Diffraction Spikes

On a Tropical Getaway

2008-12-16T21:06:00.002-05:00

I was thinking at one point that it is time to retire this blog. I still may do that, but here's one more post that postpones the end.

I wanted to share the details of my tropical getaway. Since it is December in Happy Valley and snow is accumulating outside, it is a great time of year to take some time off work, go away, and enjoy ourselves.

Well, Shannon and I are going to do just that, well, except for the tropical part.

Tomorrow I get on a plane to Omaha, NE, where the high temp the next few days is predicted to be in the mid 20s to high teens.

There aren't any palm trees, but there are two volleyball matches left this season. Penn State plays Nebraska Thursday in the Final Four, and the championship match is Sunday night. I may be going somewhere colder, but I have tickets to sit in the Penn State section and watch a really special team compete for a National Championship. There's no other place I'd rather be in the entire world.

On the Big 10 myth

2008-10-27T19:43:00.002-04:00

I made the mistake of reading comments attached to an SI college football article. Unfortunately, it is clear that the narrative that the Big 12 and the SEC are unbeatable has taken hold in the conscience of your average fan who has been watching college football for two seasons and thinks they now know everything there is to know. I've copied here selections from my post to the Big 12 and SEC fans claiming that PSU and the Big Ten should be banned from a National Championship game just to remind everyone of the "dominance" of the Big 12 and SEC over the Big Ten. Let me start by saying that the punchline is that Penn State is 7-2 against SEC and Big 12 teams in bowl games in the past 15 years.

Penn State is *not* Ohio State when it comes to bowl games. Let's look at PSU's bowl history in recent years:

2007 - beat Texas A&M (Big 12)
2006 - beat Tennessee (and the vaunted SEC speed that is too much for us Big Ten teams)
2005 - beat Florida State
2002 - lost to Auburn (SEC)
1999 - *shut out* Texas A&M (Big 12)
1998 - beat Kentucky (SEC)
1997 - lost to Florida (Joe benched Joe Jurevicius, and Curtis Enis was ineligible - his two best players)
1996 - beat Texas (Big 12)
1995 - beat Auburn (SEC)
1994 - beat Oregon
1993 - beat Tennessee (SEC)

so, PSU is 3-0 against the Big 12 in bowls in the past 15 years, and 4-2 against the SEC in bowls in the past 15 years (and I would put an asterisk by the loss to Florida). If you only want to talk about the last two years, PSU is 1-0 against the Big 12 and 1-0 against the SEC, and that was with Anthony Morelli at QB, not Daryl Clark. I think if you check, you will find that PSU was the underdog in most of those games. Most recently, Kirk Herbstreit pulled out the "SEC speed" argument to pick Tennessee to beat PSU in 2006, and if you go to YouTube, you'll see a highlight reel of PSU defensive backs pounding Tennessee receivers. It's hard to do that if the receivers are blowing by you (which they weren't).

So keep thinking that PSU is OSU and if matched up against the SEC or Big 12 it will be an automatic loss. I'll go into that game with history on my side, a coach with more bowl wins and more bowl appearances than anyone in history, and a .691 winning percentage in bowls. You all can keep thinking Joe Paterno is Jim Tressel and we'll see where that gets you.

Of course, I will be the first to admit that this is getting *way* ahead of ourselves -- I'm certain that one of the undefeated teams won't be undefeated by the end of the season. The reason for this rant is that the mob mentality is already beginning that says that OSU got embarrassed in bowls the last two years, so PSU shouldn't be allowed to play in the national championship even if they are undefeated. You can dismiss this as just talk by fans who don't know any better and it is harmless, but this is exactly the type of narrative that voted Nebraska national champion in 1994 because the fans "knew" that Penn State couldn't compete with Nebraska. I still say if they played head to head, the offense with three future Pro Bowlers would have won.

Do I need to even say anything?

2008-10-25T23:05:00.000-04:00

On Earmarks

2008-10-09T01:24:00.002-04:00

Never thought my specialty -- science outreach -- would come up in a presidential debate.

But apparently, John McCain thinks spending money to educate children about science is bad. Maybe that's why a huge fraction of his running mate's generation, including her, thinks dinosaurs walked with people.

So there you have it people -- don't vote for Obama, because he had the audacity to reach across the aisle and vote with his Republican colleagues to earmark funds for a renovation of the historic Adler Planetarium.

Is it November yet?

On St. Paul

2008-09-01T23:16:00.002-04:00

Wow. Blogs are reporting (I've only checked CNN, but it seems like this is going completely unreported in the MSM) that St. Paul has been turned into a military zone. There are YouTube videos of non violent protestors being pepper sprayed, stories about the FBI pre-emptively directing arrests of protestors (who are subsequently charged with fire code violations), and journalist Amy Goodman from Democracy Now was arrested for attempting to report on the violence.

Doesn't this seem like something Americans usually condemn when it happens in places like China?

When do the tanks roll into St. Paul?

On a warm heart

2008-08-27T21:57:00.002-04:00

One of my biggest pet peeves is the Moon landing conspiracies. I can't believe it when otherwise intelligent folks (including an M.D. I know!) believe in the crackpot idea that NASA faked the Moon landings.

Well tonight on Mythbusters, the guys ran a series of tests to debunk many of the ideas advanced by Moon conspiracy theorists. I'm sure they won't sway anyone who is a die hard, but hopefully the younger generation who might have otherwise bought into the myth will see the show and grow up realizing how ridiculous the conspiracy theories are.

Thank you mythbusters, you've warmed my heart.

On the post I meant to write today

2008-07-27T01:18:00.002-04:00

Just saw this linked to by someone else.

I hope Dr. D sees this post and clicks on the link. Very funny stuff.

My brother-in-law, who is an amazing guitarist, watched me beat Knights of Cydonia on the medium setting on Guitar Hero. He told me that it would be much easier to learn how to play the song on a real guitar. I didn't believe him, but watching Alex Lifeson fail to play Tom Sawyer on Rock Band makes me think Dave might be right.

Geddy sounded great, though -- I bet he did ok on his part.

On comments

2008-07-27T00:52:00.005-04:00

First off, let me note the blog is not dead. Summer just kicks my butt with an increased workload over fall & spring, and what time I have to blog goes away.

The reason I'm writing now is that I drank too much caffeine today, and even though I need to sleep, I'm writing this instead. Tomorrow, no iced coffee.

Anyway... I just moderated three comments -- two old ones from Mike, and one from Comcast! I had read today that Comcast has taken to responding to bloggers who trash them in order to try to improve their reputation. In my case, it looks like a Comcast rep responded to my criticism of them for their recent behavior in the ad campaign being waged against Dems that supported the new FISA legislation.

I didn't respond in the comments. Instead, I'll let Glenn Greenwald respond for me.

I'm glad that Comcast is using the dollars they get from me and the rest of us who are forced to use their service to pay people to respond to blogs. Now I know why I pay $60 a month for internet service. Before I just had to guess where the money was going. I can tell them how to fix their reputation a lot faster than writing comments on my blog -- lower your prices, improve your service, and stay out of politics. Since I see no chance of any of those three things happening, I'm still dropping them as soon as I have an alternative. I've even gone so far as to contact my township supervisors to ask them to help get our township more alternatives for internet service. The day I can stop giving one more dollar to the worst company in America will be a happy one for me.

On the Lesser of Two Evils

2008-06-21T21:54:00.002-04:00

I just got finished writing an email to the Obama campaign.

The issue that matters most to me in this election is the restoration of our civil liberties. I was originally planning to vote for Dodd in the primary, but he dropped out before my state voted. I've never donated a dime to a politician, but came closer than I ever have in my life to donating to Dodd. My reason for even considering it had to do with his very principled stand over retroactive immunity for the telecoms that broke the law and wiretapped American citizens without warrants. Dodd's fight was weakly supported by Obama and Clinton, and outright opposed by Harry Reid, and so that is a good way to rank those three -- Obama and Clinton are ok, and Reid needs to be stripped of his leadership role, and even better, outright voted out of office.

Over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald has been writing about this topic often, and has really done excellent work reporting on the issue and also motivating people to fight against the Congress whenever they take up this legislation. Unfortunately, it appears a lost cause now (as he predicted months ago), and part of the reason is that Obama has failed to lead and take a stand. Even worse, he appears to be simply covering his butt by issuing half-hearted statements to appease people like me, while knowing full well that he could take real action if he wanted to do so.

After realizing that Dodd wasn't going to be competitive, I reluctantly became an Obama supporter. I admit to being inspired by a lot of what he and his team have done, and I had gotten to the point where I thought that voting for Obama was actually going to be a vote for a candidate I genuinely supported, rather than the usual lesser of two evils vote.

With his failure on this issue, though, he squandered every ounce of my support and really has revealed himself to be yet another in a long line of lesser of two evils candidates. Maybe one of these days a real leader will actually run for office in this country, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

On begging for help

2008-06-09T23:03:00.003-04:00

Please someone, anyone, offer me alternative internet service. There is yet another reason to despise Comcast, and this one elevates them to an entirely new level of sleaze. It pains me that I pretty much have no choice but to continue giving them my money.

Glenn Greenwald has been writing extensively about the fight against granting the telecoms retroactive immunity. It's an issue that is important to me, and I was impressed with Chris Dodd for putting everything on the line to fight against retroactive immunity. He won my support with that position.

Greenwald and some other folks have decided to actively work on this issue, and they have been going after blue dog democrats that have been enabling Bush. They took a poll about which blue dog to go after first, and after raising something like $75k in a short amount of time, put together an ad campaign to alert the constituents of a PA democrat that he's been voting for the Bush policies, including granting immunity to telecoms. Well, this guy lives in the heart of Comcast country, and Comcast has been very generous in donating to him.

Radio stations, TV stations, and newspapers have been playing the ad, but anyone want to guess which fine, upstanding cable company came up with a bunch of bogus reasons to refuse to run it? Yes, our comcastic friends refused to run a political ad critical of a congressman for taking money from telecoms (including them) to grant them immunity from prosecution.

Read Greenwald's column for more details. I'm going to go fire off a note to Verizon *begging* them to bring FiOS to my neighborhood.

On more outrage

2008-05-28T22:58:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about it, and although I never meant this blog to ever be about politics (which isn't cats, volleyball, or astronomy), it is getting that way because I keep getting more and more outraged. Every day when I think it can't get any worse, it gets worse.

There are plenty of much more serious things I can rail against, but this is the outrage of the day:

Rachael Ray.

She did an ad for Dunkin' Donuts wearing a scarf. Apparently, this means that she supports the terrorists and that she wants all Americans to die.

The same people who use racial slurs on TV or in their live speeches because that proves their bona fides as a "conservative" who does not bow to political correctness felt the need to force Dunkin' Donuts to pull a commercial because Rachael Ray was wearing a freaking scarf. This is the most important issue of our day, forget the war, the economy, or anything else -- we can't have our TV chefs wearing unapproved scarves on TV! Think about the anarchy that will result!

That's right. The "conservatives" have decided that this woman's attire so offended their delicate as a flower sensibilities as proud patriotic americans that no one should be allowed to see this heinous advertisement.

The 12 Republicans left in the US must be so proud -- they've finally won the all important battle to force companies to police the clothing choices of their paid endorsers.

Next time I'm going to wear a necktie, I'll be sure to call my Republican congressman to find out if it is on the approved list. I'm guessing I'll be in trouble, because I do have a lot of Jerry Garcia ties, after all.

On my favorite Dixie Chick

2008-05-21T22:29:00.003-04:00

I was happy to see Bush get called out for what was just the latest in a long, long line of outrageous actions -- comparing Democrats to Nazi appeasers.

One thing that no one mentioned, though, was the first thought that occurred to me:

Natalie Maines said in Europe that she was embarrassed by our president. She was vilified and even received death threats. The howling outrage from the usual suspects could probably have been predicted, but I was amazed how many people and what a variety of people felt necessary to pile on Natalie. Does anyone think what she said was so wrong anymore? If anything, I think 99% of people would be willing to shout from the rooftops that Dubya is an embarrassment.

Anyway, someone explain to me how what Maines said was even remotely as awful as what Bush said. Like I said, I'm glad for the outrage (especially Olbermann's -- he's singlehandedly doing what Air America failed to do), but how come it's not as widespread and deeply felt as that a random Dixie Chick provoked? I'm hoping it's because we're all desensitized to what Worst.President.Ever has to say and not because people think calling Obama an appeaser in Israel isn't as bad as saying Bush embarrasses you while touring Europe.

Just another aside on Olbermann -- it takes some serious nerve to go on TV and tell the sitting president to "Shut the hell up". I wonder if his audit has started yet, or if they're looking deeper for skeletons in his closet. I'm guessing he's now on the TSA's "terrorist" list, has his phone tapped, and Rove is working on some "witnesses" to accuse him of bribery. I hope he's got some friends to help him out.

On the best line since "untracked"

2008-05-02T00:13:00.002-04:00

I'm grading and watching the Pepperdine / Long Beach State NCAA men's vball semifinal.

Earlier tonight, PSU beat Ohio State to earn a spot in the championship.

This match is being called by the same team of Mowins & Kiraly that called the PSU / Stanford women's volleyball national championship match.

I've been known to make fun of this Mowins/Kiraly tandem. During the women's match, they must have said Foluke Akinradewo's name about a bazillion times, including telling us many, many, many times about her having to move out of her apartment to go train with the Olympic Team. It really seemed like it was the Foluke Akinradewo show, and oh, by the way, there is a match going on in the background.

Anyway... I found their commentary so annoying, I *have* to poke fun at Mowins for a slip she made during this match. I guess one of the Pepperdine guys attended commencement, and then went right to the gym to play in the conference championship match that got them into the tourney. While explaining this riveting human interest drama, Mowins said something along the lines of, "he took off the gown and the mortar & pestle and left for the gym."

I didn't know the regalia at Pepperdine was borrowed from the chemistry department.

On the Paterno Family Professor of English Literature

2008-04-29T23:18:00.004-04:00

So the AAUP released their annual report on faculty salaries. I don't want to be too critical, but I do want to call out one of their arguments as bogus.

They say,

"The salaries paid to head football coaches at Division I-A universities are ten times as high as the salaries of senior professors. What does this say about the priorities of these universities?"

If anyone who has been here more than once doesn't know I'm a football fan, let me state for the record my bias -- I'm a season ticket holder at PSU, which is both my employer and the institution that awarded my bachelor's degree. That being said, though, I have to say that I think including this argument in what is otherwise a pretty standard paper on salary statistics hurts their credibility.

I know that it is easy to pick on football and fashionable to do so, but I just don't buy the argument that it is bad for colleges to pay football coaches more than $1M. Let's look at their argument:

(paraphrased) Major football schools pay their football coaches ~10 times the average full professor salary.

Well, what about supply and demand? How many PhDs are there that can fill your average full prof's slot? How many coaches have the CV to coach Penn State? Isn't it also simple economics that you pay a salary that is competitive with the other options a candidate might have? The full profs in my department are a talented lot, and could go to most other universities, could go to NSF, NASA, a national lab, or other federally funded research institution. So, PSU has to offer a competitive package to what those places have to offer in order to keep its faculty. Your average top D1 football coach gets approached annually by an NFL team, so D1 schools have to pay of order what an NFL coach might make to keep them. Last time I checked, even the worst NFL franchise (Detroit?, Arizona?) pays its coaches of order 10 times what NASA pays their senior scientists. If I'm wrong about NASA's salary scale, please tell me where to apply.

The authors of the AAUP report disagree. They say,

"If the purpose of the institutions were to produce football entertainment for profit and serve as farm teams for the National Football League, then arguments about letting market forces determine college coaches’ salaries would make sense. Otherwise, they don’t."

Huh? What is special about colleges that market forces can just be ignored when someone decides it is convenient? Why is it ok for market forces to determine that business profs should earn more than liberal arts profs, but not ok for football coaches? I just don't understand that statement at all. Personally, I wish that market forces were such that the best teachers commanded top salaries and movie stars and athletes made middle class salaries, but that's just not the case. Penn State can buy this argument, take a stand for the AAUP, and offer its next coach $100k, and we'll see if market forces can be ignored.

You can say that Penn State should do this, because it will mean the end of its football program (or at least the end of a D1 quality program). There is precedent for such a decision. Do the senior faculty at Chicago get larger annual salary increases than the schools that remained in the Big Ten? I'm going to guess that there is no correlation -- I bet Chicago profs have been getting annual raises similar to PSU faculty. I imagine that whatever the difference is in salary scale between PSU and Chicago, it has more to do with public vs. private than D1 vs. D3 athletics.

Lastly, how many head football coaches do schools like Penn State have? If you're not sure, the answer is 1.

Anyone know how many full profs there are? I would guess here it's in the neighborhood of 1,000. So if you integrate the salaries for football coaches and do the same for full profs, I get $1M for football coaches (tough math there -- 1 x $1M), and $100M for full profs. Seems to me that the ratio of football:full prof salaries does not show a lack of proper prioritization on the part of the administration.

We can argue about how self sufficient athletic departments truly are and how much football teams help to generate donations for academics (and here, I have to plug that at PSU Joe donated millions for things such as endowing faculty positions), but I just don't understand the demonizing of coaches and athletics.

Personally, I find football to be something that adds value to the quality of life here in State College. Isn't one of the Penn State PR lines "making life better"? So pay our head coach > 10 times what I make -- you're making my life better, even if you're not pleasing the AAUP. I'm not saying I want a raise less than inflation in 2008, but personally I don't think that there is any relationship to Joe's salary, football revenue, and my salary increase.

On the PA primary

2008-04-20T14:53:00.002-04:00

It can't come soon enough.

I'm no fan of Hillary, but I have to say, any shred of hope she had of getting my vote has disappeared because of her incompetent PA staff.

We have been getting multiple calls a day from the Hillary campaign, and multiple sets of literature. In contrast, we've had one Obama call and one Obama pamphlet. That's all I need. Ten calls and ten pamphlets don't tell me anything different than the first one.

Still, though, today's bit of campaigning was the best of the bunch.

I got home at ~1pm, and found a Hillary pamphlet in my door jamb, *again*. However, I noticed this one had something on it, which I originally thought was ketchup. However, upon closer inspection, whoever dropped this pamphlet off must have been bleeding, and they got blood on the pamphlet and on my door.

So, here's the new slogan -- Hillary '08 - she's even willing to bleed for your vote.

I hope that she's planning to send a biohazard team to my neighborhood to clean up everyone's doors. Maybe I'll send her campaign a bill for disinfection services.

On the Bill of Rights

2008-04-06T23:19:00.002-04:00

I'm just wondering -- next January, do we get the fourth amendment back? How about habeus corpus?

If our current administration can just declare the fourth amendment does not apply in certain cases, are we expected to just trust they won't do the same to the rest of the Bill of Rights?

Why isn't anyone upset about this? Have we all just accepted that we live in a dictatorship and don't care that our constitution no longer applies?

I'd like my rights back.

on science as politics

2008-04-05T18:57:00.002-04:00

hello from my local NPR station. Shannon signed us up to answer phones during radio pledge. It's been slow, so I have time to post.

Anyway, I read, against my better judgement, an opinion piece by one of those obnoxious loudmouths about big oil, which turned into a diatribe about global warming. I won't identify the guy or link to him, because that only gives his opinions more visibility (not that he needs that). Once again, this idiot repeats the moronic position that some random think tank claims that the ratio of global warming "supporters" to the "other side" is 38:1 on CBS news.

I'm not the first to make this point, but it needs to be repeated as long as people keep making this claim on tv. Science is not politics. Unlike any political topic where you can balance the debate, scientific debates should not be "balanced". For example, let's say your average truthiness-spewing idiot has an astronomer on who claims that the sun will rise the next day in the east. In order to balance this, does he need to have someone on to claim the sun will rise in the west?

Maybe a more direct analogy -- if a cosmologist gets on tv because of the discovery of a redshift 8 object, is the show obligated to have Chip Arp on to dispute the cosmological origin of the redshift?

The Nobel prize winning scientists here tell us that human induced climate change is supported by evidence so strong that they felt comfortable using the word unequivocal in their report. To me, the cosmological origin of the redshift is unequivocal. By "balancing" debates on science it gives people the impression that we can legislate science. Congress can vote to deny global warming or evolution, but that doesn't make it so. So by finding and giving a platform to some random person with scientific credentials who claims that global warming is not human caused, it gives the false impression that the evidence isn't as strong as it is.

So as much as some folks would like to treat climate change as a political issue, it is not one and should not be treated as one. So a 38:1 ratio on the news "supporting" global warming is appropriate.

If you want to have a political debate, you can balance the folks on your show discussing how to address climate change.

On post-its, dog collars, and hula skirts

2008-03-31T19:41:00.002-04:00

Steinn beat me to it, but I was going to discuss the latest appearance of the post-it bandit.

So, to recap, someone covered my truck in post-it notes a few months ago. This was followed by a day at work where a number of office doors were similarly covered.

More recently, the bandit stuck again. Steinn found a hula skirt in his office, Mike found dog collars, Larry found a groundhog (stuffed, I assume), and Caryl found glow-in-the-dark glasses.

Today's pranks led to police being called.

I agree, the prankster did go too far, they probably should have stopped before putting stuff in very sensitive offices. Here's my working hypothesis: the prankster(s) don't really have access to the offices. I'm thinking they have some clever method for getting stuff in otherwise. I've heard several reports of stuff being knocked over (Steinn, Mike, Caryl), and I can't imagine someone who was so precise in their post-it application wouldn't be careful enough not to knock stuff off of everyone's desks. This suggests to me they don't have that much control over where stuff gets placed. Robin also got balloons, which you can place under the door and inflate from the other side. I'm not just saying this because someone called "Prankster" commented to Steinn that they can't get in -- even if that is a fake comment by an outside observer, I mentioned this same thought to Mike earlier today. Mike didn't believe me, but Mike's evidence was that opening the door blew papers off his desk. I think it was the method for placing the stuff in the office without opening the door that knocked stuff off the desk.

Anyway, I would like to know (just for curiosity's sake) who the bandit is, but I don't want the person to get in trouble -- even placing a groundhog in Larry's office seems harmless to me.

On apologies

2008-03-27T23:41:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the neglect of this blog -- it's been busy lately, and I have a tough time blogging when I'm on my computer working all the time. I need to escape the keyboard rather than spend more time in front of it.

I thought that since I'm in Boston for a meeting, I'd find some time to catch up, but I spent a lot of time today at the meeting corresponding with folks back home about some plans for some work obligations next week. So still didn't find any time to blog.

Now, I'm tired. Sorry to the few of you who have found checking here to be futile lately, but I'll be back to posting something random soon.

In the meantime, here's a few links I've found interesting lately:

more from Chris Dodd.

I'm going to miss this by about 2 hours. Interesting that Jay Paterno was at his campaign HQ.

It really seems like this is it for Joe, but many people are enjoying this far too much. Many people seem to have so many axes to grind with him that they are really seeming to savor watching this play out in a way that is not so flattering for Joe. Personally, I will always believe that the man deserves much more respect than he gets.

More at some time when I'm more motivated...

The Moon Hoax Hoax

2008-03-11T23:49:00.003-04:00

One of my pet peeves -- moon landing hoax theories.

One of my dreams come true: Mythbusters are going to be taking on the Moon landing hoax myths.

I can't wait.

On the Stillers again

2008-03-05T22:36:00.002-05:00

Most folks will probably deny this, but I've been on record for a few years saying that although I wish Joe Paterno will never retire, I do have an approved coach that has my all important permission to replace him.

That person is Bill Cowher. I know this is a complete pipe dream, and in fact, I'm only partly convinced myself this is a good idea. However, I can't think of anyone else I think should take over for Joe.

So, the rumors are that Cowher was here talking to PSU's AD. I had actually heard that rumor through the grapevine before it showed up on SI.com or in the Pittsburgh newspapers. I hope it's true.

Bill's got my vote, and as I mentioned, I have lots of pull around here.

On the Stillers

2008-03-04T23:49:00.002-05:00

This past week, Myron Cope passed away.

Peter King wrote a nice tribute to him in his column this week.

Everything that everyone says about Myron is true. I came late to the Steelers and won't claim to be a long time fan (or even necessarily the most loyal fan right now), but the reason I am a Steelers fan at all today is because of Myron Cope. Like everyone around here, I turn down the volume of the TV when Penn State football is on TV and when the Steelers are on TV, and turn up the volume on the radio and listen to our local announcers. The reason for listening to the Steelers was always Myron. The rest of the crew is great, too, but Myron really was a lot of fun to listen to because it was clear how much he loved the Steelers. After decades on the radio, he was still screeching "Touchdonn" (no, that's not a typo) every time they scored.

When I lived in Virginia, I loved visiting PA, because on the drive back to CVille on football Sundays, I could usually keep Cope on my radio for a good chunk of the trip.

If I have such fond memories of a guy I've listened to for a few years now, I can't even imagine what the guys who have been listening to Myron since the 70s feel. I imagine a lot of cans of Iron City were raised in his honor last week.

Sorry... no time to finish this, gotta go get a hot dog.

On Beer

2008-02-21T22:55:00.000-05:00

mmmmm... Otto's sumatra stout.

'nuff said.

On the cult of global warming deniers

2008-02-10T12:51:00.000-05:00

I've put down some of my thoughts here from time to time about global warming. Let me summarize my latest -- I've attended a few talks lately by some of the scientists at Penn State involved in energy research. This included a talk by Richard Alley, one of the most academically decorated faculty at Penn State, who is a co-author of the IPCC report and part of the team that shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore.

You can watch his talk here (although it's only in Windoze Media format, which is ridiculous).

The scientists have been delivering a universal message during their talks so far: that global warming is real, it is human induced, all of the scientific community is in consensus, and its effects are happening even faster than the most pessimistic predictions. Richard was asked if he would estimate how many scientists in the community fall on the other side of the argument, and his answer was zero. In his talk, he noted that scientists use words like "the evidence suggests", "it is likely that", "it is very likely that", etc., to give a feel for how strongly they believe the data. He used the phrase "it is unequivocal" about human-induced global warming. UNEQUIVOCAL. How many times have you seen that phrase used in the ApJ?

After hearing all of these talks, I find it embarrassing how the scientific community has failed our citizens. We have let this argument get lumped in with wiretapping, FISA, and "enhanced interrogation", so the decision about whether or not we need to do something about climate change is made by your voter registration card. I know that this is a problem, but it was driven home this morning. In our local paper, there was an article written by a local about how global warming is likely going to have a series of startling effects on the fish & game industry, which is so important to PA. Read the comments. It is a sampling of people who think that the author is an idiot for buying the global warming "myth". My favorite comment is the person who feels that (paraphrasing) us worrying about this is because of our culture's need for instantaneous gratification -- he thinks that "Nature" will solve this problem. He's right -- Nature is solving the problem, the question is if we will like the way Nature solves it.

I'm just as guilty as everyone else - I drive a light truck, I heat my house, I'm writing this post with my laptop plugged into the wall and my wireless base station connecting me to the internet. I've also reinsulated my attic, insulated my water heater, changed every bulb in my house to a CFL, and would install solar panels on my roof if I could only find a vendor to do it. You can laugh at me all you want, but I figure that if spending some of my disposable income on energy saving technology might help (even if it might only have a 1% chance of maintaining our planet's habitability) it's worth it.

If you watch Richard's talk and still think this is all some big conspiracy hatched by Al Gore, you should be ashamed of yourself. I understand that skepticism is the heart of science. I am not asking people to stop being skeptical of data with error bars and model predictions of future climate, what I am asking is that you apply the same level of rigor to your evaluation of this conclusion as you would to any result. You know, if Rush Limbaugh went on the radio and told me that Ursa Minor has a mass to light ratio of 100, I would evaluate his sources and decide how their arguments stack up to the rest of the published literature. It's not too hard to find folks who are stubbornly holding on to the early, very high M/L estimates of Ursa Minor, and I'm sure they'd be happy to be given a chance to go on radio and TV and scoff at the rest of community who refuses to acknowledge their vastly superior work that proves Ursa Minor must have an M/L of 100. Do you think if the cosmological redshift somehow became a political issue the non-cosmological redshift crowd wouldn't do everything they could to get on Rush's show?

Unfortunately, I know that there are folks who will read this, shake their head, and say "just another liberal academic who buys whatever Al Gore tells him". That's the problem we need to solve. Then we can start trying to reverse climate change.

On tidal disruption of satellite galaxies

2008-02-08T22:53:00.000-05:00

It's fun to be on APOD and Digg.