Angry

I am so fucking angry.
At myself for allowing myself to be swayed by polls in an unconventional election.
At pollsters being so sure of themselves in an unconventional election.
At the third party voters who needed to make a point.
At all who could have voted and didn't.
At Putin or whoever was feeding Assange his bullshit.
At Assange for fucking with our election with bullshit that DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER for his personal gain and ego.
At FBI Director Comey for whatever the fuck he thought he was doing.
At Clinton for being uninspiring to too many in the south, especially Florida where she had to win.
At whites across the country voting out of fear and greed for a rapist, lying, fraud who doesn't give a flying fuck about anybody but himself.
At the GOP who are going to use their power to try to fuck over millions of people on health care, civil rights, and a future of climate change disasters to support greed, fear, and religious bullshit. 

What I expected:

 

Now I've seen it both ways

I've seen the sun both ways now.  Still above the horizon at midnight and now below the horizon at noon.  In 1979 my friends and I went to northern Norway in July and in Bodo stayed up to midnight to watch the sun not set from the top of a hill.  Today I am sitting in a Boeing 747 over the middle of Greenland at 34,000 feet, the local time is a little after noon and the sun is below the horizon. Awesome when I realized what I was seeing. Airline crews on polar flights see this all the time, but I wonder how many passengers do, realizing what they are seeing.  My row mates appreciated it when I pointed it out. Explainable given they are young Europeans with an effective educational system.

Also saw Greenland glaciers and land mass along with ice floes and cracks in the ice since the weather was clear. Another new sight to me.  

Very Basic Astronomy

This is harder than I thought… trying to find a very basic astronomy video or web site.  Easier to just write it out.  And trying to not be condescending.

With the exception of eight things, every light in the sky you can see with just your eyes is a star.  Including the sun.
1. Planet Mercury (hard to see unless you know where and when to look)
2. Planet Venus
3. Our Moon
4. Planet Mars
5. Planet Jupiter
6. Planet Saturn
7. An occasional comet or meteor
8. Airplanes/Satellites/Space Station/Shuttles (man made stuff in the sky)

The sun is a star.  It is our star.  It is really really close to us, compared to any other star you can see which is the only reason it looks different.

Other stars all seem to have planets in orbit around them, but we, with our eyes cannot see any of them.

The order of things is: Earth is a planet in orbit around the Sun.  The Sun is a star in orbit around the center of the galaxy.  Our galaxy is one of billions in the universe.

Our sun is an average star, born from dust and gasses that coalesced about 4 billion years ago into our solar system, destined to burn out and explode in another 4 billion years.  All of the elements in our solar system heavier than Helium were created in the fires and deaths of previous stars in the previous 10 billion years. The carbon in your right hand was probably not created in the same star that created the carbon in your left hand.

The stars we see with our eyes in the sky are all in our galaxy, a fat disk of billions of stars, 100,000 light years across, with a massive black hole in the center.   We are about 2/3s of the way from the center to the edge so there are stars from our galaxy all around us.  Looking towards the center of our galaxy is what the Milky Way is, looking towards where most of our galaxy’s stars are from our point of view.  If a model of our galaxy was made 100 yards across, our entire solar system, including Pluto's orbit, would be smaller than a grain of sand at that scale.   The light from most of the stars at the center of our galaxy is blocked by clouds of dust and gasses, otherwise the Milky Way would be nearly as bright as the sun.  Infrared and x-ray telescopes can see through that dust and show us the structure at the center.

100,000 light years distance = 6 × 10¹⁷ miles = 600,000,000,000,000,000 miles.

There are billions of galaxies in the universe, each with billions of stars.  They are faint and impossible to see without a telescope with one exception, the Andromeda galaxy which can been seen from a dark location on a moonless night.  If you hold a dime at arm’s length against the darkest, emptiest, part of the sky, in that direction the Hubble space telescope saw thousands of galaxies.  Each of these are millions of light years from each other now.  The Universe is expanding, all of the galaxies are moving away from each other.  Someday, a future civilization in our galaxy will not be able to see the light from any other galaxies or of the background radiation from the Big Bang. They will not be able to derive the true history and structure of the universe.

We are far more insignificant than you have ever imagined.

Intellectual Collapse of Islam... and US?

From 800 to 1100 AD, the Arabic world was the center of knowledge in the world.  Mathmatics as we know it today was developed, the stars were named as navigation and astronomy were refined.  We’d be speaking Arabic today but for one thing.  Around 1100 AD, a Muslim scholar, Hamid Al-Ghazali, declared that mathematics was the work of the devil.  That was the beginning of the end of the 300 year Arabic renaissance and intellectual domination.  Today, out of the billions of Muslims on the planet, only two are Nobel prize winners.  Out of only 15 million Jews, one quarter of the prizes have been given to Jews.  Significant scientific discovery by the Muslim world ended in 1100.   Is the US headed in the same direction?  The religious right and social conservatives seem to be trying to drag us into the dark ages.

http://youtu.be/Fl1nJC3lvFs

Facebook rant:

The 2014 Obama NASA budget proposal. Essentially unchanged from 2012 and 2013. It should be doubled. Where is this out of control spending I keep hearing blather about? IT SHOULD BE DOUBLED! This country is going down the tubes, heading the same way the Arab world went in 1100AD, the moral religious right got it in their heads that math was the devils work and now the Arab greatest accomplishments (algebra, math, astronomy, navigation) are from 900 years ago and they are still beheading and stoning people. Without investment, research, and exploration, we will follow the Arab world. Fuck the Tea Party.
  

Movement conservatives have traded truth for certainty.

"Mike.K. says:October 29, 2012 at 4:01 am

I have to say on your “big government” comments on conservatives:

Most conservatives are authoritarians. They want small government for *themselves*. They want big, authoritarian government for people they don’t like. I’ve mentioned the base’s drive towards “punishment politics” before. They are often people who either want to be lead, or want to be part of the goon squad so they can give a beating to “those” people. They have made themselves the hero of their invented past of lies for so long, and everyone else the villain, that they really believe that God Himself will make sure they and they alone are on the right side of the gated fence and the right side of the billy club. Remember that with Bush’s election they were promised a thousand year reign of Good Christian Conservatives, and so they already think their ascendance to power was stolen by hippies and uppity women and minorities and gays.  

This is part of why they will applaud torture and applaud the thought of leaving someone to die. They are OK with sending their children to war, knowing some will die, as long as more brown people and unbelievers die than their own. They are fine with back ally abortions, as long as they can buy their own daughters an airline ticket and that more poor and colored die than their own. They were fine with the dismantling of unions, as long as it was laborer-class jobs sent overseas. They are fine with pissing away billions on a war on drugs, as long as more of “those” people get swept off the streets. 

Movement conservatives have traded truth for certainty. As a result, words no longer have meaning. If you don’t understand talk of “big government”, it’s because you’re trying to make sense of the lyrics of Wingnut Jazz. It doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t make sense. It just scares you with big government spending by big government democrats for big government liberals to re-educate your children with socialist indoctrination, think of the children!, until Sarah Palin gets up on stage wrapped in a flag and brandishing her Bible, her hair did up and her tits nice and bouncy under her big big smile (just for you!), spinning a soothing chord of the Jazz, about the Founding Fathers and their Common Sense Constitutional Freedom Solutions based on Conservative Values and the Christian Bible of Jesus.  

And then you write her a check."

What would Gene Kranz think?

How embarrassing.
Kranz, where are you?

Jupiter and its moons

Out of Body, Roger!

I love Radiolab.  Particularly this one.  Out of body experiences.  Listen.

Irrational belief in rhino horn power...

"IPSWICH, England — The Ipswich Museum contains many alluring and potentially theft-worthy items, including a spectacular 2,000-year-old gold-leaf Egyptian death mask on loan from the British Museum and a rare Hawaiian cape featuring feathers from the extinct o’o bird. But when two thieves forced their way in after midnight on July 28, they were seeking something else entirely.Never mind that their target, a large rhinoceros horn, was still attached to its owner, which had been standing blamelessly in the museum since 1907."

And now they are stealing horn from museums? For some reason the killing of rhinos for their horn so that some inadequate prick somewhere can pretend to be enhanced sexually with it enrages me. (yeah, what else is new?) Why is that? Could it be the stupidity of a totally irrational belief in rhino horn power causing the slaughter of thousands of people.... oops rhinos?

Hoping Irene isn't too bad for my friends on the east coast.

Be nice to Vagabonde Irene!

Naked ladies. How do they do it?

These have been blooming all over Santa Cruz county over the last few weeks.  All at once.  How do they know?  How do they know when to bloom?  Some clock?  Some hormone?

Teach the controversy!

It cracks me up every time I hear "students should make their own decisions" about evolution vs ID vs creationism taught in schools. Especially when in the same breadth only abstinence sex education is acceptable in many places. No condoms or birth control. No choice on abortion. No questioning the bible...

Storm

Yay! Storm (The Movie) is out!

Finding Truth

Wallidjan,

I watched the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GADt13X3OBI).  It said nothing other than what you've already said... look around, stuff is complex, there must be a god because stuff is complex.  Someone must have created it all.

How did the flawless order of the whole universe come into being?

Who provided the delicate balances in the world?

How did living beings, incredibility diversified in nature, emerge?

Asking these questions and resigning (submitting) yourself to the easy answer of "god did it" is the way to The Truth?

I am sorry.  No.  Not going to happen.  These questions have very good, god-free, answers.

It isn't flawless in any way.

Nobody.

Evolution.

You kept saying how complex the inner workings of a single cell is.  Yes it is.  But it is understandable and even though I am not a micro-biologist, I know they have very detailed knowledge of how proteins and DNA and all the other compounds of the inner cell work to do the things they do.  The knowledge base of cell mechanics is huge and there is no magic involved.  You are going to claim a designer had to have put it all together.  No, there are natural paths to how the cells evolved.  Chemical reactions are predictable and traceable.  It isn't magic.  How chemistry works isn't magic, it is even easier than biology to test and examine since now you are dealing with the basic elements and chemical reactions.  And these are predictable from the mechanisms of quantum and particle physics.  All the way to the big bang we can trace how things work.  Our universe is probably only one of infinitely many, each with it's own characteristics.  This is the one we exist in.  It is that simple. No god necessary.

A month of listening to the Nature podcast would show you how much they know about the inner workings of cells, physics, chemistry, cosmology.  

http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/

"A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, beautiful talk on the creation of the universe.  Clear, easily understood, and it even makes sense!

Short clip to tease you to watch the long version: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfOL_oGgRVk

Long version: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

Very much worth the  time.

Pull yourself out of the grips of this medieval backward belief, it will only drag you down with it.

Tom

Discovery on its way, one last time.

Some lucky people got to see Discovery launch on it's final mission the other day. This image from an airliner (in the right place at the right time) is awesome. 
Humans accelerating millions of pounds of spacecraft to 17,000mph is puny in comparison to nature and the grand scheme of things. 
The Pale Blue Dot, up close.

via @Crooooow from an airline window seat

Green Flash!

I finally saw a green flash last night at sunset over the ocean. Clear horizon and cold air. I stopped at a scenic overlook on the way to the airport thinking I might have a chance. Sure enough! Yay! Just wish I had my camera with me. :-( No chance tonight with cloud cover on the horizon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash

This hardly compares with the news from NASA today about the Kepler mission's success. This is very cool! Staring at a region of space that covers only 1/400th of our galaxy and they find more than 1200 potential planets. 50 of them in "habitable zones" around their stars. Scale that up and you get at least 20,000 planets in the right place for liquid water, potentially life, in our galaxy.
Motherlode of potential planets found: more than 1200 alien worlds!

With the potential of a million planets in just our galaxy being in the habitable zone of their stars, the chances of life elsewhere are huge, especially since we are thinking even the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have conditions that could breed life. Pretty amazing. Because of the physics of space and distance, we'll probably not visit or maybe even see any, but detecting the signatures of life is entirely possible.  

Evolution discussion

I survived 5 minutes of "Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution #1" and Dr Martin exposed his total lack of understanding of evolution. He may be a dentist, but he has no credentials to teach evolution. All of his arguments were, "that couldn't happen all at once." Well, that isn't evolution, is it? As you could guess, I think you wasted your time with those shows. If you are interested in what evolution actually is, the link here is a start. The simple beauty of evolution has god beat hands down. In my opinion.

Sorry you didn't watch the rest or maybe you did. You see Dr Martin was taught in our schools the same thing you were. Darwin himself stated that maybe his whole idea was a fantasy. Too bad for him he didn't acknowledge "Intelligent Design", but I can thank him that his work sparked deeper investigation that blows evolution out of the water. Just would hope and pray that I would see you in Heaven when that time comes because I love you. God bless.

[I didn't send this last reply, it wouldn't be useful, maybe if he comes back with questions]

I've heard his arguments quite often. I have to keep my mind open but when you hear the same junk over and over again, it gets painful. Just because he was in the classes doesn't mean he truly understood it. He said he taught it but that really doesn't mean anything. The first sentences out of his mouth were common misconceptions about evolution.  I skipped through the video and every mystery was here is this weird thing, how could that happen by itself?  No attempt to use evolution to try to explain.  Darwin, as all scientists I've read, as is the scientific method, has to doubt his own theories. His doubt was 150 years ago! The testing and confirmations had hardly started by the time he died. In those 150 years evolution has been tested and confirmed many ways via many different science disciplines regardless of what this video states. None of the "mysteries" of this video are actually mysterious. More than 99% of life science scientists accept evolution as fact. Fact, not the common use of theory. Many of the drugs and treatments we have today would not exist without the understanding of evolution.  I see this country falling behind in science and math.  We have fallen behind the rest of the world in many ways, headed to becoming a 2nd rate county.  We are doomed to mediocrity if more people follow this guy and people like him back to the middle ages.

Why Religion Should Be Confronted

"It's time for secularists to stop sucking up to Christians -- and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and any others who claim they have some sacred right to decide what kind of society the rest of us must live in--what a human being can do with her own body. The good news is that young people are joining the rising atheist movement in increasing numbers. I have not met one yet who is an accommodationist. I have great hope that in perhaps another generation America will have joined Europe and the rest of the developed world in shucking off the rusty chains of ancient superstition."

Good 'ol Victor.  I need to get his latest book.  The new atheist community has been arguing how much to accommodate religion.  From derisive ridicule to full accommodation and respect for beliefs the argument goes.  Like Victor, I agree that all fronts need to be utilized in the goal for world domination by atheism.  Oops did I say that out loud?  Well yeah, that is the goal, right?  :-)  Actually the goal is evidence based policy decisions as opposed to political based ones.  The fact that religions are not based on evidence means they may be left in the dust waiting for the rapture or something.  But the rest of us are going to have to deal with global warming, over population and pollution problems that will make the two great wars of the 20th century look like 2nd grade playground pissing contests.  Religious based thinking is not going to help one whit.

Perfect!

 I love it.

Morals Without God?

"Perhaps it is just me, but I am wary of anyone whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. Why not assume that our humanity, including the self-control needed for livable societies, is built into us? Does anyone truly believe that our ancestors lacked social norms before they had religion? Did they never assist others in need, or complain about an unfair deal? Humans must have worried about the functioning of their communities well before the current religions arose, which is only a few thousand years ago. Not that religion is irrelevant — I will get to this — but it is an add-on rather than the wellspring of morality."

 This has always fascinated me.  Good article and very clear.  Are morals instinctive, have they evolved with us, what do other animals do, nature vs nurture?  It is pretty clear morals come naturally, but there seems to be some nurture that has to get it where we want it to be.  To mold the circuitry of our brains to function morally.  The examples of kids without the nurture are the Romanian and Russian orphans who were kept in cribs without any nurture in the 80's/90's.  Very horrible and I understand very damaging to their growth.  But I think it shows that morality is not just a biological wiring of our brains, society has to help mold the morals of the community.  De Waal describes how the monkeys and apes he works with also have many moralistic characteristics, that all mammals can be shown to have some level of morality.  He even states that most pets are mammals because they better match our morals.  Anyway, a great read!