Month: August 2008

  • Pluto is Two Years Dead

    Today is the two year anniversary of Pluto’s demotion from planet status. I had invited several people to contribute to this event. Chris Schierer has remarked that Pluto is really really small and is very very hard to see. Kim Bosco tells us how Pluto was found and why Kansas is key! Jim Cronen opines about classification and lastly, Steph Sisson has composed a planetary haiku for the event:

    Like your dark namesake,
    return to deepest shadow.
    Retrograde motion

    I also have an opinion and some comments on this event


    You may recall that in 2006, the International Planetary Union decided on a definition of “planet” that did not include Pluto.

    The IAU members gathered at the 2006 General Assembly agreed that a “planet” is defined as a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

    The clinching criteria was the (c) item. Pluto doesn’t have a large enough mass to have “cleared the neighbourhood”. Unfortunately, as several people have pointed out, if Mercury (a planet) were transported to the Kuiper Belt, it wouldn’t be a planet anymore. The definition is fundamentally arbitrary and therefore hasn’t much scientific usefulness.

    This has implications for the ongoing search for “planets” in other solar systems. To date, most of the discovered extra-solar (“not in our solar system”) planets have been large ones. Jupiter-sized or so. These fit anyone’s definition of planet. Several planets close to the size of Earth have also been located. Soon, as techniques and technology improve, even smaller bodies will be found. We’re going to have to pigeon-hole these orbiting piles of rock and ice into our preconceived definitions of what is a planet, and what is not. People will think differently of a planet then they will a moon, or an asteroid, or a Kuiper belt object, or whatever. Don’t forget that the moons Titan (orbiting Saturn) and Ganymede (orbiting Jupiter) are both larger than Mercury, although less massive. Don’t tell me that your school teachers didn’t concentrate more on Mercury than they did Titan or Ganymede because I’ll know you’re lying.

    These preconceived notions, while not detrimental in and of themselves, can lead to dangerous blindspots when performing that grandest of tasks: science. While I have faith that eventually these blindspots are exposed and examined, wouldn’t it be better to not force astronomers, astrophysicists and other scientists to pre-ordain orbiting bodies into the categories of “planet” or “not-planet”. A more all-inclusive term is needed for the various piles of rock, ice and gas that circle their central furnaces. “Planet” should probably not be used anymore in science, with an exception:

    For the purposes of Grade School science instruction, I think that we should call the most recent 9 planets (including Pluto, for historical reasons) the “official” planets of our solar system and then discard the term in later science instruction, explaining that “planet” is only a convenient label for several large bodies that circle our sun and that it is not a scientific term.

    Pluto isn’t a planet anymore, alas. It still has a large place in the hearts of those of us who care.

  • Evil Eyebrow Comment and Moderation Policy

    Smashed Keyboard
    Photo Credits to Jhuebner

    I feel the need to post this because I want everyone to be very clear about my blog. This is my very own personal playground and I will run it anyway I damn well choose. That includes the current policy of placing every commenter1 into a queue for approval if they haven’t previously had an approved comment. That also includes changing policies without notice.

    I reserve the right to manage my playground in a manner that is pleasing to me. This means arbitrary deletion or spamination of any comment I feel like. To date, in the 3 years and 3 months this blog has been running I’ve approved every single comment except one (that one I couldn’t figure out if it was spam or topical, eventually I came down on spam). Even weird, crazy, obscene and profane comments get approved (see this Lost post).

    I make an effort to approve comments in moderation as quickly as possible, but it may take some time if I’m not near a computer. I do not obsessively check my email or my blog when I’m doing something fun. If you sit in the queue for a length of time that makes you think I don’t like you or that I’m trying to suppress you, I assure you that you’re projecting. Take a breath and come back tomorrow.

    I maintain my right to snark back at people who snark at me. It’s not personal. After all I probably don’t know you. If you keep it polite, I will reciprocate.

    If you need more information, my policy is substantively similar to John Scalzi’s with the exception that I will never alter your words without permission. Your comment will be either approved or denied. Rarely will it be denied (as I said, I don’t believe I’ve ever denied a legitimate comment). I have no reason to keep people from expressing their opinions on my blog, even if those opinions are diametrically opposed to mine. So bring it on, but reap as you sow, if you catch my drift


    1“Commenter” is defined by my blog software as a name and an email address. If you change the way you enter your name or the email address you place in the comment block, you’ll be dumped into moderation hell.

  • I've Been Taken To Task

    I posted on Friday about vaccines and my opinion of parents who don’t do use them.

    Ginger Taylor responded (and snarked at me for not approving her comment fast enough). She makes some points, to which I respond.

    I want to know what you, my regular readers, think. Am I being a mouthpiece for corporate pharmaceutical or does the science hold up?

  • Peachtree City Triathlon 2008

    Tonight we head down to Peachtree City for the 2008 Tri-PTC race. It’s a sprint triathlon (~400 meter swim, 20 kilometer bike, 5 kilometer run) and this will be our second time doing it.

    This was my very first triathlon last September and I’m sorta looking forward to it. Unfortunately, with my calf strain I’ll probably be walking the 5k instead of running and I’ll take it easy on the bike. I’m looking at this as an opportunity to practice my transitions under race conditions.

    It should be a blast. There’s about a thousand racers of all shapes and abilities. Hopefully I won’t get punched in the head during the swim this year.

  • House Cats

    In the continuing series of random photographs, here is a picture of our bedroom before it was our bedroom. This image was on the house listing when we were shopping around for a home.

    Bedroom

    The people we purchased our house from had 10 cats, 2 dogs, a bird and two rats. If you look closely at this picture, you can see 6 cats. Can you spot them all?

  • Parents Continue to Kill Children

    Unfounded fears about vaccination which are fueled by media networks who want to show “both sides” of a story without having an opinion themselves are causing the resurgence of measles and other childhood diseases. Parents fear that vaccination will give their children autism (untrue) or that they may develop serious side effects (rare1). At least, with the fear of side effects, parents are dreading well-documented issues, even if they are vastly over-reacting to the possibility of a complication. (there is also the subset of parents who object to vaccination on religious grounds. I won’t talk about them, here)

    Parents who fear childhood vaccinations because of the speculative and discarded hypothesis that they cause autism are prey to an emotional response which is the basis for the statement “Correlation does not imply causality”. In other words just because an effect occurs after you do something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the something caused the effect. Just because some children are diagnosed with autism after they receive vaccinations does not necessarily mean that vaccinations cause autism.

    Some anti-vaccination persons claim that the main culprit, so the theory goes, is a preservative called thimerosal, a mercury containing compound. On the face of it, you might suppose they’re right, after all, mercury is a neurotoxin and autism is a neurologic disorder. Let’s assume for the moment that mercury might cause autism. The obvious response would be to remove the mercury-containing substance, thimerosal, from the vaccines that children are receiving. That would make sense, right?

    Well, that’s what Sweden and Denmark did. They removed thimerosal from their vaccines and yet the incidence of autism went up. This website has a breakdown of numerous studies that confirm no link between thimerosal and autism rates. There is no link between thimerosal and autism2. None. Zero.

    “Ok, then”, you say, “what about vaccines without thimerosal? Those might be causing autism.” True, they might, but how about this Danish study where they looked at a large population of children (nearly all Danish children born between ’91 and ’98) who were vaccinated with non-thimerosal doses and compared them to all the unvaccinated children born during the same years. They found no statistical difference between the two categories when looking at autism rates. A child receiving a vaccination (or not) made no difference in whether she would be diagnosed with autism.

    This brings us back to my initial point that parents are killing their children. They are denying them modern (proven!) immunity to life-threatening diseases because of unsubstantiated fears. Furthermore, they are actively fighting the (proven!) vaccination movement while discounting the knowledge of professional scientists and epidemiologists because they know there’s a link between autism in their children and the vaccines that were administered.3

    These parents are killing their children and by association are endangering the lives of the children around them. There are kids out there who for various reasons cannot be vaccinated and they are being put in harms way, especially because some of the medical reasons which prevent their vaccination are likely to make them more susceptible to measles or other childhood diseases.

    We’ve stamped out small pox. We’ve eliminated polio in America, Europe and China. We’ve reduced measles, mumps and rubella to tiny shadows of their former selves. But measles is popping back up and kids are being infected. We, the population of the world, have a right to live in a disease free environment because we can. It makes no sense to throw away a life saving treatment and have children die because some people don’t believe in science.

    The anti-vaccine movement gets my blood up in a way that anti-evolutionists don’t. They’re both wrong, but the anti-vaxxers are presented with flesh-and-blood reminders of what it is they’re fighting against. The anti-evolutionists merely have to ignore complicated (often dry) scientific studies and research.

    Don’t be an anti-vaxxer! Your kids might die.


    1It’s important to read the list of vaccination side effects from the CDC while keeping in mind that something might be possible, but it’s not likely. Several of the “severe” side effects are listed as so rare that they haven’t determined whether or not the vaccine caused them

    2Quoting from the FDA website, and remember that this was issued during the tenure of the most science-fearing administration of recent decades, “In 2004, the IOM’s Immunization Safety Review Committee issued its final report, examining the hypothesis that vaccines, specifically the MMR vaccines and thimerosal containing vaccines, are causally associated with autism. In this report, the committee incorporated new epidemiological evidence from the U.S., Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, and studies of biologic mechanisms related to vaccines and autism since its report in 2001. The committee concluded that this body of evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism, and that hypotheses generated to date concerning a biological mechanism for such causality are theoretical only [editor’s emphasis]. Further, the committee stated that the benefits of vaccination are proven and the hypothesis of susceptible populations is presently speculative, and that widespread rejection of vaccines would lead to increases in incidences of serious infectious diseases like measles, whooping cough and Hib bacterial meningitis.”

    3A side note (not one which I’ll argue) is whether it’s a public good to prevent the infection of hundreds of thousands and the death of hundreds by inflicting [something] on a few. ‘The good of the many’ argument. Note that I don’t think we are inflicting anything on those few, aside from the fortunately rare serious side effects.

  • Fay

    People don’t pay attention to the weather outside their immediate vicinity unless it’s a catastrophic incident that makes national/international news. Thus we have Tropical Storm Fay, which isn’t bothering me personally at the moment but sure is causing headaches for my neighbors to the south (although I used to live in one of the flooded towns).

    What’s interesting about Fay, from a strictly academic standpoint, is the degree to which it has snubbed its nose at the best efforts of forecasters. SciGuy has the lowdown on the latest.


    If you don’t want to read about Fay, you can see the evolution of the AT-AT

  • Jenn Has a Mac (for a little while)

    Jenn's Temporary Laptop

    My wife rocks.

    Why does she rock, exactly? She rocks because she applied for, and was awarded, the iTunes University grant wherein she gets a Mac laptop for the semester and her students get iPods. It’s all in the name of education, though, because she will be using these tools to teach her students about multimedia publication and education, i.e. podcasts1. Podcasts such as Talking Traffic, say, or Screenspace!

    Also throughout the semester, Jenn will be doing a new thing where her online class space will be a blog. You can go check it out and eventually listen to student and professor podcasts, if you care to. You can’t comment, however; that requires Dr. Jenn to allow you and I don’t believe she’s opening this to the general public.


    1I misspelled “podcasts” as “podcats” which lead me to a google search on same. I think my favorite of all the results is Switchblade Kitten.

  • Another Random Photo

    This is the last of the random images tonight, I promise.

    Trebuchet

    In October of 2005, my friend John held a pumpkin chunkin’ contest at his home in Valley Falls, NY. The rules were basic: Construct a device that could accurately lob a smallish pumpkin to a target. No explosives, compressed air, internal combustion, or other power source was allowed. Strictly a mechanically actuated device.

    My problem was that while John’s house was in NY, mine was (is) in GA. It would be difficult to carry a large device on an aircraft and expensive to ship one. My solution: dig out all those boy scout lashing skills and build a trebuchet on site the day of the contest. Thankfully, John’s house has a lot of forest for the taking.

    The device was a good first try. The hardest part was trying to fix the counterweight on the end of the throwing arm. I ran out of time to do a good job and ended up just hanging it from the end, which made the trebuchet rather inefficient. Nevertheless, it did fling pumpkins about 75% of the way to the target (at least when the release mechanism worked and the pumpkin wasn’t being hurled straight into the ground). Great fun!


    You can see over there on the left Chris’ much more conventional, much more accurate and much more powerful elastic-band-powered pumpkin slingshot. That thing had some throw!

  • My Caucasian-ness is Evident

    I was digging through the archives of my digital pictures and decided to upload a sample of images that struck me. Some of them struck me quite hard.
    Boogie
    In case anyone doubted it, I come from a long line of white-men can’t dance.

    This picture was taken at the wedding of my good friends Jim and Robin, whom I will see next week for Dragon*Con. If you’re wondering why I look so different in that picture, it’s because it was eight years ago.

    This image is really funny.