The Chocolate Dog cometh

Happy Saint Patricks Day from Saint Tuesday

Happy Saint Patricks Day from Saint Tuesday. My brother is in Savannah Georgia today for their St Paddy's day celebration. I hope he has a wonderful and safe time...I always loved going there and have more than a few good stories from those days I might just have to post here or on SE sometime.

Little extra triva ...Kevin, my brother has a really cool shamrock tattoo...

How to build a YF-22 fighter plane of your own

You will need:
One penny, dated circa 1900
A cereal box (unopened, i.e. containing cereal)
A coin-operated time machine
A bank account containing at least 20.00$
1039 metric tons of scotch tape
Go to a cash machine and withdraw exactly 20.00$ from your bank account. Buy something costing around 5.49$ from any nearby store, to obtain some change. Use the money to operate the time machine. (Note: time machine, bank account and the money contained therein will be created at later steps. Therefore the only equipment you ACTUALLY need to find in order to build this F-16 is the scotch tape, the penny and the cereal box. However, you should ensure that all of the above items are present before you begin, or you will not be successful.)
Head forwards in time by several thousand years to an era of human history, which has invented time travel. withdraw some more cash from your account - it will have accumulated a HUGE quantity of interest during this time - and purchase a coin-operated time machine identical in model to your own. Send this back in time on autopilot to several minutes before you started following these instructions. This accounts for the time machine in the above list.
Head back to the 1900s or thereabouts and open a bank account with what was your current bank in your home era. Remember, banks go through name changes, so be sure to check up on what its old name used to be. Deposit the old penny. Compound interest should increase the value of this penny to about 20.00$ by the time you need it in 2003ish. All of your money is now also accounted for, as is your bank account.
Take your scotch tape and your box of cereal backwards in time by roughly 14,000,000,000 years and allow the preposterous quantity of scotch tape to undergo gravitational collapse to form a star. This star should be of sufficient mass to go supernova, generating large amounts of iron and other heavy elements. If you picked your spot correctly, this should result in the creation of our Sun and the planet Earth, both of which you are therefore directly responsible for.
Head down onto the shores of young, sterile, lifeless Earth and empty out the box of cereal onto a randomly selected stretch of coastline. Mold and bacteria in the cereal should soon begin to munch on the cereal, then the box, gradually evolving and growing until becoming life, as we know it. You are now also responsible for the evolution of humanity, and obviously, all things that humanity has ever done, including, for example, the invention of time machines, bank accounts, scotch tape, breakfast cereal, and YF-22 fighter planes (Cool). (Note: even if the bacteria die out and humanity evolves by other means, then you still made Earth and everything on it, so you still get the credit for YF-22s. However, the cereal box is not directly involved.)
Head to the distant future a second time. Extract millions of dollars from your bank account.
Finally, return to the present day. Purchase a real YF-22.

Global Warming...A humorous essay

It is almost universally accepted now that the Earth is getting warmer. Simply looking at the statistics will tell you this - people who would argue otherwise tend to be the kind of tinfoil hat people who also believe that imminent magnetic pole reversal will kill everybody on Earth in 2030-something and that comets don't exist and so on and so forth. The real question that we should all be asking ourselves is not whether the Earth is getting warmer. The question is: how will this affect us?
Obviously there will be positive effects - for example, who wouldn't want to live on the newly formed tropical sunny Swiss coast? But, like any change anybody ever made to anything ever, there will also be negative effects, which will most likely outweigh the positive. As the equatorial regions of our planet grow hotter, vital industries serving the Western world from that region may diminish in capacity and - to put it bluntly - life will not be so cushy. People will have to relocate in the wake of extreme weather conditions like floods and hurricanes, which will cost the global taxpayer a stunning amount of cash overall. Granted, it may be that the changes occur smoothly enough that very few people actually perish as the Earth grows warmer, but we will NOT enjoy the transition period and the brave new world WILL prove relatively expensive to adapt to.
Overall, then, the prevailing opinion among scientists (although this is by no means as universally agreed upon as the existence of global warming itself) is that global warming would be a bad thing. It is only upon agreement of this point that we move on to the third question, which is "Can we reduce global warming?", and the fourth question, by far the most contentious, "What is causing global warming in the first place?"
Now, some people take the highly controversial view that global warming is a wholly natural event - the Earth is well known to have gone through phases of being warm and being cold in the past. The implication they take from this is that global warming cannot, or should not, be fought - we have no choice but to put up with it! (Note that this isn't actually a logically airtight argument. Mankind fights and generally wipes the floor with nature all the time.) Most of the people who put forward this point of view tend to be the kind of people whose corporations' factories' continuously accelerating output of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are what most sane observers believe is the actual reason behind global warming. (GLOBAL WARMING IS PEOPLE! PEEEEEEEOPLE!)
I take a third point of view. I'm of a more scientific bent - I am a fan of the mathematician, the logician, the rational reasoner. I say that reducing CO2 output wouldn't do the job - even if we reduced it to zero and planted trees to scoop up the excess - because that's not the CAUSE of global warming. We need to cut straight to the source.
The Sun is the cause of global warming.
We need to turn off the Sun.
Don't worry, I don't mean permanently.
Proposal
The average surface temperature of Earth's atmosphere is about 14°C or 287 Kelvins. This has been measured to increase by about 0.6 Kelvins over the last 200 years, or about 0.2% of its absolute temperature. Which means the Sun is giving out roughly 0.2% more energy than we need to keep it at the required temperature. Therefore, if we make it so the Sun gives out about 0.2% less energy, everything will be fine!
Thus I propose that we turn off the Sun for roughly 0.2% of each solar day, or two to four minutes every 24 hours.
Naturally if these back-of-the-envelope calculations prove inaccurate we can increase or decrease the period of deactivation as needed.
The effects of turning the Sun off for 2 to 4 minutes per day will not differ significantly from those of a total solar eclipse. Eclipses occur roughly twice per year and typically last a comparable period of time, although eclipses lasting as long as 11 minutes are known to be possible. Light-sensitive street lights on the affected hemisphere of the Earth will temporarily light up; birds will stop singing; people will not be able to see each other very well; that sort of thing.
Assessment
Pros
We can end global warming now and forever by this method.
We no longer have to worry about strictly limiting our CO2 output, which would require an enormous effort, as well as being time-consuming and unprofitable. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations will no longer be a problem (until around the year 2100 when they approach the level which is lethal to human life - at which point other solutions will doubtless present themselves).
We can save 0.2% on our energy bill, which, I'm sure we all know, is both very large and almost completely unpaid.
Cons
The onset of the deactivation would be much more rapid than the minutes-long lead-up period to a solar eclipse - in fact, nearly instantaneous. In particular, this will catch motorists and cyclists by surprise.
To minimize the danger thus posed, I would propose that the deactivations be arranged to occur as predictably and regularly as possible - preferably at the exact same time every day. In order that the minimum number of people are inconvenienced by the momentary loss of illumination, I would also propose to arrange for the deactivations to occur at midnight UTC, while the Sun is approximately centered over the Pacific Ocean. Japan would thus see the deactivations around dawn; the American West Coast, around dusk. Most other places would be unaffected, as it would already be nighttime. Still, bad luck for Hawaii.
While the Sun is known to vary slightly in luminosity over an 11-year cycle, the long-term effects of entirely deactivating our parent star for 3 minutes are unknown and unexplored, as the temporary total deactivation of a star is totally unprecedented in astronomical science.
It can be conjectured that without the supporting pressure of internal fusion the Sun's layers will most likely collapse inwards under gravitational attraction until one of two things happens - either it becomes a neutron star, or we switch it back on again and normal operation is resumed. This raises the additional questions of whether switching the Sun back on after it has collapsed too far (say, fifteen minutes) would cause a supernova to occur, and what (if anything) would happen if we attempted to reactivate nuclear fusion processes in a neutron star.
Moderating the amount of heat reaching the Earth by this method is specifically forbidden in the Sun's user manual, and voids the warranty.
Conclusion
Clearly the major issue arising from the proposal not whether we should go ahead with it (we should) or even when (as soon as possible) but where and who. Specifically, where should the Switch be built? And who should be permitted access to it?
Once these admittedly knotty issues are resolved, however, the hard part is over with; all we need to do is persuade every nation of the world to cooperate and global warming is as good as ended!

Pi

Happy Pi day March 14...03.14...

Random thoughts on a slow day

I don't really have anything all that wonderful to say here today , just a few odds and ends. Most of which are the result of the fact that I have been babysitting my little daughter Daisy today while Shanzi, Hailee, and Grandma Sandy went to meet with our lawyers, meaning that I have had Cnn on all day and well that kind of news flood is always fuel for the blog slanted.

In any case; as I said no big wonking whatevers here, just a few thoughts, musings and rambles...

1.Isn't it ironic that in the midst of the Walter Reed scandal, Vice President Cheney makes headlines with the prompt, high quality treatment he received almost immediately after he noticed a problem with his leg? The working poor would not have had that option. So often easily treated conditions are left untreated until they become so dire that intervention--now more expensive--cannot be put off. Worse yet the messy, confusing net of red tape and apathy can be so overwhelming that health issues are left untreated until it is just too late for anything at all to be done. I experience this daily, well maybe not daily but A LOT. I can't tell you how difficult the constant battle for doctors appointments and medications really are. Due to a clerical error we were forced to rescheduel a "well baby" check up for my daughter and were told there would be no appointments available for two to three months, this after we had set an appointment not two days earlier for one of us with the same said doctor. A well baby exam takes 15-20 min.s TOPS but we were not allowed to even switch our adult appt. to be Daisy's (The more important one) due to massive red tape..."We can't do that ...we would have to cancle your appt. then it would be filled before all the paperwork could be set in motion...blah blah blah words words words".

2.Okay...get this...Iran is pissed about the movie 300. It's supposed to be a full on anti-persian propaganda film and part of a psycological "war" on Iranian culture....Excuse me ...er but WHAT? I mean I am not even sure what the Hell to make of this one . First off this action movie is about Spartan Greeks vs. pre-Islamic Persians/Iranians...With the Theocratic extremist Islamic goverment in Iran declaring everything "ifidelic" (is that a word...should be) and the work of Satan that falls out side the teachings of Muhammed...no, sorry their interpretation of the teachings of Muhammed I would think they wouldn't care about infidel killing infidel but who here in the west really knows what is going on in that sort of mind. I personaly just think they hate everything non them...hmmm that sounds familiar...

3.The TANF program is a wonking mess and nonsensical, I should know I'm on it and it gets wackier every month, it like so many of our welfare programs is more about appearing to help than actually taking the time to dig in and adress root causes and lend proper assitence it's all a bunch of checked boxes and passed paperwork that in the end declares "My work as a social worker is done here!" ...a pass the Buck what the fuck ...whooooo'ssss neeexxxt! philosiphy ...well there is a lot more to it all but well I don't feel like talking about it now....and don't even get me started on CASA. I am not going to make any blanket statments here but I know that org. gas a ship load of incompetent self rightious busy no-bodies and well hypocrits. ...crap, sorry I am not going down that road...not with out a lot of for thought and proof reading.

4.Anna Nicole was absolutly surrounded by they most awful sort of flakes riding the coat tails of a fabulous disaster. They were entertaining enough in a campy sort of way on the old Anna Nicole show, but in the face of current events it's just a sad mixture of self serving, boo hoo self promotion (I guess they wanted more than their fair 15 min.s) and Jerry Springerism.

5.I can't believe Mrs. Grantham married Mr. Yancey, Jeff and Seth are steprothers now and Cathy is a step sister. weird, Iam stunned, happy for them, but stunned none the less.

Bye for now

Close the Mexican border

With George Bush traveling throughout Latin America and south of the Rio Grand I think now is the perfect time to build that wall between us and Mexico. What better time to seal our borders than when George W' s on the other side of them? ;)

California spanking law

I don't know if you've heard about this, but its exactly the kind of news that compels perfectly sane people to throw their arms up in the air, bang their foreheads against brick walls, and devote the rest of their lives to eating raw cookie dough out of plastic tubs in the basement while watching Jessica Fletcher overturn police incompetence on the Biography Channel. And what the hell is "Murder, She Wrote" doing on the Biography Channel in the first place? But that diatribe is best left for another day.
Today's harangue concerns Democratic California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber and her plan to introduce a bill to the legislature ("hello bill," "hello legislature") that will make parental spanking a crime if the child is three years or younger, labeling it misdemeanor child abuse.
That's right, "spank your offspring, go to jail," is about to become law. "Neglect to stroke a pony, pay a fine" is on the docket for next year. And the "Polyester Banky Ban?" Still stuck in conference.
Now don't get me wrong, I understand Ms. Lieber's motivation. As a card carrying member of the Mommy Party, she is unable to control her insatiable urge to protect us from ourselves. And she's seriously anti- child abuse.
But then again, aren't we all? And that's a good thing. But come on. Do we really need a law here? Aren't most slaps to the bottom more of a Pavolovian response training exercise anyway?
Throw a tantrum, get a smack. Repeat until salivation occurs. Besides, unless its full, spanking a diaper is like dropping a dime on a pillow. And when full, its an exercise neither the spanker or spankee is likely to forget. Or more importantly, anxious to duplicate.
I'm curious as to exactly how the honorable Assemblywoman proposes parents discipline their darling nippers in the event they toss the toaster into the tropical fish tank.
Perhaps a squirt gun to the back of the head like you use to keep cats off of furniture? Or temporary exile to a terrarium upholstered in a fetching array of bubble wrap? Or replacing "Teletubbies" with tapes of the last season's "The Apprentice?" If Donald Trump doesn't constitute cruel and unusual, I don't know what does.
Mostly though, what worries me is misdemeanor rug rat abuse creep. How soon before the legislature is asked to outlaw stern looks, unseemly scents and substandard nose nuzzling? All very traumatizing to our miniature progeny.
Isn't the simple act of an adult walking past a crawling moppet sheer intimidation through sizism? Passing a toddler? Get down on all fours mister. And put that beer in a sippy cup. "A pacifier for all my friends." Not to mention the booming adult voice has to be a terrifying thing, so infractions of the decibel meter will be financially penalized via a complex geometric formula involving frequency and frequency.
Once you cross the cherub protection threshold, a gibberish translator to protect the little angel's fragile sense of self esteem, easily compromised by formalized language seems to be a logical leap. And picking up a wee bairn and thrusting them up towards the ceiling with extended arms or riding them on one's shoulders? Flagrant reinforcement of an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.
All I'm saying here is, its a slippery slope, Ms. Lieber. One that involves hunching way over and whispering and squirt guns and rampant sheep shearing and grown men sucking on nipples. And who wants that?

U.F.O. 's 2

I read this earlier today on one of my favorite web sites, Phil Plaits bad astronomy.com. I thought I would reprint it here as it makes an excelent companion post to my U.F.O. post from much earlier in this blogs life.

Why I don’t “believe” in UFOs: the Phoenix Lights

Posted in Antiscience, Cool stuff, Science, Debunking, Skepticism, Rant on March 6th, 2007 at 6:59 PM
Is it possible that, one day, there will be a UFO story that makes me scratch my head and say, I cannot possibly conceive of an explanation for that besides an alien spacecraft?
Maybe. But that day is not yet here. In fact, given stories like this one, it’s a long, long way off.
Ever heard of the Phoenix Lights? 10 years ago, on March 13, 1997, a string of mysterious lights were seen hovering over Phoenix, Arizona. They were witnessed by a lot of people– Phoenix is a big town. For once, a UFO sighting was well-documented with lots of witnesses spaced out geographically, and with actual imagery and footage. Here’s a still from one amateur video: NOTE- photo still actually apears at the top of this entry.

This was big news. When I saw them, my first thought was, "Hey airplanes!" But I am a foolish NASA stooge planted by the CIA to brainwash the sheeple and keep under wraps THE BIGGEST STORY OF ALL TIME.
Or, maybe, they were, y’know, airplanes.
In fact, they were. Kinda. There was a practice flight going on at a nearby military air base. The squadron flying was dropping flares. The flares had little parachutes on them, so from a distance you’d see — GASP — a line of lights moving very slowly.
I saw a TV show where they proved beyond a doubt that’s what these things were. Video footage shot at night showed the lights disappearing one by one. Were they warping away, entering another dimension, or teleporting to some distant star?
No, they were falling behind a nearby mountain range. In the show I saw — a very rare skeptical look at UFOs — they went back to the location the person was shooting the video from, and took more pictures. When they superposed the video with their own pictures shot during the day, you could clearly see the line of mountains in the distance. When a light — sorry, "Light" — blinked out, you could plainly see it was falling below the top of the mountain. In other words, the flares were on the other side of that range as seen in the video, and when one got low enough, the mountain blocked the view. Wink! The light was gone.
I also saw (I think on the same show) a kid saying he was looking at the lights through binoculars or a telescope, and he saw that they were planes. But then someone else said (paraphrased) "Those weren’t planes! I know what I saw!" How many times have we heard that?
Sigh.
Well, now we also have one more nail in this coffin: a statement by one of the pilots who dropped the flares.
The lights were flares, said the Air National Guard, dropped during nighttime exercises at the Barry M. Goldwater Range.
That’s what they were, insists Lt. Col. Ed Jones, who piloted one of the four A10s in the squadron that he says launched the flares.
Jones, in his first interview with the news media concerning the night 10 years ago, says he can’t believe a decision to eject a few leftover flares turned into a UFO furor that continues to this day.
Lt. Col. Jones obviously doesn’t understand just how much people want to believe in UFOs. Faced with overwhelming evidence — even at the time, ten years ago — that these were flares, people still won’t wake up and see that’s precisely what these things were.
I absolutely 100% guarantee that when this story goes to UFO bulletin boards, people will claim that Lt. Cmdr. Jones is a) a disinfo agent, b) a government plant, or c) brainwashed. That’s a no-brainer.
Like Roswell, like Gulf Breeze, like a recent sighting of UFOs over London, and like a hundred — a thousand — other obviously mundane stories blown up into gigantic conspiracy theories, the Phoenix Lights will live on. And a little piece of the collective human intelligence starves to death.
Tip o’ the tin foil hat to James Oberg
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"…well, that and California, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah ..."

This is from the text of one of those really annoying"flag waving" e-mails that get passed around by the same people who send out those insipid christian morality tales and antocedendents that are trying there best to put an "O'Henry type twist on some moronic story of holy irony or redeption:
" When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.
He answered by saying that, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return." -- widely circulated e-mail.

"…well, that and California, Florida, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Utah ..."

Self-mutilation is not the only facet of my complex personality

When I encounter people on the street the market place or in the workplace, the first thing they notice, I'm convinced, are the self-inflicted burns and scars on my forearms. Sure, I can see how it might seem at first glance, like I devote all my time to burning and branding my flesh. Nothing could be further from the truth.
For starters, I love to read. Be it fiction, non-fiction, health pamphlets warning against the dangers of self mutilation-I'll read just about anything I can get my hands on. I guess I just have an over the top, addictive personality! Because once I pick up a book or anything hot, you practically have to sedate me with thorazine to put it down! It's hard to explain, but the pleasure I get from books goes much deeper than just words on a page. I love the way a book feels in my hand. The familiar smell of the paper and ink. Also the I enjoy the way a single page feels when held firmly between the index finger and thumb while being pulled sharply against the flesh and can create a deeply satisfying cut.
I also adore cooking and make my living as a sous chef. After a long day there is nothing I look forward to more than rolling up my sleeves, grabbing a sharp chefs knife and slicing…slicing…slicing some …vegetables…yes vegetables for a stir fry. Maybe it's the fragrant aroma of fresh herbs and spices sizzling in the pan that calms the spirit and sooths the pains of the day away. There is nothing so calming as the sound and smell of raw meat hitting a blazingly hot sauté pan.
That reminds me of another favorite pastime; gardening! For me gardening is just like therapy except that with gardening I am usually alone so no one is there to ask me why I have branded "Help Me" into my arm.
Another thing you might never guess about me is that I am learning to sew! Sure it was frustrating at first and yes there were a few times when I got frustrated with my lack of progress and responded by jabbing the needle repeatedly into my thigh, but after a while I started to get the hang of it. Man it was worth it too. Now I don't have to go to the tailor everytime I need one of my shirt/coat buttons replaced, or to the hospital every time I need stitches!