Diane's Blog

Happy New Year

My last post of 2006 is about the movies. We had a good laugh reading the worst movie list of 2006 in the SF Chronicle. The movie critic
Mick La Salle gave the #1 honors to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Having seen the same movie the night before, we must agree with Mick.

El Stinkaroo! Was there any dialog in that movie?

The best movie I saw this year at home (from Netflix) was Reds. I had been patiently waiting for years for that movie to come out on DVD and I was not disappointed. Hollywood can't seem to make epic movies like Reds anymore.

The recent movies that I really enjoyed this year were Syriana, Constant Gardener, Good Night and Good Luck and Nanny McPhee.

I have to get ready to go party, so have a Happy New Year and enjoy the movies in 2007.

Peace on Earth

Today is the 92nd anniversary of the 1914 Christmas Day Truce of World War I.

Like that day, may peace break out in the world...even if only for a day.

Merry Christmas to everyone in the pixelated world.

Lava Lava Everywhere

On Friday we drove to Volcano National Park. The park is quite a contrast between cool fern covered rainforest and hot wind blasted lava fields. We drove around Crater Rim Drive and then drove down Chain of Craters Road to the end.

Halemauma'u Crater---A boiling lava lake during the 19th century and described by Mark Twain as "the fiery pits of hell."

Steam Vents

Continue reading "Lava Lava Everywhere"

Pu'uhonua o Honaunau

Honaunau Bay was a place of residence for the royal chiefs of Hawaii. Part of Honaunau Bay was the Pu'uhonua, which was a place of refuge for those who had broken taboos, laws, or declined to fight in the chieftain's wars. Any lawbreaker reaching the Pu'uhonua could not be touched or punished.

Continue reading "Pu'uhonua o Honaunau"

Waterfalls, Flora and Fauna

We spent our first weekend in Hawaii indoors... because of two days of rain. On Monday, we headed out the door early to Hilo which is located on the rainy side of the Island. Hilo is known for waterfalls, tropical gardens and the University of Hawaii.

Photographs from the World Botanical Gardens and Umauma Falls.

UMAUMA FALLS

RAIN FOREST

Continue reading "Waterfalls, Flora and Fauna"

Aloha from 13,976 ft

I am taking a break from boring and contentious subjects like politics. Instead I will be posting my boring and not so contentious vacation pictures from Hawaii, the Big Island.

Today we headed for the top of Mauna Kea, the highest point in Hawaii and home to quite a few telescopes. To get to the top is quite an adventure. First you have to drive past a military firing range on a road that has been chewed up by jeeps and then you have to dodge invisible cows.

We stopped at the Visitors' Center (9,000 ft) to get accustomed to the higher altitude, and then up we went.

As you can see the area is very desolate but the sky is clear and perfect for viewing objects in deep space. The summit of Mauna Kea is 13,976 ft and you start to feel the effects of less oxygen the moment you start to walk around.

The photograph is of the Keck I and Keck II telescopes and the Suburu telescope.

Who's Afraid of Happy Days

This is my post election day post!

Natural-amente--- I am VERY happy about the outcome of the 2006 national elections..but I don't need to add anything to all the spin and analysis that is already part of the pixelated world..except to SING...

(Follow the Bouncing Ball )

Happy Days are Here Again.. the skies above are clear again
(Go... Sen. Boxer)
So let's sing a song of cheer again. Happy days are here again.

Okay...Optimism is the attitude of fools.... but I can be a fool for a day or two.

I started reading "The Waves" by Virginia Woolf this weekend. I was quite inspired by this essay and decided maybe it is time to read a book ( with pages I can destroy or go back to ten years from now...unlike the pixelated world). I am at the half-way mark...Next weekend, maybe I will have a great essay about how Bernard and G.W. are twins separated by decades....or maybe I won't. Is Condi...Susan? Is Karl Rove...Louis? Is the entire Rep.party Louis?

Stay Tuned!

BOO!

Rising from the internet graveyard is ISNTITOBVIOUS.

(Sound effects..moan..groan...scream really loud)

It's Halloween and time for a holiday post. Halloween precedes Election Day, the day when events get really scary.
I think Halloween is just a warm-up.

Don't you just want to dive under the bed when the VEEP starts talking about torture. I hate to think that one day soon you turn on CNN and the politicians look like executioners. Or maybe wear the dominatrix look. (That might be future Pres_Senator Clinton)

One of the non-issues about Halloween 2006 are sexy costumes for little girls. The culture warriors blame it on the FEMINISTS.
Now how stupid is that. How about the retailers??? I know Gloria once wore the bunny suit....but really it makes more sense to blame Walmart.

I am waiting for sweets to be the issue next year. What! You're letting your little girl (in her hooker costume) start on the road to diabetes and heart disease.

No I have not spent the last six weeks in the hospital due to eating spinach. That's just a rumor.

Spinach Kills!

Hey Kids, the US government says don't eat your spinach.

It's bad for you....it's a killer.

My favorite science bloggers explain it all:

Carl Zimmer: The Loom

This post tells just what Escherichia coli O157:H7 does to the body.

Mike the Mad Biologist

Wants you to know, only some E. coli are biological terrorists....most are peaceful.

Tara Smith: Aetiology:

Tara says ignore the Dateline, CNN, Fox hype and EAT your vegetables. Just cook them or wash them really well.

Finally...A Science Post

From The Loom:

For the next two months the online archives of the Royal Society will searchable for free. The archive goes all the way back to 1665.

Historical papers you can find in the archives include:

The Complementary Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid
F.H.C Crick and J.D Watson - 1954

On the Hoyle-Narlikar Theory of Gravitation
S. W. Hawking - 1965

Alexander Fleming (Paper describing early stages of penicillin discoveries) - 1922

Arthur Eddington's solar eclipse observations, confirming Einstein's general theory of relativity (Phil Trans 1919)

Mentioned in the post was Mr. Zimmer's book The Soul Made Flesh. I read it last December during vacation. It tells the story of Thomas Willis, an unknown scientist...yet he is considered the father of neuroscience.

An interesting point of this book is that Thomas Willis and his fellow students at Oxford were able to study science in the manner it is done today because the professors they were beholden to for grades and degrees had left Oxford. It seems there was a civil war going on and the cowardly professors exited and left their science students to their own devices. The Oxford students learned science through experiments instead of philosophy lectures. And history was made.

Anyway I recommend the book.

Antique Tin Foil Hats Part II

Ok readers, I am not going to be silly this time. Austria is not taking over the U.S.A.

Ms Maha has a reason why she linked to R. Hofstadter's article "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". She's angry with an editorial in the Washington Post about the late Mr. Hofstadter.

For one thing, according to Maha the editorial is pointless and stupid
Oh Really....a pointless and stupid op-ed...

One bad sentence caught my eye:

It was a mistake to tear liberalism from its populist roots and to emphasize the irrational element of popular movements almost to the exclusion of their own self-understanding.

As if one person (Hofstadter) could do that.
(Who never had a T.V show!)

The populists groups of liberalism were farmers and union members which happen to be as scarce as wired phones that you dial.

This group wasn't repudiated by elites.....assassinated by the modern world is more like it.

Whether that's right or wrong...or good or bad...maybe I'll leave that to another post.

But back to the op-ed. Read the darn thing but be forewarned.
It's just another boring "why does everyone hate the liberals" piece ...

Except this time, to be more classy the theme is let's blame it on a dead intellectual instead of Bill Clinton or Michael Moore.

Antique Tin Foil Hats

Are you tired of hearing about 9-11, Iraq, Iran, and terrorists? Are you envious of your ancestors or even dear old Grandma and Grandpa because they never had to listen to this anxiety producing crapola on Fox-CNN?

Well first unplug the television set and then read this link to Richard Hofstadter's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". The essay was written in 1963 during the cold war and applies to the new war on terror as well.

Yes, political paranoia about the "other" is as old as America. It started with the Catholics....I think the Gunpowder Plot had something to do with starting that particular brand of paranoia which imported nicely to the colonies. Religious paranoia went out of fashion at the beginning of 20th century and was replaced with Bolshevik and Communist paranoid fantasies.

I find it interesting that the Nazis or fascists are never mentioned. Nazis seem to be the modern default symbol for evil, yet did any political group have tin foil theories about them during the thirties?

I do have to point out this particular part of the essay....

Two books which appeared in 1835 described the new danger to the ?American way of life and may be taken as expressions of the anti-Catholic mentality. One, Foreign Conspiracies against the Liberties of the United States, was from the hand of the celebrated painter and inventor of the telegraph, S.F.B. Morse. “A conspiracy exists,” Morse proclaimed , and “its plans are already in operation…we are attacked in a vulnerable quarter which cannot be defended by our ships, our forts, or our armies.” The main source of the conspiracy Morse found in Metternich’s government:

“Austria is now acting in this country. She has devised a grand scheme. She has organized a great plan for doing something here.…

She has her Jesuit missionaries traveling through the land; she has supplied them with money, and has furnished a fountain for a regular supply.” Were the plot successful, Morse said, some scion of the House of Hapsburg would soon be installed as Emperor of the United States.

Well see, maybe those tin foil hat guys were right after all. Look who is Governor of California...(the most populous and one of the richest states in America). Maybe that law about the president needing to be born in America will be changed and he can become president. Do you suppose he is a scion of the house of Hapsburg?

Thanks to Mahablog for the link to the essay!

Monday Poetry

Chaplinesque

We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

Hart Crane   1926

It's September

Summer is over and it is back to the serious business of education and governing. The Science Bloggers are all back in school and our intrepid American journalists are sharpening their pencils and wits in anticipation of the upcoming 2006 election season. Here in California the movie star governor is up for re-election...(Ssh...I think its a secret). I'm not sure what we will be asked to decide about the governance of the city of San Francisco...I read in the Chronicle that it will be ten issues, including the impeachment of Bush and Cheney...which means if the Republicans lose the House......

Those of us conspiracy theory nuts are waiting for a Bush October surprise....or more likely a Diebold surprise.

Meantime I intend to enjoy our San Francisco September weather and be grateful that I can write for fun and not worry about grades.

Planet Gimli

NASA is not happy. No it's not a budget cut. It's that Pluto is not a planet anymore. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided to vote Pluto out of the planet club because of its highly elliptical orbit that overlaps with Neptune.

It isn't all about size. (Like everyone thought)

The New Horizons mission to Pluto isn't the first voyage to the last planet anymore. It may not even be the first voyage to a dwarf planet. Ceres may be upgraded to dwarf planet, and if NASA's Dawn mission launches next summer, it will arrive at Ceres five months before New Horizons gets to Pluto.

From NASA: New Horizons Continuing on to Pluto, Planet or Not