Contriving

Phillip Plait writes in Slate about the current state of our search for Earth-ish planets in other solar systems. 

We haven’t found a precise twin of Earth yet, but we’ve come mighty close. In fact, it’s likely that there are millions, perhaps billions, of planets like ours in the Milky Way alone. But right now, at this moment, we only know of one for sure: ours.

We May Have Already Found Another Earth
One of the biggest questions in astronomical research right now is quite simple to ask but extremely difficult to answer: In the depths of space, is there an Earth-like planet somewhere orbiting a Sun-like star? The answer is rather surprising: almost certainly yes. We haven’t found a precise twin of…

Originally posted on Google+ · February 3, 2014

There are two different types of people in the world,those who want to know,and those who want to believe.

–Friedrich Nietzsche (possibly)

Originally posted on Google+ · January 31, 2014

Personally, I find jokes about tragedy most enjoyable to tell before enough time has passed for most people to find the joke funny.

Anyway, these guys experimented pre and post during Hurricane Sandy to find out when jokes about tragedy are found to be funny.

Gradually, week-by-week, people rated the tweets as increasingly funny, with peak funniness observed at 36 days after the tragedy.

Locating the “sweet spot” when jokes about tragedy are seen as funny

Originally posted on Google+ · January 30, 2014

Look closely at the image below. See a little streak at the center? That is LADEE, in its low orbit around the Moon, photographed by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on January 15. LADEE was only 9000 meters below, moving in its orbit at 1600 meters per second, while Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was moving the same speed but in a nearly perpendicular direction. The high relative speeds, plus the particular style in which the camera operates, cause LADEE to appear as a long streak.

Says Emily Lakdawalla (I hope your last name is as fun to say as I always imagine it to be when I read something you write) at http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/01291300-ladee-spotted-by-lroc.html along with providing a link with more information.

Originally posted on Google+ · January 29, 2014

My scifi-fueled mind thinks of a future in which plants and other organic material form a self-healing, planet-spanning computing substrate.

Adamatzky’s interest is more than mere curiosity. His idea is that plants can be thought of as organic wires that could become the infrastructure behind an entirely new generation of biological circuits, sensors and even information processors that grow for scratch with little more than a sprinkle of water and a little soil.

First Tests of Prototype Organic Wires Grown from Seedlings | MIT Technology Review
Self-growing circuits made out of biological structures such as plant stems act as temperature sensors and more, says expert in unconventional computing.

Originally posted on Google+ · January 29, 2014

Ok, last quote from that Fifty States of Fear link (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/fifty-states-of-fear/?pagewanted=all) I've been pulling quotes from.

In total, 54,000 Americans die every year due to work-related illnesses and accidents. This is the equivalent of 148 deaths each day; in terms of fatalities it is roughly a Boston Marathon bombing every half hour of every day.

But while we spend more than 7 billion dollars a year on the T.S.A.’s national security theater in which over 58,000 T.S.A. employees make sure we are not carrying too much toothpaste or shampoo onto airplanes, the budget for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is under $600 million per year. It seems that our threat assessments are flawed.

Fifty States of Fear
Is our government trying to minimize our worries about terrorism, or manipulating them to consolidate its power?

Originally posted on Google+ · January 29, 2014

The goal of terrorism is not to crash planes, or even to kill people; the goal of terrorism is to cause terror. … But terrorists can only do so much. They cannot take away our freedoms. They cannot reduce our liberties. They cannot, by themselves, cause that much terror. It’s our reaction to terrorism that determines whether or not their actions are ultimately successful. That we allow governments to do these things to us — to effectively do the terrorists’ job for them — is the greatest harm of all.

–Bruce Schneier as quoted at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/fifty-states-of-fear/?pagewanted=all (which I've been sharing a few quotes from)

Fifty States of Fear
Is our government trying to minimize our worries about terrorism, or manipulating them to consolidate its power?

Originally posted on Google+ · January 29, 2014

So many good quotes to pull from the last article (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/fifty-states-of-fear/?pagewanted=all) I posted.  Here's another:

I don’t know if I want to live in a country where lone wolf and random terror attacks are impossible ‘cause that country would look more like North Korea than America.

That's from Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide.

Fifty States of Fear
Is our government trying to minimize our worries about terrorism, or manipulating them to consolidate its power?

Originally posted on Google+ · January 29, 2014

Here Peter Ludlow talks about the absolutely absurd state of affairs that citizens today allow themselves to be put in to.

Given this obvious truth, one might suppose that modern democratic states, with the lessons of history at hand, would seek to minimize fear — or at least minimize its effect on deliberative decision-making in both foreign and domestic policy.

But today the opposite is frequently true. Even democracies founded in the principles of liberty and the common good often take the path of more authoritarian states. They don’t work to minimize fear, but use it to exert control over the populace and serve the government’s principal aim: consolidating power.

…

However, since 9/11 leaders of both political parties in the United States have sought to consolidate power by leaning not just on the danger of a terrorist attack, but on the fact that the possible perpetrators are frightening individuals who are not like us.

Fifty States of Fear
Is our government trying to minimize our worries about terrorism, or manipulating them to consolidate its power?

Originally posted on Google+ · January 29, 2014

In my 8-week-long struggle to successfully complete an application on Healthcare.gov, I was eventually directed to fill out Missouri's Medicaid/Medicare application even though it will be denied because of too much income.  This is so Healthcare.gov and Missouri's systems sync up (or something, after being on phone for hours I lost track).

Anyway, Missouri's application is full of poor UI and poorly worded questions.  For example, take the screenshot I just took attached below.

I am the parent of Morgan, but I have to select a yes/no answer to the question "If you are not the parent are you the primary caretaker for this person?"

Clear as mud.

Originally posted on Google+ · January 14, 2014