There really is no learning going on.

The US has announced an agreement with Poland to site interceptor missiles on their soil. The missiles are part of the tragically flawed Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. The system is flawed because it doesn't really have an enemy to protect the US from but also that it could easily be overwhelmed if currently friendly countries who do have the capability were to turn enemy. Anyway, that's not really the point of this post, which is actually to point out that history is repeating itself. After the announcement, all the news and political pundits anxiously theorized as to Russia's likely response. Some scenarios are not hard to imagine. In 1961 the US installed 15 Jupiter missiles in Izmir, Turkey, aimed at western Soviet cities, including Moscow. The Soviet response in 1962 was to install missiles in Cuba. This became the infamous "Cuban Missile Crisis" which history has unfairly portrayed as all the Russians doing. So, 47 years later, here we are again. Cuba is probably not likely to play host again, but Venezuela anyone? There really is no learning going on.

James Dyson: A genius or a bee?

Why is James Dyson proudly advertising that it took over 5000 prototypes to get the design of his vacuum cleaners right? One of the greatest geniuses of the modern era, Nikola Tesla once said of Thomas Edison "If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor."

NAS votes for common sense

It's sad that the National Academy of Sciences had to devote valuable resources in order to produce a comprehensive position paper explaining science and evolution, and debunking creationism, but it's welcome. Now can we move on? Please.

Mr Three Percent

The number of points that Bill Clinton got in the 1992 Iowa Caucus. What does it all mean?

Vote for common sense

I'll blurt this right out - I can't vote for anyone who doesn't believe in evolution. Phew.

Creationists tend to hang on the word "Theory" as if it means "Guess" - Darwins' Guess At What's Going On - and saying things like "Well, the jury is still out on Evolution, and it is only a theory after all". They don't seem to consider the fact that science is generally split into Laws and Theories. A Law is something proven beyond reasonable doubt - if you do this, the result will be this. Many Laws started out as Theories. The Theory of Evolution is unlikely to become a Law because there are too many variables - if you do this, the result, based on observation, evidence and testing will likely be this, although it's not certain. Meanwhile, as with Laws, we'll continue observing, tracing evidence and testing, and refining the theory as we go. Or we could sit back and say it must all have been created a Designer.

Now, back to the opening statement. I don't know that I could trust the running of a country to someone who rejects out of hand scientific evidence, observation and testing in favor of mythology, even if that candidate pledges not to interfere with science education. It amounts to impaired judgement to me.

In a test, which one of the following would make you pause and question the candidates judgement?

I believe....

• Santa Claus
• The Earth is flat
• The Sun orbits the Earth
• Mbombo vomited the sun. moon and stars
• A god named Pangu, born inside the egg, broke it into two halves: The upper half became the sky, the lower half became the earth.
• Gaia brought forth Ouranos, the starry sky, her equal, to cover her, the hills, and the fruitless deep of the Sea, Pontus, "without sweet union of love," out of her own self.
• An omnipotent being created the heavens and earth in 6 days
• Zeus is king of the gods and god of the sky and thunder
• "Conjecture about [the origin, etc., of] the world is an unconjecturable that is not to be conjectured about, that would bring madness & vexation to anyone who conjectured about it."
• All animals and humans have a divine element in them that is covered by the ignorance and illusions of material or profane existence
• Global Warming is caused by the declining number of pirates.
• Natural selection is a process that causes heritable traits that are helpful for survival and reproduction to become more common, and harmful traits to become more rare. This occurs because organisms with advantageous traits pass on more copies of these heritable traits to the next generation.
• Natural selection is a process that causes heritable traits that are helpful for survival and reproduction to become more common, and harmful traits to become more rare. This occurs because organisms with advantageous traits pass on more copies of these heritable traits to the next generation, with the exception of humans because God created us in His image, and therefore we're exempt.

All but two are fairy tales. Just vote for common sense, not myths and superstition.

Ron Paul and the dissolution of the United States

If you've taken any time to look beyond Ron Paul's stance on Iraq and examine his positions on a wide variety of other subjects it becomes clear, to me at least, that he is for the dissolution of these here United States of America. His position, on things such as the IRS, Federal Reserve, Intelligence Agencies, Environment, Education, Social Security etc etc, is that there should be little or no Federal Government or Federal oversight and that all such governance should be left to the States. Dissolution may not be his stated aim, but it would obviously be one possible outcome. Apart from having a joint defense system, what would be left that could be called "United"?

It also strikes me that such a break up of the Union would after a pretty short time result in mini-Unions because wide diversity of policies, such as taxation and social services, between the States, as shown in Europe, doesn't work in the long term. To avoid unbalanced trade patterns or population migration between States, strategic alliances, agreements and entities will be formed. The first form of this would likely be an East / West division, with Pacific coast states forming an alliance while the Atlantic states do the same, leaving the "Heartland" States with a decision to make as to where their economic interests lie. Texas will likely run it alone for a while. The upshot of all of this is that the "United States" will eventually reform along with all it's governing institutions. Could the intermission include revolutionary wars and wars of independence? Possibly but hopefully unlikely, although with the Red / Blue divide so prominantly promoted by our media I wouldn't exclude any possibility.

Netflix Recommendations are crap

I've been using Netflix for years and don't think I've ever had a good recommendation from them, but today just blew my mind. They proudly recommend "The Looney Tunes Golden Collection" because I enjoyed the Sergio Leone classic "Once Upon a Time in the West". Anyone have any idea how their recommendation algorithm works?