"when money equals speech, elections become auctions"

"when money equals speech, elections become auctions" - From: http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/11/01/bought-justice/

Most succinct way to describe the problem, that I've found anyway.

Snippet:

Consider the key case cited by most experts in West Virginia showing the cost of judicial corruption. Rowland notes:
The CEO of A.T. Massey Coal Co. spent $3 million to elect lawyer Brent Benjamin to the state Supreme Court, while Massey Coal was appealing a $50 million jury award against it. Even after repeated requests from the petitioners, Justice Benjamin refused to recuse himself, instead casting the deciding vote to overturn the $50 million judgment.

new friends

another Gibson interview

from Boing Boing, here: http://boingboing.net/2011/09/01/william-gibson-interview-boing-boing-exclusive.html

Lots of interesting stuff as usual, including: What things are keeping your interest lately? 

"The sheer surreality of the Republican presidential primary, Libya, Iain Sinclair's monolithic ongoing anti-Olympics project (Hackney, That Rose Red Empire and now Ghost Milk), the "gray man" concept in personal security, the culture of personal aerial drones, parts of the United States as newly undeveloped sub-nations and the foreign outsourcing thereof...
"

(wow - two posts today!)

what we should know about time (and aging)

From Cosmic Variance: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/09/01/ten-things-everyone-should-know-about-time/

In particular, this one:

9. Aging can be reversed. We all grow old, part of the general trend toward growing disorder. But it’s only the universe as a whole that must increase in entropy, not every individual piece of it. (Otherwise it would be impossible to build a refrigerator.) Reversing the arrow of time for living organisms is a technological challenge, not a physical impossibility. And we’re making progress on a few fronts: stem cells, yeast, and even (with caveats) mice and human muscle tissue. As one biologist told me: “You and I won’t live forever. But as for our grandkids, I’m not placing any bets.”

Kurzweil has been singing this song for a while, and it makes sense.   When extreme healthy-life extension becomes possible, how society responds and adapts to the possibility will be fascinating.     How'd you like to see the same set of supreme court justices for 200 years?   ;-)

feynman: cargo cult science

For the permanent record:  http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html

in particular:

I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

NASA, the space program, and the Shuttle

So, the shuttle has made its last flight, and last landing.  Many lament its end, and worry about the future of human space flight.  Not me, I think a door has closed, but many will open.   In particular, a plethora of space-focused companies are pursuing technologies that may open space for all of us faster than NASA could have.  Here's to them!

Here is a good place to follow many of the new efforts: http://www.newspacejournal.com/

solar energy technology and Moore's Law

I've been trying to understand theoretical maximums, etc.. for solar energy.  This article by Ramez Naam in O'Reilly Radar captures a lot of what I am in interested in learning.

See: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/04/solar-power-moores-law.html  Apparently this article was originally in Scientific American.

Valuable snippet:

The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power. Half of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back into space. Seven hundred watts of power, on average, reaches Earth's surface. Summed across the half of the Earth that the sun is shining on, that is 89 petawatts of power. By comparison, all of human civilization uses around 15 terrawatts of power, or one six-thousandth as much. In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day.

I'd like to understand more about the impact of latitude and weather on the theoretical maximum in any particular location.   Latitude changes mean changes in angle of sunlight, affecting energy density I suppose.  Also,  average cloud cover in a particular location obviously makes a big difference.

Anyone really good with maps mashups?  Given a Google map of a particular location, calculate and display theoretical max energy from sunlight.   Maybe, given appropriate weather table data this would be an application for Fusion Tables.  Any takers?  Or perhaps someone has already done this.   If only I had any free time at all....

2011 gardening tips

Well, I'll use this post to collect tips and suggestions for our 2011 gardening.

First, from the Concord Magazine Blog: 11 Tips for Selecting Seeds to Grow in the Concord Area (Part 1 Open Pollinated Seeds, Variety, New England Sourcing,  Expand Harvest, and other good suggestions.

Updated: Here is Part 2:  http://www.concordma.com/blog/2011/02/11-tips-for-selecting-seeds-to-grow-in-the-concord-area-part-2.html


Also, this year hopefully I'll remember to get some straw for the garden paths to keep down the weeds.  Like here: http://homesteadrevival.blogspot.com/2010/02/preparing-garden-path.html  I love this photo and would like to do something similar.

Waltham to put on a Steampunk event in May

Wow, this will be cool.

See: http://internationalsteampunkcity.com/

And, where I originally found it on BoingBoing: http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/13/waltham-mass-becomes.html

Scheduled for May 6th - 8th, it comes just before/as I leave for Google IO. But, I'll try to drive down for the 6th anyway. By coincidence, just after we get back from NYC.

another Mars photo - 'hills-of-endeavour"

thanks to http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/  more great Mars photos

the “The Road To Endeavour”, a blog dedicated to following the Mars Exploration Rover ‘Opportunity’ as she heads south from Victoria Crater to the much larger, much more epic crater, ‘Endeavour’!

blog post here:  http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/the-hills-are-calling/

Liking this panorama:

It still is so awe-inspiring to be able to see and post "local" photos taken from the Martian surface.  Gotta love the 21st century.

new toy from Google - Julia Map

see: http://juliamap.googlelabs.com/

snowpocalypse

Our fenced garden is almost entirely under snow.   Today happens to be the second day of storms, one each day.  January apparently 3rd snowiest January ever, and 6th snowiest month ever.  Sigh.

Thats the garden down there - see the top of the fence?

winter storm photo

I'm getting pretty tired of all the snow this winter.  And now look:

current storm

sunset on mars

An old-ish photo (2005) but I recently discovered it.  I really like it and its now my desktop wallpaper.  Boggles my mind to see the kind of photos that NASA is returning from various spots in the Solar System.   In this case, thanks to the rover Spirit...

mars sunset

 

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_347.html

more on climate change denial

Haven't written too much lately on climate change, but I do like to post links to reasoned analysis especially where it applies to debunking debunkers.

A good example is an article at realclimate.org  entitled:  "Forbes’ rich list of nonsense" - talking about a recent article in Forbes.   Here is the article on realclimate.org - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/forbes-rich-list-of-nonsense/.

Thanks to boingboing for publicizing it: http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/10/climatologists-pick.html

And from World Resources, an evocative photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26107309@N05/3525028997/

warm-starting 2011

So, a little walk in Arlington, yesterday, on the bike path.  What a day.

Bike Path

Spy Pond