Mathematicians Rule?

Before Copernicus, in the civilized world, mathematicians had managed to keep the Earth the center of the universe. Their math was maybe a little convoluted, maybe a little beyond the ken of the average person, but it worked.

Copernicus said, start here, not there, and the math is easier.

Now, mathematicians are working overtime to emphasize the relevance of our apparently 4-dimensional space-time continuum using, for instance, string theory, which is “based on the (deceptively simple) premise that at Planckian scales, where the quantum effects of gravity…” etc. They note that strings can begin or end on D-branes. So there you go: once again,
mathematicians are working overtime to keep us important.

Presumably, somewhere, sometime, someif, someelse, there’s a Copernicus saying “Hey, listen, all we have to do is put THIS at the middle instead of THAT and everything falls into place.”

Maybe there’ll be a visit.

My Conspiracy Compendium

Casey Denney wonders how 23-year-old army veteran Dillon Warn can call the Iraq war “unprovoked.”
There remain a lot of people like Casey Denney for whom the reality-based world is elusive.
Facts:

• Iraq had absolutely NO involvement in the 9/11/2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. That needs to be constantly repeated, because Bush and the Bushies continue to imply - sometimes outright say - Iraq did it.
• Iraq had absolutely NO Weapons of Mass Destruction. That also needs to be constantly repeated, because Bush and the Bushies continue to imply that they did, and for sure someday they will be found (gee, wouldn’t somebody use at least some part of them eventually?).
• Bush family & Saudi Arabian bin Laden family are friends and oil associates.
• Osama bin Laden masterminded the 9/11/2001 destruction of the Trade Center.
• 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian
• Bush & Cheney repeatedly state that Iran supplies fighters in Iraq.
• Iraq’s majority is Shia.
• Iran is a Shia country.
• al-Qaeda is a Sunni group led by a Saudi Arabian.
• Saudi Arabia supplies Sunni fighters in Iraq.
• Saudi Arabia is a Sunni country.
• Saddam Hussein was a Sunni; his ruling group was Sunni.
• Saudi Arabia is seldom mentioned as the place from which al-Qaeda originated.
• Saudi Arabia is a major supplier of oil to the United States.

Some more Facts:

• All the bin Ladens who were in the US when the Trade Center was destroyed got on a plane and left the country at a time when no air traffic was allowed in the US (verifiable?).
• Osama bin Laden has never been captured or killed, and is still at large. (As far as I know)
• When the United States had Osama bin Laden in its sights, the US backed off.
• al Qaeda’s base of operations now seems to be in Pakistan, which is our ally.
• Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow American military bases in their country. (Is that right?)
• Cheney & Bush said Iraq involved in 9/11
• Cheney still says Iraq involved in 9/11

Obvious conspiracy conclusion:

• George W Bush & Dick Cheney and their fellow conspirators, at the request of the Saudi Arabian bin Laden family, stopped trying to kill or capture Osama bin Laden.
• The bin Laden family would have lost face if they had allowed the US to kill a member of their family. As it is, bin Laden is a hero in much of the Muslim world and the bin Ladens’ status is enhanced by that (despite the Saudis’ fear that if they make a misstep al Qaeda will begin to harrass the Saudis).

So there they are, all the factoids and such necessary to answer the question: why is the US in Iraq.

Anniversary Speech

I made the following speech as a City Council Comment on St. Patrick’s Day 2008.

Happy St. Patty’s Day.

“It’s been over 6 years since the US entered Afghanistan to crush the repressive Taliban and crush al-qaeda.
The Taliban have regrouped. When al-qaeda disappeared into the mountains, the US pulled back.
Remember Osama bin-Laden? His whereabouts are unknown. Maybe in Pakistan.
It’s been over 5 years since the US entered Iraq to get those weapons of mass destruction that were north, south, east, and west of Baghdad. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Didn’t even have to say what they were to dupe America. Oh, for those of you who still believe Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction: give it up. Not there.
It’s all such a huge mass of cynicism and lies and hypocricy and incompetence that I can’t really find a good way to tackle it but there is this:
our official count of dead American soldiers in Iraq is near 4,000, and
the cost of George Bush’s romantic adventure to Iraq is about 3 trillion dollars, and
no one we’ve elected has the courage or good sense to mention that somebody has to pay for it
Today the US Government started using your money - my money - to prop up Wall Street.
There’s still no policy proposed to pay for any of this stuff.
And here in Missoula we’re still looking for handouts from the Federal Government.
Hell, they might as well send us a few billion, it’s all free money.”

For what it’s worth, I bowdlerized the last sentence.

Crap.

Evolution? Smarter or dumber?

I thought this would make a simple post. And of course I was right.

Is the human race becoming smarter? or dumber?
(is it a given that the human race isn’t staying the same?)
Are the smartest humans becoming smarter or dumber? Are the human race’s smartest people alive today? Or not?
If the smartest humans are alive today, are they powerless because of the aggregate stupidity of the rest of us? Is that an Ayn Rand thing? How do you pronounce Ayn? (This has been fully responded to by Larry Kralj).

Put aside common sense* for just a moment and consider that it’s been 65,000,000 years since dinosaurs (except for birds) infested the Earth. All Human Beings share a common upty-great grandpa from 60,000 years ago (named Umpty). Neither of those things has any bearing on human intelligence trends, as far as I know; it’s just that given enough time, unexpected things can happen.

Which is more important: whether the smartest people get smarter or dumber, or whether the rest of us get smarter or dumber? I’d venture that us non-smart people don’t advance the Human Race; it’s the smart people who do that. Us non-smart people have our place, though; we act as the governor that keeps the smart people from going to far, too fast.

*common sense tells us that God’s tiniest fingers keep the proper spin on each and every quark, whether it be up, down or even dare I say, charmed; it’s much like David Spathaky spinning plates or Meadowlark Lemon spinning a basketball. Actually, way more like David Spathaky. That’s been quite a feat for the 6,000 years since God set it up. Nobody with any sense could imagine God doing that for sixty-five million years, much less 4 1/2 billion years or more. Why should He?

The cost of forestalling terrorism

2/29/08 A couple of days ago I was listening to a government spokesman say once again that because the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, no Terrorist Act Has Been Carried out in the United States or against US Installations anywhere in the world since. (Not counting attacks against all American installations, fixed and mobile, in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course).

Starting here: 3,000 people killed in the US 9/11/2001, mostly by Saudi Arabians trained in Afghanistan.

Since the US invaded Iraq for no particular reason in 2003, almost 4,000 American soldiers died there, 30,000 American soldiers were wounded there, 400+ contractors died there, 150 journalists (mostly locals) were killed there, and there are almost 90,000 documented Iraqi civilian deaths (but as General Tommy Franks said, we don’t do body counts).

The dollar cost looks to be over 3,000,000,000,000 dollars so far (borrowed money).

Leaving aside the question of whether the Iraq invasion kept terrorist acts from being carried out etc., is 4,000++ American lives and 3 trillion dollars a reasonable price to pay to forestall some imagined terrorist act?

Iraq is better? or worse?

3/2/8 there are 2 Missoulian articles on the same page. One says the situation in Iraq is improved. The other says Iraqis are moving from Iraq to the US in record numbers. The things-are-better article is from AP. It doesn’t go into what it means to be better. I don’t remember where the other article was from. I could go look but why bother?

Why are all those Iraqis moving to the US if things are going so well in Iraq?

Sunspots.

Things change. Global Warming is a big deal. Why argue about its cause? Is it bovine flatulence? Is it coal-fired power plants? Is it sunspots? Is it the good intentions of do-gooders? What does it matter? Whatever it is, the puny efforts of 7 billion people won’t change things one bit. Except for the worse. Besides, the Doomsday Vault is ready for anything. Including seabottom methane.

As luck would have it, we don’t have that long before it’s all over.

Which leads to the obvious question: how much money can Missoulians afford to spend on streets and parks and sidewalks and pools and police and open space and such? It’s just common sense that there’s a limit, right? What is it? Should a majority of voters get to decide what it is? Should they get to vote? Or should their elected representatives decide not to let people make that decision for them?

If Missoula is now poor it’s time to stop buying amenities. No more sidewalks. No more paved roads. No more parks with grass. Lay off all those firefighters and police and truck drivers and computer techs and such.

Everybody except the elected people. We need them. A lot.

7 billion people

Figure 100 pounds each. There’s young ones and old ones, and most of them are hungry.

700,000,000,000 pounds. 350 million tons. 18% of that is carbon (per a wiki), or 63 million tons of carbon. .038% of Earth’s atmosphere is CO2. The atmosphere weighs 5.1361×10¹⁸ kg, per Wikipedia. You’d think they’d use pounds, eh? that’s 11 times 10 to the 18th power pounds, or just, like, 5 or 6 times 10 to, say, the 15th power.

Heck, I have no idea how much a pound of carbon weighs… oh, yeah, I get it.

So there you have it, all worked out. What? Oh. The atmosphere has 1 trillion 900 billion pounds of carbon dioxide

To convert carbon to co2, multiply the carbon times 44/12.

To see if human beings have  helped ward off global warming, do the calculation backward.

Or watch the Grammys.

Miscellany

Some stuff I just might write about if I ever get around to it are,

What is the weight of 7 billion people?
What is the weight of their carbon content?
What happens to the carbon when people die?
What portion of that carbon is permanently fixed by embalming?

Tipping point: seabottom methane.
Only 7 billion years until the earth is engulfed by the sun.

How much money can Missoulians afford to spend on streets and sidewalks and pools and open space and such?

How much money does it cost to do all the things that need to be done?

70,000 people.
half are renters.
half own.
Most owners are actually buying their homes. Most owe more than 3/4 of the cost of their homes(?).
Many owners’ homes are worth less than the owners owe.

Do we have more than we can afford to maintain? Should we stop putting in sidewalks? Should we have more buses?

7 billion years and it’s all over for sure.
Krakatoa - stone age.
Cretaceous meteor - yow.
Paleozoic meteor - start again.

9 trillion dollars plus what? soc sec? vet bennies? Medicare/aid?
Who’s gonna pay all that back? Me? Why me?

al-qaeda wants everything.
- support from our crucial source of oil, Saudi Arabia (Bush’s Friends)
when Bush is gone, will S.A. still be our friends?
Oil sources
Venezuela, Russia, Canada?, Iran, Kuwait?,
All our manufactured goods come from - China?! Friend? Will China always take chits for manufacturing our stuff? What if they stop?

wealth comes from? adding value!
What added value does the US provide/create?
ideas? used to provide ideas. Then sold them to other countries/multinational corporations

Is the human race becoming smarter? or dumber?
(is it a given that the human race isn’t staying the same?)
Are the smartest humains becoming smarter or dumber? Are the human race’s smartest people alive today? Or not?
If the smartest humans are alive today, are they powerless because of the aggregate stupidity of the rest of us? Is that an Ayn Rand thing? How do you pronounce Ayn?

**just what is a “regressive?”