SRF Heavy Industries

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Beermas is coming.

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The cool thing about being a reverend as well as a scientist is that I can still enjoy this article from the BBC: Hints of ‘time before Big Bang’

See, the scientist in me keeps me from forgetting the rules of science, including the big one right at the top, which says, “If you can’t test your hypothesis, it’s not science.” The bulk of cosmology is conjecture and extrapolation, which is to say, mythology. If your conjecture and extrapolation lends itself to being supported or disproved by later observation, it’s a step closer to science. If your conjecture produces a list of things to look for that would support it or disprove it, then it may in fact be a legitimate hypothesis and is most probably actually science—or as close as you can get without a lab.

The part of cosmology that makes it difficult to be a science is the fact that it doesn’t readily fit into a lab yet. You can’t attempt to produce effects on a cosmological scale under controlled conditions.

And if you discover a way to do so, please don’t do it in my backyard. Or in the galaxy where I keep all my stuff.

Where the reverend part fits in is that I do enjoy mythology. There is a kind of logic that applies to it. There are tests for internal consistency. You can completely evaluate the worth of a myth in terms of the axioms it posits, applied to itself.

But you can’t really test a myth for anything other than consistency. That’s basically the same thing we do with science, except we use equipment.

The story they present here is a pretty one, one of universes giving quiet, surreptitious birth to children universes, and somehow they tie this into the here-to-fore inexplicable arrow of time. (You should read it and any supporting material [which seems, on the surface, to leave out the possibility that the cosmic background radiation might appear to be asymmetric with respect to us because we’ve surfed a bit down the face of the wave, as it were] and see if you can make out what they’re saying.)

That’s not surprising. Myths are constructed to make us more comfortable with the unknown. Which currently includes entropy (the way we can tell the past from the future) and gravity and the reason the universe appears to be expanding. It would be comforting if we could tie up all of those into one neat and elegant story—comforting like God Himself is comforting—but it’s still nothing but a story, a myth, until we can use the story to make predictions and then test those predictions with controlled observations.

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Bob Moon: Big oil stands to make billions of dollars in windfall profits from the royalty concessions it gets from the federal government — read that “the American taxpayers.” That’s the bottom line of a report released today by the Government Accountability Office.

During the 1990’s Congress gave oil companies a pass on royalty payments in order to encourage deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and many in Congress regret it.

If you missed it, that’s Big Oil, whose had record profits quarter after quarter and year after year, weaseling out of paying what amounts to taxes on mineral rights for sucking the oil out of the ground on public lands. To put it another way, that’s YOUR oil and MY oil they’re pulling out of the ground and selling back to us.

Just so you know.

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush’s first business venture, Arbusto Energy.

Isn’t that … fantastic. At this rate, Pharaon has a good chance of bankrolling a decent defense should the FBI actually ever get the chance to pick him up.

It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Kudos to London’s Slinkachu, who’s taking full credit for these.

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Papers, please.

This has already happened in my own neighborhood. Randomly stopped by a cop who checked my ID and asked why I was in the neighborhood. Pulled over to be told I had a flickery tail-light and also asked why I was in the neighborhood. Followed through my neighborhood by a cop who tailgated me at maybe half a car-length for the entire duration until I pulled into my driveway. Because obviously if I’m a white guy in a black neighborhood, I’m there to buy drugs. Has nothing to do with having bought the last $100,000 house inside the I-285 perimeter before the market bubble.

That’s not as formal as they’re setting up to do it in DC. But, hey, they’ve been doing this in the nicer neighborhoods in South Florida for fifty years.

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More reporting from Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor at The Guardian:

Prison ships, torture claims, and missing detainees

Vessels used: USS Bataan Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, 257m x 32m. Carries 3,200 people. Took part in activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Holds a 600-bed hospital; USS Peleliu Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship, 250m x 32.5m. Carries 2,805 people. Was deployed as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, on August 22 2003, and took part in activities in south Iraq and Persian Gulf; USNS Stockham Used to provide support for the US Marine Corps.
Other ships that have been stationed at or near Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which warrant investigation regarding possible secret detention facilities, are, according to Reprieve: USNS Watson, Watkins, Sister, Charlton, Pomeroy, Red Cloud, Soderman, and Dahl; MV PFC William B Baugh, Alex Bonnyman, Franklin J Phillips, Louis J Huage Jr, and James Anderson Jr

Complaint over British role in extraordinary rendition

Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general who is professor of international security studies at West Point military academy, has twice spoken publicly about the use of Diego Garcia to detain suspects. In May 2004, he said: “We’re probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram airfield, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq.” He repeated the claim in December last year.

Up to seventeen ships going in and out of Diego Garcia. Somewhere on the order of ten thousand US Naval and Marine troops who know more than a few details and are keeping quiet.

This is for, you know, my own records. Since everyone who used to care about this kind of thing is completely numb now and turns their face away so as to be able to get through the day without screaming.

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No results found for “dramatic femur”.

I’ve saved you all.

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Boy, are my arms tired. *YOU MUST CLICK*

***

Exhausted. Every damned day, exhausted.

This weekend I did the taxes. Not really a month late since Sherman the F2 Tornado gave us a tad more than a month’s extension to file for Fulton and DeKalb counties. Federal tax forms = six pages this year including two pages of the full-on form 1040, Schedule A, Schedule C, Schedule SE, and form 8863. This doesn’t count three pages of GA form 500 and resubmitting Federal Schedule A to Georgia. Nor does it count a dry run on form 2106 (two pages) before I figured out all that crap belonged on Schedule C. And it’s pretty funny how every form makes you stop and go fill out another chunk of some other form before you can continue. I had to work hard to get my dependencies straightened out to avoid the most basic compilation errors. Doing your taxes shouldn’t be like that.

Fortunately, at the lowest level, code is code. It all works the same.

Hey, Georgia. The computerized “fill-in” form is inconvenient as hell when you can’t save it and have to hit “tab” between every fucking character you type. In that long list of things you accept donations for at the end of the form, why don’t you allow us to tip $5 to updating your bogus ancient ScanTronic crapola hardware to something modern for next year?

And here’s a tip for all governments involved: how about not making the process so complicated you need a degree in order to get through it without screwing yourself out of a bundle or risking going to jail? For that matter, the criminal code could use a similar overhaul. The only correct answer for “Do you understand the charges that are being brought against you?” is “How the hell could I, your honor? I’m not wealthy enough to have the money or free time to study law and/or accounting. Once the state has paid for my CPA and my education sufficient to allow me to pass the bar, I’ll get back to you.”

Again, code is code. I try to avoid programming in languages I don’t know, but I can usually get by. Regardless, if you have to pay someone for criminal defense or tax preparation to make sure it gets done right, the system is broken. And unfairly skewed against people who would find the hiring of such people a hardship.

The day previous was spent taking apart the trap under the kitchen sink to snake twenty-five feet of manual auger through twenty-year-old sludge to try to poke some kind of hole. Three or four full-extension passes later, the sink drains enough to wash half an evening’s worth of cooking and serving dishes before you have to take a half-hour break for the sinks to drain again. That’s not clear enough–not enough bandwidth–to consider installing a dishwasher and/or garbage disposal. It _is_ just a system of tubes, after all…. Networking is networking. Moving the sludge.

Before appliances are feasible a big chunk of drain pipes in the crawlspace will need replacing or pressure-flushing or whatever an actual plumber thinks will clear the goddamn line. If what I snaked up is typical of what’s in there, we’ll probably have to rocket the replaced pipes/removed sludge into the heart of the sun for proper disposal.

Next week I’ll do the DBA metaphors for cleaning out a fridge and doing yardwork. Pruning, mowing, cleaning out the cruft, and sanity-checking. Store only what you’ll use, clear out noise to speed searches, handle spoilage, yadda yadda yadda.

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Somebody’s houseplant has a Twitter account. More than twenty days ago it needed water. It’s probably dead now.

That’s Stewie. Or maybe Pua. It’s an anteater. It’s cooler than you. Click the pic.

This article is chock-full of ignorant and probably exists only because Rosemary Desmond made a bet that she could get the phrase “cereal killer” in a headline. Mycotoxins range from good old “bread madness” (from whence LSD-25 was eventually derived) all the way up to funky death from liver and/or kidney failure, sure, but claiming it as an increased danger from climate change is on the stupid side of ballsy. The conclusion assumes that any regulatory agencies completely give up checking for this kind of thing, plus also farmers and laborers go completely blind during harvest season.

The above pic is from the same “news” source, claiming that Tasmanian Devils also make good pets. Don’t you try it.

Some people have fucked-up fetishes. Click if you dare.

Vatican okays belief in aliens. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say this probably refers to extraterrestrial/extradimensional life and not just foreigners. Someone please get back to me when the Vatican issues a decree that says skepticism is okay and they’ve finally grown a sense of humor with respect to old Tom Lehrer songs.

In other news, trying to put hot pink underwear on a goat and trying to tie a ribbon on the tail of a struggling steer somehow “proves that we are normal”, says Jen Vrana, president and founder of the Liberty Gay Rodeo Association. I’m not sure I’m ever one to judge what normal is, but I’m fairly sure that’s not it. Not that I find the slightest problem with the idea of making your goat wear hot pink underwear or putting a ribbon you have no other use for on the tail of a steer—PETA and I disagree frequently—but that’s not a typical hobby for anyone of any sexual orientation.

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Just in case anyone cares, Hezbollah has taken over most of western Beirut. Apparently because someone threatened to turn off their private telephone network.

But never mind that. Here’s a picture of a cute capitalist imperialist baby hedgehog, apparently born with liquid assets. And probably a stock portfolio with substantial investment in the oil industry.

As you were.

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