The Space Toast Pages

Matthew Rasmussen's journal of journals on various topics of interest, published here, there or somewhere since 1999.

Panorama: Breakwater in Winter

Rockland, ME. A much balmier 20°, but breezy.

Stitched together in Hugin from 13 camera phone pictures. Stereographic projection.

Panorama: Stepped Brook

Union, ME. Air temperature about 10° F.

Stitched together in Hugin from 24 camera phone pictures. Stereographic projection.

Retired Addiction

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

Does a book listing all non-self-referential books contain itself? A book about the founding of modern logic has no right to be such a compulsive page-turner.

The Fiddlers of Rome

Sneering, populist climate science denialism from a self-described Libertarian is nothing shocking, but it should be a bit beneath the New York Times science page. I'm beginning to think the best thing to do is just to sneer back, and keep asking questions about those lovely secondhand robes they've bought from the Emperor.

Leaving aside the question of whether libertarian philosophy is even flexible enough to mount a response to a problem with personalized rewards but socialized consequences, let's make sure we understand why this is denialism, and not skepticism. Climate change "denialism" relies not on a single set of arguments, but on several tiers, whose only commonality is a defense of inaction on the issue:

1. I don't "believe" in climate change, because of X,Y, Z
2. If you show that X,Y,Z are invalid, I will find new arguments U,V,W
3. If you demolish U,V,W, I will say that even if climate change is happening, there is no evidence that it is anthropogenic because of A,B,C
4. A,B,C become D,E,F through the same process that produced U,V,W
5. When D,E,F fall, I will argue that there's no evidence that it will be harmful
6. When harm is shown, I will pass the buck to the next generation, assuming they will invent some whiz-bang technology to reverse the damage
7. Why, under libertarian philosophy, anyone in the future would undertake a massive program whose only benefits are social will remain unasked; presumably in the future Libertarians will remain a fringe minority

The scientific consensus on plate tectonics is about as old as I am. It's been around much longer than that, much like our understanding of the greenhouse effect. To certain generations of Americans, though, the Earth never moved. The geological revolution was a boon to oil and gas exploration, and the free market as a whole. If modern climate science had such a rosy picture to offer, would such an unfortunate gap have ever been opened in the last ten years between scientific consensus and public perception?

Carry On

No existential threat to the civilized world exists from fundamentalist terrorists. We do not call the madman Emperor, and we do not call the criminal Nemesis. Were terrorists able to threaten the existence of our values, the existence of our institutions of law, or even the lives of any great portion of us, they would not require the tools of cowardice. If Cheney, Beck, Limbaugh, Palin or O'Reilly will argue otherwise, let them do so, and let them stand against evidence. Fear will always be sold cheap by shameful men. Defend reason. Keep calm, and carry on.

The Sci Fi Channel

Spaceships

If you don't have artificial gravity, science fiction starts to look more like the age of schooners. To get from place to place in the solar system it'd be necessary to accelerate halfway, turn around and decelerate for the rest of the trip. Accelerating or decelerating at more than the equivalent rate of Earth gravity (9.8m/s) would be difficult for the crew to withstand for long. Jupiter is about 983 million km from Earth at its nearest point. If I'm doing the math right (and I'm probably not) accelerating halfway at 9.8m/s would take 158 hours -- about 6½ days. The full trip would take two weeks.

Laser weapons are a must. You'd only be able to see them when they shoot through gas or dust, but when it comes to shooting from one moving platform and hitting another on a logarithmic scale you won't get much time to aim. A projectile would deliver more energy with less expended, but a powerful lazer would be able to vaporize or nudge it out of the way. Opponents would basically joust on a split-second timeframe, trying to pass momentarily close enough for their computers to shoot. Ships would be no more than specks to one another, usually less. Forget about human combat.

Until someone tells me what exactly an "energy shield" would be, we'll have to assume that surviving a lazer attack means thick, dense plating all over the ship. If a lazer can vaporize a few cubic meters of hull in one shot, you'd better have a lot of hull to spare. It should be shiny too. Getting hit with a lazer might lead to some pretty refractions.

One last thought: Get used to the solar system. It takes light from the sun (which doesn't have to accelerate) eight minutes to reach Earth, four hours to reach Neptune, and four years to reach the nearest star -- itself a burnt-out red dwarf, Proxima Centauri.

Blowing some of the cobwebs out of scifi tropes, fiction begins to slip into unfamiliar grooves.

YouTube Captioning: Morning Musume - Onna ni Sachi Are

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Maxwell

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