News and Views

I have a nice insulated coffee cup that has a screw-on cap with a rubber O-ring seal. Putting the cap on has been very frustrating for me over the two years I have owned it. Sometimes I gently screw the cap on, and the seal is good, no coffee leaks. Other times no matter how hard I twist it on, the lid leaks. I can remove and replace it several times, and it still leaks. I thought the problem had gone away around last April, but it came back again a couple of months ago.

I have been putting up with this all this time, and then the other day I happened to remember the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, and a simple demonstration that Richard Feymann did to show what had caused it. He placed a piece of the shuttle O-ring into a glass of ice water and when he pulled it out, the O-ring was brittle and hard. The cold morning of the Challenger flight had made the O-rings inflexible, thus allowing gases to leak and ignite, causing the explosion.

The same thing was happening to my coffee cup. If the lid (and O-ring) was warm, which usually was the case in the summer, the seal was good. But on these cold winter mornings the O-ring is inflexible and doesn’t seal well. I’ve gone to running hot water over the lid, especially over the O-ring, and now I get a good seal every time.

Physics at work in every day life!

Gisele got a new computer for Christmas, with a “Dual Processor” CPU. The technical details: It’s an Intel 820, which runs at 2.8 GHz. She has 1Gig of Dual DDR2 RAM, and a fast SATA hard drive.

I did some playing around with it to see if I could tell any difference between her computer and mine, which is a 2.6 GHz (single CPU) with similar RAM and hard drive. Both computers are running Windows 2000. Of course, hers has a newly installed OS, while mine has accumulated stuff for two or three years, so it’s not a completely fair test, but anyway…

The dual CPUs are supposed to divide the work between the processors, with (as I understand it) one focussing on whatever you have in the foreground, while the other handles the background tasks. If the foreground program is written to take advantage of the dual processors, then that program can also see performance improvements, but not many programs are so written.

I did a couple of qualitative tests:

1) Just running single applications, I didn’t notice much difference. Opening and running Firefox or Open Office seemed to take about as long on either computer.

2) You know how during startup, while the system is putting icons on the tray, loading the virus scanner, etc, you can click on the start button or an application and it pretends to acknowledge you, but it takes a long time for anything to come up. With Gisele’s computer it seemed to respond much more quickly, while the booting continued in the background.

3) I started the virus scanner doing a full system scan in the background, then ran various programs in the foreground (Firefox, Open Office). I couldn’t even tell the virus scan was running. Everything was fast and responsive. On my computer the foreground slows down perceptibly while scanning for viruses.

Next year Intel is coming out with new versions of the dual processor CPUs, which are supposed to share memory better and therefore perform even better. Quad processors are due out soon after that, but Windows 2000 can’t handle a quad (or more) processor and I’m loathe to install an activation-required OS from Microsoft. However, along with these multi-processor CPUs, there will be new software for running multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single computer, so that might be the time to start phasing in Linux. I’ve tried VMWare on my current computer, but the background OS just takes up too much of the CPU and slows down the foreground OS too much. But with dual processors, that shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll see!

Boy, I thought 30 minutes would be enough buffer to catch the whole game, but it looks like I needed another 30. Tivo stopped recording with 5 or 6 seconds left in the first overtime.

Double overtime, 1-point win! They don’t get much more exciting than that! Nice comeback, too.

We are currently at the top of the PAC-10 at 2-0, though by the end of the day we will probably be tied with UCLA and others.

Mom and Donna came over for Christmas, as well as Bill and Esther Wright. Donna made home-made cinnamon rolls — they were delicious!

In the late afternoon, Kelvin and Grace Inouye came over with their daughter, Keri (Devon’s girlfriend) for dessert and a couple of rounds of Taboo. I ate too much, but it was good, especially Keri’s home-made strawberry cheesecake.

I got new speakers for my computer — my old ones broke a few weeks ago. Gisele got a new computer, 2.8 GHz dual processor system. Now she can’t complain that she always gets stuck with the slowest computer in the family!

We gave Mom her Tivo, bought by (in alphabetical order): Betty, Daryl, Dianna, Don, Donna, and Richard. It will be a couple of days before we get it hooked up at her house.

Way back in February of 2004 the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report “SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY IN POLICY MAKING — An Investigation of the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science”. The report has been signed by over 8000 scientists in the US, including 49 Nobel Laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients, and 169 members of the National Academies.

The basic complaint is that the Bush administration continually and systematically modifies, suppresses or invents scientific evidence so as to support their own agenda and political and religious beliefs. Much of the text of the examples that follow has been lifted directly from this report:

1) The Bush administration has consistently sought to undermine the public’s understanding of the view held by the vast majority of climate scientists that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are making a discernible contribution to global warming.

2) Senior Bush officials suppressed and sought to manipulate government information about mercury contained in an EPA report on children’s health and the environment, as part of an attempt to to avoid issuing new standards to regulate emissions by coal fired power plants.

3) Bush has made no secret of his view that sex education should teach teenagers “abstinence only” rather than including information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Despite the fact that this strategy has not been shown to be effective at curbing teen pregnancies or halting the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, the Bush administration refused to allow performance measures to test whether abstinence-only programs were proving effective, such as charting the birth rate of female program participants. In place of such established measures, the Bush administration has required the government to track only participants’ program attendance and attitudes, measures designed to obscure the lack of efficacy of abstinence-only programs.

4) Fact-based information on the CDC’s website has been altered to raise scientifically questionable doubt about the efficacy of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

5) Information suggesting a link between abortion and breast cancer was posted on the National Cancer Institute website despite objections from CDC staff, who noted that substantial scientific study has long refuted the connection. (Note: After public outcry on the matter, the information has since been revised and no longer implies a connection.)

6) The claim that the aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were intended for the manufacture of uranium for nuclear weapons was central to Secretary Powell’s case to the UN that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, despite disagreement from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the DOE. A set of technical experts from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge, Livermore, and Los Alamos National Laboratories stated that the tube dimensions were far from ideal for a nuclear weapons program. In fact, the dimensions and the aluminum alloy were identical to those of tubes acquired for rockets by Iraq in the 1980s.

7) The Bush administration created a “review team” made up of predominantly nonscientists who proceeded to overrule a $12 million science-based plan for managing old-growth forest habitat and reducing the risk of fire.

8) The current administration has repeatedly allowed political considerations to trump scientific qualifications in the appointment process. The administration has picked candidates with questionable credentials for advisory positions, used political litmus tests to vet candidates for even the least political of its government review panels, and favored the candidates put forward by industry lobbyists over those recommended by its own federal agencies.

9) According a former CDC staff member “The current administration has instituted an unheard-of level of micromanagement in the programmatic and scientific activities of CDC. We’re seeing a clear substitution of ideology for science and it is causing many committed scientists to leave the agency.”

10) In 2002, just as an expert advisory committee to the CDC appeared ready to consider a more stringent federal lead standard, the administration rejected highly qualified experts nominated by CDC staff scientists to serve on the committee, instead appointing two with financial ties to the lead industry— effectively blocking debate on the more stringent standard.

11) In an apparent attempt to block a pending report that would recommend changes in the flow of the Missouri River to comply with the Endangered Species Act, the administration removed scientists from a study years in the making.

12) An official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) overruled the advice of the agency’s staff and two independent scientific advisory panels when he decided recently to deny women over-the-counter access to the emergency contraceptive levonorgestrel (sold under the brand name “Plan B”). Numerous FDA officials and medical advisers to FDA involved in and familiar with the approval process call the move an almost unprecedented repudiation of government scientific expertise. By law, the FDA is required to approve drugs that are found to be safe and effective. Former FDA officials stated that they could not remember a single instance when someone had overruled both an advisory committee and staff recommendations. The switch of the drug to nonprescription status in the United States was also endorsed by some 70 scientific organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The list goes on and on.

You can read the full report or an executive summary here, along with the Bush Administration’s rebuttal and the UCS’s followup response.

I’m pretty happy with my old Toshiba 50″ rear projection (CRT) TV, and have been for several years (is it 5? 7? More? Not sure.)

I’ve continually said that the new DLP, Plasma and LCD HDTVs are nicer, but until I can get a larger display that is “significantly” better than what I have, I won’t bother to buy anything new. The latest 60″ – 65″ DLP’s from Samsung, Mitsubishi, Toshiba etc. are close, but I still see some artifacts there that put me off.

Yesterday I saw the new Sony 60″ Grand WEGA SXRD Rear Projection HDTV in Best Buy, and I think I’ve seen my next TV. It was sitting next to a 61″ Mitsubishi DLP and the difference was big. Colors and artifacts were noticeably better on the Sony. Details that I couldn’t make out on the DLP were clear on the Sony. At 1920 x 1080 native resolution (almost twice the others), you would expect that it would look better, but it wasn’t just the resolution. With DLP I sometimes feel like I’m looking through a film at the picture. With the Sony, I felt like I was looking through a clean window.

OK, so now I know which TV I want, but it will have to come down in price a little first. $5000 is a lot of money for a TV! Unless one of you want to buy me a nice Christmas present?…

I have to side with John McCain and the majority of the Senate in supporting the anti-torture bill. As a civilized country, I don’t think we have any business torturing anyone.

However, I can think of situations where I might waver. What if we have incontestable evidence that there is a plan to detonate a nuclear weapon in Phoenix, and we have someone in custody who could tell us enough to stop the attack if we could only get the information out of him. Is it OK to torture this one person, in order to save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives?

Shade the situation a little grayer. We have evidence that there is a plan to detonate somewhere a conventional bomb (but we’re not sure), and we have somebody who might well know something about it, but maybe not. Maybe he is innocent. Can we torture him?

Then make it even grayer. We are in a “war with terrorists.” There are undoubtedly plans being developed to kill Americans. Some of the people in custody might know something about some plan somewhere. Can we torture them all on the chance that we will gain some useful information from one of them? This will undoubtedly result in many innocent people being tortured.

But is this really so much different from what we despised Sadam Hussein for, retaining and torturing large numbers of people, many of them innocent of any crime, because we might find a real enemy in this way?

These are some of the questions that make the whole situation complex.

I remember visiting the Tower of London, and hearing the guides discussing some of the tortures and punishments that were routinely carried out there. We think back on how barbaric they were, just a few hundred years ago, and how far we have risen above their level. There are still forces in the world and in our country trying to pull us back down into that barbaric pit. The United States as the only world superpower has to set an example, putting human rights and compassion above vengeance and perfect security.

Benjamin Franklin’s quote has been repeated so much lately that it is almost trite, but I think it still stands up. To paraphrase, “Those who would sacrifice freedom for security, will gain neither”.

I had a letter to the editor published in today’s East Valley Tribune. It was in response to a previous letter writer who made several stabs at evolution.

I set him straight! 🙂

Today is the reason that so many holidays happen to fall around this time of the year.

In the northern hemisphere today is the shortest day and longest night of the year. Here in the Phoenix area the days are just under 10 hours long, while for my niece Robin in Anchorage the days are only about 5.5 hours long.

I’m not suggesting naked dancing under the noonday sun or anything, but as you celebrate whatever holidays you hold important, keep in mind the primitive roots and the physical/astronomical significance of this time of year. Our ancestors were celebrating this well before 2000 years ago, and without adding credence to their pagan beliefs, we can share their interest in the turning of the seasons.

The trial “Kitzmiller et al v. Dover Area School District” in Harrisburg, PA was decided today. In this case a school board had required that biology teachers read to the students a statement about gaps and problems in Darwin’s theory and to make them aware of other theories of evolution including intelligent design.

The ACLU filed suit on behalf of 11 parents on December 14, 2004, joined by “The National Center for Science Education” and “Americans United for Separation of Church and State”.

Judge John Jones III, in handing down his decision, made a statement that included the following:

“In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

“Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

“To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.”

Score one for reason and science.