Independence Day: April 15

I mentioned in an earlier blog that for an American to declare his true patriotism for his or her nation, we need to celebrate the independence of our nation not on July 4 but on April 15. On July 4 we can fly fireworks and flags, put on red, white, and blue and play patriotic songs while we picnic and go on vacations in the middle of the summer. None of this tests our patriotism for our nation. April 15 does. On that day we turn in our income tax 1040 to the IRS. Are we willing to pay for what our government does? Are we willing to put our patriotism down not in fireworks but in greenbacks? We were so gung ho about attacking Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Now comes the hard part. The bill. About $60,000,000,000 to maybe $200,000,000,000 or so, or hundreds of dollars per each of us. It might want us to think twice before doing things like attacking Iraq, setting up a myriad of bureaucratic agencies, or building a missile defense system that depends on 10 million lines of code going right the first time it is used. Sure, we can party on July 4, but when we see what happens on April 15, we may want to do something on another day - the first Tuesday in November. Sometimes patriotism means saving our government a few bucks.

Did Casper Weinberger predict the War in Iraq?

In the late 1990s I read an interesting book by former US Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, The Next War. This book is a fascinating look at what war could be like in the future, including wars against Russia, China, and North Korea. But it is the War with Mexico in 2003 that is now of interest. To me it seems the war is occurring! The main difference is that the war is not against Mexico but against Iraq.

According to the Weinberger scenario, in 1999 June, the president of Mexico is assassinated, and Eduardo Francisco Ruiz takes over later that year, and sets up a radical regime in which he denounces Washington and makes numerous policy changes in Mexico's government. Over the next three years, huge waves of immigrants, millions, of them, flee the country into the United States, prompting US officials to call for action. Eventually the Mexicans overrun the US embassy.

The US decides to take action against Mexico, so they pile up troops in neighboring Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. Then the US invades, on 2003 April 14, quickly going to Mexico City, where they are greeted with cheers. However, absolutely no sign of the Ruiz regime is present; all the offices are empty. The US then charges into the badlands northwest of Mexico City and encounter a force of Mexicans. A fierce battle with casualties on both sides ensues, and eventually US forces prevail, and a new government is set up with aid from the US military. However, no sign of Ruiz is ever found.

It seems to me that is what is happening in Iraq! The date is even close; 2003 April 14 will probably be the end of the war instead of the beginning, but it is close enough. Like with Mexico in Weinberger's book, US troops quickly invade from a neighboring desert, and walk in mostly unhindered into Baghdad. The terrain is also similar: desert with some big cities. If the rest of the scenario goes according to Weinberger, there will be some fierce fighting in northern Iraq, and eventually the US will prevail, but we may never be able to find any of the senior Iraqi leadership, including Saddam Hussein.

So it seems to me that Weinberger was correct; it is just that he got the country wrong. So maybe a look at his other scenarios may be warranted.

The Fourth Turning

In 1996 William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book called the The Fourth Turning, in which the authors find that the four phases of life (childhood, young adulthood, midlife, and elderhood) and the four generational groups (prophet, nomad, hero, adaptive) imply a series of periods or "turnings" of history, which he numbers from First to Fourth. The Fourth Turning is a crisis period in which society is reconstructed. According to the authors, that should begin around 2005. I found an article from them today, however, that suggests that maybe it has already started: http://www.axess.se/english/currentissue/millennial_generation.php. The authors talks mostly about generations but suggests that Planeattack (that is, 9/11) was the catalyst that started this Fourth Turning. So is the crisis upon us?

Some Interesting Google Searches

Here is a new game. Think of a word and enter just that word into news.google.com, the news google search site. You will get the latest news that has that word. For example, today, entering "dead" yields "Is Saddam dead?" Here are some other ones:

dead: Is Saddam dead?
Baghdad: Allies tighten control over Baghdad.
51st state: Iraq, the 51st state?
kerry: Kerry calls for US regime change.
ill: Illinois. 3rd talks about SARS
war: the endless war.
tulip: The Commonwealth Chess Championship from April 20

I think that "51st state" was the most interesting of these. But be sure if your tulips are in check to get them out of check.

Sorcerer's Apprentice

I heard the other day that Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt, said that the war against Iraq should not be fought and that it will result in a hundred bin Ladens. This really stirs my imagination up good. What I envision is Osama bin Laden wandering around after Planeattack, bringing lots of trouble just like the broom in "Sorcerer's Apprentice" brought all that water to the apprentice. So what do we do? Smash the Iraq broom into a zillion pieces. And then the haunting music starts again. And all those pieces and rubble left over from the Saddam regime grow and turn into copies of bin Laden, and then I see the entire landscape covered with copies of Osama bin Laden wandering off into the world to do their dirty work. Dum de Dum de dun-dun-dun Dum de dum de dun-dun-dun …

National Dark Sky Week

Today is the day of National Dark Sky Week. For the next eight days, keep your lights off between 10 am and midnight Mountain and Eastern time, between 9 and 11 pm Pacific and Central Time, and if you are elsewhere, for two hours just before your local midnight. National Dark Sky Week is the brainchild of a 15-year-old woman named Jennifer Barlow, of Midlothian, Virginia. It was her idea to do more than just the usual A project in Science Class, more than a Science Fair even, but to engage in a project that affects all of us. This nationwide project is sponsored by many organizations, including the Astronomical League. So turn off your lights tonight.

I did tonight and I brought out my telescope for viewing. I aimed it at Jupiter and saw one moon on one side and one on the other. Then I tried for a tougher object. Spring is galaxy time, as the Milky Way is along the horizon and not very visible. The constellation Virgo is loaded with galaxies, including the elliptical galaxy M87, which looks like a ball of fuzzy light with a jet emanating from it, most likely caused by a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. This object is more than 40 million light years away. I did see a galaxy, and I remembered some guide stars. I then looked it up in Uranometria 2000 and found that I most likely saw NGC 4452 instead. It is also probably a member of the Virgo Cluster, as is M87, and appears to be an edge-on galaxy.

I'll try again some other night for M87. But note that I had darker skies than usual because of my telling my community association about National Dark Sky Week.

The Grumble Zone

I heard on CNN tonight that soldiers like to grumble at each other about things. I probably could not tolerate too much of this. I feel that people should work things out amicably rather than grumble or argue about it. Please get me out of the Grumble Zone. My favorite place to be is as far away from the Grumble Zone as I can get.

Some interesting sites

One interesting site I found out about lately was www.whatreallyhappened.com, which finds unusual viewpoints in the news and presents them in a list of links. The site has an enormous number of links to sites that most of us are not even aware of. Among the things that this site presents is an argument as to why the big chemical plant in Iraq that was recently discovered is probably not a factory of weapons of mass destruction, and the discovery of British weapons in Iraqi inventories.

Another one is that of the Iraqi who has been blogging to the world, http://www.dear_raed.blogspot.com/. He does not have any sympathy for the Hussein regime but he does not like the bombing in Baghdad either, saying that one of his favorite buildings collapsed before his eyes.

And here's a real scary one: http://www.rea-alp.com/~dragnfly/index.html. It is about the upcoming ultimate oil shortage, the time in the future when the demand for oil will exceed the supply, even with all oil suppliers pumping full tilt. One interesting passage is where he calls to task a friend who understands that this oil shortage is coming, but that he still plans a rich retirement full of travel all over the place. The two thoughts contradict. Or you can go to K.S. Deffeyes' site at http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/ and read that not only is the peak of oil production very soon, but that perhaps it may have already happened! Oil production has declined since 2000 November.

Also look at the Interactive Sky Chart of Sky and Telescope's site. When you step through it, it shows you the constellations that are up at each hour on a sky circle representing the dome of the sky. When the Sun rises, you see the background lighten, and when it is daytime, no stars show at all in the chart, only the Sun (and planets) which is what we would actually see.

Astronomy Weekend

We had unexpectedly clear skies this weekend. It is past full Moon and it is the anti-harvest moon in March, when first the Moon is full, then it disappears from the evening sky, leaving dark skies. On Friday night I took my new 8-inch Celestron NexStar telescope to the Science Museum's skywatch. This telescope is a "go to" scope. This means that you find the object on a keyboard, then hit a key to tell the telescope where to point to to view the object. It took a while to get started, as I had to level and align the telescope to north, then aim at the two reference stars Sirius and Capella. Then I told it to go to Jupiter and it went there, and I showed the public Jupiter from my telescope. I also showed Saturn and M42. I also tested out some new equipment, such as a star diagonal, a Barlow lens, and a 9.7mm Super Plössl eyepiece. I found that the Barlow lens magnified the image two times, making it the same, nearly, as the 9.7mm eyepiece, which is a high power (about 160X) eyepiece.

The next night I went out in my back yard and was surprised to see Jupiter with five moons! Now Jupiter has 52 moons or so, but most are captured asteroids. Only four moons deserve the appellation "moon", as they are the size of our Moon. They are easily visible in an amateur telescope, and make a dramatic sight: a solar system within a solar system. On Saturday night, 2003 March 22, however, I saw five moons. Two were on the right, and three on the left. Huhh? I knew that one of them, the faintest one, had to be a background star, and it had to be the inner moon on the right. Indeed, someone in the Richmond Astronomical Society told me that the star was SAO 98075. I looked it up on the Internet and found that Jupiter had occulted (eclipsed) it on 2003 March 20. I also saw M44 Beehive cluster, M42, and made an attempt to see the two galaxies of M51. I tested more equipment. I tried something called a field reducer. That made the image smaller and brighter. With the 40mm Plössl eyepiece, that really made the Beehive cluster stand out. Jupiter was small but bright. I also tried a star diagonal and saw results similar to using my other diagonal.

Last night I went out again, this time to another astronomer's house, where we were having a telescope party. There a telescope that was willed to my astronomical society in 1957 and somehow came apart to several owners came together again when we put two parts together and they exactly fit.

So I saw several stars and gave my telescope a good workout this weekend. I hope for good skies again this weekend.

It finally begins

Tonight I heard that an attack had begun on Iraq; and that further, an attempt was made to hit the high leadership. As I expected, news of this event has swamped all of the stations, even to the extent of trumping sports events; usually the news on the weekend get sportsed out. The headline on the CNN site was the largest I have ever seen, and I expect the headline in tomorrow's paper to fill the front page. These all mean that the start of this war is a Memorable Event, only six of which have occurred in my lifetime, with the other five being the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, the manned landing on the Moon, the start of Persian Gulf War I, and Planeattack. Let us hope this war ends quickly with only a few civilian and military casualties and with new hope for the people of Iraq.

Spam-of-mouth

I got a shock this morning when I opened my email up and found a message saying that a report on me had been made by someone on the site word-of-mouth.info. Now who would do that? It sound like the biggest tattle site of them all. I went there and tried to find out who this was, and it would not tell; it said send an email or something. Then I got another email saying that someone had searched me. Right. Myself, just now. I tried the magic antidote of this age on the site. That's right, Google. I googled the site, looking for sites about word-of-mouth.info, not in it. I got about 10 or so blogs sort of like this one, and all of them said in so many words that it was spam. What really made me conclude that it was spam was a message last year from the site that said, "This is not a spam.", in capital letters surrounded by asterisks. As I said before, any email that contains the phrase "This is not a spam." is megrittian instead and is indeed spam. So much for word-of-mouth.

Megrittian is my newest non-word: it comes from the artist René Megritte, who made a drawing of a pipe with the caption "Ceci ne'st pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe.).

Speech Contest

I went to an Toastmaster Dual-Area Speech Contest today. Actually it was two contests: one for Table Topics (impromptu speaking) and one for the International Speech Contest. What was interesting was not who won the speech contests, but their compatibility with each other. These were the speeches that were given in this order:

"Just add one" - my speech. My main thesis was that there never is an end to anything; it is always possible to proceed.

"Answering the knock of change" There occasionally comes a time when you need to change to achieve success.

"The Picture of Success" or how you can picture yourself succeeding to tell yourself where your actions should be heading.

"The Very Last Time" A tribute to Babe Ruth and to the speaker's grandfather, as they both entered the last phase of their lives.

If the last speech were made the first, this would be a good 30-minute panel course on how to succeed. For that speech says that there sooner or later will be an end. The second speech, Just Add One, would say that even then, you can go one step farther. The third speech says that in order to do that, you have to answer the knock of change. And the fourth one sums things up, asking you to picture yourself a success in a never-ending ever-changing world.

I did not win the contest, but I did win Table Topics, simply by showing up. So I go up to the next level - Division.

Spam Words

Spam, spam, spam. It is increasing tremendously. Near the beginning of the millennium it was 8 percent of all email; now it is closer to 40 percent, according to my morning paper. So how do you get rid of it? Delete it. But if you have to delete 40 percent of your emails, that will take a long time; besides, you may accidentally think that a legitimate email is spam and delete it. So how do you deal with it? The ultimate answer would be legislation at the national level, plus enforcement. But without that, how to get rid of spams?

There are various products on the market to identify spam. One of the most available is the Rules wizard in Outlook. You can write a rule to tell Outlook to do something with "junk mail"; perhaps delete it, or better yet, send it to a folder you label "spam". You define a rule through a wizard, and it runs something like "Check messages when they arrive; if they have "mortgage" or "credit" in the subject, then move it to the Spam folder and stop processing more rules". The last is needed on move rules to prevent the computer from squawking that a message is not there. The rule checks for words in the subject; another possibility is the address, but addresses tend to be more particular.

So suppose you want to set up an anti-spam rule that identifies it by words in the subject. A word like "Richmond" is not likely to be in a spam subject, because most spammers spam the world, not just Richmond. However, "mortgage" is likely to be a spam subject, since so many spams offer low mortgage rates. A while ago I made a test of spam. I saved all the spams and did a word frequency analysis of spam subjects and of legitimate mail subjects. I identified those words that had a high frequency in spam and a low frequency in legitimate mail. I came up with these words:

free, business, make, money, now, credit, get, cash, mortgage, cost, fee, how, merchant, addresses, guaranteed, offshore, equity, opportunity, vacation, viagra, mom, advertise, anyone, anything, commerce, sex, million, millions, find, increase, account, solution

I did it again today and came up with these words:

free, business, make, money, now, credit, get, cash, mortgage, com, insurance, rates, best, cartridges, shipping, adv, james, online, software, inkjet, win, card, debt, refinance, up, lowest, only, family, gift, jimvb, save, mindspring, sale, your, off

The first eight words of both lists are the same and can be thought of as a basic spam word list. The other words reflect fads in spamming. In the first set of words, they were offering viagra, the opportunity to find anyone, and millions of email addresses. In the second set, they are more personal, mentioning my name and email address, and hawk inkjet cartridges, mortgages, credit and credit cards, and bargains. By far the top spam word of them all is free. It appeared this time in 309 spams and in 26 legitimate emails. It is a good idea to put this word in your anti-spam rule list, but you still need to check the spam folder for legitimate emails that contain "free", as in "How to keep our country free".

The best idea would be to use a selection of these words in an anti-spam rule, and tell the computer to put the emails in the spam folder. Also put in past or future dated emails and emails marked of high importance, with the red flag. This also goes in reverse. You don't want your email to wind up in someone's spam or junk folder, or even worse, deleted. Further, people reply to your email , and the words you use come back to you; they go into the spam folder if they contain "million". So if you have to use one of these spam words in your subject, misspell it. Say "Weather about to guet warmer", for instance. Or you could say, "Weather about to g9et warmer", sticking in an extraneous digit.

Perhaps one of these days spam email will go the way of junk faxes.

Blogger Error

I just posted this blog on Morse Code and Words. Immediately it throws up this error message: "The system cannot find the file specified." What file? Did I specify a file? I didn't specify a file. I wrote some text and asked Blogger to put it in my blog. What's more, when I checked this blog page, it had the Morse Code blog in with the others. So I am still able to use the system. That is a property of Pyra and Blogger: They throw up errors that don't mean anything. That is why I rated them only moderately good a while ago and hope that Google will mean an improvement. At least it is better than errors that prevent me from posting altogether.

Morse Code and Words

I notice that words have definite rhythms; for example, record and record have different rhythms. Record, as in 33 rpm, has an N pattern: Dah Dit, for Dah Dit is an N in Morse Code. Record, as in copy with a recorder, has an A pattern: Dit Dah. So words can be reduced to letters by their rhythms, if they are not too long. Even if they are, we can convert them to bits, and thus to numbers. Here are some examples:

E . a (the article)
T - dog
A .- receipt
N -. mother
I .. in the
M -- Great Dane
S ... so as to
U ..- in the lake
R .-. apartment
W .-- a done deal
D -.. galaxy
K -.- kitty cat
G --. New Yorker
O --- Go! Go! Go!
X -..- Slow to react
B -... automobile
C -.-. helicopter
-.-.. hippopotamus

and so forth. Piecing these together is what produces a poem. Any poem can be reduced to Morse Code, or more properly, to a series of 1s and 0s representing a rhythm. Writing a poem or a song involves putting these together in the right manner to fit into a good rhythm.

Can God make square circles?

I was doing some fill in the blank browsing today; in particular, "two plus two equals" -four. I wanted to see what some people's idea of two plus two were if they weren't four. I got numerous answers from the Orwellian five to the uplifting love to such things as foresight and sheep to such numbers as 3, 16, and 32. What really struck me was one of those who said it was five, namely http://gci.gospelcom.net/dw/1995/11/04/. One of the statements the author of this page makes is "God can make square circles if He wants to." Huhh?? Really?

Well, it might be impossible to prove that God does not exist or that he does not make square circles. What I can prove is that if God can make square circles, then I am God. Here is the reason. If God can make a square circle, it is possible that a square circle exists. Draw two tangent lines through two different points on the border of such a square circle. Since the figure is square, the points can be selected so that the tangents have the same slope. They then have an angle 0 with respect to each other. However, since the figure is also a circle, with the tangents being close to each other, they are not the same, and the tangents make an angle t that is greater than 0. Since this angle is also zero, t = 0. Divide both sides by t, which I can do since t > 0. The result is 1 = 0. Add 1 to both sides to get 2 = 1. Now God and I are two entities. But since 2 = 1, God and I are one entity. Therefore, I am God.

The argument goes further from here. Since God can make square circles and since I am God, therefore I can make square circles. No, I am afraid that I cannot make any square circles. This implies that the hypothesis of my proof above is false; i.e., God cannot make square circles. In other words, because I can't make square circles, therefore God can't either.

I can make all these conclusions because I start with a contradiction to begin with: square circles. A contradiction implies anything, and can be used by crackpots to "prove" their theories and by despots to justify mayhem. Whatever is beyond our ability to comprehend may be such, but there is no way we can talk sense about it if it involves contradictions. There is no way that a supreme being or deity can violate the laws of logic. And thus be it to Gods who are not God, to even numbers greater than 2 that are prime, and indeed, also to square circles.

Cancer City

Yesterday the headline in the Richmond, Virginia newspaper read "TOBACCO TOWN". This is because Philip Morris, known best for selling cigarettes and other tobacco products, is moving its headquarters from New York City to Richmond. This irked me a bit because I am not a smoker and I know that smoking can, among other things, cause cancer. I then heard a radio talk show host ask if this is an appropriate term to use, as Richmond is more than just a mere "town"; maybe Petersburg is a town, but not Richmond. I thought he was leaning towards "Tobacco City". But that is not very catchy and still unrepresentative of Richmond; further, it does not fit in songs readily. But I found an alternative that does fit readily in a song that already exists. The song goes:

I'm going to Cancer City,
Cancer City, here I come.
I'm going to Cancer City,
Cancer City, here I come.
They got some cancer sticks they're sellin'
And I'm going there to smoke me some.
So I'm going to Cancer City. . .

Yes, I know that you don't have to smoke. You could just pass the cigarette stand by in the local 7-11. If everyone did that, Phillip Morris would go out of business. But still, having a major corporate headquarters here in Richmond be that of a tobacco company town is not going to give Richmond a good image. The tourism bureaus and the local Chamber of Commerce have a tougher job now convincing people to come to Richmond and they will have to emphasize the other fine things that Richmond has to offer. The best way of dealing with Phillip Morris is if you smoke, quit.

Peace on Earth and No Shirt

Today an outrageous thing happened in Albany. A man and his son were eating at the food court at Crossgate Mall in Guilderland, New York, a suburb of Albany. They were wearing T-shirts bearing the words "Peace on Earth" and "Give Peace a Chance". Security came up to them and asked them to take off their T-shirts or leave the mall. They refused. The security called police, and a policeman told them to leave the mall or take off their shirts. The son took off his shirt. The father did not and he was arrested, arraigned on a charge of trespassing, and released. I suppose that means he will face a judge in court. He is the Chairman of a Commission on Judicial Conduct. I bet he and the judge will be watching each other very closely in court.

This was followed by a 100-person demonstration. And rightfully so. Since when is "Peace on Earth" so objectionable that it earns one an expulsion from a suburban mall? If it were me, I would take off my T-shirt. Normally T-shirts are worn with nothing under them so I would go around shirtless in the mall. That is also forbidden by regulations "shoes and shirt required". I suppose another cop would tell me to put my shirt back on. So I do so. So a cop says take it off because it says "Peace on Earth". Or I could confront the cop and said, "So and so officer told me to take the shirt off."

In any case, this is an attack on First Amendment rights. The mall is a public place, no matter what security or the police say. If it were a private place, one would have to show membership to get in. If it were a private place, this incident would mean that it is no place I would want to shop in. In fact, that is what we should do. I say boycott Crossgate Mall until they change their policy and drop their charges against the T-shirt wearer.

AM, PM, and Military Time

Today I proposed by email a meeting of an organization I belong to at 2100. That is 9 pm. Someone in the organization objected to my using military time. No. The military got this one right. They need a system for stating times that will not cause confusion, because that can totally destroy a military operation. In fact, military time is what we should all be using. There is too much confusion between AM and PM. More than once I have gotten up late in the morning because I set my alarm clock for 6 PM instead of 6 AM. It is ambiguous. The basic unit of time is the day, the time from noon to noon, not half a day. Further, AM/PM time insists on using 12 AM instead of 0 AM and 12 PM instead of 0 PM, causing more confusion. Algorithms to compare AM/PM times are complicated because of having to deal with 12 o'clocks. And never say 12 AM or 12 PM. That causes confusion. Say "noon" or "midnight" instead. So start using 24-hour time and get to bed by 2300.

Google News Explosion

Google really improved its service with its news.google.com news service, which gathered the news of 4000 news sites in one search place. However, there is one flaw that Google News has. If a story is reported to the Associated Press, it becomes almost impossible to search for the place where the story comes from, or to search for other stories. For example, if an event occurred in Richmond, and it gets reported to the AP, then it will appear in the San Antonio news site, and in the Sacramento news site, and in the news sites of Peoria, Philadelphia, La Crosse WI, Orlando, Truth or Consequences NM, Great Britain, Sydney Australia, and a zillion other local news sites. You then have to next and next and next and next and next through all these sites to get to a site from the Richmond area. It is easier simply to go to the Richmond station to begin with and forget Google. I think the service would be improved if it blocked (upon clicking a checkbox by the user) all sites reporting the event except AP and the city of origin of the event, if the event gets reported to the AP.