FastForwardz

There's nothing like the Hubble

Pluto surprise!

Academics may continue to quibble about whether Pluto is technically a planet, or not, but this week astronomers discovered two more moons orbiting around the diminutive orb.

The Hubble telescope keeps on amazing us with its stunning discoveries. While the Bush administration wants to bring the Hubble down (to save money) scientists using it continue to do pioneering science...brilliant science that can't be done any other way right now.

In fact the use of the Hubble to study Pluto was only due to the last minute cancellation of a more "prestigious" deep space project. The planetary science guys struggle to get time on a big instrument like the Hubble, but they were ready when the opportunity presented itself.

Two More Moons Discovered Orbiting Pluto

Two small moons have been discovered orbiting Pluto, bringing the planet's retinue of known satellites to three and leaving scientist to wonder how it could be.

"That suggests they probably formed at the same time as Charon," Weaver told SPACE.com in a telephone interview Friday. NASA planned a teleconference with reporters Monday at 1 p.m. ET to announce the discovery.

While scientists had predicted there might be more moons, the newfound setup is surprising nonetheless, in part because Pluto is smaller than our own Moon.

"It's almost like a mini solar system," Weaver said. "How can something about 70 percent the size of Earth's Moon have all these satellites? How can that happen? We're going to have to explain that."

The moon-hunting project was denied by Hubble planners several times and took years to get approved, and only then after a failed instrument on Hubble last year caused project leaders to add several previously unaccepted observing programs to fill the schedule.

For Hubble, this one was easy.

Unlike many observing projects that require several Hubble orbits – often 15 or more and sometimes many dozens -- Weaver's team needed just two orbits. On the first set of observations they spotted the two points of light, then on the second orbit they found them again and made sure they moved against the background of relatively fixed stars.

Two More Moons Discovered Orbiting Pluto

I Love Vermont

Here's a fine example of why Vermonters are different.

In 1776 Vermont elected to NOT join the union, preferring to wait and see how the experimental union made out; Vermonters have always been skeptical about federalism. In the next fourteen years the economic and social prospects of the fledgling Union appeared promising enough for Vermont to finally decide to join in 1791.

But unlike every other "state", by the time it joined the Union, Vermont had for fourteen years been its own 'country', an independent republic with it's own identity and it's own constitution. The signing of the Constitution for the "Free and Independent Republic of Vermont" took place in Elijah West's Tavern, in Windsor, Vermont, in 1777. The constitution resembled Pennsylvania's, but went further than others had before in that it granted full citizenship to all adult males regardless of property ownership, outlawed slavery, and set the rules for an independent nation which nevertheless contemplated admission to the United States. Of course, after admission, our skepticism about the Union has only grown over the years.

Vermont’s radicalism can be traced back to 1777 when it first became an independent republic prior to joining the Union fourteen years later. Vermont was the only American state which truly invented itself before becoming a part of the United States. Unlike other New England states, Vermont was never an English colony, or any other kind of colony, thus avoiding a period of aristocratic oligarchy. Influenced by some of its earlier Iroquois and Yankee inhabitants, Vermont established an almost casteless society never to be replicated elsewhere in America.

Second Vermont Republic

Unfortunately, back in 1791, wealthy land owners in New York State had presumptions of real estate ownership in the Republic of Vermont, and before they would allow the "Republic" to join the "Union" they managed to get crooked politicians in NY to extort the princely sum of $30,000 from Vermont. Now Vermont wants the money back, with interest.

Vermonters want New York to repay Vermont statehood debt

MONTPELIER, Vt. --A Vermont Supreme Court justice wants the state of New York to repay, with interest, a $30,000 payment Vermont made to New York 215 years ago so it would allow Vermont to join the union.

Before Vermont joined the union in 1791, New York argued it was owed the money to repay land claims in what was then the independent Republic of Vermont dating to a 1664 British royal proclamation.

Vermont and New York officials signed a payment agreement on Oct. 7, 1790. The first payment was in 1794. It took Vermont five years to finish paying the debt, said state Archivist Gregory Sanford.

"This money was taken, as far as we're concerned, simply as extortion," Dooley said. "We had to pay it to get into the union, because otherwise if New York opposed we would not become a state." Depending on how the interest on the money is calculated, the $30,000 payment could have grown to as much as $1.3 billion."

Vermonters want New York to repay Vermont statehood debt

So what? Where's the crime?"

We do not get to pick and choose which laws we will obey and which we will not.

On the eve of conclusion of the Fitzgerald investigation, here's is a very appropriate comment from former US Senator Gary Hart regarding the relative gravity of the 'offense' in the case of outing of an undercover agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency. While the White House will try to spin the coming Fitzgerald indictments as much ado about nothing (mere perjury), remember where this whole thing started; it started with a crime that carries a penalty of 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. A crime that was committed in the interest of inflicting damage to political opponents in the run-up to a war...no big thing.

I saw this first on Atrios' site (http://atrios.blogspot.com/). The original article comes from the Denver Post; you might want to read the whole thing at:

Here is the crime in outing a CIA agent

The federal statute making it a criminal penalty to knowingly divulge the identity of anyone working undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency was not enacted in a vacuum. In the early 1970s, in part as a result of the radicalization of individuals and groups over the Vietnam War, a former CIA employee named Philip Agee wrote a book revealing the identities of several dozen CIA employees, many under deep cover and some including agency station chiefs in foreign capitals.

-----

Richard Welch, a brilliant Harvard-educated classicist, had been stationed in Greece as CIA station chief only a few months before he was murdered, by a radical Greek terrorist organization called the 17th of November, in the doorway of his house in Athens on Dec. 23, 1975. Had Agee not divulged his name,* there is every reason to believe that Welch would be alive today after decades of loyal service to his country.

Largely as a result of Agee's perfidy and Welch's unnecessary death, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) of 1982 was enacted, making it a felony to knowingly divulge the identity of a covert CIA operative. It carries penalties of 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine for each offense. There are those who dismiss the crime by saying, "Oh, Wilson only had a desk job." That is not a defense under this felony statute. It is for the CIA, not Karl Rove or Robert Novak, to determine who requires identity protection and who does not.

-----

There is one final irony to this story. On Christmas Eve in 1975, I got a call at my home from the director of the CIA, William Colby. He asked if I would intervene with the White House to obtain presidential approval to have Welch buried at Arlington National Cemetery, a hero fallen in service to his country. I quickly called President Ford's chief of staff on Colby's behalf and made the request. Within two hours, the president had agreed to sign the order permitting Welch to be buried at Arlington.

The chief of staff's name was Richard Cheney.

DenverPost.com - OPINION - 10/25/05

SPAM snobs

The SPAM is excellent tonight!

I developed an appreciation for SPAM when I was in the Boy Scouts; it tastes divine cooked in a skillet over a campfire; and it keeps indefinitely with out refrigeration; what's not to like? I loved cooking SPAM over a hot plate in college, but then I also ate American cheese; what did I know. I always thought the SPAM brand got a bum rap after its association with unwanted junk mail...damn those fools on Monty Python. Alas, in this country SPAM is doubly cursed, the subject of both culinary and cyber culture ridicule. But the Koreans clearly have a more discerning culinary sense; in Korea SPAM is a delicacy!

When Only Slabs of Pink, Jellied Byproduct Will Do

SEOUL — Stroll into an expensive department store and walk straight past the $180 watermelon with a ribbon twirled just so around its stem. Don't bother with the tea in a butterfly-shaped tin for $153, or with the gift boxes of Belgian chocolates or French cheeses.

If you're looking for a gift that bespeaks elegance and taste, you might try Spam. The luncheon meat might be the subject of satire back home in the U.S., but in South Korea, it is positively classy. With $136 million in sales, South Korea is the largest market in the world for Spam outside the United States. But here, some consider the pink luncheon meat with its gelatinous shell too nice to buy for themselves, and 40% of the Spam is purchased as gifts.

Especially during the holidays, you can see the blue-and-yellow cans neatly stacked in the aisles of the better stores. South Koreans are nearly as passionate about packaging as the Japanese are, and the Spam often comes wrapped in boxed sets. A set of 12 cans costs $44. "I can't understand what is funny about Spam," said Jeon Pyoung Soo, a CJ Corp. executive who is brand manager here for Spam.

Jeon recalled a recent visit to Austin, Minn., where Spam's manufacturer, Hormel Foods Corp., has created a museum devoted to the history and cult of Spam. Highlights include a 1970 Monty Python skit in which a group of Vikings drowns out all other conversation with a chorus of "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam." (The skit is credited with the word "spam" coming into use to mean unsolicited e-mails that likewise clog a computer's inbox.)

"Everybody was laughing and smiling but me," said the 27-year-old Jeon, who went to business school in the United States and is fluent in English. "I knew all the words, but I didn't get the joke."

"It is a curious thing about Spam that in the Far East, it is taken very seriously, while in the United States, particularly on college campuses, it has this quirky, kitschy retro feel to it," said Julie Craven, public relations manager for Hormel.

When Only Slabs of Pink, Jellied Byproduct Will Do - Los Angeles Times

Giant pinhole camera

Giant pinhole camera to shoot alien worlds

One of the really difficult problems in photo astronomy is that of 'imaging' really faint objects against the great abundance of starlight that is everywhere in the heavens. This a bit like the problem of seeing stars in the sky above a brightly lit city; too much light. For the astronomers that hunt the special class of planets that orbit in'extrasolar' systems in distant parts of the Milky Way, the 'light problem' is totally overwhelming. The principle mechanisms of discovery in extrasolar astronomy have thus been entirely 'indirect'; the presence of a planet orbiting a distant star has been inferred by a wobble in the trajectory of the star; or a periodic dimming of the brightness of the star that has suggested that something is passing in front of the star. No one has yet been able to actually 'image' an "exoplanet" directly. But this is going to change soon, and the tool that will be used to accomplish this seemingly impossible task is a gigantic version of the first camera ever made - the pin hole camera!

Imagine having a photograph of an alien world in a far off solar system, one that shows continents, ice caps, cloud cover, maybe even rivers... thru a pinhole! ...this is going to be fun.

Camera obscura views obscure extrasolar planets

The project is for an orbiting, soccer-field sized "starshade" shaped like a daisy that would funnel light from distant planets between its petals to a second spacecraft trailing 50,000 miles behind. Known as the New Worlds Observer, the project was selected for initial funding by NIAC in 2004 as a giant pinhole camera in space.

The starshade would block out intense light from the parent stars of planets outside the solar system while allowing planet light to creep around the starshade's edge and funneling it into a trailing spacecraft for analysis, Cash said. The observatory would allow scientists to map and catalogue planetary systems around nearby stars -- including those with "warm, close-in orbits around parent stars" similar to Earth and Venus -- to frozen, giant planets at the edges of distant solar systems, he said.

"Using photometry and spectroscopy, we could identify planetary features like oceans, continents, polar caps and cloud banks, and even detect biomarkers like methane, water, oxygen and ozone," said Cash. "We could knock off a new planetary system every week, and we could build it tomorrow using existing technology. It's the kind of mission I dreamed about as a kid, and one that nobody would ever forget."

CU Proposal To Image Distant Planets Is Funded For Second Round Of Study

Alien Planets to Pose for Giant Pinhole Camera in Space

In the fall of 2000, sitting in my apartment in Glenn Dale, MD, I prepared to watch the coming solar eclipse with a shoebox. I opened the blinds on my window, found a comfortable spot on the floor, and propped the box up next to me, one end pointed at the sun. A tiny hole in the end pointed toward the sky allowed just enough light through to form an image of the sun on the inside wall of the box. Thus, without special filters or even a proper telescope, I spent the next hour watching the moon?s shadow creep across the disk of the sun.

I used a pinhole camera; a device known to the ancient Greeks and put to various uses ever since. A small hole punched in the wall of a box -- or a room -- creates an inverted image on a screen of whatever object the camera faces. The pinhole camera, or camera obscura, was used in the Renaissance as a drawing aid. When the screen was replaced by a photographic film, it formed the basis for today?s handheld cameras.

Now, a project funded by NASA?s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) could launch the humble pinhole camera into the sky. Dubbed the New Worlds Imager (NWI) and led by Dr. Webster Cash of the University of Colorado at Boulder, the goal is to use a large-scale camera obscura to obtain the first pictures of exosolar planets -- worlds from beyond our solar system.

NASA - Alien Planets to Pose for Giant Pinhole Camera in Space

NASA - EXO-planet finding project

Again with the hubris!

Hubris in the 'Age of the BLOG'

Definition: "Hubris" is exaggerated pride or self-confidence often resulting in retribution.

If you are old enough to remember Watergate (and Yogi Berra) this is starting to feel like "Deja vu all over again". The arrogance of a ruling party often causes them to over-reach; then they lie about it; then there are the inevitable 'leaks' that allow the press dig out the 'real' story; then we investigate the liars; then they lie about it 'under oath'; then we convict them of 'perjury'. Once the liars are 'outed', this country simply does not abide liars in high office.

This is why we need an independent press, and an independent judiciary, and precisely why we must block either party from placing ideologs on the courts. As we all know from virtually every episode of "Law and Order", it is often much easier to catch the "evil doers" for sloppiness (in this case perjury) than it is for us to catch them for their original cleverly crafted crimes. In the end we rely on the inevitable blindness of hubris, on the inexorable scrutiny of the press, and on the practiced thoroughness of special prosecutors, to keep the politically powerful in check. This is just another dimension of our system of checks-and-balances at work.

Of course none of this would be happening to this administration with out the press (strenuously prompted by the bloggers) keeping the liars in the spotlight. In spite of his legendary mastery of classic and proven propaganda techniques, Karl Rove simply could not control the 'press' this time around; has he lost his touch in the face of new media technologies? ...Once again hubris comes to the rescue... this time in the 'Age of the BLOG'.

Poll: Americans Favor Bush's Impeachment If He Lied about Iraq

By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans say that President Bush should be impeached if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,001 U.S. adults on October 8-9.

The poll found that 50% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."

44% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 3.1% margin of error.

Those who agreed with the statement were also more passionate: 39% strongly agreed, while 30% strongly disagreed.

"The results of this poll are truly astonishing," said AfterDowningStreet.org co-founder Bob Fertik. "Bush's record-low approval ratings tell just half of the story, which is how much Americans oppose Bush's policies on Iraq and other issues. But this poll tells the other half of the story - that a solid plurality of Americans want Congress to consider removing Bush from the White House."

Poll: Americans Want Bush Impeached

The Bush family at war with itself

Howard Fienman with Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hard Ball:

Right now, my sense, in reporting this... is that the Bush family, political family, is at war with itself inside the White House. My sense is, it's Andy Card, the chief of staff, and his people against Karl Rove, the brain.

And that runs through a whole lot of things, whether it's Harriet Miers or Katrina. But it all starts with Iraq.

And some submerged, but now emerging divisions within the administration over why we went into that war, how we went into that war and what was done to sell it. There are people who are out for Karl Rove inside that White House, which makes his situation even more perilous.

My understanding, from talking to somebody quite close to this investigation, is that they think there are going to be indictments and possibly Karl Rove could be among them, if not for the act of the leaking information about Valerie Plame, then perhaps for perjury, because he's now testified four times.

And there are conflicts between what Matt Cooper told the grand jury and what Rove evidently told the jury himself. And Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, is an absolute stickler for detail who has no political axe to grind here, other than keeping his own credibility. Having put Judy Miller in jail, having gone to the lengths he had, my understand is, he has got some people here, not only Rove, but perhaps Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff.

'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Oct. 10th - MSNBC.com

For President Under Duress, Body Language Speaks Volumes

It's only 6:17 a.m. Central time, and President Bush is already facing his second question of the day about Karl Rove's legal troubles.

"Does it worry you," NBC's Matt Lauer is asking him at a construction-site interview in Louisiana, that prosecutors "seem to have such an interest in Mr. Rove?"

Bush blinks twice. He touches his tongue to his lips. He blinks twice more. He starts to answer, but he stops himself.

"I'm not going to talk about the case," Bush finally says after a three-second pause that, in television time, feels like a commercial break.

The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.

The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was "trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression," Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.

When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer -- along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling. Laura Bush, by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood still through her entire answer about encouraging volunteerism.

For President Under Duress, Body Language Speaks Volumes

The Google EPIC

Goog God!

While Microsoft is working feverishly to reposition themselves against the threat of Google, the rest of us have to wonder...what's next? Is nothing safe from Google? Are we all going to be subsumed? Are we all just so much 'content' to feed the insatiable 'indexing engine' of the Goog God? And what will Google do when it is done?

Movie portrays growing Google as the death knell for Fourth Estate

As Google positions itself to be a total online content provider, the question of what is next for the search engine giant might be at least partially forecasted by U.S. journalists Matt Thompson and Robin Sloan.

Matt Thompson, deputy editor for online content for startribune.com, the Web site for the newspaper in Minneapolis, and Robin Sloan, who works for Current, a San Francisco-based cable and satellite TV network, created "EPIC 2015." In the short movie, the two peg the growing Google as the death knell for the slumbering Fourth Estate, which loses its gatekeeping and publishing role to the Internet.
The eight-minute piece -- produced by the Museum for Media History, a fictitious construct of Thompson and Sloan -- swerves between the plausible and the dramatic, tendering a prophecy that is both alarmist and maybe inevitable.

Short movie envisions the growing Google 'EPIC'

See the EPIC 2015 movie at:

Robin Sloan 2005

Search on every word in every book, in every library on earth...in a second!

Imagine sitting at your computer and, in less than a second, searching the full text of every book ever written. Imagine an historian being able to instantly find every book that mentions the Battle of Algiers. Imagine a high school student in Bangladesh discovering an out-of-print author held only in a library in Ann Arbor. Imagine one giant electronic card catalog that makes all the world's books discoverable with just a few keystrokes by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Google's job is to help people find information. Google Print's job is to make it easier for people to find books. When you do a Google search, your results now include pointers to those books whose contents, stored in the Google Print index, contain your search terms. For many books, these results will, like an ordinary card catalog, contain basic bibliographic information and, at most, a few lines of text where your search terms appear.

Imagine the cultural impact of putting tens of millions of previously inaccessible volumes into one vast index, every word of which is searchable by anyone, rich and poor, urban and rural, First World and Third, en toute langue -- and all, of course, entirely for free. How many users will find, and then buy, books they never could have discovered any other way? How many out-of-print and backlist titles will find new and renewed sales life? How many future authors will make a living through their words solely because the Internet has made it so much easier for a scattered audience to find them? This egalitarianism of information dispersal is precisely what the Web is best at; precisely what leads to powerful new business models for the creative community; precisely what copyright law is ultimately intended to support; and, together with our partners, precisely what we hope, and expect, to accomplish with Google Print.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Google Print

WSJ.com - Books of Revelation

Autonomous cars!

Stanford wins the DARPA Robot Car Race!

This is not easy. I've raced motorcycles in long distance 'overland' races many times, and I can report that just completing a race like this one is an accomplishment to be proud of; to have averaged 19 miles per hour over the whole race is very very impressive; but to have done it with out a human driver is totally amazing! This is the beginning of a vast new transportation age.

There were five finishers this year (last year none finished), and this year's number two car was a mere 11 minutes behind. This was a real race! That these robot devices were designed and built by private institutions, under the direction of some very clever private citizens - and not in some secret government skunk works - is yet another indication of how big this step actually is. In the not very distant future, we can expect to see private entrepreneurs developing all kinds of autonomous transportation devices, eventually including cars that can drive us along on the interstate highways, faster and safer than we can do it ourselves...maybe even drive us home safely in blizzards! This is clearly a plausible future.

At the very least we will see this particular desert race get very interesting next year when they run it again. Next year they're going to go a lot faster; maybe as fast as humans. Is the 1000 mile Baja race next? Robotic car technology will have completely 'arrived' when an autonomous car can win the unlimited class at Baja...against humans. Actually maybe winning the Indy 500 will be easier.

2005 DARPA GRAND CHALLENGE CHAMPIONS

Today Stanley and the Stanford Racing Team were awarded 2 million dollars for being the first team to complete the 132 mile DARPA Grand Challenge course. Stanley finished in just under 6 hours 54 minutes and averaged over 19 miles per hours on the course.

stanfordracing.org

Stanford Volkswagen Wins $2M Robot Race

PRIMM, Nev. - A driverless Volkswagen won a $2 million race across the rugged Nevada desert Sunday, beating four other robot-guided vehicles that completed a Pentagon-sponsored contest aimed at making warfare safer for humans.

The race displayed major technological leaps since last year's inaugural race, when none of the self-driving vehicles crossed the finish line.

Stanley the VW Touareg, designed by Stanford University, zipped through the 132-mile Mojave Desert course in six hours and 53 minutes Saturday, using only its computer brain and sensors to navigate rough and twisting desert and mountain trails. The Stanford team celebrated by popping champagne and pouring it over the mud-covered Stanley.

Stanford Volkswagen Wins $2M Robot Race

DARPA Grand Challenge 2005

Stanley is equipped with seven Pentium-M processors, GPS, a radar system, four laser range finders and stereo camera set-up as well as a single camera system. It has an inertial measurement unit, that along with wheel speed data can estimate how the vehicle is tilted, relative to the ground.

The evidence for 'design'

Letter to the editor - from a local newspaper, sent by friends Robert Dahl and Dion Wright

I find myself adopting a philosophy of Really Stupid Design as the likely alternative to old-fashioned evolution.

After all, mankind represents not so much the pinnacle of God's - or Darwin's - creation, as a second-year student engineering project that barely qualifies for a failing grade.

The pains in my neck and back? A badly designed support system for a creature doomed to a vertical existence, obviously cribbed from the deity at the next desk who was designing a four-footed creature.

As my lifetime store of knowledge increases, my ability to recall it is likewise declining. Not to mention failing eyesight, hemorrhoids, vermiform appendix, hammertoe, Morton's neuroma and a Jones fracture. And what kind of tool-using animal has only two arms? Try repairing a furnace fan yourself sometime, Mr. Divine Engineer.

Whoever designed me had better be encouraged to go into some other pursuit where He can't hurt anyone. Comparative religion, for example.

WP, Retired chemist, Oro Valley

The Unintelligent Design network

...instead of being swayed by either side, we at UDN, Inc. have found a theory that effectively merges the strengths of the two theories without the weaknesses. The intelligent design people say there are too many holes in the fossil record, and that evolution is only a theory; the scientists say there's not enough evidence of intelligent design. So we say, instead, that life has indeed been designed, just not very well.

Unintelligent Design Network, Inc.

Intelligent Design Trial

A debate has arisen over a Pennsylvania school board's decision to teach both intelligent design and evolution in the classroom. Here are some highlights from the trial:

Intelligent Design Trial - from The Onion

Killer Flu?

Killer flu of 1918 caused by bird virus

The virus responsible for the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed an estimated 50m people worldwide, has been reconstructed by genetic engineering in a high-security US laboratory.

Preliminary studies show that it is an avian flu virus that mutated to spread quickly between people just as many experts fear will happen soon with the current H5N1 strain of bird flu in Asia. Details of the project are published today in the journals Science and Nature. The US National Institutes of Health approved the research, despite its apparent risk, because it will help scientists find new treatments for the most dangerous types of flu.

Killer flu of 1918 caused by bird virus