Possibly interesting book

I got this book from the library, yesterday: "The Last Policeman", by Ben H. Winters.  There is an asteroid large enough to permanently sterilize Earth, and it is on a collision course.  There isn't enough time to prevent the collision, and society pretty much dissolves away.  No mass riots, no violent anarchy, just profound apathy.  Suicide rates have increased dramatically.  The "Last Policeman", Hank Palace, continues to investigate even though there is no point.  An insurance salesman appears to have committed suicide, but there is something strange about it.  He thinks it might be murder.  Palace is a guy who continues to do his job in a world that logically and rationally doesn't give a fuck about it.  This aught to be good...

Senile remeniscences.

I'm getting older, which means the first few twinkling of senility are are becoming apparent. Neural synapses are being destroyed, and as they do I'll get weird recollections that have nothing to do with my current circumstances.  So, right now it's Thanksgiving evening, and right now I'm thinking about the time I visited China a few years ago. 

My wife, her parents and I had visited the Forbidden City in Beijing.  Plenty of interesting ancient buildings.  They were the bureaucratic landscape that maintained the Chinese empire for centuries.  Outside the Forbidden City is Tienanmen Square, the current bureaucratic landscape of China.  No longer "forbidden" China's Great Hall of the People contains the legislative body of China.

Anyway, we had finished touring the Forbidden City, and were looking at Tienanmen Square.  My father in law was talking to one of the PLA soldiers about when the lowering of the flag would be, and if Mao's tomb was still open.  I didn't speak Mandarin, so I was just looking around like a dumb mute. 

I noticed an older, senior officer, possibly a colonel or brigadier, riding a rusty old bicycle.  He was in dress uniform, and riding roughly away from the Hall of the People, in my general direction.  He had a basket in the front of his bike, with a toddler in the basket, possibly is grand-kid.  Two of the soldiers standing guard came to attention and saluted the brigadier.  He saluted back while lazily peddling past them.... the kid saluted, too.  He didn't even look back to see if his grand-dad was saluting.  He must have thought the soldiers were saluting to him.  Grand-dad, commander of a brigade containing thousands of soldiers, decided to take his grandson to work today... And is riding his rusty bicycle back home, past the Forbidden City....

Dunno why, but that's something I'll always remember.

Funny things in movies that would never happen in real life.

While watching "Batman Begins", Bruce Wayne was attending his birthday party, when an older rich lady introduces him to "a mister RAS Al-ghoul?"

Bruce Wayne replies, "You aren't Ra's al Ghul.  I watched him die."  Ducart shows up, and says "Is Ra's al Ghul immortal?  Are his methods, supernatural?", and the scene develops... but the old lady apparently got bored with the conversation and left...  I've just always thought that was funny.  

Coffee Cream

I bought "Non Fat" Half-and-Half at the grocery story yesterday.  Non-Fat. Half-and-Half.  I shook it to make sure there was actual liquid inside it, thinking it might just be a container full of air.  What could possibly be inside?  We will soon find out....

My letter to the President.

Dear Mr. President:

I voted for you in 2008.  I will not vote for you again.  Here are the reasons why:

You have decided not to close Gitmo Indefinite Detention Center.

You have a kill list that may include US citizens.  Even if it doesn't include citizens, the disregard for due process is alarming.  Shouldn't these people be brought to justice rather than be assassinated in acts of terror?

You kill people in Pakistan and Afghanistan without due process using drones.  Often times, you do "secondary strikes" against first responders and family you come to render aid to those tried to help the wounded.  Women and children civilians are often killed as collateral damage. 

Instead of using political means to end the crisis in Syria, your State Department has been throwing gasoline on the fire.  Some parts of the resistance, and the Syrian Government have asked for political resolutions, but you decided to exclude that part of the resistance in your decision to advance the bloodshed in Syria.

Maybe if these sort of things changed I might vote differently, though I doubt it.  As a moral person, I can't in good consciousness vote for you.

Damien Mathew.

As usual, I'm sure there are typos.  I don't really care, to be honest. I have brain damage, what's the President's excuse?

Cold Dark Matter

I was reading Science magazine from a couple weeks ago and came across this quote form an astronomer studying Cold Dark Matter.  Dark matter is something that is supposed to reconcile the fact that the Universe is expanding faster than predicted by general relativity.  Nobody is smart enough to come up with a better theory for gravitation, so instead they created something propelling the Universe outward, and called it "Dark Matter."

Anyway, here's the interesting quote: "I have a huge investment in cold dark matter = my whole career and something like 300 papers- but it could be wrong." ... If you've written 300 papers on one topic, and it's still controversial and up for debate, then what exactly HAS he written? I submit that he's doing science wrong. 

Isaac Newton hardly ever published anything I discovered... perhaps the opposite extreme.  But, when he did publish something it was profound, and clearly sparked new ideas and debates.  Perhaps scientists should "write" less and "say" more...

Popular Science

I was watching this video on Gamma-ray bursts, which is pretty interesting. 

Anyway, I think as far as astronomy is concerned, most people are interested in it, even if it is in a passive sense.  If a new discovery is found in astronomy, people might listen as least on their news broadcast, or bring it up in light conversation.  It's interesting, easy to make accessible to the masses, and it helps us understand our place in the world.

Compare our interest in astronomy to that of high-energy physics.  People sort of try to understand it.  When the LHC makes an announcement we sort of listen.  Yet, we canned the Superconducting Super Collider, a physics experiment with energies about double the energies the LHC could possibly create.  I suppose you can by your kid a telescope from the toy store reasonably cheap, but you can't buy them a toy particle accelerator.  I suppose astronomy is easily accessible in that respect.  We can all look up at night and look at the stars.  We can't observe particle collisions on a whim... and particle physics is really hard.  Most particle physicists don't even understand it.

Anyway. if the SSC got the green-light, we would probably have answered the question of the Higgs Boson ten years ago, and would already be pursuing newer avenues of high-energy physics.  Not to say we would be researching warp-drive or anything like that, but practically speaking high energy physics would be Done (the standard model explains literally everything), or we are wrong in some weird way and we need to think harder about it.... Either way, it would be interesting to know.  I would love to live in a world where, at the most fundamental level we could say, "we've finally figured it out".  Chaos, naturally rules everything, and we can't possibly understand complex systems, but the underlying principles are there, and we understand it.... or not...

Instead, we shit-canned the SSC, and diverted the finding to the International Space Station, a laboratory that literally does nothing... but it's in space, and that's cool...