In the the 19th century the Democratic party, rooted in large part among Southern planters who were dependent on exports of commodities and imports of finished goods, was the party of free trade. The northern Whigs, and later the Republicans, were the party of tariffs. They were the faction which drew support from the industry of the North which benefited from protection against European competitors. The Republican support for tariffs and Democratic opposition persisted into the early 20th century. Only after World War II did this long standing division between the two parties diminish, so that by 1993 a much larger proportion of Republicans than Democrats supported the ratification of NAFTA.

Because of NAFTA’s prominence in my mind, as well as the tinge of economic nationalism on the labor Left and the maturing anti-globalization sentiment on the cultural Left, I had assumed that the Republicans tilted toward free trade more than Democrats. Not so. Pew came out with a survey a few days ago, and the results indicate that my preconception was wrong.

I don’t really want to litigate the issue of trade. Whatever your nuanced view, and I’m sure you have a nuanced view since you’re reading this weblog, I think we can agree that most Americans are not economically enlightened. These are gut emotional responses, drawn out during a time of economic stress and anxiety. The fact that ~1/3 of Americans think that trade makes prices higher seems crazy. You don’t need to know about comparative advantage, or track the CPI. Just consider how Walmart has flooded the US with cheap Chinese goods.

So we’re not talking about people who have a good grasp of international economics. What’s going on here? I think this has some element of xenophobia. Those with high school educations or less have rational reason to worry. But what’s going on with senior citizens? Many of these are retired and drawing fixed Social Security income, don’t have to worry about losing health insurance because of job loss, and might be deriving income from pension funds invested in the global pool of capital. The deflationary pressure of cheap foreign goods and services should be welcome to those on constant but modest incomes. Again, it isn’t a matter of reason, but reflexive aversion to the foreign. It is the young who are having to hustle in the globalized labor market, but the young are most pro-trade.

The Republican party has long had a tension between populists who oppose free flow of labor (immigration) and are suspicious of international capital, and the economic elites. If the populists turn against the free flow of goods & service then the problem will be compounded. As for the Democrats, it looks like the economic nationalists and anti-globalists are fading. I’m updating my stereotypes as of now.

Addendum: The outlines of this are kind of evident in the GSS. I think I ignored/didn’t see the patterns because of my preconceptions. Shame on me!

I am in love with this comment and want to have its babies:

pi appears as a constant in many formula of physics. General relativity says that it isn’t constant. Is it the origin of the pi particle, aka pion?

A curmudgeonly literalist might, when faced with a question such as this, harrumph a simple “No.” A more loquacious sort might explain that general relativity does not say that π is not a contstant. Pi is not a parameter of physics like the fine-structure constant, which could conceivably be different or even variable from place to place. It’s a universal answer to a fixed question, to wit: what is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, as measured in Euclidean geometry? The answer is of course 3.141592653589793…, or any number of representations in terms of infinite series.

But the point of the question is that GR says we don’t live in Euclidean space; we move through a curved spacetime manifold. That’s okay. In a curved space, we could imagine defining the “diameter” of a circle as the maximum geodesic distance connecting two of its points, and taking the ratio of the circumference with that diameter, and indeed it would typically not give us 3.14159… But that doesn’t mean π is changing from place to place; it just means that the ratio of circumference to diameter (defined this way) in a curved space doesn’t equal π. If the circumference/diameter ratio is less than π, you are in a positively curved space, such as a sphere; if it is greater than π, you are in a negatively curved space, such as a saddle. Geometry can also be much more complicated than that, with different ratios depending on how the circle is oriented in space, which is why curvature is properly measured by tensors rather than by a simple number.

Taken from Mathematics Illuminated, which says that pi really does depend on the geometry of space, which is crazy.

(Parenthetically, one of the dumbest mathematical arguments ever given was put forward by the world’s smartest person, Marilyn Vos Savant. The columnist wrote an entire book criticizing Andrew Wiles’s proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Her argument: Wyles made use of non-Euclidean geometry, but what if geometry is really Euclidean? Touche!)

However … despite the fact that π doesn’t really change from place to place in general relativity, the geometry does change from place to place, and there is a particle associated with those dynamics — the graviton. Although the formulation of the original question isn’t accurate, the spirit is very much in the right place. And I, for one, will henceforth be perpetually sad that the physics community missed a chance by attaching the word pion to the lightest quark-antiquark bound state, rather than to the particle associated with deviations from Euclidean geometry. That would have been awesome.

A few days ago a friend was asking me about Aziz Ansari, the brown American comedian who grew up in South Carolina, and is of Tamil Muslim heritage. Since I don’t watch Parks and Recreation, I knew about him mostly through the Sepia Mutiny weblog. Some of the comments there indicated that Ansari was a practicing Muslim. That did not surprise me, South Asians are very religious. In particular, group religious identity matters a great deal to people whose origins are in Indian and Islamic civilization (and their intersection).

This is in contrast to East Asians, for whom group religious identity matters far less. It is notable that the most Sinic Southeast Asian nation, Vietnam, is closest to the East Asian model, with no single organized supernatural tradition being identified with the national consciousness. In contrast the more Indic mainland Southeast Asians, and those of maritime Southeast Asia, do fuse religion and national identity. To be Thai is to a great extent to be a Theravada Buddhist, and to be a Malay is to be a Muslim.*

The USA, unlike Canada, Singapore, or the UK, does not have breakdowns of religious affiliation by ethnic group down to the level of sub-Asian ethnicities, so I don’t know how religious or irreligious South Asians are. I assume that they’re less religious than Canadian or British South Asians, in large part because they’re a more advanced community in terms of education and economics vis-a-vis the mainstream in the USA (though to be fair it seems that the Punjabis of British Columbia and the Pakistanis of Britain are responsible for most of the social dysfunction of South Asians in those countries). But it still seems that a substantial number of American South Asians retain nominal religious identity even if their personal beliefs and practices are relatively secular. Fareed Zakaria was for example drafted as a “moderate Muslim” in the wake of 9/11 despite the fact that he used to be Slate’s wine columnist. Here’s Zakaria on the role of religion in his life:

Growing up in a country like India, riven by sectarian violence, Zakaria says, “you’re absolutely aware of the power religion has, in a positive and negative sense—in its ability to inspire people and its ability to inspire people to kill.” On the other hand, his own upbringing was open-minded and secular; he sang Christian hymns at school and celebrated Hindu as well as his own Muslim holidays. “I do know a lot about the world of Islam in an instinctive way that you can’t get through book learning,” he says thoughtfully, but admits he finds the role of token Muslim explainer in the American media slightly uncomfortable. “I occasionally find myself reluctant to be pulled into a world that’s not mine, in the sense that I’m not a religious guy.”

He was born and raised in India, so no matter how assimilated he is Zakaria retains the stamp of the nation of his birth. The Zakarias are a powerful Indian Muslim family, and in India his identity was that of a Muslim, albeit one who was comfortable with South Asian supernatural pluralism.** Zakaria also believes that he has an implicit cultural understanding of Islam because that was the milieu in which he was raised. But he admits candidly what is pretty obvious, he’s not particularly religious in any conventional understanding for a Muslim. Nevertheless he does not disavow Islam, or assert he’s an atheist or agnostic.

I’m obviously not in Fareed Zakaria’s camp. I’m not a Muslim, I’m an atheist. Just like my paternal grandmother was not a Hindu even though she was born into a Hindu family. This sort of plain and naked assertion of atheism is not something that many Americans are comfortable with, since theism is normative. But in a South Asian context the bigger issue is the rupture with historical communal memory. I have met Americans who were born into a Hindu family who were atheists and ate beef who nevertheless winced when I admitted that there were Hindus in my family tree only a few generations back who obviously converted for reasons of rational self-interest. The power of “team Hindu” and “team Islam” still remains within Diasporic South Asian communities. Of course this sort of phenomenon is cross-cultural, an atheist friend who was from a Calvinist part of the Netherlands felt confident in mocking the special superstition of Roman Catholicism in a manner which would have made the Reformers of yore smile.

For myself, close readers will be aware that my explicitly asserted denial of the existence of God and rejection of identification with Islamic civilization is something of an affront to the memory of my recent ancestors. My mother’s paternal grandfather was a wandering Muslim mystic. In his lifetime he came to be revered for his piety, and the site of his grave has become a object of pilgrimage in the local region. The superstitious local folk naturally believe that we who descend from this man carry his holiness in our blood, and my mother remembers as a small child people approaching her as if she was a special talisman. On my father’s side I come from a line of Ulama.

But if religiosity is heritable it is highly amusing to me that I probably come very close to lacking the “God gene.” My understanding that I was an atheist as a small child was less of a rejection of the existence of God than an acknowledgment of the lack of belief which had always implicitly been part of of my model of how the world worked. I simply was never “Wired for Creationism.” But by lack of belief in and of itself does not entail that I reject “team Islam.” I was always struck by the fact that Edward Said, a Christian Arab by birth, an atheist as an adult, defined himself as a product of Islamic civilization. The connection between an individual and a religious ethos runs deeper than belief alone. It even runs deeper than explicit identification. I have argued repeatedly that most American Jews and Roman Catholics adhere to a view of what religion is, and what their religion is, that is clearly in keeping with the confessional sectarian Protestantism which has shaped the history of the United States of America. For me my personal disaffection with Indian and Islamic civilization was completed by my reading of Chinese philosophers, in particular Xun Zi, as well as the pre-Socratics of the Greeks. The fact that my ancestors wasted their lives on metaphysics, mysticism, and the Madhhab is a shame. Their Eudaimonia would have been deeply alien to me, in a way that Marcus Aurelius never was.

So what about the point of the article? Here’s an addendum to an article from last spring in The New York Times:

In an earlier version of this article, Michael Schur, the co-creator of “Parks and Recreation,” partly described Mr. Ansari as a Muslim. Mr. Ansari describes himself as an atheist.

Whoever claimed Ansari was a practicing Muslim was lying, deluded, or mistaken. Because of my general knowledge that South Asians do not usually disavow any religious identity I simply accepted this as a given and repeated the falsehood. And that is why I am putting up this post, and hoping that Google picks up this for the appropriate search queries.

* I am aware that there are small communities of Thai-speaking Christians, as well as larger communities Thai-speaking Muslims.

** I once talked to a man who was of Indian Christian background whose personal beliefs were closer to Hinduism, but in India everyone defined him as a Christian because of his birth, despite his rejection of Christian beliefs and acceptance of Hindu ones.

Image Credit: Mb3741, Wikimedia Commons

Independence Day has one of my most favorite hero duos of all time: Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum. Brawn and brains, flyboy and nerd, working together to take out the baddies. It all comes down to one flash of insight on behalf of a drunk Goldblum after being chastised by his father. Cliché eureka! moments like Goldblum’s realization that he can give the mothership a “cold” are great until you realize one thing: if Goldblum hadn’t been as smart as he was, the movie would have ended much differently. No one in the film was even close to figuring out how to defeat the aliens. Will Smith was in a distant second place and he had only discovered that they are vulnerable to face punches. The hillbilly who flew his jet fighter into the alien destruct-o-beam doesn’t count, because he needed a force-field-free spaceship for his trick to work. If Jeff Goldblum hadn’t been a super-genius, humanity would have been annihilated.

Every apocalyptic film seems to trade on the idea that there will be some lone super-genius to figure out the problem. In The Day The Earth Stood Still (both versions) Professor Barnhardt manages to convince Klaatu to give humanity a second look. Cleese’s version of the character had a particularly moving “this is our moment” speech. Though it’s eventually the love between a mother and child that triggers Klaatu’s mercy, Barnhardt is the one who opens Klaatu to the possibility. Over and over we see the lone super-genius helping to save the world.

Shouldn’t we want, oh, I don’t know, at least more than one super-genius per global catastrophe? I’d like to think so. And where might we get some more geniuses? you may ask. We make them.

In his essay, “The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis”, philosopher David Chalmers notes that there is a very real chance that if machines become self-aware and start improving themselves, we’re going to have a problem (*cough* Skynet *cough* Liquid T-1000 *cough, cough*). One of his potential solutions is to enhance ourselves to keep up:

This might be done genetically, pharmacologically, surgically, or even educationally. It might be done through implantation of new computational mechanisms in the brain, either replacing or extending existing brain mechanisms. Or it might be done simply by embedding the brain in an ever more sophisticated environment, producing an “extended mind” whose capacities far exceed that of an unextended brain.

Does any of that sound familiar? Perhaps a little film called Gattaca may ring some bells? Chalmers is arguing enhancement may be necessary to prevent extinction. Why not extrapolate that logic to other existential risks. Alien invasion? Superhumans would probably put up a better fight. Skynet goes live? An army of hackers with a collective IQ of 200+ and neuro-integrated interfaces would clean that up in a jiffy. But what about our current problems? Although heavy-handed, the message in both versions of The Day the Earth Stood Still is that humanity’s greatest existential threat is itself. War, suffering, poverty, and environmental destruction all seem like problems that would merit allowing our best and brightest to become even better and brighter for the sake of everyone.

A common fear is that the super-intelligent would just step on us normals, creating second-class citizens. Enhancement doesn’t just mean the ability to do complex equations and create new molecular compounds; raw intellectual horsepower is just one among many possibilities. We know that some people have moral problems caused by damage to specific parts of their brain. As neuroscience progresses, there is a very real possibility we’ll be able to improve those specific parts of the moral brain. I don’t mean we’d have a society of lock-step rule followers, but instead people who were genuinely better at being moral than most of us. Can you imagine a world where politicians had improved ethical scruples? Or, to put it simply, where the most brilliant minds were also the most caring?

Which brings me back to Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day. Not only does he come up with the solution, but he selflessly gets in the nuke-strapped UFO with Will Smith to fly into the middle of the enemy mothership. Same for professor Barnhardt, who is as good at moral philosophy as it seems he is math, attempting to show Klaatu the best of our species.

In science fiction, when humanity is faced with existential crises, we turn to great minds attached to great hearts. While we aren’t under alien attack or facing sentient machines, our world has its own share of problems. Human cognitive enhancement might just be the solution from which all other solutions are born; or maybe it brings too many risks of its own.

ID4 Promotional Image via Wikipedia under fair use

[Update: It occurs to me after posting this entry that it might make more sense if you watch this first. My apologies for any confusion.]

This is for your own good, folks.

You have been warned.

In a nation of ~1 billion, even one where a large minority are positively malnourished, you’d expect some really tall people. So not that surprising: NBA Awaits Satnam From India, So Big and Athletic at 14:

In a country of 1.3 billion people, 7-foot, 250-pound Satnam Singh Bhamar has become a beacon for basketball hope.

At age 14.

…

That potential starts with his size, which is incredible itself. At age 14, he is expected to grow for another couple of years. For now, he wears a size-22 basketball shoe. His hands swallow the ball. His father, Balbir Singh Bhamara, is 7-2. His grandmother on his father’s side is 6-9.

Punjab is one of India’s more prosperous states. Interestingly this kid’s paternal grandmother is as tall in standard deviation units as her son or grandson. In Western developed societies height is 80-90% heritable. That means that there’s very little expected regression back to the population mean for any given child. The article doesn’t mention the mother’s height though. If she is of more normal size then Satnam is either a fluke, or, there are dominant large effect rare alleles being passed down by the father, perhaps from the paternal grandmother.

Localisation of regions of intense pleasure response evoked by soccer goals.

“Localisation of regions of intense pleasure responses will lead to a better understanding of the reward mechanisms in the brain. Here we present a novel fMRI video paradigm designed to evoke high levels of pleasure in a specific test group and to distinguish regions of pleasure from anticipation. It exploits the intense commitment of soccer supporters and thus captures the intense euphoric feeling experienced when a soccer goal is scored. Nine healthy male subjects were imaged. Statistically significant activation clusters were determined for four contrasts: (i) goals vs. open play; (ii) missed chances vs. open play; (iii) goals vs. missed chances; and (iv) goals and missed chances vs. open play. Superior temporal, inferior frontal and amygdala were activated by all contrasts. Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was activated in contrasts (i) and (iii), suggesting that the ACC is involved in processing pleasure. The putamen was activated in contrasts (i), (ii) and (iv) implicating involvement of this region in the anticipation of pleasure. This paradigm activates brain regions known to be involved in pleasure-processing networks. The structure of the paradigm allows the separation of anticipation from the pleasure stimulus and provides a paradigm devoid of decision-making.”

Thanks to Valerie for today’s ROFL!

Photo: flickr/NaturalBlu

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: World Cup Week: Celebrate FTW!
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: World Cup Week: World cup soccer players tend to be born with sun and moon in adjacent zodiacal signs.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: World Cup Week: Vuvuzela – Good for your team, bad for your ears.

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

I tweeted this on an impulse:

What is the one concept in science that you really think should be explained better to a wide audience?

At least 140 characters restricts people to really only suggesting one thing. But I don’t want to leave the blog readers out, so have a go. See if you can stick to just one!

UPDATE:  SOLVED by LeeV at 12:22 CDT

Are you about ready for a bonus riddle?  Tom and I are, and hope to have one for you by the 29th.  I’ll let you know for sure when we get the dates down.

For today, your riddle answer is found in the real world…

image from PhotoBucket

You are looking for a thing.

This thing is one object composed of separate, distinct parts.

It changes its shape and size.

The changes effect its function.

It does something important.

You’ll see this thing represented very well in popular fiction.

This has been associated with many important discoveries in several areas of astronomy.

Ahhhh… do you have the answer already?  You know where to find me…

…lurking…

…lurking…

Have any friends or colleagues who don’t believe in dark matter? Showing them this should help.

That ghostly haze is dark matter — or at least, an impression of the gravitational field created by the dark matter. This is galaxy cluster Abell 1689, in the constellation Virgo. (We feel compelled to add that information, in case you’re going to go looking for it in the night sky tonight or something.) It’s easy to see that the images of many of the galaxies have been noticeably warped by passing through the gravitational field of the cluster, a phenomenon known as strong gravitational lensing. This cluster has been studied for a while using strong lensing. The idea is that the detailed distribution of dark matter affects the specific ways in which different background images are distorted (similar to what was used to analyze the Bullet Cluster). Astronomers use up massive amounts of computer time constructing different models and determining where the dark matter has to be to distort the galaxies in just the right way. Now Dan Coe and collaborators have made an unprecedentedly high-precision map of where the dark matter is (paper here).

This isn’t all about the pretty pictures. We have theoretical predictions about how dark matter should act, and it’s good to compare them to data. Interestingly, the fit to our favorite models is not perfect; this cluster, and a few others like it, are more dense in a central core region than simple theories predict. This is an opportunity to learn something — perhaps clusters started to form earlier in the history of the universe than we thought, or perhaps there’s something new in the physics of dark matter that we have to start taking into account.

But the pretty pictures are certainly a reward in their own right.

Never forget: the Sun is a star, a mighty ball of ionized gas, and when a star throws a tantrum, even a small one is epic.

And the Sun just sent us a little reminder: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught this amazing sequence of a sunspot blasting out a flare, then shooting out a long streamer of plasma:

[Direct link to YouTube video here]

Wow! So what are we seeing here?

SDO views the Sun in many wavelengths, and in this case we’re looking at ultraviolet light form the Sun so energetic it’s almost X-rays. The bright spot is actually a sunspot! They’re dark in the kind of light we see with our eyes^* but can be very bright at other wavelengths. Sunspots are regions of intense magnetic field concentration; magnetic loops arc out of the spot, reach into space, then head back down. They seethe with vast amounts of energy, which can be released explosively under some conditions.

That’s what happened here. The magnetic field loops in Sunspot 1123 suddenly and cataclysmically released all their energy in the early morning of November 12, blasting it outward as a solar flare — you can see that as the intense flash of light coming from the bright region in the center of the video. This explosive event also launched a streamer of plasma off the Sun’s surface, flowing outward along the Sun’s magnetic field. Although the plasma is very hot, we see it silhouetted against the Sun’s surface, so it looks dark. This type of streamer is called a filament (had we seen it against the darkness of space, it would look bright, and be called a prominence). You can see it heading roughly in our direction at the end of the video. Don’t worry though, it won’t hit us!

And as if this weren’t enough, along with this event was a small coronal mass ejection. This is when a huge blast of subatomic particles is lofted into space by the Sun, and they sometimes (but not always) occur with flares. Happily for us, the CME will miss the Earth; when they hit they can cause damage to our satellites, as well as mess with our power grid here on the Earth’s surface.

However, don’t rest easy. We’re only at the beginning of this solar cycle, when the Sun’s twisted and complex magnetic field is starting to act up. It’ll build for the next two or three years, reaching a peak in late 2013 or 2014. We’ll probably see some pretty big flares and CMEs then, which means aurorae (yay!) and potential problems with our power grid (boo!). I doubt we’ll see the kind of damage breathless doomcriers will no doubt promulgate, but the thing is, we just don’t know. Will this be a big, violent peak, or a relatively quiet one?

We just have to wait and see. But I’m glad we have observatories like SDO watching the Sun so carefully. The more we know about it, the better.

Incidentally, I have quite a bit more detail about the Sun, spots, flares, and CMEs in chapter 2 of my book Death from the Skies! Just so’s you know.

Blogs worth checking out: Reaction Norm, A Replicated Typo, and Dodecad. Heather Mac Donald has some expectations for the Tea Party.

Take a look at the Wikio Science Top 20. Same old, same old. I’m always sniffing around for new science blogs, and am struck by how many of the top bloggers I’ve met personally. Eight of the top 20 on Wikio for example. Are there many unknown gems out there?

Josh Green reminisces about the rise of Talking Points Memo. Some people “have it”, some do not. Joshua Micah Marshall “has it.” He’s always had it. I started an abortive blog in the fall of 2001, but gave up after a week. Then I started blogging in April of 2002, and never looked back. For most of the 2000s I was a code monkey who blogged as a hobby on the side. I never managed to give it up, and it’s led me to some really awesome places.

Cultures differ. Check out the definition for ‘Islamophobia’. Now read this article, Palestinian held for Facebook criticism of Islam:

Residents of Qalqiliya say they had no idea that Walid Husayin — the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar — was leading a double life.

Known as a quiet man who prayed with his family each Friday and spent his evenings working in his father’s barbershop, Husayin was secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

Now, he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for “insulting the divine essence.” Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

“He should be burned to death,” said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public “to be an example to others,” he added.

Over several years, Husayin is suspected of posting arguments in favor of atheism on English and Arabic blogs, where he described the God of Islam as having the attributes of a “primitive Bedouin.” He called Islam a “blind faith that grows and takes over people’s minds where there is irrationality and ignorance.”

If that wasn’t enough, he is also suspected of creating three Facebook groups in which he sarcastically declared himself God and ordered his followers, among other things, to smoke marijuana in verses that spoof the Muslim holy book, the Quran. At its peak, Husayin’s Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors, overwhelmingly from Arab countries.

…

Husayin is the first to be arrested in the West Bank for his religious views, said Tayseer Tamimi, the former chief Islamic judge in the area.

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority is among the more religiously liberal Arab governments in the region. It is dominated by secular elites and has frequently cracked down on hardline Muslims and activists connected to its conservative Islamic rival, Hamas.

Husayin’s high public profile and prickly style, however, left authorities no choice but to take action.

…

Instead, he began going to an Internet cafe — a move that turned out to be a costly mistake. The owner, Ahmed Abu-Asal, said the blogger aroused suspicion by spending up to seven hours a day in a corner booth. After several months, a cafe worker supplied captured snapshots of his Facebook pages to Palestinian intelligence officials.

…

He could face a life sentence if he’s found guilty, depending on how harshly the judge thinks he attacked Islam and how widely his views were broadcast, said Islamic scholar Tamimi.

Even so, a small minority has questioned whether the government went too far.

Zainab Rashid, a liberal Palestinian commentator, wrote in an online opinion piece that Husayin has made an important point: “that criticizing religious texts for their (intellectual) weakness can only be combatted by … oppression, prison and execution.”

- I think many readers of this weblog could sympathize Walid Husayin. He seems to have been an “internet atheist,” obsessed with the rejection of theism which was so strongly normative in the world around him. Because of the familial expectations he clearly had to live a lie in public, so he took out his angst in private. We’re not talking Michael Servetus here, we’re talking an angry 15 year old on LiveJournal (no offense, but in societies where men live with their families deep into their 20s they are usually psychologically teenagers in my experience).

- Burning a religious dissenter has some negative connotations for people in the West. That sort of stuff basically stopped after the Enlightenment, though the famous burning of the aforementioned Michael Servetus at the instigation of John Calvin shows just how acceptable such barbarism was in the West even in the early modern period. From the perspective of modern Westerners though that was the past, and like slavery burning someone for blasphemy is no longer thinkable (unless you’re a follower of R. J. Rushdoony). Things are different in much of the Muslim world, especially the Arab world. If Islamophobia is the irrational fear of Islam, what do you call the rational fear? Are those who want a cordon sanitaire against these sorts of cultural values without any foundation in reality? I don’t begrudge Muslims of whatever stripe arguing for the superiority or virtuosity of their belief system; that’s the nature of their meme. Rather, I’m always struck by the lack of reflection that many secular Westerners have as to the realized perniciousness of Islam in the world when judged by the values that Westerners today hold to be fundamental.

- The 70,000 visitors is vague. 70,000 visitors total is not large, but 70,000 per day is reasonable. The fact that Walid Husayin attained some level of pseudo-fame in the Arab world attests to a pent up demand for a violation of the norm of ostentatious piety. Throughout the history of civilization there have been sects and movements which operate as a counter-narrative against the pieties of the age. Cynics in ancient Greece of the Stoics and Platonists. Daoists in the China of the Confucians. The Carvaka who rejected the strictures of Brahmanical Hinduism. This strain also existed within Islam, exemplified by the poet Al-Ma’arri, who declared that “The sacred books are only such a set of idle tales as any age could have and indeed did actually produce.” But the fact is that the Abrahamic religions in particular have a long track record of not tolerating counter-cultural religio-philosophical movements. Al-Ma’arri and Plethon were notable tokens, not representatives of an alternative school. In contrast to the often imperfectly realized acceptance of the fact of plurality of opinion in Greece & Rome, in China, and in Indic civilization, Christianity and Islam tended toward ideological monopoly.

- The blog Breaking Spells asserts:

Regardless, only the most backward of societies -the most primitive of this world- would still have the barbaric and mindless law which allows a death sentence for blasphemy….

Here’s a map of the UN’s Human Development Index (black is the lowest category, but lighter blue shades are lower):

Some Muslim countries, like Pakistan, have low HDI. Others, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, have high HDI. Additionally, much of Latin America and Africa has lower HDI than the “core” Muslim world (Arab-Turk-Persian). The Muslim nations really aren’t primitive. Geneva in the 16th century wasn’t primitive. A well developed system of thought-policing from on-high is unfortunately a feature of more advanced societies, though the trend is obviously not monotonic as a function of development. The causal connections are not necessarily clear.

Next month (I think on the 16th) Norton will release a new book by Richard A. Muller, The Instant Physicist:  An Illustrated Guide.  The book can be pre-ordered now from various distributors.

Image shamelessly lifted from Amazon.com

I think you’re going to enjoy this book.   The format is perfect for quick dips; on the left side, an easy-to-read (and humorous) explanation of every-day physics, and on the right, a clever illustration (by Joey Manfre).  You’ll learn how spy satellites operate (and how to hide from them), how to calculate the epicenter of an earthquake, what really fell out of the sky at Roswell, and many, many other nuggets.

This is science brought into your living room.  It’s interesting, engaging, and even captured the attention of my teenager.  I consider that nothing short of incredible.  Although designed for non-scientists, it is an enjoyable read at all levels.  With gentle wit (and great illustrations), Muller will instill a love of physics in the ordinary world.  I would say it’s definitely worth a trip to your local library or favorite bookstore.

Richard Muller is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.  He has published several books, including Physics For Future Presidents, a book based on his popular lecture series for non-science majors at Berkeley.

W. W. Norton & Company is the oldest and largest independent (employee-owned) publisher in the United States.  Its roots go back to 1923.  They have a solid reputation; publishing textbooks in science, history, art and literature, along with bestsellers like Helter Skelter and A Clockwork Orange.

Enjoy!

One of the five close up images we have so far. Click for larger and the link for more is below. Images: Epoxi spacecraft/NASA

We are waiting for the shuttle launch, perhaps as early as tomorrow, but the news of the day is the EPOXI flyby of comet Hartley 2.

The flyby has just been completed successfully and the spacecraft has been re-oriented to utilize the high gain antenna.  The high gain antenna allows for a higher data rate of data to be downloaded.  Job #1 right now is to download engineering data and then the pictures can be sent.  I think I heard (so don’t hold me to this) they have something like 199 pictures?

I hope to have pictures to put up later today.  For now we can give the EPOXI mission team a pat on the back, the flyby was pretty much right on the numbers.

The image above is one of five you can see here.

The source of the leak is the GUCP. Credit: NASA

The shuttle mission is scrubbed again and this time until November 30th at the earliest.

The problem was a leak at the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate (GUCP) where the external tank and an external 17 inch pipe are attached. Essentially the 17 inch lines is a vent pipe to carry gaseous hydrogen safely away from the shuttle and burned off so as not to cause a problem.  Hydrogen is VERY flammable.

The leak was termed “significant” by shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach. It is similar to leaks on STS-119 and 127 except the rate of leakage was higher.  The problem was noted during the tanking process so now the tank needs to be drained and the vapors inside rendered inert before technicians can take a look, the process should take about 20 hours.

By Saturday they should have a pretty good handle on what is going on. The Mission Management Team will meet and decide if there might be a possibility of a Monday launch.  I know, I know, I said the 30th, but something tells me that will still be the case.  Besides for those of you that have followed my more recent predictions concerning the shuttle KNOW now that I’ve said that, to be watching the news on Monday!

No matter, better safe than sorry I say.

Isn’t that a poetic title?

Deep in the outer Solar System (about 1/4 the way to Proxima Centauri), lies the hypothesized home of long-period comets; the Oort Cloud (rhythms with “fort”, “short” and “snort”).  Possibly a remnant of our Solar System’s original protoplanetary disc, the Oort Cloud was hypothesized by astronomer Jan Oort in 1950 to resolve a paradox concerning comets (basically, there shouldn’t be any comets left in the Solar System, so where are they coming from?).

Oort Cloud comparison - NASA/CalTech/R.Hurt

Believed to occupy a space from about 5,000 AU to about 50,000 AU, the Oort Cloud is thought to contain several trillion objects.  These objects would be small (some tiny), and the Oort Cloud is believed to have a total mass of only about 5X the Earth.  While there have been no confirmed, direct observations of the Oort Cloud, four Trans-Neptunian objects are considered part of the structure:  90377 Sedna, 2000 CR (105), 2006 SQ(372), and 2008 KV (42).

Voyager 1 conception - American Museum of Natural History

Admittedly, not much is yet known about the Oort Cloud.  It’s too far away and its objects are too small to allow easy study.  Hopefully, once Voyager 1 gets a bit further out, we’ll have more information.  Voyager 1, by the way, is currently in the heliosheath, and should enter heliopause in 2015.  That puts it about 10.6 billion miles away.  It has a long way to go before it will enter the Oort Cloud, if ever.  Also, New Horizons will blow past Pluto in July, 2015, and continue on toward the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.

Illustrated as roughly spherical, the Oort Cloud is very tenuously bound to the Sun’s gravity.  It is also influenced by the gravity of nearby stars, like Proxima Centauri.  It’s thought that gravity perturbations from nearby stars and planets are what sends objects from the Oort Cloud rocketing into the Inner Solar System, giving us comets.

Oort Cloud - NASA - It's big, for certain

While distant and mysterious, the Oort Cloud serves as a reminder that we really know very little about the Solar System (much less the Universe) in which we live.

Current Status: Delayed.

Launch Date: Friday, November 5, 2010 @ 3:04 pm ET

Odds of Launch: Unknown at this time

Shuttle: Discovery (OV-103) – Sad to say this is the final scheduled flight for Discovery.

Mission: STS-133

Mission Length: 10 days

EVA’s: 2 (on flight days: 5 and 7)

Primary Objectives: Among other things, robotically install Express Logistics Carrier to starboard three truss lower inboard common attach site and robotically install Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) to Unity node nadir or Earth-facing port.

Commander: Steve Lindsey

Pilot: Eric Boe

Mission Specialists: Tim Kopra, Alvin Drew, Michael Barratt and Nicole Stott

Launch Pad 39A — Webcam Image courtesy: NASA/Kennedy Space Center

NOAA’s Forecast:

Tomorrow: Partly sunny, with a high near 83. East wind between 5 and 10 mph.

To keep current with the news about the launch, I recommend you go to NASA’s Launch Blog which should be live around 10:30 am ET. You will need to refresh your browser to get the latest from that site, but it’s THE place to get the up to the minute stuff especially if you can’t watch NASA TV.

I will be watching the launch itself on NASA-TV in between getting home and rushing out the door again.

ALSO: You can listen to KSC communications via Radio Reference, click the little speaker and then you can minimize the player and continue browsing.

This is the last scheduled flight for Discovery. She made her first flight as STS-41D on August 30, 1984. This is also the next to the last scheduled shuttle flight for the program before the government slams the door shut on human space flight, but hey we will have a second rate health care system that we still can’t afford so it’s all good right?

Image Credits: NASA / NOAA

Click here to view the embedded video.

This coming week is going to be busy – YAY!

Source

“Interest in sensations from removed body parts other than limbs has increased with modern surgical techniques. This applies particularly to operations (e.g., gender-changing surgeries) that have resulted in phantom genitalia. The impression given in modern accounts, especially those dealing with phantoms associated with penis amputation, is that this is a recently discovered phenomenon. Yet the historical record reveals several cases of phantom penises dating from the late-eighteenth century and the early-nineteenth century. These cases, recorded by some of the leading medical and surgical figures of the era, are of considerable historical and theoretical significance. This is partly because these phantoms were associated with pleasurable sensations, in contrast to the loss of a limb, which for centuries had been associated with painful phantoms. We here present several early reports on phantom penile sensations, with the intent of showing what had been described and why more than 200 years ago.”

Thanks to Paul for today’s ROFL!

Photo: flickr/goldberg

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Is that a ruthenium polypyridine complex in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: The case of the haunted scrotum.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Ever wonder how much electricity your penis can take?

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

As Sean has already mentioned, we have been nominated for a physics.org web award, for nothing less than Best Blog. I imagine first place comes with an immense cash prize, which we would then share with all of our loyal readers. As it happens, yours truly is one of the judges (for the “Best Q&A / Ask the Expert” site). But why would you trust me with such an important and profound responsibility? You can and should put in your own votes (unfortunately, you have to register with physics.org to be able to vote; there’s lots of good stuff on the site). Did Sean mention that you can also vote for Cosmic Variance while you’re at it? At the very least, it’s worth perusing the websites of the other 34 shortlisted nominees; they form a wonderful and entertaining collection of science-oriented blogs.