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Uncertain Principles

Physics, Politics, Pop Culture

Saturday, July 05, 2003

Quick Hits and Sapping of Motivation

It's strange-- last summer, when I started this blog, I had no trouble at all keeping up with both this site and my book log. Since buying the house, though, my interest in all things blogospheric has dropped way off. Partly, it's that all the political news at the moment is just so damn depressing (see, for example, Patrick Nielsen Hayden's Fourth of July post and references therein), but that wouldn't really explain the seven book backlog on the book log (four books, now, since I added three last night. Go check it out.). Mostly it's just that owning a house, and having responsibility for maintenance of the house and yard, and having a rather nice back yard to loaf around in provide more attractive options for spending my time than reading and writing weblog posts.

This is not, I hasten to note, a declaration of superiority to those who continue to blog a lot. It's actually something of a shock to find that I'd rather be re-framing the downstairs bathroom door than putzing around with the computer. I really don't understand how this came about, and I'm not sure I wouldn't like it to stop.

Anyway, I've started putting together references to explain the five-quark particle thing, so maybe that will kick-start some new physics posts (it'll probably take at least two to explain what's up with that). In the meantime, here are a few quick notes about stuff that has caught my eye recently:

1) If you enjoy deadpan legal humor, there's a great line buried in Jack Balkin's explanation of Lawrence v. Texas:

Why Justice Scalia thought it important to assert the state's right to regulate masturbation on the basis that it is immoral is beyond me. I leave this very interesting question to your imagination.

It's also a very good explanation of the decision. His explanation of the Supreme Court's fundamental majoritarianism is also good reading.

2) On a lighter note, I heartily support the Poor Man's prescription for media reform:

It is my opinion that all journalists should be fired and replaced with tenured physics and engineering professors, and then we would soon find out exactly who stands where and who has been faking the funk.

Amen, brother. Hallelujah. Northrup for President.

His post about Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt is very good as well.

3) Finally, to end on an actual science note, we have this article from the BBC, about the discovery of a new extrasolar planetary system:

Astronomers have found a planetary system similar to ours - a Jupiter-like world circling a Sun-like star in roughly the same orbit that Jupiter follows our Sun.

Of course, if you read down a little farther, you find out what "roughly the same" means:

But this Jupiter-like world stirs memories. It circles its parent star at a distance of 467 million kilometres (290 million miles), not a lot different from the 778 million km (483 million miles) that Jupiter is away from our Sun.

The similarities do not end there. This new world circles its star every 6 years; our Jupiter takes 12 years.

Because, of course, 193,000,000 miles is a pretty trivial distance, and six is a lot like twelve, in that they're both greater than two.

I also like the "Artist's impression of the new planet and possible moons" which is a wonderfully generic gas-giant-with-moons painting that I've seen used elsewhere as an artist's redition of the view of Io and Jupiter from one of the outer Jovian moons. It's probably done duty as cover art, too.

(To be fair, it's conceivable that, in terms of astronomical taxonomy, anything within a factor of two of Jupiter's orbit in either direction is pretty similar-- astronomy is a science of vast distances, strange units, and error bars in the exponent, so this is actually a fairly close similarity, as such things go. But whoever wrote those two paragraphs should be smacked upside the head with a math textbook...)

Posted at 9:33 AM | link | follow-ups |