|
 Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Marshmallow-based speed-of-light measurator. This physics HOWTO explains a technique for verifying the speed of light using a microwave oven and a bunch of marshmallows.
[P]ut the dish of marshmallows in the microwave and cook on low heat. Microwaves do not cook evenly and the marshmallows will begin to melt at the hottest spots in the microwave. (I leaned this from our Food Science teacher Anita Cornwall.) Heat the marshmallows until they begin to melt in four or five different spots. Remove the dish from the microwave and observe the melted spots. Take the ruler and measure the distance between the melted spots. You will find that one distance repeats over and over. This distance will correspond to half the wavelength of the microwave, about 6 cm. Now turn the oven around and look for a small sign that gives you the frequency of the microwave. Most commercial microwaves operate at 2450 MHz.
All you do now is multiply the frequency by the wavelength. The product is the speed of light.
Link
(via Making Light)) [Boing Boing]
Very nice. I'll try it with my son. 1:25:52 PM 
|
|
Computer Glitch Gives Free Gas, But Stores Your ID For Police. Everyone knows that gas prices have been hovering around all time highs lately in the US, so imagine the joy that some people felt when it was discovered that a computer glitch at a certain gas station chain meant you could get free gas if you inserted your driver's license instead of your credit card. The glitch went unnoticed by the company (though, very noticed by customers) for three weeks causing thousands of dollars in losses for the company. The only problem is that, while the machines might not have charged users, it did store all the data from the driver's license. In other words, if you took part, the police may be knocking on your door with a bill - and a misdemeanor fraud charge.
[Techdirt]
What a nice morality play! Those that stole gave their identities to the police that will now be able to find them. 1:18:19 PM
|
|
The best article I have read that makes Pat Tillman a human, not some sort of martyr, or Rambo, or sap. He was a real person to those who knew him, a multidimensional human being who had an impact on many people he met. From the anguish of his youngest brother who said:Pat isn't with God,' he said. 'He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.'' to a discussion with a coach about gays in sports to the books he read, we gain a better idea of just what sort of man we lost. Gwen Knapp ends he article with this:Tillman wasn't an icon anymore. He was a man you wanted to know, to spend time with, to lift a Guinness alongside. But that had become impossible, the price of war, because his brother was right. Pat is dead. He's f -- ing dead. So it is for over 700 other American soldiers and upwards of 10,000 Iraqis. I wish each and every one of them could have a wake like Pat Tillman. It would be the human thing to do. 1:10:07 PM
|
|
I've got to stop this...I hate politics. It makes me want to puke.. Perhaps you are wondering what a solid conservative icon like Rush Limbaugh would have to say about the Abu Ghraib disgrace. Wonder no more.
This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off? [Pharyngula]
You know, Rush is a complete and utter fool, playing to the worst in hman beings purely for ratings. For anyone to compare this to fraternity high jinks is so wrong. For any rational human being to listen to this imbecile, whose viewpoint is so far beyond the pale, is mind-boggling. Howard Stern gets taken off the air for off-color language while hateful stuff like this is kept. Have they no sense of decency? 12:58:36 PM
|
|
Joe Wilson Thinks the Republican Party Has Gone Insane. Via Hullaballoo:
Hullabaloo : This Week's Water Cooler Talking Point: Joe Wilson puts it very nicely:
Conason: What's the difference in the GOP from when you were growing up?
Wilson: If you're fiscally responsible, this is not your party. If you believe in a moderate foreign policy characterized by alliances, free trade and the ability to operate in an international environment, this is not your party. If you believe in limited federal government, this is not your party. If you believe that the government should stay out of your bedroom, this is very definitely not your party. In fact, I would argue that unless you believe in the American imperium, imposed on the world by force, or unless you believe in the literal interpretation of the Book of Revelations, this is not your party.
[Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]
The GOP is in the hands of neoconservatives, who are about a close to conservatives as libertarians are to socialists. 12:43:07 PM
|
|
Is it Torture? What does "is" mean? As Mark Rothsch .... Is it Torture? What does "is" mean?
As Mark Rothschild pointed out,
' When asked by a reporter whether torture has taken place in Iraq, Rumsfeld said, "My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture." He added that he did not know "that torture took place." '
A reader wrote in to suggest we all look at The Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions and The War Crimes Act of 1996 (pdf).
Another reader wrote, ' Has any of the major news outlets, or US politicians, noted the following points in Gen Taguba's report: 1) he refers to Military Intelligence, CIA, contract personnel, and Third Nation personnel as conducting interrogations. Who are the "Third Nation" personnel? . . . 2) The report states that Gen Geoffrey Miller, Commandant at Quantanimo, was sent to Iraq in the Fall of '03 to make recommendations on interrogations. He recommended that a Military Intell Brigade be put in overall control of Abu Ghraib prison and that the Military Police Brigade personnel asas as "an enabler for interrogation." Gen Tagubu concluded that these recommendations of Gen Miller led to a lack of communication and fragmentation of responsibility. Gen Miller has now been placed in charge of ALL Iraqi detiontioncenters/prisons. The "fox in the hen house"? '
[Juan Cole * Informed Comment *]
Well, by the Geneva Conventions, which we signed, there is no doubt it is torture. It is torture by any rational view of it. Rumsfeld's parsing of it reminds me of Clinton's statement 'I did not have sex with that woman.' Now, Clinton's referred to events that were personal in nature and had little direct effects on us as Americans. What Rumsfeld parses is international in nature and has direct consequences on our soldiers. WHich is worse? Why can Rumsfeld get a free ride on this?
And why is the military officer from Gitmo, the one who went over to Iraq last year to advise the soldiers in the Iraq prison how to soften up the prisoners, who may very well be directly responsible for the fiasco we are seeing, now being put in direct command of the prison. Not fox in the hen house as much as keeping coconspirators close where they can direct any investigation? This stinks to high heaven. 12:30:23 PM
|
|
|
Over a year ago, Glenn reynolds discussed torture. He hit the ball out of the park. Unfortunately, no one listened to one of the strongest conservative/libertarian voices on the Internet.
The torture advocates who phrase the question thusly - 'If we had tortured Moussaoui before 9/11, we could have prevented that catastrophe.' - are fools because that is not what happens in the real world. We never know AT THE TIME who is the important one to torture. Only in hindsight. The proper phrasing should be - 'If we had tortured a thousand people, and Moussaoui happened to be one of them, and we happened to believe his words amongst all the lies told by innocent people just to stop their torture, we could have prevented the catastrophe.'
This is why torture does not work in these settings. The fog of war/terrorism does not allow you to know who should or should not be tortured. So you spend too much time with the wrong people providing the wrong information. And the process destroys not only those tortured but the torturers. It damages the societies of both. Here is a great quote from Samuel Adams, again, brought up on the Internet over a year ago:It is more beneficial that many guilty persons should escape unpunished than one innocent person should suffer, because it is of more importance that innocence should be protected than it is that guilt should be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world that all of them cannot be punished, and many times they happen in such a manner that it is not of much consequence to the public whether they are punished or not.
But when innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, the subject will exclaim, [base "]it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.[per thou] And if such a sentiment as this should take place in the mind of a subject there would be an end to all security whatsoever.
Torturing innocents places our troops at much greater risk than any sort of information we extract. Getting very poor intelligence (because innocent people will say anything to get it to stop. Guilty ones also.) is a tactical reason not to torture. But the strategic, the reason we are supposedly over there, is irreparable damaged. This is why almost every military person wants these soldiers to be severely punished. Another conservative blogger discussed several things that could be done. I like this one: The third and final act that is within the Army's power is to disband the 372nd Military Police Company. Dissolve it entirely; never resurrect the unit designation; strip it of its citations; bury the guidon in disgrace in front of all its soldiers and an Iraqi delegation in Iraq; scatter its alumni to the four corners of the Army. Cruel? Yes. Harsh? You bet. Salutary? Absolutely. The Army is a closed society that treasures its hierarchy and its heritage: institutional oblivion is therefore among its most dreaded fates. This ought to be the fate of the 372nd, with all the public humiliation and display that can be mustered. To the soldiers, it will say that there will be little mercy and no mitigation for crimes in America's service; to Iraqis, it will say that we have excised our cancer and are moving decisively forward. To Americans, it will say that we have the courage to be the best, not by comparison, but as an end in itself.
The 372nd will forever be tarnished by this. It needs to disappear, in a way that sends a strong message to every soldier, and to the world, that there are consequences for everyone when something like these events happens. No whining about not knowing any better or I was ordered. You guys screwed up big time and now every must pay. Because if someone does not pay big time, we have little hope of ever rectifying this. It may not be fair but, as Tacitus says, 'Not being fair, though, is not the same thing as not being right.' 12:20:22 PM
|
|
|
|
|
