The End of Days

You've probably heard scientists speculate that the most crucial point in the development of an intelligent society, universally speaking, is just after they learn to split the atom. They gather that a great many of them learn to release great amounts of energy before they learn how to properly control it and hedge against disaster. This would lead to the extinction of such societies.

I think there's another crucial point, that has nothing to do with atom splitting, that occurs before then. One that we've already crossed. The more communal a society becomes, the less "survival of the fittest" goes on. After all, we'd be pretty cold-hearted beasts if we allowed people to suffer and/or die, if we could prevent it. But it goes beyond just keeping people alive. We lower the bar in education, to make it more fair. We insist on equal opportunity for all, regardless of ability. We attempt to "level the playing field" economically by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. We elect people to high office based on how nice they are and what logo they sport, rather than any kind of competence for the job they seek. Fierce competition is frowned upon because it makes the losers feel bad. Striving for excellence has been replaced with striving for order and mere survival.

There are already signs that this has lead to the dumbing down of the population as a whole. We accept as fact, just about anything the media's favorite go-to experts put in front of us. We have the ability to transfer thousands of generations of knowledge to and fro at a moments notice, but we're too busy watching cat videos to be bothered. We actually believe that spending more than twice what the government takes in and borrowing 8 times revenue, will lead to a robust economy. It must be true. The experts told us so. We take steps to make our most common energy source more expensive because it's leading to catastrophic global warming, as the average global temperature drops. We stuff ourselves with carbs because the food pyramid says to, while we scratch our heads at the "obesity epidemic" and the increased rates of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. We see images, provided by Hubble, of what look to be galactic offspring of larger, older galaxies, but the differing "red shift" tells us that they must be billions of light-years apart. Who you gonna believe? The theory or your own lying eyes?

As we continue to accommodate the lowest common denominator, the species will get increasingly stupid. This may well result in our own self-destruction due to nuclear annihilation, but it wont be because we knew too much.

We Don't Need Another Hero

For years, a certain constituency of Americans has been vastly under-served and under-represented. While they may disagree on a number of issues, the members of this constituency agree on a few fundamental things. One is that massive government debt will be a severe burden on future generations and that it is immoral to attempt to improve our short-term circumstances by knowingly jeopardizing our children and grandchildren. Another, related idea is that it is not the role of government to shield us from the consequences of misfortune or poor judgment, but to uphold our rights as we sort it out ourselves. It's a constituency that believes government's role in the life of the individual should be limited, as should it's budget. Issues thus far not involved in this coalition include abortion, gay rights, global warming and other hotly contested subjects that are left for another venue and another group.

This constituency has been left asking "Who will champion our cause? Where's the next Ronald Reagan? Who will defend our position?" Well, on April 15th 2009, they stopped asking and started defending themselves.

The problem with putting your fate in the hands of a political party is that they are really not sets of ideas, they are infrastructures for accomplishing a task; winning elections. As a party, they don't promote a limited scope of ideas or single issues, they adopt a number of issues and positions based partly on commonly held beliefs and partly on political expediency.

The Republican Party has spoken up for limited government and fiscal discipline, but has not lived up to the hype. Also, people who believe in capitalism, limited government and fiscal restraint, but don't tow the party line on other issues are ostracized. The same dynamic takes place in the Democrat party. You have to buy the whole package.

Whether you're liberal or conservative; capitalist, socialist or communist, you have to admire a group that refused to give up when a leader failed to emerge. The followers have become the leaders. This is in clear evidence as conservative politicians and pundits are now falling all over themselves trying to connect themselves to this movement.

I would caution members of this coalition not to allow it to get hijacked by a political party or to try to expand it to cover more issues. This is a unique movement of individuals promoting a specific set of ideas upon which they agree. At stake is whether future generations will work for the state or the state will work for them. Other issues can wait for another day, another rally, a different coalition, a different movement. No one who believes in ensuring the freedom of our descendants need be excluded because they also believe in something else. If we protect and respect each others individuality, we can work everything else out in time.

Obama's new Afghanistan strategy

President Obama today announced his new strategy for dealing with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Al Quaida.

As someone who has not been a big fan of the administration to date, I must say I didn't hear anything, policy-wise, that I didn't like.

The President is continuing to increase troop levels, with an emphasis on training. The goal is to build up and train the Afghan army and police until they are ready to handle their own security. There will also be funds provided by the U.S. for things like schools and infrastructure for Afghanistan. I do believe in the strategy of "give them something to lose." when it's done correctly. Mr. Obama also stated that the U.S, Afghanistan and Pakistan will engage in continuing talks and strategy sessions regarding security as well as economics and long term stability. He emphasized the need for civilian efforts as well, saying we need an "army" of agriculture specialists and engineers to not only erradicate the poppy production that fuels terrorist funding, but to find viable, alternative cash crops. This is something I have suggested in my own blogs in the past.

He seemed to have a real grasp on the danger posed by instability in the region and of the clear and present danger posed by Al Quaida and its allies. That was refreshing to hear.

The one thing that was a bit annoying about the presentation was the multiple referrals to Afghanistan being "denied the resources necessary due to the war in Iraq." Mr. Obama has won the election. He's the President. It's okay to acknowledge that we actually accomplished something good in Iraq and it wasn't a complete waste. Oh well, that's just politics. History wont pay much heed to snide remarks in the long run, just results.

I do like the strategy that was laid out today. Let's hope the execution is as good as the plan.

SNL News - No Joke, Feb 7, 2009

There was a lot going on in D.C. this week. The debate raged over the stimulus package and some key Obama nominations went down in flames. You'd expect the writers on Saturday Night Live would have some great material for the SNL News segment at the President's expense.

Here's what they came up with: Seth Myers reports that two Obama nominees had to withdraw because of tax problems and President Obama says "I screwed up." The punch line from Myers? "That was your screw up? This guy broke the world" (picture of George W. Bush).

They couldn't bring themselves to lampoon our Glorious Leader. Instead, they tried to make him feel better. These are strange days indeed. Particularly at NBC, where an entire network has become a cheerleader for a political agenda. We're used to comedians and news outlets being cynical of, suspicious of and sometimes even hostile toward our politicians. I've never seen anything like the partnership that seems to have been reached between NBC and this White House.

It's sad to see the poison has spread to otherwise talented comedians. If praising the powers that be in the highest of terms were funny, I'd say go for it. It's not. It's pathetic.

Is Yellowstone about to blow its top?

Photo by Austin Post, courtesy of USGS

Scientists are puzzled by the recent spurt of seismic activity in Yellowstone. Swarms of tremors in the park are not that unusual, but the number and proximity of this event definitely is.

James Pethokoukis did a Splunk search and discovered that during the entire decade of the 80's there were 128 Yellowstone area tremors measuring 2.5 or greater on the Richter scale. There have been 30 in the past four days centered under and around Yellowstone Lake alone, some measuring as high as 3.8. The number of 2.5 or higher tremors in the Yellowstone Lake area for the entire decade of the 80's was 4. I did post a comment on the article asking the author why he did not include data from the 90's. I haven't got an answer to that one yet.


The AP reports: "Several hundred quakes centered under the northern end of Yellowstone Lake have now occurred since Dec. 26. No damage has been reported. Earthquake swarms happen fairly often in Yellowstone. But scientists say it's unusual for so many earthquakes to happen over several days. Yellowstone lies mostly in northwestern Wyoming and is the caldera of a volcano that last erupted 70,000 years ago. Scientists have not concluded what is causing the earthquakes."


From LiveScience.com: "Scientists wonder if the shaking might presage a larger event. This month's swarm is the most intense in this area for some years, scientists said. It is centered on the east side of the Yellowstone caldera, a giant basin created in a colossal eruption some 620,000 years ago. Researchers have long predicted that the Yellowstone supervolcano will eventually erupt again, with devastating consequences for much of the United States. Half the country could be covered in ash up to 3 feet (1 meter) deep, one study predicts. But those same researchers say nothing suggests such an eruption is imminent. They point out, however, that Yellowstone seems to blow its top about every 600,000 years."

The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is a bit more conservative: "The December 2008 earthquake sequence is the most intense in this area for some years. No damage has been reported within Yellowstone National Park, nor would any be expected from earthquakes of this size. The swarm is in a region of historical earthquake activity and is close to areas of Yellowstone famous hydrothermal activity. Similar earthquake swarms have occurred in the past in Yellowstone without triggering steam explosions or volcanic activity. Nevertheless, there is some potential for hydrothermal explosions and earthquakes may continue or increase in magnitude. There is a much lower potential for related volcanic activity."

This story may not have stirred my interest so much had it not been for the 2005 BBC/Discovery Channel docudrama, "Supervolcano Caldera". Being in Colorado, I'm not close enough for a super-eruption to kill me instantly, but not far enough away to avoid eventually freezing to death, starving to death or at best, living the rest of my life in desperate squalor. Still, it might be better than living through the constant drip, drip, drip of ever increasing socialism.

This will likely turn out to be just a seismic oddity that will be of great interest to scientists in years to come. Still, for the rest of us, it's worth keeping an eye on for now.

A dark cloud over dark matter?

Astronomers working with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have announced the results of new research that they say confirms the existence of dark energy. They speculate that the findings could lead to new insights into the beginning and perhaps the eventual end of the cosmos. But, there's a fly in the ointment. Its name is Halton Arp.

The universe started with a big bang and is constantly expanding. That expansion is accelerating. We know this because the redshift of the light from far away cosmic entities tells us how fast they are moving away from us (remember the train whistle analogy in high school). The model has run into some problems over the decades, such as the fact that there wasn't enough matter to account for galaxies staying together and that there was no explanation for accelerated expansion. Don't panic. New forms of energy and matter were called into being to fix those problems: dark energy and dark matter.

The expanding universe model is no longer open to debate. It's an established fact and indisputable....or is it? A man named Halton Arp has a different idea. He has done extensive and very convincing research aimed at demonstrating that the redshifted light from far away objects is not a measure of velocity, but of age. He proposes that galaxies occasionally eject matter, which may become a new galaxy. The new galaxy is formed of newly formed particles, as a result of the explosive expulsion, which are lower in mass than their older counterparts. The particles in the new galaxy increase in mass as they age. It is the difference in the mass of the particles between the parent and offspring galaxies that accounts for the difference in redshift.

Mr. Arp has produced volumes of research, including observational evidence, that I will not go into here. Please visit the site for more detailed information.

The importance of the proposal is that, if it is correct, everything we think we know about the cosmos suddenly changes. A galaxy that is observed alongside another that has a much higher redshift would be assumed to be far away from its apparent neighbor and rapidly accelerating under the current model. Under Arp's model, the higher redshifted galaxy would be adjacent to, and the offspring of the other galaxy. The currently accepted relative positions and motions of all far away cosmic objects would suddenly be thrown into disarray, along with any research based on them. You can understand why the scientific community in general is not clamoring to support Arp's work.

Whatever the truth is, either Arp is wrong or the scientific community at large is wrong. History has proven that it is indeed possible for the broader scientific community to be dead wrong, even in the face of compelling evidence, for decades and even centuries at a time.

"But there is research, even brand new research that supports the dark energy/dark matter scenario." When you establish a false premise as an absolute truth, any observation you make must be made to conform to your premise. The research being done into dark energy and dark matter is heavily dependent on redshift being an indicator of the relative location and velocity of the objects being studied. If those "facts" are not facts, much of the data derived from them is meaningless.

I'm not a physicist or an astronomer, but I do believe in Occum's Razor. When faced with two plausible possibilities, the simpler one is usually correct. When you have to develop new particles and new properties of existing particles to explain what you are observing in the context of your established premise, check your premise.

Algae, Solar Power and the Electric Car

The lobbyist for the algae to fuel industry will be on Capital Hill this week, trying to convince lawmakers that their industry should be included in any comprehensive, long term energy strategy. They've got the support of the airline industry behind them and at least one company, Sapphire Energy, has actually produced a viable fuel.

Ascent Solar passed a major milestone recently when the Department of Energy officially certified that their thin film photovoltaic cells achieved nearly 10% efficiency at converting sunlight to usable power. Ascent hopes to have commercially available building products, incorporating their cells, on the market in 2010.

The electric car has gotten a lot of hype recently, but there is one major problem I haven't heard anyone address yet. No matter how much range they get and at what efficiency, people are inevitably going to overdrive their charge. What do you do when you're stuck on the side of the highway and out of juice? With gas powered vehicles you can at least grab a gas can and hitch a ride. I've heard of no counterpart to the gas-can for the electric car. Before they can go mass-market, they need to come up with a portable device one can carry to a charging station or outlet. You would charge the device with enough juice to get you at least 20 miles or so and return to your car with it. I suppose an alternative would be the emergence of an industry based on cars or trucks driving the highways and byways with enough power to sell stranded motorists a quick charge. But what if one doesn't happen to be patrolling your area? It's not an insurmountable problem. In fact, it's probably a simple fix. I'm just surprised none of the egg heads at the automobile companies have though about it yet.