In Praise Of Our Atmosphere

NASA does a lot of work with a little money.  They send rovers to Mars, they launch satellites into space, they observer distant stars and galaxies and they look at the moon.  We often forget about them moon perhaps because of its ubiquitousness in the sky.  That is until NASA informs us that they have recorded the largest explosion ever recorded on the moon.  If you happened to be looking at the moon at the time of impact, you would have been able to see it with the naked eye.  No telescope required.  40 kilograms at 90,000 kilometers per hour.  KER-SPLAT!

Even a casual observer will notice that the moon gets hit a lot.  It’s surface is more cratered than a teenager’s face with acne.  With no atmosphere, the moon takes the full force of any impact from rogue meteoroids.  Any colonization that we do on the moon would almost certainly be required to be underground as a result.

Earth, on the other hand, has a nice atmosphere of various gases that not only allows us to breath and live, but also protects us from the potentially deadly flying rocks that are strewn across our  solar floating in mathematically precise orbits around the Sun just like Earth.  Any of those rocks that try hitting the Earth are met by billions of molecules joyously bouncing off of each other but mostly spread impossibly far apart.  The plunging rock changes this dynamic.  It pushes those molecules closer and closer together where they start bouncing off of each other more and more frequently.  All of this bouncing around causes pressure and temperature to rise quickly.  The higher pressure and temperature start picking away at the death spiraling rock until it breaks apart into fine dust and tiny pebbles that fall harmlessly to Earth.  Well, most of the time.

So, thank you atmosphere!  Your praises cannot be sung enough.  Ballads should be written and stories told of all of your invisible, silent, never ending works.

The News Media Is Not Liberal

You hear it a lot.  The liberal news media.  The news media won’t cover story X because it’s liberal.  The liberal news media doesn’t want you to know about Y.  It’s all a bunch of poppycock.  Stories X and Y aren’t covered because they’re either non-stories or they’re boring stories.

The news media is only liberal in the sense that society is liberal and the news media is a reflection of society.  The news media doesn’t cover conservative stories because conservative stories are boring.  “Things are exactly the same as they we’re yesterday!  News at 11!”

That isn’t to say that the news media doesn’t have an agenda.  They do.  That agenda is money.  That agenda is ratings.  If a news organization thinks a story can generate either of those two things, they will cover the story.  If not, they won’t.  End of story.

Really, “news” should be taken out of the name and they should just be called ” the media” because much of what they do cover is not news and what they do cover is so unbalanced it’s not even funny.  They take a story and offer “both sides” of the story even when there is quite obviously only one side.  “Is the sky blue?  Opinions differ.  Let’s hear both sides.”

Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done to change the current state of things short of creating a state subsidized news system.  Of course, we already have that in NPR and PBS and they do a stellar job of reporting stories in as unbiased a way as possible.  “Unbiased”, by they way, does not mean reporting both sides.  It means reporting the truth.

NPR and PBS are horribly underfunded, unfortunately.  This is mostly due to the same people who scream “media bias” at every opportunity.  They really are the only two entities who do hard news anymore and that makes them dangerous to the corporate conglomerations that run, well, everything.  CNN, NBC, FOX, MSNBC, all spin their news to appease their corporate masters.    It is a sorry state of affairs.

For all its many, many flaws there is no liberal bias in the media.  Change is just much more interesting than nothing changing so it gets covered.  I will admit that reporting on things that have worked well for a long time would have social benefit but it’s very hard to sell as a news story.  These things won’t change so it’s up to us to seek out news.  This is a very tall order in the chaos that is our lives.  The result is a criminally uninformed society.

Craft Beer Week!

This almost escaped my attention.  Craft Beer week started today!  So much for sobriety.  Revolution Brewery is taking over the Village Tap on Friday.  And Sunday!  Oh, Sunday!  Goose Island is having a block party featuring eight, count them, eight Bourbon County Stouts!  *drool*

106 Degrees In Iowa

Sioux City, Iowa hit 106 degrees yesterday.  This after getting an unprecedented snowfall earlier in the month.  Temperatures rose 77 degrees in only 56 hours.

Chicago officially hit 91 degrees after being at 36 degrees the previous morning.  That makes it the highest temperature swing ever recorded for May.

Many other 100+ degree temperatures were recorded.  The highest was 108 in Broken Bow, Iowa.

The extreme temperatures are due to an extreme jet stream.  There is a huge bow in the jet stream allowing cold air to flood in from Canada and behind that bow is a giant surge of warm air that stretches north to Canada.  The jet stream does look like this from time to time during the summer and it’s usually how the most violent summer storms come to be.  A jet stream configuration like this happening in May is extremely unusual.

Obama Scandal Rehash

It’s scandal season on Capitol Hill.  Time for Republicans to fling as much mud as possible and  hope something sticks.  Let’s see what they’ve got.

Benghazi

Outrage meter:  11

Who’s pissed:  Lots of Sturm und Drang fauxtrage from Republicans in Congress and actual outrage from citizens that are generally already pissed at Obama for one reason or another.

What happened:  Four Americans were killed in an ambush of our consulate in Benghazi, Libya during a much larger demonstration.

Why are people pissed:  It mostly boils down to “Obama is a lying liar who lies and is soft on terrorism.”  Republicans once again are painting Obama as “The Other” and the usual people are listening.  Obama is accused of is saying “act of terror” instead of “terrorist attack” when the attacks happened and not all information is known.  There was also some massaging of talking points between various agencies which happens for EVERY major incident and most minor ones.  There are also many loud calls that “OBAMA SHOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING!” with every suggestion of “something” being blowing someone up.  I see prudence where others see a devious plot to defraud Americans.

Should people be pissed:  Nothing to see here, keep moving.

IRS Malfeasance

Outrage meter: 5 and climbing

Who’s pissed: Pretty much everyone that knows about it which still isn’t a lot of people.

What happened:  The IRS was targeting applications of non-profit entities with names that included “Tea Party” and “Patriot” and “Constitution” and “9/12” and various other names for special reviews.

Why are people pissed:  The IRS was targeting applications of non-profit entities with names that included “Tea Party” and “Patriot” and “Constitution” and “9/12” and various other names for special reviews!

Should people be pissed:  Yes and no.  It’s a pretty abhorrent practice on its surface and to not be pissed you need to know “inside baseball” levels of political history so people are rightly pissed if a bit misguided.  This was happening at a time when non-profit 501(c)(4) entities were given much broader fundraising abilities by the Supreme Court and the Tea Party was all the rage and applications for new 501(c)(4) entities skyrocketed and there was an inordinate amount of applications for the above keywords.  501(c)(4)s are not supposed to be political entities and the Tea Party, in general, certainly is so I can see the increased scrutiny in that case, but many of the other keywords are pretty squishy.  This was more of a fraud prevention measure than it was a deliberate targeting of right wing groups.  Right wing rage and 501(c)(4) growth just happened to occur at the same time.  And while the IRS almost certainly overstepped their bounds and they should take measures to fix this, the IRS is supposed to investigate suspicious increases in applications and that’s what they did.  Imagine if there was a marked increase in “John Doe” applications for welfare and the welfare department did nothing to investigate it.

Obamacare Private Fundraising

Outrage meter: 1

Who’s pissed:  Mostly just Republicans in Congress

What happened:  Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is in charge of enacting Obamacare.  One of the things she is charged with doing is setting up the exchanges.  She needed more money to set up the exchanges so she asked Congress for more money.  Republicans said no.  This puts Sebelius in the strange position of being required by law to create the exchanges but not having any money to do so.  Her solution was to ask private companies to help fund the implementation of the exchanges since Congress won’t.

Why are people pissed:  She actually may have broken the law.  There are many rules against an acting Secretary fundraising as Secretary but fundraising as Kathleen Sebelius is ok.  There are obviously conflicts of interest with this arrangement.  In order to whip up this scandal, Republicans are saying that this is worse than the Iran-Contra scandal, which is ridiculous.

Should people be pissed:  I honestly don’t know.  If she actually broke the law, certainly, but that’s not really clear at this point.  What lengths should you go to to enact a justly passed law when half of Congress wants to do anything in their power to stop you from enacting that law because they don’t have the votes to repeal it?

AP Phone Records

Outrage meter:  5

Who’s pissed:  Mostly just the media, but they have a large mouthpiece.

What happened:  The Justice Department secretly obtained the phone records from a bunch of Associated Press reporters.  Why they did this is unclear.  The assumption is that they were investigating a leak regarding a CIA operation to foil an airplane bombing plot.

Why are people pissed:  First Amendment!  Government intrusion!  Freedom of the press!

Should the be pissed:  Yes.  Even if they were investigating a leak of top secret information, the steps that the Justice Department took to find the leak overstepped bounds that shouldn’t be overstepped.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they broke the law.  It is almost trivially easy for the government to obtain information about it’s citizens these days.  Both Republicans and Democrats are equally to blame for this situation which is why they’ve been mostly silent on the issue.  May this scandal grow legs and lead to changing federal eavesdropping laws.

One Monsanto To Rule Them All

The Supreme Court recently unanimously ruled in favor of Monsanto in a lawsuit that has far reaching implications for genetic modification and individual control of the food chain.  At issue was whether a farmer could buy soybeans from a grain elevator and plant them even though those soybeans were grown with Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready soybean stock.  The court ruled that the farmer violated Monsanto’s patent doing so.

There are a couple of interesting points to this.  First, the farmer does have a contract with Monsanto to buy its Roundup Ready soybeans and he did so for the traditional first planting season.  He then decided to attempt a risky second planting with the much cheaper soybeans he was able to purchase from a local grain elevator.  Second, 90% of soybeans grown in the United States are Roundup Ready.  Talk about a monopoly!  Third, the Supreme Court made it clear that all the thorny issues involved with this decision are only relevant to this decision and no inferences should be made as to the general legality of patented gene modification technology.

I call balderdash on that third point.  I am far from an expert, but I’ve never heard someone cite a case and the citation be rejected because the Supreme Court called no backsies when they made the decision.  Of course this decision is going to be used as precedent in the many cases to come!  The “this is not meant to be a sweeping decision” language is just political cover for an incredibly contentious issue.

Think about the implication here.  The Supreme Court has ruled that a company can create a self-replicating organic product and then decide how the offspring of that product is used ad infinitum.  I buy and plant Roundup Ready seed from Monsanto.  I plant those seeds and sell the resulting crop to person B.  Person B is restricted from planting the seeds I sold him.  Person B sells the seed to person C.  Person C is restricted from planting the seeds that person B sold him.  Monsanto can dictate exactly how those soybeans are used throughout the soybean’s life cycle no matter how many generations that soybean exists.  In theory, this means that Monsanto could dictate exactly what products are made with those soybeans.  Not that I think they would ever do something so stupid.

The farmer in this case almost certainly deserved to lose.  He signed a contract with Monsanto and he tried to skirt that contract in an inventive way.  The problem is HOW he lost.  The Supreme Court is saying that he violated patent law, not contract law.  Monsanto can and does go after farmers who plant non-Roundup Ready crops that happen to get cross pollinated with a neighbor’s Roundup Ready plants.  This Supreme Court decision declares that Monsanto has every right to do so.

This is one of those issues where the law definitely needs to be updated but there is so much money involved that there is almost unanimous political agreement that nothing will be done.  Self-replicating technologies should not be patentable.  If companies like Monsanto want to mess with genes to produce a superior plant they should mess with a few more genes and make those plants infertile.

GUITARS. IN. SPACE!

Commander Chris Hadfield recorded a pretty awesome version of “Space Oddity” while on the International Space Station.  Check it out:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo&feature=youtube_gdata_player]

There is a guitar in space!  That got me to thinking.  Your average acoustic guitar weighs about 7 lbs (3 kg).  The cost per kilogram to get an object to orbit is around $10,000.  That means that the guitar cost $30,000 to get to the ISS!

This isn’t meant as a knock on wasteful government spending.  It’s more putting into perspective how expensive space travel is.  A guitar is certainly worth the investment for the astronauts of the ISS.  It provides needed entertainment during their downtime hours.  It’s not like these guys can go out for a walk in their free time.  Not to mention that a guitar in space has brought us this stunning music video!  Well played, NASA.  Well played.

It also got me to thinking about how much modern technology has likely saved us.  You have to assume that a fairly common personal item brought by the astronauts is a book.  Books are made of paper and paper is pretty heavy.  Now, thought, they can just keep a Kindle or two up there to share and have hundreds of books at the cost of only $2,500 (250 g) per Kindle.  And they can just beam new books to the ISS for free!

That’s the beautiful thing about space travel.  Even the most mundane thing as a guitar becomes infinitely fascinating.

Movie Review: The Great Gatsby

Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars

The sheer decadence will draw you in and destroy you.

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Gender, WTF?

Growing up, we learn very quickly that there are two genders.  Female and male.  You either have an innie or an outie.  Everything in life reinforces this; adults, institutions, bathrooms, commercials, statistics, language.  Case closed.  End of story.  Goodnight, Irene.

Having grown up, we come to realize that things aren’t quite as clear cut as they seem.  It turns out that gender isn’t bipolar.  It isn’t determined by a flip of the coin at conception.  Genitalia does not define gender.  Gender is more like a roll of a pair of loaded dice with some outcomes much more likely than others.  Something we’ve always thought of as black and white actually holds greys and yellows and oranges and purples.  Many of us rebel against this idea.  We try to put the yellows and oranges into the familiar and well understood black and white boxes.  Many purples and greys try to conform to the black and white paradigm because society reinforces that what they truly are is wrong.

A fairly decent majority of the population does conform to the traditional female/male gender.  In gender studies, these people are called cisgendered.  They are the people with penises that feel like “males” and the people with vaginas that feel like “females” as defined by popular society.

Everyone else is thrown into the familiar “transgender” bucket.  They are the people with penises that feel like “females” and the people with vaginas that feel like “males” and every possible permutation and gradation thereof.  Our society as a whole still considers them to be abnormal.  In reality, they’re just the green eyes in a world of blue and brown eyes.  It is well past time that society start treating them as such.

There is a whole lot of privilege built in with being cisgendered.  Like every societal privilege, a majority of the challenge is getting those with privilege to recognize that they even have it.  This is a monumental task but not one that cannot be overcome.  Education and exposure is the key.

But where to start?  I would say the answer to that is at birth.  There is already a whole lot of stigmatization that happens when we identify a newborn with a penis as male and a newborn with a vagina as female.  Gender may have been decided well before birth but it certainly can not be determined by adults or by the baby at birth.  Birth certificates should lose their male/female identifier and replace it with a simple equipment check: Penis/Vagina/Both.

Of course, this would also require society getting over calling the penis and vagina “naughty bits”.  Which is another monumental task in and of itself.  But it does lead me to the second idea.  We need to get people to realize that gender identity and sexual identity are two completely different assignations.  I see gender identity as how you “feel” about yourself and sexual identity as how you “feel” about other people.  Society deeply intertwines the two and that makes each much more difficult to talk about.  Yes, there is a lot of overlap between the two that falls exactly where you’d expect it to fall, but we’re once again getting into privilege issues.

This is incredibly complicated stuff.  One can understand why a vast majority of the population doesn’t give it much thought.  And that’s actually fine.  That’s how it should be.  That is our goal.  Our problem now is that people only think about it when they are confronted with a standard deviation from their norm.  It is new and completely outside their realm of experience and that makes it scary.  The idea is to help them get past the fear.  To make them see other gender identities just like they would someone with green eyes.  It might be worth noting for it’s unusualness, but it’s certainly not worth treating a person differently over.

Book Review: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.

Jean-Paul’s rating: 2/5 stars

Take your pulpiest detective novel.  Add magic.  Stir.

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