Magpie

Saturday, November 4

Who cares if aliens might be calling us?

Or about important astronomic research? Dubya's got a war to pay for and science can just go by the wayside.

Faced with huge budget cuts, the US National Science Foundation has decided to close down two world-class observatories: the Arecibo radio observatory in Puerto Rico and the Very Long Baseline Array, a network of 10 radio telescopes stretching from Hawaii to the US Virgin Islands. The only hope for the two observatories' survival is if the NSF can get third parties to pay some of the tab for operating them.

Aerial view of Arecibo radio dish

The main dish at Arecibo. Get ready to kiss it goodbye.

Built in the 1960s and upgraded in the 1970s and in 1997, Arecibo is the world's most sensitive radio telescope. The giant antenna is fixed in place, but the Earth's rotation on its axis and movement of a receiver suspended above the reflective dish allow it to scan about 40% of the sky over the course of a year.

It is famed for discoveries including the first binary pulsar. It also offers unique capabilities for radar observations of near-Earth asteroids, which [can] not be done elsewhere because of Arecibo's sensitivity....

Finding outside support for the telescope is expected to be difficult....

The VLBA is a network of 10 radio dishes, each 25 metres wide. Stretching more than 8000 kilometres from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, it offers unmatched resolution at radio wavelengths.

First operated in 1993, it is famed for discoveries of cosmic jets and studies of bright galaxies powered by colossal black holes. Fred Lo, director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which manages the VLBA, said in a written statement that the NRAO would "aggressively pursue international assistance" to save the telescopes. The statement also quoted the new report's observation that "if the VLBA is closed, a unique capability would likely be lost for decades."

This is just another example of how Dubya's misplaced budget priorities and obsession with terrorists and the occupation of Iraq are eroding the ability of the US to conduct basic scientific research. If you don't think that matters, you probably won't mind living in the US as it continues its slide toward being an economic has-been, either.

Via New Scientist.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:29 PM | Get permalink

Friday, November 3

What if US productivity tanked and nobody noticed?

Well, it has tanked and almost nobody noticed.

Economist Dean Baker noticed, and he tells us why the current productivity drop should be front page news.

Via Beat the Press.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:52 AM | Get permalink

Want to build an atom bomb?

If you were looking for a how-to guide, you just missed your chance.

Last year, Dubya's administration put up a website containing captured documents from Saddam-era Iraq, as a sop to its hard-right base. The idea was that people like you or me could peruse the documents and hopefully find that elusive hard evidence that Saddam Hussein was making WMDs.

Well, the feds pulled the documents off the web yesterday after it was revealed that some of the documents were 'a basic guide to building an atom bomb.'

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs....

The government had received earlier warnings about the contents of the Web site. Last spring, after the site began posting old Iraqi documents about chemical weapons, United Nations arms-control officials in New York won the withdrawal of a report that gave information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill by causing respiratory failure.

Despite those earlier warnings, Dubya's administration didn't pull the website down. At least not until the International Atomic Energy Agency — you know, those crybabies who won't deal with Iran's nukes — complained about the nuclear-related documents.

I was going to make a snide comment here, but the facts are snide enough, don't you think?
Via NY Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:17 AM | Get permalink

20 years of Dubya.

Read all about it in the NY Times' editorial for Jan 1, 2020.

The United States has made itself, thanks to Mr. Bush and his bold policies, the most powerful nation in the history of the human race. Mr. Bush rightly saw that the old United Nations, the diminished remnants of which now preside in its new headquarters in Geneva, was an irrelevant institution that needed to be destroyed in order to be saved, and that the United States, as the sole remaining military power, had a need to assert itself not just for its own interests, but to free the world from the oppression of lesser tyrants like Saddam Hussein. It's a vision that would never have come to pass if the late Al Gore had managed to steal the Presidency twenty years ago, and those who spoke against against it early on have rightly been imprisoned or executed in the name of that vision, along with many of the leaders of the now-illegal Democratic Party.

Via The Sideshow.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:07 AM | Get permalink

The US rich just keep getting richer.

And they do it much faster than everyone else, too.

That fact isn't anything new, really, and it's only reaffirmed by a UC Berkeley study on income disparities in the US.

But buried inside a story on the study's findings was this interesting piece of information:

Between 2000 and 2005, workers with four-year college degrees saw their wages fall 3.1 percent, adjusted for inflation.

You got it: Not only is a four-year degree not a ticket to success any more, but it's a certain way to fall behind economically. Not a pleasant notion if you're a young person in the process of taking on massive student loan debts because the US no longer thinks it important that anyone except the well-to-do has access to higher education.

That fact about four-year degrees is more than grist for a blog post, though. Reading it, I recalled a phone call I had with a friend over the weekend. Both of us recently started new technical writing jobs and, in the course of the conversation, we discovered that both of us are being paid about the same hourly rate we made seven or eight years ago. I even pulled up an inflation calculator online while we were talking and figured out that — for either of us to have stayed even with the cost of living — we'd need to be be making about five bucks more an hour than we are. And we're well educated workers, toiling away in that high-tech field that's supposed to be so lucrative.

So much for Dubya's 'growth economy', eh?

Via McClatchy Washington Bureau.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, November 2

Once more into the Kerry 'controversy.'

But only because Gal Beckerman does such an admirable job of summing up the press' role as the accomplices of the GOP spin machine:

The press dutifully and mindlessly leaped onto the new controversy, with no thought to how it shed absolutely no light on any of the issues that actually matter in these midterms. Seasoned political reporters like Adam Nagourney at the New York Times and Peter Baker at the Washington Post blew precious column inches on the fallout of a negligible misstatement by someone who isn't even on the ballot.

There is much to critique about this shameful moment. But to pinpoint one of the more frustrating elements, these journalists did not even have the intellectual honesty to admit that they helped make this story grow.

In account after account, the wide exposure of the Kerry comment was attributed to "White House and Republican allies." A New York Times "Political Memo" this morning described the provenance of the statement and its broad effect in almost religious terms, a deus ex machina, "manna from Massachusetts."

But the raised voices of Republican operatives alone--even when the president is among them -- do not a story make. For that you need reporters to amplify it and editors to give it prominence....

What saddens us most about the election coverage this year, and we've said it before, is that the press spends too much time bogged down in faux news like the Kerry thing, when there is so much at stake. Iraq, alone, should have elicited a spirited and interesting debate. The public is engaged on a number of issues, but Iraq tops nearly everyone's list. The press can't force candidates to debate something they want desperately to avoid, but it can try to minimize its complicity in the attempts--by both sides, we should add, though in this election overwhelmingly from embattled Republicans--to change the subject or ignore it altogether. And when the press is complicit, it should be honest and transparent enough to say so. [Emphasis added]

Via CJR Daily.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:31 PM | Get permalink

Putting the Canadian press in its place.

Since Stephen Harper's Conservative government took power in Canada, many observers have noticed that the PM often seems to be running his administration straight out of Dubya and Karl Rove's playbook. Like Dubya, Harper has a bad relationship with much of the press and, last May, the press and PM moved into direct confrontation.

At Press Think, Ira Basen has a very interesting piece about what's happened since then. The story is striking both for the parallels between Harper's situation in Canada and that of the White House here in the US, and for the differences. Go read it here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:04 AM | Get permalink

The US dollar might not be worth as much as it used to be.

But at least dollars aren't disintegrating, like some 20- and 50-euro notes.

Via Spiegel.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:32 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, November 1

It's always good to know who your friends are.

And who they aren't.

Almost 100 of the ABC Radio Network's advertisers want their commercials blacked out on any of the network's affiliate stations when they air programs from liberal Air America Radio.

ABC Radio Network memo about Air America ad blackout

ABC Radio Network memo about Air America ad blackout

Are you doing business with companies on this list?
It turns out that I am.

I found my car insurance company on the list. You can bet that I'm dropping them a line about their attitude toward Air America.

You can view a much larger (and legible) version of the image here.

Via Media Matters for America.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:29 PM | Get permalink

What kind of America do you believe in?

That's the question that Amnesty International put to people on the street as part of the group's campaign against human rights abuses by the US government. Many of the answers Amnesty got are disturbing.

Via Talk Left.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:56 PM | Get permalink

The Pentagon is on the attack against a deadly foe.

And the news media and its 24-hour news cycle won't have a chance.

At least, that's the intent of the military spinmeisters behind the US military's plans to churn out propaganda in response to unfavorable reporting in the press, in a way that resembles nothing more than how the GOP and White House have been manipulating press coverage for the last six years.

In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said new teams of people would "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and "correct the record".

The memo describes an operation modelled on political campaigns that use "Rapid Response" action to answer opponents' assertions quickly.

Another branch would co-ordinate "surrogates". In political campaigns, surrogates are usually high-level politicians or key interest groups who speak or travel on behalf of a candidate or an issue.

The Pentagon plan would focus more resources on so-called new media, including the internet and weblogs. It would also include new workers to book civilian and military guests on television and radio shows.

Of course, there's nothing political about the military's new propaganda machine, oh no:

[Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff] denied that the effort was set up to respond to the eroding public support for the war or that it was aimed at helping President George Bush's Republican partymates in next week's elections.

And I'm the f'n Queen of Siam.

Via UK Independent.

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:55 PM | Get permalink

The Kerry 'controversy.'

Other than noting that Dubya obviously isn't smart enough to figure out that John Kerry was insulting him, not US servicembers in Iraq when bungled a one-liner in his speech the other day, we don't have anything to say about the matter. Especially since Lisa English does such an excellent job of putting the matter into perspective in this post.

Via Ruminate This.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:43 PM | Get permalink

Tracking next week's US elections.

We've found some cool maps showing the state of play for next week's elections.

Majority Watch has a map showing their latest polling for most congressional districts here.
Congressional Quarterly has mapped their projections for Senate, House, and governor races over here.

Both require Flash.

If you know of any other good maps — or good lists of polls/projections — feel free to leave links in the comments.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:13 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, October 31

My heartfelt apologies.

For the entire time that I've been blogging, I've repeatedly accused Dubya of refusing to deal with global warming and climate change. I've obviously been so wrong.

SNOW: The President has in fact, contrary to stereotype, been actively engaged in trying to fight climate change and will continue to do so.

REPORTER: The one area that is notably absent and that even Shell Oil and other major players are calling for is a global mandatory emissions cap and trade program. Unless do you this on an international basis, it?s not in the long-term economic interest of the United States, which seems to be one of your arguments that somehow will benefit the United States in the long-term.

SNOW: Well, what the United States has done is we have actually taken the lead on those kinds of innovations.

Tony Snow makes my brain hurt.

Via Think Progress.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:36 AM | Get permalink

Whatta ya mean, you wanted to vote for the Democrats??

As people in the US begin voting early for next week's elections, electronic voting machines are already acting weirdly. And, of course, acting weirdly in ways that favor Republican candidates.

A few days ago, there were reports that people in Broward County, Florida were finding that their votes for Democrats were being tallied as GOP votes. And now, the same thing appears to be happening in east Texas.

KFDM continues to get complaints from Jefferson County voters who say the electronic voting machines are not registering their votes correctly.
Friday night, KFDM reported about people who had cast straight Democratic ticket ballots, but the touch-screen machines indicated they had voted a straight Republican ticket.
Some of those voters including Lamar University professor, Dr. Bruce Drury, believe the problem is a programming error.

Saturday, KFDM spoke to another voter who says it's not just happening with straight ticket voting, he says it's happening on individual races as well, Jerry Stopher told us when he voted for a Democrat, the Republican's name was highlighted.

Jefferson county clerk Carolyn Guidry says her office has checked the calibration of the machines and found no problems.

She says the electronic system is very sensitive.

Stopher said, "There's something in these machines, in this equipment, that's showing Republican votes when you vote for Democrats, and I know Ms. Guidry's a nice lady, and she's working hard, but her theory that my fingernail was somehow over the Republican button is just unrealistic, my fingernail was not. The equipment is not working properly as far as I can tell."

I'm sure that the Democratic voters in Jefferson County just lack the sensitivity to use the voting machines properly. It couldn't possibly be programming errors. Especially not deliberate ones that would favor one party — say, the GOP — over another.

Via KFDM-TV.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:06 AM | Get permalink

Sorry about yesterday.

It was my first day on the new job, and I was without internet access almost all day. Plus I had the fun of trying to get my job computer to work right. So when I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was to sit down in front of yet another computer.

I feel better today, though. :)

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:04 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, October 29

Blame Blogger.

I had posts ready to go eight hours ago, but stupid Blogger wasn't working.

I suppose I really should get around to converting Magpie to WordPress — especially since I've been paying for alternate hosting for a couple of months now.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:28 PM | Get permalink

Did I ever tell you that I have too much time on my hands?

I bet you do, too.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:42 AM | Get permalink

Dubya's administration is finally investigating electronic voting machines.

Of course, it's only because they think that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez may be the owner of Smartmatic, the corporate parent of Sequoia Voting Systems.

My guess is that the GOP is worried that the fraud won't go their way on Sequoia machines.

Via Miami Herald.

More: The NY Times has more here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:57 AM | Get permalink

I'm almost certain this site is a hoax.

But isn't it a sad sign of the times that it could be real?

Detail from hoax election consulting site

They focus on the outcome rather than the process.

You can check out the site for yourself over here.

Via MetaFilter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:36 AM | Get permalink