Aeromondo

This is one of the smartest people on our planet.

2009-07-04T22:05:00.003-05:00

If I was in the TV business, I would get her on in Oprah's time slot and load up her shows with people like Hitchens, Dawkins, Myers, Harris and Kleiman against the fluff like Oprah herself and guests, everyone who's ever been on the View or Ellen or the silly freaks on comedy cable and let'er rip.
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Well Shit!

2009-06-24T10:45:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking July stuff all month. I brain farted the Apollo 11 anniversary by a month even knowing it is on July 20. No one even laughed at me. Sniff. Now, here's Buzz

Making of Buzz Aldrin's Rocket Experience w/ Snoop Dogg and Talib Kweli from Buzz Aldrin

Father's Day; It's Summer!

2009-06-21T23:11:00.003-05:00

Up and out for a walk at about 5:30 this morning and the moon was just a sliver. Forty years ago yesterday I was glued to a barely working very old, even then, black and white television set at 1736 Bunker Hill in Irving, Texas watching as Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. It seems almost like just yesterday to me. Since then, I became a father. That's lots better. I miss the long talks and help from my dad. When I was a year old he was 36 times as old as I was. That gave him a head start at being a pretty dang good dad. I'm still trying to catch up. But today was a great Father's day from my kids and ex to me. So, I don't care if anyone lands on the Moon again. I've got something better.

Hodgman Treks Obama

2009-06-20T07:44:00.001-05:00

Early 4th of July?

2009-06-18T21:19:00.002-05:00

I've been fascinated by the revolt in Iran and how people are using twitter and technology to organize their actions and stay connected. It has surprised and bamboozled their old politicos.

Today over a million people marched and protested and demanded a new election. They are showing Americans what we should have done in 1999.

Meanwhile, Hannity, Limbaugh and the usual Republican yappers are all hot for Obama to throw down the gauntlet with Iran. Don’t bother them with the fact that an aggressive US stance would HURT the chances for reform there – for them, acting tough is an end in itself.

It is so very great to now have a President that knows what "soft power" means and is intelligent enough to carry it out. Today, the protesters in Iran are saying, "Ahmadinejad is the Bush of Iran. And Mousavi is the Obama of Iran."

Those fireworks you hear are Republican heads exploding!

In The Spirit...

2009-06-18T07:05:00.000-05:00

I've gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.
- New York City detective

Living in a galaxy is just plain cool.

2009-06-16T12:57:00.001-05:00

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Ken Miller; brilliant scientist trapped in the mind of a creationist

2009-06-11T21:58:00.003-05:00

PZ Myers shreds him and the stupidity of accommodationism.

It's way past time.

2009-05-31T12:33:00.002-05:00

Oprah gets a well deserved hammering by Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert over at Newsweek. Too bad Oprah's fans are not into reality and will probably never, ever crack open a mag like Newsweek or read an entire paragraph because they are the ones who really need to understand this article and hold her responsible.

Why do creationist have to lie?

2009-05-29T07:41:00.003-05:00

Because they've got nothing.

McLeroy Is Out!

2009-05-28T17:10:00.003-05:00

The Texas Senate tossed the appalling Don McLeroy out of the chair at the Texas State Board of Education. That is a good thing. Sadly, the message probably will not register on the rest of the creationist on that board and Perry will probably just appoint another bible thumping fool to take his place.

Mama, Don't Let Your Babbies Grow Up To Be Conservatives

2009-05-28T11:43:00.001-05:00

Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated.

Ida

2009-05-20T08:40:00.003-05:00

Ed Yong gets Ida right. "Ida was hailed as a "missing link" in human evolution, beautifully illustrating our transition from leaping about in trees to rampant mass-media sensationalism."

While I'm thinking about it...

2009-05-19T21:07:00.002-05:00

Cell phones should act as access points and mesh routers too. There are bazillions more cell phones than PCs and such in the world and they are all talking to networks already. Most cell phones spend most of there time doing nothing. If someone was industrious enough, it seems to me that all those unused processors could be put to good uses. One good use might be to connect them up as a cloud to be used as a giant distributed cluster and metered out at a few pennies per megaflop minute. The accessibility would be phenomenal. Everything from sensors to nodes could connect from just about anywhere. And on and on. Give me some royalties.

Road Wireless

2009-05-09T21:07:00.002-05:00

Since about 1996 I've been telling everyone I know that every car and truck should carry a mesh router. Robin Chase now thinks so too and she has more stroke than me or my friends. So maybe it will start getting done.

A conspiracy to kill a child.

2009-05-09T11:03:00.002-05:00

Daniel Hauser is a 13 year old victim of Hodgkin lymphoma here in Minnesota. Doctors give him a 5% chance of surviving the disease, not because he has some particularly lethal form of the cancer, but because his mother is a religious fruitcake who who wants to deny her child treatment.

I disagree with PZ Myers. The mother's reasoning is not insane or a consequence of ignorance, it is criminal and the product of criminal conspiracy. I hope she and all her religious associates rot in prison for conspiracy to murder after someone rescues Daniel.

Found; The Holodeck Connection!

2009-05-09T09:34:00.002-05:00

The keys to the holodeck may have been found. Only there is no need to actually enter the holodeck as it is in your head. There is nothing to learn, you are born with it. There is nothing you can do about it, either.

In a report published in Science May 8, 2009, Michel Desmurget, Karen T. Reilly, Nathalie Richard, Alexandru Szathmari, Carmine Mottolese, and Angela Sirigu demonstrate that stimulating the brain results in the perception of action even when no action has occured. Futher, they dmonstrate that stimulating a different spot of the brain results in action that the person does not perceive. Abstract:

Parietal and premotor cortex regions are serious contendersfor bringing motor intentions and motor responses into awareness.We used electrical stimulation in seven patients undergoingawake brain surgery. Stimulating the right inferior parietalregions triggered a strong intention and desire to move thecontralateral hand, arm, or foot, whereas stimulating the leftinferior parietal region provoked the intention to move thelips and to talk. When stimulation intensity was increased inparietal areas, participants believed they had really performedthese movements, although no electromyographic activity wasdetected. Stimulation of the premotor region triggered overtmouth and contralateral limb movements. Yet, patients firmlydenied that they had moved. Conscious intention and motor awarenessthus arise from increased parietal activity before movementexecution.

So, I guess we can see some iPhone developers connecting transcranial magnetic stimulators with something worth doing that can be carried around on iPhones and shared though the ether. Then I guess we could all just imagine our lives. Just think, too, how great the un-fettered free market system will operate. No need for marketing and advertising or even real products or services, just connect and force people to send you their money and all you have to do is return a stimulus package directly to their brain that tells them they got everything they wanted and so much more. Then you will have all their money... until someone imagines it back, that is. So now, which matters most, intention or action? What about that volition thing?

For Our Daughters

2009-05-02T09:14:00.002-05:00

PhysioProf kicks of the Letters Letters to Our Daughters Project, Then, Dr. Pascale Lane writes and PZ Myers chimes in with a powerful piece exposing the blind bias culture and society has toward womenz. For those not inclined to click through, you gotta see PhysioProf's profile so you can't say you didn't know.

The Egyptian goddess Isis was celebrated as the ideal wife and mother.

The blogger known as Dr. Isis has some fancy-sounding degrees and is a physiologist at a major research university working on some terribly impressive stuff. She blogs about balancing her research career with the demands of raising small children, how to succeed as a woman in academia, and anything else she finds interesting. Also, she blogs about shoes. In fact, she blogs a lot about shoes.

...And behold, he raised the motherfucking Jameson on high as Isis bedecked her feet in glory, and the masses were sated. -- The Holy Gospel According to PhysioProf

Now, write those letters.

Texas Rep. Joe Barton Ignorant Jerk

2009-04-23T15:34:00.003-05:00

Joe Barton is an embarrassment to this state. He summons his most condescending manner and actually thinks he stumped Nobel laureate Steven Chu with his self-serving rhetorical question on oil in Alaska and the North Slope. Chu was not stumped. Chu is kind and tries to gently explain a little bit of what everyone in the world above the 6th grade knows about plate tectonics and oil deposits. The stupid burns in this video.

Update: Yes, I called Barton's Washington office and gave them a piece of my mind about his ignorant and condescending rudeness.

An old freind has died.

2009-04-23T10:26:00.003-05:00

I knew John Lancione since 1967 when I worked at Air Haven on Redbird airport in Dallas. My shop maintained many of the airplanes based in the company's hangars. John had a Mooney there. John, known far and wide as Light Brown or just LB, was a very outgoing and interesting guy. He owned a motorcycle dealership and shop at the time we first met. He was restless and visionary and very talented. He loved his family, Corsairs, Firebirds, motorcycles, radial engines, computer technologies, and put those and many more interests and talents to work over the years. He created Leak Proof Seals, AeroComp, Clone Computer Corporation, and many other industries during his good run. But most of all he was always glad to see us. He will be missed by his family and myriad friends. Good-bye old pal.

Happy Earth Day

2009-04-22T09:20:00.001-05:00

Aww Dang!

2009-04-18T16:23:00.000-05:00

This is just too cruel!

Damnit Obama!

2009-04-17T17:24:00.003-05:00

I can't believe that, just a couple of months into his first term, I'm saying this about Obama whom I supported for president and was so hopeful for. But him saying he will not prosecute CIA operatives for torture is outrageous. Michael O'Hare beats me to it and says it much better than I can.

An old story describes a king who offered a fortune and his beautiful daughter in marriage to whoever could do the most amazing thing. Various knights and performers tried, but a handsome young man blew away everyone else with a clockwork made of gold, encrusted with jewels, and covered with beautiful paintings, all his own work. The clock chimed the hours, tracked the moon and planets across the sky, forecast the weather, and played beautiful, ethereal music on bells. He was about to be given the prize when an unshaven bruiser walked in with a sledgehammer and smashed the clock to pieces. Shocked and appalled, everyone present agreed that this destruction was even more amazing then the clock.

Bush's footpads are moral defectives. The torture they organized, abetted, and implemented was amazing but not remarkably inconsistent with their pervasive thuggery. What could be more remarkable than the Bush gang trashing international law, civilized standards of behavior, and the international reputation of their country?

Now we know. ...

...I can't exaggerate the damage this considered, purposeful, mistake has done to an administration I tried to help elect and had a lot of hope for. Torturing people systematically is not just criminal but outrageous, unspeakable. Having orders to do it is no excuse: we need every citizen and every spook to think before obeying orders that may for whatever reason be illegal, especially orders that are cruel, vengeful, and compromise the mission: this principle is so obvious movie plots are built on its universal validity.

Spencer Ackerman is properly exercised about the memos and the policy, but wrong about the guy pouring the water. Soldiers in Iraq are not liable for an illegal war, but a soldier in Iraq ordered to pull the fingernails out of a prisoner by a sergeant or by a general is a criminal if he obeys.

Letting the authors of the most humiliating episode of a uniformly incompetent and vicious administration walk while cravenly mouthing nonsense about "looking ahead not backward" is not actually that far from the crimes themselves. It's illegal to manage prosecutions of corruption and election fraud for political convenience, so how much worse is it to obstruct justice for really heinous offenses on grounds of political comfort, which is precisely what this is.

Here and there in Obama's administration, never mind the next time we make a mistake at the polls, bad guys are going to tell underlings to do bad things. The president just gave them all a pass.

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We hear repeated today, feeble protest (for prosecuting those responsible) from some who claim the barbarism of torture is justified because the so-called terrorists are brutal and savage and do far worse things to their captives or because we must torture them to protect ourselves from their attacks.

Saying we can do this because their violence is more revolting than our violence is a stupid and barbaric excuse for immorality. What Bush and his mob did was violate our country's and international law - written, tested and principled laws that protect human life, liberty and justice and are subject to change according to how gruesome and threatening the enemy is only in the mind of cowards and traitors and idiots.

The brave and free always stand up for principles of law even if it threatens to cost their life. Everyone knows that torture does not produce any useful information. Torture is the coward's excuse for violence and an attempt to show how strong they are; not how just they are. What everyone heard the Bushies saying then is that they are so afraid to suffer or die for moral principles that those principles have no meaning or value.

It's in the beginning all over again for Mark

2009-04-15T21:33:00.002-05:00

....the question that occurs to any five-year-old: “If God created the world, who created God?”

Yeah, me too. So the answer is?

בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַלפְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַלפְּנֵי הַמָּיִם

Naw, Santa did it.

High Points

2009-04-12T11:36:00.003-05:00

Last week, gave a blood sample Monday and had lunch with the kids, grocery shopped Tuesday, got to see some cool medical technology Wednesday in Baylor Heart Plano and (bored several members of the family - thanks fam), Thursday just sat around reading and walked some too, Friday and Saturday just poked around on the Internets and made chicken with mushroom sauce, rice, mustard greens and butter beans. Back to normal today doing laundry and such. Too easy.

PS. Rich, Ben&linda, Tom&Wendy and I saw Monsters v. Aliens Tuesday. It was 3D. Thanks to polarized glasses instead of red and green ones, it looked normal to me so I didn't flinch as much as most folks did. That's much better than just green.