Rant "Science!"

A lot of people don't realize that the science community is like a pit of hungry tigers, waiting for the next paper to be dropped in and shredded.

I was listening to "The Skeptics Guide to the Universe." - they were having a dispute with another podcast.

Conflicting Podcast - "This guy has a study that shows that Dogs can psychically predict the arrival of their owners back home."

SGU - "The study was poorly constucted and a crock. The meta-analysis of prior studies was dumber than they usually are, and meta-analyses suck."

ConPod - "You guys were totally mean and hostile!"

SGU - [Paraphrasing] "It's SCIENCE, you [darn]! Get a helmet and stop being a [darn]!"

In "Science!", you develop a theory, and supporting data, and then other scientists try to kill it. Most die, but the ones that survive are scary bad[darn] theories.

Win is killing a unfit idea and showing it's head to the audience. "This idea was WRONG and I destroyed it FOR SCIENCE!!"

MAJOR win is when your theory is standing at the end of the battle.

The science community stabbed, beat and kicked anthropogenic global warming with sticks, knives and guns.

And now most of them, particularly the ones who publish and throw ideas ideas into the pit to fight to the death their own selves, are saying - "It lived."

There's no end to this. Newton, Einstein, Hawking. Their ideas get attacked and shredded (Actually the stuffed corpses of Newton's are on display in the entry halls of "SCIENCE")

There's no point at which a referee blows a whistle and declares an idea THE TRUTH.

You just look for the people who go into the pit and kill ideas for a living (And for joy) and if they shake their head and say "I couldn't take it down." This is a clue.

Few people debate the idea that the earth is round. This is a major tough idea. It has many lines of defense and counter attack. You better be a tough [darn] to go after this idea. Everyone who has tried has wound up on the ground so far.

These days the people who go after this one are like the angry little man at the bar who gets [darn]-faced and goes after the biggest guy he can find "WASH'ER YOU LOOKIN' AT!?!?! HANH!?!?"

Loons. Idiots. Masochists who enjoy the beatings with facts they get.

It's still in the arena. If you get a new fact, you may just have a chance to take it down. Good luck with that.

Most of the people who are attacking anthropogenic global warming are going after it with rubber chickens and rainbow colored fright wigs. They are not equipped for that fight.

Parsing out who has the right weapons and the right knowledge to make a run at this idea is hard for us in the civilian world.

I am hearing from the people in the pit with knives. They are reporting that this thing is tough. I am hearing from people who have court side seats, and occasionally get a scientist in their lap from a foul. This thing is winning the fight. It's way ahead on points.

The most difficult thing is trying to track down just who knows what they are talking about.

because this pit where Ideas and scientists go to fight to the death -

It's not just one place. It can't be. There's no official coloseum. there are dozens of unofficial coloseums.

In this metaphor the arena in which an idea fights for it's life is a journal.

The Skeptoid Podcast did a wonderful discussion of how to tell a legitmate journal.

The creationists have been setting up thier own journals. Padded rooms where they tap "Intelligent Design" with boffers and yell "IT WINS!"

This poor idea doesn't get three steps out of the front door before wild scientists shred it alive. It screams and is gone. The creationists drag it's little mangled corpse back to safety, prop it back up and try again.

I don't know about this Maunder Minimum idea. The sources I have read say it's not steady on it's feet and is bleeding here and there. It's standing, but who knows for how long?

This new Maunder Minimum? It's a baby fresh out of the chute. Let's give it some time and see if it survives a real fight.

The guys who threw it into the pit. How credible are they? How tough are they? How well do they know their [darn]?

Maybe they are like those happy people who load a bunch [darn] with whoopie cushions and bunches of fruit into a clown car and cry when a wild scientist slaughters it like a ding dong at an over eaters anonymous meeting.

Any idea can be thrown into the pit. Most likely, it will get butchered mercilessly. THAT'S SCIENCE!

People who are too attached to their pet ideas get bit and loose their fingers.

Science is not for the faint of heart.

I love it.

Jay ~Meow!~

So, I got my hot lil hands on a full run of the 1983 show "V" and proceeded to watch the two intro miniseries installments (and the first episode of the series). It's funny, but you get so used to the fancy CGI, the morphing terminators, and the spectabulous space shots in modern films, but many times there's something lacking there. I think it's called 'a compelling story'. Somtimes it's called a 'plot' of any nature. We get so caught up in the HD/CGI/Visual experience, we sometimes (as viewers) let the story slide.

V was a story and a half. As I recall, it was one of the most expensive miniseries ever made at that time, and it shows it. Not from the visual effects point of view (frankly, some of them were laughable by today's standards), but for the boldness of the story itself. A retelling of the stories of resistance fighters of world war II - facing facist Germany and fighting back every way they knew how.

V is the story of one cell of the resistance in Los Angeles, fighting against the (supposedly) friendly "visitors", an advanced alien civilization who showed up in mile wide motherships, lazily hovering over the world's biggest cities. They came 'as friends' - yeah, right - and only wanted our help to make some special chemicals that would keep them from going extinct. Uh huh. All that didn't explain the mysterious disappearances, the mass kidnappings, and - oh yeah - those tubes with frozen human ala carte in their starships. You see, they needed water and food. To be precise, they wanted all our water and humans as food! The resistance, led by Dr. Juliet Parrish and reporter Michael Donovan assemble a widely diverse group of people in their cell, and work to subvert the visitors at every turn. Their band is not without casualties. Lots of them. 

All in all, it's a wonderful story. A story of real heroism against insurmountable odds. It's also a cautionary tale about helping those who wish you harm. Collaborators do not do too well in V - much like in real life. Neither side will trust a collaborator, and eventually both sides will want you dead.

Ignore the effects (some of the matte shots made me cringe) and go grab this baby and watch it again. It's well worth the time.

Well, I'm not exactly sure I need another blog, but we'll see how this turns out.  :-)

There are times, and those times seem to be coming more and more often, when I truly dispair for the human race. More specifically, I despair over the human race's seeming shunning of exploration and risk taking. It's almost as if we, as a species, have forgotten that we have come this far precisely because we took risks and explored.

Now, any mistake, any misstep, any accident, and it's "Why are you doing that?", "You shouldn't be doing that!". As if we have decided that from this point out, the rules change. No exploration if there's risk involved. No pushing forward if a person may be injured. Hell, we even consider harsh language as an 'injury' now.

NASA says "Let's go to Mars!" - the American public says "There's more important things here on Earth". We've heard that line before, folks. And we lost the moon because of it. Never mind that there's He3 in them there moon rocks - a more powerful energy source than anything we have here on ole terra firma. (Three shuttle loads a year would power the USA for a year) Never mind that if we had the moon today, we'd have Mars tomorrow. (And who knows what spinoff tech we'd have already) Never mind all the benefits of space, just look at the tragic costs of 'that boondoggle'!

I chalk it up to what my friend calls "the attention span of a gnat's ass" of the American people. You can see that everywhere. From politics to war to 9/11 to even patriotism. Space never had a chance against those other things. Space was boring. Space was not interesting.

Well, risk is never boring. Real risk. Risk as in the "If we don't do this right, we're gonna die" mentality. And sometimes, regrettably, they did die. I, for one, will never forget them. Those bold, courageous, explorers of the cosmos. Those who knew the risks, rolled the dice, and lost. They burn in my memory like shining stars. But sometimes... sometimes we roll the dice and we, as Commander Adama says, "roll the hard six". But that takes guts, and boldness, and an appreciation of the real risks involved.

I think that every schoolchild in America should watch Apollo 13 in their classroom - with a teacher who truly understands what the space program was all about. That story is one of the most amazing in our young country's history. Also, I'd include "From the Earth to the Moon", and "When We Left Earth" to that list. Our real space adventures have seemingly come to a close, and our wonderful astronauts are slowly leaving us, one by one.

We can't afford to forget our exploratory roots. It's as dangerous as forgetting to eat, only more so.

I don't usually do this, but here are the Amazon links to any of the above mentioned titles you don't have. If you haven't seen any of them, I strongly suggest it.

We (CSM and I) watched the premier of Sanctuary last evening on the SciFi Channel.

I watched at least a few of the "webisodes" several months ago when they tried to launch Sanctuary as a pay-to-view web series.  The story was vaguely the same last night as in the first few webisodes, but significantly fleshed out.  And I think Amanda Tapping's fake British accent is toned down, which is probably a good thing.:-)

Sanctuary plays on the often-repeated idea that there are *things* and even monsters in our world that most people don't see.  This is certainly a theme of Torchwood, as it was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it also recurs through centuries of literature.  We both fear and are intrigued by the "monsters just out of sight" so they make fertile ground for storytelling.  As a result, there are very familiar elements about Sanctuary.  The real question is how innovatively the series takes on this theme.

It will take time because not all the back story is clear from the permier.  Dr. Helen Magnus is almost 150 years old and her blood apparently can keep other people young, too.  She once was engaged to Jack the Ripper, who was one of these "just out of sight" beings.  She now runs an institution that both protects the public from the dangerous beings, and protects vulnerable beings from mob rule.  The implication is that there are many baddies out there with nasty plans for all of us, but of course they don't much go into that in the premier.  It has to unfold as part of a story arc. Magnus also has a zaftig blonde commando daughter who runs around through tunnels a lot, wearing tight clothes, carrying big weapons, fighting bad guys and being a typical disobedient teenager.  Jackthe Ripper was her dad, but she doesn't know it.

On the technical side, the thing that is intereasting about Sanctuary is that much of it is shot using green screen, with the backgrounds filled in via CGI animation.  As my wife quipped, they make all the scenes dark so the CGI doesn't have to be as good.  The dark settings ARE reminiscent of The X-Files and much of Torchwood, and I will be charitable and say that they probably are for BOTH artistic and practical reasons. :-) 

I enjoyed the double first eipsode and I plan to watch the succeeding episodes.  I don't know yet whether it will hold my attention enough to watch it EVERY week, or just when I catch it.  That will depend on how attached I get to the characters, and on the quality of the storytelling. 

The original soundtrack album of the hit BBC TV series Torchwood is now available:

          http://tinyurl.com/3ogtmb

It was first made available to purchase for download back in August, and it now for sale "hard copy" as well.

The third season of the series began filming about a month ago and wil air as a five night miniseries sometime in 2009. 

Congratulations to the Omnibeing and all the subsidiary beings at SciFiOrbit for their launch today.

And to think -- I knew the Omnibeing before "the year that everything changed." 

Luckily, Torchwood was ready. 

Best wishes, SciFiOrbit, for many zeros to the left of the decmil point.

One of the things I do in my spare time (ha) is occasional feature news reports for public radio.  I will be doing a news feature in the next few days about a pipe organ that is about to be rehabilitated at a cost of around $250,000.  The organ was made in the 1930s by a famous builder, the Skinner company.

Most of the Skinner organs have been heavily modified, to the point that the original makers might not recognize the instrument.  "Cobbled yup beyond recognition" is the technical term.  :-)  This particular pipe organ, however, has NOT been modified, and in fact has not been playable for some years. One might think that this is the perfect opportunity to "restore" this particular instrument to its original condition, given that it is historically important.  Instead, however, they are going to do a "historically sensitive" rehabilitation because in its original form, the pipe organ would not be suitable to play much of the serious organ music written in the late 19th and 20th centirues.

It struck me this morning that this is a metaphor for Star Trek.  Some fans would like to see a true "restoration" of the franchise.  Others suspect that the new Star Trek movie will be "cobbled up beyond recognition."

What Star Trek really needs is an historically sensitive renovation.  Obviouslty we will have new actors, sets and special effects.  The best solution, however, will be to preserve the feel and mood of the original, and at least the major points of continuity.  That way, the original fans will likely come along, while the movie will be able to find a new generation of fans.

If, instead, they try to "new coke" us with an unrecognizable product that only gives lip service to the original, the movie will fail at the box office and the franchise will probably become pretty passive for a long time.

There isn't a tv series that's impressed me enough to affect my wallet.  This series has ~ I'll buy the complete set.

We're in the middle of the last season. All things must come to an end sometime but I'm not ready to say goodbye to this show. The characters are interesting ~ vibrant, full of life portraying both good and flaw qualities. Watching them grow has been a pleasure (and pain!) over the last few years and the plot ...   Well, the plot is a pretzel twist that has one sitting on edge going WTF as yet another corkscrew is introduced to create havoc with how you thought the story would end. 

I know what I think will happen and am impatient for the show to resume (damn writers' strike - lol - i hope they got what they wanted).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqhzuzXlUIM&feature=related

 Brian Tyler - Inama Nushif

Inama nushif (She is eternal)
Al ­asir hiy ayish (No malice can touch)

Lia-anni (Singular and ageless)
Zaratha zarati (Perpetually bound)

Hatt al-hudad (Through the tempest)
Al-maahn al-baiid (be it deluge or sand)
Ay-yah idare (A singular voice)
Adamm malum (speaks through the torrent)

Hatt al-hudad (Through the tempest)
Al-maahn al-baiid (be it deluge or sand)
Ay-yah idare (A singular voice)
Adamm malum (speaks through the torrent)

Inama nishuf al a sadarr (Forever her voice sings)
Eann zaratha zarati (through the ages eternally bound)

Kali bakka a tishuf ahatt (Sacrifice is her gift)
Al hudad alman dali (one that cannot be equaled)

Inama nishuf al a sadarr (Forever her voice sings)
Eann zaratha zarati (through the ages eternally bound)

Kali bakka a tishuf ahatt (Sacrifice is her gift)
Al hudad alman dali alia (that Alia will one day equal)

Inama nushif (She is eternal)
Al ­asir hiy ayish (No malice can touch)

Lia-anni (Singular and ageless)
Zaratha zarati (Perpetually bound)