Amtekoth

I haven't been by in a while, sorry. My newest pair of Lab Bratz episodes reflects a trend I've seen in academic publishing. Professors send their best work to the highest profile journals, of course. But then they have the dregs of their work written up and sent out to a "dumpster" journal that's just grateful to get anything from a big-name scientist. I'm ashamed to say, I've been a party to this, from time to time. So, of course, I had to put it into my online comic. Anyway, I hope that you find the 2 most recent strips humorous. Ed

Of course it was. Don't even try to rewrite that one. "WMD" and "9/11" were uttered EVERY DAY for months as excuses to go to war. The official resolution was centered on the legal basis for going to war, which was Saddam's failure to comply. But it was sold to the US public as WMD and 9/11. Rummy, Dick and Condi used that imagery daily to drum up support, which they got. Powell showed the images of the "biowarfare trailers", even though the Pentagon's own team on the ground said that's not what they were. Those experts were overruled by their higher ups who had an agenda. And the Republicans in congress have sat on the analysis of how the intel, right and wrong, was used to sell the war. They took away soldiers and support and sent them to Iraq WAY too early. The REAL war on terror was being waged in Afganistan and was supported by most of this country (myself included) and the world. This administration keeps calling their invasion of Iraq the war on terror. It is duplicitous and intentionally so. Don't get me wrong. Saddam was evil and deserved to be taken down. I'd have been MUCH happier if the Israelis had put a bullet in his head years ago. But the argument was that he had to taken down NOW, before we all paid a terrible price. The UN inspections, the No-Fly zones and the restrictions on his money were effective at curbing his ability to put his ambitions into fruition. Were they perfect? No. But he was much more interested in palaces than Plutonium. He'd rattle his scabbard, but it didn't have a sword in it. Other dictators are MUCH more dangerous (North Korea) to us. Other democracies are more dangerous to us (Iran). Other world powers are more dangerous to us (China). All of them have ignored treaties and agreements in order to pursue policies that directly threaten us and our interests. I think he misled the country to get us into a war. Could that be proven? Not easily, granted, and that will get tougher with the administration's moves to keep everything they do secret. They've been reclassifying old documents and keeping new ones secret. They have been punishing leakers that expose their (possibly) illegal activities while leaking information themselves that they want out there for political gain, a huge double-standard. Leakers can genuinely damage this country. But sometimes they expose the truth, and that is something this administration cannot abide.

That's NOT the case that was pushed in public at the time. Dick Cheney, in particular, linked Osama and Saddam in speeches over and over again, even when it was reported that no proof of a functional relationship existed. Bush and his people took their eye off the real enemy, the extreme Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists, as personified by Osama and his fellow Al-Qaida murderers, to pursue regime change in Iraq. The reasons given in public changed repeatedly as their evidence failed to pan out or were shown to be false or twisted. And these are the folks who got re-elected by calling Kerry a waffler! People in the room at the time have come forward (after they left their government jobs) to tell the story of Bush's insistence on going into Iraq, regardless of 9/11. The administration’s apologists and allies savaged these whistleblowers. As has been pointed out by others, there were (and still are) other brutal dictators out there. This administration seems to be very selective about which genocides they punish and which ones they don't, IMO. There are now far more foreign terrorists in Iraq than there were before the war. That's an irony that seems to elude Bush. My personal opinion is that we have to deal with the mess we've been dragged into under false pretenses. Number one should be to get rid of the people responsible for the mess: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the Neocons who assailed the patriotism of anyone who tried to point out that the Emperor was buck naked. George Tenet resigned, so we can't fire him. But Bush did give the guy who "lied to him" the Medal of Freedom. Good job, Georgie! This congress will never impeach Bush (he could kill a child, carried live on Fox News, and they wouldn't). A ramped exit over the next two years is my thought. Blah, gotta run (I need to take care of some chores). I'll chime in more later.

From the Meta Research press release (above): "A common thought experiment asks: "What would happen to the Earth's orbit if the Sun suddenly ceased to exist?" The answer is now clear. The usual relationship "force is the gradient of the potential" would instantly end. The Sun's potential field would then begin to dissipate, taking 8.3 minutes to dissipate out to the distance of the Earth's orbit; so effects such as light-bending and clock-slowing would persist for that long. But the Newtonian component of gravitational force, the force that keeps Earth in its orbit, would cease almost instantly, and Earth would fly off along a straight line like a weight on a spinning merry-go-round that broke free from its moorings. " Back in 1983, when I was in college, I was posing this EXACT idea to physics and math major friends of mine. They all disputed the idea, but could offer up no more proof than saying, "nothing is faster than light."

It's too bad that NASA and the administration are willing to let Hubble die so young. Has there been any news of a reprieve? Ed

I'm wondering which stars are the most likely candidates? Unless we have an unseen brown dwarf out there, we can probably calculate which of the known stars in our neighborhood swings around with us. Ed

Sorry to jump in so late. I think you are right about the Senate, but in addition I'm reminded of something I read years ago. What about making the House of Representatives a non-elected position like jury-duty or the draft? Every 2 years, the computers spit out randomized lists of eligible citizens. If you are at the top of the list, you are the new Rep. Welcome to Congress! Exceptions can be made for mental health issues and what-not (although we've had some loonies in the government over the years). The pay would be better than 95% of the population currently gets. Increase the penalties for accepting bribes. There is no re-election campaign, so bribing would be a dangerous crapshoot for a company instead of the wise investment it now is. A professional staff helps get newbies up to speed. Laws would get a LOT simpler if you didn't have a few hundred lawyers writing them. And you still have the "States Rights" Senators making sure things don't get too crazy. I know it'll never happen. But "What if...?"

"Think globally, act locally." :rolleyes: and "Change begins at home." :) Okay, kidding aside (I don't think you should kill yourself as a solution to your problems), just try to change what you legally and realistically can. The world is too big...its problems are overwhelming and you sound like you're in despair. One step at a time. Try to get some control over a little part of your world and go from there.

I read about a space elevator in a book by Arthur C. Clarke back in the late 1970's. I just ran a google search. Check this NASA article out: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm Looks like the earliest ideas for this came from the 1800s! Clarke wrote about a space elevator in his book Fountains of Paradise in 1978, which is where it first gained widespread notice. Cool stuff, once we have the materials to put it into action! Ed