Any Given Sunday With Drew Henson And Bill Parcells
Here it goes..
Here's the latest report on our erstwhile kid quarterback, but you need registration to sign in. Instead I've copied and pasted the entire article without permission. Very bad of me.

POSTCARDS FROM THE LEDGEPlaying Drew could reap Super benefitsBy Jim ReevesStar-Telegram Staff Writer

Bill Parcells is right. Winning is the ultimate goal. But it's not about winning meaningless games in the midst of a lost season. It's not about going 5-11, or 6-10. It's about winning Super Bowls. He, of all people, should know that. Certainly we know that around here. We've been to the mountaintop. We want to go there again.
You do that by building around a quarterback. The Cowboys haven't had one to build around since Troy Aikman's heyday. What was that, 10 years ago? Nine? Almost too long to remember.

Around here, Super Bowl success has always been associated with a strong quarterback. Roger Staubach won two; Aikman claimed three. What we know, what even Parcells must admit, is that Vinny Testaverde won't take the Cowboys to a Super Bowl. Drew Henson? Who knows? That's what all the complaining is about. It's why Jerry Jones isn't happy. We all want to find out. We need to find out if Henson is the man. The problem is, Big Bill has become shortsighted in his old age. He's focused on winning the next game, not the next Lombardi Trophy. He's trying to get the Cowboys into the playoffs -- where they really have no business this year, anyway -- instead of to Super Bowl (insert whatever Roman numeral you want to shoot for here). It's just not in Parcells' nature not to try to go for a winnable game, like Thursday's, with whatever is at his disposal.

Henson, in his first NFL start, was struggling. Enter Testaverde at halftime. "I think Drew Henson is going to be an excellent player. Bill Parcells thinks he's a good player, too," former Saints general manager Randy Mueller said on ESPN Radio on Friday. "I think he [Parcells] will develop Drew Henson, but not at the cost of losing a game. "At halftime [Thursday], Bill saw how bad the Bears were and knew if [the Cowboys] didn't screw it up, they could win the game."

And they did. Buthow much further down the road would the Cowboys be today if Parcells had put the kid back out there and he had won the game? How much more confidence would Henson have gained? How much closer would the Cowboys be to their next Super Bowl? Closer than they are today with Testaverde stepping in to win it.

Parcells' own words betray him. "Right now, he needs more work," Parcells said of Henson. "The guy hasn't played a lot of football." There's a remedy for both those problems, and it's the same cure: Play him. Parcells also underestimates and dishonors Cowboys fans when he said he didn't care if they booed, that he has "other people's interests to think about." What he needs to understand is that it's not about him. It's not even about the players. It's about the Cowboys as a franchise, and that includes their fans. At least they understand that it's not about winning games; it's about winning Super Bowls.

Hmmm. There you go. Drew Henson might turn out to be a prospect who burned out in 2 sports rather than just one.

- Art Neuro

Artificial Gravitas
NASA are finally working on the problem of low-gravity effects on the body during long service in space. They are calling it artificial gravity, but it's not the stuff of Star Trek, it's the big 'centrifugal' wheel that generates a centripital force simulating gravity. That's right. Just like the one you've seen on '2001: a Space Odyssey'.

A major undertaking in artificial gravity research is being prepared at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston, overseen by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Starting next year at UTMB, a corps of individuals will partake in bed rest studies that reproduce the effects of weightlessness, with half that group also rotated once a day on a centrifuge.

The new centrifuge has been built for NASA by Wyle Laboratories, headquartered in El Segundo, California, for use in studying the effects of artificial gravity as a countermeasure to the negative effects of long-term microgravity on the human body. That newly-built centrifuge has recently been installed at UTMB. "It's a really beautiful device," Young said. Young is co-investigator for the work, teamed with William Paloski, principal scientist, in the Human Adaptation and Countermeasures Office at the NASA Johnson Space Center.

The NASA-sponsored research is divided into two phases. The first phase is using the short radius centrifuge -- which has a radius of 10 feet (three meters) radius to support NASA's Artificial Gravity Pilot Study. A second phase will include significant enhancements to the centrifuge design to provide support for a multinational artificial gravity project that would involve Germany and Russia, Young added. The Artificial Gravity Project Pilot Study involves test subjects being placed in a six degree head-down bed-rest position which simulates the effects of microgravity on a human body. The test subjects are then positioned in the short radius centrifuge and subjected up to 2.5 Gs at their feet to simulate a gravity environment.

"As far as I'm concerned," Young concluded, "the purpose of all these studies is not to show how to use artificial gravity. Rather, it is to determine whether or not artificial gravity is an acceptable solution."

There used to be a a piece of graffiti somewhere: "There is no such thing as Gravity; the Earth Sucks".
Somehow it never left my mind.

A New Style Of Pumping Gas In Texas
This is interesting. They are finally sequestering carbon into disused oil mines, presumably from whence they came. Active sequestration, if successful is a good idea (Obviously, if it doesn't produce more Carbon gasses than it sequesters). There some problems with it, but it's worth trying.

In the depleted South Liberty oil field near the town of Dayton, a University of Texas team successfully pumped 1,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide -- the principal greenhouse gas -- into the reservoirs of briny water more than 5,000 feet underground.

Scientists say those porous rock formations, which extend for hundreds of miles from Mexico to Alabama, could be ideally suited to storing the greenhouse gases widely blamed for global warming.

"We have lot of oil and gas fields in this area that are in decline," Susan Hovorka, a University of Texas geologist and the lead researcher on the pilot project told Reuters. "The Gulf Coast is one of the best places on earth for this." The technology,
known as carbon sequestration, has attracted global attention from industries and governments that are eager to capture and bottle up the gas that can linger in the atmosphere for decades. The gases released by burning fossil fuels, scientists say, are the main cause of global warming, which is expected over time to lift the planet's temperatures and sharply alter weather patterns, raising sea levels and causing devastating storms.

With Russia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol earlier this month clearing the way for the environment pact to come into force in February and the start of the European Union's carbon dioxide emissions trading market just a month away, demand for methods for eliminating or storing the gas are on the rise.

Then there's this bit:

Hovorka said a preliminary estimate of the amount of carbon dioxide storage
capacity along the coast regions of the Gulf of Mexico put the figure at about 300 billion tons -- enough to hold 1,000 years of pollution from the region at the current rate.

Many hurdles -- both technical and economic -- remain before carbon sequestration can develop as a viable enterprise, Christopher said, but much of the expertise and at least a limited transportation network already exists.

Since the 1970s, oil and gas drillers have injected carbon dioxide into oil wells in a process called enhanced oil recovery that increases the output from those sites.

"This is something we know how to do. We've been doing it for 30 years in West Texas," he said. Houston-based energy company Kinder Morgan Inc. ships a billion cubic feet a day of the gas through its 1,100 miles pipeline network, much of it from Colorado into the West Texas oil fields.

That pipeline system would need to be vastly expanded to reach the major carbon dioxide emitters on the other side of the state -- an expensive and complicated endeavor but one the company has considered.

"If the opportunity is there and it's attractive, we want to be a part of it," said Rick
Rainey, spokesman for Kinder Morgan.

So there you go. Concrete, practical steps. We are not done for... yet. :)

- Art Neuro

Translated Transcription of Interview With Hideki Matsui
Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees has been interviewed briefly by the Yomiuri newspaper.
Here's my translation of the transcription if anybody is interested.

- Interview by Fujio Tanaka.
Q: You've started training already.
A: Yes. I'm 30 now, so if I rest too much, I start putting on excess weight.

Q: Will you re-start your training once you return to Japan?
A: Yes, probably. I'll be busy with things like having to go to the bat maker for changes to the bat.

Q: You've been making small changes to the bat each year. What changes will you make this year?
A: Not much this year. I might move the centre of gravity towards the handle a little bit.

Q: But there's great significance even in small changes.
A: Well yeah. If you move the centre of gravity towards the handle, the centre of percussion will move towards the grip as well, and that might make it harder to get jammed on the inside.

Q: Yes, you did seem to get jammed on the inside a lot last year.
A: Yeah, because I'm keeping my timing for the outside fastball. So when you go to swing for the inside fastball from that stance, it gets uncomfortable and you end up getting jammed.

Q: When you were with the Giants you were looking at the inside high pitch.
A: Yeah. If you adjusted to the course where the ball appears the fastest, then it seemed easy to hit the ball on the sweetspot, where ever it came. The opposite, where you look at the outside pitch and adjust for the inside pitch is a lot harder.

Q: Yet you have to keep the outside pitch in mind.
A: Yes, they totally pitch to the outside corner. I figured if they jammed me inside, I'd just have to accept that as a consequence of my approach.

Q: So now you're not satsified with that.
A: Well, actually it's more a change of my thinking. From a situation where I was forced to think about the outside fastball, I want to think about the inside pitch in addition to that, broadening my base. In the end, I want to increase the percentage of the longball.

Q: If you move the centre of the gravity towards the handle, it will increase the swing speed.
A: That may be one outcome.

Q: ...But centrifugal force will diminish, so you need to strengthen more.
A: Actually, I mainly work with strengthening my torso, but if you can hit the ball at a good point, you can actually carry it into the stands easily.

Q: So this is an off-season where you review your approach.
A: Yes. I spent a lot of time last year analysing my opponents. So maybe I've grown in that sense.

It's pretty interesting. Of course there's no such thing as 'centrifugal' force. It's centripetal force. However it's swing speed that's needed. Generally speaking, you hit the ball further with a lighter bat going fast than a heavier bat going slow. So Godzilla is on track.
I'm keeping him for next year. :)

- Art Neuro

Running Hot And Cold When Two Worlds Vanish
Arctic Peoples are trying to team up with Tropical Island folks in trying to raise awareness and combat global warming.

"We are two of the world's most vulnerable areas," Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), said of the low-lying islands -- at risk from rising sea levels -- and the Arctic -- where the ice is melting.

"Linking up makes a lot of sense," Watt-Cloutier, whose organization says it represents 155,000 people in Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Russia, told Reuters on Thursday.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet because of a build-up of gases from fossil fuels burned in cars, factories and power plants, according to a report by 250 scientists from 8 countries this month. That could make the North Pole ice-free in summer by 2100, driving species like polar bears toward extinction and undermining indigenous hunting cultures, the report says.

In turn, a global thaw could push up sea levels by almost a meter (3 ft) by 2100, according to U.N. projections, threatening to sink low-lying Pacific island states like Tuvalu or the Marshall Islands or the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

With their homes under threat, many indigenous peoples in the Arctic and islanders say the United States, the world's biggest polluter, bears much of the blame for global warming after Washington rejected caps on emissions under the 128-nation Kyoto protocol.

I don't know what's worse. The Kyoto protocol is a sticky tape solution to a very complex, humungous problem. It is inadequate and will draw funds away from finding alternatives to fossil fuel energy use. It's a bit like a small room with 128 people marginally promising not to exhale and breathe as much going into the future, promising that their kids who will increase the number in the room will do as agreed. Then there's the inordinately large guy who eats way more than his fair share who says, "No fuck off, I'm not going to agree to that, not even as a symbolic gesture. Me and my kids are going to burp, fart and exhale as much as we like!"

One shakes one's head.
I'm not a Greenie, but this situation plain sucks. Yet, I guess as a civilisation we're hooked on just burning stuff for energy, come hell or highwater, and at the rate we're going we'll be getting both.

- Art Neuro

Complaints Department
The American Physical Society is making its objections to the Moon, Mars and Beyond Initiative. The gist of their argument is that it might cost more than projected and the over-runs might take away from other scientific projects.

Returning Americans to the Moon and landing on Mars would have a powerful symbolic significance, the APS report observes, but it would constitute only a small step in the advancement of knowledge, since much will already be known from exploration with the robotic precursor probes that are necessary to guarantee the safety of any human mission.

The APS report was authored by a 10-person group, with the committee chaired by Joel Primack, a professor of physics and a leading astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

According to their web site, the American Physical Society is the world's largest professional body of physicists, representing more than 45,000 physicists in academia and industry in the United States and internationally. It has offices in College Park, Maryland and Ridge, New York.

The other objection seems to be that the initiaitve is ill-defined. Well, methinks that getting there and anddoing stuff is pretty good enough at this point. As you may all know it is our contention that there are plenty of reasons to go. Not nearly any good enough reasons not to go.

Still, it's a thought-provoking read.

Test Your Space Trivia
Right here. This one is good:

7. In the "Star Wars" films, the Imperial TIE Fighters are propelled by ion engines (TIE stands for Twin Ion Engine). While these spacecraft are fictional, real ion engines power some of today's spacecraft.

Fact or Fiction!?
Go knock yourself out. :)

- Art Neuro

Russia And Brazil
...have signed a pact to cooperate in space. Brazil has the Alcantra launch facility, close to the equator. Why don't we have a luanch site on Cape York? Grrr!!!

The document signed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Russian President Vladimir Putin evokes "development of a modernized version" of Brazil's satellite launch rocket known as the VLS-1 as well as development of new models.

It also calls for joint work on development of geostationary satellites to be used for communication and navigation and for cooperation on improving the infrastructure at Brazil's Alcantara launch facility.

While the memorandum of understanding spelled out no timetable, Lula said it gave Brazil "renewed optimism and determination" to pursue its national plans for launching commercial satellites from the Alcantara site. The Alcantara facility is located near the equator, which makes satellite launches considerably less costly, and Brazil has made clear its intention to become a viable space power.

Brazil! A Space power! Come on Canberra. Where is your vision thing?! Where's 'The Plan' for a Space Industry, goddamnit!
Ugh.

- Art Neuro

Planets X, Y & Z
Here's an interesting one. There might be even more planets belonging to our solar system out there.

Last November, Mike Brown's team found a world at least half as large as Pluto. They named it Sedna, after the Inuit sea goddess. Sedna's elongated orbit is outside the Kuiper Belt, ranging from 76 to 1,000 AU. Sedna was found only because it is currently near the innermost stretch of its travels.

Well past Sedna is another reservoir of material left over from the formation of the solar system, theorists believe. The Oort Cloud is a hypothesized sphere of frozen objects thought to start at about 10,000 AU and extend to 100,000 AU, or 1.5 light years from the Sun.

Nobody expected to find an object like Sedna in the largely empty space between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. Theorists are now scrambling to explain Sedna's presence and what it means to the composition of the outer solar system.

"Sedna could be a member of a substantial population of bodies trapped between the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud," says the University of Hawaii's David Jewitt, who made the first accurate estimate of a KBO albedo in 2001.

Brown, who now bets against finding Planet X in the Kuiper Belt, thinks his group's discovery of Sedna portends an even more compelling scenario. "I'd also be willing to bet that there are many objects larger than Pluto out in the region of space where Sedna lives," Brown said last week. Out to about 1,000 AU, he speculates that there could be 10 or 20 Pluto-sized objects, "and a handful of larger things, too."

Some of these suspected worlds could be as big as Mercury or even Mars, he said. I asked Brown if there might be worlds larger than Pluto clear out at the edge of the Oort Cloud, 1.5 light-years away and nearly half the distance to the Alpha Centauri star system.

"Absolutely," he said. "Probably even likely."

More worlds to discover! More worlds to mine!

Tragedy And Disaster
There's an old Latin American joke cursing their military junta el Presdientes of their world. A child is asked in class, "What is he difference between a tragedy and a disaster?"
The child replies, "A Tragedy is if the plane carrying El Presidente and his whole cabinet and their families crashes into the side of the mountain. A Disaster is when El Presidente survives the crash."

In that spirit, I bring to you this article:

A private jet that was en route to Houston to pick up former President Bush (news
- web sites) clipped a light pole and crashed Monday as it approached Hobby
Airport in thick fog, killing all three people aboard.

The Gulfstream G-1159A jet, coming into Houston, went down about 6:15 a.m. in an undeveloped area 1 1/2 miles south of the airport, officials said. The former president had been scheduled to travel to Ecuador for a conference.

"I was deeply saddened to learn of the plane crash this morning," Bush said through spokesman Tom Frechette. "I'd flown with this group before and know them well. I join in sending heartfelt condolences to each and every member of their families."

The names of the three crew members were not immediately released. Bush, who lives in Houston, was going to give a lecture for the Guayaquil, Ecuador, Chamber of Commerce, Frechette said, adding, "It's very sad." He said he was to have accompanied Bush, as was a Secret Service agent.

It's no big deal in the scheme of the world (or space policy for that matter), but I thought I'd share that disaster with you.

More Inuit References, or How Many Words Do We Really Need (In A Time Of Global Warming)?
Not enough by far.
The Arctic is shrinking as global warming continues. Folks, the Inuit who are famed to have so many different words to describe snow, have no words to describe this because they are seeing has simply not been seen in their part of the world before. Check it out.

We can't even describe what we're seeing," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of
the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (news - web sites) which says it represents 155,000 people in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.

In the Inuit language Inuktitut, robins are known just as the "bird with the red breast," she said. Inuit hunters in north Canada recently saw some ducks but have not figured out what species they were, in Inuktitut or any other language.

An eight-nation report this month says the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and that the North Pole could be ice-free in northern hemisphere summer by 2100, threatening indigenous cultures and perhaps wiping out creatures like polar bears.

Then they go on to report this little factoid:

In Arctic Europe, birch trees are gaining ground and Saami reindeer herders are
seeing roe deer or even elk, a forest-dwelling cousin of moose, on former lichen pastures.

"I know about 1,200 words for reindeer -- we classify them by age, sex, color, antlers," said Nils Isak Eira, who manages a herd of 2,000 reindeer in north Norway.
"I know just one word for elk -- 'sarvva'," said 50-year-old Eira. "But the animals are so unusual that many Saami use the Norwegian word 'elg.' When I was a child it was like a mythical creature."

Thrushes have been spotted in Saami areas of the Arctic in winter, apparently too lazy to bother migrating south. Foreign ministers from the eight Arctic countries are due to meet in Reykjavik on Wednesday but are sharply divided about what to do. The United States is most opposed to any drastic new action.

1200 words for Reindeer! One native word for Elk, but they borrow the Norwegian word instead. Times are changing. We are seeing disturbing signs everywhere. A Darkness may as well be rising in the East. I have but one question.
What would Gandalf do? :)

- Art Neuro

Smart One Arrives On The Moon
In what seems like an episode of Astroboy, the European Space Agency's SMART-1 robotic probe has landed on the moon.

More information of the regional lighting conditions will be obtained by SMART-1 for the Moon's north polar region. "The greatest contribution to our understanding of the lighting in this region will likely come from the fact that SMART-1 will image the north pole for at least six months, providing information on the seasonal variations of the lighting conditions in this region," Bussey said.

Although not comprehensive or extensive, Spudis added, Europe's SMART-1 will obtain some new data of great value. It nicely helps to fill the niche on global elemental mapping and the image data makes a small but nonetheless important enhancement to the extensive Clementine image data, he said.

ESA's Foing is delighted that the Moon probe has reached its destination. The spacecraft is ready for action.

"The team is still so excited by SMART-1's first lunar orbit, thanks to the new technologies. We obtained before lunar capture the first European pictures of the lunar North pole and far side,・Foing said. "The spacecraft and the instruments are ready for their lunar tasks: charting lunar minerals, looking at the chemical signature of Earth-Moon violent beginnings, searching for ices at the poles, or prospecting the potential sites for future landing probes and exploration."

The moon is certainly an oft-visited mistress these days. :)

Four years On The International Space Station
We have now had ten crews and four continuous years of habitation on the ISS. Doesn't seem that long ago that they started this thing, but now it's four years gone by. Time flies when you're having fun.

For NASA officials, the anniversary marks the end of a year of firsts for the ISS that included unprecedented repairs and spacewalks for two space station crews.

In February, Expedition 8 commander Michael Foale and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri stepped outside the ISS for the first spacewalk without a human crewmember inside.

A few months later a new station crew, Expedition 9's Gennady Padalka and Michael Fincke, flawlessly performed a risky spacewalk to repair a U.S. ISS component while wearing Russian Orlan space suits and starting from the Russian segment.

"It is a testament that we've learned a lot about adapting to conditions in space," said Mark Geyer, NASA's ISS manager for integration and operations, in a telephone interview.

Humans have lived onboard the ISS since Nov. 2, 2000, when the three-man crew of Expedition 1 set foot inside the orbiting station. "It was a foggy day," Geyer said of Expedition 1's Oct. 31 launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. 的t was a long trip to see a three-second launch."

Geyer stressed that while humans have lived continuously aboard the ISS since 2000, they have lived in space much longer. The Russians had a near-continuous presence aboard Mir since 1996.

Still, 4 years is nothing to be sneezed at.

Drew Henson Makes An Appearance For The Cowboys
Bill Parcells finally let the failed Yankee take the field, but only after his main QB Vinny Testaverde got hurt. Henson completed six passes but the Cowboys haplessly went down 30-10 to the Ravens.

Quarterback Drew Henson replaced an ineffective Vinny Testaverde and completed all six of his passes, including the Cowboys' only touchdown, in a 30-10 loss to the Baltimore Ravens. Coach Bill Parcells was quick to point out that Testaverde injured his right shoulder after throwing his second interception, and Parcells refused to anoint Henson the starter against the Chicago Bears on Thursday.

"I don't know what's going to happen," said Parcells, who has so far ignored calls by fans and media for Henson to start. "Let's just see where he is. If I have all the facts, then I'll make a decision."

Henson said he did not feel overwhelmed against the Ravens' defense. As for Thursday, he said, "If I've got to go, I'll be ready. We'll see if Vinny can come back."

It's still nowhere near as fun as baseball, but there you have it. Drew Henson has sort of arrived. If it were a choice between being the Quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys on any given Sunday or the regular Thirdbaseman for the New York Yankees, you know I'd choose the latter. :)

- Art Neuro

A Self-Contradictory Life
Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the most successful small arm of the century, the AK47 turned 85 on 10 November.

Kalashnikov is the most poignant symbol of the decline. When the Soviet Union began to crumble in 1989, the legendary gun maker was 70 years old, rich in official honors and titles, but ill prepared for the market forces about to sweep Russia.

Kalashnikov makes nothing from his gun designs. The Soviet Union had licensed more than a dozen countries to manufacture his weapons. After 1991 post-communist middlemen began selling stock out of old Soviet armories, and today there are an estimated 100 million AK-47s in circulation. The rifle is featured on the flags of Mozambique and numerous jihadist groups. Knockoffs are everywhere; General Kalashnikov and Izhmash accused the United States this summer of buying pirate AK-47s for the Iraqi police force. And authentic AK-47s remain dirt cheap. "Militarily, the guys who are buying are poor and they're insurgents and they're just going to buy AK-47s," says Old Dominion University professor and small-arms expert Aaron Karp. "They'd be foolish not to."

So there you have it. Mikhail Kalashnikov goes on to say:

The romance is gone for Kalashnikov. He says he has been very careful about lending his name only to honorable products, but less so about the financial details. "I haven't become a billionaire. I haven't become a millionaire," he says. "And I think it's unlikely I ever will."

In another article, we see:

Kalashnikov said the rifle “was created to defend the fatherland,’’ adding, ”It is a pity it was used in other inadmissible conflicts,“ The New York Times reported.

So what we have here is a man who designed commy-tommy-guns, who wishes that they weren't used to kill people; and an old-time commie who laments he isn't going to be a millionaire or a billionaire.

- Art Neuro

Bureaucratic Planning
"The future is uncertain and The End is always near." So sang the late Jim Morrison in 'Roadhouse Blues'.
I am writing this before I forget this very interesting piece of Australian Film history which was told to me most elaborately and lavishly last Friday night as we celebrated the birthday of one Brain A. Williams.

In the 1970's a certain man I shall refer to as MJ, but not Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson found himself in the crucible of the Australian Film Industry's revival. It was 1975, he was the General Manager and co-founder of the now-legendary Sydney Film Co-operative, who was invited to participate in the 1975 'Australia 75' event in the category of Film and TV.

At one of the meetings, he was regaled to The Plan by a group of fifty-something-year old high ranking bureaucrats in Canberra over a lunch. The Plan, was conceived by Prime Minister John Gorton and Nugget Coombs to resuscitate the Australian Film Industry back in 1968. It was a 3-stage plan, consisting of three decades where Australia would put into effect a concerted plan to develop a film industry and cultural industry. The Plan consisted of a decade of reconstruction, a decade of development and decade of consolidation. Simple enough.

What MJ reports is that when he reflects on his lifetime in the film business, the Plan was indeed carried out and there is nothing surprising in that in of itself, but when you look at the details, the events become striking. In 1971, the Federal government created institutions such as the AFC, and AFTS; invested money to the AFI. In 1981, it introduced the 10BA tax concession which opened the floodgates to investment and in 1981; and in 1991 they moved to create the Film Finance Corporation. What was amazing to MJ was not only the fact that the Plan had succeeded in resuscitating a long-dormant film industry to the point where Hollywood came to shoot in Australia, but the fact the plan had survived successive governments.

The way MJ put it, John Gorton and Nugget Coombs conceived the Plan in 1968; and this was not junked by William McMahon ("He wasn't stupid enough to ditch it", as MJ put it). Gough Whitlam obviously saw no problem in continuing a cultural programme, and neither did Malcolm Fraser and then treasurer John Howard. Hawke and Keating obviously did not abandon the Plan and neither has the current Coalition government. In other words (mine) the Australian Government sustained an Affirmative Long Term Plan (ALTP) for the Film Industry. According to MJ, he has seen signs of 'the Plan' or an ALTP in other areas and sectors of Australian life. There has been an ALTP regarding Welfare, taxation, Micro-economic Reform, and so on. And what is truly amazing about this is that Federal Governments of both Major Parties come and go, but in essence, the policies that get carried out are indeed according to the ALTP.

"Think about that for a moment, the scope of this thing," said MJ. "These people are out there voting on politicians thinking there is a choice, but really there isn't. There's just 'The Plan' for everything and the Federal Government is just moving on it, administering it."
MJ went on to cite all the examples; how Keating was planning to do the same thing as the Howard government of completely dismantling the CES and creating a jobs-placement market. The GST was a bone of contention because he couldn't get it through the Labor Caucus as Option C in 1985 so Keating used it as a political stick for the 1993 election instead but the GST was always going to happen (an observation with which I agree). Floating the dollar, the de-regulation of the banking sector, all of these momentous policy shifts opf the past were executed according to plans drawn up by high level policy planners in the various bureaucracies.
That's right.

According to MJ, the high level policy planners of this country are all working to a Plan that is over-arching all the little issues we see day-to-day. Politics as we digest it in soundbites and TV segments and column inches is all window dressing; Which is entirely believable. We live under the rule not of democracy but a polytechno-oligarchy. Elections are the stuff of popularity contests; sort of a puppet show for the gallery.
- All of which dovetails with the Frank Zappa observation that government is the entertainment branch of industry. Its importance lies in looking important and it's only important because it's important to look important. If you thought baseball was smoke, well, politics is no different it seems. So much for the importance of electoral politics. As for the old Left/Right debates that masquerade as policy setting, well we can all consign those to history as something akin to interesting Broadway Musicals of the past.

And so we came to the end of the 30 year Film Industry Plan in 2001. What did the bureaucrats say about the film industry after the 30year plan to MJ back in 1975?
"They said after that, all bets are off."
I am a film maker in the post-ALTP period of the Australian Film Industry. :)

- Art Neuro

Quantum Astronomy Continued
Here's more in the second instalment.

The First Interplanetary Communication Link
Laser comm links to Mars!

The 5-watt laser NASA plans to test at Mars by the end of the decade is expected to transmit data at rates nearly 10 times faster than any existing interplanetary radio communications link. The difference, NASA officials said, will be comparable to moving from a dial-up modem to a broadband Internet connection.

But the new technology is not without its challenges and NASA says it could be decades before lasers are ready to take over as the primary means of communicating with spacecraft.

The U.S. military has plans to field a constellation of optical communications relay satellites in Earth orbit starting around 2012. Those satellites are intended to help the Pentagon deal with a bandwidth crunch that has been heightened in part by a growing fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles that are transmitting data-rich imagery.

NASA faces a bandwidth crunch of its own in deep space as more powerful spacecraft and instruments become reality. Highly reliable data links with fast transmission rates also are deemed critical to the human planetary expeditions NASA hopes to undertake. NASA is tackling some of the technical challenges facing interplanetary optical communications with the Mars Laser Communication Demonstration (MLCD) now in development at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.

It's like reading some sci-fi novel.

- Art Neuro

The Drew Henson Hour Approacheth
... but it ain't here yet.

"The other player gives us a better chance to win," Parcells said of Vinny Testaverde. "We're not running a tryout camp." Parcells said he didn't consider putting in Henson late in Monday's blowout loss for fear of subjecting him to the safety blitz. He compared Henson, who hasn't taken a snap this season, to a young fighter with only five or six bouts.

"It's not like I wouldn't want to find out about the player," said Parcells, "but right now I don't think it's the time." Parcells said he could spend two hours talking about the reasons he didn't want to play Henson yet, but declined to elaborate.

So we await the Cowboys to sink even further before the futur arrives in Dallas Football Land. So much for that.
Hey, it's a kind of star-gazing, okay?

- Art Neuro

Off The Air - A Quick Update Of The Space Freaks...
We're busy folks., and these are trying times.
Some of us are tyring to finish a thesis and this is tough as hell.
Some of us are trying to finish a film; this is tough business.
Some of us are also trying to finish an album. This is bloody tough when you're tyring to finish a film at the same time.
Some of us are considering launching a proper website to replace this meager blog.
Some of us are trying to write a manifesto of our collective position on Space Policy; and this is not going to be easy.
Some of us have Day-Jobs, some of us are tyring to secure one.
All of this and it's bleeding November!
So while we're off the air a bit, bear with us. :)

Politics In the Age of Scumbags
Everybody has a take on politics. It's the natural process of democracy where everybody's opinions (sad and pathetic as they are/might be) are not stamped out by some ideologue. This is a good thing. In the course of time, people start to get frustrated that they cannot convince others of their 'wisdom'. It may simly be the case that the so-called wisdom is simply a matter of being *wrong*; as in mistaken. In other words, it may all be opinion, but sometimes being wrong is being wrong is being wrong, much like Gertrude Stein's rose.

However, it has to be said that the adage, "politics is the last refuge of the scourndrel" was never more true than today.

People assume I am a political animal - I am not. I am an anti-politicial animal in as much as I try to cut out politics from the issue, as I strongly believe that technological solutions which rest on scientific method are far more likely to be useful than political soutions which rely heavily on people's emotional acceptance of unacceptable things. I know people love to say, what is not political, but I beg to say where philosophers seek the abstract sans the idiotic baggage of metaphsyics, I seek space policy sans the moronic baggage of politics. It may be nigh impossible, but anything would be better than the age old crap.

After all, if we are to get to space, maybe we have to take on the *unpolitic* to achieve the long term success for humanity. The way I figure it, politics, in the guise of Left/Right knuckle dusters and the usual he-said-she-said is about as useful as a spare groom at a wedding. And while both sides are into point-scoring over substantial policies, we have to say, it doth suck.
Folks, we're trying for space; not try and win the local election. We're entirely happy to leave politics to the scumbags, the scurrilous, the scoundrels, the scantily clad, the policy squonks, and the unadulterated scum. Just as long as we get the policies and outcomes we want. :)

In the mean time, 'Stick it to the man. '

- Art Neuro

Daisuke Matsuzaka Drops Major Hint
The Seibu Lions Ace, Daisuke Matsuzaka has dropped his first hint that he won't wait out until he earns his Free Agency in 2008 to try out with the Majors.

If you can read Japanese, here's the article. :)
Essentially he says, "Next year I'm with the Lions, but that's talking just about next year."
The indication seems to be that he would use the posting system to see what bids come over the Pacific Ocean for his services. Matsuzaka's got a 96mph Fastball a Slider, a plus Curve and allegedly, a weird screw-ball like 'gyro-ball'.

Mark my words, the Yankees will be in-like-Flynn on this bubba.

- Art Neuro

Inherit the Wind Redux
In what is another chapter in the on-going legal idiocies that are the monkey trials, the US stae of Georgia is hosting another round of seemingly never ending faith vs. science debates at the tax payer's expense. Get your barf-bags now. :)

The stickers, which appeared after pressure from hundreds of parents, many of them religious conservatives, read:

"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

Linwood Gunn, a lawyer for the suburban Atlanta school board, said the stickers only advised students to keep an open mind and did not promote religion in violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the school board on behalf of parents who believed the disclaimers pushed the teaching of creationism and discriminated against non-Christians and followers of other religions. Creationism rejects modern scientific explanations for the origin and development of life, preferring instead the idea of supernatural creation by God. Evolution, which is accepted by virtually all biologists, contends life developed from more primitive forms and was dictated by natural selection.

And yet, I still get people who express their 'doubts about evolution' on the grounds that not all the data is in. Seriously folks, how much data do you these people need? Isn't it good enough that Evolution is the equivalent of the Unfiied Field Theory for Biology?

Rover Report
Opportunity sems to remain opportunistic, while Spirit seems lost without any. Or so we are led to believe in this report.

- Art Neuro

Oh Yeah, There's This Thing Here
The MLB All-Stars are touring Japan again. They are winning 4 games to 2 in a best of 9. However pitching last night for Japan was our fave Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Matsuzaka who defeated Cuba in the opening round of this past August's Olympic Baseball tournament, allowed one-run and five-hits. He walked none and struck out six; he pitched the full 9 innings, silencing the MLB offense.
He's certainly living up to the long tradition of righty Japanese pitching aces.

- Art Neuro

Hey Pluto
Pluto is struggling to keep its status as a proper planet amongst its siblings. Being so far away and undernourished by the sun can possibly do that you. Anyway, Pluto's got good news. It's got Kuiper belt Objects.

"People were finding all these KBOs that were huge - literally half the size of Pluto or larger," University of Arizona astronomer John Stansberry said. "But those supposed sizes were based on assumptions that KBOs have very low albedos, similar to comets."

Albedo is a measure of how much light an object reflects. The more light an object reflects, the higher its albedo. Actual data on Kuiper Belt Object albedos have been hard to come by because the objects are so distant, dim and cold. Many astronomers have assumed that KBO albedos - like comet albedos - are around four percent and have used that number to calculate KBO diameters.

However, in early results from their Spitzer Space Telescope survey of 30 Kuiper Belt Objects, Stansberry and colleagues found that a distant KBO designated 2002 AW197 reflects 18 percent of its incident light and is about 700 kilometers (435 miles) in diameter. That's considerably smaller and more reflective than expected, Stansberry said.

"2002 AW197 is believed to be one of the largest KBOs thus far discovered," he said. "These results indicate that this object is larger than all but one main-belt asteroid(Ceres), about half the size of Pluto's moon, Charon, and about 30 percent as large and a tenth as massive as Pluto."

I'm sure the plaent is pleased as punch.

More Jokes About... Uranus
There are rings around your... Uranus.
Here's the article.

"It's really intriguing, the planet seems to be getting more active as the equinox approaches," said de Pater, who, with colleague Heidi B. Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., has been observing Uranus since 2000 with adaptive optics on the Keck II telescope.

"When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus in 1986, it saw almost no discrete cloud activity -- you could literally count the number of discrete clouds on your fingers: 10! Most astronomers decided that Uranus was a boring, static planet," Hammel added. "What we are seeing now is the opposite, that actually there are changes, and they are visible to Keck and the Hubble Space Telescope."

There you go. Rings around your...

Quantum Astronomy
I'm not an astronomy buff. I'm really not all that interested in gazing at stars through telescopes. I kind of left that behind as a kid and haven't missed it. But there are always interesting developments out there.

Here's one.

A Warm Dark Glow
Again, the straight astronomy aspect of this article leaves me a little bored, but here it is anyway.

- Art Neuro

Like many people I have difficulty understanding how Bush won the election at a time when he was so unpopular. Here, here and here are articles that offer an explanation. GWB fans might not want to read them, because the explanation involves Republican skullduggery and outright fraud.

Then again, there's nothing a red blooded conservative likes more than saying nasty things about "liberals", and I'm sure plenty of cause for that can be found in the material I referenced. So maybe there is something for everyone.

James

An Entry Not Totally About the Yankees
Steven Goldman who pens the Pinstriped Bible for the YES Network has this article this week. He essentially goes through the pros (lots) and cons (nothing) of keeping Jorge Posada in pinstripes. Last week, he jokingly/rhetorically suggested it was better to trade Captain Dreamboat Jeter than to trade catcher Jorge Posada (which is to say, don't trade him at all); to which he recived a lot of e-mails from those who didn't understand him. Some of it was obviously filled with crass invective, and so he had this to say:

Parenthetically, it's hard to imagine something less impressive than being ripped by a reader who hides behind an anonymous online handle. I never have a problem when a reader has a legitimate disagreement with an opinion expressed in this column. We're all about community here, and talking things over with the neighbors is one of the joys of being part of a community. When a reader doesn't make an argument but rather hurls invective from behind a nom de Internet, I don't see a neighbor with a point, but a coward who lacks both a point of view and the guts to stand up for himself.

I wholeheartedly agree with this paragraph so much I wanted to have it framed; instead I thought I'd bung it up here.
They do hang you for irony Mr. Goldman.

- Art Neuro

Weather Patterns Around Uranus
Laugh it up.
Now settle down and have a read:

The new images, from the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, provide insight into some of the most enigmatic weather in the solar system, researchers said today at a meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.

"The cloud features range from small to large, from dim and diffuse to sharp and bright, from rapidly evolving systems to stable features that last for years," said Lawrence Sromovsky of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center.

A large storm in the southern hemisphere seesaws over 5 degrees of latitude during several years. "It's weird behavior that hasn't been recognized before on Uranus," Sromovsky said. "It's similar to what's been seen on Neptune, although there the oscillation is much more rapid. Sromovsky added that it's not surprising to see cloud features drifting in latitude, but models don't predict the movement. "We don't know what makes it keep coming back to its starting point," he said.

The pictures also reveal a long, narrow complex of cloud features that is probably the largest group of atmospheric features ever seen on the planet. Spotted in the northern hemisphere, the 18,000-mile-long complex of clouds dissipated completely over the span of a month.

"These more dynamic systems seem to develop at northern latitudes apparently using up energy and dissipating relatively rapidly," Sromovsky said.

It's amazing how you say 'Uranus' and you get laughs.

Good Idea, Bad Plan
Here's an article about mining on the moon. The idea is of course to utilise resources on the places where we go. As you may well know, we have argued that the moon ain't much of a place to be going to do this stuff.

Renewed support for space resources has been unearthed in large measure by the "Exploration Vision" announced by President George W. Bush last February. Indeed, space resource proposals are now being considered by NASA 's Human and Robotic Technology Program.

"There is a range of possibilities for use of space resources in exploration strategy," even before people are dispatched back to the Moon and off to Mars, said Mike Duke, Director of the Center for Commercial Applications of Combustion in Space (CCACS)at the Colorado School of Mines. NASA, however, has yet to adopt ISRU in blueprinting that strategy, perhaps not willing at this point to take some assumptions・some leaps of faith," he suggested.

"There is a feeling that something is finally going to happen. Much of this feeling stems from President Bush's exploration initiative, which specifically calls for the use of extraterrestrial resources," noted G. Jeffrey Taylor, a professor of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawai'i in Honolulu and chair of the workshop's scientific program.

...Hmmm...
I dunno. Seems to me that we have to concede (again) that the current US President is for space exploration and therefore good for our cause.
Well, no skin off my nose to do so. Props to Dubya on that account.

For US$50 million Bucks You Can Buy...
Another Space Competition.
Rules are set for the new competition with Bigelow Aerospeace Prize money worth US $50million.

Anyone who wants to follow in the shoes of Burt Rutan and win the next big space prize will have to build a spacecraft capable of taking a crew of no fewer than five people to an altitude of 400 kilometers and complete two orbits of the Earth at that altitude. Then they have to repeat that accomplishment within 60 days.

While the first flight must demonstrate only the ability to carry five crew members, the winner will have to take at least five people up on the second flight. And one more thing. They have to do it by Jan. 10, 2010.

Those are just some of the rules that govern who wins the $50 million "America's Space Prize," an effort by Bigelow Aerospace, of North Las Vegas, Nevada, to spur the development of space tourism in low Earth orbit. No more than 20 percent of the spacecraft's hardware can be expendable. It must also demonstrate the ability to dock with Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space habitat and be able to stay docked in orbit for up to six months.

A key ambition of the Bigelow Aerospace cash reward is to break the monopoly on crew transport to space currently held by Russia's Soyuz spacecraft. "This is trying to be an alternative to the bad situation that our country is in with Soyuz," in terms of International Space Station operations, said Robert Bigelow, head of Bigelow Aerospace in an exclusive interview with SPACE.com and Space News.

Yeah. The Soyuz thing is bad... :)
Why don't they come out and say it flat out: it's the Space Shuttle that is bad. If it weren't so, we wouldn't be relying on old Soyuz to support the ISS.
Oh well. It's good news all the same.

- Art Neuro

Wag the Dog
Check this out.
Sort of explains a lot.

Your Parents Are Your Worst Enemies
You know your parents are your worst enemy when they stiff you you on your share.
I recently collected zero from the property-sale that showed 28k net capital gain when my shouldered risk was 40%.
My old man justified him taking all of the 28k on the grounds that it made up for his 'opportunity cost' for having put his momney into the venture when he could have collected the same interest in the bank. Needless to say I'm disgusted.
Afterwards he said I should get a steady job so he can help me with a mortgage again. I gagged and choked on a roasted almond, wishing I could die on the spot.

- Art Neuro

Futility Infielder Laments
In the recent days I have found this article by Jay Jaffe of Futility Infielder. Jay Jaffe is a Yankee fan who also writes for Baseball prospectus and is quite the raconteur on the Net. Normally I wouldn't really cite another blog for an article, but I thought this might shed some light on how people are feeling out there in the USA, just so that we can know they're not all crazy for Dubya.

I try very hard to steer clear of any head-on political content in this blog. An astute reader could certainly cobble together a good idea of where I stand based on the views I've aired regarding, say, stadium finance, gays in baseball, and the politicization of the Hall of Fame. But I started writing about baseball in order to get away from writing about politics and the culture wars, desiring to find a common bond among people who might otherwise disagree and seeing a need to shed the stridency which ran rampant through much of my writing and drained the joy I took from the endeavor. That desire has served me well for the past three and a half years, allowing me to build up a nice little audience and make a fulfilling sidelight out of this site. Despite my better impulses, I cannot let Tuesday's results pass without comment, if only because I know that I won't be able to write about the relatively trivial matters of baseball which capture my fancy until I vent my spleen. Feel free to disregard this post, or to vote with your feet either before or after I've aired my views, but don't expect a knock-down, drag-out exchange in the comments thread. Debating politics via this blog is a far more futile endeavor than the major league career of Enrique Wilson, and I've no intention of wasting further energy once I fire off this volley. Sad to say, it's just as unlikely you'll change my mind at this juncture as that I'll change yours.I'm absolutely devastated, disgusted, and revulsed not only by the thought of four more years under George W. Bush but also by the incredible polarization of this country. While I certainly believe that reasonable minds can disagree on a wide range of policy issues, I simply don't understand how anybody could look at the facts and think that we are safer today after four years under Bush, when 9/11 and the Iraqi debacle are direct results of the man's brazen ignorance and incompetence, and the U.S. is viewed with contempt by the enlightened democratic countries that should be our allies.I used to joke that I lived in New York City to get away from the crazy fundamentalists populating the rest of the country.

Now, it's no laughing matter. I feel far more endangered by what those zealots can produce via electoral politics -- especially with regards to this band of certified thugs who have just "won" and will do ever more to put Americans in harm's way -- than anything I might face on the darkest, most dangerous streets of New York City. Right now, writing about the first flicker of the hot stove flame feels like a hapless attempt at a coping strategy. As I've said before under similarly bleak circumstances, I would give anything to be yawning through a pitching change right now. I would watch a Red Sox victory parade and like it, paint my face and wear Jheri Curl while eating a vat of Boston Baked Beans, if it guaranteed a different electoral result. On that note, as the possibility of a Kerry presidency had dawned, I had imagined scribbling a short post about how such a victory was better -- exponentially better -- than winning four straight World Series. Now, staring at this most bitter and brutal defeat, I feel as though my team has lost, its stadium has been razed, and its players have been fed to the lions in front of a hostile Coliseum crowd. We do live in two different Americas, and I'm less optimistic with each passing day that the gap will ever be bridged.

After that, he goes back to writing about baseball, and it's all good. I have had other e-mails forwarded to me about the tremendous sense of disbelief and forboding that the recent election results have wrought in America. I won't post them because they are not public documents to be released in such a forum like this, but suffice to say, the tone is very similar. The outpouring is so much more amazing than when the Bush family seemingly stole the election in 2000.

At the best of times most of politics is smoke. it's the entertainment branch of the Military Industrial Complex in America, andin Australia it's the debating team competition in the school of Insiders. The only probelm is that it affects us so much on a daily level. John Howard's lurch (nay, charge) to the right has brought out all sorts of racists from the woodwork, allowing them a kind of social legitimacy. To think that we were once headed for a future society where tolerance was the cornerstone now seems remote and we are worse for it.
By the way, there are those who argue that there ought to be tolerance too for the intolerant, but really this is a sordid piece of sophistry.

The upshot of it is this: We live in interesting times. If we don't like what we see, then it is up to us to try and change them. The Sleeper must Awaken. Let the Power Fall. Don't get discouraged by the inert masses, the vicious demagogues, the strident critics, the lousy slogans; do your thing, keep talking, keep reasoning, keep persuading that there is a better way than simply 'more of the same and protect my hip pocket.' We'll be fighitng in the streets with our children at our feet and the 'morals' that they worship will be gone.
IOW, Rock on and stick it to the man.

- Art Neuro

Welcome To The Drew Henson Hour
Baseball Season has ended, and I have run out of smoke to fill the pages. I do want to sort of follow gridiron a little bit, only because ex-Yankee thirdbase prospect Drew Henson has moved back to try his hand at Football.

The story so far was that Drew Henson, a once-touted 3B propsect for the Yankees burnt out and decided to go back to his other sport, Football (a.k.a Gridiron). He was drafted speculatively by Houston, and this played into Henson's decision to quit baseball and his 17 milliondollar contract and try his hand at being a quarterback where he once considered a can't-miss future star in that sport. Henson was signed by Houston who traded him to the rather needy Dallas Cowboys organisation.

Henson's decision, combined with Aaron Boone's unfortunate basketball accident of course cleared the Yankee books to enable them to trade for Alex Rodriguez; so it is with some interest that I have followed Henson's football career. I'll be blunt: I barrack for the guy, even if he's playing for the hated Dallas Cowaboys. I want him to succeed. I can't explain why.
Maybe it's because there were some years where I was desperately waiting for him to arrive as the Yankee thirdbaseman of the future; a kind of a homegrown Troy Glaus homerun-mashing 3B. We Yankee faithful all hoped for that all-homegrown infield of Nick Johnson, Alfonso Soriano, Derek Jeter, Drew Henson. Just consider it a hangover of that anticipation of something that never came.

And so in that odd spirit, I present to you this article. And this one where the Cowboys took a humiliating 26-3 loss.

Hope is fleeting for the Cowboys (3-5). Only six teams have made the playoffs during the past five years with fewer than 10 wins. The Cowboys will be hard-pressed to win six of their next eight games to get to 9-7 and possible wild-card playoff contention. They will be decided underdogs in at least five of their remaining games, starting next Monday against the NFCEast-leading Eagles. The situation puts the inevitable quarterback change, to get rookie Drew Henson seasoning for next year, on the horizon.

Parcells, at wits' end with a team he calls "stupid," simply said he doesn't know "where we go from here, if anywhere."

"That is about as bad as it can get," Parcells said. "I am really embarrassed for that kind of performances. We were poorly coached and we played bad. I have to take the blame for it. I don't know that I can get them to do anything."

Parcells also described the 35-17 season-opening loss to Minnesota and the 40-21 loss to Green Bay two weeks ago as embarrassing. He called the latter the lowest point of his two-year tenure in Dallas.

That is, until Sunday.
Parcells offered an apology to owner Jerry Jones, who brought Parcells to Dallas last year with a four-year, $17.1 million contract to make the Cowboys into winners again.

"We just stink," Parcells said. "We are bad. I am ashamed and the owner doesn't deserve it. I did a poor job. We as a team did poor. I am embarrassed for the organization."

Eesh!. That doesn't sound too good. But it does open the door for this comment:

How bad are things in Dallas?
Bad enough that they probably want to switch to QB Drew Henson and play for the future. One problem: Next week is a Monday night game against the Eagles. Don't expect to see the rookie start that one. But after they fall to 3-6, expect him to start against Baltimore.

It looks like a long road ahead for Drew Henson, but I hope he makes it, and becomes the cornerstone of a Dallas Dynasty. I won't post results every week, but from time to time, I'm going to check in on the Cowboys. As for your hate-mail, I'm used to it from my Yankee excursions. :)

- Art Neuro

More Shots of Titan
In between the on-going 'War on Weasel Words' we are carrying out here, folks should check out this article about the radar imaging of Titan. Kind of cool.

The area shown is in the northern hemisphere of Titan and is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) wide by 300 kilometers (186 miles) long. The image is a part of a larger strip created from data taken on Oct. 26, 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft flew approximately 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) above Titan's surface.

More On The Huygens Probe
Here's an artricle about the possible surface conditions for the landing of the Hugens probe.

Commenting on the latest data results and implications for the Huygens probe Mark Leese of the Open University, Programme Manager for Science Surface Package [SSP] instruments that will unravel the mysteries of Titan said: "It's interesting that all of the possible landing scenarios that we envisaged - a hard crunch onto ice, a softer squelch into solid organics or a splash-down on a liquid hydrocarbon lake - still seem to exist on Titan."

Leese added, "A first look at the measurements of Titan's atmosphere during the fly- by suggest that the "Atmosphere Model" we developed and used to design the Huygens probe is valid and all looks good for the probe release on Christmas day and descent to the surface on 14th January 2005."

Further analysis of Titan's upper atmosphere, the thermosphere, has revealed a strange brew as Dr Ingo Mueller-Wodarg of Imperial College London explained," Our instrument, the Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS), made in-situ measurements of atmospheric gases in Titan's upper atmosphere and found a potent cocktail of nitrogen and methane, stirred up with signatures of hydrogen and other hydrocarbons. We are now working on a 'Weather Report' for the Huygens landing in January".

More On The Melting Polar Caps
There are still people in denial about the melting polar caps.
Here's the latest, and it ain't good. Ain't good at all.
I know it's a copyright no-no, but I've decided to copy the entire article here.

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming is heating the Arctic almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet in a thaw that threatens millions of livelihoods and could wipe out polar bears by 2100, an eight-nation report said on Monday.

The biggest survey to date of the Arctic climate, by 250 scientists, said the accelerating melt could be a foretaste of wider disruptions from a build-up of human emissions of heat-trapping gases in the earth's atmosphere.

The "Arctic climate is now warming rapidly and much larger changes are projected," according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), funded by the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Finland.

Arctic temperatures are rising at almost twice the global average and could leap 4-7 Celsius (7-13 Fahrenheit) by 2100, roughly twice the global average projected by U.N. reports. Siberia and Alaska have already warmed by 2-3 C since the 1950s.
Possible benefits like more productive fisheries, easier access to oil and gas deposits or trans-Arctic shipping routes would be outweighed by threats to indigenous peoples and the habitats of animals and plants.

Sea ice around the North Pole, for instance, could almost disappear in summer by the end of the century. The extent of the ice has already shrunk by 15 percent to 20 percent in the past 30 years. "Polar bears are unlikely to survive as a species if there is an almost complete loss of summer sea-ice cover," the report said. On land, creatures like lemmings, caribou, reindeer and snowy owls are being squeezed north into a narrower range.

FOSSIL FUELS BLAMED
The report mainly blames the melt on gases from fossil fuels burned in cars, factories and power plants. The Arctic warms faster than the global average because dark ground and water, once exposed, traps more heat than reflective snow and ice. Klaus Toepfer, head of the U.N. Environment Program, said the Arctic changes were an early warning.

"What happens there is of concern for everyone because Arctic warming and its consequences have worldwide implications," he said. And the melting of glaciers is expected to raise world sea levels by about 10 cm (4 inches) by the end of the century. Many of the 4 million people in the Arctic are already suffering. Buildings from Russia to Canada have collapsed because of subsidence linked to thawing permafrost that also destabilizes oil pipelines, roads and airports.

Indigenous hunters are falling through thinning ice and say that prey from seals to whales is harder to find. Rising levels of ultra-violet radiation may cause cancers. Changes under way in the Arctic "present serious challenges to human health and food security, and possibly even (to) the survival of some cultures," the report says.

Farming could benefit in some areas, while more productive forests are moving north on to former tundra. "There are not just negative consequences, there will be new opportunities too," said Paal Prestrud, vice-chair of ACIA.

Scientists will meet in Iceland this week to discuss the report. Foreign ministers from Arctic nations are due to meet in Iceland on Nov. 24 but diplomats say they are deeply split with Washington least willing to make drastic action. President Bush pulled the United States, the world's top polluter, out of the 126-nation Kyoto protocol in 2001, arguing its curbs on greenhouse gas emissions were too costly and unfairly excluded developing nations.

"Kyoto is only a first step," said Norwegian Environment Minister Knut Hareide, a strong backer of Kyoto. "The clear message from this report is that Kyoto is not
enough. We must reduce emissions much more in coming decades."

So much for the vapid claim that the US Republicans are somehow eco-friendly.

Predicting Earthquakes
They used to joke about this, but now we find that there's a group that claims they have accurately predicted all the Earthquakes in the last 4 years.

Using historical seismic records as a base, the Rundle-Tiampo earthquake forecast has accurately predicted locations for 15 of the last 16 temblors with magnitudes greater than 5.0 on the Richter scale, all of which have occurred since January 2000. The forecast is currently about halfway through its 10-year timespan.

“I have to say that it's gratifying, though I'm not surprised,” said Kristy Tiampo, an assistant professor with the University of Western Ontario in Canada, during a telephone interview. “The Southern California and Northern California seismic networks have quite good databases, the best freely available data around.”

This is indeed a breakthrough. Watch insurance companies fund the research in future... methinks. :)

- Art Neuro

Busy Week
Sorry about the lack of posts. I've been busy doing a corporate video for IBM, which was fun, but in its own way gruelling. 20hour days on location and in the cutting room can drive you bananas. I've needed a rest.

This week saw the re-election of the Bush regime back into the White House, giving us 4 more years of whatever it is that they have been giving us. Surprisingly (unless one is a redneck or a Conservative Weasel), the US decided to vote back in a candidate that has given them such wonderful moments as September 11, War in Afghanistan, Gulf War II: War on Iraq, and ballooning fiscal deficit. These things are not good management by any stretch of the imagination but polling showed these international matters were not what mattered. What mattered were what are allegedly referred to as 'morals issues'; that gay marriages Stem cell research and abortion be stopped.

Well, blow me down with a cyclone, but if as a collective, the US electorate is willing to vote for those issues far more than any other issue and deliver a victory to George W. Bush, then it can be said that they are as a collective, ignorant, myopic and devoid of intelligence. 72% still believe that Iraq had WMDs at the time of the War on Iraq, and 55% believe the Iraqis were behind September 11 attacks; something that is just not true.

Separation of Church and State
For reasons of expediency, in recent years, conservative parties have taken to courting the religious vote. In turn, this has manifested itself in strange ways, such as the appointment of Dr. Peter Hollingworth as Governor general of Australia. While I do not wish to go over his questionable record as a clergyman, it is worth noting that appointing a Bishop as a Governor General no matter how well respected and loved, is crossing the hard-won line between Church and State.

Similarly, the conservative parties have asked churches to arrange for their constituencies to vote as a block. This ridiculous trend has reached such a point that the Amish are now voting. Think about that for a moment. The Amish as a bloc-voted for George W Bush. The Amish, who eschewed politics and technology found themselves registering to vote.

“Pennsylvania and Ohio are just absolute battleground states, and to think that the Amish could weigh in to the tune of thousands of votes that are clearly going to be Republican — that could be very significant for Bush,” said Chet Beiler, a former Amish who has been dropping off voter registration forms at Amish businesses and farms in hopes of signing up as many as 3,000 new voters.

As pacifists, most Amish avoid political activity that they believe would link them even indirectly with government-sponsored violence. But hot-button social issues, coupled with gentle prompting from people like Beiler, are galvanizing some Amish to register to vote.

“We hate that abortion issue,” said Sam Stolztfus, 60, an Amish farmer and gazebo maker in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, where an estimated 27,000 Amish live. “We’re totally against it. And as far as gay issues, that’s completely contrary to the
Bible.”

The bearded Stolztfus proudly says the Amish are “sort of swept up with Bush fever.”

Apparently it's more important for gays to not get married; it's more important not to have abortions, but the violent military actions carried out by the US Government around the world are 'A-okay'.
Ugh. What about all the guff about non-violence? The beards and no moustaches, because moustaches were worn by military folk? What happened to all that 'Witness' stuff where you turn the other cheek?
This is sure to go down in history as one of the Great moments in Amish philosophy. Really, LOL, how stupid are these people? I guess it doesn't matter now. Which is typically in line with the stupidity of the rest of the Churches bloc-voting for Bush.

In Sydney, the church in Blacktown went and printed fake how-to-vote cards of a Lebanese Australian Labor Party candidate, saying he wanted to spread Islam in Australia. Talk about having too much money.

But really, folks, we ought to be very concerned with this trend where the conservatives are going back and mixing God and politics. Kings (for whom Conservatives show much love and affection) fought for this line. Thomas a Beckett died for this. As did Sir Thomas Moore. Countless innocents died in the conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic Church, just to get the Church out of politics in Germany. The line between Church and State is a fruit of all those events in history and is a line that should not be rubbed out just because it gives you another few years in office. But what can you do? The fools for Christ want to be stupid, and want to remain stupid in the face of the world's problems.

What to Do With The Churches
It would never happen because too many people are willing to be stupid, but here's the Frank Zappa Plan:

1. Tax the Churches.
2. Tax the Businesses Owned by The Churches.

If God wants a hand in our politics, he's got to pay the fare for participating.

Hurled Abuse and Insults
Lately, Mr. Conservative Weasel has taken to baiting this writer about political stuff. I cannot say how much dismay it gives me that he keeps baiting me about things I don't really care about. Frankly, it's tedious as his Left-Right politics. The advice of other readers has been, "just ignore it". However, it wouldn't be fair to such a good reader as Mr. Weasel to go unanswered. So here's my answer to all his carping and invective and generally unsound, un-empathic inter-personal behaviour:
Dear Mr. Weasel, nobody but you thinks I or db are Leftists. Nobody thinks you are anywhere near the centre as you so claim.

- Art Neuro

200 Years
As Poofter's Froth Wyoming goes to the polls to decide which puppet of the Military Industry Complex will get to show off his peacock suit, we should consider that civilisation as we know it, specifically that which guzzles oil and spurts out Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere at an accelerating rate, has got a sunset clause. Put bluntly, this isn't going to last forever because either we're going to give out or the Earth is going to give out, or both are going to give out.

This topic has been discussed to death everywhere, and while there are folks who remain adamant that human ingenuity will get us through this death trap. Schumpeter, a very important economist called this process the dynamic destruction and recreation of value. This is fine. However, the planet is actually a finite resource. No matter how efficient humanity becomes in utilising its resources, it's eventually going to eat through all of it. Now this might be 50-100 years away depending on which brand of apocalyptic Greenie you ask. But let's say it's 200 years off. What the hell are we doing about it? Right now, we're quibbling over who gets to use up the main energy resource first and by how much.

Now, here's the thing. By definition (supplied to us by our very own trenchant critic Mr. Conservative Weasel), a conservative person would say, "this is fine, leave it alone, it's a thing of beauty, it's always worked don't change a thing."
Now, in most instances of history, this was an okay thing to say. Because many problems can be just put off to be solved by future generations. The meta-problem if you will, with sending off to tomorrow, the problems that ought to be solved today is that with our 200 year crunch-time time limit, it's eventually going to catch up with your great grand kids. Of course the powers that be in power today don't think that future people vote today so they are happy to sell them down the river.

Right now, we have two major parties paying lip-service to this issue, but both of them put in such a feeble attempt to address these issues. Things are not getting done. Neither the traditional Left nor the Right have a plan. (BTW We have a plan - go to space). Which is to day, the tradition of Left-Right politics is not going to serve us one jot, going into the last 200 years of our civilisation. It's only going to get uglier and pretty soon, it's going to be blame=throwers at 10 paces. It is against this back drop that the two US presidential candidates consist of two multi-millionaires, one who IS the oil company front man, and the in the other corner is somebody who is clearly the main man for the Industrialists of the US North East.

And then there are people who find this 2 horse race compelling and significant.
The future of our world never looked so bleak as it does today.

- Art Neuro

Tycho Brahe's Lost Star Found
Here's the article.

The finding will help researchers better understand the conditions under which a certain type of stellar explosion occurs. Some astronomers have suggested type 1a supernovas -- the variety apparently seen by Tycho Brahe -- might be the result of stellar collisions between two white dwarfs, rather than the mass-transfer idea.

"If we accept that the companion has been identified, then we now know for the first time that not all type-Ia supernovae are produced by coalescence of white dwarfs," writes University of Oklahoma physicist David Branch in an analysis of the work forthe journal.

All this is important in part because type 1a supernovas are rare in our galaxy but common in the universe as a whole. All of them achieve an almost identical maximum brightness, then fade at a nearly identical rate. So astronomers use them as "standard candles" to measure distances to faraway galaxies.

No wise cracks today.

Brain Size and IQ Evolution
If you believe this sort of thing is important, here's the article.

As little as we know about our own intellectual history, we know even less about other, clearly brainy species, such as dolphins. Correction: make that past tense. Some research just published by behavioral biologist Lori Marino (of Emory University and the SETI Insitute), together with her colleagues Dan McShea and Mark D. Uhen, has, for the first time, mapped out the intelligence of toothed whales and dolphins over the past 50 million years. This map may lead us to some real research treasure: uncovering just what it is that provokes evolution to select for high intelligence. How could Marino and her team measure the IQ's of animals that breathed their last millions of years ago? She used what has become an accepted standard for gauging the intelligence of animals both dead and alive: the so-called 'encephalization quotient', or EQ.

Simply put, this is the mass of the brain, as a fraction of body weight. If you have an average-sized brain for your body weight, then your EQ is one. If you have twice as massive a brain as the average species your size, then your EQ is two - and you move, if not to the head of the class, then at least a few rows forward.

If you believe in such studies...
I am sceptical.

- Art Neuro