4 Trillion Degrees

Smash together two gold nuclei at nearly the speed of light, and that's the temperature of the explosion you get. Hottest temperature ever heads science to Big Bang.

...In comparison, "The predicted melting temperature of protons and neutrons is 2 trillion degrees. The temperatures at the core of a typical type-2 supernova is 2 billion degrees," he said.

The center of our sun is 50 million degrees, iron melts at 1,800 degrees and the average temperature of the universe is now 0.7 of a degree above absolute zero.

This research may shed light on why the early universe had more matter than antimatter, and may allow us to build devices that run off of particle spin, rather than only current flow.

The "spin" involved, is not the kind of spin that comes out of Washington DC, however. It's a property of most particles.

Climategate Document Database

Check out the CRU emails and documents at the Climategate Document Database : Alleged CRU Email

Little Green Footballs catches The Daily Mail telling the truth

The owner of Little Green Footballs claims the Daily Mail is lying: The Daily Mail's Latest Lie About Climate Change

His assertion:

The Daily Mail’s story by David Rose, claiming that climate scientist Phil Jones “admitted” there has been no global warming since 1995, is completely false.

His evidence:

The BBC interviews Phil Jones:

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

...the text is more reasonable, if also, well, wrong:

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

Well, it's quite possible that if we continue into the future, the average trend will be upward, at a rate that lets us reject the null hypothesis. But Jones stated the trends over the past 15 years do not show statistically significant warming. It is impossible to reject the null hypothesis of no warming over the past fifteen years.

Man-in-the-Middle Attack Against Chip and PIN

Man-in-the-Middle Attack Against Chip and PIN

Nice attack against the EMV -- Eurocard Mastercard Visa -- the "chip and PIN" credit card payment system. The attack allows a criminal to use a stolen card without knowing the PIN.

The flaw is that when you put a card into a terminal, a negotiation takes place about how the cardholder should be authenticated: using a PIN, using a signature or not at all. This particular subprotocol is not authenticated, so you can trick the card into thinking it's doing a chip-and-signature transaction while the terminal thinks it's chip-and-PIN. The upshot is that you can buy stuff using a stolen card and a PIN of 0000 (or anything you want). We did so, on camera, using various journalists' cards. The transactions went through fine and the receipts say "Verified by PIN".

[...]

So what went wrong? In essence, there is a gaping hole in the specifications which together create the "Chip and PIN" system. These specs consist of the EMV protocol framework, the card scheme individual rules (Visa, MasterCard standards), the national payment association rules (UK Payments Association aka APACS, in the UK), and documents produced by each individual issuer describing their own customisations of the scheme. Each spec defines security criteria, tweaks options and sets rules -- but none take responsibility for listing what back-end checks are needed. As a result, hundreds of issuers independently get it wrong, and gain false assurance that all bases are covered from the common specifications. The EMV specification stack is broken, and needs fixing.

Read Ross Anderson's entire blog post for both details and context. Here's the paper, the press release, and a FAQ. And one news article.

This is big. There are about a gazillion of these in circulation.

Ten GOP Health Ideas for Obama

Newt Gingrich and John Goodman present ten ideas for health care – ideas which the Democrates have studiously ignored: Ten GOP Health Ideas for Obama

...here's where he should start:

• Make insurance affordable. The current taxation of health insurance is arbitrary and unfair, giving lavish subsidies to some, like those who get Cadillac coverage from their employers, and almost no relief to people who have to buy their own.

• Make health insurance portable.

• Meet the needs of the chronically ill.

• Allow doctors and patients to control costs.

• Don't cut Medicare.

• Protect early retirees.

• Inform consumers.

• Eliminate junk lawsuits.

• Stop health-care fraud.

• Make medical breakthroughs accessible to patients.

The solutions presented here can be the foundation for a patient-centered system. Let's hope the president has the courage to embrace them.

Radical Life Extension and the Problem of Malthusian Hells

Ronald Bailey looks at the probable effects of life-extension technology in Reason Magazine.

The End of Intelligent Design?

Stephen M. Barr, professor of physics at the University of Delaware, has some thoughts on...The End of Intelligent Design? He opens up with this stirring assessment:

What has the intelligent design movement achieved? As science, nothing. The goal of science is to increase our understanding of the natural world, and there is not a single phenomenon that we understand better today or are likely to understand better in the future through the efforts of ID theorists. If we are to look for ID achievements, then, it must be in the realm of natural theology. And there, I think, the movement must be judged not only a failure, but a debacle.
....
The ID claim is that certain biological phenomena lie outside the ordinary course of nature. Aside from the fact that such a claim is, in practice, impossible to substantiate, it has the effect of pitting natural theology against science by asserting an incompetence of science. To be sure, there are questions that natural science is not competent to address, and too many scientists have lost all sense of the limitations of their disciplines, not to mention their own limitations. But the ID arguments effectively declare natural science incompetent even in what most would regard as its own proper sphere. Nothing could be better calculated to provoke the antagonism of the scientific community. This throwing down of the gauntlet to science explains not a little of the fervor of the scientific backlash against ID.
....
The older (and wiser) form of the design argument for the existence of God—one found implicitly in Scripture and in many early Christian writings—did not point to the naturally inexplicable or to effects outside the course of nature, but to nature itself and its ordinary operations—operations whose “power and working” were seen as reflecting the power and wisdom of God.
....
But whereas the advance of science continually strengthens the broader and more traditional version of the design argument, the ID movement’s version is hostage to every advance in biological science. Science must fail for ID to succeed. In the famous “explanatory filter” of William A. Dembski, one finds “design” by eliminating “law” and “chance” as explanations. This, in effect, makes it a zero-sum game between God and nature. What nature does and science can explain is crossed off the list, and what remains is the evidence for God. This conception of design plays right into the hands of atheists, whose caricature of religion has always been that it is a substitute for the scientific understanding of nature.

The name of this form of apologia: "The God of the Gaps".

The ID movement has also rubbed a very raw wound in the relation between science and religion. For decades scientists have had to fend off the attempts by Young Earth creationists to promote their ideas as a valid alternative science. The scientific world’s exasperation with creationists is understandable. Imagine yourself a serious historian in a country where half the population believed in Afrocentric history, say, or a serious political scientist in a country where half the people believed that the world is run by the Bilderberg Group or the Rockefellers. It would get to you after a while, especially if there were constant attempts to insert these alternative theories into textbooks. So, when the ID movement came along and suggested that its ideas be taught in science classrooms, it touched a nerve. This is one reason that the New Atheists attracted such a huge audience.

Skeptic Magazine put out an issue addressing the Holocaust Denial / Historical Revision movement, examining the types of argument they make. The comparison between Holocaust Denialism and Evolution Denialism are striking, to say the least.

Racist? Speak for yourself!

The Torch Has been Passed to a New Generation — and It Doesn’t Include Racism

by Hannah Giles

Every generation feels misunderstood by those preceding it. And it doesn't help matters that the older generations, and establishments, feel obligated to wield the Hammer of Thor against every move and thought we make. Yet, this is how societies develop, grow, evolve and ultimately survive. It's like passing a torch in life's grand race.

The thing is, my generation has some problems with the torch we are about to take off with, and we aren't shy about letting the uppers know.

Boldness, zeal, angst, creativity, action and openness are characteristics of youth. Life is a mystery and the brevity of our lives prevents us from accessing many of its clues. We want meaning, purpose, acknowledgement and the ability to prove to the older generation that we are indeed serious about our roles in life, even if we don't know what that is.  And so we take actions, we unite behind leaders and explore the depths of our persona.

It is when we act, and act effectively, that the big dogs get frustrated. By acting, and establishing our generational brand, we force the established thoughts, groups and figures to not only question their life's work and purpose, but to recognize the inevitable passing of the torch.

This is where conflict arises. Rather than gracefully welcoming us to the world stage, offering a wink and a tip of the hat, the dominant forces try their hardest to break us down and shoo us out of town. They will even accuse upcoming whippersnappers of things outside of our realm of experience in order to discredit us within their own circles.

Which, I might add, is a great Saul Alinsky tactic:

Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

Take last week for example, when Max Blumenthal launched an attack on James O'Keefe claiming racism. Yes racism, a concept and word my generation has been taught to reject, and an experience we have never actually endured.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say my generation is colorblind. We modern-day American kids were born into a free and equal society, and our familiarity with institutional racism begins and ends with our textbooks. Our parents, schools and culture have conditioned us to not judge natural characteristics of our fellow man. Lessons from the past have shown that doing so results in a second-rate society that holds itself back from operating at optimum levels.

Take a look at my age group:

1. Our schools have never been segregated. Those days are long gone in relation to our time on earth and the development of our society.

2. We are more likely to throw a fit about someone's eating habits, clothing, athletic affiliation, political stance, religious views and preferred music genre, than the skin color of our peers.

3. We played a major role in electing President Obama, who is not only the first black president of the U.S. but also the first man to be a minority in the nation he was elected to lead.

Since race has never been an issue for those of and around my age, we are able to conduct higher levels of human bonding. We group ourselves according to ideologies, coming together and uniting around self-determined topics, attractions and goals.  Don't get me wrong. We are not the flower children full only of peace and love. Cultural conflicts still exist, and will continue to exist so long as man has a mind he can call his own.

Maybe if they spoke slower and used smaller words?

Gerard Alexander writes at the Washington Post asking why liberals are so condescending.

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

....

This worldview was on display in the popular liberal reaction to the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Rather than engage in a discussion about the complexities of free speech in politics, liberals have largely argued that the decision will "open the floodgates for special interests" to influence American elections, as the president warned in his State of the Union address. In other words, it was all part of the conspiracy to support conservative candidates for their nefarious, self-serving ends.

It follows that the thinkers, politicians and citizens who advance conservative ideas must be dupes, quacks or hired guns selling stories they know to be a sham. In this spirit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman regularly dismisses conservative arguments not simply as incorrect, but as lies. Writing last summer, Krugman pondered the duplicity he found evident in 35 years' worth of Wall Street Journal editorial writers: "What do these people really believe? I mean, they're not stupid -- life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they're not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth. . . . The question is, what is that higher truth?"

In Krugman's world, there is no need to take seriously the arguments of "these people" -- only to plumb the depths of their errors and imagine hidden motives.

The thing is, conservatives generally believe liberals are mistaken.  Liberals generally believe conservatives are evil.  They are wrong, but in their case, it is by deliberate design.

James O’Keefe -- white supremacist?

Maybe not... » James O’Keefe vs. Max Blumenthal: How the Left Distorts, Invents and Lies

It started with a blog post at something called One People’s Project, in which someone named Daryle Jenkins claimed:

...There was also a photographer there, and lo and behold this picture has surfaced of a now familiar face attending the forum - James O’Keefe.

O’Keefe was manning a table at a forum of suit-and-tie Nazis.

A DC area photographer snapped a photo of O’Keefe as he maintained a literature table near the panelists.

The photograph that One People’s Project shows as its proof (above) is cropped and just shows O’Keefe from the shoulders up. It doesn’t show that he is sitting at all, let alone at a table, let alone “manning” the table at the event apparently hosted by the Robert Taft Club.

Max Blumenthal — son of Clinton apparatchik “Sid Vicious” Blumenthal — at Salon.com picked up on the story and extrapolated even more:

According to One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O’Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism.

Within an hour or so the Village Voice got really creative on its media blog and added a little more to the mix:

James O’Keefe, the videographer famous for taking down ACORN (and infamous for trying to take down Senator Landrieu), organized a speaking forum for white supremacists, and was even photographed manning the event’s merchandise table.

That’s right, we’ve gone from O’Keefe attending the event to O’Keefe manning a literature table to O’Keefe organizing the entire event!
....
So we spoke with James O’Keefe today. This is what he tells us:

1. He was not “manning a table” at the event
2. He was not involved with the organization or operations of the event.
3. He attended the event with many of his Leadership Institute co-workers since it was right across the street from their building in Arlington, Va., and it was organized by other LI associates.
4. The organizer who is being called a “White Supremacist” is half Jewish and half Korean.
5. One of the panelist was an African-American named Kevin Martin.
6. The event was forced to move to a Georgetown University building in Arlington, not at a cross-burning.

We know all this because we called Mr. O’Keefe and asked him. Which is more than other media outlets have done.

The expanding universe

The blog "Starts with a Bang" discusses the expanding universe in: The Greatest Story Ever Told -- 04 -- The Expanding Universe

DADT: A Reasonable Compromise

Max Boot calls Don't Ask/Don't Tell... A Reasonable Compromise

Special Forces is one of the areas in which women are still not allowed to serve even though most jobs in the military have been opened to them. Why not simply extend to gays the same policy applied to women? That is, let gays serve openly in most billets but not in a few combat designations. It seems like a reasonable compromise.

O’Keefe: The Persecution of an American Patriot

Big Government looks at what the media really care about. » O’Keefe: The Persecution of an American Patriot.

James O’Keefe, along with Hannah Giles, broke one of the biggest investigative news stories since Watergate on the systemic corruption of radical left governmental organizations. It was, for new media, a defining moment. And while the historic implications of the O’Keefe/Giles expose are not yet fully understood, the media landscape was forever changed.

Despite this seismic shift in modern journalism, the mainstream media scornfully ignored the biggest story of the Obama administration. ACORN, Obama’s personal community organizing group, funded with taxpayer dollars, was shown to be a criminal, rapacious, and predatory organization. In clip after clip from O’Keefe and Giles, ACORN’s indecency became more obvious and outrageous, and the little remaining trust that the American people had in government/community service organizations morphed into outright contempt.

And the mainstream media yawned.

Until last week, that is, when, like sharks to chum, the media swarm worked itself into a frenzy over the news that James O’Keefe had been “busted” on trumped up charges. In an egregious act of thuggery and intimidation, James O’Keefe was arrested for entering Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA)’s office (the people’s office) wearing a telephone repairman uniform. O’Keefe was attempting to document Landrieu’s contempt for the American people in not answering the phone from outraged citizens. Landrieu took a massive bribe from Chicago-land President Obama to induce her to help ram the nationalized health-care plan through despite the fury of the American people. Landrieu claimed she wasn’t answering her constituents because — get this — her phones were broken. O’Keefe was videoing the working phones. Beautiful.

The Power Behind Hurricanes and Tornadoes

Clouds turn out to be heat engines, and are very good at moving heat energy from the lower atmosphere to the upper. A paper discussing this is referenced at The Air Vent: The Power Behind Hurricanes and Tornadoes

TIM AND PAM TEBOW COMMERCIAL

Marriage, institutions, and tradition

The G.K. Chesterton quote cited in the post below on Dont Ask, Don't Tell was raised in a long post on same-sex marriage.

I am bothered by this specific argument, which I have heard over and over from the people I know who favor gay marriage laws. I mean, literally over and over; when they get into arguments, they just repeat it, again and again. "I will get married even if marriage is expanded to include gay people; I cannot imagine anyone up and deciding not to get married because gay people are getting married; therefore, the whole idea is ridiculous and bigoted."

They may well be right. Nonetheless, libertarians should know better. The limits of your imagination are not the limits of reality. Every government programme that libertarians have argued against has been defended at its inception with exactly this argument.

The War on Salt

Salt, sugar, fat, our use of energy, our way of life. Jim Davidson ties it all together in The War on Salt.

The war on salt is just one aspect of this same, tired, ancient, boring, despicable, and horrid war—a war with billions of casualties, a war against human spirit, a war on possibility. It is the war that doesn't give you a walk-on role in the world, only a lead role in a cage.

What I'm talking about is the war on the future we were promised, with flying cars, much longer lives, colonies in space, hotels in the Moon, terraforming of Mars. It is the war which impoverishes nearly everyone, the war which enriches only the cronies of big government, the war which opposes cheap air travel, cheap space travel, food that tastes good, drugs that relieve pain, a free market, free choices, free love, free thought, free people.

Peak Social Security?

From Fortune: Next in Line for a Bailout: Social Security

A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits.

Instead of helping to finance the rest of the government, as it has done for decades, our nation's biggest social program needs help from the Treasury to keep benefit checks from bouncing -- in other words, a taxpayer bailout.

No one has officially announced that Social Security will be cash-negative this year. But you can figure it out for yourself, as I did, by comparing two numbers in the recent federal budget update that the nonpartisan CBO issued last week.

Gays in the Military

Cassandra at Villainous Company quotes Colin Powell on Dont Ask, Don't Tell: Colin Powell on DADT: Then and Now, then offers some comments of her own.

[In testimony before Congress on gays in the military], I said, “I think it would be prejudicial to good order and discipline to try to integrate gays and lesbians in the current military structure.” Congresswoman Pat Schroeder quoted a 1942 government report and claimed that the same arguments used then against racial integration in the military were being used against gays today.

She had her logic wrong. I responded, “Skin color is a benign, nonbehavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument."

His words bear repeating. They also deserve an honest attempt to grapple with the inconvenient truth he wasn't afraid to speak when he wasn't swimming against the tide of public opinion. Human sexuality - whether female or male, heterosexual or homosexual - is a fundamental and extremely powerful driver of human behavior. To elide past this basic truth requires an almost willful act of blindness.

My own opinions about both women and gays openly serving in the military have undergone a radical shift during the last thirty years. I began by seeing no reason why both women and gays shouldn't be able to serve anywhere they wished to. What changed my mind over the years, contrary to the bigoted assertions of close minded individuals who refuse even to entertain ideas that challenge their world view, was not misogyny or fear of Teh Gay.

It was over 30 years of observing real human behavior. What changed my mind was repeated demonstrations of a basic fact: in real life (which is a very different realm from the utopian, best case scenarios of would be reformers), people don't always behave well. And though most people are good, decent, and responsible it takes only a small number who behave otherwise to cause significant problems for the rest of us.
....
What is so bizarre to me about the arguments of those who don't even want to discuss the real life consequences of having gays serve openly in the armed forces is that they insist that considering anything but the best case scenario is de facto bigotry. But their fear fueled name calling doesn't stand up to close inspection. There are rational objections to allowing gays to serve openly and they aren't based on the assumption that homosexuals behave differently than heterosexuals. They are based on the assumption that gays are no different from you and me. How is that bigotry?
....
Any company or battalion commander could tell you that disciplinary issues related to sex have a significant impact on unit morale and readiness.

And this occurs even though men and women do not share the same quarters.

Which raises an interesting question. If we take the non-bigoted approach and assume that homosexuals have the same drives heterosexuals do; assume they are no more likely to act on these drives, but no less likely either; if we assume they are just like us; is it not reasonable to predict a similar increase in rape accusations and allegations of sexual harassment, fraternization and adultery?

Again, these assumptions are not based on demonization of gays, nor upon the assumption that they are less moral or dedicated that heterosexuals. They are based on the assumption that, in the aggregate, gays are every bit as moral and dedicated as heteros but also that the same temptations and weaknesses that cause discipline problems when men and women are in close quarters would be present when billeting men and women who are sexually attracted to their own sex together.

This is not fear. It is not homophobia. And it is certainly not hatred or bigotry. It is common sense.

For Reference:

The Continuing Deflation of LGF

Perspective from the Big Government site: The Continuing Deflation of Little Green Footballs

I feel compelled to answer the Little Green Monster after I saw him go after James O’Keefe with that same tired wet noodle of a charge he has leveled at so many, calling him a white nationalist. Johnson claimed in an LGF post that “ACORN sting filmmaker James O’Keefe was photographed attending a 2006 white nationalist conference titled ‘Race and Conservatism.’”

Sounds terrible, right? Sure, until you get the facts that Johnson doesn’t tell you. When it became clear that it wasn’t a “white nationalist conference,” Johnson tried to slither out of responsibility for his words by saying in a new post: “It’s very clear that I attributed the ‘white nationalist conference’ claim to One People’s Project; that’s what the words ‘according to’ mean.”

Busted! As if it weren’t obvious that in his original post, he was approving of and endorsing what One People’s Project said. But this is typical of Johnson’s weaselly hit-and-run smear tactics.

Meanwhile, Larry O’Connor at Big Journalism uncovered the truth about O’Keefe’s supposed participation in this conference:

1. He was not “manning a table” at the event.

2. He was not involved with the organization or operations of the event.

3. He attended the event with many of his Leadership Institute co-workers since it was right across the street from their building in Arlington, Va., and it was organized by other LI associates.

4. The organizer who is being called a “White Supremacist” is half Jewish and half Korean.

5. One of the panelist was an African-American named Kevin Martin.

The event was forced to move to a Georgetown University building in Arlington, not at a cross-burning.

This is what Johnson does. He has gotten a great deal of publicity for his announcement about how he parted ways with the Right, but the real story of Charles Johnson is not even that he changed his mind or his politics. Little Green Footballs today is not a political site. It’s an attack site. He has set about to destroy the most effective voices on the Right. But in fact, he destroyed himself.

At first, I noticed he was attacking Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch. OK, maybe it's a pissing contest. When I followed links, all I could see was a pretty weak attempt at guilt by association.

Now he's attacking people all over the place, with the same charge.

Everyone's wrong but him?

I don't quite buy it.

---

And here's a copy of a retraction request aimed at LGF.

While it is true Mr. Johnson did not use the precise phrase “white nationalist convention” as was noted in Weigel’s article, he said something very similar in the comments of his blog. In this case, Mr. Johnson does not attribute his claim that O’Keefe attended a “meeting of white nationalists” to anyone.

We hope that Mr. Johnson, an influential presence in the blogosphere, will issue a retraction without playing the semantics game with the words “meeting” and “conference”...

In addition, his claim O’Keefe was “a friend” of Marcus Epstein is false. In an interview with BigJournalism.com, James O’Keefe denied Mr. Johnson’s claim, which, again, is unattributed. As was hashed out here, there is no factual basis for Johnson to imply a close link between O’Keefe and Epstein...

We kindly request retractions to both statements.