Dean's World

My buddy Ed Wagner forwarded an article to me on Stephen Hawking's latest views on black holes, which according to the report are that he is retracting his view that no useful information ever escapes black holes.

I found myself itching a bit while reading it because, like so many popular accounts in science, it does a lot of obvious generalizing and hand-waving. Fortunately for me, I've learned over the years how to seek the original peer-reviewed sources for information on biology, medicine, archaeology, economics, and other sciences. Unfortunately for me, my math background is so week that I can't understand most physics papers (a regular frustration for me, but I've had neither the time nor the resources to learn calculus). So when it comes to physics, I'm often at the mercy of popular accounts, and it drives me nearly bananas when I can tell they're feeding me information that's almost certainly wrong.

For example, some years ago I read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It was one of the best books I ever read, although I must admit I had to make three goes at it before I felt that I fully understood it. But that book, along with Lincoln Barnett's The Unvierse and Doctor Einstein taught me almost everything I know about physics. Well, that and some popular writings by Dr. Asimov.

Anyway, in A Brief History of Time, Hawking was already explaining that he no longer believed that black holes don't emit information. Indeed, he explained that he believed that black holes probably did emit radiation, and that they might even eventually peter out into nothingness. So when I read a popular account saying he's got a "new" position on black holes that doesn't seem to deviate much from things Hawking said ten years ago, I become frustrated.

Does anyone have a line on what Hawking's new notion actually is? Because he was taking the position that black holes emit radiation quite a long time ago.

The latest House of Ketchup is available for your reading pleasure.

Skeptics of the European Union seem to feel pretty good about how well they did in the last elections. Although I personally see the EU as an inevitability, my suspicion is that the critics will be an important voice in shaping and limiting the scope of the new superstate's powers. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.

About half of all Americans want immigration in the U.S. to be cut back, while the other half either want it to stay where it is or be increased. This according to Gallup.

Since I myself believe that so long as they are not eligible for welfare benefits until they've worked in the country for a certain number of years, immigrants are a net plus to our society and especially to our economy. Alas, many Americans just don't see it that way.

My dear wife has found a Learning Annex Course List For Men. But as I look at it, most of these classes look hopelessly complex to me.

On the other hand, I have a few additional classes I discovered from poking around, these for women.

Class 1: Refrigerator Exploration. How to leave things in predictable locations in the fridge so your S.O. can find things. Meets 5 weeks, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7:30 pm.

Class 2: Tolerating His Hobbies. Learn that he is no more ignoring you when he's watching TV than when he's playing with his car or computer. Slides and real-life simulations will be used. Meets Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8pm.

Class 3: Not Asking. Women who take this course are simply astounded to discover that not only do they not have to ask a man how he likes the new outfit or haircut, but how they can actually achieve a state of higher bliss by not asking. Class runs constantly due to need for steady repetition, running every single day from 6-10pm.

Class 4: Summarizing Conversations. How to relate an entire conversation you just had with your sister, mother, or best friend in 25 words or less. 10 week intensive training course, meeting 3 nights a week. Advanced students only.

Class 5: God's Intended Purpose For The Remote Control. Runs most week nights from 7-10, call ahead.

Class 6: PMS Only Comes Once Per Month. No other excuses. Meets every Tuesday night. Don't come if it's Cranky Tuesday for you.

Class 7: All Babies Are Not Cute. Slides, graphic examples. Thursdays from 6-8pm.

Hmm, the list seems to run out there, but I'm sure there must be similar courses some of you would like to see the local Learning Annex offer....

Ace notes that we've found a total of 35 mustard and sarin gas shells in Iraq. Not counting a few other prohibited items we've found.

Via Michele, who also has some related news and thoughts on the matter.

Contrary to popular and press misconceptions, Naval personnel are quite deeply involved in combat operations overseas. Jeff Quinton has a roundup of information on the Navy's contributions, which are quite considerable.

If you're Navy and you're reading this, let me just say it: Thank you, sailor.

For years they were considered a myth, but researchers at the European Space Agency confirm that there are several rogue waves rippling through the world's oceans every year. These waves are not tidal waves because they rarely reach land, but they are often as high as ten-story buildings and are known to sink quite large ships without warning.

You can read the press release on rogue waves here.

The oceans are just amazing things, aren't they?

Fans of the slide guitar have made the original Coricidin bottle rather legendary. The funny thing is that Coricidin is a cold medicine and they haven't made those bottles in many years. Yet the bottle is just about the perfect size for most electric guitars.

But there's a cool company in Alabama that makes exact replicas of those original bottles just for slide guitarists, with several optional variations on the original to make them less fragile, a little heavier, and so on. Or you can get an exact replica of the original with no changes if you want. Check out the Real Bottlenecking Company.

Man, just tune your guitar to an open chord and grab one of these puppies and you can have all kinds of fun.

Hmm, it appears that the Presbyterians are joining the anti-Israel bandwagon.

How disappointing to see my old church doing such a thing.

The latest Carnival of the Vanities is available for your reading pleasure.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has published a study which looks at the concern that teens aged 10-19 might be at higher risk for suicide wbe taking certain popular antidepressants. They looked at four popular antidepressants: amitriptyline, fluoxetine, paroxetine, and dothiepin (also known as Elavil, Prozac, Paxil, and Prothiaden). They conclude that there is a very small but not insignificant increased risk of suicide during the beginning weeks of first taking any of these drugs. Which means that the standard advice of watching patients closely when they're first introduced to these meds is a good idea.

But it should be said that the risk here is very small indeed, and that severely depressed patients always have some suicide risk.

It often amazes me how many people I run into who think that the Bush administration banned stem cell research in the U.S. This isn't the case at all, nor has the Bush administration even proposed such a thing. All that the administration did was cut off government funding for research on new stem cell lines.

I've always thought this was a sensible approach. There are plenty of companies doing stem cell research and they don't need government funding. Although I don't have a big problem with the research being done, tens of millions of Americans believe life begins and conception. While I disagree with them, I'm not comfortable spending taxpayer money for something that so many people feel so deeply about.

By the way, the New England Journal of Medicine has a pretty good opinion piece on this issue. It's entitled Embryo Ethics: The Moral Logic of Stem-Cell Research. I disagree with their conclusions slightly (like I said, I am perfectly happy with a ban on Federal funding for the research), but they make their arguments fairly well.

Occasionally, my wife or I will come upon a stranger who's read one or both of our weblogs. I have also had some old friends from years ago rediscover me through the weblog, and they read regularly.

Yet I have friends and family members who absolutely never look at this weblog, who have barely the faintest interest in it.

Indeed, I have at least one relative who regularly writes to me and, in all seriousness, tells me that America is growing very much like Nazi Germany. He sometimes sends me wretchedly unfunny Doonesbury cartoons, glowing praise of Michael Moore, and animal-rights literature. Whenever I argue with him over any of it, he rants about how I should be more open-minded and stop spouting the party line given to me by Rush Limblah and Bill O'Really.

He recently even sent me the dictionary definition of the word "fascism" in case I didn't know it.

I used to find that stuff insulting, but now it just amuses me. "Yeah, yeah, great, oh thank you for letting me know, I had NO IDEA that Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh were anything other than perfect and objective truth tellers, thank you for saving me from them! And you're right, we invaded a SOVEREIGN NATION named Iraq and we should be ashamed, ashamed!"

Like I said, at first it was insulting, and now it's just amusing.

Especially because I know he spends all kinds of time surfing the web, but he'll never read this. Funny, huh?

Man, I knew these guys had been around a while, but I didn't realize they'd been around since the early 1960s. Amazing.

Most impressive that they were so advanced for the era that they didn't require punch cards.....

(Via Andrew.)

So. Linda Ronstadt was booed off stage and kicked out of a hotel for praising Michael Moore.

I applaud both the audience members and the Las Vegas Aladdin Casino for exercising their First Amendment rights (and their right of free association) by refusing to countenance an apologist for a hatemonger.

Free speech is alive and well in America!

The radical left is fond of comparing today's America to Nazi Germany and other fascist dictatorships. This is silly of course. Indeed, it's beyond silly. Still, if you want to see a pretty good takedown and perspective on why that's an utterly silly comparison, PoliPop will explain it to you in very clear and well-researched terms.

I've met people who think Democrats (or the Clintons) are secretly Communists, so I suppose thinking Republicans (or Bush) are secretly Fascists isn't too different.

But we should remind people that such rhetoric is both inappropriate and silly.

(Via Weekend Pundit.)

Have you seen Steven Taylor's PoliBlogger web site? There's some good stuff there, which is why I've added it to the blogroll.

If you're in or near Pennsylvania, you might want to help catch this crapweasel who stole from a fallen Marine.

I'd love to help catch this piece of vermin.

* Update * Jeff Quinton notes that the crapweasel has been caught! Or actually, crapweasels, since there was more than one of 'em.

The Queen notes that Sandy Berger is innocent until proven guilty and that slinging recriminations is irresponsible.

She's right of course. It's also, by the way, unnecessarily devisive.

Have you thanked Tony?

I have.

The Democratic Party has released its Platform for 2004.

This is the great thing about the Internet. In elections past, it was very hard for the everyday citizen to find things like this. Now anyone can get important civic documents like this with just a few clicks!

From today's Wall Street Journal:

After U.S. and British intelligence reports exposed his falsehoods in the last 10 days, Joe Wilson is finally defending himself. We're therefore glad to return to this story one more time, because there are some larger lessons here about the law, and for the Beltway media and Bush White House.

Mr. Wilson's defense, in essence, is that the "Republican-written" Senate Intelligence Committee report is a partisan hatchet job. We could forgive people for being taken in by this, considering the way the Committee's ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, has been spinning it over the past week. But the fact is that the three most damning conclusions are contained not in Chairman Pat Roberts's "Additional Views," but in the main body of the report approved by Mr. Rockefeller and seven other Democrats.

Number one: The winner of last year's Award for Truth Telling from the Nation magazine foundation, didn't tell the truth when he wrote that his wife, CIA officer Valerie Plame, "had nothing to do with" his selection for the Niger mission. Mr. Wilson is now pretending there is some kind of important distinction between whether she "recommended" or "proposed" him for the trip.

...Number two: Joe Wilson didn't tell the truth about how he supposedly came to realize that it was "highly doubtful" there was anything to the story he'd been sent to Niger to investigate. He told everyone that he'd recognized as obvious forgeries the documents purporting to show an Iraq-Niger uranium deal. But the forged documents to which he referred didn't reach U.S. intelligence until eight months after his trip. Mr. Wilson has said that he "misspoke"--multiple times, apparently--on this issue.

Number three: Joe Wilson was also not telling the truth when he said that his final report to the CIA had "debunked" the Niger story.

...This is a remarkable record of falsehood.

There's more. Read the rest here if you want.

You know, I've been in situation where I defended a guy who others said was lying, and then was mortified when I found out he was lying after all.

You'd think Bush haters would be feeling pretty mortified by now to have been a part of helping a man peddle lies about the Commander In Chief during a time of war. Wouldn't you?

Kim du Toit has a pretty good piece on the real philosophical divide in American politics, at least so far as domestic policy is concerned. You can read it here.

However, Kim runs off the rails in his conclusions, and I explain why I think so in his comments, which you can read right here (just do a ctrl-F and look for my name). Note that if you read all the comments, you'll also get to see me slap around an idiotarian libertarian.

Why do I get hives whenever I read the words "Clinton" and "investigation" in the same news story?

I really am not interested in retroactive recriminations to the Clinton administration for its "failures" to adequately address the Al Qaeda threat. It's utterly pointless to look back in hindsight and point fingers and say if they'd acted differently everything would have been better.

That said, what the hell was Sandy Berger thinking?

Last week, many of us were moved by Annie Jacobsen's article, Terror in the Skies.

Some cast doubt on her story. Today she answers her critics and has more to say.

Boi from Troy is annoyed by homophobe Sheila Kuehl.

Go get 'em, Tiger.

Please update your blogrolls.

Michele has a story you need to read, and might be able to help with.

This place costs us money to keep going. Dean's World and The Queen's site don't exist in a vacuum you know.

Those of you who drop a dime in the tip jar (it's over there on the right) make a difference. So do our advertisers, who for only a few bucks make what we do possible. None of it pays enough to justify the time and energy we put in here, but we love it so we do it anyway. But that money, it does make a difference.

Just so you know.

Do you like what we do? Okay, so kwitcherbitchin, and support our advertisers. Yes, all of them.

And if you drop a dime in the tip jar, we thank you for that too.

I loved the '90s. I did.

I remember in the early '90s I had a conversation with a friend of mine where I said, "You know, I didn't notice much transition between the '80s and the '90s, except all of a sudden the music got a lot better." He laughed and agreed.

It was a great time to be alive. Suddenly, after the terrible pap-techno music of the '80s, the music had balls again. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden all ruled.

Now all of a sudden I'm reading people like Stryker and Michele claiming that the '90s sucked. To which all I can say is, "you both suck, the '90s ruled!"

The '90s were the first decade when all the music and fashion (except for Lenny Kravitz, who by the way was also mondo cool) wasn't imitative of the '60s. When suddenly popular music didn't have to be overproduced and slick. When it was okay to be nasty again. When rap music went from cheap to mainstream. When the Martini made a comeback. When Squirrel Nut Zipper and Brian Setzer reminded us why the big bands were cool after all. When computers went from something spastic geeks loved to something that everyone wanted. When "nigga" went from a epithet to a term of endearment. When women discovered that it was okay to be powerful and self-assured and yet still be feminine and still like guys to be guys. When that the whole "gender difference" thing was something fun rather than something to be railed against. When the Internet became something that everyone wanted to be a part of. When investing in the stock market stopped being something for greedy slick-haired weasels and became (through 401ks) something that everyone could be a part of. When the President was a regular guy everyone could relate to--hell even if you hated him you still related to him.

It was the decade in which Communism finally fell, and everyone finally realized that it was an evil thing that crushed the human spirit. Jesus Jones said it for everyone: "Bob Dylan didn't have this to sing about, you know it feels great to be alive... right here, right now, there is no other place I'd rather be.... right here right now, watching the world wake up from history!"

In the '90s, a black man became the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And gay people went from disgusting perverts who belonged in jail to, well, if not totally accepted, then at least people we saw as people and not criminals.

In the '90s, we all liked ourselves again. In the '90s, we all learned to love The Simpsons. In the '90s, cartoon lovers also discovered the joys of The Animaniacs and Ren & Stimpy. Hell, in the '90s, people who loved cartoons in general were able to come out of the closet and say, "I'm over 30 years old and I still love cartoons!" And Chuck Jones finally, finally, finally got his due as one of the greatest American artists of all time. As did Mel Blanc.

The '90s gave us South Park.

Hillary pissed everyone off, except the people who loved her. Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura changed what AM radio was all about. Even if you hated them, and many people did, suddenly we had something on the radio that was interesting to argue about.

In the '90s, Stevie Ray Vaughan died. I still weep for this. But his legacy lives on, and because of him the Blues remains an important and revered art form.

In the '90s, Quentin Tarantino gave us Pulp Fiction. Steven Spielberg gave us Schindler's List. Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone gave us the unforgettable Basic Instinct. In 1984, they made a cheesy movie called The Terminator and in the '90s they made one of the best sequels ever made, with Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwartzenegger starring in the amazing Terminator II: Judgement Day.

The '90s also gave us Fight Club, The Shawshank Redemption, Waiting To Exhale, Goodfellas, Fargo, L.A. Confidential, and The Truman Show.

The '90s gave us Viagra and Dennis Miller. Camille Paglia all by her lonesome changed what it meant to be a "feminist" and women learned how to laugh again. And we all discovered that women like porn after all.

Everybody got cable TV. Everybody got remote controls. And compact discs became something that everyone could afford.

I've mentioned it already, but it can't be said enough: in the '90s, the Berlin Wall came down. One of the greatest symbols of human oppression in the history of mankind--IT CAME DOWN, DOWN, DOWN.

In the '90s, America discovered what good beer is again. In the '90s, we discovered that, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, free trade helps everybody. In the '90s, we finally acknowledged that if people live on welfare, the kindest thing you can do for them is encourage them to get an education and get a job.

In the '90s, the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers made a comeback, and so did Frank Sinatra. And both Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones were still a part of it all.

The '90s gave us Newt Gingrich, Ross Perot, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Liddy Dole, Jerry Springer, and Oprah Winfrey.

The '90s sucked? What are you guys smoking? I can't think of a decade that was more fun and interesting than the 1990s in America!

The Linus Pauling Institute has released a study showing that vitamins C and E reduce damage caused by extreme exercise, and suggest that this also lends support to the theory that these antioxidents reduce damage from heart attacks and strokes.

Yet another blow against the "all vitamin pills do is give you expensive urine" crowd if you ask me.

The main reason I picked Joe Gandelman to be my Permanent Guest Blogger is because partisanship means far less to this guy than the ideas he believes in. That says a lot to me. Partisanship has its place, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Really, it's not. But ultimately, if you don't base your opinions on what you truly believe vs. whatever your friends think, you're just a partisan hack. Joe gets that.

Plus Joe's got this wonderful trait that I seek to emulate: being willing to accept with aplomb those who utterly disagree. I try to be that way but I recognize that I fail in that department much of the time. Anyway, when Joe Gandelman gets annoyed, I tend to sit up and take notice. So when Joe Gandelman is annoyed with Alex S. Jones, you might want to find out why.

Me? I think it's just the Old Media busy whistling past the graveyard.

I was pleased to notice that the Protest Warriors will be demonstrating at the Republican National Convention.

Power to the people, my brothers!

The Queen is unhappy with Governor Schwartzenegger.

I really enjoyed this piece on the meaning of patriotism. I think you might too.

The latest Carnival of the Capitalists is available for your reading pleasure.

The good news from Iraq just keeps getting better.

Too bad the mainstream media wants you to believe otherwise.

* Update! * Art Chrenkoff, who does the regular "Good News From Iraq" on his weblog, has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal! High five, Art!

So once again we see two things: 1) The mainstream media refuses to do its patriotic duty to tell the whole story rather than just their own cynical and negative slant, and 2) Citizen journalists are taking up the slack for them.

It's a good day.

Don't you just hate it when you call a man a liar and a "right wing zealot" based on 16 words he said, and it turns out that not only were those 16 words perfectly correct but that your only proof that they weren't turns out to be a liar himself?

Man, that's gotta sting. But that's what you get for crying "wolf."

Here's one piece of advice though: admitting you were wrong may be tough, but you'll sleep better at night and prove yourself to be a more honorable person if you do.

My buddy Joel spotted this interesting piece on NPR: apparently, the Army is recruiting Navy and Air Force people. While the Navy and Air Force have more folks than they need right now, the Army still needs people, so they're conducting a sort of "Go Green" campaign to get these service members to (no pun intended) jump ship.

Hey why not? Although I do have one question: if you go from Blue to Green, do you have to yell at yourself during the annual Army/Navy game?

Recently on the excellent Winds Of Change site:

JK: On July 9, 2004, Robin Burke published a must-read article on the transformations underway in America's military and intelligence communities. It was good enough to make our all-time Best Of... category, and the outstanding discussions that Robin led made it even better. Helicopter pilot and Air Force Special Operations Command planning officer John Lance was invited to stitch some of his comment posts into a Guest Blog article.

Well what are you waiting for? Go read it.

The family of a fallen service member was horrified to learn recently that their son's funeral was used in Michael Moore's vile hate-film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." This service member was a Bush supporter and a vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, and proud to serve there, yet Moore, without his permission, used footage in his film of this man's funeral without his family's permission. His mother has called Michael Moore a "maggot that feeds on the dead," and the whole family is outraged.

Read the story here.

Let's hope they sue his multimillionare butt straight into the poorhouse.

Also in case you missed it, don't fail to read Dave Kopel's Fifty-Six Deceits In Fahrenheit 9/11, and keep it handy in case you run across someone (as I have a few times) who tries to defend Moore's hate-propaganda.

I see that Chess Master Bobby Fischer has been arrested by the Japanese governmenet for passport violation. He's to be deported to the U.S.

The story notes that:

In radio interviews, he praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards." His mother was Jewish.

This isn't the first time Fischer has gotten into scrapes with the law, and it's not the first time he's said nutjob crazy stuff. This chess genius is also a lunatic.

But here's the funny thing: a little-known fact is that there is a long tradition of world-class chess masters also being off their rockers. It seems common for them to either start out a little cracked, or for them to go mad as they age. It's happened with fair regularity for, literally, centuries. Indeed, you can read about this in a book called The Curse of Kirsan: Adventures in the Chess Underworld.

I remember how as a child I got interested in chess and played it very intensely for a while. Then one day it dawned on me: to truly master the game I would have to spend the rest of my life devoting my spare mental energies to it. I promptly quit playing regularly at that point. Now on the few occasions when I do, I'm very casual about it, simply because there are other things I'd like to be doing with my mental faculties.

Still, it is a fascinating game with a fascinating history.

(Story via Dowingba.)

* Update * Garry Kasparov has just published an article on Bobby Fischer that you might want to read. Kasparov is of course one of the greatest chess masters of all time himself. His most poignant remark: "People may believe that this is what happens when a genius plays chess--instead of what happens when a fragile mind leaves his life's work behind."

A British report has concluded that Bush's statement and a similar one by Prime Minister Tony Blair were "well-founded." In his speech, Bush had attributed the uranium claim to the British government......


The British inquiry said it was generally accepted that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999, and there was intelligence from several sources that the visit was to acquire uranium. "Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible," the report said.