in terms of their faith and follow idol worship, atheism, and materialism, it makes me wonder if this was not God’s warning to them.”http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/467934.html "I think (the disaster) is tembatsu (divine punishment), although I feel sorry for disaster victims," he said.http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110315x7.html I guess…

Some Thoughts On Priorities It occurs to me that in this modern age of demands for instant satisfaction of our wants and needs, the instructions to supervisors of refineries, explosives factories and nuclear power facilities need to be revised. In order to satisfy the wants and needs of the greatest number of people in the shortest possible time, I propose the following order of priorities: Instructions To Site Managers In The Event Of Emergency: 1 - send a personal message to every conspiracy nut on the planet giving full details of every aspect of the emergency that might give them cause…

Open Thread #1 I have started this blog entry under 'random thoughts' for the benefit of those of my readers who may with to discuss a broader spectrum of my topics than is usual in scientific discussions. Please stick to 'the Chatter Box' topics unless you are a writer here. Please note that 'a broader spectrum' does not include the theory that Homer Simpson shot JFK or that advertisements for Ugg boots have a rightful place in science blogs!

Royally Screwed Getting screwed - in the sense of being at the receiving end of a whole bunch of badness - has its origins in carpentry.  It's nothing to do with thumbscrews.  It has everything to do with keeping a thing under pressure - or releasing it.  Things can get literally screwed up or screwed down. If you are trying to clamp something with screws you are screwing something down.  If you have a screw loose then your efforts will result in a screw-up.  A screw-up in a steam locomotive shop may result in a most public screw-up somewhere along the line. In the…

What I Had For Breakfast #2 Four whole fried chickens, and a Coke. My bike's got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It's a model made before lycra was invented, so it'll run good on regular jeans and t-shirt - or the outfit described in the comments to What I Had For Breakfast #1. I said I was going to reveal something about myself here, and I will continue to do so.  All you need do to extract meaningful data is to study psychoanalysis - or criminal psychology, whichever is least  likely to harm your street cred. I am often accused of never finishing what I star 2.2…