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Large Hadron Collider Down Until 2009 | Wired Science from Wired.com

On Sept. 18, the news from CERN, the organization that runs the LHC, was that an electrical problem involved with a cooling system caused a helium leak that would keep the mammoth particle accelerator out of commission for a day or so. A couple days later, days stretched into two months: The machine would need to be warmed back up, which will take three to four weeks, before a full investigation could be done.

Now the outlook is even more bleak for eager physicists who have already waited decades for the giant collider to come to fruition, after a week of tantilizingly successful beam operations.

The warm-up period and ensuing investigations will bump up against the LHC’s “obligatory winter maintenance period,” according to a statement today from CERN. This brings us into early spring before commissioning can restart.

Do I have to say that this is also exactly what we’d be told if something super-freaky had happened when they first turned this thing on, something so super-freaky that they’re afraid to turn it on again? “Obligatory winter maintenance period.” Good one.

Roman calendar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The fact that we use the same month names as the Romans encourages us to assume that a Roman date occurred on the same Julian date as its modern equivalent. This assumption is not correct. Even early Julian dates, before the leap year cycle was stabilised, are not quite what they appear to be. For example, it is well known that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BC, and this is usually converted to 15 March 44 BC. While he was indeed assassinated on the 15th day of the Roman month Martius, the equivalent date on the modern Julian calendar is probably 14 March 44 BC.

I’ve noticed that historians put a lot of effort into figuring out what day things really happened. Was Caesar assassinated on the 15th or the 14th? Was Washington born on February 11th or February 22nd?

The thing is, I’ve always thought historians were barking up the wrong tree on this. To my way of thinking, it really doesn’t matter what day something really happened; what matters more is what day people thought it happened. So as far as I’m concerned, George was born on the 11th because his mother and father, the attending midwife, and the Smith family down the road  all thought of the day as the 11th.

Here’s another example: say I was born on March 8th. Fifty years later a congressional proclamation changes the calendar slightly, and now I’m told I was born on March 4th. But I’ve thought I was born on March 8th all my life; I’ve said “March 8th” about ten thousand times, and I’m very familiar with how it sounds. March 8th fits me like an old shoe. Now you’re asking me to put this squeaky new shoe on, this March 4th shoe. Thanks, but no thanks. I wasn’t born on March 8th because that’s what a calendar said, not really. I was born on March 8th because that’s what we called the day I was born on when I was born on it.

The World Question Center 2008

A collection of essays from people who know things about things they thought they knew but later figured out they didn’t. For instance, I like Martin Seligman’s essay about the probability of ET because he basically independently came to the same conclusion I came to, but with the added distraction of being Carl Sagan’s friend.

Earthrace - The Boat

In March 2008, Earthrace will attempt to set a new speed record for a powerboat to circumnavigate the globe running 100% biodiesel, and with a net zero carbon-footprint, in order to increase awareness of the environment and the sustainable use of resources.

“Net zero carbon footprint.” While I don’t want to detract from something cool–I like it when cool things happen– this phrase is beginning to really grate. This boat has a 3,000 gallon fuel tank. A non-trivial amount of energy went in to making it in the first place. It’s only “net zero” because the company buys carbon offsets. I could make a Hummer or a Boeing 727 “net zero” doing that.

You know, if *everybody* bought carbon offsets to reduce their carbon footprint to “net zero,” we’d still have a problem. I don’t care how many trees you plant, a 727 still does what it does.

Before someone says that I don’t understand the concept behind carbon offsets, let me just say this: I understand it. It’s a wonderful way to roll around in your cake and then eat it. It’s a wonderful way to keep doing what you’re doing with a clean conscience. I *understand* that. You gave at the office. You adopted the skinny televised black kid in Ethiopia. What you didn’t do was leave your Hummer at home and walk to the grocery store.

“Net zero carbon footprint.” Jesus Christ. The phrase is about to become absolutely meaningless as every damn company piles on with its own product. It’ll be like what happened to the word ‘retarded’ when it leaked out into the mainstream; psychiatrists had to come up with some other word. A perfectly descriptive term, ruined by squatters.

When a can of coke is advertised as having a “net zero carbon footprint,” the retardeding of the phrase will be complete.

There are constraints written into the fabric of the world which we do not see but are nevertheless there. It’s fun to talk about planetary, stellar, and galactic civilizations as if we will inevitably progress to them; it’s fun. But where’s the evidence of civilizations that came before us? The universe should be lousy with their leavings, the inevitable shitpiles that gargantuan projects always produce. Of course, some say the reason we don’t see any of these things is that we don’t know what to look for. They say it’s like asking a marmot to find a contact address in Outlook; it’s something completely beyond its (and our) ken and ability.

I suspect that the real reason we don’t notice these stellar shitpiles and .pst files is that they aren’t there. I suspect that there are good, unknown reasons that make it virtually impossible for a civilization to spread much beyond where it originated.

A remote cam 70 feet in the air in Maine watches birdies sit and tweet and occasionally fly off. Baby birdies are in there, too; at least one was borneded this week.

Draft of climate report maps out ‘highway to extinction’ - CNN.com

“The worst stuff is not going to happen because we can’t be that stupid,” said Harvard University oceanographer James McCarthy, who was a top author of the 2001 version of this report. “Not that I think the projections aren’t that good, but because we can’t be that stupid.”

Oh, I beg to differ, perfesser. We can easily be that stupid. The question is whether or not we’ll get lucky.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Eclipse set to be ‘best in years’

[Robert Massey, spokesman for the UK's Royal Astronomical Society] added that [the eclipse] was totally safe to observe and no protective filters were needed because the Moon would actually be less bright than during a normal full moon.

So, perfesser, what yer sayin is that I kin look at the sun without goggles r such, now, too, right? Am I hearin you right? Whyn’t yew mumbledy-peg eggheads make up yer minds already!

Nice work from Terry Jones if you have a spare 59m 04s.

CNN.com - Experts predict one more Atlantic hurricane - Oct 3, 2006
FORT COLLINS, Colorado (AP) — Hurricane expert William Gray downgraded his forecast for the 2006 Atlantic storm season again Tuesday, predicting one more hurricane, two more named storms but no intense hurricanes.

He also has an amazing 95 percent accuracy in predicting how many dumps he’ll take during any given day! His 11:30 pm “Daily Dump Forecast” is eerily accurate.

Bonehead.

Follow up to this and that.

CNN.com - Marijuana may stave off Alzheimer’s - Oct 5, 2006

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) — Good news for aging hippies: Smoking pot may stave off Alzheimer’s disease. New research shows that the active ingredient in marijuana may prevent the progression of the disease by preserving levels of an important neurotransmitter that allows the brain to function. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California found that marijuana’s active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, can prevent the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from breaking down more effectively than commercially marketed drugs. THC is also more effective at blocking clumps of protein that can inhibit memory and cognition in Alzheimer’s patients, the researchers reported in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. The researchers said their discovery could lead to more effective drug treatment for Alzheimer’s, the leading cause of dementia among the elderly. Those afflicted with Alzheimer’s suffer from memory loss, impaired decision-making, and diminished language and movement skills. The ultimate cause of the disease is unknown, though it is believed to be hereditary. Marijuana is used to relieve glaucoma and can help reduce side effects from cancer and AIDS treatment. Possessing marijuana for recreational use is illegal in many parts of the world, including the United States, though some states allow possession for medical purposes.

“Those afflicted with Alzheimer’s suffer from memory loss, impaired decision-making, and diminished language and movement skills” is funny, see, because pot does the same thing, only less permanently. Well, I thought it was funny.

The Church of the FSM

Ah, you’ve probably surfed through this site at one point or another. Regardless, I want this, the best of all possible graphs, sitting in my blog for when I need to look at it.

Scientists help bodies grow new organs.

A team of scientists and surgeons at a Melbourne hospital has developed a method of growing new organs within a patient’s body.

The article goes on to say that I’m not going to get a new liver or forearm next week. So it’s another false alarm.

I just want a little shot of amazing news to tide me over. Aren’t we due? I think we’re due. I think the last mind-blowing news was when the Berlin Wall came down. What was that, ‘90? And don’t get me started on amazing health news; it’s been a goddamn biblical drought around here.

You people have rested on your “We’ve eradicated smallpox” laurels for one hell of a long time. You need to get back to work! Cure cancer and heart disease already! I mean, Jesus! Look at the time!

Kloss Gibbon - Wikipedia

The Kloss Gibbon (Hylobates klossii), also known as the Mentawai Gibbon or the Bilou, is a primate in the Hylobatidae or gibbon family…The singing of the Kloss Gibbons is considered the most beautiful of all the gibbons’ songs.

It is my considered opinion that The Kloss Gibbon also is the tastiest of all gibbons, although that resolution wasn’t successfully passed at the last meeting of the Council of Gibbon Considerers.

On January 6, 2006, Henan Province’s Dahe Daily newspaper reported that the local police department was unable to take an ID photo of Ye Xiangting from Yelou Village in the Yangzhuang Township of Wugang City, Henan Province. No image of Ye Xiangting showed up in the computer photos, and there is still no clear explanation for the result.

Gentlemen, I think this is the real thing. Oh, I know I said that about the hungry Buddha boy in Nepal, the Jesus head in the loaf of bread, and the Mary in the cabinet. Also, there was the fiasco about the Rigellian spaceship landing on the white house lawn in ‘02, for which I apologize. And the thing about the shitting statue of Percival is just plain embarrassing now; sorry to all those I induced to leave their jobs, sell their worldly possessions, and follow the shitting Percival; I was wrong. But this; this one I have a good feeling about.

“The police station chief told the reporter they have encountered two similar cases. They are unclear about the cause and hope the experts can offer an explanation.”

Right, good job there, Kolshak. I’m glad you’re on the case. “Two similar cases.” Third world, what is wrong with you?

Speaking of turds, dinosaurs produced a lot of them. I’m sure the Smithsonian has drawers-full of coprolites stashed away in their attic.

The dinosaurs were prolific coprolite generators because there were no toilets in the Mesozoic era. So every turd produced by every dinosaur ever born had a chance to fossilize, sitting out there in the sun like that. You can’t say that about our turds.

In fact, I could almost number the turds I’ve manufactured that have the slightest chance of turning into coprolites. It’s certainly a low number; every one I’ve produced in the wild has been memorable, in that I remember it.

Which is kind of sad, really. Scientists eons from now will have scant chance of deriving any clues from my shit. That gives me pause. And it’s almost impossible that a turd of mine will be fossilized and under glass atop a velvety pedestal one day.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask that one of my turds ends up under glass atop a velvety pedestal.

“Scientists’ abilities to control the spin of the electron help determine the properties of the photon, which in turn could have implications for the development of optoelectronics and quantum cryptography. Photons could be encoded with secure information, which could serve as the basis for anti-eavesdropping technology, Warburton said.”

Or it might not.

Really, I know why scientists and reporters feel the need to speculate, but can they at least put a disclaimer at the end of the speculation? Something like “This is only speculation,” or “Who knows what the future may bring?” or “We are almost invariably wrong.”

Yes, it could serve as the basis for anti-eavesdropping technology, but it won’t. Yes, it could lead to safer public drinking water or a miracle cancer drug, but it won’t.

I say this, comfortable that I’ll be right 999 times out of a thousand. I don’t mind being wrong that thousandth time, as long as I get to mock reporters and researchers the other 999 times.

In my speech class that I’m taking, a requirement to get a good grade for a speech is to cite a “wealth of sources.” My informational speech I’ll be giving concerns how to book the best flight when going on vacation. Nice and easy. For the speech, my root source is faa.gov, a division of dot.gov.

Many topics have a variety of sources to mine. This isn’t one of them. There are no other sources; faa.gov is root. Any fact-giving anywhere else is derived from it. Any opinion anywhere else is based on it.

But my instructor will insist that I toss some more sources in there. Sprinkle em right on in.

A speech class is built and exists to treat students like children, which, judging from my fellow students, isn’t always a bad thing. Some of these people are terrifically dull. Oh, the stories I could tell. But a speech class isn’t built to allow for the odd grown-up who wanders in for unfathomable reasons.

The other reason Speech Class exists is to discover and nurture those people who have a knack for speechifying, of course. We’ve got to have a certain amount of people around who like talking to other people, otherwise civilization would crumble. But as an appalling consequence, I have to give two brutally pointless speeches (when all is said and done) to strangers.

I’ve given speeches before for classes and in the military; some of them might have even been worthwhile to one or two people who heard them. But I already know I don’t like giving them. They can cross me off the list; I don’t care for it. This speech class won’t lead me to bigger and better speech classes.

But I’m required to take it.

When the course and the instructor require me to have a wealth of sources, even when there is obviously just one source, they’re telling me that I am not root. They’re in my face about it.

The thing is, in the things I care about, I am root. Root doesn’t mean that I know everything, even on subjects I know a lot about. It means that, if someone asks me a question, and I don’t know the answer, I tell them so. For example, this guy

“If the increased southern temperatures [of Saturn] are solely the result of seasonality, then the temperature should increase gradually with increasing latitude, but it doesn’t,” Orton said. “We see that the temperature increases abruptly by several degrees near 70 degrees south and again at 87 degrees south.

“A really hot thing within a couple degrees of the pole is something I don’t understand at all,” he said.

is my hero.

We should be bugged when an institution’s policy is to deny root to us. That should never be gotten used to.

Here’s a little ditty from yesteryear that I read in a book that I got from my mother-in-law last Christmas, Seeing in the Dark, about stars:

Follow the arc to Arcturus,
and on to Spica go;
Then turn northwest to Regulus,
the foot of the lion, Leo.

It’s just that far to Gemini,
Where Castor and Pollux glow,
Near Rigel, and Capella,
And Sirius, down below.

While I learned about my poor meatball on Mount Smokie, kids in else-time were learning about the stars in the sky. How did we get so street-smart, and so dumb?

The world has a fever, and has had for a long time. I hope it breaks soon.

The Sun and the Moon set astronomy back thousands of years.

As the only two things in the heavens that the ancients could look at and see any detail whatsoever, the fact that the Sun is a brilliant, featureless disk, and the fact that the Moon is a featureful but unchanging disk, kept Ptolemy and the rest of those guys in the dark. It was obvious to everyone that these things up in the sky were two dimensional. They were not spheres, they were heavenly stamps.

This is my example: if the Moon had rotated as it revolved about us, so that it showed a different face, gradually, every night, then it would have been obvious that it was a big ball out there. It is a stupendous coincidence of natural law that it shows us one unchanging surface. This stupendous coincidence allowed people to assume that it was not spherical. And if the Moon wasn’t a sphere, why think that anything else up there was? And if nothing else up there was spherical, why believe that the Earth was round?

There was no obvious reason to think that. It took many different people many lifetimes to convince everyone else that their subtle reasoning that the Earth is a ball, surrounded by other balls, was correct.

I tire myself out right now, just thinking about the inherent difficulty in trying to convince the hoi polloi of thousands of years ago that the earth is round, given the Sun and the Moon.