Anti-Aircraft Lasers

These things have been in development for some time, and I still wonder how effective these would be in more realistic situations, but it does appear that real progress has been made. 

How useful would it be for ships?  That depends on many things, including how military aircraft might be able to follow a jerky, unpredictable path that might impede the ability of the laser to stay on one spot long enough to start a fire or cause damage.

On the other hand, something like this might come in very handy on towers around cities like Washington, D.C., or New York City.  Remember how the Secret Service had no way to prevent a small plane from crashing into the White House?  This kind of technology could take care of that problem.  It could also be effective against September-11 type attacks using commercial aircraft, which cannot dodge and juke like military aircraft.  Mounted high on broadcast towers, the lasers would be much less obvious than orbiting military planes, would have easy access to the power grid, and would have a clear view of the city sky.

I have no way of knowing whether or not these things have been installed to provide anti-aircraft protection for cities.  Then again, it's the the kind of thing that would be announced, since if the locations of the lasers were known, their access to power could be shut down.

String Theory: Did God Have Any Choice?

I am reminded of this question by the opening chapter of a book I have just started reading: The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin.  Smolin, who is skeptical of string theory, has justified criticisms about the extent to which string theory has monopolized particle physics and the over-exuberance of some of the proponents of the theory's proponents.  He does not quote them asking, "Did God have any choice?" but it actually has been suggested by some enthusiasts that no, God did not have any choice; no other laws for the universe were possible.

You don't have to be either a physicist or a theologian to see that this is poppycock.  We can imagine all kinds of laws that might govern the universe.  We do this not only in scientific conjecture, but also whenever we write books of fantasy or science fiction.

Not only does such a suggestion both border on blasphemy and also contradict the everyday experience of telling, hearing, and reading stories, it perpetuates the idea that modern physics advances very much like it did in ancient Greece:  scientists sit around and tell stories, and whoever tells the best story "wins".  This completely obscures the fact that physics is an intrinsically experimental science.  The literature is full of elegant theories that nevertheless are contradicted by experiment, and Mother Nature always gets the last word.  Of course, the most damage was done by Albert Einstein, who really did think his theory was so beautiful that it must be true; so far, Mother Nature seems to agree.

In reality, the situation is not that bad.  The best book I have finished on string theory and why it is appealing is Out of This World: Colliding Universes, Branes, Strings, and Other Wild Ideas of Modern Physics by Stephen Webb.  Webb's book makes it clear that the "inevitability" of string theory is a conjecture (not proved) that is constrained by the known symmetries of the gravitational, strong nuclear, and electroweak forces, together with a dash of aesthetic beauty. 

To illustrate what this means, imagine I am trying to understand how many finger are on my right hand.

1. I perform one experiment and find that there are fewer than 6 fingers on that hand.  
2. I perform another experiment and find  that my right hand has more than 4 fingers.  
3. Finally, I declare that the laws of nature are beautiful, and a beautiful law would be that the number of fingers on a hand is an integer.  

There is only one solution left:  I have 5 fingers on my right hand.  I might make a brash statement that "God had no choice" but to give me 5 finger on that hand, given conditions 1, 2, and 3.  But of course, the experiment does not really constrain God's choice; God's choice constrained the experiment.  I could easily have been born with more or fewer than 5 fingers on my hand, as was the case with some of my acquaintances.  As for the requirement of an integer number of fingers, some people lose part of a finger, and in any case one might argue that the thumb does not count as a whole finger.

Why then is such a ridiculous claim made about string theory?  Either because the speaker does not really understand what he's talking about, or because he wants to make a shocking statement that makes him seem more important than he really is.

Nibiru

I know I should not be surprised, but there are still people who are saying that there is a planet "Nibiru" that will pass near Earth later this year.  I had hoped this would calm down, at least temporarily, after all the "Mayan calendar" predictions fizzled.  Silly me.

WARNING:  The following video is painful to anyone with either a basic grasp of science or a drop of common sense.

Now I am content to say that Nibiru actually hit the Earth on February 15, but was much smaller than had been expected, namely about the size of a house.

However, if it is indeed supposed to be more massive than Jupiter, it should be about the same diameter as Jupiter.  (Oddly enough, mass doesn't have much effect on the diameter of really big planets.)  This means it would become visible to the naked eye at about the orbit of Uranus.  It would be easily visible to anyone with binoculars, let alone a telescope.

To be generous to how fast an unknown planet might approach Earth, imagine it was dropped from well outside the solar system and just allowed to fall toward the sun, picking up speed as it fell.  By the time it reached the orbit of Uranus, it would still have about 6 years 3 months to fall before it reached Earth.  

By the time it reached the orbit of Jupiter, it would be as bright as Jupiter, which is brighter than anything in the night sky other than the moon and Venus.  It would be easy to see even in the largest cities.  (To my great surprise, I was able to see comet Hale-Bopp from inside Tokyo.  I wasn't even looking for it; I just looked up on my way home from the subway station, and there it was.)  The planet would still have about 298 days to fall. 

In other words, there is no way whatsoever that this could "sneak up on us".  

But what if it came from the direction of the sun, like the guy in the video says?  

Well, it could not have always been in the inner solar system, for a variety of reasons, ranging from the fact it would destabilize the orbits of the inner planets to the fact that it would be easy for even amateurs to see -- "presidential executive order" or not.  On the other hand, if it fell from farther out and just happened to be close to the sun from our perspective right now, we would have seen it six months ago.

One more thing.  The idea discussed in this first video is not exactly the same as the original idea of Zecharia Sitchin, but there are some strong similarities.  Sitchin believes that a planet "Nibiru" has passed through the inner solar system before, with catastrophic consequences.  In fact, he thinks it passes through the inner solar system every few thousand years, which may sound like a long time when compared with recorded human history but would still mean that either (a) a planet has just recently been bumped into an orbit that crosses the orbits of a half dozen other planets, which is unlikely, or (b) Nibiru has already passed through the inner solar system millions of times.  Neither case is at all consistent with the nice, almost-circular orbits of the planets.  It might be plausible if we lived in some of the wilder systems we have seen orbiting other stars, but not for our solar system. 

Hate Crimes Laws

The way we define "hate crimes" now is pretty stupid, or worse.  After all, essentially all crimes involve either actual hatred or callous disregard; the boundary between these two is fuzzy at best, and the motivation of the criminal is not of foremost concern to the victim.  Worse, these laws appear to be yet another word game designed to get around the Constitution -- in this case, the Fifth Amendment's protection against double jeopardy.  Also, the "hate crime" legislation has become above all a mark of special favor for some groups from the government.

In spite of these problems, I have come to the conclusion that there actually is a proper role for "hate crime" laws.  Specifically, an act should be considered a "hate crime" if 

1. it constituted a felony under other statues, and
2. either
1. a confessed purpose of the act was to intimidate or outrage an identifiable group of people or 
2. a reasonable person would conclude that a purpose of the act was to intimidate or outrage an identifiable group of people.

Note that the only real difference between such a crime and terrorism is degree.  A "hate crime" might involve things like the destruction of property; terrorism should be reserved for acts which actually cause terror: bombings, poisoning the mail, that sort of thing.  The valid purpose of a "hate crimes" law should be to fill in this gap between a crime only against individual victims and acts of terrorism meant to intimidate whole groups.

As an example of what I have in mind, consider the poisoning of the oaks at Toomer's Corner.  Note that although "criminal damage to an agricultural facility" is apparently a felony under existing statutes, what makes this crime really important is that it (as Updyke himself confessed below) was targeted at the entire Auburn University community. 

As it is, motives such as intimidating a group may come into play at sentencing, and my default instinct is not to multiply laws unnecessarily.  On the whole, though, I think the real if indirect targeting of a whole group constitutes a distinct crime.

Even so, some care would be needed in drafting the laws.  I do think that the language should be kept general, rather than enumerating distinct categories that are favored for special protection.  On the other hand, imagine the plausible case in which members of the Mongols motorcycle gang murder a member of the Hell's Angels "to make a point".  Should that be considered a hate crime?  Under the conditions I set forth above, yes; besides which it would be of practical interest to discourage hotheads from stirring up trouble.  It is not clear, though, that much of anyone would be comfortable with seeming to make "membership in a motorcycle gang" a protected category.

Matt Dillon for President

No, not the actor; the US Marshal in Gunsmoke.  

Although Marshal Dillon did occasionally make mistakes, he was the exemplar of American masculine virtue.  So, for example, in the episode "Kangaroo Court", he had to deal with a religious extremist who had taken it upon himself to pass and execute judgment, including floggings and amputations, on those who did not live by his moral code.  If Gunsmoke had been produced today, that would have been the whole of the story:  a cynical, agnostic marshal triumphing over a stereotypically crazy believer.  Instead, the episode ends with Marshal Dillon quoting Micah 6:8, showing that the marshal knew Scripture, had a pious attitude toward it, and knew how to apply it.  

Above all, Marshal Dillon embodied the cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, moderation, and courage.  These are perhaps best on display in the fairly typical scenes in which he protects someone he has arrested from a lynch mob.  Marshal Dillon may be confident that the prisoner will be convicted by a jury and hanged, but he will not be hanged until he has had his trial.  The law is the law, even when it is inconvenient.

A complete contrast, both in character and in genre, can be found in the character of Ming the Merciless; the particular scene I have in mind comes from the (pretty awful) 1980 movie.  Ming, of course, is an over-the-top tyrant for whom there is no law except his own convenience.  Thus his attempted wedding to Dale Arden proceeds like this:

Zogi, the High Priest: Do you, Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, take this Earthling Dale Arden, to be your Empress of the Hour?
The Emperor Ming: Of the hour, yes.
Zogi, the High Priest: Do you promise to use her as you will?
The Emperor Ming: Certainly!
Zogi, the High Priest: Not to blast her into space?
[Ming glares at Zogi]
Zogi, the High Priest: Uh, until such time as you grow weary of her.
The Emperor Ming: I do.

So Marshal Dillon,  American hero, was willing to risk his life to see to it that a man he was confident was guilty would still receive a fair trial, but for the villainous tyrant Ming, the most basic aspects of law could be disposed of when they became wearisome.  

Which of these two is most like these Republican senators, who want to be seen as "tough as nails" and "no nonsense"?  Is the Constitution only binding when we feel sympathy for the accused, or are doubtful of his guilt, so that a trial would not be wearisome?

Sweet Caroline

Forty years ago, we were proud of our country because 

• we were sending men to the moon, 
• we had not only been an important factor in winning World War II, but we had helped rebuild our defeated foes into freer and healthier societies, 
• we were defending the world against the spread of godless Communism, and
• our founding documents showed the greatest wisdom in balancing the need for a just order with the need for freedom.

I turned on the radio this morning to find that today people are proud of America because fans of the Boston Bruins know the words to "The Star Spangled Banner" and baseball parks across the country played "Sweet Caroline".  Both of these are nice, mind you, but not really much of a foundation for national pride.

Meanwhile:

• We now can't even send a man into orbit without buying a lift on a Russian Soyuz.  It is not at all clear when or if we will get back into manned space flight; there are currently no plans with sufficient support and momentum to withstand the end of a president's term.
• We have spent the last decade and more fighting wars with no clear aims.  Even before the wars are over, we have tried to "rebuild" the fractious states of our foes according to political traditions that are alien to them in the hope that they will elect governments that mirror American values.  The results have been predictably poor.
• The president of Russia is now more likely to invoke God, as he did in response to the explosion of a meteor on Feb. 15, than is the president of the United States.
• It is safe to say that respect for the US Constitution is lower today than at any other time in American history.
• Freedom of religion is under attack in various ways.
• So is the Second Amendment.
• The idea of Congress actually declaring a war is a joke.  Now the president declares wars, and he dares Congress not to rally behind him.
• The Bill of Rights still protects the individual from the government.  Unless, that is, the government decides to call the individual an "enemy combatant", a decision that cannot be appealed and that has the effect of depriving the individual of all rights, civil and human.
• Oh, and the Bill of Rights does not apply to US territory outside the 50 states.  However, other parts of the Constitution, such as the fact that the president is the commander-in-chief of the military, apparently still do hold there.

Japan: An Alien Culture

The poor writers of Star Trek try to create alien civilizations, but they really only manage to give us slight exaggerations and caricatures of contemporary Americans.  None of these aliens are so strange, though, as to be able to produce this:

Japan seems to look at the world in a completely unique way.  This should have been a warning to us:  the fact that the American occupation of Japan worked so well should have been a warning that it would certainly not work anywhere else.

Don't think, though, that Japan is crazier than any other country.  We all have our own odd characteristics; we just don't notice them, in the same way we do not usually see our own noses.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend when I came back from spending 3 months in Denmark and Germany.  I told him that nothing says "America" like two football helmets shooting lightning at each other, colliding, and exploding.  "I never noticed; it just seems so natural."  Of course he was exaggerating, but there is a sense in which this seems appropriate, in spite of the fact that it is obviously nonsense.