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Archive for September, 2008

silence

29 Sep

"silence"
 
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no description

29 Sep

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29 Sep

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Paris

29 Sep

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Pullman on Censorship and Religion

29 Sep

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy constitutes one of the finest reading experiences for children I’ve ever seen. I read them as an adult, on the advice of a literary colleague, and fell under their spell immediately. They are fantasy books, for sure, but with a strong rational and anti-authority philosophy. And although I don’t think of them as purely anti-religious, if your religion is one with an authoritarian streak then …

In a brief article in The Guardian, Pullman takes on those who would seek to ban his books from library shelves. He points to the futility of such bans, the inevitable increased readership of banned works, and the utterly moronic reasons that some give for requesting bans. But he saves his real vitriol for religion. Pullman’s basic take on religion

My basic objection to religion is not that it isn’t true; I like plenty of things that aren’t true. It’s that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

isn’t precisely the same as my own, since I do disagree with religion because it is false. I also like plenty of things that aren’t true - the works of David Foster Wallace are a timely example - but the things I like that aren’t true don’t claim to be true. But I certainly also agree with the things that drive Pullman nuts

In fact, when it comes to banning books, religion is the worst reason of the lot. Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue – from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones.

Well put!

 
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It's snowing on Mars – San Francisco Chronicle

29 Sep

ITV.com

It's snowing on Mars
San Francisco Chronicle - 1 hour ago
(09-29) 17:22 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- It's snowing on Mars and winter is icumen in - to misquote the Middle English paen to springtime.
Phoenix Mars Lander "Sees" Falling Snow National Geographic
NASA robot sends back evidence it's snowing on Mars Computerworld
The Associated Press - TG Daily - Reuters - Bloomberg
all 355 news articles
 
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12978189-digit prime number discovered by UCLA researchers – TG Daily

29 Sep

BBC News

12978189-digit prime number discovered by UCLA researchers
TG Daily - 2 hours ago
By Samantha Rose Los Angeles (CA) - Mathematicians at UCLA discovered the 45th known Mersenne prime with almost 13 million digits.
Video: UCLA Researchers Find Largest Known Prime Number AssociatedPress
UCLA Mathematicians Discover 13-Million-Digit Prime Number AHN
The Associated Press - eFluxMedia - Los Angeles Times - Discover Magazine
all 506 news articles
 
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Birdlike Dinosaur Found in Argentina – National Geographic

29 Sep

National Geographic

Birdlike Dinosaur Found in Argentina
National Geographic - 2 hours ago
A new predatory dinosaur with a birdlike breathing system found in Argentina may help scientists better understand the evolution of birds' lung systems.
Dinosaur predator breathed like a modern bird Reuters
Argentina dinosaur fossil find tightens evolutionary link with ... Chicago Tribune
LiveScience.com - Science News - Telegraph.co.uk - InTheNews.co.uk
all 20 news articles
 
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European Spaceship's Death Plunge Caught on Film – Space.com

29 Sep

United Press International

European Spaceship's Death Plunge Caught on Film
Space.com - 4 hours ago
By Peter B. de Selding GLASGOW, Scotland - Europe's unmanned space cargo vehicle successfully reentered the atmosphere over the south Pacific Ocean Sept.
Space freighter successfully ends mission by burning up USA Today
Spaceship dies in blaze of glory MSNBC
United Press International - BBC News - RTT News - Space Com
all 52 news articles
 
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Earth: A Very Special Place In the Void [Dark Energy]

29 Sep

You know that "I'm an insignificant dot in the middle of this enormous universe" feeling you get when you stare up into the night sky a little too long? Well, some Oxford scientists think you might be a little more special than that - or at least, the planet you live on is. Their radical new theory would not only obviate the need for dark energy to explain observed patterns of galactic motion, it would overturn the centuries-old Copernican Principle. Not bad for a day's work.

In the 16th century, Copernicus hypothesized that the Earth is not the center of the solar system, but rather the sun is. Later, cosmologists expanded this idea into the Copernican Principle: Earth is not in a special place in the universe, therefore our observations of local space can be used to infer data about the rest of the universe. When astronomers observed that the universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate, they needed to add something to their equations to make it all make sense. That something is dark energy, which would have to exist in massive quantities (as yet, pretty much undetectable) to explain this expansion.

Here's the thing - the universe is really, really, really huge. Just the part we can see is almost incomprehensibly big, and there's a whole lot of universe we can't see. No one knows how big the whole universe is, but it's entirely possible that our part of the universe is just a tiny fraction of the whole. Physicists from Oxford University are considering the idea that the universe we can observe is actually anomalous, a giant void with a low density of matter. The rest of the universe may look substantially different. Doing some number crunching revealed that their model of the universe works without dark energy, but isn't quite as accurate as the current dark energy model. However, they need more observations of certain types of supernovae to refine their numbers - in a few months, their equations may look better with more data.

What's particularly cool is that this maverick theory that tosses a very accepted tenet of astronomy right out the window is being published in Physical Review Letters, one of the most respected physics journals. It sure beats excommunication. Image by: NASA.

Overturning Copernicus, eliminating dark energy. [Nobel Intent]

Tsunami invisibility cloak, dark energy v. the void, sorting nanotubes with light, and more. [EurekAlert!]


 
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