past v present in US space

Ranges depend on whether you measure from the first or last flight of a program that was active over some time period.

Past achievements in space exploration:

• First US satellite in orbit to first man in space: 3 years
• First US satellite in orbit to first man in orbit: 4 years
• First man in orbit to first Moon landing: 8 years
• Moon landings to LEO space station: 1-4 years
• Moon landings to LEO Space Shuttle: 9-11 years
• Pioneer 10 to Voyager 1 and 2: 5 years

Current vision of space exploration:

• First LEO Space Shuttle to LEO space station completion: 19 years
• From LEO Space Shuttle to Moon landing: 10-29 years
• From LEO Space Shuttle to Mars landing: 17-36+ years
• Cassini to Europa Jupiter System Mission: ~10 years

Where did the ambition go?! Maybe I will help re-inject some this summer.

apparently, how to tell whether you meet Jane Austen’s conditions for getting engaged

1. Do you recognize this person’s family name?
2. Is this person richer than you?
   1. If yes: you should get engaged, like, instantly.
   2. If no: as long as he or she is not so poor that his or her family can count their number of live-in servants on one hand or less, who the heck cares?  You own half the spoils of the frakking British Empire anyway.
3. Is this person of higher social station than you?
   1. If yes: you should get engaged now now now now.
   2. If no: as long as he or she is not at peon or indentured servant level, who the frak cares?
4. Does at least one parent approve?
5. Does at least one parent disapprove?
6. Have you met this person more than zero times?

Whose hallway looks more fun?

Operations Research and Information Engineering: they research how to make office workers more productive and efficient and stuff--*hurk*. I think the best word for this hallway is "edifice."

Computer Science: Tightly closed, nearly-unmarked doors behind which grad students and profs alike burn LCD tans into their skin.

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering: Machines and mechanisms on display--and look, there are even some people!

Astronomy and Space Sciences: These guys send robots to other planets, and it sure shows!

eating Fox

1. Clinton on Fox
2. Stewart on O’Reilly
3. Colbert on O’Reilly
4. O’Reilly on Colbert

science, creationism, and “open-mindedness”

I recently had a discussion (actually, my first-ever intelligent discussion) with a creationist. Our discussion was, mainly, about the nature of the debate rather than any specific points — after all, neither of us was going to convince the other. However, one of his main contentions was that so-called “evolutionists” were close-minded in nature and desperately clung to the theory of evolution when there are scientific problems with that theory.* Some responses:

• The purpose of science is, in fact, to discriminate. It sorts out theories that accurately explain existing phenomena and predict the future behavior of the universe from those that do not provide sufficient explanations or make inaccurate predictions. It is not “close-minded” to reject a hypothesis that has been disproved many times over during the past hundred-odd years. This is just science doing its job! If, each time we educated a new scientist, we had to start from scratch without any established theories, we would still be at the level of the ancient Greeks. Very optimistically. Then again, it is the Platonic tradition to disbelieve observations of the physical world, so maybe that’s where the creationists want us.
• Logically, to prove a hypothesis, we must either find an analytical proof based on irrefutable premises or show that the hypothesis is true for every single possible case. A frequent contention by scientists is that creationism cannot be placed on par with a scientific theory because it has no predictive power. But ah-ha, say the creationists, Dr. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., used creationist premises to make predictions about the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune that were borne out after Voyager II. This proves that creationism has predictive power. Not so, I say! It proves only that creationist premises (and many barely-justifiable assumptions) lead to a prediction that is consistent with the physical world in a single case. Creationists will have to show a lot more predictions than that to demonstrate that they have a scientific theory on their hands. In fact, I challenge them to use Genesis to make accurate (or any) predictions in the biological sciences, rather than in a specific application of magnetic theory that is so underdeveloped at present that scientists have had to revise it every single time a probe visits an outer planet. Is it really so close-minded to expect logical rigor when arguments are presented as scientifically rigorous?
• On the other hand, disproving a hypothesis requires only a single counterexample. By this test, creationism has been disproved many times over by various methods that date the Earth, Solar System, galaxy, and universe to far greater ages than the ~6000 years nominally required by creationism. In fact, Judeo-Christian biblical creation can be refuted on these grounds taking as a premise nothing but the inerrant truth of the bible: Genesis contains two creation myths, each of which is mutually exclusive of the other (different initial conditions, order of events, and duration of events). By the premise, both must be taken as true, however, if either one is true, then the other must be false. Since either one (or both) creation myths is false, the premise must be false. Ergo, neither myth can be treated as fact. Again, all I am applying here is the simple logic of implication; I am not necessarily closing my mind off to all alternatives. I even opened myself up to the creationist premise of the literal truth of the bible.
• The theory of evolution has, well, evolved since the time when Darwin first postulated it. This is because science often uncovers phenomena that elucidate a new aspect of a field, and existing theories must be revised to account for that data (see previous remark about gas giants). In other words, when a theory cannot explain some data, scientists revise the theory (sometimes extensively). Thus, we do not “cling desperately” to evolution, since the theory itself has been repeatedly modified. However, creationism, by virtue of coming out of a supposedly irrefutable bible, has never been modified to fit new data. Rather, creationists “desperately cling” to their belief by re-interpreting the data to fit the existing theory. Well, I exaggerate slightly — creationism was modified to fit observed data once: by a guy named Darwin, who allowed that God must have created life through the process of evolution.
• One thing that creationism will never be able to do is use the scientific method to provide a convincing inductive argument for biblical creation. To do this, creationists would have to take as a premise not the literal truth of the bible, but the accuracy of observation and their ability to draw logical conclusions from those observations. They would then have to use their observations alone to show that, logically, the most likely explanation for the data is that the world was miraculously created 5768 Earth calendar years ago and that the creator was their preferred god. First, I note that they do not currently take this approach — rather, they work backwards: take bible as true, go find evidence to support that premise/conclusion. (Creationists often obfuscate their argument by building their conclusions into their premises.) Second, and more importantly, there is no way creationists could support their theory in a scientific manner. There are two reasons why I know this. One — available data (e.g., the age of the Earth, Solar System, galaxy, and universe as obtained by radioisotope dating, measuring the speed of light, plate tectonics, measured sedimentation rates, crater counting, timing formation models for Solar System or galactic features, etc) do not support the theory. Two — even if creationists could show that the universe was <6000 years old, they would still have to show that it was created in a six-day period by a god (who they would also have to show the existence of, by logical interpretation of data). This is scientifically impossible unless said god were to appear and submit to observational tests. Here, creationists usually go back to invoking their bibles, which is where they build their conclusions into their premises. Now, I may seem unnecessarily harsh: What does all this have to do with open-mindedness? My point is simply that even if I give the creationists the benefit of the doubt, their theory does not stand up to truly scientific analysis and, in fact, they could not arrive at their theory through the methods of science. Whether scientists are “open-minded” or not has nothing to do with the validity of creationist theory.

* Many creationists have latched on to the term “evolutionist” to describe anyone who believes in a non-biblical creation; that is, that evolution guides the development of life and that the universe is >5768 years old. Essentially, the term applies to most scientists. However, I reject the use of the word “evolutionist” because it seeks to portray evolution as a belief system rather than a scientific theory. I do not believe in evolution, rather, I am convinced of evolution, perhaps of the punctuated equilibrium variety, by a preponderance of evidence. Furthermore, my convictions that the theories governing relativity, radioactive decay, plate tectonics, etc, are sufficiently accurate to date the formation of the Earth, Solar System, and universe are not dependent on my being convinced of evolution.

great combination of bumper stickers I saw on a car the other day

1. Klein’s Archery
2. Born to Hunt
3. Support Our Troops
4. Kerry-Edwards ’04
5. [Gay pride flag]

a US President-elect should be required, by law, to…

1. visit every National Park.
2. tour every major city in the US, and walk down three randomly selected streets.
3. visit the capitol of every US ally.
4. go on a spacewalk.

Lists of Things Official 2008 Campaign Coverage: several political views of Ron Paul, each of which, alone, is sufficient to make me scared of him

1. He wants to eliminate the Federal Reserve and have a floating currency. Because, with a huge national debt and trade deficit, with China becoming an economic powerhouse and holding the largest foreign reserve of US currency, with the dollar sinking against other currencies, and with the current mortgage crisis, having no monetary policy at all would be great. Yeah, no risk of inflation or recession or staggering economic crash there.
2. He wants to abolish the IRS. I assume he thinks that citizens should decide on their own how much in taxes they owe to the government, and should make the check out to “The Government, c/o Ron Paul?” Seriously, he’s such a free-market nut, but why did he seemingly forget that companies tend to hire accountants?
3. He wants to prohibit the federal government from levying income taxes. Apparently, his US history is pretty weak: we have tried this twice before. The first time, under the original Articles of Confederation, we realized that our government was headed into a hole and we wrote the Constitution instead (with federal income taxes as a prominent feature). The second time, half of the US seceded and wrote itself a constitution that did not allow federal taxes, with the result that they printed a hugely inflated currency and had no capital to spend on the war they were trying to fight, a major reason why they lost spectacularly.
4. Speaking of, he lambasted Abraham Lincoln for fighting the Civil War at all. Uhhhh…yeah…way to endorse states’ right to secede, there. I hereby declare my apartment a sovereign nation.
5. He wants to pull out of the UN, IMF, NATO, etc. NATO! Why the *$&% would any Presidential hopeful want to pull out of that enormously successful alliance?! Also, this sends a great message to the rest of the world. Something akin to, “Frak you, we don’t care what you think, we’re just going to do whatever the heck we please to you and you’d better just take it lying down. How dare you suggest that we sign your pathetic treaties and try to work out our global problems.”  Because, of course, there are no problems that affect the whole world at once, just individual nations one at a time.  Kind of reminds me of a horrid sitting President I know.
6. He thinks that is basically okay for any American citizen to go walking around in a city with a concealed automatic grenade launcher. Because (so says Wikipedia) he thinks that school shootings etc are a result of “prohibitions on self-defense.” Logic?
7. He wants to eliminate federal agencies like FEMA (because we never have emergencies that need responses, no sir) and the Department of Education. (Because we don’t need educated children–after all, if we had an educated populace, who would vote for people like Paul?)
8. He supports legalizing prostitution. I fell like there is a very, very limited number of reasons why a male politician would want this.

important things to remember about Charles Darwin

1. He was a devout Christian.
2. He found it amazing and awe-inspiring that God chose to create the world through the process of evolution.
3. He did not “believe” in evolution a priori.  He became convinced of evolution through true scientific process of induction, of inference through observation.  It’s not like he was “indoctrinated” in “scientific dogma” in grade school.
4. He did believe in God a priori.  He wasn’t out to get religion.
5. His theory was formulated in terms of so-called “macroevolution,” and was founded on evidence of same.  So-called “microevolution” was observed later.  (Both so-called because the distinction is artificial: it’s a way for Creationists to refuse evolution without also giving up their vaccines.  This makes them Cafeteria Scientists as well as Cafeteria Christians!)

astonishing things!

1. Blind teen using echolocation
2. Fox News fearmongering with CA wildfires
3. Red Sox win World Series–again!