Light Pollution is Birth Control?

I saw a movie over the weekend called "The Sunshine State", which is about developers moving into a pristine Florida barrier island environment threatening not only the wildlife there but the way of living there that people who lived there had experienced for decades. A woman who has lived her life in the island area meets a man who is one of the developers, and the two go out to a deserted locale which however has blaring metal halide lights all over the place, making it well lit and unsuitable for lover's lane activities. So she says something like "These lights were made for security, but also for birth control." Light pollution as birth control. What an interesting observation.

Pledge of Allegiance again

Bravo, 9th Circuit Court! You are holding your ground. The court refused to review the case of Andrew Newdow, the atheist who filed suit to get the Pledge of Allegiance with "under God" out of the school system as it violates separation of church and state and is an infringement of religious freedom. Unfortunately, it will go to the Supreme Court, which is likely to strike it down. At least for a while anyway, religious freedom will reign in western states.

Mercredi Gras

Every year New Orleans becomes a party town with their celebration of Mardi Gras, which means Fat Tuesday; the day when you feast and party and get fat. This year, Mardi Gras is on March 4, which means the paraders in New Orleans will March 4 into Mardi Gras singing "When the saints come marching in". It is always the day before Lent, the Catholic penance before Easter. To me the only reason for a Mardi Gras is that Lent follows. We party just before that, because we know on the day after we must fast and think solemn thoughts about something that happened 2,000 years ago. I say, if we can party on Mardi Gras, we can party any day of the year. I say that life was made for merriment and celebration, not for solemn Lents. There is nothing special about 47 days before the first Sunday after the first Full Moon of spring. Sad things can happen any day of the year, so we must be prepared to party any day of the year and not pile up all our frustrations before Lent. Let the celebration continue right into Lent. Mercredi Gras (Fat Wednesday), anyone?

Will the End of the World Save our World?

The 2000 January issue of Astronomy magazine features an article by Thomas Hayden, a science editor for Newsweek, on the End of our World. The Sun is continually getting hotter as it gets older. About a billion years from now, according to Mr. Hayden, it will be 10% brighter than it is now. That will make it hot on Earth, and the oceans will evaporate to form eternal cloudiness on the Earth. The water vapor will make it into the stratosphere. There Sunlight will hit it, and split the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is too light for the Earth's gravity to hold onto, and it will be lost forever. The Oxygen will sink to the ground to form carbon dioxide and carbonates. Thus will the Earth become like Venus: CO₂ atmosphere much denser and hotter than now, and no water. The oceans will have boiled away. It will be the End of the World.

But that's a billion years from now. There are more pressing concerns ahead of us, such as the running out of oil. According to some observers, that will happen about 2010 or so, when cheap oil runs out and production enters a decline. The results will be devastating, as we depend a lot on oil. That could be the End of the World. We need to replace our oil-burning vehicle engines with another fuel, and hydrogen is posed as an answer. Hydrogen will be forever (or actually a billion years, as we saw above) available on the Earth, and the fuel burns clean, producing only water vapor as a waste product. We need cars that burn hydrogen, and such cars have been made: fuel cell vehicles. Most of the vehicles that I have heard about make their hydrogen fuel from a fossil fuel such as gasoline, or from a biological fuel such as grain alcohol. That does not solve the running out of oil problem. We need a source independent of fossil fuels. So why can't the Sun's energy be used to break up (electrolyze) water into hydrogen and oxygen, the way that it will happen a billion years from now to boil away the oceans? Why up above and in the far future? Why not on this Earth and now? Is there some way of using the End of the World to Save the World?

Tom Brokaw hypes it up

Today's media hype of the day: Tonight on the 6:30 NBC news, Tom Brokaw's voice came with an urgent, strident tone, emphasizing emergencies and dire things everywhere, such as the possible attack on Iraq, the terrorist threat level, and the nightclub disasters, to the tune of booming loud martial-like music. Then he mentioned that Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers Neighborhood TV show for children) died at the age of 74, to the same bombastic music and tone of voice. What hype. And you really goofed it up this time, Tom. That was not Mr. Rogers' style! He was laid back, friendly, and optimistic. I think Tom should have cut the boom-music off and told us about Mr. Rogers in the same way that Mr. Rogers would have - softly and matter-of-factly.

JavaScript

I ran into an interesting word today, JavaScript. I have known about it for some time. It is a "scripting" programming language for the Web. The code goes inside an HTML file and is executed when the user requests the web page. I have constructed some JavaScript programs and once in a while I will post one. But my interest is in the word JavaScript itself and what it says about human nature. There is another web programming language called Java, invented by Sun Microsystems, but the two have little in common. The language was invented in 1995 and called LiveScript or ECMAScript by Netscape. However, the language did not catch on. The reason why is because Java came on the market, and programmers all over the place saw their chance to make the Web dynamic. Java drew all the interest and LiveScript dropped by the wayside. So, to pick up interest in LiveScript, Netscape got permission from Sun to change the name of the language to JavaScript. Immediately, it became a hit. Programmers rushed to it thinking it was some variation of Java. While the two languages are both based ultimately on C, they differ more than they have in common. After that it became a source of confusion among programmers. The idea is that exactly the same language fizzled when it was called LiveScript and succeeded greatly when it was JavaScript, simply because it was a "Java" language. It shows that words do matter, and that many people are not able to separate the object from the word for it. This is not a good way for things to be, but while it is the case, if you can put a so-called "buzz" word into the title of your endeavor, it will probably succeed.

After the Strom

I saw it on CNN today, on my Cable TV. I could not believe it. They were talking about how the rains this weekends combined with the snowstorm last weekend would cause floods. The caption on the bottom screen read: "After The Strom". That's right, after the strom. They were calmly talking about the storm and the flood dangers while the screen script warned viewers of what could happen after the strom. Did they mean Strom Thurmond? I can tell you what they meant then: Trent Lott lost his majority leader in the Senate. But they did not seem to be talking about that. It seems that they need to check spelling and grammar of captions before they show them.

A New Blogger

I have been blogging with Blogtrek for some time now, using as my blogging host Blogger. Now I hear that my favorite search engine, Google, is buying it. This can only mean good things for Blogger, says the Blogger site. But what do we have now? Glooger? Bloggle? The possibilities are mind-bloggling. In any case, when you now search in Bloggle for something, you may very well bloggle to my gloogling site, Blogtrek (no, I am not going to name it Googlek.).

This what can't be displayed?

Many times when you try to reach a web site you get the reply "This page cannot be displayed." Such happens when you try to access http://www.methinksnopage.com. There follows a set of instructions to help you find what's wrong. This week, however, I found a page that says something else instead. Try http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/. It seems that something else can't be displayed, or at least that seems to be the case in one prominent area of the world right now.

Interesting week

This week had four disasters in it. What's happening here? Is this because a war might happen? First someone uses pepper spray in a nightclub and 21 people die trying to trample out of the place. Then an airplane crashes in Iran killing 302 people. This morning the pyrotechnics got out of control in a Providence, RI, nightclub and the flames spread to engulf everyone inside in minutes. A barge being refueled on Staten Island explodes, producing scenes from Manhattan that looked eerily like Planeattack.

In particular, there has to have been lots of nightclub violations in the past few years in the US, but no disasters. Then all of a sudden we get two at once. Perhaps the nightclubs will clean up their act.

Close the School or Not?

Along with much of the East Coast, the Great Snowstorm of 2003 has caused poor roads around here and resulted in some of the local public school systems being closed for several days. Today, the temperature went to around 50, causing a lot of melting. Therefore, most of the school systems are opening tomorrow. But not School System H. SSH decided to remain closed tomorrow, and the local talk show host on radio ridiculed the situation. He says if that if we do that, then we need to send kids home when it rains because they might get wet, or not have school in the autumn because the falling leaves could attack the students. He said that ice is not melting at 56 degrees F in SSH. A caller said that she spun around 180 degrees twice when navigating roads in H. So which is it? Does H close the schools tomorrow or not? Note that if H does close the school, five days will be permanently lost.

To me this looks like a decision between opening the schools and having the kids become injured intellectuals, or keeping them closed and having them become safe idiots. So which is it, H? Injured intellectuals or safe idiots? I don't think I could decide that one.

Cat on the Door Step

This morning I saw a cat on our back yard deck steps. Our cat was on the sill glowering at it. The cats look much alike, blotchy white and tabby with some orange, more on that cat than on ours. The other cat stares at the squirrels in your yard. With the cat around there is not a bird in sight, even though we have filled the bird feeders. I click my fingers on the bay window pane. The cat turns its head around and glowers at me. It is staring at me with a couple of big fat beautiful green eyes. Then it goes to the back of the yard and disappears. The birds return.

Skyjacking and carjacking

In the book Predicting New Words, by Allan Metcalf, the nonword skyjacking is mentioned. This word was coined about two to three decades ago to describe the hijacking of aircraft. We almost never use the word anymore. However, we do use carjacking a lot. What's the difference? According to Mr. Metcalf, it is because skyjacking has a cute pun, sky versus hi, making light of a serious subject. According to Mr. Metcalf, "cute" or "clever" words almost never survive. Words need to settle in the language unnoticed. Carjacking has survived because there is no such pun; it simply describes the objectionable practice of forcing someone out of a car and taking their car. If so, then what's wrong with planejacking? Why hasn't that appeared in our language?

If it hadn't been for France

Some people are saying the French are being ungrateful because they oppose the upcoming war against Iraq. They say that we saved the French from German occupation iin World War II and now they are being ungrateful by opposing the US. That is a specious argument if I ever saw one. The French has given us a favor. If it weren't for the French, we'd be depositing our paychecks at Benedict Arnold National Bank. Viva la France!

Fire Department Effectiveness

How effective is the fire department? Do you measure it by the number of fires it puts out? If so, the people of the fire department will set fires, and then put them out. Similarly for bioweapons experts. How many bioattacks do they successfully counter? Measure them like this, and they will set an attack, and then counter it. In this case, though I believe the goal was to bring attention to bioweapons research.

Perhaps the military should be the same way. Measure the effectiveness of an army and its government by the number of wars that it wins? If so they will purposely set wars to show everyone how well it can win them. I read somewhere that the fire department is best rated by the number of fires it prevents. Maybe the military and government should be rated by the number of wars it prevents. But I don't see much war preventing except from places like "old Europe".

Snowstorm caused a meltdown?!

Tonight I heard a reporter on CNN saying that the huge snowstorm that we had this weekend caused the transportation system in the Northeast US to experience a meltdown. That's right, a meltdown. This is yet another hyper word that has been worked up by the hypermedia ever since the Three Mile Island incident of 1979. Well, they really made a boner this time. That's exactly what I want, a meltdown! I want all this sleet, freezing rain, and snow to melt down and give us back our transportation system. Fortunately, the weather people predict a meltdown this week, with temperatures in the 50s melting all this stuff off the roads.

The Blizzard of 2003

I saw it coming on the weather reports; in fact, from the GFS model, I had seen this one two weeks in advance. This does not mean I like it in any sense. This storm came in with rain, then it started sleeting for two days. They predicted 12-18 inches of snow, but we got only about 2 inches of ice and sleet. It was not the easiest thing to shovel. It was like a steamroller, wiping out one event after another that I wanted to go to, a telescope open house, a valentine dance, a church service, and a board meeting of an organization where I am an officer. It made it a lonely, cabin-fever weekend. I did get out to shovel snow and run to the main road to see what condition it was in. These events (except for the church service) have been rescheduled, are now going to crowd my next two weeks to the hilt.

The Board of Supervisors Problem

This is the case involving having to wait a long time for an event to happen. It can be for a haircut where you are told only that it will be a long wait, a place where you select numbers for waiting in line, or a court case or government body case which is in a huge docket of cases. Let's take the last one for an example. Suppose your development is concerned about a developer next door building lower cost homes and your neighborhood is afraid of plummeting market values of its homes. So your development is going to challenge their petition at the Board of Supervisors meeting to change the zoning to apartments, say. It is schedule for some night, but you are afraid that it will take a long time before the case comes up. Let's say it will come up sometime between 7 pm and midnight. So you say, I won't come at 7. I'll come in at 10 and save some time. But you are afraid they may pull a fast one on you and bring it up at 9. Then you'll miss it. What should you do?

It depends on your attitude to the supervisors. You could observe the past history of cases similar to your own and find out what the most likely time is for your case to come up. If it is 10, then you will arrive at 9:45. But suppose you don't have such a history, or you have had bad luck with situations in the past and believe that the system is out to make things the most miserable on you as it can.

In that case it is a 2-person zero-sum game. The theory of such games was worked out about half a century ago. Some of these games have what is known as saddle points, or Nash equilibria (mentioned in the beautiful movie A Beautiful Mind, which came out in 2002). In these equilibria, if you deviate from the solution, you will do worse. Well is there such an equilibrium in this case? You come in at midnight, because you feel that the system will make you wait a long time and delay the thing as much as it can. So then it decides to make it at 8 o'clock, to make you miss it. Seeing this, you want to come in at 8. But it decides to make it 7 instead to make you miss it. So you come in at 7. So then it makes it midnight to make you waste 5 hours of your time. And this thing goes on indefinitely. It is clear that this game has no saddle points.

In such a case, game theory says you should use a random device to determine what you are going to do. That keeps the other side guessing. But with what probabilities should you make the times to be? There is a well-known procedure for solving this, using linear programming. I set up the problem using 33 discrete times on an Excel spreadsheet and solved for it. The solution is this: with some high probability, come in on time. In the above example, arrive at 7; that is, on time. If you draw the other probability, then draw completely at random from all the possible hours, making the later hours more likely. How high a probability should you come on time? It depends on how much you value not missing the case versus wasting your time. Roughly speaking, how long a wait in hours must it be before you are indifferent between waiting that time and missing it? Say it is H hours. Then with probability H/(H+1), arrive on time; else draw completely randomly an arrival time. It turns out this is not a good game to play; missing the event is too likely, and you are apt to wait a long time. But this is the best you can do.

Now suppose everyone in the neighborhood follows this rule. Then a huge bunch, maybe 2/3 of the development, will come in on time to support their cause. While the other cases are going on, other people from the development will dribble in a little at time, with the frequency increasing as the night wears on. A few will miss it, when the case comes up and those who selected later times lose out. The last time I went to such a hearing, I did indeed observed this type of behavior to some extent. So game theory in this case had the power to predict accurately what people will do.

Reclaiming the Night Sky

In the beginning was the Big Bang, and then the galaxies and stars were created. The stars lived their lives and exploded, scattering life-stuff all over the place. Some of it came together to form our own blue and white planet, along with a star for it to orbit. If we walk out on our planet-home at night with no clouds or moon and look up, we can see the stuff from which we were created.

Or maybe we can't. More likely the pale light of Sirius is drowned out by the blaring lights of a garish auto dealership; the delicate glow of the celestial road of the Milky Way is hidden from our sight by the line of screaming blaring light on the roads of the suburban business district. More and more the lights of our homes, our institutions, and our highways are blinding us to the glories of the universe. That includes the lights of my, the lights in your subdivision and your home, and the lights at my home. There is light pollution all over the place. It is time we reclaimed our night sky. It would be nice if for two hours, the entire nation, or at least half of it, could turn out its lights so we can see the night sky.

A high school student from Midlothian, Virginia, is trying to get us to do just that. She is Jennifer Barlow, and her web site is http://www.nationaldarkskyweek.htmlplanet.com I found out about this energetic, enterprising young woman through the Richmond Astronomical Society I belong to, and she gave a talk to our group on Monday night. She has declared the week of 2003 April 1-8 to be National Dark Sky Week, and is asking us to turn out all outside lights and bright indoor lights between 10 pm and midnight every night during this week. I feel that this is a good way to get to know and appreciate the night sky. So therefore I urge us to turn out our lights during this time. Perhaps we could urge our neighbors and community associations to take part in this endeavor. This is our view of the Cosmos that is being ruined - the Universe from which we all came. So I urge us all to take part in this project this April.

September 11 Ambiguity

For a while I have been saying that one should not call Planeattack, the terrorist attacks of 2001 September 11, "September 11". This is because it maligns people who were born on a September 11. But there is another reason, too. "September 11" is inherently ambiguous. 57 days of my life have been called "September 11". This is why a major event should not be referred to by its month/day date. I found a headline in the newspaper this morning that read "Terror threat greatest since September 11." Which September 11? Both are plausible. 2002 September 11 was the last time that an Orange terrorism state was declared. 2001 September 11 was the date of Planeattack. The headline should have read "Terror threat greatest since terror attacks of 2001", or "Terror threat greatest since Planeattack", provided enough people understand "Planeattack". So please don't call the terror attacks of a year and a half ago "September 11". There's been another September 11.