Relativity passes absolute test

This is a little old, but I am very interested to stumble across an article from Scientific American indicating that a test of general relativity was able to successfully confirm Einstein's hypothesis. The experiment tested the theory that large objects bend space-time with their gravitational force. I am amazed that physicians and engineers were able to develop a mechanism that could confirm or disprove Einstein's theories.

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Training bureaucrats to lobby for REAL ID

Although New Hampshire originally failed to recognize the privacy threats of the REAL ID act, they eventually came to their senses and enacted legislation rejecting such an ID system. So what is a company that makes ID systems, and which stands to profit immensely from the REAL ID act, to do? Hold a good old-fashioned junket, and train state workers to advocate these systems to their legislatures back home. I hope that New Hampshire continues its independent stand on this issue and refuses to be swayed by such shallow lobbying efforts.

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Six years later

So much has changed.

Richard Feynman: "Judging Books By Their Cover"

A great first-hand account from physicist Richard Feynman about his experience serving on the California State Curriculum Commission, evaluating new textbooks for the State of California. His tale is an excellent illustration of how companies do business with the state and how inevitably someone gets short-changed in the process.

We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.

I said, "The book depository didn't send me that book, but the other two were nice."

Someone tried repeating the question: "What do you think about that book?"

"I said they didn't send me that one, so I don't have any judgment on it."

The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet. There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late."

It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn't believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.

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The Great Iraq Swindle

Rolling Stone features an excellent expose on the incredible money pit that Iraq has become. Thanks to toothless congressional oversight and contractors with friends in high places, the reconstruction effort in Iraq has become a perverse combination of capitalism and socialism. Taxpayer dollars are funnelled from the federal treasury into the pockets of contracting companies with very little to show for it. When I read David McCullogh's excellent biography of Harry Truman, I was impressed at the work Truman did on the Truman commission eliminating war profiteering during the Second World War. What a shame we do not have a congress willing to do the work that Truman did in the 1940's.

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NYTimes profiles Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin will always be a favorite of mine because of the way he revitalized Johnny Cash's career. He's now working with Columbia Records to try to save the music industry from itself. My hope is that the industry is finally seeing the light of day, with two labels now releasing music that is free of DRM. There is a lot more work to be done - labels continue to sign uninteresting acts and release overproduced records, commecial radio is an affront to most people's intelligence, and the RIAA continues to sue its fans. However, perhaps Columbia embracing Rubin is a sign that the industry may finally understand that their business needs to be about the music.

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A Nation of Wimps

Psychology Today writes on the super-protective environment currently swaddling our children and how it's doing more harm than good.

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Would Orwell have been a blogger?

Robert McCallum writes in The Observer in an attempt to surmise what George Orwell's opinions regarding the current state of communication in our most energized medium today, the Internet.

I don't pretend to understand Orwell enough to divine what his opinion would be regarding blogging and the health of English letters as evidenced by communication on the internet. My thoughts cast back to images of the Kaleidoscope in "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the machine at the Ministry of Truth which could grind out endless folk songs for the entertainment of the Proles. I think much of the discourse currently existing in the "blogosphere" consists of rote work and there is very little illumination, or even mechanical skill, out there. While Andrew Keen's "Cult of the Amateur" book, as well as the author himself, are universally reviled for their elitist attitude and ham-handed delivery, I think there exists a grain of truth in his overall thesis. I think that the lowest common denominator attitude in cyberspace that has delivered a million YouTube videos of "America's Funniest Home Videos" rejects should be deplored. People have been granted the ability to get their voices out to the world; they should not squander that opportunity by screaming unintelligible obscenities.

On a tangent, while doing a little background reading on Orwell, I came across the interesting 1984 Index (unfortunately out of date) whose goal was to track the similarities between the environment described in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and our current "War on Terror" environment in the Western World.

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Seige at Rainbow Farm

Courtesy of Playboy and the Media Awareness Project, a story of another group of peaceful protesters defying government authority and getting gunned down for it. My hope is that the current NH standoff will not end this way.

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LBJ's Political Hurricane

Courtesy of NBC's Brian Williams, discussion of Lyndon B Johnson's action taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy in 1965 in contrast to the ever-vacationing GWB's reaction to Hurricane Rita. I guess Johnson couldn't rely on Brownie to do a "hell of a job."

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