So we made it to Mars again and geeks like me everywhere stayed up extra late to watch the live event. We were not dissappointed. To see the first photos come back seconds after langing, even though the dust cap was still on the camera was an amazing thing.

I stayed up. I was excited. I wasn't quite as excited as the people in the video, but I was excited.

Here's what really gets me though. When Curiosity touched down after the sky-crane manouver, I was struck by just how excited the people at JPL were about this. My first thought: "Holy crap! It's like the opening of a Microsoft store ... except they're all wearing the same color shirt."

It's been 50 years since we first put humans on the moon. In 50 years, airplanes went from a tentative unpowered glider in North Carolina to the supersonic Bell X-1; why haven't we done the same for space flight? I mean...should we be this excited by going to Mars? Shouldn't it be old hat by now?

Don't get me wrong. I'm excited. The science that's going to come out of this mission will enrich our lives for years to come and the new technology that went into creating the mission is probably just hitting our cellphones and clothing stores. I just think we're missing out on a lot of opportunty. Heck, we spent the entire budget of this mission in less than a month in Iraq...Just think what we could be doing with more balanced priorities.

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I just wanted a place to keep handy links to debunk common misconceptions.

Global Warming

Volcanoes produce more CO₂ than humans

Turns out the USGS has an artice on that one here.

Gas studies at volcanoes worldwide have helped volcanologists tally up a global volcanic CO₂ budget in the same way that nations around the globe have cooperated to determine how much CO₂ is released by human activity through the burning of fossil fuels. Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO₂ annually.

This seems like a huge amount of CO₂, but a visit to the U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) website (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/) helps anyone armed with a handheld calculator and a high school chemistry text put the volcanic CO₂ tally into perspective. Because while 200 million tonnes of CO₂ is large, the global fossil fuel CO₂ emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, not only does volcanic CO₂ not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value.

 

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Human Embrionic Stem Cells

Adult stem cell therapy exists, embrionic stem cell therapy does not

Turns out there's some promise in human embrionic stem cells. You can even start new lines without destroying the fetus (which was probably going to be destroyed anyway.) RPE therapy.

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I don't gamble, but I do play poker. In fact, it turns out I'm pretty good at poker despite still having to sit and calculate the odds sometimes. One thing that playing poker has helped me learn is that people do stupid things to get ahead. Consequently, there are stupid rules to keep them from doing it.

For example, if a player puts in only one chip and that chip is worth more than the current bet, unless they announce that they are raising that chip is considered a call and they are owed change from the pot. This keeps the player from getting information from other players' reactions prior to deciding if they will call or raise.

Lewis Black has a similar rant on the topic:

They needed to do this because as the Jews were wandering around willy-nilly in the desert, one of them no doubt led a camel up to a rabbi and said, "I met her at an oasis and it's been wonderful. She looked at me in a way that I've always wanted to be looked at. We're in love and, well, Rabbi, we want to be married."

And the rabbi said, "Perhaps you didn't notice, but she's a fucking camel." Then he went back to the other rabbis and informed them, "Son of a bitch, we have to come up with another rule! Today a guy came back with a camel and yesterday one of them showed up with a snapping turtle. God knows what's going to happen tomorrow. We've got to get these people on track." Hence, the man-woman marriage rule in the Bible.

So when you complain that a law is stupid, realize that it's because someone did something stupid to cause it to become a law. When McDonalds started labeling their coffee as 'hot' because of a 'frivolous lawsuit,' realize that the person who brought that lawsuit suffered 3rd degree burns from 'hot' coffee. When you think that helmet laws infringe on your right to let your hair blow in the wind on your motorcycle, realize that it frees others from the trauma of killing you in the event of an accident.

Not that there isn't such a thing as a truly stupid law.

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I'm afraid you might be in for a bit of a rambling rant.

On 19 August, 2011, 4 people died at a the Pukkelpop Music Festival in Hasselt Belgium, just 5 days after 4 people were killed by a collapsing stage at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis.

To me, this is a fine example of "build it cheap, get it done, and damn the consequences," a mentality that penetrates any money-making operation. It is also a fine opportunity to discus why we have safety regulations and why they should be enforced.

I would think that restaurants would welcome health inspectors, that factories would welcome safety inspectors, and that construction contractors would welcome building inspectors. I would think that these companies would understand that injuring or killing their customers or employees would not be the desired outcome of their business transactions.

Sadly, as @arclight said on Twitter last night "Every industrial safety regulation can be traced back to at least one headstone."

And from @CaerwynFarm: "You would be surprised how often I have to answer a request at work with "Cuz it is F'ing illegal!"

In the US, it took until 1971 for the government to set up the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Since then the rate of reported serious workplace injuries and illnesses has declined from 11 per 100 workers in 1972 to 3.6 per 100 workers in 2009. There are no accurate statistics from 1970, but it is estimated around 70 workers were killed on the job per 1,000,000 US residents. That number fell to approximately 14 per 1,000,000 in 2009.

If you're a Republican or Libertarian (and if you are why are you reading this?) you'll be about to say something like "I guess you want to live in a nanny state. I, quite frankly, am tired of the one I live in." Which...I guess...is your right...at least to say...but it also makes you a complete ass. How can you possibly feel that employers have the "freedom" to kill their workers or that builders have the "freedom" to kill their customers? The plain fact is that people who profit from cutting corners need nannies to stop them from hurting people for profit.

I find it ironic that the ideology that feels employers should be allowed to maintain unsafe workplaces is the same ideology that feels workers should not be allowed to collectively bargain. Most of the people buying a company's two-bit products probably care less about the people who made them than the company does.

Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Your right not to wear a motorcycle helmet ends at your family suing me for your death in a crash. Your right to build with cheap materials ends at my right not to die when your building falls on me.

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An open letter to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show that they will probably never read AKA slacktivism extraordinaire.

Dear Jon Stewart,

I am a liberal and I love the way you mock hypocrisy even when that mocking is directed at the hypocrisy of other liberals. I am an atheist and I love the way you mock the hypocrisy of religion, even when that mocking is directed at the hypocrisy of others with no religion. I believe that it is a hallmark of liberals that we are able to see both sides of the debate and through that vision have come to side with the most correct side of the debate.

Recently, however, you mocked the American Atheists desire to be free from religious symbols at the September Eleventh Memorial in New York. This moves beyond the mocking of hypocrisy and into the mocking of what minorities already endure on a daily basis.

I agree that the American Atheists could have made their comments more sensitively and they could have avoided openly mocking religion in this context; that's really your job, not theirs. But I can't help but wonder why you are in favor of having a Christian symbol at a national memorial where Christians, Jews, atheists, Muslims and others were killed in a horrific, religiously-driven attack against the United States. In other contexts, you seem to be in favor of the First Amendment separation of church and state, why are you against it now?

Atheists endure daily threats of death, violence, rape and vandalism simply because they don't believe in a god. They face daily reminders that the majority of the United States sees them as outsiders. You ask that atheists to 'just think of it as a metal t-shaped thingy.' That is akin to asking blacks in the south faced with the KKK standing on their front lawn to 'just think of them as campers making s'mores with that t-shaped burney thing' or to ask Jews to think of neo-nazi skinheads as 'just clean-shaven history buffs.'

I am happy that this cross currently rests at St. Peter's Church and hope that it will not be moved and included in any state-sponsored memorial or museum. Those i-beams may have been just a t-shaped thingy at one point, but once it has been raised on a concrete plinth and blessed by Christian leaders it becomes a cross, and that cross could only serve to make non-religious visitors to the memorial feel unwelcome.

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I woke up early today to get in a couple hours of exercise before starting my normal routine. One of the first things I saw was a link to this article about a convicted rapist who won't be doing any time because Judge Robert Dewar in Manitoba said his victim was 'asking for it' by dressing suggestively and kissing her assailant.

Of course, the first thing I thought of was the Not Ever campaign and their advertisement.

I wonder if Judge Dewar would tell a man wearing a Rolex who was robbed at knife-point that they were 'asking for it' by dressing smartly. Or if he would tell a mother who's child was kidnapped that she was 'asking for it' by having an adorable family. Or maybe he'd tell the family of a pedestrian who was killed by a drunk driver that he was 'asking for it' by being out walking after last call.

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A friend pointed me to a New York Times article about global hunger, food prices and the assertion that we're 'one poor harvest away from chaos.' In reading it, the sentence 'Some experts warned that the world could be on the verge of a "nightmare scenario" of cut‑throat competition for the control of shrinking supplies.' really stood out for me and started me thinking.

A couple years ago, I was talking with a libertarian about poor people, school lunches, and taking responsibility for one's actions. I'll see if I can sum up some of his arguments...

Poor people have made a decision to get a job that doesn't pay well or to not work enough hours to make a living wage. Even if they didn't make those decisions directly, they chose not to get the education needed to qualify for a job that pays well enough. So either way, their lack of income can be blamed squarely on them. If these people then choose to have children the can't afford to feed, then they should be locked up for child abuse because they chose to have children they couldn't afford to feed. It's all their fault. The public shouldn't subsidize school lunch.

Now...I guess I can sympathize a little with that argument. Bad decisions shouldn't be rewarded. On the other hand, the state of sex education is horrid and I'm not sure it's fair to argue that having a child is always the decision of the parents. Sometimes it's really the decision of lobbyists who don't want their own children exposed to 'pornography' in school. Also, the cost of higher education is not tiny. Access to college is something that your own parents' income influences quite a lot. But I think most libertarians would run off on a tangent about the 'indoctrinated liberal elite' if I brought that up.

What brought me to this blog post was the sentence I quoted above. In a capitalist society, what determines the cost of food? I would argue that it's the people producing and, even more-so, selling that food. So, if you're going to allow the corporations that sell food to determine their prices and govern their profits, you're also allowing them to determine who is 'poor' and can't afford to feed their child. And, if you're going to allow corporations to determine who can't afford to feed their child, you're effectively allowing corporations to decide who gets put in jail for child abuse.

As I said before, I really do have sympathy for the libertarian viewpoint. That sympathy ends when human nature and greed take over and destroy the ideals.

(This doesn't even begin to consider the cost of food in countries that can't produce enough for their population or the repercussions of taking the libertarian dream to its logical conclusions in other situations.)

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I recently gave some real-world reasons for passing net neutrality laws. Today News Corp has joined the list of companies to step over the line from defending themselves to offending their customers. Gizmodo has the details.

When the clock struck midnight on Saturday, Cablevision customers could no longer watch FOX on their TV. That's because News Corp. (which owns FOX) and Cablevision couldn't come to an agreement on the fees that Cablevision should pay News Corp. It's something that's happened before with other networks and other cable providers but the new twist is that News Corp. is using their stake in Hulu to ban Cablevision Internet users from accessing FOX content on Hulu as well.

When can we get some sense? If cable and television providers keep messing with their customers, their customers are going to learn to use bittorrent real fast. Net neutrality isn't just for protecting consumers and small content providers, it's for protecting everyone.

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I love the Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis. They're one of the rare exceptions to the Rule of Two Kinds of Brewpubs: the kind with good beer and the kind with good food. They aren't 5-star on either front, but both their beer and their food are welcome after-work-happyhour or lunchtime fare. Then I got this tweet:

Rational folk not welcome at Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis. http://j.mp/cLRZQA

The event in question is for Sam Singleton: Atheist Evangelist.

Sam Singleton Atheist Evangelist likes to point out that “unlike you” he has a creator. That’s why he claims to identify with God. “We’re both totally made up,” he explains. Brother Sam, as his friends refer to him, considers himself inevitable. “Sooner or later somebody like me was bound to happen if families kept (messing) with their children’s heads. I’m surprised it took this long. You know what Hosea 8:7 says about reaping the whirlwind. Well, here we are.

They had apparently had an agreement for a time and date in the Town Hall back room that was later canceled by Town Hall. As a result, Sam sent out some vague information about Town Hall being anti-atheist/rationalist, but with no real information. I contacted a representative of Sam Singleton and received this response:

Thanks for your interest. Simply put, they made an agreement, reneged on it, and did so without going to the trouble of contacting this office for clarification as to nature of the event. The owner left a very long, rambling, unpleasant voice mail on my cell phone, making clear that we and ours are not welcome at the Town Hall Brewery, which now joins the growing list of venues that have first agreed to, then backed out of providing a place for Brother Sam and his fans too spend their hard earned money.

That irked me quite a bit to read. But I do still like Town Hall, so I had to give them an opportunity to respond. I called them, left a message and received a pretty prompt return phonecall. I won't quote the conversation because I wasn't recording it, but they basically told me that Town Hall would not have sponsored any religious or political event either, that they don't want to offend anyone, regardless of their beliefs, and that all they want to do is "brew beer and serve food." I can respect that as long as it's honest.

So, until Town Hall Brewery sponsors a political or religious event in their back room, I'll continue to let them brew beer and serve food to me.

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I recently received my permit to carry a pistol in the state of MN, a permit that is accepted by many other states. During this fairly long process, I realized that this is not something within the reach of the average citizen.

In order to get a permit, Minnesota State Statute 624.714 requires that you take a class from a certified firearms training instructor. This class can cost anywhere from $75 to $150, depending on where you take the course and what services are offered with it. The class also includes a live-fire qualification test. For that test, you'll need a gun ($15 to rent), ammunition ($8-20), a target ($2), and a place to shoot ($15-30).

Once you have your certificatate you have to go, in person, to the sheriff's office in your county to present your application, certificate (and your own photocopy), and pay an application fee. The fee is typically $100 since the law states that is the maximum that a county may charge. The various sheriff's offices have different, restricted hours for accepting these permits that tend to be during business hours. For example, the Hennepin county sheriff will only accept applications between 8:30 AM and 3:30 PM (exactly) Monday through Friday. So you have to have the flexibility to take time off during the day. (This might actually be an advantage to the unemployed and people working low-wage, off-hours jobs.)

At this point, you get to wait up to 30 days for your permit to be mailed and delivered. This is effectively the same as the two-week waiting period for a permit to acquire a handgun. Once you receive your permit you're permitted to carry a pistol, rifle, or shotgun openly or concealed throughout the state of Minnesota. So, if you don't already own one, maybe it's time to buy a gun.

There are cheap guns out there, but you don't want to buy any of those because they might blow up and kill you or they might misfire or something else might happen that keeps you from protecting yourself with them. So you'll want to spend at least $300 for a gun, probably closer to $600 or $800 for something that's really worthwhile. Luckily, your permit to carry also counts as a permit to acquire, so you can just go into any gun shop and buy whatever you want, probably .45 caliber.

Now that you have a gun, there are things to think about when it comes to ammunition. You probably don't want to worry about hitting people behind your attacker…like your family and friends in the next room or that nice couple 18 blocks away, and you'll probably want to make sure that whoever you start shooting at goes down for the count, and you probably don't want to get sued by your attacker because of some crazy, unexpected problem with the bullets. This means buying ammunition other than full metal jacket (FMJ) and it means you need high-quality. You're looking for something that a. expands or breaks up on impact and b. does as much damage as possible, c. doesn't come out the other side of a target (person, chair, building, 2x4) in any condition to cause unplanned damage and d. is as reliable and consistent as possible. If you bought a .45 as your carry weapon, that means you're going to pay through the nose for FMJ, not to mention hollow-point. $30 for a box of 20 is not unlikely.

Putting a gun in your waistband is a bad idea. You don't want it to snag on something and shoot you in they whatever-it's-pointing-at and you don't want it to fall out while you're not looking...or while anyone else is looking for that matter. Like guns, cheap holsters are exactly that: cheap. Spend $50 at least for something that's shaped to your gun and fits you well.

Now that you have a gun and ammunition and a way to carry it, you want to have experience with it. You'll want to go to the range every few weeks to make sure that using your gun is second nature to you. You want to be able to reload, clear jams and work the safety as easily as you breathe. So you'll need a lane and 50-100 rounds every time you go (not all of them have to be your carry ammunition, but some sure should be.) So expect to spend between $50 and $200 every few weeks.

And, if you ever do shoot someone, you'll want a lawyer on retainer so you don't have to spend too long in jail. That's going to cost you another $350, minimum.

What's that add up to? Around $1000 initial outlay and up to an additional $1000 per year every year you have a permit. In Minnesota, you have to renew every 5 years. That means taking the course over and paying another, smaller, permit fee. I don't know what the legal income requirements are for poor people carrying guns, but the practical, financial requirements seem pretty high.

Update: Some friends have pointed out that I missed a few things relating to the total cost of ownership of a gun. These were mostly on the issue of safety; things that I didn't think about because they were so obvious (to me).

If you have a gun in the house, it needs to be kept safe. Since guns are inherently dangerous objects, 'safe' has a pretty broad meaning. It should be kept where it cannot be stolen or picked up by children and in a way that it cannot be used if it is stolen or picked up by someone. If you are merely owning a gun, you can accomplish this with a fairly inexpensive safe or heavy lock-box. If you are carrying a gun, you will also need a way to lock it in your car and, most likely, near wherever you get dressed. A home safe could cost anywhere from $30 to several thousand dollars (if you have a lot of guns) and lock-boxes for the car and your closet will cost about the same.

Greg Laden also mentioned in his link to this article that I failed to mention liablility insurance. He makes a good point, and it's something that I hadn't even considered.

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