Free beer and planets for all!

The new planet, and its moon.

The evidence points to it being smaller than Pluto, and right about Sedna's size.

passing the time

Laundry picked up in the form of clothes left behind.

Popsicles dripped on shirts. Shirts cleaned in the sink.

Supposedly atrocious food from Swish, left by the roommates to whet the appetite of yours truly.

The Two Towers on Encore WAM late at night. Yes we apparently get Encore WAM (thanks to Yulia for pointing that out.)

I found my Mogwai, in Ogg format. Silly iPods, no mogwai for you.

Tomorrow, Jets Camp with Cy.

Also drinking Tang, the choice of astronauts everywhere.

No Comment.

Kylie?

CULTURE: Europe: Drought... Australia: Man Drought: "Australia is facing a drought of men as continued migration to the northern hemispheres larger economies leaves behind a gender skew:

New figures show there were 20,000 fewer men than women aged 30-something in Australia last year, according to a report by accounting firm KPMG, reversing a long period in which there were more men.



The study, which uses data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, shows that in the 12 months to 2004 there was a surplus of women in every age group between 29 and 55.

The skew has had a remarkable effect on national culture:

'The man drought is leading to a shift in consumer culture; you have more women buying apartments, taking out finance loans; women are evolving their own single culture,' Mr Salt said.

(Written by: SomeOneUK)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

3rd Case of Mad Cow in the US.

Do I hear 4?

USDA probes possible 3rd case of mad cow disease: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A cow suspected of having mad cow disease will be retested in British and U.S. laboratories for confirmation of what may be America's third case, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Wednesday."

(Via Reuters: Top News.)

Bad Rain Forests. No Carbon Sink.

Amazon Carbon Cycling: "

At first blush, this doesn't seem like terribly good news, but it does give us a bit more information to use when thinking about our climate response options. Researchers studying the carbon cycle in the Amazon River basin (particularly the uptake and release of CO2 by the region's plants) have found that, rather than sequestering the CO2 for decades or centuries, the carbon is cycled out back into the atmosphere within five years. Among the implications of this discovery (assuming it's confirmed) is that the Amazon rain forests are not good candidates for long-term capture of CO2, and that we need to pay close attention to the actual carbon cycle for each biome before assigning sequestration targets.

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in QuickChanges at 02:05 PM)"

(Via WorldChanging: Another World Is Here.)

I would like to modify my request for a Savannah. I want a Savannah that has been modified to have those missing 247 base pairs... so that it can taste sweet food.

Just because.

Pharyngula::Cats, candy, and evolution: "

P.Z. Myers on the non-sweet tooth of cats:

Pharyngula::Cats, candy, and evolution: What this protein does is detect sugar, and then instruct your taste buds to start sending nerve impulses up to your brain.... Cats don't get to experience that... their TAS1R2 gene carries a substantial mutation that destroys its function.... There is a small deletion near the beginning of the sequence that chops out 247 base pairs. This deletion puts the remainder of the sequence out of register... turning it into non-functional nonsense, and also generating multiple stop sequences.... Poor kitties. They don't even know what they are missing.

It's nice to have an explanation for why cats prefer fish to candy bars, but there's more to the story than that. It's also another piece of evidence for evolution. The cat TAS1R2 gene has been thoroughly blasted into uselessness, but there is obviously more than one way to do that. A larger deletion that took out the whole gene would be just as effective, as would a 1 base pair deletion at the beginning of the sequence. Any random scrambling would do. So how do you explain this?

The sequence was analyzed in house cats, but the gene was also examined in samples taken from a tiger and a cheetah. They have exactly the same mutation... 'plagiarized errors ', a phenomenon that is most simply explained by common descent. The last common ancestor of house cats, tigers, and cheetahs had this mutation, and passed it on to all of its progeny.

We can also make an evolutionary prediction: I expect that lions, leopards, and lynxes will also have the same 247 base pair deletion... the scar of this ancient gouge in their DNA will be present in all cats...

One question: is there any sense in which it is... adaptive for cats to not like fruit? Fruit is, after all, a quick source of energy--easily digested calories. One would think that a cat that liked fruit would have more energy for the hunt.

Or is this just an example of genetic drift at work? The few animals that speciated into the ancestral cat lineage got this mutation, and it wasn't (very) harmful, so they didn't become extinct. And thereafter there was no way to undo it.

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

Since we're talking about the makeup of the ideal family these days...

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (City Journal/Reducing Poverty in the Long Run Department): "

it's a dirty job. Bradford Plumer reads City Journal so we don't have to:

Bradford Plumer: City Journal always strikes me as one of the most noxious magazines around... its writers... wade into decades-old debates... disregard all... research, and then flatly declare that liberals are stupid and conservatives were right all along about everything. Exhibit A is Kay Hymowitz's piece this month on how... legions of liberal academics... have kept people poor and stupid for 40 years... [and] the one true cause of black poverty is that most black children grow up in fatherless homes. Liberals, Hymowitz declares, need to step out of their 'don't blame the victim' mentality and realize this hyper-obvious fact.

Well, okay. Plenty of liberals have been thinking about the importance of family structure for quite some time: she even mentions two (William Julius Wilson and Sara MacLanahan), and then there was, um, the last Democratic president--a pretty prominent liberal, when you think about it. (Hymowitz makes it seem like Clinton was only 'forced' to worry about family structure in the post-Gingrich era, but in fact, his 1992 campaign speeches included lines like, 'Governments don't raise kids; parents do.') Beyond that, though, the relationship between marriage and childhood problems--let alone wider poverty--is complex and deserves a bit fuller treatment than the shallow gloss Hymowitz gives.

As it happens, the other day I was reading a collection of essays called The Future of the Family, edited by none other than Hymowitz' hero, Pat Moynihan, with a literature review of the effects of fatherlessness co-authored by... yet another one of Hymowitz' heroes, Sara MacLanahan! And lo, the results are a bit more ambiguous than the City Journal essay suggests.... MacLanahan argues that... fatherlessness is associated with lower test scores, greater levels of poverty, behavioral problems, delinquency, etc. for children.... What's not clear... is why... perhaps poverty causes both fatherlessness and negative outcomes for children, in which case single motherhood wouldn't be the root problem. One study, for instance, found that 'when pre-divorce circumstances are taken into account, the associations between family disruption and child outcomes become smaller, sometimes statistically insignificant.' (Not all studies, though.) And then some of the findings are just plain odd. For instance, the academic achievement gap between kids in one- and two-parent families is moderately small in many social democracies like Sweden and Iceland--smaller than the gap in 'neo-liberal' states like the U.S. or New Zealand--suggesting that a sturdy safety net can overcome the supposed disadvantages of single-parent families. On the other hand, the achievement gap is even smaller in Mediterranean countries....

Basically, it's just not clear.... The facts here aren't speaking for themselves, or else they are, but in ancient Aramaic.

[I]nsofar as the fact of single motherhood itself is actually a 'problem' (and I'm not convinced it is, but let's suppose...), there are basically two remedies. One, we can try to reduce the number of divorces by, say, making divorce harder... that seems like a terrible option....

So let's look behind door #2. And door #2 is... reducing out-of-wedlock births in the first place. This seems like a pretty unambiguously decent policy goal, especially since 60 percent of all births are unintended.... Now the tried-and-true way to reduce unintended out-of-wedlock births involves teen-pregnancy prevention programs that emphasize, yes, condoms and other 'icky' items. (Hell, they can teach abstinence too, since that seems to work, though 'abstinence-only' programs pretty clearly do not.)... But these are all pretty well-known liberal policy goals, I daresay.

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

University of Michigan Engineering won the 2005 North American Solar Car Challenge.



Why am I not surprised?

Women's shaving cream sold as Men's shaving cream.

I wonder which costs more?

I think back to Einstein, who in the name of simplicity washed and shaved with the same soap.

Transsexual Shaving Cream: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Todd Lappin recently bought a travel-sized can of Gillette shaving gel. 'Being a discriminating consumer, I was drawn to the product by its burly packaging and subtle-yet-masculine scent,' he writes. Imagine his shock when the label came off the can a few weeks later, revealing the true nature of the product. See the photos for yourself. Link"

(Via Boing Boing.)

GM Doesn't Give You A Free Lunch.

TECHNOLOGY: GM "Super Weed" Found In UK: "A weed with genes from genetically modified crops has been found in the UK by government researchers. The genes make the weed resistant to several weed killers.

[Friends of the Earth] said Government researchers found a GM version of the common weed charlock growing in one of the fields used in the Government-sponsored farm-scale trials of GM crops.



The plant was resistant to the weed killer used in the GM trial and was confirmed as containing the gene inserted into the GM oilseed rape.



It is the first known case of such an occurrence in Britain and overturns previous scientific assumptions that charlock, a common weed found alongside oilseed rape in Europe, was unlikely to cross-breed with GM oilseed rape.

The UK population has been wary of GM technology, especially when it has been applied to food. Some of that is fear caused by ignorance, but the knowledge that modified genes can cross from GM crops to wild plants isn't going to make GM technology more popular.



('Oilseed rape' is known as 'canola' in the US.)

(Written by: dem_z)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

The video is hilarious.

Pregnancy Test: Monday Afternoon Silliness: "

Filed under: Cult of Mac, Humor, iPod Family

We interrupt our normal schedule of insightful Apple punditry with the following PG-13 rated Apple-related skit.





Thanks to Vince of hackaday fame for pointing this out. He got the 411 on this video from a hackaday reader named 'wetsmellydog.'

Read	Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

The day

The day
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

The books are finally sitting on the sofa, at rest.

FW: [IP] more on TSA Violated Law, GAO Finds - illustrates a WIDEspread problem!

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Saturday, Jul 23, 2005 4:06 pm
Subject: [IP] more on TSA Violated Law, GAO Finds - illustrates a WIDEspread problem!

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>
Date: July 23, 2005 3:00:44 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] TSA Violated Law, GAO Finds - illustrates a WIDEspread problem!

At 5:59 PM -0400 7/22/05, David Farber wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:

> From: prsingel <prsingel@pacbell.net>
...
TSA employeess did indeed violate a federal privacy law when they
secretly expanded the nature and extent of testing of a new passenger
screening system, according to congressional investigators.
...

This, in fact, illustrates a WIDEspread problem, in all levels of government. It works like this:

1. An enforcement agency pleads that they need more powers/latitude/ authority etc., in order to protect innocent citizens / do their job / etc.

2. The legislative body grants them their wishes, but with limits and prohibitions on how those new (or current!) powers can be exploited by the agency.

3. The enforcement agency -- as an administrative decision, or by [some of] its officials acting as "rogue agents" -- exceeds those powers and their authority ... sometimes grossly exceeding it.

4. The legislative body is [sometimes] "outraged", at least when it's sufficiently embarrassing, and it's elected members posture and whine and cry "helpless" crocodile tears about such administrative "excesses".

BUT ...

It is the legislative body that is at FAULT! Why?

Almost invariably, when they grant new powers and impose new limitations, legislators FAIL to, at the same time, specify any PENALTIES -- especially CRIMINAL penalties -- for any agents, officials, administrators, etc., who violate their legislated prohibitions.

I.e., the legislators specify limitations and prohibitions, but commonly do NOT specify any penalties if their limitations and prohibitions are ignored or violated!

Can you imagine the same legislators enacting prohibitions or mandates on PRIVATE citizens -- who are NOT part of their too-cozy government -- without ALSO taking great care to, at the same time, enact penalties ... civil and/or criminal ... for CITIZENS who violate those prohibitions and mandates?!

Solution: EVERY time a legislative body -- local, state or federal -- proposes to enact some limitation or mandate, EVEN if it's on <gasp> other government officials and agencies, they should (must!) ALSO, at the same time, as part of the same legislation, ALWAYS enact/ include PENALTIES to be imposed if [when] government agents violate the enacted limits/prohibitions.

And since violations are by officials acting under "color of authority" -- acting on behalf of that very legislative body -- who violate their prohibitions, the penalties should be MANDATORY. (Let's not give the administrative branch the freedom to decide whether it will prosecute itself!)

Doing anything less simply INVITES and ENCOURAGES "over-zealous" agents and "well-meaning" officials to IGNORE the law's toothless limits, and do whatever they damn-well please. (I.e., the much- vaunted "rule of law" only applies to citizens; not government officials!)

--jim

-------------------------------------http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

New York according to MSN's new map service.

Perhaps they are a little bit out of date...

Cy's place last night was filled with upstate NY wine, Shana, Jeanne, Cy, moi, Karen, Bec, and Apples to Apples.


The game rocks.

And I wants it.

The Catholic Church begins a campaign against a book "denouncing it as logically and historically flawed".

Where do we begin with this...

CULTURE: Work Of Fiction Is, Er, Fictitious: "The Da Vinci Code is described as 'an intelligent and lucid thriller'. I haven't seen anyone describe it as an accurate account of history so it's confusing to see some people take it so seriously.

THE Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales begins a campaign today against Dan Brown’s bestselling The Da Vinci Code, denouncing it as logically and historically flawed and a risible hoax.



A new Catholic website aimed at Da Vinci fans is timed to coincide with today’s feast of St Mary Magdalene, depicted in the book as the sacred vessel, or Holy Grail, who bore Jesus Christ’s children. The site, designed by the Catholic Enquiry Office (CEO), a national office of the Church, includes biographies of St Mary, Bible extracts, prayers, articles, web links, images and a cake recipe.



It includes question-andanswer sessions listing alleged historical, artistic and religious errors in the book, such as its depiction of the Catholic organisation Opus Dei.

Wait, did someone say cake?



The source article has some quotes from Catholics who hate the book.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the prelate appointed by the Vatican to defend the Church’s reputation, has described the novel as a ‘castle of lies’ that ‘distorted’ the truth.



Cardinal Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa, says that the novel is a deliberate attempt to discredit the Catholic Church through absurd and vulgar falsifications.

The article then goes on to interview Monsignor Keith Barltrop (the director of the CEO), and he contradicts the article's earlier claim that he's campaigning against the book.

‘We are not trying to take on The Da Vinci Code.’ Rather the Church was ‘shameless’ in availing itself of the chance to evangelise, he said.



He added: ‘There is huge interest in the book. It poses as the truth but it clearly is not. It is a damn good read but it is a long way from the truth.



‘People are engaged in a lot of things, from aromatherapy through to tarot cards to this sort of thing. Rather than be negative about it, we see it as symptomatic of a seeking mentality that, for whatever reason, does not get channelled to organised religion.’

I really hope that's just a front and that they've dispatched monk assassins.

(Written by: dem_z)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

Italian Men

Italian Men
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

First they steal our women...

FW: [IP] Requiem for a fictional Scotsman

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Sunday, Jul 24, 2005 8:39 am
Subject: [IP] Requiem for a fictional Scotsman

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Kevin G. Barkes" <kgbarkes@gmail.com>
Date: July 24, 2005 7:41:03 AM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Requiem for a fictional Scotsman
Reply-To: "Kevin G. Barkes" <kgbarkes@gmail.com>

Other kids worshipped baseball players. My hero was a fictional
Scottish engineer from the 23rd century.

Before the terms geek and nerd entered the vernacular, we were called brains, or, more cruelly, weirdos. We built Heathkits, disassembled
televisions and tape recorders, and bribed the librarian to give us
first crack at the new issues of Popular Science and Popular
Electronics, usually by changing the ribbon or switching the golf
balls on her newfangled IBM Selectric.

The normal people left us alone until they needed their eight tracks fixed, or someone to set up the projector for health class, or install a new ink pad on the mimeograph machine. Task completed, we would be
summarily dismissed with a curt thank you. We'd return to the
backstage of the auditorium/gym, the traditional sanctuary of the
oddballs on the audio/visual team.

Scotty was our hero because he was one of us. Instead of the
backstage, he was buried in the bowels of the Enterprise's engineering section, which wasn't even in the main part of the ship. There he
ruled, serenely, totally in control, obtaining supreme satisfaction in the knowledge that while the idiots on the bridge were supposedly in
charge, he was the one who made possible their continued existence.

And then there was the Spock business. We Scotty aficionados resented the Vulcan science officer. In the first place, the whole "I'm totally in control and have no emotions" thing was patently dishonest. He was like the guy on the AV squad who discovered girls over the summer and was suddenly Mr. Cool. Yeah, right. When his girlfriend dumped him for the football team towel manager (quasi-athlete is still better than
certified nerd), he nearly fried the pre-amp in the PA system by
replacing the 1 megohm resistor in the main power supply with a 1K
unit while in his emotionally distraught state.

Spock was our high school principal, a pointy eared deus ex machina who appeared and broke the rules of the game. I recall spending days
overhauling the motor and drive assembly of an old Wollensak
reel-to-reel mono tape recorder, finally getting its wow and flutter
back within specs. Rather than praise my efforts, the principal said
"Oh, we'll just buy a new one." Buy a new one? The possibility had
never even been presented to me! This is the parsimonious wretch who
only two weeks ago made me use rubber bands to replace the capstan
drive belt to save 50 cents! No wonder Scotty drank himself into
oblivion when he was off duty!

The Star Trek writers used Spock and abused Scotty in the same manner. They placed the Enterprise in some ludicrous situation which had no
resolution, then sent Spock down into engineering to order Scotty to
perform some action totally in violation of Trek's already delusional laws of physics.

Until the arrival of Bill Gates, Scotty was the first expression of the belief that the nerds could probably run things better, but were
disinclined to deal with such mundane challenges. Notice that when he was forced to take the con of the Enterprise- usually because Kirk was being held captive by the father of the native princess he'd just
boinked into delirium, and the hyper-intelligent Spock had been
rendered unconscious by a judiciously applied blunt object wielded by an alien with the appearance and IQ of a turnip- Scotty was by far the best strategic commander of the lot.

When you saw him in the captain's chair, you knew Kirk and Spock had screwed up yet again- but you also knew things would turn out fine
because the Scotsman would handily defeat the enemy du jour and would beam his sorry superiors' behinds back up to ship before the last
commercial break. And then what would happen? The episode would end
with Kirk and Spock congratulating themselves on their ingenuity while Scotty had already disappeared back into the depths of engineering to deal with the real responsibility of keeping the ship running.

Those of you who have saved customer presentations, demos and initial installations from ten-thumbed marketing types know what I'm talking
about. The suits go out for a night on the town to celebrate their
technical savvy and sales skills, while you're stuck in the cheap
hotel room with a poorly stocked mini-bar that you're not permitted to access anyway because of the cost, on the phone resolving a customer
crisis while simultaneously answering inane support questions via
e-mail. And frankly, you're happy about it. Who wants to listen to
salesmen talk about sports?

But I digress.

Finally, Scotty embodied the benefits of technology and the "can do" attitude that pervaded the 60s. Oh, he might complain mightily about
some absurd demand being placed upon him: what geek isn't conservative when it comes to maintaining stable environments for critical systems? But he believed, as did his real-world counterpart Gene Krantz, that
"Failure is not an option." It's the unspoken challenge that motivates those of us for whom Scotty is the ultimate role model.

Montgomery Scott, the fictional character, will continue to perform engineering miracles indefinitely on film, video, DVD, and media yet
to be devised. For that, we are grateful. But I sincerely mourn the
passing of James Montgomery Doohan- ironically, on the 36th
anniversary of the first manned moon landing- who made Scotty the
cultural icon he became.

The word is given, Mr. Scott. Warp speed.

-- Regards,

KGB

-----
Kevin G. Barkes
Email: kgb@kgb.com | Web: www.kgb.com
Commentwear by KGB:
http://www.commentwear.com
Eff the Ineffable, Scrute the Inscrutable:
http://www.cafeshops.com/kgbstuff.9211569
KGB Report:
http://www.kgb.com
National Temperature Index:
http://nationaltemperatureindex.com
DCL Dialogue on line:
http://www.kgb.com/dcl.html
Random Quotations Generator:
http://www.goodquotations.com
Over 12,000 searchable quotations.

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