Monthly Archives: February 2013

Bang! Zoom! To The Moon, Alice!

This may come as a surprise to you, but big things are big.  Take the Moon for instance.  Pretty big.  Except if you compare it to the Earth.  And the Earth is pretty big except if you compare it to the Sun.  When you scale up by orders of magnitude it becomes very difficult for the human brain to comprehend what exactly is being talked about.

That’s how politicians can throw around numbers like one trillion and scare people.  Numbers that large are so far out of our everyday experience that we can’t wrap our head around them.  I liken it to how the trip to Grandma’s house seemed like it took forever when you were a child but now it seems like a short jaunt in the car.  You have to work regularly with large numbers for them to make sense.  If you don’t work with large numbers, you should be very cautious of what conclusions you draw from anyone throwing large numbers at you.  It is likely that they’re taking the large numbers out of context to make them scarier than they actually are.

All that to say that when you try to wrap your head around things that are big, it’s good to have a familiar frame of reference to compare to.  That’s what makes this picture of the continental United States superimposed on the Moon so useful.  The U.S. is about 3,400 kilometers across at its widest longitude and the Moon has a circumference of around 11,000 kilometers.  So this looks about right if it isn’t perfect.

Kind of cool, huh?

Nuclear Apocalypse Narrowly Avoided?

I was thinking about the incredibly awesome meteor that decided to streak through the skies of Russia last week and something occurred to me.  How close to nuclear war did we come?

Think about it.  A rocket-like object suddenly starts hurling itself across the Russian sky and explodes with nuclear-like ferocity.  You have to imagine that someone within the Russian army was getting an itchy trigger finger while all of this was going on.  Especially since many other close calls have occurred over lesser incidents.  I guess it all depends on if Russia was even capable of detecting the meteor on radar.

Maybe Russia has become more careful with their nuclear triggers since the Cold War has ended.  What about other countries though?  What if a meteor struck Pakistan?  Would we be looking at a nuclear war between Pakistan and India?  I would say that the odds are pretty good of an overreaction on either side’s part given the tensions between those two countries.

Chances are that if a meteor hits us, we’re not going to see it coming.  And given humanity’s penchant for the dramatic, chances are some government will overreact to it.  Our biggest threat in the event of a meteor strike is likely not the meteor itself but the actions of the government of the country that it hits.  And that’s scary.

February 13th, 2013: Slavery Finally Banned In Mississippi

No, that is not a typo.  It turns out that, due to an oversight, Mississippi has never actually ratified the 13th Amendment banning slavery.  Better late than never?

I find it very hard to believe that this was an actual oversight, but I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.  Still, Mississippi didn’t actually vote for ratification until 1995.  1995!  How is that even possible?  I wonder if each year until 1995 there was someone that said, “Maybe we should finally ban slavery?”  And the overwhelming response was, “Dude, too soon!  Too soon!  Our wounds are still healing!”

More proof of a post-racial America.

This Is Important!

Never before has data analysis been used to better serve humanity.  I present to you the porn actress demographics study.  Not that I have any first-hand knowledge of such things, but I would have expected there to be many more blondes.

All States Equal

Have you ever wondered what the United States would look like if all fifty states had the same population?  Wonder no longer!

How cool is that?  It’s very difficult to conceptualize how dense certain parts of the U.S. actually are and how sparse other parts are.  This map really makes it easier.  Look at how large the new state of Ogalalla is even though it contains Denver.

This map also shows how much room for population grown the U.S. has.  Places like the United Kingdom and Germany have 200 people per square kilometer.  The United States?  34.  Our population is around 315 million people right now.  If we had the population density of Germany or the U.K., we’d have 1.8 BILLION people.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Gone, Baby, Gone

Good news from the Arctic Ocean!  I’m just kidding, there is never good news from the Arctic Ocean unless you happen to own a shipping company.  The Arctic sea ice is even lower than the direst of predictions.

In 1979, there were 16,855 cubic kilometers of sea ice during the sea ice minimum.  In 2012, just 3,261 cubic kilometers.  That’s down 80% in 33 years.  Scientists are now predicting an ice free summer for the Arctic ocean in as a decade from now.

There is very little we can do at this point to save the Arctic ice.  It’s as good as gone.  That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything to prevent future warming, though.  We might not be able to save the Arctic, but we can still save ourselves.

A Very Good Question

This is what Senatorial grandstanding should look like:

 

You go, girl!  We have an incredibly perverse system where companies can rake in tens of billions of dollars in profit while breaking the law and then pay a few billion in a settlement.  There is zero incentive for a company that has already proven that they will break the law to stop breaking the law.  It’s like telling a kid to go to their room when their room contains a full entertainment center and they spend most of their time there anyway.

Elizabeth Warren is quickly becoming one of the people I would want in my neighborhood.  A list that is sadly bereft of women at the moment.  Shame on me.

Unfortunate Ad Campaign Of The Day

Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius was arrested today for the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.  You may remember Oscar as the “Blade Runner”.  He’s the one that had both his legs amputated below the knees when he was a year old and now uses carbon-fiber blades to run.  He shot Reeva Steenkamp four times and claims that he thought she was an intruder.  It turns out there’s no evidence of that being true so away to jail he goes.

Nike, who has Pistorius as a spokesperson, had to quickly pull an ad featuring Pistorius and the tag line, “I am a bullet in the chamber.”  Can’t imagine why.

This should be viewed as an overall win for the the Paralympic community.  Pistorius has broken the stereotype and proven that even athletes with no legs can be dickishly abusive and homicidal.  One small step for man and all that.

Things That Make You Go BOOM!

A very large meteor has streaked across the sky in Russia.  And there are lots of videos!  You want to watch them.  You really do.

There have been reports of many injuries from the sonic boom of the meteor breaking windows all over the place.  If you’ve never heard a sonic boom from a plane before, they are LOUD and will break windows.  This meteor was much bigger than an airplane.  Thus, the shockwave had much more energy.

As Phil Plait says, this has nothing to do with the very large asteroid that’s scheduled to streak by the Earth this weekend.  It’s just a coincidence.

I’ll certainly be keeping up with this story because it is AWESOME!  I’ll post any other cool videos I find.

Highlights From The State Of The Union

Last night’s State of the Union Address was mostly boilerplate Democraty feel good circle-jerky material, but there were some interesting highlights.

  • The announcement of a bipartisan panel to investigate voting irregularities that led to long lines at the polls.  No one should have to wait six hours in line to vote.  Of course, much of this can be tied to Republican governor shenanigans (I’m looking at you, Scott Walker), but there were other issues as well.  It will be interesting to see what comes of the commission.
  • Universal pre-school!  This would be huge if Obama can pull it off.  Kids that age are sponges soaking up everything around them.  Getting them into a learning environment just a year earlier than they are today will have enormous implications to every avenue of social justice.
  • Raising the minimum wage to $9.00.  A somewhat better living wage for all!  People complain that it will cost jobs, but there is zero evidence to show this and some evidence that shows the opposite.  Counter-intuitive, I know, but it’s true.
  • Tying governmental scholarships, in part, to affordability of education.  This is a great idea.  There is some decent evidence that some of the meteoric rise in college tuition is due to the availability of governmental money.  Telling colleges that they have to be affordable is a great way to rein in costs.

I hope all of the above get a vote this year.  They are a good mixture of sound investments in the future and immediate economic gains.