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Never mind the Higgs Boson, the really BIG science news is our growing ability to “see” invisible dark matter. Check this out: My fav science-for-laymen magazine ScienceNews has the article about seeing a huge filament of dark matter connecting two galaxies. SN has been all over this story for a while. This kind of news plucks my awe twanger.  I love it. Pix credit:  July 8, 2012 ScienceNews

Jim Ramsburg and I worked together in L.A. at KLAC in the deep, dark '60s. He was a whiz kid then and is a whiz olde farte now.  If you were conscious during the '30s, '40s and/or the '50s, you will find yourself riding Dorothy's tornado down Alice's rabbit hole of memory and nostalgia reading his book. If you are student looking for a great media paper, there is endless potentially plagiarisable stuff. If the ratings biz interests you, this will be fascinating. Plus there are a bunch of great stories.  You will grin, giggle and grimace.    Gotta get it!  Do the Amazon boogie. [Check out Jim's web site at http://www.jimramsburg.com/]

We Are Both Misguided and Well Informed Today's NYTimes.com has two articles that come from two different realities.  I couldn't pass this up without a comment.  These days "amazing" must be way more so to kick over the threshold of "gotta blog about it." First I read " Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot" Its about Tea Party types who believe the U.N. is trying to undermine our freedoms and American Way of Life by encouraging hiking trails and reducing greenhouse gases.  Just a sample: " Across the country, activists with ties to the  Tea Party  are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy.  They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a  United Nations -led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities. They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lane...

I Say It Again... BURY THEM! OK, I said it before.  But here a very nice piece noting that in Connecticut, every big storm that cuts the power for long, expensive, uncomfortable periods of time reflects prior identical problems.  Check it out here Point is, we could end this madness of 19th Century power distribution.  Huge savings in money and inconvenience. Put the returning vets on the case! Please..... .  Feb 2  (what? 2008? Bury Them! UnderGrounding So how much did that Kentucky ice storm cost? Millions of people without power, plus of course, their factories, shops, offices, banks, government installations, plus the call-up of the whole Kentucky National Guard... on and on, the costs skyrocketed. Main problem? Power lines. Wires on top of poles, the way we have distributed electricity since the first days of the telegraph set the standard. Power line wires run by and th...

EVERYTHING Is Explained by Evolution ...At least everything human.  And I actually think pretty much everything that's alive, including plants, "germs," bugs and irresistible puppies are all fully explainable by evolution. I've bought into the idea that if a human trait - even a weird one - is around today, it was survival-positive at some point in our evolution, thus became part of what the human race is.  For instance  schizophrenia , not a trait you might consider all that valuable these days.  But back there in deep pre-history, the schizos probably were very effective shamans, and a tribe with a really wild shaman had survival advantages.  You can write the scenario as well as I can.   Could'a Been Us In one of my fav magazines NewScientist writer  Kate Ravilious   put together a fine piece ( 07 November 2011)  expanding on current thinking on this " EVERYTHING Is Explained by Evolution" bit.  She summarizes (and ad...

No More Floods; No More Droughts (Future) Historical fiction (Revisited) As our Congress messes around doing absolutely nothing about improving America's infrastructure, I can't resist pulling up my RBI (Really Big Idea) from 2003.  Put on your "government could really work" rose-colored glasses and read this. May 2020     The Mississippi River is approaching flood stage in Illinois, Indiana and Missouri.  The Corps of Engineers monitors the levees and dikes with the giant web of depth gauges and flow meters.  The U.S. Weather Bureau is predicting major rainstorms in several of the watersheds.  Supercomputers are crunching trillions of numbers and putting options in clear graphical displays in front of Corps decision makers.   The top Corps engineer picks up the Red Phone and calls the White House.  Connections are made and the Secretary of the Interior, the Vice President and The Woman Herself come online and listen to ...

JUST WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO PAY FOR? More Thrill of Getting Published. The whole warped argument about our national debt must be seen in a different light if we are ever going to see the light. I took a modest whack at it in this piece, printed in The Mountain View Telegraph , one of our weeklies hereabouts. (Unreadable, but cute, no?) Here ' tis , readable: Thursday, 21 July 2011 09:09 Willis Duff Tijeras resident The word "government" has been mutated by some into "monster," a conniving enormity out to "get in your way." Perhaps it's because the combination of local, state and federal government is just too big for us to see clearly, like fleas have trouble seeing the dog. So it must be a monster. In truth, government is a huge nonprofit whose purpose is to keep our civilization functioning the way we want it to. In the U.S., the government works for you. You are the client. "You" are all of us c...

"Message Control" a Super Weapon of the Right Americans aren't nuts. We actually know what the important stuff is, even though we are bludgeoned with talking points - all carefully orchestrated by the Selfish Rich (see the next post below). Proof that we are not crazy? Try this : Now you know I'm a survey maven, no? This is well designed, well executed public opinion polling. There is a very high probability that it represents how Americans actually think. But would you guess that from what Congress is up to? No, not Congress , the crazed Right Wing Nuts in Congress and the corporate media that echos their brain farts. Our agenda is being set by a small minority of well-organized loudmouths riding an ideological broomstick. JOBS and THE HEALTH OF OUR ECONOMY are the real issues. The current madness of Slash Slash Slash into the humanitarian side of government spending, and Give Give Give to the richest is, well... madness! Even Genuine Conservative David Brook...

They Own Your Mind You think your are thinking straight? Probably not. Because THEY have control of your mind ... da DUM !!! I've been telling anyone who will listen about the "right wing think tank threat," but this fine lady says it best. "The US main stream media is owned by maybe half a dozen large corporations. They all rely on advertising revenue from other large corporations for their existence. This means that these corporate advertisers control the message." You're not telling me anything I haven't known for years, but that's only part of it. Along with corporate interests there is a huge infrastructure of "think tanks" set up by wealthy family trusts -- the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife foundations, the John M. Olin, Joseph Coors, Charles Koch, etc., foundations -- that actually generate fake data to feed to news media to keep people confused. This is in collusion with Big Oil, Big Pharma , and othe...

BIGGER Than BIG Things that happen in slo -mo are invisible to most of us. Life is short, and events that take several lifetimes just disappear in the noise of day-to-day living. The BIG slo -mo elephant on the beach is climate change. BIG REPORT So what could be bigger? How about another MASS EXTINCTION as a result of climate change? There is yet another huge, fully credible, completely frightening report just out (on 20 June) warning of this looming nightmare, already underway, in our precious oceans and seas. Here are just the headlines of this report : Human actions have resulted in warming and acidification of the oceans and are now causing increased hypoxia. The speeds of many negative changes to the ocean are near to or are tracking the worst-case scenarios from IPCC and other predictions. Some are as predicted, but many are faster than anticipated, and many are still accelerating. ...