OK, today, I'm ranting. Maybe it was that ONE (guess I'm a lightweight) glass of Zin last night. Maybe it was the Benadryl I took before bed after discovering I am allergic to my sofa (so much for feeling smug about the down-filled cushions). Maybe it was the combination effect. Either way, I'm pretty sure a truck ran over me in my sleep. Twice.
Let me begin with ranting about the fact that if you google my blog, it does indeed come up - the second entry in fact. Unfortunately, it seems to be followed by someone's thoughts from 2003 that begin "(bleep) this (bleep)..." Sigh. Why? Why is everything bleep this and bleep that already? I'm no puritan, but please.
Alright, we'll skip the rant and go right to the conclusion (talk about a segue - oh and fair warning, the conclusion is a rant in and of itself). We need a new political party. That's right. A new party. I'm calling it the practical party and I'm happy to lead if no one else steps up to the plate. The practical party is going to make honest, practical decisions. We are not going to bend to the pressure of special interest groups. The practical party will do things like acnknowledge that the truth is, abortion is a horrible greusome thing. We won't pussy foot around that fact. We will also acknowledge that legal or not, people will continue to have abortions for any number of reasons, but they will have them less "safely". Therefore, the best way to handle the situation is just to reduce the reason for them, not to end legal access to them. Reducing the reason requires education so that people can make informed decisions about birth control. It also means access to free contraception and perhaps the development of better contraception. It means that sex ed and the distribution of birth control in schools is not only appropriate, it's PRACTICAL and necessary. Sorry religious right, but teen-aged kids aren't going to stop having sex. That's right, they're not. Just like people aren't going to stop having abortions.
The practical party will recognize that you have to balance economic growth with environmental policy and make decisions accordingly. We will look at the data around drilling for oil in Alaska, for example, and recognize that the environmental impact is fairly negligable. Then again, the need to drill there is fairly negligable. We will then decide if the need outweighs the benefit. But we will do this dispassionately, and without the sway of big money or emotional hyperbole on either side.
The practical party will realize that it just doesn't matter who has sex with who and who marries who, and we won't even engage in those issues, except to say - leave people alone already.
The practical party will not support policies that make people feel as though their culture is being legislated away. As an aside, IMHO, the reason that the left has lost so much ground in recent years is that the policies supported by the left have degraded American culture to the point that people are now overcorrecting. That's not to say that many of those policies aren't good, just that it all got a little bit silly. Choose your battles, lefties. And let the majority have their culture already, so long as it's not actually hurting anyone.
At any rant, the practical party starts here. Anyone want to join me?
Georgia over and out.
Thursday, April 14
Wednesday, April 13
A Dream Deferred
Apparently I'm not the only armchair physicist who dreamed about cosmology as a child (and for all you fashionistas, no, that's not the same as cosmETology), only to find my way in the world on a different career path. But when life gives you transgenic lemons, perhaps we can all take a lesson in taking it less seriously from this guy...
http://foxtrot.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v434/n7035/full/434820a_fs.html
http://foxtrot.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v434/n7035/full/434820a_fs.html
Tuesday, April 12
Today, A Jedi I Will Be
Yesterday my 15-month-old daughter was brushing my hair with her soft little baby brush. After a while she said "Mommy?" in a way that could have meant, 'are you still there?', or 'pretty hair means mommy then, right?', or 'what do you think of your new style?.' It was one of few times when I found myself actually living in the moment - a state of mind that no amount of meditation or yoga has ever induced. And you have to be, with kids, in the moment, because no matter what you turn around and they're not 15 months anymore.
So in appreciation for the way children bring out the here and now in even the best of us, I intend to watch The Empire Strikes Back this weekend for a little immersion in Jedi wisdom. I recommend you do the same. And until then -- we can ponder an admonition from Yoda, the most venerable of Jedi masters and a teacher for the times:
"A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things."
May the force be with you...
So in appreciation for the way children bring out the here and now in even the best of us, I intend to watch The Empire Strikes Back this weekend for a little immersion in Jedi wisdom. I recommend you do the same. And until then -- we can ponder an admonition from Yoda, the most venerable of Jedi masters and a teacher for the times:
"A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things."
May the force be with you...
Wednesday, April 6
Ups and Downs
My husband and I recently had a conversation that went something like this: "Why don't you ever put me on a pedestal the way my old boyfriends used to do?" The answer? "Honestly hon, you kind of dated down." Ouch.
The Pulitzers were awarded a couple days ago. I'm sorry to say that my blog didn't make the list. I've already begun a blogging campaign to encourage modernization of the Prize with inclusion of a blog category in 06. So far, only the two people who read my blog are on board.
But on the upside, I now have a reporter friend who just took the 05 prize for best beat reporting in healthcare. OK, let's be honest: I worked with her a couple times, we talked about our kids, she sat in on a concall I organized, I think she does great work, and she probably doesn't remember my name. That said, she won the Prize. And an instant upgrade from media contact to "reporter friend". Lucky, lucky her.
So my question is this: What's the fastest route to relationship upgrade? If I win the Pulitzer for best blog, do I win the Pedestal too?
The Pulitzers were awarded a couple days ago. I'm sorry to say that my blog didn't make the list. I've already begun a blogging campaign to encourage modernization of the Prize with inclusion of a blog category in 06. So far, only the two people who read my blog are on board.
But on the upside, I now have a reporter friend who just took the 05 prize for best beat reporting in healthcare. OK, let's be honest: I worked with her a couple times, we talked about our kids, she sat in on a concall I organized, I think she does great work, and she probably doesn't remember my name. That said, she won the Prize. And an instant upgrade from media contact to "reporter friend". Lucky, lucky her.
So my question is this: What's the fastest route to relationship upgrade? If I win the Pulitzer for best blog, do I win the Pedestal too?
Monday, April 4
When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be a Physicist
From Nature
Black holes 'do not exist'
Philip Ball
These mysterious objects are dark-energy stars, physicist claims.
Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist.
Over the past few years, observations of the motions of galaxies have shown that some 70% the Universe seems to be composed of a strange 'dark energy' that is driving the Universe's accelerating expansion.
George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads to the formation of stars that contain dark energy. "It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist," he claims.
Black holes are one of the most celebrated predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the warping of space-time caused by massive objects. The theory suggests that a sufficiently massive star, when it dies, will collapse under its own gravity to a single point.
But Einstein didn't believe in black holes, Chapline argues. "Unfortunately", he adds, "he couldn't articulate why." At the root of the problem is the other revolutionary theory of twentieth-century physics, which Einstein also helped to formulate: quantum mechanics.
It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist.
In general relativity, there is no such thing as a 'universal time' that makes clocks tick at the same rate everywhere. Instead, gravity makes clocks run at different rates in different places. But quantum mechanics, which describes physical phenomena at infinitesimally small scales, is meaningful only if time is universal; if not, its equations make no sense.
This problem is particularly pressing at the boundary, or event horizon, of a black hole. To a far-off observer, time seems to stand still here. A spacecraft falling into a black hole would seem, to someone watching it from afar, to be stuck forever at the event horizon, although the astronauts in the spacecraft would feel as if they were continuing to fall. "General relativity predicts that nothing happens at the event horizon," says Chapline.
Quantum transitions
However, as long ago as 1975 quantum physicists argued that strange things do happen at an event horizon: matter governed by quantum laws becomes hypersensitive to slight disturbances. "The result was quickly forgotten," says Chapline, "because it didn't agree with the prediction of general relativity. But actually, it was absolutely correct."
This strange behaviour, he says, is the signature of a 'quantum phase transition' of space-time. Chapline argues that a star doesn't simply collapse to form a black hole; instead, the space-time inside it becomes filled with dark energy and this has some intriguing gravitational effects.
Outside the 'surface' of a dark-energy star, it behaves much like a black hole, producing a strong gravitational tug. But inside, the 'negative' gravity of dark energy may cause matter to bounce back out again.
If the dark-energy star is big enough, Chapline predicts, any electrons bounced out will have been converted to positrons, which then annihilate other electrons in a burst of high-energy radiation. Chapline says that this could explain the radiation observed from the centre of our galaxy, previously interpreted as the signature of a huge black hole.
He also thinks that the Universe could be filled with 'primordial' dark-energy stars. These are formed not by stellar collapse but by fluctuations of space-time itself, like blobs of liquid condensing spontaneously out of a cooling gas. These, he suggests, could be stuff that has the same gravitational effect as normal matter, but cannot be seen: the elusive substance known as dark matter.
Black holes 'do not exist'
Philip Ball
These mysterious objects are dark-energy stars, physicist claims.
Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist.
Over the past few years, observations of the motions of galaxies have shown that some 70% the Universe seems to be composed of a strange 'dark energy' that is driving the Universe's accelerating expansion.
George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads to the formation of stars that contain dark energy. "It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist," he claims.
Black holes are one of the most celebrated predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the warping of space-time caused by massive objects. The theory suggests that a sufficiently massive star, when it dies, will collapse under its own gravity to a single point.
But Einstein didn't believe in black holes, Chapline argues. "Unfortunately", he adds, "he couldn't articulate why." At the root of the problem is the other revolutionary theory of twentieth-century physics, which Einstein also helped to formulate: quantum mechanics.
It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist.
In general relativity, there is no such thing as a 'universal time' that makes clocks tick at the same rate everywhere. Instead, gravity makes clocks run at different rates in different places. But quantum mechanics, which describes physical phenomena at infinitesimally small scales, is meaningful only if time is universal; if not, its equations make no sense.
This problem is particularly pressing at the boundary, or event horizon, of a black hole. To a far-off observer, time seems to stand still here. A spacecraft falling into a black hole would seem, to someone watching it from afar, to be stuck forever at the event horizon, although the astronauts in the spacecraft would feel as if they were continuing to fall. "General relativity predicts that nothing happens at the event horizon," says Chapline.
Quantum transitions
However, as long ago as 1975 quantum physicists argued that strange things do happen at an event horizon: matter governed by quantum laws becomes hypersensitive to slight disturbances. "The result was quickly forgotten," says Chapline, "because it didn't agree with the prediction of general relativity. But actually, it was absolutely correct."
This strange behaviour, he says, is the signature of a 'quantum phase transition' of space-time. Chapline argues that a star doesn't simply collapse to form a black hole; instead, the space-time inside it becomes filled with dark energy and this has some intriguing gravitational effects.
Outside the 'surface' of a dark-energy star, it behaves much like a black hole, producing a strong gravitational tug. But inside, the 'negative' gravity of dark energy may cause matter to bounce back out again.
If the dark-energy star is big enough, Chapline predicts, any electrons bounced out will have been converted to positrons, which then annihilate other electrons in a burst of high-energy radiation. Chapline says that this could explain the radiation observed from the centre of our galaxy, previously interpreted as the signature of a huge black hole.
He also thinks that the Universe could be filled with 'primordial' dark-energy stars. These are formed not by stellar collapse but by fluctuations of space-time itself, like blobs of liquid condensing spontaneously out of a cooling gas. These, he suggests, could be stuff that has the same gravitational effect as normal matter, but cannot be seen: the elusive substance known as dark matter.
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