New Hominid Discovery

The story of the discovery of a new hominid fossil, found in Spain, is making the rounds of the news circuits at the moment, hot on the heels of the Darwinius massilae discovery; the new hominid has been reported in Science Daily. Named Anoiapithecus brevirostris, the fossil, called "Lluc" by researchers, is another piece in the puzzle of hominid development.

As with many hominid fossils, this one is sadly but not unexpectedly largely incomplete, but study has been possible, regardless:

"[The research team's] findings are based on a partial cranium that preserves most of the face and the associated mandible. The cranium was unearthed in 2004 in the fossil-rich area of Abocador de Can Mata (els Hostalets de Pierola, l’Anoia, Barcelona), where remains of other fossilized hominid species have been found. Preparing the fossil for study was a complicated process, due to the fragility of the remains. But once the material was available for analysis, the results were surprising: The specimen (IPS43000) combined a set of features that, until now, had never been found in the fossil record.

"Anoiapithecus displays a very modern facial morphology, with a muzzle prognathism (i.e., protrusion of the jaw) so reduced that, within the family Hominidae, scientists can only find comparable values within the genus Homo, whereas the remaining great apes are notoriously more prognathic (i.e., having jaws that project forward markedly). The extraordinary resemblance does not indicate that Anoiapithecus has any relationship with Homo, the researchers note. However, the similarity might be a case of evolutionary convergence, where two species evolving separately share common features.

"Lluc's discovery may also hold an important clue to the geographical origin of the hominid family. Some scientists have suspected that a group of primitive hominoids known as kenyapithecines (recorded from the Middle Miocene of Africa and Eurasia) might have been the ancestral group that all hominids came from. The detailed morphological study of the cranial remains of Lluc showed that, together with the modern anatomical features of hominids (e.g., nasal aperture wide at the base, high zygomatic rood, deep palate), it displays a set of primitive features, such as thick dental enamel, teeth with globulous cusps, very robust mandible and very procumbent premaxilla. These features characterize a group of primitive hominoids from the African Middle Miocene, known as afropithecids."

It's a fascinating article, and if your time permits take a few minutes to read and absorb it.

I am also obliged to say there that if any "Intelligent Design" proponents would like to try to step forward and offer their comprehensive and authoritative view on how their "theory" addresses major paleontological finds like this one, I'll be waiting - amusedly - for your rhetorical infelicities to pour forth. In the meantime, the grownups can carry on with the real science, and I look forward with great anticipation to the next big find.

Confidence Shaking

One of the features generally known about me is that I'm not a mathematical sort of cove. In fact, pretty much the opposite.

Nevertheless, I was pretty pleased with myself for starting to read through Donald E. Sands' Introduction to Crystallography. It's a subject that I've never properly understood, and I thought that it might be worthwhile to spend a few hours trying to become acquainted with the subject in greater detail.

I made it as far as nine pages before I encountered this:

Calculations involving oblique coordinate systems are certainly more tedious than they would be if the axes were at right angles to each other, but compensation is provided by features such as the identity of the fractional coordinates of equivalent points in different unit cells. The following formulas will be useful.

The volume V of a unit cell is given by

V = abc(1- cos² α - cos² β - cos² γ + 2cos α cos β cos γ)^1/2

The distance l between the points x₁, y₁, z₁, and x₂, y₂, z₂ is

l = [(x₁ - x₂)²a² + (y₁ - y₂)²b² + (z₁ - z₂)²c²

+ 2(x₁ - x₂)(y₁ - y₂)ab cos γ + 2(y₁ - y₂)(z₁ - z₂)bc cos α

+ 2(z₁ - z₂)(x₁ - x₂)ca cos β]^1/2

You should verify these formulas for the familiar case where α = β = γ = 90 degrees. Derivation of these formulas is accomplished easily by means of vector algebra.

Blink.

Vector algebra?

Blink. Blink.

Clearly, this isn't going to be quite as easy as I had hoped.

Liquid Water on Mars

Here's a quick link to a rather interesting article from Universe Today, regarding the somewhat controversial topic of liquid water on Mars. It will be interesting to watch the development of this story.

In the meantime, here's a quote that fits the mood which this news engenders in me...

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment."

-- H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898

It's still one of the more chilling opening passages of any book. I re-read TWOTW a few years back, and was delighted to find parts that I didn't remember. Probably due to the setting and the nature of the story, it holds up ever so much better than it's near contemporaries, the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars (or "Barsoom", if you like) novels...

In the meantime, back to the science. Dreams of other species and terrible war machines for another day.

From the "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time" Files

In view of a lack of time, here's a quick story to amuse you. It's something of a moral tale, so clearly, as a non-theist type-person, I shouldn't be telling it, right?

It was late January. A telephone call came in to the science store. It was a local representative, an academic, for a science competetion for secondary school students. They needed help: did we have anyone who could run one of their sections of the upcoming competetion, specifically the section on fossils?

It sounded like the sort of thing that I would enjoy, so after some negotiation and fact-finding, I accepted. I generally enjoy the opportunity to do science education - it's a good and useful expenditure of my time. I would have been happier running a section on rocks and minerals, and I normally tell people that fossil are not my strong suit, but in this case, it would be straightforward. It was essentially an exercise in identification and placement of the fossils at the correct point in geologic history. I went out, bought the recommended source book so I wouldn't be working too far out in the wilderness from what the students had prepared, and set to work.

I planned for it to be really fascinating and cool as well. While the identification could have been done from photographs or sketches, why would we do that when I had the cool stuff at my disposal? We have some fairly interesting, unusual, and expensive fossils and fossil casts at the store, and I felt certain that I could persuade the owners to let me borrow some of them for the competition. I also had an overarching plan - to present the fossils as evolutionarily grouped over the different geologic epochs. Bonus questions would allow the students to fill in the gaps, if they could. And, despite it falling on St. Valentine's Day and a Saturday, GHR, rather than balking at the idea, wanted to come with me and help. Scheduling would be tight, but I could make it work. Everything seemed to have fallen into place.

About a week later, with exactly ten days to go, an email arrived:

Hi William—
 
My name is [name], and I am a member of the [withheld] Club ([office held withheld]). [The Party of the Second Part] had asked me a while ago to compose the test for the fossil portion of the [this event]. I understand that the director of this year’s [event], [Event Director], has asked you to conduct the fossil test. If you wish to do this, I am o.k. with that. If you want to split the questions, that would work also. I have a few questions done on trace fossils, trilobites, and brachiopods. Let me know what you want to do and if you want me to help. I will be available to proctor the test on Feb 14, and also have some specimens that can be used for the stations.
 
Thanks,

[name]

And here's how it sounded in my head:

My name is [ name withheld ]. I was originally asked by [ someone who's name I don't recognise ] to run the fossil section of this event.

I [hold a high office] of the [ local fossil society ]. I know a lot about fossils, and have a collection. I was preparing to run the event's fossil section, but I hadn't bothered to write back to the organisers yet to tell them. It seems as though they've asked you, whoever you are, to do it instead.

I could take over running this. Or I suppose we could work together. If we had to. Let me know.

It's actually a misuse of the "blockquote" tag there in the second instance, but I think that I've accurately reproduced the tone that I heard in my head. This is what, on reading it, I got from the email. Of course, that's one of the dangers of email: unless you're precise, your reader may or may not get the message that you intend.

In any event, this was something that I had not expected, and I quickly weighed my options:

1. I could accept co-proctoring the event, and attempt to work with someone I didn't know, at the last minute, against the backdrop of my already-planned programme.


2. I could refuse, and say that I wanted to run the event by myself.


3. I could drop out from running the event.

You would be right in saying that there was no good thing to do. I could adapt, and work with someone who - from the tone of their email - was clearly some sort of über-fossil royalty, and clearly casting themself as my better - after all, I wasn't a part of their club. I could carry on myself, with now-wrathful eyes watching my every step for a mistake. Or I could step aside, in favour of someone who was, by dint of their interest and apparent experitse, probably more qualified than I.

I emailed the organiser and stepped aside.

At the time that I did this, I presented all sorts of justifications to myself, saying that "I'm sure they can do it better" and that while, yes, my version would have been pretty cool, "they're bound to have access to all sorts of good fossil to use". And surely, "they've been planning to do this, therefore it should be good".

Why, then, had they wanted to work together? On, I think, the Wednesday before the competition Saturday, I found out.

An individual came into the store mid-afternoon, and introduced themself as my email interlocutor. Did we have any fossils that they could purchase for the section? They had lost all of theirs.

I was more than a little gobsmacked. This was the person who had flaunted their expertise? This was a local society office-hodler? They went on to explain that they only really knew local fossils, and didn't have any representation of anything outside of the Pennsylvanian era. After looking and clucking their tongue at how expensive fossils can be, they spent about $20 on a few tiny instances and left.

I didn't hear anything about how the eventual event went over. I feel certain that, as a result, the students who participated in this event didn't have as rich an experience as they might have done. I couldn't possibly have known it at the time, but I certainly felt badly seeing the paltry selection of fossils that went out the door with this fossil society leader. I felt badly knowing that my ideas, my plans... based on what I had seen, they would have been better.

Like every time that I make a bad decision in my life, I try to learn how not to do the same thing again. Remember how this was going to be a moral tale? Or, at least, a tale with a moral? This time, I think that the moral that I learned was this: I should really, really trust my instincts. I should learn to see through titles, and hollow bluster, better than I do now. The line that I should have taken? "I've already put a lot of work into this event. If you would like to see my notes, you are welcome to, but currently, I think that I have a handle on everything. If you would like to assist with proctoring this event, let's talk about when and how you will be there to help out."

Honestly, it would have been better. Better for students trying to be keen on science. Better for the event. And better for me, not having to realise that I was essentially out-bluffed by a brachiopod hunter.

The Reappearance of the Prodigal Blogger

Every time that I've started to write again recently, I seem to hear Derek Jacobi in the back of my head, after he's just found out in Utopia [SPOILER ALERT] that he's not the meek and mild Professor Yana, but the Doctor's arch-nemesis (I'm thinking of the thoroughly-evil, not just a little campy, Deadly Assassin-era):

"The Master... REBORN!!!"


(cue maniacal laughter)

So the blog shall return, and I'm going to try to force myself to have the time and energy to carry on with it for a while. We shall see how that goes.

Here are a few random thoughts in the meantime:

• It's not as though I haven't been busy, despite everything. Sure, I've fallen behind on listening the "IDiocy: the Future" podcast, in favour of catching up on AstronomyCast. Honestly, I just couldn't bear listening to Luskin for a while. Life is too short, and contrary to what the Disco would have you think, you don't get a second go.


• I haven't had the heart yet to look and see what the traffic spike on this blog a couple of weeks ago was. There weren't any comments, just a sudden high number one day... Thursday, I think. Bloody Thursdays.


• Republicans? Really? This is the best that you can do? Mitt, Eric, and Jeb's Pizza Party? The "Rove and Cheney Won't Shut Up Tour, 2009"? The bastard spawn of Cape Girardeau, MO? Either you've genuinely worked at making a pathetic effort at opposition, or you have a monumentally evil plan. The trouble with that second hypothesis is this: I don't really see any of you as the "evil genius" type. "Incompetent buffoon sidekicks", yes. "Demented lackwits", absolutely (looking at you, Michelle Bachmann). "Evil genius", not so much. And what exactly is it that you're opposing so flacidly? Do you think that you can just run out the clock on climate change, social justice and equality, real science education, not torturing people, abiding by the traditions and laws of the nation you claim to love... ? I don't think that all of you are inherently evil, but some of you simply must learn the difference between that which is politically expeditious in the short term and the exigencies of reality.


• Every now and then, being on the largely pointless time-suck that is Facebook does yield a few old friends who I have actually been pleased to hear from. They should just know, as does the rest of my - admittedly minute - personal social circle, that I am a minor legend when it comes to not responding to emails in a timely fashion. It's rather my "thing".


• In another bit of news, I'm also posting snippets of this and that via Twitter. Yep, I caved; you'll see the feed on the right. My feed is guaranteed to be at least part science, as that's what I do every day, but with some twists, and probably the odd occasional and unwarranted personal remark. Share and enjoy.


• My Twitter cohort @leifb put me on to a good site for amateur astronomers in the US, Clear Dark Sky. It's a great reference if you want to know just how good your seeing conditions will be for the coming evening. I'll be posting some more about my newly re-kindled love for astronomy as time and events warrant, including something brief and pithy on the frustrations of attempting astrophotography when you don't have the right gear... =)


• It's gardening season again, so there will probably be pictures of our successes... or failures. As I neglected to snap photos of either daffodils or custard apple flowers, it's the least that I can do.

Meanwhile, in the world of science, things are positively buzzing in all quarters:

• The Hubble Space Telescope repair mission is completed. The dangerous Servicing Mission Four, vital upgrades, a second shuttle on standby in the event that something goes wrong... fantastic stuff. Apart from a few minor problems, everything seems to have gone swimmingly.


• Two European space telescopes, Herschel and Planck, have also been launched, and are headed for their orbits around L2.


• A new primate fossil, some 47 million years old, has been reported (original paper at PLoS One). Of course, media reports have immediately gotten the whole damn story wrong - as you would expect from the largely scientifically-illiterate media. For the last time, people, there's no such thing as a "missing link", at least, not in the way that you're saying it.

That's about the strength of things for now. More entries as events - and available time - warrant.

Spring Crocuses

This entry would have been more à propos had I been able to get myself to post it a week and a half ago. O tempora, o mores... Nevertheless, here we are now, with photos of flowers, just in time for spring. Taken on 16 March with a Canon EOS Rebel XT (don't cameras have silly names?), these aren't the earliest local crocuses that I remember seeing, but they are some of the nicest. At some point in the history of our hundred year-old house, someone littered the back garden with crocus bulbs, and if I've bothered to rake the winter before, we get a nice show just on the cusp of spring.

I've always been a mediocre photographer. I tried on more than one occasion to learn the rudiments of composition, style, and technical saavy - the things that go into taking a really good photograph. I've always understood that there was an actual science that went into good photography - I just couldn't be asked. In the days of film-based 35mm SLRs, therefore, the only good photographs I ever took were accidental. No matter what I thought I was seeing through the viewfinder, what I got when the prints came back was... less than perfect, shall we say.

Fortunately, in the era of digital cameras, it's possible for even mediocre photographers to take passable photographs. Whereas before I would have had an entire roll of over-exposed images because I entirely neglected to reset the metering from Manual and didn't notice the warnings, now I can make any number of mistakes and just delete the ones that went hideously wrong, while retaining the ones that I am pleased to say represent "my vision". Er... yes... "my vision"... of crocuses.

At the time of writing, the daffodils are up as well - and I've always had a soft spot for daffodils, in a Wordsworthian sense. Look for more photos soon.

I know - the suspense is hard to bear, isn't it?

First Observations

Last night it was clear and cold, and although the Moon was up, rendering the sky stupidly bright on top of two nearby streetlights, it was still possible to take my new toy out for a quick spin. Here's a quick review of my initial impressions of the Celestron Omni XLT 150.

The XLT 150 a six-inch Newtonian reflector, which means that it has a main mirror, six inches (150 mm) in diameter, which collects light and reflects it to the secondary mirror, which in turn sends it through the focuser and into the eyepiece. This arrangement means that you get more light collection than many traditional refractors that would cost the same, due to a refractor requiring a more expensive primary objective lens.

I had already put the telescope together completely, but elected to remove the tube from the mount for my first forray out of doors. The mount is the CG-4, and is referred to a German mount, a variant of the equatorial mount, and its shipping weight is 45 pounds. It's not too ungainly, although you can't collapse the legs of this tripod without removing the stabiliser / accessory tray. After getting the mount outside, I went back for the tube, and had the telescope ready to go in short order. Next came the challenge: what to look for?

I knew, based on the programme which GHR and I had watched at the Linda Hall Library last Friday, that we wanted to try for Saturn, but it was too low on the horizon, so I went for a classic, and started hunting for things in Orion. I used the low-power 25mm eyepiece which comes with the XLT 150 to start with, planning, if necessary, to move up to the other eyepiece which I had received, an Orion Stratus 5mm. The XLT 150 has a focal length of 750mm, giving me either 30x or 150x magnification; the telescope's specifications give its useful magnification limit as 324x, although atmospheric conditions can drive that number down, as we will see. Surprisingly, as it was my first time out with a new telescope, I wasn't to be disappointed. In an article from Sky & Telescope about astrophotography, the photo illustrates exactly what I saw (with hopes that the author won't mind its use in the furtherance of the astronomical hobby). M42, the Orion Nebula, with three bright stars in a row. It was a cloudy, distinct patch in my 25mm eyepiece, and switching out for the 5mm, it sprang into view. I was excited enough to call GHR outside to have a look (since she is the one who decided that this was the gift that she had to get me), and we shared a sweet moment of astro-geekery.

After looking around a bit more, then temporarily destroying my night vision by pointing the telescope directly at the Moon without a polarizing filter, and then delaying an hour for dinner, I decided to go back to trying to catch Saturn. By this time, the tube had reached thermal equilibrium, which meant that there should be no currents of air distorting my view as the tube cooled to the temperature outside. Currently, the sixth planet is following the moon across the sky (figuratively, of course), and the brightness of the moon worried me. Saturn to the naked eye is a pale yellow dot. After further jiggery-pokery with the telescope setup (by which time the planet had only barely cleared the trees over the road), I set the spotting scope's crosshairs squarely on the yellow point, and had my first look through the 25mm eyepiece. And it was... amazing.

Clearly visible, even if just a small point, was Saturn (at about the size in the photograph, although the rings were different as noted). The rings were evident, although still more or less a flat plane - they should open up later in the year - and after a moment, I realised that I could also see three points of light - orbiting in the same plane as the rings, which I believe were moons. Probably Titan and Rhea and... Enceladus? Someone can feel free to correct me on that, if they can find the answer before I can figure it out from my sources. At any rate, I quickly swapped out again for the 5mm eyepiece, and was rewarded with the disc of Saturn looming larger in my view. It would move across the eyepiece within a few seconds, at which time I would use the mount's controls to bring it back into view. I can't tell you how many times I repeated that action.

It was at this point that I remembered that I had borrowed a Barlow lens from work to test with our spotting scope, and that it was still on my desk. The Barlow, as you can read, decreases the focal length of the eyepiece, thus increasing the magnification provided by that eyepiece. By putting a 2x Barlow into the focuser before inserting the 25mm eyepiece, I effectively doubled the magnification. Barlows are sold in a variety of shapes, sizes, and powers; the one that I had for testing was an Orion 2x Shorty Barlow (so named for its shorter barrel). Although this worked exceedingly well with the 25mm eyepiece, with the 5mm eyepiece, I was pushing the useful magnification limit (instead of 150x, the 2x Barlow pushed the magnification to 300x). Although I was rewarded with a still-larger Saturn swimming in the eyepiece, it was difficult to focus and remain focused. A better Barlow and better seeing might have made this combination work better, but I'm not complaining. It was still fantastic.

All in all, I know that I've got a lot to learn about telescopes before I even start to get the most out of mine. Real, genuinely dark skies will be a first prerequisite, and I'm hoping to get a crack at some before long. It will mean driving out into the country, but there are sites in the area that should afford better views. An all-night star party sounds like fun as well, and I know that we were already talking about organising one at the store for early summer. I'll definitely be pushing for that.

Next steps? I've heard of some people doing rudimentary digital astro-imaging just by pointing a digital SLR through the eyepiece, and I'm tempted to try that next time, just to see what I can capture. Alternately, I may go so mad as to buy the appropriate T-ring and see what I can do, but that's some way down the road yet. And another eyepiece or two, along with some appropriate filters, won't go amiss. But these are things for which I can save my money and buy well.

Still one of the best birthday presents ever, then? Undoubtedly. And my review of the Celestron Omni XLT 150? I'm sure that I will find its limitations, but for the moment, I can only say that this is a great starter telescope with a lot of potential, and one that I'm certain to be enjoying for years to come.

Best Birthday Gift Ever? I Think So.

A little while back, I chronicled my desire for a good telescope. It's probably a direct result of having wanted one ever since I was quite young, and now being around them all of the time.

Over the road from me, when I was a child, there lived a boy called Charles. He was about four years older than I was, and as a result, he seemed not only infinitely cool but infinitely wise. This was the 1970s - we had different standards for wisdom then. Whatever Charles was interested in, I wanted to be interested in. I started reading HG Wells just to be in the small - and very exclusive - HG Wells club that he was forming: he'd written a quiz about the Master's work that I'm pretty sure I couldn't even pass now as a sort of entrance exam. After that, it was Edgar Rice Burroughs, who we both read and adored. Charles was also into astronomy, and I remember - or seem to remember but am not entirely certain of, as I've done a lot of drinking since then - being allowed out on special nights by my parents to look at the stars. I wanted my own 'scope, but that was one of a long list of unrequited childhood dreams (which in a way, are the best of childhood dreams).

It wasn't as though I didn't have other interests to take up my time. And eventually, of course, other distractions were invented, which would in their course sway me from the goals which I had originally imagined for myself. That, of course, is another story for another day.

The point - and I do have one - is that it appears that GHR not only reads the blog, but takes notice of things. Because guess what turned up at home the other day? Yes, you guessed it:

This.

Yes, you could say that I'm pretty lucky - or even very lucky. You'd be right.

This afternoon, I set about putting it together. Not too hard. But here's an interesting thought: things tend to be much bigger in your home than they are in the shop. And of course, now that I have it assembled, what's the forecast? Rain. Bloody rain.

Oh well. I've waited for this long. Another day or two isn't going to be the end of the world.

By the way, I accidentally posted earlier, so if that popped up on your feeds and whatnot, it wasn't anything. Apologies.

Asteroid Passes Earth Inside Moon's Orbit; Bobby Jindal Calls for Dismantling All Telescopes

The BBC reported this week that an asteroid possibly as big as a 10-storey building passed within 72,000 km (44,750 miles) of the Earth on Tuesday, at 1344 hours GMT (would have been 7.44 local time for me). The asteroid, 21 to 47 metres in length (it's still hard to be sure, until we see it again), would therefore have been the same size as the object which triggered the famous Tunguska Event, now believed to have been an asteroid vapourising and then exploding above the ground in the midst of the Russian wilderness, 101 years ago. There is no doubt that had this asteroid struck a major population centre of the day (London, New York, Paris... pick a city, really), the results would have been catastrophic.

So what does this have to do with monitoring volcanoes?

Against this background, we consider the rebuttal of Louisiana Governor Piyush "Bobby" Jindal given to President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress, in which he laid out his budget plans. One of the things that Governor Jindal targeted for derision was spending on volcano research, in these words (transcript):

"But Democratic leaders in Congress -- they rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history, with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government [if they're moving the government fleet to green vehicles, then it's about damn time and I have no problem at all with it], $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland [this has already been debunked multiple times, look it up], and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." [emphasis added] Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."

-- Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Republican Response to President Obama's Address, 24 February 2009

Predictably, geologists didn't look on this sort of cack-handed attempt to score cheap political points with much favour. In fact, anyone with any sense at all might have thought twice before parroting this ridiculous line. Maria Brumm over at Green Gabbro was particularly direct:

"I have two questions.

1. Do Republicans (or moderates who don't have a kneejerk anti-Republican reflex) also feel like he's talking to the nation as though we were all kindergarteners? I was flabbergasted, but I don't know how to properly account for my rather strong political biases here.


2. DID HE SERIOUSLY JUST SAY THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT BE MONITORING VOLCANOES??!?!!!????@#$@!

Ms Brumm follows this with a further entry, The Stimulating Effect of Monitoring Volcanoes, in which she says in part:

"Volcano monitoring money will be spent directly, and swiftly, on goods and services - primarily new and upgraded monitoring equipment, and the people needed to install the equipment and interpret the data (source). We'll get a long-term economic benefit from our improved ability to forecast and mitigate eruptions, just like we would with the oft-cited infrastructure investment of a new road (albeit with slightly more uncertainty - but the expected value is positive). And because volcano hazard warnings are a public good, there is little risk of disincentivizing private industry."

But let's leave this to one side, for the moment. Let's consider the neo-Republican approach to science, as exemplified by Mr Jindal. Major threats from asteroids? Well, surely the private sector will step in there, and privatise protection services for areas that wish to be protected from rocks from space, right? Same applies to volcanoes.

Natural forces, Mr Jindal, do not respect international boundaries. Nor do they give a toss for your sound-bite politics.

Oh, and before you complain that Jindal really did no such thing as calling for the dismantling of telescopes, let me direct you to your nearest dictionary. Look up the word "hyperbole". Then "irony". And, finally, "cack-handed nitwit". Repeat as necessary.

Going Mobile

Apparently reader 'antbus' has grown impatient with my lacksidaisical posting habits, and who can blame him?  So, rather than indulge in a third doughnut while I wait at the auto dealership for a routine maintenance procedure on GHR's beloved Prius, I'm venturing into the heady world of about three years ago and taking a first stab at the world of 'mobile blogging'.  We'll see how it goes...

One thing that hasn't really changed with the advent of the 'new technological era' is the concept of the waiting room.  Sure, there are more people with laptops and mobiles, and there's wi-fi (possibly of the very weak variety, like the network I can't connect to here), but other than that, they're much the same.  Same bleating telly, either on sport channels or the mind-numbing idiocy of day-time chat and tragedy shows, same old magazines and oft-read newspapers, same people trying to kill time until their number is called, or until their car's vital fluids flow viscuous and clear once again.

Uncannily, though, and perhaps as a reflection of the current state of the world, this waiting room is surprisingly quiet.  It's strangely sobering.