I was a bit busy last week and wasn’t able to do one of the things I really wanted to: write about space and a few extraordinary developments that have been announced or released lately. Namely, there’s been more fun with exo-planetary systems, Europa and asteroids.
F-Yeah Exo-Planetary Systems
A few months ago I wrote about the discovery of a hot “near-Earth” named GJ 1214b. The rocky planet measuring about six times the mass of the Earth was discovered at about 40 light years distance using the Radial Velocity method of exo-planetary detection (measuring red-shift of a star to determine slight wobbles caused by a star — in this case, GJ 1214 — orbiting along with exo-planet(s) around their common center of gravity).
Scientists at a conference in France announced this week the discovery of two new exciting sets of exo-planetary systems, each distinguishing in its own way. The first, which has been observed primarily using Radial Velocity is the discovery of the stellar system with the most known planets outside of our own solar system. HD 10180, a Sun-like M-Class star sitting about 128 light years away hosts a whopping seven planets.
NASA released the above animation of the planetary system around HD 10180.
Click through for more discussion and discovery.Read more…
I’ve been meaning to write a bit more and clarify my thoughts and feelings on the Cordoba Initiative’s plans for a community center and mosque in lower Manhattan. Last week, I strung together a bit of a rambling post discussing how disappointed I am in the sweeping tide of anti-American behavior taken up in the name of “American values” throughout this nation.
The proposed Cordoba House is an uncomfortable issue for most and brings up conflicting feelings and desires to both defend American freedoms and empathize with the families of September 11, 2001 victims.
Part of my desire to discuss the topic more was the realization that I hadn’t articulated well exactly what it was that I found offensive and anti-American. So let me be clear, opposing the Cordoba House is not anti-American. It is merely the attempts to use the government or government means that is anti-American and, quite simply, unconstitutional.
While technically, the movement to have the former Burlington Coat Factory building landmarked was not specifically tied to the building of a mosque (and it would not have completely blocked the construction, but simply made the plans more difficult as the exterior of the building would have had to be preserved) and was, therefore, not relating to the establishment, promotion or obstruction of religious freedoms. Despite this, few would argue that the facts really hid the between-the-lines anti-Islam motivations thereunder. This would be no different than the post-Edwards v Aguillard move of creationists to remove overt religious references to religion or god in the newly revamped intelligence design movement. Everyone knows the motivation has no basis in science, but in religious ideology.
In the case of the Cordoba House, pushing to landmark and make more difficult the conversion of the building at the proposed site was a measure to use the government to obstruct the construction of a privately funded, otherwise legal religious building and institution. In other words, this move represented an effort to violate the Establishment Clause.
I’ve settled into a nice niche with respect to Twitter news. Yes, you can get some breaking stories truly from the masses via Trending Topics, but I also rely on two specific sources for news updates. One is for headlines and the other is for commentary.
Mike Bloomberg marked the Cordoba House victory from Governor's Island (nee Nutten Island), where the Dutch first settled New Amsterdam.
This past week has seen two important victories for liberty in America. Yet somehow, the news accounts are all over the place. If you look at a Red station/website/paper (e.g., anything owned by Rupert Murdoch), the sky is falling. If you’re on Twitter or Tumblr, you’d think everyone had decided to sing Kumbaya and that all the world’s ills are over. Obviously, the reality is somewhere in between. And, at least in my eyes, these victories for liberty were but speed bumps that have not halted a harsh and brutal wave of oppression that ironically brandishes the name of freedom.
The victories of which I speak were both very important. The first came on Tuesday when the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously against a measure to grant landmark status to the building that once housed The Burlington Coat Factory and now is planned to be torn down and replaced with a 13-story community center called the Cordoba House. The second was Wednesday, when a California jurist enjoined enforcement of a ballot initiative that effectively banned same-sex marriage in the state. While these two levees pushed back the waters of hatred and bigotry (of late, quite commonly in the name of fundamentalist Christianity), this country is leaking like a sieve elsewhere and that the victories were necessary at all is reflective thereof.
So I hadn’t intended to post any lectures, TED or not, today, but the leak of more than 90,000 documents (at least some of which were classified) relating to American operations in Afghanistan and intelligence relating to Pakistan, the Taliban and the Afghan government at least made this particular lecture topical.
I will note that don’t have an opinion with respect to whether WikiLeaks’ existence is a positive or negative thing and whether the site’s leaks are a net positive or negative for both America’s governmental actions and national security. I’ve not thought enough on the topic to have an informed opinion.
Most certainly, WikiLeaks has been structured in a very conscientious manner, taking great care to cover their sources. And they do take legitimate measures to ensure validity of materials. But should everything be leaked just because it can be — noting, however, that they are quite clear in that they don’t publish everything they get? On that, I’m not certain.
Here is WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange in a conversation discussing the site just earlier this month at TEDGlobal 2010.
Any time you get a chance to see NdGT work, you're constantly drawn to make plans to visit the Rose Center.
While most of the time I’m going to embed videos from TED lectures, sometimes I’ll go with non-TED videos that drive home a similar concept of pressing forth knowledge while providing entertainment. In the field of science and astrophysics, in particular, there’s simply no one better than Neil de Grasse Tyson.
Tyson is the revered host of PBS’s NOVA magazine show and is the director of the Rose Center and Hayden Planetarium at New York’s Museum of Natural History. He’s also one of the most engaging folks when it comes to conveying enthusiasm for the sciences. Oh yeah, there’s also the whole Pluto thing (The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet).
I’ve linked a few videos for a reason, appearing after the jump.
OK, I admit I’m like a nerd without the credentials (American Studies BA instead of a Physics or Chem BS), but I must say I was especially pleased with a certain clever re-Tweet I earned myself today. As many of you may know, Russian scientists (in concert with some Americans) have collided particles together in a successful effort to recreate a new, super heavy element numbered 117 and temporarily called Ununseptium.
Well, as the team prepares to give it a final name, Wired Science’s Twitter has been helping out by polling followers on what they think the name should be. I contributed my thought, which got a solid re-Tweet from my all-time favorite magazine.
Click through for images and Epic Victory! Read more…
I don’t mean to mock. I really don’t. Tea Baggers, as a whole, are no less moronic than the masses of Americans that march for or against something they don’t really understand. The difference is that the Tea Baggers don’t have eloquent leadership or spellcheckers (or anyone with the simple capacity to tell them that they shouldn’t use “tea bagging” as a verb).
Nevertheless, there is something especially amusing about the typos made by the Tea Baggers… it may be because they have such an affinity for signs and such an incapacity to get them right in both concept and execution. Over on Flickr, user Pargon has assembled a great pool of 140 photos (and counting) showing some of the greatest Tea Bagger typos. The slideshow is below. Enjoy (or cry for America).
A new feature I’m going to hopefully get going on the site is linking a couple of lectures from TED that I find worthwhile watching. First up is going to be a few pieces on Science, Free-thinking and Religion.
The subject was sparked for me by tuning in to a TED talk by Sam Harris two weeks ago on morality and religion, or rather taking morality from our understanding of science, instead of religion. Filmed at TED2010 in February 2010, Long Beach, CA.
I will admit that I’m not 100 percent on board with Harris’s talk. I think that the idea of scientific forces driving moral behavior has some validity, but it’s far from a universal truth. On the converse side, one can also equally argue that religion has been at the forefront of both acts of kindness and true villainy. Where Harris does hit home, however, is in the idea that science can guide what is good — or rather the affirmative answer to the question posed by Harris: can a fact about how reality is provide an idea of how something should be. Harris will lose some fans in that he is elitist and somewhat dismissive of the more religious of the red states.
In any respect, Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer and Julia Sweeney, after the jump. Read more…
I honestly couldn’t really care much about the death of Corey Haim. Yeah, anyone throwing their life away on drugs is tragic, but Corey Haim’s death is really no more so than your local neighborhood crackhead. That said, he was in some kickass movies. Silver Bullet, Lucas, Lost Boys and, of course, that movie where Nicole Eggert got nekkid. [Pause... reflect... getting creepy so get back to typing]
Anyway, Lost Boys was freaking awesome, so in honor of Haim’s passing we will remember his best movie career scene… starring the most powerful stereo in the world:
Oh, and if they need someone to adopt Nanook, I’m totally in.
After the jump, the “Cry Little Sister” compilation and movie trailer. Read more…
).