Going to see the new Star Trek film tonight with my daughters and a friend. I can't wait.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
My Friend
Patrick Roy Kramer, May 6, 1977-October 22, 2006
All Things Will Die - Lord Alfred Tennyson
Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing
Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing
Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating
Full merrily;
Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
O, vanity!
Death waits at the door.
See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call’d–we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.
O, misery!
Hark! death is calling
While I speak to ye,
The jaw is falling,
The red cheek paling,
The strong limbs failing;
Ice with the warm blood mixing;
The eyeballs fixing.
Nine times goes the passing bell:
Ye merry souls, farewell.
The old earth
Had a birth,
As all men know,
Long ago.
And the old earth must die.
So let the warm winds range,
And the blue wave beat the shore;
For even and morn
Ye will never see
Thro’ eternity.
All things were born.
Ye will come never more,
For all things must die.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Kids and Divorce
As is so often the case, The Onion mixes in a healthy amount of truth with the funny.
Bipartisanship at Its Finest
So, when Obama offered to make concessions on curbing medical malpractice rewards as part of overhauling health care, what did the Republicans offer to give?
Nothing, it turned out. Republicans were unprepared to make any concessions, if they had any to make.
Just more proof that the current crop of Republicans are not serious about governing, only about grandstanding. Like it or not, our system of government is typically about working with people of differing views and compromising with them. Unfortunately for the Republicans, Democrats hold the White House as well as a majority in both branches of Congress. They are in a position of not needing to compromise as much as the GOP. If the Democrats wanted to, they could ram quite a bit through. So, it seems as if it is in the best interest of the party for Republicans to take an olive branch when it's offered instead of throwing it away.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Reconciling Science and Religion
I'm always glad to read stories like this. Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian and a scientist. He worked on the Human Genome Project and now he's working on a new project to bridge the gap between Christian fundamentalism and science.
Collins, 59, who with his mustache and shock of gray hair looks like former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's cheerful twin, seems genuinely pained by the idea that science could be viewed as a threat to religion, or religion to science. And so he decided to gather a group of theologians and scientists to create the BioLogos Foundation in order to foster dialogue between the two sides. The name — combining bios (Greek for "life") and logos ("the word") — is also what Collins calls his blended theory of evolution and creation, an approach he hopes can replace intelligent design, which he derides as "not a scientific proposal" and "not good theology either."
Through the Washington-based foundation, Collins says he and his colleagues hope to support scholarship that "takes seriously the claims of both faith and science." Its online component, biologos.org, is designed to be a resource for skeptics and nonbelievers who are interested in religious arguments for God's existence. But the primary audience for BioLogos is Collins' own Evangelical community.
I think this is fantastic. The person in the best position to change minds is someone on the inside, a member of the community. Being an Evangelical, Collins knows the language, knows the thought processes of the group and is in a much better position to show them that faith does not have to be in conflict with science. The two enrich each other or at least should. It's the extremes on both sides (Richard Dawkins, James Dobson, I'm looking at you two) that escalate this "battle" and make it difficult for the two to come together.
I guess I'm saying that I vote for more sanity and respect from people on both sides of the issue.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Conservatives and Humor
Via HuffPo, it seems that conservatives have difficulty detecting satire.
This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.
It would be easy to just laugh at those dumb conservatives, but I'm genuinely curious as to why this is so. Why do conservatives have a harder time realizing that Colbert is a parody? By the same token, if there was a similar show with a conservative ideological bent, would liberals be able to identify it as satire?
No Moon Base?
NASA is saying that they might abandon their plans for a moon base in favor of other manned missions.
NASA will probably not build an outpost on the moon as originally planned, the agency's acting administrator, Chris Scolese, told lawmakers on Wednesday. His comments also hinted that the agency is open to putting more emphasis on human missions to destinations like Mars or a near-Earth asteroid.
NASA has been working towards returning astronauts to the moon by 2020 and building a permanent base there. But some space analysts and advocacy groups like the Planetary Society have urged the agency to cancel plans for a permanent moon base, carry out shorter moon missions instead, and focus on getting astronauts to Mars.
As big a proponent as I am of space exploration, I am glad that NASA is dropping the idea of a moon base. It sounds cool, but it's actually not very helpful in exploring space. It's really too far from Earth to serve as a convenient launching point for further missions. What we need are a space elevator to more cheaply and easily move materials into space, a large space station in orbit around our planet that can be spun for artificial gravity, and a plant for manufacturing craft outside of Earth's gravity. Granted, none of these are going to happen in the near term; but NASA or a private contractor should be working on these. Space exploration will increase dramatically once we have these in place.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Grandma Dope
I am going to suggest this career to my mother. She could use a way to supplement her income and 10 Gs a week isn't bad at all.
Ideas and Sense
An article at The Atlantic takes the NYT to task for just tossing out theories without any, you know, facts behind them. It was interesting if not altogether unsurprising in this day and age. What I loved about the piece, though, was this cartoon.
I'd never seen this before, but I love it. I printed it out and hung it up at work. I may have to have a copy with me at all of the meetings I have to go to. Instead of voicing dissent for every bad idea, I can just hold this up every time one comes up.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Kim Kardashian is a Role Model
In the "You Can't Make This Shit Up" category, Sean Hannity calls Kim Kardashian a role model for young girls. Shhh....hear that? Yeah, that's just the crickets chirping. I guess for all of the girls out there that want to be famous for being famous, "accidentally" release a sex tape, or pose for Playboy; then, yeah, she's a great role model. Of course, Hannity also equates liberals with terrorists, has no problems with torture, and brings anti-Semites on his show to smear Obama.
And to think this guy has an audience. That the bar is so low for success should give every American hope.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
No More CAPTCHAs!
Chris Wilson makes the case.
If only someone had listened to computer scientist Moni Naor in 1996, proving that you're human on the Internet would have been so much more interesting. Naor was among the first to propose that simple tests only humans can solve would prevent malicious bots from infiltrating the Web. In an unpublished manuscript, Naor proposed nine possible tests, including gender recognition in images, fill-in-the-blank sentences, and a "deciding nudity" quiz in which you're asked to identify which person isn't wearing any clothes.
Alas, rather than getting to play "find the naked person" every time we sign up for a webmail account, we're now stuck with those reviled squiggly letter tests known as CAPTCHAs. Let's give credit where credit's due: These tests have been incredibly effective in combating spam. But even CAPTCHA pioneer Luis von Ahn, who received a MacArthur genius grant on account of his squiggly-letter work, admitted to me that they won't be a solution forever. For all their success, these tests are a crude way to weed out the bots among us. And they have proliferated to so many sites that the task of proving your humanity on the Internet is beginning to feel like an imposition.
I hope it's soon. Those things are damn annoying.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
A Bullied Kid Commits Suicide
An eleven-year-old in Georgia has committed suicide because he couldn't handle any more bullying. I have written before about kids and bullying and this subject is one close to my heart. Parents and students need to do more to stop this. It can't just be written off as "kids will be kids." No! In this case the boy's mother complained to the school about it several times and nothing was done. This is unacceptable. Parents and schools need to work with children about the importance of not bullying and if (when, I should say) it does happen, the hammer needs to come down. Hard. Nothing good comes from bullying. It doesn't make the kid being bullied tougher. It's not the bully just letting out some harmless aggression. It is a vicious assault against someone whether physical violence takes place or not. The scars of bullying last for a lifetime.
And sometimes that life ends too early because of the bullying. That's not acceptable.
Weekly Music Video
The 80s were great on so many levels. This is a great tune to get you pumped up.
Quiet Riot - "Cum on Feel the Noize"
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night
This is not cute or funny or endearing. It's just creepy. In order to "boost [her] confidence," a mom has spent nearly $18,000 on plastic surgery in order to...look just like her 20-something daughter. She even dresses like her.
I know that the inability to accept the aging process is as old as humanity itself. The expressions of that fear still amaze me from time to time, however. What is this woman going to think or do when she's older and no amount of plastic surgery can make her look younger? Why is it often harder to love and accept ourselves than it is others?
A Brief Moment of Joy Before the End
If this doesn't choke you up just a little, you may be a Vulcan.
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