23 April 2009, PM

NBA Who would have thought that the Bulls would 3 point favorites against the defending NBA champions? They are. I am looking forward to this game; the last two were thrillers and I expect this one to be close too.

Science
You’ve probably heard that models for the universe contain “extra” dimensions (beyond the usual spatial and time ones) and that many of these are “curled up” so as to be small (spacetime is modeled as an orbifold rather than as a manifold). Here is Cosmic Variance’s explanation of this:

Extra dimensions. Sounds preposterous at first. Well, perhaps more accurately, it sounds preposterous to most people who don’t do high-energy theory. But, really I assure you, there are many well-motivated reasons why us wacky theorists like to ponder the existence of extra dimensions.

For one, as shown long ago by Kaluza and Klein, it is possible to get Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism in four dimensions by taking 5 dimensional General Relativity and wrapping one of the spatial dimensions up in a circle too small to see. The smaller the circle is, the harder it is to move in this “other direction,” and so there is no danger in getting lost on the way home. In this way, Maxwell’s equations have an elegant geometrical origin and gravity and electricity & magnatism are combined into one force (5 dimensional gravity).

Another strong motivation comes from string theory, which is only a consistent quantum theory of gravity if there are 10 or 11 dimensions in total. Again, since we don’t see them, it is necessary to hide the existence of the extra dimensions. Inspired by the fact that it was possible to hide one extra dimension by wrapping it up in a circle, generally the extra 6 or 7 dimensions are thought to be “compactified” into a very small compact geometry like a sphere or a torus.

At this point, the five-year-old in the audience is insistently asking, “If you have all these extra dimensions, and you are telling me that they are wrapped up into this tiny ball, how did they get wrapped up in the first place? Why are the four dimensions we see so large, and the others so small?”

After nearly a century of thinking about the existence of extra dimensions, there are surprisingly few plausible answers to this very simple question. One of the few answers was proposed by Brandenberger and Vafa. They studied the thermodynamics of strings in a torus-shaped hot early-universe, and found that miraculously it is favorable for only four of the dimensions to become large. Pretty nice, if the universe is a torus and all the dimensions started out small and compact. But, it would be nice to have some alternatives in case this turns out not to be viable.

Sean Carroll, Lisa Randall, and I recently wrote a paper that revisits the five-year-old’s question. We wanted to start with the very simplest model that has extra dimensions and solutions in which some of them can be compactified. A minimal set of ingredients needed to accomplish this includes 1) D-dimensional gravity, 2) a positive D-dimensional cosmological constant, and 3) a (D-4)-form gauge field (think E&M, but with more indices). This theory has long been known to have solutions where 4 of the dimensions are non-compact and (D-4) of them correspond to directions on a sphere, whose size is stabilized by the energetics of curvature and a background Electric or Magnetic field.

More interestingly, we showed that some of the spacetimes that are solutions to this theory contain a four-dimensional universe that lives behind the event horizon of an extended object, a “p-brane” or “black brane,” that is embedded in a background D-dimensional spacetime. Moreover, there are mechanisms that dynamically give rise to such objects, thanks to the magic of quantum mechanics, and this leads to an explanation for why some number of extra dimensions became compact!

Note: the reader can take the word “compact” to mean “closed and bounded”.

Life Science Conservation Report has a nice article that talks about the harsh environments in which some types of life can survive. In this case, microbes were found living under an antarctic glacier.

This has implications for the possibility of finding life on other planets.

Academia I’ll be honest: I actually like my department. But this post is hilarious anyway, as most small universities have people like these on its campus (though usually not all in the same department).

Economy President Obama is putting some heat on credit card companies. Robert Reich explains why this is a good thing.

Torture: A graduate of our military SERE program talks about what it was like and what conclusions he draws from his experience. Read Part I and Part II.

Bill O’Reilly Didn’t know that President Nixon actually met with Chairman Mao.

Republicans
A Democrat draws fire for suggesting that there is a contingent of racists among the GOP base (note: he didn’t claim that they were the majority of the GOP base). I wonder if the folks who were offended by that remark forgot about:

Or even:

Yes, total shock at the idea that there is a racist segment of the Republican Party. The distribution of the Barack the Magic Negro song by a candidate for the RNC Chairmanship and former leader of the Tennessee Republican Party? The SoCal mayor who made and sent a postcard of the White House lawn with watermelons sprouted all over it? Macaca? The 24 hour news cycle makes for unbelievably short memories, clearly.

Those examples aside, there is a segment of the GOP that brings that attitude to the immigration debate, and it’s made up of House members, not the aforementioned marginal figures in the Party. To start, here’s Dana Rohrabacher, the Congressman from the pristine beach communities in Southern Los Angeles and Northern Orange County on Real Time with Bill Maher:

“ROHRABACHER: It’s bad for the American people to have so many people coming in from overseas, bidding down the wages of our average person, taking – and at the same time, a lot of employers aren’t giving the same kind of benefits. So we end up with less tax revenue. We end up with our education system under – collapsing under this pressure. Our health care system collapsing under the pressure.

MAHER: You’re blaming all that on the Mexicans?

ROHRABACHER: Yes, I am. Yes, I am.”

This current crop of Republicans does faux-outrage pretty well. Here is their attempt to act wounded because the Department of Homeland Security warned that current economic conditions plus the fact that we have a Black president might help right wing extremist groups recruit from some of our veterans. In fact, this has happened; no one is saying that this is the norm.

Republicans and Conservatives: their own words.

PZ Myers reports on this Republican joke:

A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the courses had a professor who was an avowed atheist and a member of the ACLU.

One day the professor shocked the class when he came in, looked to the ceiling, and flatly stated, “God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I’ll give you exactly 15 minutes.”

The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop.

Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, ‘”Here I am God. I’m still waiting.” It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him, knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold.

The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked, stunned, and sat there looking on in silence.

The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, “What the heck is the matter with you? Why did you do that?”

The Marine calmly replied, “God was too busy today protecting American soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot. So, He sent me.”

This is a real knee-slapper huh? Actually, I grew up among people who would have found this to be funny (this is not a slap at my immediate family; I am referring to those I associated with).

Dick Morris Socialism, Socialism, Socialism! Hmmm, no one had to take the TARP money….

Karl Rove How DARE President Obama admit to the world that the United States may have been less than perfect at times!

Interesting, but then Senator Obama promised that we would be less belligerent in the world, and he is delivering. Oh yes, I remember another candidate promising more humility in US foreign policy:

I just don’t think it’s the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you ….but I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you…..I think the United States must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course.”

Yes, that was then Governor George W. Bush in October, 2000.

See Mr. Rove: a candidate keeping their word is a good thing.

23 April 2009

Workout notes 4 mile run (40 minutes); got hissed at by the geese. There are so many birds on this course; it will be unrunnable soon (due to dive bombing red winged blackbirds). Then I lead Nancy’s “yoga lattes” class.

Torture Here is an excellent article in Salon (hat tip to a facebook friend)

The argument that torture works cannot simply be dismissed. During World War II, for example, the Gestapo used torture with considerable effectiveness on captured agents working for Britain’s Special Operations Executive, the top-secret organization dedicated to sabotage and subversion behind Axis lines. A number of agents, unable to withstand the pain or, in some cases, even the prospect of pain, told their captors everything they knew, including the identity of other agents, the arrival time of flights, and the location of safe houses. During France’s brutal war in Algeria, the colonial power used torture effectively. As historian Alistair Horne, the author of the classic analysis of the French-Algerian war, “A Savage War of Peace,” told me in a 2007 interview, “In Algeria, the French used torture — as opposed to abuse — very effectively as an instrument of war. They had some success with it; they did undoubtedly get some intelligence from the use of torture.” That intelligence included information about future terrorist strikes and the infrastructure of terror networks in Algiers.

So the easy argument against torture, that it is ineffective, is wrong. Torture can work. Nor can one simply dismiss the philosophical “ticking bomb” debate. Even ethicists bitterly opposed to torture acknowledge that if that hypothetical situation — endlessly depicted in Fox’s TV show “24″ — actually existed, there would be a compelling moral and philosophical argument for torture in that instance.

But in the real world, the “ticking bomb” situation never arises. It is never the case that we know we can automatically avert mass slaughter by torturing someone. Reality is not that neat. Guilt and knowledge are not established in advance. Those whom we torture may or may not be planning nefarious deeds. As the British political scientist Henry Shue pointed out in his classic 1978 essay “Torture,” “Notice how unlike the circumstances of an actual choice about torture the philosopher’s example is. The proposed victim of our torture is not someone we suspect of planting the device: he is the perpetrator. He is not some pitiful psychotic making one last play for attention: He did plant the device. The wiring is not backwards, the mechanism is not jammed: the device will destroy the city if not deactivated.” Shue concludes that “The distance between the situations which must be concocted in order to have a plausible case of morally permissible torture and the situations which actually occur is, if anything, further reason why the existing prohibitions against torture should remain and should be strengthened by making torture an international crime.”

As Shue suggests, the “ticking bomb” situation should be left in the classroom, for ethicists and philosophers to ponder. It has nothing to do with the real world. [...]

Torture is not morally justifiable. In addition, it has severe negative consequences. Once a nation embraces torture, it forfeits any claim to a moral high ground. It becomes no better than those it is fighting. It may win a battle, but it will lose the war. As America struggles to win hearts and minds in the Arab/Muslim world, the use of torture is more harmful in the long run than any “high-value” intelligence gained by its use. And U.S. torture not only builds hatred in the Muslim world, it turns our allies against us — and erodes us from within. As historian Horne pointed out, “When the news came out in France of what the army was doing, it caused such a revulsion that it led directly to the French capitulation. And not only revulsion in France, but revulsion here. JFK, as a senator, took up the Algerian cause quite strongly partly because of the human rights issue.” Horne’s conclusion: “I feel myself absolutely clear in my own mind that you do not, whatever the excuse, use torture, let alone abuse.”

But it is even worse than that. On the Rachel Maddow show, the conjecture was advanced that the Bush-Cheney torture program wasn’t really designed to obtain actionable intelligence but was rather a desperate attempt to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

I sincerely hope that this conjecture was without merit; no I didn’t like President Bush and I despise Dick Cheney. But I sincerely hope that this country didn’t elect monsters.

Democrats Grow Spines?

Workout notes Yesterday afternoon, 3 miles of steady walking (right leg, behind the knee area/upper calf slight), then 3 more miles of slower stuff with the group.

This morning: I am supposed to lead Nancy’s class. I’ll take Vickie’s class and then run an easy 3-4 miles.

Politics/Social/Science:
One result of President Obama’s stimulus program: number of research grants for cancer research is going to double:

The US federal agency tasked with tackling cancer has laid out a plan to double the number of cancer research projects it funds, prioritizing first-time grants to young researchers and emphasizing genomic approaches to understanding the disease.

These goals are attainable, according to John Niederhuber, director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), thanks to an infusion of government funding from an increased annual budget and recently awarded stimulus funds.

But since stimulus funds must be spent within two years, Niederhuber said during a speech at the American Association for Cancer Research conference in Denver, the NCI is weighing grant awards carefully.

“It falls to NCI to carefully calculate and thoughtfully assume the risks of initially funding some four-year grants with economic stimulus money, knowing that we will need to find additional resources for the out years,” Niederhuber said, according to a transcript of his speech. “I believe it falls, as well, to our grantees to come forward with only their strongest science.”

In 2009 the agency will be able to fund the top 16% of grant applications instead of only the top 12%–last year’s payline–based on budgetary increases alone, Niederhuber said. The NCI may be able to fund 25% of applications with the added $1.3 billion that the agency is set to receive as part of the $10 billion in stimulus funding for the National Institutes of Health.

But raising the payline is only half the story. “Economic stimulus funds give us the chance to be visionary,” Niederhuber said, adding that the NCI will seek to fund more young, first-time investigators, and will emphasize prevention and early diagnosis in the research it supports in the future. “Patients still need better treatments, better prevention, and better early detection,” he said. “We must recommit ourselves to answering that call.”

This recommitment comes in the form of three initiatives–genetic screening of different cancers, developing personalized cancer care drug development platforms, and integrating the work of physical scientists in oncological study–that largely target cancer’s molecular roots.

Through programs such as the Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), the three year old project on which the NCI collaborates with the National Human Genome Research Institute, researchers hope to identify a slew of genes related to various tumor types, Niederhuber said. TCGA has already identified new genes involved with glioblastoma tumors and has characterized four different subtypes of the deadly cancer. “With that foundation of success, we plan to move TCGA forward, with a goal of identifying all of the relevant genomic alterations in 20 to 25 major tumor types.”

“We are undoubtedly moving toward the day when cancers will be diagnosed early and controlled,” Niederhuber said.

That is a nice step in the right direction!

Politics

Increasingly, Democrats are beginning to realize that they won the last election:

A Democratic president thrills a French audience by telling it that America has been “arrogant.” He brushes aside 50 years of anti-communist orthodoxy by relaxing restrictions against Fidel Castro’s Cuba. He directs his attorney general to ease a crackdown on medical marijuana and even plays host to the Grateful Dead in the Oval Office.

Several times a month in his young presidency, Barack Obama has done things that cause conservatives to bray, using the phrase once invoked by Bob Dole, “Where’s the outrage?!”

The outrage is definitely there, in certain precincts of Republican politics. What’s notable, however, is that it mostly has stayed there — with little or no effect on Obama.

He has been blithely crossing ideological red lines and dancing on cultural third rails — the kinds of gestures that would have scorched an earlier generation of Democrats — with seeming impunity. Obama’s foes, and even some of his allies, are a bit mystified.

Part of the answer is generational. Many hot-button liberal issues — decades-long obsessions for many baby boomers — have cooled a lot since the last time a Democrat occupied the White House.

And part of it is that the highest-profile Republican messengers these days are a deeply unpopular former vice president and a similarly polarizing former House speaker — both of whose days in the sun would seem to be behind them.

[...]

“Bill Clinton was first on a ballot in 1974, and a lot of his reference points were from the Cold War and the culture wars,” said Cook. “For Obama, that’s just stuff in history books.”

“America is more liberal today than we were in 1993,” said Paul Begala, the Democratic strategist and a key lieutenant in Clinton’s eight-year battle against the right. “When Clinton took office, we were still in the age of Reagan.”

But the passage of time and deep unpopularity of former President George W. Bush have emphatically ended the conservative ascendancy, Begala argued.

“Obama is part of that and a beneficiary of that,” he observed.

On Time magazine’s The Page, Mark Halperin compiled a list of things Obama had done that “Clinton would have gotten hammered for,” including the new Cuba policy and meeting with the Dead.

Beyond the move toward a new middle — one closer to the center-left — the sound of silence also reflects the times in which Obama is governing, where the challenges are more tangible and urgent.

Having gay families over to the White House for the Easter Egg Roll tends to be eclipsed, for example, when the U.S. government is effectively taking over major American car companies.

“He has the benefit of nobody paying attention to anything but the economy,” said Stuart Stevens, a longtime GOP strategist and author. “You have the economic equivalent of the country being at war. Nobody on Sept. 20, 2001, was particularly focused on cultural issues, either.” [...]

And then there is the nature of Obama’s victory last year.

“He had a coalition where he didn’t have to figure out how to get socially conservative voters behind him,” noted Carrick, a South Carolina native who has helped his clients navigate the culture wars. “He won with younger voters, Latinos, African-Americans and college-educated suburban voters. Those folks, for different reasons, just don’t care about some of these issues.”

For Begala, Carrick and other veterans of the Clinton era, it’s a far different set of circumstances than the relatively placid times of the ’90s, when peace and prosperity were at hand and the culture wars were central.

Jennifer Palmieri, a Clinton White House aide who now works at the Center for American Progress, recalled Obama’s appearance last month on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

“It struck me that Clinton would have really gotten knocked around for going to Hollywood and doing ‘The Tonight Show’ in the middle of the economic crisis,” Palmieri said. “But times are different now. People have bigger things to worry about. And this White House does a better job of staying out of the defensive crouch.”

But a Clinton has been getting in on the act as well:

UPDATE 3: HILLARY KNOCKS OUT THE CHAVEZ STUPIDITY!!!

Hillary is making me very very very happy. She just right now knocked away all that silly huffing and puffing about “handshake-gate.” She described the book gift-giving incident as a case of Hugo Chavez camera hogging, including the way he deliberately positioned the book cover so that the title would catch the camera lens. She said:

I found it all amusing…President Obama was right; why should we be afraid of shaking somebody’s hand…Iran is seeking influence in our hemisphere…we buy their (Venezuela) oil…let’s see if we can turn some of this (animosity) around… [laughter]

To another “concerned Republican” about the Hugo Chavez handshake, she just said:

8 years of isolation hasn’t worked. We’ve isolated him (Hugo Chavez), so he’s gone elsewhere. He’s a sociable guy, so he’s found the sorts of friends we don’t like. Eight years of isolation hasn’t worked so let’s try something else.

I tells ya there is no better way to knock out “teh stoopid”

Here is some video:

Hillary Clinton reminds a Republican that Dick Cheney has zero credibility:

And here she reminds another one that Barack Obama won the election: Americans chose his way and not theirs:

Comment: If you are wondering why I am crowing so loudly: I became an adult during the Ronald Reagan era. From that point onward, the Republicans seemed to have a lock on what so-called patriotism. If you disagreed with them, you were labeled as being a “blame America first” person, being unpatriotic, or whatever.

Yes, Bill Clinton did win two terms, but even he had to throw bones in the direction of social conservatives.

But no longer. We have a President who is willing to admit (in public) that the United States sometimes makes mistakes and is sometimes out of line. We have a President who knows that we should try to engage the world rather than try to bully it, all the while using force when necessary.

Yes, the Republicans don’t like that, but at long last, we have leadership who is willing to shrug it off and move on!

Yes, the Republicans aren’t totally worthless; in some areas they can teach us things. There are times when liberals see a need and try to things too quickly or sometimes, try to solve a problem that isn’t there.

But you know what? Conservatives/Republicans, while a part of American society are only a part. They are not owed a captive audience for their views and we have no business kowtowing to them. They don’t define what it means to be a patriotic American and frankly, they never should have been allowed to do so.

They lost this last election, and unlike the previous two, this one wasn’t close. Their vision has been roundly rejected by the public and we need to keep reminding them of that.

Sure, if they come up with a good idea (don’t laugh; it is possible) we should listen. But they are a minority opposition group and ought to be treated as such.

Breaking News | Latest News | Current News – FOXNews.com

Fox News gets something right?

more about "Breaking News | Latest News | Current…", posted with vodpod

Hat tip: The Good Kentuckian.