CapitalistImperialistPig

There is supposedly a Chinese tradition that floods and disasters are the test of an emperor. Even god kings aren't expected to prevent natural disasters, but they are expected to respond agressively and appropriately. I not a big David Brooks fan, but he has this nice column in a related vein tomorrow. Floods wash away the surface of society, the settled way things have been done. They expose the underlying power structures, the injustices, the patterns of corruption and the unacknowledged inequalities. When you look back over the meteorological turbulence in this nation's history, it's striking how often political turbulence followed. He presents concise descriptions of some historical examples, and concludes with this: Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are pre...

Our Presidential playboy was vacationing in Texas when the final 9/11 warning came in on the presidential briefing. He missed it of course, because "nobody could have imagined" the scenario, even if it was there in black and white. There can't be any excuse for failing to pay attention to Hurricane Katrina. The disaster was predicted far in advance, and the approach of the Hurrican was seen many days out. Why weren't the obvious preparations made? Why were not evacuations carried out, troops and trucks sent to aid the population, shelters prepared and staffed? Criminal negligence! Criminal negligence! Criminal negligence!

Fay Dowker has a nice descriptive introduction to the Causal Sets approach to Quantum Gravity: gr-qc/0508109 No equations, but very lucid explanations of the ideas and accomplishments. Every approach to quantum gravity in this broad conception must embody answers to two fundamental questions: “What is quantum mechanics?” and “What is the deep structure of spacetime?” This article will touch on the former question and focus on the latter and the answer to it provided by the approach known as causal set theory which marries the two concepts of discreteness (or atomicity) and causality. The view that causality is a more fundamental organising principle, even than space and time, is an ancient tradition of thought... She brings in a supporting quote from big Al: “But you have correctly grasped the drawback that the continuum brings. If the molecular view of matter is the correct (appropriate) one, i.e., if a part of the universe is to be represented by a finite number of moving points, th...

Right now, people in New Orleans and on the Gulf coast urgently need all kinds of help, but when the crisis is past, the nation needs to take a good hard look at how this was allowed to happen. Cuba, a poor and technologically primitive country took a huge hit from a Category 5 hurricane earlier this year, but loss of life was minimal. It now looks like hundreds or perhaps thousands have died in Mississipi and Louisiana, in the richest and most technologically advanced country in the world, despite the fact that almost exactly the disaster that occurred has been long predicted. What could have been done? For a start, mandatory evacuations should have been mandatory, with the troops and trucks to get everybody out. Getting everybody out not only protects those who leave, but prevents looting, the threat that causes many to stay. The levees should all have been concrete, not dirt. Pumps should have had generators and been located well above Lake Ponchetrain. Well equipped and prepa...

No, I'm not talking about the bullshit articles on the "scientific controversy" over Intelligent Design published a week or so ago. Here the initials stand for Intelligent Design BitchSlapped in New York Times, (by Op-Ed contributor Daniel Dennett.) Dennett is one of many guys writing intelligently about Darwin ( Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life ), and he elegantly exposes the ID scam in this essay . Intelligent design is a hoax, he says, and it exploits common human fraillties just like every other scam. The fundamental scientific idea of evolution by natural selection is not just mind-boggling; natural selection, by executing God's traditional task of designing and creating all creatures great and small, also seems to deny one of the best reasons we have for believing in God. So there is plenty of motivation for resisting the assurances of the biologists. ...Some of the methods used to exploit these urges are easy to analyze; others ...

Lubos Motl has a new post up on a proposed linear collder to follow the LHC. He talks about the late lamented SSC, its invention by the greatest Scientific Mind of our age, Ronald Reagan, the support it had from Bush & Bush, and its tragic demise at the hands of evil Democrats in the Senate. Lubos hopes that private money might build a new linear collider, but what, I say, could be a fitter monument to the scientific genius of our dear leaders than a taxpayer (or bond buyer) financed Ronald Reagan and (George Bush)^2 Memorial Linear Collider. A suitable site could extend from the Bush Presidential Libraries in Texas to the Reagan Presidential Library in California, with the interaction region somewhere near John McCain's home in Arizona. The whole thing would cost less than the International Space Station, and produce far better science, even if it never discovers the LSP.

Katrina is starting to look like a very scary Hurricane, and the projected bullseye is very close to New Orleans.