Science update
Read this. New study on the effect of the paleocene/eocene thermal maximum on ocean currents. (About 55M years ago, a 7-degree rise in temperatures basically caused the entire world’s climate to flip) If you haven’t been following this story carefully, you should — people are finally starting to discuss in public the big secret of climate change, which is that it’s a great deal more serious than anyone’s wanted to talk about in public.
Damn damn damn
Ariel Sharon just had a major stroke. Power transferred to Vice Premier Olmert; what this means for the coming elections, I have no idea.
This scares me. Sharon had become the person with enough moral weight to push forward a real plan for the future. And he seemed to have one. I don’t believe that any of the other people in this party could hold it together enough to really make things work – to win a strong plurality and push forward an actual something that could lead to peace. I feel like it’s 1995 again, when Rabin was assassinated and we all suddenly realized that our hopes were in the hands of a single all-too-mortal person. I just never thought I would be thinking that about Sharon.
God help him, and help us all.
Science list: Things that don’t make sense
New Scientist has an interesting little article about “13 things that do not make sense” — basically, odd experimental results from the past couple of years that nobody really feels comfortable explaining yet.
Now, the crackpots will be out in force saying “See! Science is at an end! There are things it can’t explain! There therefore must be an intelligent designer intentionally confounding the attempts of humans to tinker with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know…” et cetera. I’ll just leave them out in the pottery shed; these thirteen things are really interesting, and while most of them probably won’t pan out, if any of them do then there’s some damned interesting advances going on. These are all under fairly active research (for the theoretical ones and the more well-understood experimental ones [like cosmic rays] people are working hard on them, and for the stranger experimental ones [like tetraneutrons, or one they forgot, the magnetic monopole] people are still waiting for experimental confirmation).
List of titles
I was just at the donations page for Médecins Sans Frontières, and was amused to see the list of titles you can fill in on the form…
Which would you like to be?
FISA judges to be briefed
The FISA court is arranging a formal briefing where the administration will (in theory) explain its warrantless spying program.
- Will there be any analogue of opposing counsel there? Will someone be asking hard questions of the administration, or will it simply be the administration people giving a presentation to the judges and then the judges having to decide to quit or not? Why is this not a matter for a hearing of the ordinary sort?
- Note that this WP article quietly confirms Ars Technica’s analysis of what the illegal spying program actually entailed…
One more news story
In the Padilla case, Judge J. Michael Luttig of the 4th circuit court of appeals blasted the administration’s handling of the case and rejected their move to do a jurisdictional shuffle to keep this case from ever reaching the Supreme Court.
For those of you who haven’t been following: Padilla was arrested on a charge of a “dirty bomb” plot about 3.5 years ago and was held incommunicado in a military prison until heavy outside pressure forced them to allow him counsel (about a year and a half later). The case now pending before the court is whether the administration has the right to hold a US citizen as an enemy combatant outside of the legal system. The case is approaching the Supreme Court, so a few weeks ago the government tried a jurisdiction move: they formally charged Padilla with some unrelated matters and ordered him moved to a civilian prison, in an attempt to moot the issue, and asked the court of appeals to withdraw an earlier decision it made in their favor so that the Supreme Court wouldn’t have a chance to review it. Luttig is a very prominent (and very conservative) jurist, so the forcefulness of his statement today is a big deal.
News entries
If you haven’t been reading the news in the past few days, here are some important things:
(1) More details on the violence in China
(2) More on domestic spying by the NSA: FISA judge resigns in protest; interesting analysis from Slate; even more interesting analysis from Ars Technica.
(3) The latest version of the Scopes Monkey Trial ended. Analysis article; the judge’s decision is very worth reading if you have the time and want a very clear and systematic explanation of the problems with creationism.
Odd sentence:
(From a WP article about rioting in China)
“he was also director general of the Dongzhou Buddha Council, which the statement described as ‘a superstitious organization in charge of divine activities in Dongzhou.'”
I believe that some game that I run in the future will have to contain a Dongzhou Buddha Council, which will be in charge of divine activities in the area. Although I can’t imagine who would sit on it.
Nausea
I just got back from watching Syriana, and at this point I honestly feel like throwing up.
Might be spoilers
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 