What's the respiratory rate of the universe?

Reading a popular cosmology article (a hobby), I caught note of a hint that some models of physics suggest quintessence need not have a modal state. This is interesting because observations of distant stars and galaxies suggest that about a billion years ago the expansion of space accelerated. The lay assumption is that expansion will now continue at this accelerated pace, and that the universe will slowly dwindle into nothingness.

It is a bit odd, though, that such a great even should occur just as life on earth began to appear. Odd.

Not such an odd coincidence, however, if quintessence varies in an erratic way. We know space expanded very fast as the universe was "born" (the big booooooiiiiiiiiinnnnngggg), and then we think it expanded fairly smoothly, then it sped up. But maybe it speeds up and slows down all the time, sometimes with big jumps, sometimes small jumps. Maybe it's even uneven, like baking bread. Maybe some times and places it even contracts (and there, does time run backwards ... but of course if time ran backwards forwards and sideways for us we'd never know -- our awareness points from birth to death irregardless of how an observer might see us).

Maybe the universe belches and bubbles and breathes, a scaled up version of quantum foam.

It's nice being an unrestrained speculator.

Of course it did, then we might really have no idea how old the universe really is, nor is it clear what "old" would mean in that context. Age might be variable.

Fred Hoyle might be pleased.

9/27/2007: Alas, I've read a few good lay books on cosmology since I wrote this post, and it turns out this expansion is an unfortunately good fit for current theory. My non-physicist interpretation is that space has a invariant "springiness" that is constant for all time, but gravity's effect wanes with distance (inverse square of course). So gravity's getting weaker and weaker, the spring never weakens, and the expansion constantly accelerates. Only things firmly bound by gravity (milky way, some neighboring galaxies) will remain in Sol's future light cone.

BW Online | December 8, 2003 | A Guide to Phone Number Portability

BW Online | December 8, 2003 | A Guide to Phone Number Portability

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Best set of instructions I've seen -- in fact, the only set of instructions!

Keep your older service until the newer phone rings, bring phone and bill to the new phone store. Offset cost of switching with a free phone deal.

NYT Review: Neuroscience and the nature of humankind

Humanity? Maybe It’s in the Wiring

The body, it turns out, is as important as the brain. Dr. Antonio Damasio, a neurologist at the University of Iowa Medical Center and the author of the book 'Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain,' has pioneered the argument that emotions and feelings are linked to brain structures that map the body. From human social emotions, he said, both morality and reason have grown.

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In 1980 I remember Armando Howard, then my Caltech roommate, expounding at length on this thesis, that the brain "thinks" with the body.

This is an amazing summary of the latest thinking in neuroscience, most of it new in the past 10 years. It is also a stunning triumph of reductionism. Consciousness and behavior seem less emergent, and more a result of relatively well cirumscribed modules, than some had expected. More like something that could be emulated in software.

Bush Government to pass SPAM at will bill

CAUCE Latest News

The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (CAUCE, www.cauce.org) is disappointed by the passage of a weak anti-spam bill in the House of Representatives and Senate. This legislation fails the most fundamental test of any anti-spam law, in that it neglects to actually tell any marketers not to spam. Instead, it gives each marketer in the United States one free shot at each consumer's e-mail inbox, and will force companies to continue to deploy costly and disruptive anti-spam technologies to block advertising messages from reaching their employees on company time and using company resources. It also fails to learn from the experiences of the states and other countries that have tried 'opt-out' legal frameworks, where marketers must be asked to stop, to no avail. In fact, the bill would preempt an opt-in law set to go into effect in California on January 1, 2004, which was passed after an state opt-out law similar to the current federal legislation was found to be a failure.

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Business as usual. The right companies made the right payoffs and our Congress rolled over. Not only does the bill not work, it's actually worse than no action at all.

Globalization and the Export of American Labor: NYT Algonquin Discusssion

Who Wins and Who Loses as Jobs Move Overseas?

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An excellent overview. In the 90s American IT workers lost income, and investors gained income, through the use of foreign IT labor using special visas. In the 00s we're seeing a much stronger variant of labor shifting -- moving the work to where the labor is.

This is another step in the shift of wealth from labor to capitalists (shareholders, etc). That's not a bad thing, if capital markets are honest and ownership is widely distributed -- and if the nation takes wise measures to ease the shock of labor transitions. Of course we may now lack both of these prerequisites.

The Political Compass: How do you rank politically?

The Political Compass

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This online test is produced by a UK journalist, and it's very UK like. It's fairly clear what the "right" answers are, and how an awful Republican might answer. The "wrong" answers are phrased in such a way that it's hard to imagine even GWB really getting a "bad" (authoritarian) score.

I ended up being left-libertarian. Just to the left of Jean Chretien and the right of the Dalai Lama, but about as libertarian as the Dalai Lama. So I guess I'm in happy company.

Defect rates in American justice: 10-15% in the most severe cases

Bob Herbert, NYT: Returned to Life

In an interview, Professor Protess said he initially was surprised by the number of cases he and his students encountered in which the prisoners were innocent. "I'd always thought that miscarriages of justice were an aberration and that our justice system, overwhelmingly, worked well," he said. "But I was seeing error rates of 10 to 15 percent. I was very struck by how pervasive the problem was."

I asked if he thought any innocent people had actually been executed.

"Oh, absolutely," he said. "There's just no question."

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We know error rates in medicine are reasonably high. The justice system is no better, and probably worse. Any system will err to either false positive (imprisonment and/or execution) or false negative (acquittal of the guilty); justice is supposed to err to false negative (innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, etc), but in the US that's not working. Instead we err towards false conviction.

I am reasonably confident that George Bush doesn't give a damn.

Cat lovers and rare beef eaters may be easy prey for automobiles ...

BBC NEWS | Health | Eat worms - feel better

One third of Britons carry the toxoplasma parasite in their brain.

Its natural home is the cat and it's spread in cats' faeces. It can be picked up by any mammal, from rats to cattle. The main way we get it is by eating undercooked meat (which is why 80% of the French are estimated to have it, with their love of rare meat).

Once we have it we have it for life, there's no way we can get rid of it.

Research shows it somehow manipulates rats' behaviour - it makes rats attracted to cats - their natural predator, so they're more likely to be eaten by a cat and the parasite can complete its life cycle.

For years scientists thought it had no effect on our behaviour, but now the parasite's changing their minds. Recent research suggests that people with toxyplasma have slower reaction times than those without and are also more than twice as likely to be involved in a traffic accident than those who aren't carrying the parasite.

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The BBC news story is a tie in to a BBC broadcast. The broadcast sounds gruesome and fascinating. I've been following the UC/hookworm studies for years and I'm looking forward to the study publications. This Toxoplasma data is new to me though, and it's rather unsettling. It's not good news for people who have pet cats or who like their meat rare. Personally, I'm switching to well done, though it may be too late for me! Good news for dog loving cat hating vegetarians though ... (I think dogs don't get toxoplasma ...)

Courage in Saudi Arabia and the next Iraqi Invasion

Op-Ed Contributor: Telling the Truth, Facing the Whip

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Courage like this is breathtaking. A Saudi journalist says that Saudi Arabia must turn away from Wahhabism -- the state religion.

The weak evidence I get to read points ever more to Wahhabism as the true heart and soul of al Qaeda. If this is what the Bush administration also believes, then it supports one hypothesis about the invasion of Iraq. Namely that the Bush administration believes that sooner or later the US will be at war with Wahhabism. Since the Saudis are unlikely to change their state religion (could the US abandon its religious right?), this means war with Saudi Arabia. The only way the US and world economy could survive such a war is for Iraq to export a lot of oil.

It will be one of the great ironies of history if Iraq of 2006, with US support, joins Kuwait in seizing the Saudi oil fields that Saddam sought in the first Gulf War.

Of course we COULD take measures to increase our energy efficiency and increase our room to maneuver. Not under this president, alas.

Is Saddam smarter than Bush/Rumsfeld?

Tom Friedman: Letter From Tikrit

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Friedman makes a good case that Saddam planned the war better than Bush/Rumsfeld. I remember confident predictions by Bush administration figures and journalists that Saddam wasn't the kind of guy to survive in basements as a hunted fugitive. Wrong.

Bush, based on his college results, is probably about average Yale intelligence, meaning he's quite smart. Rumsfeld is reputed to be very clever, but he is apparently delusional. Saddam, based on the evidence, may be much smarter than both of them, and far less delusional. The US has to stop imagining it's dealing with an incompetent penny ante dictator, and start thinking of Saddam as a particularly cunning variant of Josef Stalin.

Clintonian healthcare reform: two insider perspectives

Notes: Robert Rubin's View of Health Care Reform: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

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The Clinton health care debacle was one of the great policy failures of the past 40 years. It was such a disaster that it set health care policy in the US back at least 10 years, and probably 15 years. DeLong was an insider, Rubin had a different angle. Their stories are interesting.

The Bush War on Terror: Time to try something different?

The Scorecard

More than two years after the World Trade Center towers came down and the President declared his 'war on terrorism,' it seems reasonable to offer a little scorecard on the 'war(s)' of choice for this administration.

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Well worth reading, this editorial/blog doesn't say anything new, but it's a good summary with some very good links. On the plus side al Qaeda and its ilk seem to be focusing on limited attacks, but the minuses are very big. Fundamentally the Bush administration has failed in their approach.

One novel observation I hadn't thought of. Bush can't quit Iraq while Sadaam is free, it's too politically risky.

London chemical plot foiled ... how smart is al Qaeda these days?

FT.com / World

The would-be terrorists made mistakes: the quantities they sought were so enormous - and the reasons they gave for buying them so unbelievable - that suspicions were immediately aroused. In addition some experts doubt that their plot could have worked.

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Prior to 9/11 al Qaeda seems to have had some very bright and evil people. Some died in that attack, others died in Afghanistan or by assassination or have been captured. Zawahiri may be the smartest of the group left at large, but he seems to spend most of his energy hiding.

This story suggests that the bench may be thin, something I've wondered ever since the spectacularly incompetent "shoe bomber" effort. Al Qaeda has no problem attracting canon fodder, but it may be failing to recruit and retrain the most dangerous operatives: educated, intelligent, creative, cruel and viscious fundamentalists. One in a thousand adults may combine creativity and intelligence, but these may be inversely correlated with fundamentalism and cruelty. A relatively small talent pool limits Al Qaeda's capabilities.

This also suggests a reasonable strategy. The US employed Russian physicists after the collapse of the USSR, in part to keep them out of dangerous pursuits. Interventions which divert talented individuals from al Qaeda towards more wholesome pursuits will not make al Qaeda and its children vanish, but it will make them far less dangerous.

Shades of Vietnam: deserting to Canada

Some soldiers would rather desert than return to Iraq : Vancouver Indymedia

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CBS did a piece on this recently, so it's getting some mainstream media coverage. A friend who lives in the American south, where most of our soldiers come from, tells me that the local news outlets are reporting on desretions. Hard to tell how big this is. The stress on guardsmen in particular is terrible.

The Arar Case: Ashcroft sends a Canadian for torture in Syria

At the Bottom of the Slippery Slope: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

Arar somehow got on a potentially-linked-to-terrorism watch list, was stopped on his way through the US and questioned for two weeks, and was then deported into Syrian custody despite being a Canadian citizen and resident. He was born in Syria and holds Syrian citizenship as well, and this was the 'pretext' for deporting him to Syria rather than Canada for questioning. As far as I know nobody in the US administration has denied that the intent of deporting him to Syria was that he be questioned by the Syrians - they sure weren't just deciding he shouldn't be in the US and deporting him (he's a Canadian resident, and was traveling on a connection through the US rather than entering it).

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During a previous national psychotic episode, we interned a large number of Americans who had ancestors born in Japan.

Did we torture any of them?

If the torture angle is a modern innovation, one could make a case that we've outdone ourselves.

Of course Ashcroft should be removed. It's easy to understand why so much of Europe considers the US to be a sort of proto-Nazi state. There are days when I worry as well.