Hello, my happy friend. You have high spirits and
know how to have a good time. When your friends
go out, most likely they invite you almost all
the time. You most likely will enjoy your
Halloween. Good for you. Keep up the
experiment. You probably light people's dark
days with your smiles and laughter. Although
you're good, doesn't mean you're an angel. You
can tend to have a scary and/or other type of
side to you. As long as you have fun, do your
scares this Halloween. Have a safe and happy
one, Joyous Pumpkin.


What Halloween Figure Are You? (Fun Quiz! MANY RESULTS!)
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Posted by: JohnL at 10:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The sharp eyes of Dave Barry (actually, one of his readers) spot this.

Makes me think of the Great Pumpkin.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via Gene Expression.

"Miriam" is fairly convincing.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Another of the golden age hard-SF authors has passed on. (Link via Jerry Pournelle).

Hal Clement, the pen name of Harry Clement Stubbs, began writing science fiction in the 1940s. He blazed the trail of science fictional world-building that was both scientifically accurate and internally consistent in his best-known work, Mission of Gravity (1954), which was first serialized in Astounding Stories magazine (the forerunner to today's Analog).

According to editors David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (in The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF), Clement's Mission of Gravity "redefined the game of hard sf as an exercise in interrelating the sciences to achieve a created world that would plausibly withstand rigorous examination from many angles."

His was a well-lived life. He graduated from Harvard with an astronomy degree in 1943 and went into the US Army Air Corps where he piloted and copiloted B-24 Liberators for the remainder of World War II. He taught for more than 38 years. He is survived by his wife, three children, and a grandchild. Requiem aeternam dona ei Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Guest Volokh co-conspirator Cori Dauber deconstructs the kabuki dance of the media's disaster coverage, which she calls the "tragedy template:"

We have a cycle and a geography of tragedy in this country. On the west coast, earthquakes and fire, in the square states, more fire, floods and tornadoes for the midwest, hurricanes for the southeast, blizzards for the northeast, and horrifying transportation accidents anywhere anytime. Whatever the tragedy, the networks immediately launch into their utterly predictable, by now completely ritualized disaster protocals -- a template for the coverage of tragedy. The greater the magnitude of the disaster, the more coverage there has to be, whether extra coverage is more information, or more ritual, as if to give less air time is to be disrespectful to those suffering, who no doubt have more on their minds than watching news coverage. The anchors must fly to the scene forthwith, donning khaki, even if it means anchoring, in Peter Jennings' striking words the other night, "from the ruin's of someone else's life."

One upside to this is that the tragedy template has temporarily displaced the Tet template.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Why do most reasonable scientists "believe in" evolution?

Because of molecular phylogenetics, explained in lay terms here.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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My comment to this post at Transterrestrial Musings seems to have triggered this one.

Cool.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Athena


?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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My answers to questions 1, 4, and 5 remained constant. Trying my second choice to numbers 2 and 3 made me Morpheus.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In my first post, I alluded to being an amateur theologian. I was raised (and remain) United Methodist, and am a member of a large and vibrant congregation here in Plano. I am by nature a rationalist, and struggle regularly with the tension of reason versus faith. Although I grew up Methodist, I spent the years K-8 in Missouri Synod Lutheran Schools, learning literalist fundamentalism the Lutheran way. From there, I encountered the opposite end of the spectrum at the local Jesuit high school, where I was taught a Thomistic, rationalist, scholarly approach to theological matters.

I am now largely a deist, much like the founders of our country, but continue to find fellowship, comfort, and fulfillment in my church. My wife and I attend a self-led adult Sunday school class, in which I have taught many different lessons covering biblical history, early church history, Judaism, and current events. I have no formal theological training, just five translations of the bible, Google, and some secondary sources.

Because of my profession [lawyer], I was recently invited by my parents-in-law to teach their Sunday school class about matters of church and state. The main case study in my lesson was Roy's Rock -- a/k/a the ten commandments dispute continuing in Alabama.

In the course of my research, I discovered a couple of interesting tidbits.

First, historically, the denomination most strongly in favor of a strong separation of church and state was the Baptists! The denomination of Roy Moore. The denomination that most people in our country would associate with the "Religious Right." The denomination that wants prayer in schools, "under G-d" in the pledge, and their ten commandments in courthouses everywhere. The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was founded by Baptist Roger Williams.

It was founded on the principle of religious liberty, and attracted refugees from the several colonies that had established Christian churches.

How ironic that such a high-profile member of the denomination in America originally tied so closely to religious liberty now seeks to display its version of the ten commandments in a state courthouse! That is the second tidbit I learned in preparing the lesson. Using the same source text, three different traditional listings of the ten commandments emerge. One used by Jews, one used by Roman Catholics and Lutherans, and one used by other Protestants. Guess which version Judge Roy had engraved on his rock?

Posted by: JohnL at 12:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Very cool rendering of Escher's relativity here.

(Via Josh Cohen).

Posted by: JohnL at 09:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via the numerology of the Gematriculator, this site was certified 50% Evil (or Good) as of the time of posting.

For the sake of comparison:

Instapundit: 31% Evil, 69% Good
The White House: 67% Evil, 33% Good
Freedom From Religion Foundation: 15% Evil, 85% Good

And, interestingly enough:
The Vatican: 1% Evil, 99% Good

Posted by: JohnL at 11:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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On Spaceref today, Frank Sietzen tells us that President Bush may be set to call for a resumption of manned flights to the moon "to develop advanced technologies that can support U.S. astronauts working beyond Earth orbit to not only the Moon, but eventually on near-Earth asteroids and Mars." One of the author's sources tells him that the space policy review was "not driven by any crash program mentality" but focused on how a new major manned space goal could both mobilize the U.S. space industry and boost morale at NASA.

Rand Simberg offers his views here and, as usual, I find myself largely in agreement with him.

When I was much younger, Moonbase Alpha seemed to be a long way in the future. Now I note that kids who entered college in 1999 have already graduated, and still there is no prospect of a permanent settlement on the moon. I really don't think the dysfunctional bureaucracy so skilled at flying circles in LEO for the last 20 years is the right horse to bet on to get us to the moon to stay. Nor do I think my tax dollars should be used to "boost the morale" of NASA.

Sietzen's article indicates that President Bush may wait until December 17, 2003 (the centennial of the Wright Brothers' flight) to announce this bold program. How great would it be if Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne makes its maiden flight into space on that day, as has been speculated? (See, e.g., the third paragraph from the end of this article).

Even if Rutan does not upstage the President on that date, the X-Prize format may provide an example on how to break NASA's stranglehold on this market. Jerry Pournelle drafted the following model legislation in 1984:

"The Congress has determined that a permanent colony on the
Moon is in the national interest of the United States.
The Treasurer is directed to pay the sum of $10 billion (Ten Billion US
Dollars) to the first US-owned company that shall place 31 American
citizens on the Moon and maintain them there alive and in good health
for the period of three years and one day.
This payment shall be exempt from Federal taxation. No money shall be
paid under this act until the conditions set forth above are fulfilled."

I would write my congresscritters to support a law like that.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via Virginia Postrel, a site devoted to awful plastic surgery.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Thanks to a pointer from Transterrestrial Musings, I discovered a new (to me) blog.

Gene Expression is a group blog with a very clean layout and presents a smorgasbord of topics and sharp commentary.

Highly recommended.

Posted by: JohnL at 11:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here. (Via The Corner).

Posted by: JohnL at 10:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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That's what this article basically says.

If you drill deeper into the article, though, you realize that the presence of large deposits of olivine on the surface of Mars only indicates the lack of recent liquid water. Since Mars' atmospheric pressure is only 0.06 bars, there shouldn't be any appreciable liquid water on the surface anyway.

I am more curious about the search for subsurface water, preferably close enough to the surface that settlers can drill for water without too much effort. Certainly other reports from Mars indicate the possibility of water close to the surface, if not on it.

With NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the ESA's Mars Express, and the Japanese Nozomi all due to arrive next year, I am looking forward to a "flood" of new data.

Posted by: JohnL at 12:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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But you have to wonder, didn't they have some kind of clue about their street name when they moved in?

Posted by: JohnL at 11:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It looks like the Japanese continue to pursue the concept first demonstrated with the DC-X.

(Here are some photos from an earlier test of the Japanese vehicle).

Posted by: JohnL at 11:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I picked up the Rush in Rio DVD today and have watched the first half of disc one.

I will be watching the rest tonight, so no more posts. (Thanks to some alphabetical serendipity, I picked this DVD up today, too!)

I see that Alan K. Henderson is in the spirit of the day.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Developments in solid state lasers may lead to practical battlefield applications in the near future according to this article.

What are the implications of being able to shoot mortar and artillery shells out of the air? To knock ballistic missiles out of the sky before they can deliver their payloads? What about soldiers equipped with nano-surgeons
that radically improve a soldier's chances of surviving a battlefield wound? Is it a good thing for our military to become, effectively, invincible? I part ways with many fellow libertarians in my support for the overseas war on terrorism and my wholehearted agreement with Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz's proposed "cure" for terrorism outlined in his September 13, 2001 comments.

But I occasionally grow concerned about the long term health of our republic in the face of a quasi-imperial and essentially invincible military, a theme expanded upon by Jerry Pournelle here.

Of one thing I am sure: we cannot stop developing improved military technologies (and we cannot surrender our nukes voluntarily) unless we are willing to surrender sovereignty to an illiberal hegemon like China.

Posted by: JohnL at 12:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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