Pictures and a poem

I got a digital camera recently, so here are my attempts at some pictures.
First, here’s the Waltham Commons as I waited for the bus:

and here are pictures of my brother’s two dogs (Athena and Casper):

and it’s Friday, so here’s a poem:
The walls were crying
As I walked below them
To find my other side
And I wish they’d [...]

Honduras resolution

It seems there is now an agreement to end the coup in Honduras. A couple places have translations for the agreement. Here’s one (for a slightly different one, go here):
The accord contains the following points:
1– The creation of a government of unity and national reconciliation
2– Rejection of amnesty for political crimes, and delay of criminal [...]

Superfreakonomics and global warming

I’m a little slow getting to this, but it seems that the new book by Levitt and Dubner has a chapter on global warming (you can see an excerpt here). As usual, I leave most of the arguments to the experts (see here, here, and here for example). Instead, I’ll look at one of the responses [...]

Global Warming

Hmm, it seems there is more out about global warming and the data still says the Earth is getting warmer. First, via here, a study finds the same basic ‘hockey stick’ graph using different methods. Being a math guy, I love this:
The sheer amount of computation, however, is daunting, involving heavy matrix algebra. Initial values [...]

State ideology and a poem

Via Kevin Drum, Boris Shor has put up a graph that:
has performed some analysis (jointly with Nolan McCarty) on the ideological positions of state legislators. The estimates are based on state legislative voting, which might make you wonder how you could possibly compare legislators in one state with those in another. The trick is that [...]

The NRA and arms treaties

So, the UN is trying to write a law to help prevent illegal arms transfers. The main purpose is to try to stop the flow of arms to private armies in mostly lawless countries like Somalia and the DR Congo and to stop arms from getting to regimes like Zimbabwe that use them against their [...]

Sri Lanka

I haven’t talked about Sri Lanka for a while, mainly because there has been almost nothing in the news here. Looking around at the news by other countries, I catch glimpses that show the government is still not acting well. From a British newspaper, I see that Sri Lanka may be about to lose a [...]

Saturn, nuclear war, and a poem

To try to keep things calm, let’s start with a very nice image of Saturn (taken by Cassini–it’s a mosaic of many pictures taken over 8 hours; Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute):

Ok, now that you’re calm, here’s John Bolton intimating that Israel should attack Iran with nuclear bombs:
“Negotiations have failed, and so too have sanctions,” [...]

Protest in Puerto Rico

I heard via TPM that there’s a large strike going on in Puerto Rico: there are estimates of 100,000 or more people demonstrating against large job cuts by the government. There are a few things interesting about this.
The scale is comparatively quite large (more than 100,000 go to the demonstration and 200-300,000 are estimated to stay [...]

Lead, abortion, and murder

I have seen the Freakonomics idea that legalizing abortion caused a decrease in violence and I have been wary about it. They say that they control for lots of variables, but it still amounted to an observational study with their inherent problems. In particular confounding factors–just because you think you have thought of all the [...]

More DR Congo

The DR Congo is back in the news, put there by a joint report by 84 humanitarian and human rights groups. It’s not pretty:
“The human rights and humanitarian consequences of the current military operation are simply disastrous,” said Marcel Stoessel of Oxfam. “UN peacekeepers, who have a mandate to protect civilians, urgently need to work [...]

Now that’s a ring

Well now:
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an enormous ring around Saturn — by far the largest of the giant planet’s many rings.
The new belt lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane. The bulk of its material starts about six million kilometers [...]

War against the moon commences and a poem

It’s begun:
NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, created twin impacts on the moon’s surface early Friday in a search for water ice. Scientists will analyze data from the spacecraft’s instruments to assess whether water ice is present.
The satellite traveled 5.6 million miles during an historic 113-day mission that ended in the Cabeus [...]

Rape, arbitration, and Republicans

An amendment by Senator Franken to stop funding for defense contractors who mandate arbitration for certain things (like sexual assault) passed the Senate 68-30. Democrats have started to use the fact that 30 Republicans voted against a proposal to rectify a situation where a woman gang raped and then imprisoned in a metal container was [...]

Priests and Polanski

The Catholic Church still doesn’t get things. Sunday’s Boston Globe had this bit:
David Gibson, writing for Politics Daily, also asks, “Comparisons are by their nature invidious. But what if Roman Polanksi were wearing a Roman collar? Would ‘Monsignor Polanski’ receive the same considerations?’’ Peter Smith, a religion writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal, wonders, “Let’s say [...]

LCROSS and a poem

This seems interesting:
LCROSS launched with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on June 18, 2009 at 2:32 p.m. PDT. The LCROSS shepherding spacecraft and the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage rocket executed a fly-by of the moon on June 23, 2009  and entered into an elongated Earth [...]

Not a good week

The natural disasters in Asia are sobering:

a typhoon killed hundreds in the Philippines (at least 240) before moving into southeast Asia and killing tens in Vietnam (at least 41 and at least 10 in Cambodia) before the weakened storm headed into Laos.
scores were killed in Samoa and American Samoa (at least 154) when a 8.0 level earthquake triggered [...]