The Dirty Tricks Squads

All right you guys – get out and Vote!
But WATCH OUT; the Dirty Tricks Squads are out in force….

Apparently winning IS everything, and there are a lot of people willing to do just about anything to make sure their man gets elected. Both sides are guilty, but there does appear to be a wide disparity in the extent and seriousness of the infractions. Democrats are being hammered in the right-wing media for things like vote buying and multiple registrations (by crack-heads no less, how cliché… ) – which HAS happened (link to it here: http://vote2004.eriposte.com/swingstates/ohio.htm#20041020). So far there have been a few isolated cases, maybe representing at most a few hundred votes. From the way the right-wing Bloggers were talking, you’d think the Dems had illegally influenced tens of thousands of votes all over the country…

Funny they should think that... ‘Cause the Republicans are on an election fraud warpath unprecedented in this Nation’s history. Well, actually maybe its always been this way and no one person knew enough to see the pattern. But with the Internet – the Rep’s are BUSTED. And ALREADY there have been convictions that have put well-connected Republican operatives in jail. The stories are both astounding in their brazenness and in the way the reveal the workings of the right-wing mindset. ANY ONE OF THEM could have swung the election results had they not been discovered in time. The up-to-date list of reported and/or alleged Election Fraud attempts can be found here: http://vote2004.eriposte.com/
Admittedly a pro-Kerry site, but also by far the most complete and current listing of incidents by both sides, and (sadly) updated daily.

To give you a taste of what’s going on, here a scanned copy of a flyer distributed throughout African-American neighborhoods in Milwaukee WI:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/28/201853/53

And lest you think that it’s just wacko’s out doing this, check out this guy:
http://vote2004.eriposte.com/swingstates/pennsylvania.htm#20041026

And lest you think it’s just party hacks and other independent operators, here’s what the Secretary of State of Ohio has been up to:
http://vote2004.eriposte.com/swingstates/ohio.htm#20041012

Christ… and we’re going to teach the Iraqi’s Democracy…?!
If you suspect an attempt at election fraud or violations of voter’s rights, report it using the hotline here: http://www.ourvote.com/.

Four More Years

If you despise the Bush administration and everything it stands for, don’t vote. If, despite everything, you are still undecided: vote Bush/Cheney. Vote for Four More Years.

The people who run the country are like that asshole at work that you watched lie, cheat and steal their way to the top. No real talent in their job, left a trail disasters and ruined careers behind them, yet rose steadily ever upward. Hell – you may even work for them now. In any large organization – you CAN succeed if have ONLY political skill. In fact, if that’s all you have, you’re better off being selfish, arrogant, and unconcerned about petty obstacles like ethics and touchy-feely people issues. This Administration is composed of the best and brightest political knife-fighters in modern history. And they run the show like knife-fighters: aggressive, violent, fast to act, slow to reflect. They know what they want, and they go after it with single-minded, unquestioning intensity.

Another four years of this will be an unmitigated disaster.

But look at the polls – this is what the people WANT. HALF the voting public wants more of the same. Apparently a large number of Americans STILL think you can have war without casualties, Democracy by invasion, empire with a volunteer military, unilateral foreign policy AND allies, accede to every whim of big corporations and yet improve the lives of the middle class.

Well, they should get what they want. And get it hard. Over and over until they can’t take it any more. Kerry voters are selfish. Who are we to deny half the American voters their God-given right to be ruled by tin-hat, banana-republic dictator wanna-be’s?

Americans need to learn that when they vote for a Government of draft-dodging ultra-right wing ideologues and corporate bag-men, there is a price to pay. And to learn that lesson, they need to pay that price. So that next time, people will really understand; in their polluted, impoverished, outsourced, health-careless, war-weary lives, that corruption mixed with inflexible ideology is a straight-line path to misery.

If Kerry wins the election – THE NEO-CONS ARE OFF THE HOOK. They are freed from the responsibility of Iraq. Back to their cushy jobs at the Hoover Institution, at Halliberton, on the lecture circuit. And they will be ubiquitous on their obnoxious talk shows, in congress, in the senate, in the media… picking, poking, undermining everything the Kerry Administration tries to do. They need to STAY. They pooped on the carpet, and now they need to clean it up even if they wreck it trying.

Americans are addicted. Addicted to a confused, corrosive, xenophobic ideology that places a higher value on Faith than Truth. It has given us cancer, and it will kill us. It’s the same cancer that almost killed the Europeans in the first half of this century, and that almost killed America in the 1860’s. Sure, if Kerry wins we exercise this latest tumor, and maybe we’ll even recover… but we’ll still be addicted, and the cancer will come back. We need to cure this addiction once and for all, and the way you always start that process is to show the addict the ruin the addition leads to. And no-one is more qualified to take us there than a second Bush/Cheney administration.

The Next 7 Posts

The series of science posts below are my attempt to put into people's minds the most important scientific data of our time. I have tried to do it by finding links to images or interactive web sites that satisfy the following criteria:
(1) the data is real and profoundly fundamental to understanding the universe and/or our place in it,
(2) if an image; it is beautiful, and makes great Wallpaper,
(3) if an interactive site; it is fun, informative and deep,
(4) the image or site conveys its profound nature.

I deliberately did not explain the data or the theories they support. Maybe I'll write a book someday... but for the Blog that would've been unmanagable. But I did try to say, briefly, why I think these are important.

Hope you like.

WMAP CMB Map

This is the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) sky map of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The CMB is the flash of light from the Big Bang itself. This image is a baby photo of the Universe at ~400,000 years old. This image, and the data used to generate it, is proof that: (1) There was a Big Bang – the entire universe started from a small, dense, hot ball of gas. (2) The universe is expanding at a rate of 71 km/sec/Mpc. (3) The Universe is 12 – 14 billion years old. (4) Tiny, random, fluctuations in the Big Bang generated all large-scale structure (galaxies & bigger) in the Universe. It just doesn't get any more profound than that.

The two things you need to know about this map is that the spectrun fits a perfect Planck curve to better than one part in one thousand, the mean temperature from that spectrum is 2.725 K, and the fluctuations shown in the map are from +200 to -200 micro-K.

WMAP CMB temperature map (770k JPEG):
http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/map_images/pub_images/ILC_Maps/ILC_b.jpg

References: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni.html, http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html

HST Ultra-Deep Field

This is the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2004 Ultra-Deep Field image of a region of “empty” space in the constellation Fornax, below Orion. Taken with the ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed by Shuttle astronauts in 2002) and NICMOS (Near Infra-Red Camera and Multiple Object Spectrometer) cameras, this image reveals galaxies that are too faint to be seen by any ground-based telescope. This image sees objects four times fainter than the 1996 and 1998 HST Deep-Field images taken with the WFPC2 (Wide-Field Planetary Camera). These are the faintest, most distant and oldest objects ever observed. Some objects in this image are so heavily red-shifted that we are seeing them as they were a mere 800 to 400 million years after the Big Bang. In all, the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field contains over 10,000 galaxies. This image is arguably THE single most important image in astronomy.

This is a great image to go through with an image magnifier. If you think your computer can handle it – try to download the 60.2 MB full-resolution (6200 x 6200 pixel) JPEG image and pore over THAT beauty. Just look at this amazing photo. Then tell me we’re alone in the universe.

Image (500k JPEG):
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2004/07/images/a/formats/print.jpg
Press release: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2004/07/
Main Hubble web site: http://hubblesite.org/

Earth from Space

Home sweet home… there’s no place like home. The Earth may not be the only planet in the Universe with life on it, but it’s the one we live on, and we’d better start taking better care of it. These two images clearly show the beauty of this place, and our profound impact on this pretty little blue-green gem.

From the Blue Marble site within the Earth Observatory, data from the Terra satellite MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) camera; absolutely THE best daytime image of the earth (234k JPEG):
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/data/ev116/ev11656_land_shallow_topo_2048.jpg

From the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System (OLS), the Earth at night (547k JPEG):
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/earth_lights_lrg.jpg

NASA’s Earth Observatory http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ has so many wonderful images it’ll take years to browse through them all. Also on Blue Marble are ultra-high res images of, for example, the daylight image of the earth above – to 1 km resolution! (in two 500MB TIFF files!). Those, if your computer can handle them, would be a great overnight downloads to study with an image magnifier. Another great source of images is the Earth Science Picture of the Day http://epod.usra.edu/ site.

Plate Tectonics

The Earth is alive, and I don’t just mean with people. Plate Tectonics was the core discovery that allows us to understand the origin of earthquakes and volcanoes (which are rather important in my part of the world), geological history, the fossil record, geomagnetism and more. We really DO understand how our planet formed, how it evolved, and how it works.

You know, it doesn’t take much understanding of geology to see that Creationism is absolutely laughable. Or it would be if it didn’t keep ending up in school curricula... Here’s an elegant reminder that the world is a real, dynamic, evolving planet, and was NOT created in 6 days (2.7MB JPEG):
http://denali.gsfc.nasa.gov/dtam/data/ftp/dtam.jpg

Reference: http://denali.gsfc.nasa.gov/dtam/

Periodic Table of the Elements

I really put this here for completeness, as anybody with any kind of education knows what this is, and images of all sorts are a dime a dozen on the Internet. But there is a reason for that - its importance absolutely cannot be understated. The Elements are the fundamental building blocks of all that you and I can experience directly. The periodic table is the fundamental result of Quantum Electrodynamics, and is the fundamental basis of Chemistry. Without it there would be no Technology as we understand it today.

Here’s a pretty good interactive Periodic table:
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/index.html

Human Genome

DNA is life, at least on this planet. Literally the instructions for building a living thing. Biology was in the Dark Ages until DNA was understood. Now we have actually mapped out the entire Human Genome. This is a momentous event… it takes human biology out of the realm of science and puts it right smack into Engineering. The Information Age is history folks; we are in the BioEngineering Age now, for better or worse.

You can read your Genome for yourself at the NBCI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) Genome MapViewer :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mapview/

(select Mammals\Homo Sapiens to get to the Human Chromosomes, then click on the numbered chromosome of interest)

Make the effort to spend some time cruising the Genome... there's some amazing stuff to be found. If this doesn’t give you the willies, nothing will.

Tree of Life

Evolution isn’t a theory folks, it’s a demonstrable fact. Natural Selection is a theory. Punctuated Equilibrium is a theory, Creationism, is... well is religious doctrine unique to Evangelical Christians, but it poses as a theory.

Evolution is the FACT that these theories must be able to explain. The way Evolution is visualized is through Cladistics, which, although coming in lots of different flavors, is basically the way we try to assemble and visualize the evolutionary hierarchy; the Tree of Life. Sadly there’s no cool picture, but the Tree exists, and you can browse your way through it:
http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html

The Reality-Based Community

Damn! Al f---ing Gore should be President!

Yeah, yeah – I know what you’re thinking… “old news, pal” But that’s not why I say this. Let me explain… Yesterday morning I was working on my next Blog post, trying to sort out what, exactly, is wrong with the way the Bush administration sees the Universe. I got stuck – I knew what I wanted to say, but couldn’t figure out how to say it. So I let it sit for the rest of the day. Then, completely by accident, while channel-surfing just before bedtime, I ran across a re-broadcast of Al Gore’s full speech at Georgetown University yesterday (Monday October 18, 2004). I caught it about 25% of the way through. Fan-freakin’-tastic! He just SLAMMED the Bush presidency. Relentless, brutal even, loaded with facts and data, and all tied together with a clear explanation of the Bush world-view. And I must say, as a speech it was downright inspirational… it was smart and clear and detailed, yet delivered in a relentless, jack-hammer format that kept me riveted to the screen.

Just what I had been struggling to say – and with the extra bonus of being loaded to overflowing with fabulous talking points to pound your Republican friends with. So I killed that Post and will let Al do the talkin’.

Here’s the full text of that speech:

http://www.algore04.com/ or http://www.algoredemocrats.com/

If it get moved in the coming days Google for the following:

Transcript: The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush
Remarks as delivered by former Vice President Al Gore Gaston Hall at Georgetown UniversityMonday, October 18, 2004

I’ve picked out some choice cuts to wet your appetite. I've tried to stay with the flow of his core message. But if you put no effort into the election except to read ONE thing and then vote… READ HIS SPEECH.

Most of the problems President Bush has caused for this country stemmed not from his belief in God but his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interest of the wealthy, and of large corporations over and above the interests of the American people. It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency.

The essential cruelty of Bush's game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals, and then cloaks them with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world. And in the process he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities.

Most disturbing of all: his contempt for the rule of reason and his early successes in persuading the nation that his ideologically based views accurately describe the world have now tempted him to the hubristic an genuinely dangerous illusion that reality is itself a commodity that can be created with clever public relations and propaganda skills; and, where specific controversies are concerned, simply purchased as a turnkey operation from the industries most affected.
George Orwell said, and I quote, "The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue. And then when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right." Intellectually it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time. The only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality -- usually on a battlefield.

He claimed that he was going to war in order to deal with an imminent threat to the United States. But again the evidence shows clearly that there was no such imminent threat, and that Bush knew that at the time -- or at least had been told that by those in the best position to know. He claims that gaining dominance of Iraqi oil fields for American producers was never part of his calculation. But we now know, from a document uncovered by the New Yorker magazine, and dated just two weeks to the day after Bush's inauguration, that his National Security Council was ordered to meld its review of operational policies toward rogue states with the secretive Cheney energy task force's, quote "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields," end quote. We also know from documents obtained in discovery proceedings against that Cheney task force, by the odd combination of Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club that one of the documents that was receiving scrutiny by the task force during that same time period was a highly detailed map of Iraq -- showing none of the cities, none of the places where people lived, but showing in great detail the location of every single oil deposit known to exist in the country, with dotted lines demarking blocks for promising exploration -- a map which in the words of a Canadian journalists resembled a butcher's drawing of a steer with the prime cuts delineated by dotted lines.

The same pattern that produced America's catastrophe in Iraq has also produced a catastrophe for our domestic economy. So President Bush's distinctive approach, and habit of mind, is clearly recognizable. He asserted over and over again that his massive tax cut would not primarily benefit the wealthy, would stimulate jobs, would increase economic growth. Now, we face the largest deficits in the history of our nation. Simultaneously we face the largest trade deficit and current account deficits in our history.

In yesterday's New York Times, Ron Suskind related a truly startling conversation with a White House official who was angry that he had written an article in 2002 that the White House didn't like. And this senior advisor to Bush told Suskind that reporters like him live, "in what we called the reality-based community." And he denigrated such people for believing that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. He went on to say, that's not the way the world really works anymore, when we act we create our own reality, and while you're studying that reality, judiciously as you will, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study, too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors, he said, and you, all of you will be left to just study what we do. By failing to adjust their policies to unexpected realities, they have made it difficult to carry out any of their policies competently. Indeed, this is the answer to what some have regarded as a mystery, how could a team so skilled in politics be so fumbling and incompetent when it comes to policy. The truth is that the same insularity and zeal that makes him effective at smash mouth politics, makes him terrible at governing. The Bush-Cheney administration is a rarity in American history, it is simultaneously dishonest and incompetent.

Its me again… and there you have it. What I was struggling to make clear. The Bush Presidency is a Faith-Based Presidency. Republicans live in a Faith-Based community – their World is one of Unquestioning Faith. They believe what they believe, and the facts on the ground are completely irrelevant. Problem is - they aren't irrelevant. Faith may be OK when its Faith in God, but last time I checked even George Bush and Dick Cheney haven't (YET) claimed their God. So let them Believe - you can't change the minds of people who think that Doubt is a Sin.

The rest of us apparently live in the "Reality-Based Community". To Republicans that's an INSULT, folks. THINK about that for a minute. Policy decisions for the real world require a President who can see that there IS a real world. And whatever you think of Kerry, at very least, he understands THAT.

America as Jazz

And now for something completely different...

At the dawn of Jazz, Black Blues musicians and classically-trained Creole musicians began to make music in between the slow, deliberate Blues beats. Improvising as they went, they began to fill in the spaces with spontaneous creation. They used these spaces to express their musical creativity, individuality, cleverness and skill. Eventually they filled all the empty, unused spaces with sound and creation. Thus was Jazz born. Since then it has continued to evolve, where today it has become a bewildering variety of sounds, rhythms and styles.

Jazz was born in America, and some argue it could only have arisen in America. Maybe… but it is certainly the ultimate American music. In fact, I would argue that America is the equivalent in human endeavor to Jazz in music. Americans excel at, are even obsessed by, filling in the empty spaces between the slow, deliberate beats of human activity. As soon as any gap appears in what people can, will or want to do – somebody jumps in to fill it up. They do it to express their creativity, individuality, cleverness and skill. If “Nature Abhors a Vacuum”, then “Americans Abhor a Lost Opportunity”.

It doesn’t seem to matter where the Opportunity lies… business, art, science, politics, religion, … You name it and some American is looking for, or has already found, yet another new niche in that field. Skydiving? Exciting. Snowboarding? Cool. But wait – why not Skydive standing on a Snowboard? Yup. You get the picture.

Is this uniquely American? Certainly not. I would argue it is uniquely Human. Is it universal in America? Certainly not. It is something that comes and goes, and appears here and there. But for whatever reason, in the era in which we live, it is in America where that creative obsession finds maximum expression.

This is something that non-American’s, and probably a lot of American’s as well, don’t seem to understand, and that’s a problem. Most people in the world come from, certainly by American standards, very homogeneous places. Their country, or tribe or whatever, is fairly well defined by religion, language, race/ethnicity, and a shared history and geography. Their world is one where people are organized into large, distinct, easily identified homogeneous chunks. Their music is immediately recognizable.

America isn’t like that. America is so complex it’s incomprehensible. There is SO MUCH variety, SO MUCH variation, that it becomes impossible to digest. No empty space left free, no note left unused. And seen through a worldview used to grouping people into large, distinct, identifiable chunks, America is a MESS. In fact – it’s the classic melting pot. A whole pile of different cultures thrown together and melted into an undifferentiated goo. Musically it’s just noise.

But its not noise – its Jazz on a grand scale. Incomprehensibly complex, rich, varied and ever-changing. You have to understand that to understand this country. America is NOT the US Government. America is NOT mass-media culture. Those are products of the Law of Large Numbers acting on a riotously varied population. America is a state of mind, a way of approaching life that at its core is about individual expression and creativity. Just like Jazz.

Pay for Stress

In my career as a manager in a high technology company, I have learned a few simples rules that I tried to teach my most promising employees. This one is BY FAR the most important, and all you young aspiring Rock Stars out there would do well to understand it… nay… ABSORB IT INTO YOUR SOUL. I call it the PS Rule:

The PS Rule: Companies Pay for Stress

Note that in this context, I mean Stress in the Corporate white-collar sense. You know – artery-busting deadlines, ridiculous hours, too much to do, endless travel, no personal life, no family life, failure = unemployment, screaming customers, irrational management, problems that can’t be solved, a million things that make your life miserable that you have no control over. Mental stress. Emotional stress. Ethical stress. Pressure on your very Soul. That sort of stuff.

When you enter the Technology workforce from University, especially Grad School, in most cases, life if good. Cool research – with decent equipment, all (well, most) of the needed resources, and focused team effort towards a real goal – typically a product or service that hopefully people will like so much they’ll actually pay for it. You’re in the lab, working on the Future. Its exciting, its fun, and you get paid Good Money.

Or do you?

You don’t. And that is as it should be. You are inexperienced, unproven, and while you may be an expert in your specialty, you are also tied to that specialty and presumably enjoy the work. You might even do it (or if a former post-doc, actually DID) for what amounts to bread and water. If the job is FUN, you’ll do it even if the pay sucks. And even if you won’t – someone else will. And let’s be honest – your impact on the Bottom Line is, well, tenuous at best. So you chug along, and if you are ambitious, eventually you start thinking “my contributions are significant, I want advancement, I want more money”. And so you start to agitate for a promotion, more responsibility, more money. You tell your boss “I’m smart, I contribute, and I want more money”. Maybe you add in for completeness “And if I don’t get it here I’ll get it somewhere else”.

Ever heard the expression: “Careful what you wish for, you might get it?”

Assuming, for argument’s sake, that you boss doesn’t simply shrug and say “Good luck, don’t use me as a reference”, (boy, you simply wouldn’t believe how many folks walk right into that one!) you now need to evaluate the consequences of The PS Rule. Companies Pay for Stress) You have a (relatively) low-paying job – but it’s in the lab doing sciencey-stuff all day long. It’s low stress – whether you think so or not. You want more pay – the PS Rule says your stress level will go up in proportion to you increased compensation.

Every increment brings you closer to the Bottom Line. Simply because your compensation is larger you now have a bigger impact on the bottom line – you have to produce that much more to justify the added expense. The tasks you get are more important: deadlines are shorter, the consequences of success greater, of failure more severe. You have more responsibility… at some point you can no longer blame problems on your boss, on the Facilities guys, on the weather – its YOUR project, its YOUR success, YOUR failure. The Company prospers/suffers, profit sharing grows/shrinks, your colleagues judge you shit-hot/putz. But this is how you succeed, how you grow. Take on the hard problems and fix them, build your reputation, fatten your resume, collect your reward. It works, but this is a zero-sum game, and it comes at a cost.

The cost is stress. Sometimes LOTS of it. How you adapt to it basically determines how successful your career will be (assuming for purposes of this discussion that you are actually successful. The PS Rule breaks down when applied to genuinely incompetent individuals). If you digest stress easily, adapting to ever higher levels of it without suffering adverse effects, you will prosper. If you do it right – every new high in stress will make anything less stressful seem easy. If you do it wrong, well, you have basically two choices: drop back down to an acceptable stress level and accept the corresponding compensation and prospects (which is fine – at some point everyone has to take this step), or die. Literally.

Stress, REAL stress, kills people. Depression, migraines, heart attacks, cancer; a thousand ills real and imagined. Bad habits: excessive drinking, drug use, aggression, violence, gambling, crime. How you react to stress determines in a very real sense the quality of your career and life . And of course, knowledge is power. Understanding what is happening is the first step towards dealing with it.

As my first boss told me: “money is how companies keep score”. But it's still an accounting: for every dollar the Company gives you, they expect something back. And no matter what it is that you give, at the heart of it what you give them is a piece of yourself. Every piece you remove can generate wealth (however you define it) or pain (however you define it). Learn the game you are playing; define your criteria for success, and play to win. But you can’t win if you don’t understand the rules. And Rule #1 is: they Pay for Stress.

Now get out there and show them what you are made of!