Irreducibly Complex Edition (John McWhorter & Michael Behe)

Thanks to BHtv commenter graz for posting the file.

Update:
The original diavlog has been reposted at bloggingheads.tv.

J. G. Ballard

Vaughn died yesterday in his last car-crash. During our friendship he had rehearsed his death in many crashes, but this was his only true accident. Driven on a collision course towards the limousine of the film actress, his car jumped the rails of the London airport flyover and plunged through the roof of a bus filled with airline passengers. The crushed bodies of package tourists, like a haemorrhage of the sun, still lay across the vinyl seats when I pushed my way through the police engineers an hour later. Holding the arm of her chauffeur, the film actress Elizabeth Taylor, with whom Vaughan had dreamed of dying for so many months, stood alone under the revolving ambulance lights. As I knelt over Vaughan’s body she placed a gloved hand to her throat.

So begins Crash: A Novel, an iconic, controversial novel of obsession and the nexus of technology and sexuality, written in the middle of the twentieth century, when the vision of technology was best represented by modes of transportation, rather than methods of information processing. The story still seems to accurately portray contemporary modes of obsession with startling clarity.

J. G. Ballard died today. Ballard was a fiercely smart British writer, similar in many ways to his contemporary, Brian W. Aldiss, Ballard wrote science fiction that was so much more psychologically sophisticated than what was being produced at the time that his work, and that of Aldiss, Norman Spinrad and a few others that a subgenre "British New Wave" was named to distinguish it - famously represented by the Michael Moorcock edited editions of New Worlds magazine. Ballard was probably best known for his novel Empire of the Sun, and the Spielberg movie of the same name. Crash was, of course, filmed by David Cronenberg. I can't think of another author whose work would have attracted such disparate attention.

Saturnebula!

What's remarkable about this beautiful image is that it's literally a scene from another galaxy. It's a picture of the Tarantula Nebula, an H II region (a cloud of glowing gas and plasma) in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the closest galaxies to, in fact a satellite of, the Milky way. The nebula is an extremely bright object, if it were as close as the Orion Nebula, it would cast shadows. It's also the location of the nearest supernova since the invention of the telescope. This is an APOD image, click once for the APOD page, click the image there for a high-resolution version.

Saturnebula!

NGC 2818 is a strikingly attractive planetary nebula found in the southern constellation Pyxis (The Compass). The beautiful hues pictured here are the result of a sequence of exposures through narrow-band filters, highlighting emission from nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms showing as red, green, and blue in the image. This is an APOD image. Click through to see the APOD page, click the image there for a higher resolution version.

Saturnebula!

This is a depiction of a pair of the most conspicuous objects in the night sky (after major solar system objects). On the left is shown one the most recognizable nebulae of all, the Horsehead Nebula. On the right, the Orion Nebula, an object bright enough to easily seen by the naked eye – it appears as the middle “star” in Orion’s sword. Both are, in fact, parts of the vast Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, an object which, despite being about 1300 light years away, has an apparent size similar to your outstretched hand held at arm’s length in the direction of the constellation of Orion. (Which itself is one of the easiest to find and recognizable patterns in the night sky.) This is one of the most beautiful and keenly observed objects in astronomy. It's a stellar nursery, (in other words a molecular cloud in which stars are actively forming) the closest such in existence, and studied pretty closely as a result.

This is an APOD image. Click the image here for the APOD page, click the image there for a detailed view.

More Kew. Rhone.

Enjoy.

Kew. Rhone.

I had no idea I'd find this when I went hunting YouTube for a Peter Blegvad (rhymes with egg-bad) video. Peter is a god among rock musicians and is, in my totally not humble opinion among the best lyricists of all time. Kew. Rhone. was a collaboration with John Greaves who wrote the music and Lisa Herman, who had to sing this impossible stuff. Don't try to understand it, just love it for the wacky degree of complexity, the irony, and the overall musical gorgeousness.

Things I Think Are Beautiful

This is a long exposure image of the Kepler launch. The mission is, of course, a space geek's wet dream. But regardless of all that, just as an abstract thing this is a beautiful picture. Also, it is an APOD image, and all that implies. (Click image for APOD page, click image there for higher resolution version.)

Update: Not surprisingly, Phil Plait does me one better.

Limbaugh v. Obama

When Michael Steele told D. L. Hughley that Rush is an "entertainer" and that some of the things he says are "incendiary" and "ugly," it's hard to imagine that the Obama administration's political operation had predicted such a perfect event to crown their decision to engage Rush directly, after Rush's "I Hope the President Fails" became a cassus belli. Nevertheless, I have to say the spectacle appears to be one of the most spectacularly successful examples of ratfucking (cf) I've witnessed, on this scale. The image of Michael Steele kissing his ring and backing away apologetically under Rush Limbaugh's steely gaze (now indelibly the Face of the Republican Party) is an image that stings on so many levels I've lost count.

The O's can count the entire episode as a big win. It's clear to me what Rush get out of this. His ratings are way up. Rush in Opposition is Rush's strongest stance - just look back to the Clinton years. The Republican party is the obvious loser. Republicans ought to be asking themselves what it is they're getting out of their alliance with Rush.

Saturnebula!

The Crab Pulsar Wind Nebula (also known as a plerion, or synchrotron nebula.) At the heart of the Crab Nebula lies a pulsar, a spinning, stellar scale object with the density of a neutron, left over as the result of a supernova, in particular one caused by the collapse of a massive star. This Chandra X-ray image clearly shows some of the structure surrounding the Crab's pulsar. As usual, this is an APOD image. The picture here links to APOD page, and a click there will show a higher res view.

Merry Christmas (and goodbye Eartha Kitt)

Eartha Kitt's death was announced today. I think that's a very sad thing. I recommend staying with the video all the way through "Old Fashioned Girl" to hear "Santa Baby" sung by the first, and the best, interpreter of that song. Not to mention the little poke she takes at Madonna's ill-considered attempt at the tune.

Saturnebula!

Fomalhaut b. It's the first visible light image of an extrasolar planet. Though it's just a speck in this image, it's an incredible milestone. Fomalhaut itself is one of the brightest stars in the sky, located about twenty-five light years from earth in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. I'm not sure the toroidal dust disk surrounding Fomalhaut, imaged here, really counts as a nebula, as such; being apparently an analog of the Kuiper belt surrounding the Sun. However, this is such a cool discovery that bending the definition to be sure it's included in this feature seems perfectly justified. The sharp definition of the inner boundary of the cloud was one of the clues that led to the conclusion that there was a planet here to be found. The planet itself is thought to be three times the size of Jupiter, with a much larger ring system than Saturn - which might, in fact be what was actually imaged here.

This is an APOD image. Click away.

Saturnebula!

Just when I think the good images of galaxies are starting to dry up, this comes along. For those who aren't aware, the Hubble Space Telescope had been offline. After having been brought back online, this was one of the first images (within the first couple of days, at any rate) captured - a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies known as ARP 147. A spectacular pair of ring-shaped galaxies, one face on, one nearly perpendicular to our viewpoint. This is an APOD image, you can click through for more explanation and a higher resolution view, as always.

Disappointing

I've only recent started reading Rick Moran's Right Wing Nut House. I was surprised by several judicious posts and had decided that Moran was somebody I could agreeably disagree with. However, his reaction to Erik's fit of utter lunacy is hardly reassuring. If the Republican party is going to recover, (and that's a goal for which I really do have sympathy) they're going to need to recognize the difference between partisanship and self-parody.

Operation Paranoia

Erick Erickson sure does think he's an Important Person. The anonymous McCain aids he seems so put out with are quaking in their boots, I'm sure. Malkin and Ace seem to be polishing their own batons. Jeebus. These folks need to take a breath. At least as long a K-Lo reigns at The Corner, Erik can't really be considered competitive for the title of Dumbest Political Blogger of any note. (Of course there's always plenty of competition on that score.)

Historic

Less than fifty years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. What more needs to be said?

Saturnebula!

Ok, in an effort to broaden this feature, since distinctive pictures of galaxies aren't an infinite resource, I'm rechristening (and retiming) it as Saturnebula. Yeah, it's a slightly goofy construction, but it's distinctive, and it's probably easier to post on Saturdays anyway - plenty of Friday Galactic Blogs went up on Saturdays in any case. I'll be pretty broad in my definition of "nebula," to encompass any cool galactic photos I find, consistently with older definitions like that of Messier.

This particular beauty is a depiction of the Veil Nebula, the leftovers from a supernova in the direction of the constellation Cygnus at an approximate distance between 1400 and 2600 light years. It spans three degrees in the night sky (six times the apparent size of a full moon) but is notoriously difficult to see in visible light, despite an apparent magnitude of about seven, which nearly as bright as the dimmest naked eye stars (corresponding to an apparent magnitude of about six.)

It's an APOD image, and you know the drill.

The Obamaclypse Is Upon Us!

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(Posted first on Bloggingheads.tv - but it fits in perfectly on the blog.)

Spooky secondary effects of an election apparently leaning toward the Democrats! Mark Levin's head literally explodes!

The following pull is almost randomly selected from the gusher of a single run-on graf of stream-of-consciousness word spew. It's lucky this election is coming very soon, if only to preserve whatever sanity is left among the right-wing punditariat. Good golly.

Excerpted from The Obama Temptation:
Charles Gibson and Katie Couric sought to humiliate Palin. They would never and have never tried such an approach with Obama. But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created.

Mark Steyn Continues...

to be an ass. And, if I'm not mistaken he's just conceded the next two elections to Obama!

Stupid Corner Tricks

Does Mark Levin Imagine that Colin Powell gives a rat's ass whether or not he has Mark's "respect?" Jeeze, those guys think a lot of themselves.