Opinion – Page 25 – The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Opinion

So, You Want to be an Astrophysicist?

ScienceBlogs contains a large number of useful, cogent, and entertaining blogs. One of them I was popping around on has a series of posts titled, So you want to be an Astrophysicist?

Ahhh, where was the internet when I was in High School? Oh, yes. It was called DARPA and Prodigy and Bulletin Boards…

These links are nice summations by someone who’s been-there-done-that, and the fact that he’s on ScienceBlogs automatically gives him street cred, in my opinion.

But.

There’s a big “but” here.

All of these link boil down to:
Take all the math and physics courses (starting in HS)
Do well on them
Don’t get into this for the money
Prepare to never sleep
Money money money money

From personal experience I have a mid-sized problem with his assertion that you should go to the best school you can afford. Sitting here at my desk at home, working a professional job that pays quite well, suitably certified (or certifiable) as a professional engineer, 10 years out of college, and I’m still paying off student loans. Sure, they’re not high-interest, but the total drain on my monthly finances is significant. The end result is that I have a continous financial committment that I can not drop and go (to quote She’s All That) study squid fishing in Borneo. I’ve nailed myself to some sort of career that delivers a middle class paycheck. At times, I find that confining.

On the other hand, if you’re passionate about what you want to do, I suppose as long as you can feed yourself, you’re good to go. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, so grad school was never a useful option for me.

All of the comments he has regarding how to work the system of faculty and admissions are excellent. I’m sure my wife, with her doctorate would agree with most of the suggestions.

I found no overarching linky page, so I’ll list them here:

Part 0
Part 1
Part 1.5
Part 1.75
Part 1.99
Part 2.0
Part 2.5

Dragon*Con 2006

Wahhhhhh!!!!!!

As you may notice from the categories tags, Dragon*Con was a multi-threaded, awesomely spectacular, ravingly cool, devastatingly delicious weekend. There’s so much to talk about, I’m not sure where to start. This will probably end up being a multiple posting.

I’ll start by saying, I bought a new camera the week before Dragon*Con, and I’m still working with the settings. Unfortunately, I had the white balance set on tungsten all weekend, so my pictures are a bit blue. I’ll be photoshopping them to adjust the color balance before I post anything. ‘Til then, you’ll just have to deal with my descriptions.

I think I will leave this post as is. Dragon*Con 2006 was great! I’ve already made hotel reservations for next year.

[editorital addition] It seems this post is similar to last year’s post. That’s ok! I feel that this year was even better, but that is probably because of the bevey of friends that made the trip here for the Con.

Media Assasiniation

It’s official. John Karr is guilty of the JonBenet Ramsey killing in 1996.

I know this because the media is now addressing him as John Mark Karr.

History shows that killers have three names: John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Arthur Herman Bremer, Carlos the Jackal, Mark David Chapman, James Earl Ray, etc.

I know, now, that the parents didn’t do it, it was John Mark Karr.

Intelligent Smoking?

Doing my morning read of the NY Times headlines email, I noticed the following article, “A Warning on Hazards of Secondhand Smoke.” Inside this article is found,

“I am here to say the debate is over: the science is clear,” Dr. Carmona said at a televised news conference…

Whoah! Whoah! Science? Since when does science have anything to do with public policy.

Better yet, where are the Intelligent Design nutjobs coming out of the woodwork to assist Big Tobacco in teaching the controversy. This seems like a perfect opportunity for them to show that cancer caused by smoking is “only a theory.”

WWAD

What Would Aslan Do?

This link has been sitting in my “to blog about” folder for a while. It neatly sums up my feelings concerning the media warriors and their interpretations of the facts surrounding us.

I hate being lumped in with a group and then told what I think. The problem stems from the old quote attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Give me enough data and I can prove anything, or at least seem to prove anything. Correlation does not imply causality, and just because Chronicles of Narnia did so well worldwide is not because we are all secretly seeking our savior.

What would Aslan do? Aslan would probably tell us to go jump off a cliff. Sometimes a movie is just a movie.

I wonder what it means that I’m such a big fan of Forrest Gump?

Rush to Vitamin V!

Rush Limbaugh was detained at Palm Beach International Airport for possessing Viagra without a prescription.

Eh?

I’m probably the second-to-last person on planet Freak to defend Rush Limbaugh (because he is a total nutjob), but this is a little over the top. What the heck is Homeland Security doing? Reading everyone’s prescription pill bottles to make sure they are carrying their own and not the ones prescribed for Osama Bin Laden? Is one pill bottle a matter of importance to Customs? Is this normal procedure? Questions, questions, questions.

The story does not go into details of the actual search, so I’m assuming he was searched for normal reasons, but for them to compare names on that bottle seems like going the extra mile. If the dude needs Vitamin V to make the beast with two backs, then for gu’s sake, let him! If it’s not his prescription, and he’s taking it without a doctor’s order, than his health problems will be just that: His.

Let him get back on the radio and rant about people who are doing drugs and hiring illegals and all that hypocritical stuff. The government has got better things to do than worry about him. Once the Democrats are back in power, then they can really persecute him.

Moronic Self Loathing = "Treasure Hunt"

I just wasted 45 minutes of my life. Usually, I don’t mind pissing away the allotted time I have before death, but this time, I resent it right down to my toenails.

We Tivo’d NBC’s Treasure Hunt (to which I refuse to hyperlink) this evening. We sat down and started up the Tivo and slowwwwly our brains melted away.

Quick synopsis: Several teams of three persons are given clues in a competitive race to be first to find a treasure. I imagine this is NBC’s response to The Great Race, but I’ve never watched that so I can’t say for certain.

This has got to be the most inane, moronic, stupid, insipid, and even degrading show I’ve watched in years! There’s no “hunt” about this treasure hunt. Each team is given a very specific path to follow and they can’t move on until they’ve got it right. I was hoping the helicopters waiting to take the Alaskan teams on their second trip would allow them to go to the wrong spot, but alas, that was not how the producers wanted it to be. They could not move until they’d figured the clue out correctly. Damn stupid.

Suffice to say, I’ll not be watching any more of that tripe.

[my apologies to all Tripe lovers in the world]

UPDATE: After ranting above, I found this article that reviews the show. The man who writes that review talks about the product placement in the show, namely that each team is equipped with a Laptop with special access to Ask.com, a Visa Card, and a Motorola Razor. This sort of thing is normal, except, of course, for the Razor to Ring Ring Ring while they’re in the middle of freaking nowhere Alaska and Hawaii. Pardon me, but I didn’t see the cell tower mounted to the glacier nearby.

I’m still pissed about this show. I watched all three seasons of Average Joe, but there at least I knew what I was in for, and got what I bargained for. NBC is soooo going down in my estimation.

Prairie Home, Hurricanes, and Levi's Call

Messy title, for a messy post. Here goes…

We saw A Prairie Home Companion on Friday. I confess that I had high expectations for this movie, given the character of the radio show from Minnesota Public Radio. We arrived a few minutes before show time and didn’t have any problem getting seats. Let’s just say that if I had to pick the type of people who would show up for this movie, you would have found them all sitting around us. I felt like the cast of a Woody Allen movie.

Speaking of a Woody Allen movie, one was advertised during previews. Again, surprise, surprise. This one looks interesting, however, and it has Scarlett Johannsen and Hugh Jackman in it, which is always good for me.

Movie Review: Clustered and Claustrophobic. There were times when all of the actors (and this was a Who’s Who of Hollywood) were talking incessantly at the same time, and it was driving me nuts. Just SHUT UP people! If that’s what really ~~toes~~ goes on behind curtains at the show, I don’t understand why there haven’t been murders. There was no overarching theme that I could detect, merely several interwoven plot lines that didn’t seem to have much to do with each other. Given that Garrison Keillor wrote this, I’m sure there were deep dark levels of meaning and symbology that I missed, but I don’t go to movies to sit and THINK about them. I’m not an indie foreign film kind of guy. Overall, I was disappointed, especially because it seemed like nothing ever happened. The whole movie was just…nothing ever happening. Very annoying. For reference, my favorite character throughout was Guy Noir, played by Kevin Kline.

If you want a glowing comment, go to the imdb site and read it. I’d recommend it as a rental for anyone who’s interested. Don’t pay the $8.50 to see it in the theater.

Next up! The Carolina Hurricanes sure got served last night. I don’t recall any Stanley Cup game 6’s where one team sucked quite that badly. They should give up and join the Atlanta Braves, who are plumbing the depths of suckedness right now.

Lastly, and this is more of a rant than anything else, but you would figure, if a state goes through all of the effort to set up an AMBER Alert system (missing child notification, which is a Levi’s Call in Georgia), and especially in the Atlanta Metropolitan area where we use highway message boards, radio calls, cable tv alerts, etc., that I would be able to find information regarding said alert when it appears across my spanish-language World Cup channel!

Nope! All of the relevant Georgia Bureau of Investigation websites are hosed, probably by people trying to get the info on the alert. All of the local news channels have…nothing on their webpages regarding this. Georgia-Navigator, which is the website for the Georgia DOT and it’s traffic management system has nothing.

The System is not working… So much for Big Brother. I Just checked again and all of the georgia.gov websites are still hosed. Maybe georgia should invest in some more servers…

Update 1253: Still no findable information on the AMBER Alert. The Georgia-navigator site at least is showing that the message boards around town are displaying “CHILD ABDUCTION ALERT, BLUE CHEVY S-10 P/U, TAG UNKNOWN.” GBI’s website for Levi’s call doesn’t have any current info, it’s solely about the requirements for issuing a Levi’s Call. Blah blah blah. The system isn’t working!

"This appears…"

If you’re not aware of the man who has been arrested and charged with murdering a young girl with plans to eat her, go to the link.

In the linked article is this quote:

“Regarding a potential motive,” Purcell Police Chief David Tompkins said Saturday, “this appears to have been part of a plan to kidnap a person, rape them, torture them, kill them, cut off their head, drain the body of blood, rape the corpse, eat the corpse then dispose of the organs and bones.”

This “appears” to be the case? How many cases similar to this does this police chief see? It seems they know some terribly specific details to have it only “appear.”

Of course, this quote probably falls into the same category as expecting athletes to have something lucid and cogent to say at the end of the game. The police chief’s expertise is crime, not public speaking, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.

But, my first read of that sentence was, “Huh?”