The Squid and the Whale

"Bad Day on the High Sea." I have nothing profound to say about this painting except that it is completely awesome. It takes one of those already awesome squid vs. whale pictures and punches it up a level. The artist's statement:

Here, raw sexual aggression is symbolized by the sperm whale, while the squid acts as a thinly-disguised metaphor for the multi-armed oligarchies of Rockefeller, Hearst, and Morgan. Their battle plays against the backdrop of the sea, standing in for--what else?--the vastness of the unconscious mind.

That says it all doesn't it?

An explaination, Mr. Taoiseach?

This is a few days old, but I cannot remain silent any longer. The yearly "Shamrock ceremony" at the White House every March 17th really bothers me. Why does the Prime Minister of Ireland come here every year on the day of his nation's largest holiday to give us a bowl of clover. Everything about this tradition is backwards. If anything, our president should visit them and bring the taoiseach a gift to thank Ireland for contributing immigrants who produced so many fine citizens like myself. It is their holiday-- can you imagine if every 4th of July our president skipped the fireworks and went to London to give the queen a hamburger? It would make no sense. Furthermore, the whole enterprise seems to be cloaked in mystery, I cannot find a reasonable explanation for it anywhere online. Every article is just some boring mention of the "annual gesture of kinship" between the US and Ireland. This year the ceremony did actually take place on the 16th, but it is the first time I've noticed it being moved up a day. If NPR can't figure it out, I'm stumped.

Obligatory

In high school I knew a kid named Landon. Yes, Landon. As in the 1936 Republican nominee for president, Alfred Landon who lost in a landslide, getting only 8 electoral votes and spawning the phrase, "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont." The Landon I knew could have done worse.

Despite having a name straight out of a J.D. Salinger novel he was universally disliked, and dislikable. Oddly enough though, he seemed to have deserved it. [It has been a long time since then though, and there is a good chance he is a totally decent guy nowadays, but all I have to go by is his personality from high school.] For starters, he hailed from Duxbury, the Laguna Beach of Massachusetts. Home of practically every rich, entitled, lacrosse-obsessed douche-bag at my school. I don't know anything about it other than that the whole town must be lined with golf courses and docks. Also, every Duxburyite seemed to alternately fear or wish to return to Duxbury public school, which both groups frequently implied was some sort of bullet-riddled gangland where "you wouldn't last 5 minutes." Well, not with that no-name brand lacrosse stick at least.

Landon seemed to belong to the latter group. Sort of a Napoleon Dynamite without the charisma. Relentlessly negative about every single person and situation he encountered, and with no apparent skills or talents (at least once hockey season started and it turned out his constantly self-touted abilities were only good enough for 2nd or 3rd string). In any case, private schools have a sort of smarmy way of getting rid of kids they consider somehow undesirable but who haven't committed any particular expellable offenses--they are "not asked back" for the following year. This fate inevitably befell him. It was a pretty cowardly way of getting rid of students, but anyone who was keeping me awake with loud rap music from his adjoining room late at night couldn't have been contributing much to the academy.

Anyhow, by the end of junior year he was simply running down the clock. He didn't seem to be too unhappy to be leaving, but the school was still forcing him to go through all the motions of the ordinary "asked back" students, such as filling out surveys and short answer questions for various offices. I think he had something extra to do, maybe for his new school and he came over to my room, looking for a human thesaurus. He was stumped on a question asking for words he would use to describe himself as a student.

"What is a word that would say that I am, like, trying?"
"Um..."
"Like, not that I am really smart or anything, just like, that I show up and do everything."
"Do you do everything?"
"Well, sort of that I try to do everything, when I like, have to do it."
"Obligatory."
"Obligatory? What does that mean?"
"It means that you put a lot of extra effort into your work. And that you strive to be excellent at all times."
"[Writing] 'I am an obligatory student...' but it doesn't sound like I'm bragging, right?"
"Definitely not."

Erin Go Braugh!

For the holiday, I've modified my site to be green.

...and why yes, I have recently broken open a Guinness Draught bottle to see what's inside, why do you ask?

The Universe (not actual size)

The entire universe from New Hampshire upwards (logarithmick). Pretty complete, except for M106 and the Lenticular Galaxy. They got Chandra, WMAP and Voyager though, so that's cool. Plus, I've always been a big fan of the Zone of Avoidance, so I'm glad they remembered it. Along with the Zone of Terror and the Auto-Zone, definitely one of the better Zones out there.

[I don't know quite where I got this, sorry, rightful owner.]

Swiss Invasion

-Neutral Switzerland accidentally invaded Liechtenstein two weeks ago. Apparently it still counts as "invasion" if your van full of soldiers gets lost and crosses a border without ammunition. You know, most people make fun of those silly jester clothes the Swiss Guard wear at the Vatican, but in my opinion that only makes them more badass. Anyone can look tough in army fatigues. But if you have to dress up like a jack-in-a-box everyday you are going to be pretty sick of fending off remarks from jackasses who think you're a wimp. You are going to make sure you know how to kill someone who makes fun of you...with a spoon.




-Havidol® is the only drug developed to treat Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD). If no one told you, you might be able to browse through the official website for a few minutes without figuring out that it is a parody of one of those soulless and increasingly ambiguous prescription drug campaigns. In fact, some people have. The spree of ads released since whenever it was that pharmaceutical companies became able to advertise has become increasingly creepy and ttransparent. We don't need "sleep aids" all of a sudden--why can't people just self-medicate with anti-histamines and cough syrup anymore? The Havidol® brand was created for an art exhibit and included print, billboard and TV ads, as well as the phony website and seems to be practically a dead-ringer for the real thing. Why is satire the only worthwhile form of social commentary these days?

-Last summer I went to a party with a bunch of film students at some stoner's house. This is his collection of bootlegged Phish concert recordings. I knew a lot of lame-o's in high school who bought every single one of Dave Matthews "live" albums (as previously mentioned, I attended a private school). Those people had nothing on this Phish sociopath. There have to be 200 CD's there, it even spilled over to a pile off the right side. How anyone could like Phish that much (or at all) is beyond me, and I live in Vermont. [Though these folks obviously suck a lot, I learned from a recent episode of House that Mr. Matthews shares the same rare double-jointed-finger talent as myself, thus raising his stock in my mind. How is that for non-satirical social commentary?]

[Photo credit goes to my friend Chris]

Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide!

I recently saw this excellent clip from Penn & Teller's incisive program Bullshit wherein a woman with a clipboard is able to easily get many signers for a petition to ban the chemical compound "dihydrogen monoxide" at an environmental rally. Apparently, this campaign originated back in 1989 and has a pretty large following online. Here is an excerpt from their wacky propaganda:

Dihydrogen Monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year...Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting, and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.
Dihydrogen Monoxide:

• is also known as hydroxyl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.
• contributes to the "greenhouse effect".
• may cause severe burns.
• contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
• accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
• may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
• has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.

Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the Midwest, and recently, California.

Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:

• as an industrial solvent and coolant.
• in nuclear power plants.
• in the production of styrofoam.
• as a fire retardant.
• in many forms of cruel animal research.
• in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
• as an additive in certain "junk foods" and other food products.

Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The impact on wildlife is extreme, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer!

The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its "importance to the economic health of this nation". In fact, the Navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations. Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use.

It's not too late!

I'm not exactly surprised that people are gullible and scientifically-illiterate, just that they are able to take this ignorance far enough to get other people to be surprised about it. Like the middle schooler who was able to win a statewide science fair by convincing so many people to sign on to the above petition. Or the even better instance of a California city council introducing an ordinance to actually ban the deadly substance a few years ago.

A related sentiment is even more common: my mom is always telling me about how she avoids eating certain foods because they have chemicals in them. These environmentalists are such ninnyhammers, if they ever succeeded what would I put in my cocoa?

Living Simply

If I posted about every single episode of This American Life that I found arresting, this blog wouldn't have some stupid non-sequitur title, it would have an even stupider title more like "Glass-haus." But this story from "Should I Stay or Should I go" concerning two Apple programmers who continued to work on their project, in secret, after being fired, is definitely in the same spirit as a scientific obsession. Two guys had spent a few years trying, with limited success, to develop an elegant graphing calculator at the time they were laid off. But they were unwilling to leave the program they had to devoted those years to undone, so they simply continued to go to work. Every day they sneaked in to use unoccupied machines, lie to inquisitive employees, and work 12 hour days for no money and no recognition on a project that did not exist.

The software ended up on over 20 million computers and became the watershed program of the soon-released Power PC. I was surprised to find out that this is the same program, NuCalc, that I occasionally use for simple graphs. You can listen to the story here at the TAL site for free (skip ahead to minute 27), or read the less-audibly pleasing first-hand account.

When the flute kicks in--that killed me.

Random Rotating Banners for Blogger-beta

Switching over to the blogger-beta template is a piece of work if you have customized your site at all. Most things were no problem, however the one piece that was the most difficult was being able to keep the nifty random banner at the top of the page. I kept trying to make myself settle for a code not quite like what I wanted; but I can't give up on a little problem like this once I've started trying to figure it out.

So this is my public service announcement for people out there without a decent explanation of how to do this. Actually, that is not completely true, there is already at least one pretty good tutorial which I started out with. It is over here, and it works pretty well. However, it puts the banner in as a background image instead of an <img>, which is pretty limiting. It is clunkier, non-resizable, and most bothersome to me, you can't make it a link back to your main page.

So instead, there is a way you can put it in directly, not as a background. First, go to the html editor and expand it to show the widget code. Then find the part (shortly after the css garbage ends) that says:

<b:widget id='Header1' locked='true' title='YOUR BLOG NAME HERE (Header)' type='Header'>
<b:includable id='main'>

Then paste this:

<div style="padding-bottom:3px; padding-top:3px;text-align:center;">
<a href="http://two-sheds.blogspot.com">
<script type="text/javascript">
var banner= new Array()

banner[0]="<img src='http://examplehostingsite.com/banner0.jpg' />"
banner[1]="<img src='http://examplehostingsite.com/banner1.jpg' />"
banner[2]="<img src='http://examplehostingsite.com/banner2.jpg' />"
banner[3]="<img src='http://examplehostingsite.com/banner3.jpg' />"
banner[4]="<img src='http://examplehostingsite.com/banner4.jpg' />"
var random=Math.round(4*Math.random());

document.write(banner[random]);
</script></a>
</div>

The "padding-top" and bottom stuff at the beginning is specific to me since I like having that little frame around the picture, so if you don't like that you can change it, but otherwise all you need to do is get your own appropriately-sized pictures and put them in there. You can have as many as you want as long as you start counting at 0, update the (4*Math.random()) to the maximum banner number that you have, and if you want more than 9 place the number in the parentheses of "new Array()"

So, people of the future who googled this, I hope this helps.


Update: Commenter Aquafina made the astute observation that if you still have the title of your blog in your banner as text you need to take it out, and has provided a link to a page that explains how to do that.

Sic Transit Gloria

This glorious movie was obtained during a CCD calibration for the STEREO mission. The pitch black disk of the moon crossing in front of the sun from a million miles away is used to find the baseline of the instrument, which is designed to observe the sun. Astronomical photos of the sun always end up being better than I expect them to be, and since this a mere calibration, I expect my expectations to be surpassed.

Curtis Montague Schilling blogs

If you are anything like me, you have often said to yourself, "that Curt Schilling fellow sure must have some interesting insights and opinions, I wish he would bother to share them with us." I am assuming here that you live in outer space or inner Mongolia and are not aware of his lengthy interviews, open letters addressing 9/11, frequent postings on Sons of Sam Horn, or call-ins to sports talk radio when some random caller disparages his splitter.

Luckily for you, hypothetical and uninformed reader, Everquest player, Red Sox pitcher and noted opinion-haver Curt Schilling now writes a blog. A vessel from which to pour forth the self-aggrandizing and pomposity that he can't unload through those other forums. Seriously though, his involved approach is actually pretty refreshing and his site has a good chance of being an insightful and revealing look inside the game from one of its most cerebral and articulate players...and hopefully, he might get some baseball in there too.

Inertia, I hope you're listening

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

ThreatDown - Cheney's Clot

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

Stephen Colbert's #1 threat to America on Tuesday's Threat Down: Gravity's Liberal Bias.

I'm glad to see someone finally catching on. Principle of Equivalence? Please, spare me your pinko ideology.

[You can put your own favorite fundamental force of nature in Colbert's wheelhouse with the ThreatDown Generator. What the Black Hole At Center of Galaxy ever did to put itself on notice, I would very much like to know.]

Scientific Federalism

CV reports on New Mexico's assertion of astronomical nomenclatural superiority.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that, as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies, it be declared a planet and that March 13, 2007 be declared "Pluto Planet Day" at the legislature.

As to the issue of Pluto's planethood I have few strong feelings. Unlike (what seems like) most of the population, within astronomy its status is not seen as meaningful or contentious, from what I have seen. Everyone has an opinion, just not a very strong one. You can call it whatever you want, the naming of an object is not a scientific question, merely a semantic one. There is no platonic ideal that sets up a definition of planetness. This is also why it seems unnecessary to incite all that furor--a concise scientific definition for "planet" is not needed for anything. I don't see the point of creating a category that artificially groups Mercury and Saturn together while excluding Pluto and the riff raff in the Kuiper belt.

[Sorry about that, bloviating about Pluto's fate seems to be a blog-transmitted disease (BTD?). I staved off infection for 6 months but it couldn't last forever. A half year of Pluto-muzzling is sort of impressive considering that I actually roomed with an IAU member who voted to demote the beleaguered Dwarf Planet last summer. (If I were him I would not announce this in mixed company.) Not to mention that my finest moment at the CfA last August was probably cracking up a table of astronomers with some kind of remark comparing Pluto's demotion to the pre-Iraq War boycott of France. I don't remember what the joke was exactly (boycotting Plutonian wine? changing the name of the Disney character to "Freedom Dog"?), but clearly it shows that I had insightful and witty things to say on the topic which I withheld in the interest of moderation.]

Anyway, New Mexico's unilateral action (or impending action, it hasn't been voted on yet) raises some questions. I am not that bothered about this state making declarations about "science" because Pluto's labeling is entirely a semantic issue. It is so awesome to hear that the New Mexico Legislature can move on to meaningless resolutions addressing astronomical nomenclature now that they are done making the state an utopian paradise with no remaining Early problems. But what is far more interesting to me is when is the next time that Pluto will be in New Mexican air space? If I don't see it written up anywhere in a day or so, I will attempt to figure it out. The state's 315,194 km² area translates to ~500,000,000 km² of New Mexico-shaped surface area out at the orbit of Pluto. So it might be possible, but considering NM's location above the Tropic of Cancer and Pluto's high vertical eccentricity, it could be a while.