UnSpace

I walked into the Bird "Flight Room" on Thursday evening to find Princess, our cockatiel, skewered through her wing on a branch of the willow tree we keep in the room. At first I thought she was dead, but examining her showed that she was exhausted, frightened, but still alive. The budgies had chewed the upturned branch to a mild point. Despite the branch being protected by the rest of the tree, somehow Princess fell onto it, having it pass through the wing just above the radius and ulna.

We had last been in the room an hour before. There were no screams. We don't know how long she was hanging.

In humans, the impaling object would be cut away, stabilized, and the person transported to the hospital. Cutting away the branch would have delayed getting Princess free and greatly increased her fear. Against my training I correctly decided (according to the vet) that sliding her up the branch was the best way to free her. There was no further bleeding.

The vet says nothing was broken. The place Princess pierced is similar to the webbing between fingers, cannot be stitched, and should heal on its own. There is a possibility that we may have a "punk" bird with a piercing after this, but the wound should heal and Princess be able to fly again.

She was given a shot of antibiotic, placed on a twice daily antibiotic, and was also placed on Metacam for pain control. She doesn't like having her wing wrapped up, but has given up attempting to remove the dressing the vet placed. She's in an incubator to keep her warm and we take her out and cuddle her several times a day to help her feel less lonely.

Princess, by the way, was the Angel on our Birdie Nativity Play Christmas card last year. She also starred as an adornment on a wreath in our 1998 Christmas card, when she was less than a year old!

Ok, so it's not really spring, but Pittsburgh set a new record for the warmest temperature here on January 7th today: 66°F. Yesterday, I went for a walk on the Eliza Trail (photos coming!) and today I went to Piney Fork (left the camera).

Spring thaw has a smell, that smell was absent during the walk. But I'm still spoiled by today. When snow comes once again, I think it will be harder to take.

The City of Bridges had another wonderful First Night Celebration last night! Nancy and I have taken to making our usual date for New Year's at Pittsburgh's First Night. Hey, just because we got married doesn't mean we don't still go out on dates with each other! We were looking forward to this event, especially since we finally got tickets to a performance of the improv group "Amish Monkeys."

Note: There are a lot of pictures here, so to keep this blog loading in something resembling a reasonable time, I've provided thumbnails — click to enlarge if you'd like a better look.

We parked the car outside the rivers and walked Downtown. As we crossed a bridge, we got to see the "Children's Fireworks." They had one set of fireworks at an early hour so the younger set could see them.

Our first stop was at the O'Reiley theater, where we saw the Amish Monkeys perform hysterically. Afterward, we went to Christos' Mediterranean Restaurant on 6th Avenue for a late dinner. Nancy and I had a wonderful dinner, and I got to take a small taste of her Carmel Creme dessert.

Parked outside what used to be the Fulton and Fulton Mini (I think it's called the Byham, now) was a cool car. Anyone know what it is?

We were able to see the First Night Parade as it went past on 6th avenue. A rumor in the streets had it that the Mayor, Luke Ravenstahl, was in New York celebrating at UPMC's expense. Not true at all! Sorry to ruin it for all you Lukey Haters, but here's a picture of the young Mayor leading the parade — in Pittsburgh:

The parade itself had people carrying grotesques. I used to know the story behind them, but here are some pictures.

One of the cool things about First Night is the number of things going on — you can't get to see them all. I missed the Clarks and we never went far enough East to see Brad Yoder (Pittsburgh's Best Solo Act according to Pittsburgh's City Paper, although I'd argue it should be the 2nd Best, Cathasaigh). Nancy picked out a number of things we wanted to see, including the Aboriginal Art at Spaces on Liberty Avenue. Along the way, we saw music performances in the street, with dancing and drumming.

There were also some odd sights. Outdoor Adventures decorated a tree with magnolia blossoms, making it appear the tree had bloomed in winter. A big hit with the youngsters were the lightsabers for sale.

We love the ice sculpture fellow, and he didn't disappoint this year, either. Look at the detail of the city! Art with chainsaws — why not?

Pittsburgh itself looked gorgeous, as some of these shots will show:

Near midnight, the Alcoa ///// Bayer Clock began the countdown to Midnight — a couple seconds off. At midnight, the fireworks started! Nancy wished me a "Happy New Year and Happy White Rabbit Day!" She always gets me on New Year's Eve.

We had a great time. Last time, the fireworks went off up around the 9th Street Bridge; this year they were Downtown, so we didn't get good photographs. But we were near the car and got home quickly where we celebrated a bit more and then did birdie waters, birdie food, and crashed.

Happy New Year Everyone!

There's a 3.9% chance an asteroid is going to whomp into Mars next January 30th at about 5:55 a.m. The rock is about the size of the Tunguska meteor. I have no idea what the science value would be; the impact would simply have a major cool factor.

I can't help but wonder, though. What if the meteor hits the one part of Mars that still has life?

Oh well, there's always Europa!

[Insert joke about crappy weather in Pittsburgh for any astronomical event I want to watch.]

I read through a lot of news sites in the morning as I eat breakfast. Two articles which I pulled up back to back were:

• Death From All Sides: "An extensive evidence file assembled by the Iraqi National Police after the controversial Blackwater shooting suggests that the private contractors opened fire unprovoked from the ground and the sky."
• Nickel Mines legacy: Forgive first: "Members of the Nickel Mines Amish community came together to share their sorrow the day after the shooting a year ago that left five girls dead. When the community reached out to the widow and parents of the murderer they sparked a national conversation on the power of forgiveness."

For those of you not familiar with the Blackwater USA security firm, it's founder is Erik Prince, someone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Most of the Blackwater soldiers claim to be followers of Jesus.

For those of you not familiar with the Nickel Mines Amish community, you probably think of them as "technologically impaired." But the reason for their avoidance of most technology is to keep them from being distracted from Jesus Christ.

Like I said, the two articles showed up back to back. To the first, I would say "These people do not represent all Christians." Unfortunately, I would also say the same about the second article, with a totally different feeling about it.

I passed the link to the story "Scientists Ask Congress to Fund $50 Billion Science Thing" to numerous friends and made an amazing discovery. Go check out the article and then read the rest of this post.

Read the rest of this entry »

Why didn't Giuliani, McCain, Romney and Thompson show up at the "minority debate"? This latest GOP debate featured African-American and Hispanic journalists asking the questions. Why didn't the top four Republicans show up?

They claimed they all had "prior commitments" but the real reason is strategy. Minority voters aren't likely to vote Republican in the primary, so why should the top four bother appealing to them as a constituency? Had they appealed to minority interests, such an appeal might even hurt their cause with those who are racist among the Republicans. Right now, their biggest foe is not the Democrats, but each other — including President George W. Bush.

Of course the also-ran Republicans showed up. They are so little known, any coverage is good. And of course all the Democrats showed up at the previous Democratic minority debate — if the minorities are going to vote in the primary, they are likely registered as Democrats.

The Republicans shouldn't appeal to the minority groups at this point. During the last presidential election, they didn't try all that hard to reach out to the minority voters. Instead, they created a bogus issue like gay marriage to frighten religious minority voters into voting for them. That way, there would be less damage when the Republicans forgot about minorities once the election was over.

Tactic wise, skipping the minority debate was the perfect thing for the Republican front-runners to do.

This does beg the question, though: are these the tactics you want your president resorting to? Is this the sort of morality you want in the Oval Office?

Somehow, this Diversity Matters logo…well, let's just see what you think:

Alex, co-worker with Dr. Irene Pepperberg, died on September 7th.

African grey parrots have a quoted lifespan of about 60 years, but it is thought by many that with good care, those alive today have the potential to live to be 100. Alex has been treated for aspergillus in the past. In parrots, it's not a disease that's ever cured, although it's far more comforting to forget something like that.

I think I'm going to get Cirrus our African grey parrot and play with her and tell her how much we love her. Nancy is doing the same right now with Holmes, our other African grey.

Bye, Alex.

As Cirrus would say…"Woooo!"

I've only skimmed the PDF "The Axis of Opportunity: The Large-Scale Correlation of Elliptical Galaxies" by Michael J. Longo (arXiv preprint, found via Slashdot) but I'm already convinced this result is startling:

I have studied a sample of 200,000 elliptical galaxies with redshifts <0.20 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to investigate whether they tend to have their ellipticities aligned along a particular axis. The data show a 13 standard deviation signal for such an alignment. The axis is close to the spiral spin axis found previously and to that of the quadrupole and octopole moments in the WMAP microwave sky survey.

According to the standard cosmological model, there should not be any axial alignment. Summing up all the rotations ought to give zero. According to this paper, the axis of rotation is "13 standard deviation[s]." Thirteen standard deviations means there's no way this is an accidental result. This result also appears to match the cosmic ray background mapped by the WMAP sky survey, which showed a spin axis most astronomers were hoping was a chance artifact.

This result begs the question "What is the universe rotating relative to?" If this universe is all there is, then it cannot rotate as the WMAP appears to indicate.

There could be several answers:

• Bigger Than What We Can See: Somewhere beyond the event horizon of the observable universe, the universe has segments rotating in the opposite direction. It all averages out, but it's too far away for us to see it.
• The Antimatter Asymmetry Problem: If Charge Parity Time (CPT) is conserved, there ought to be as much anti-matter as matter. That the universe is predominantly matter and not antimatter means CPT is not conserved and "symmetry breaking" occurred. (Think of asymmetry breaking as putting a marble exactly at the top of a perfectly formed sphere. The marble will fall down the sphere, but in choosing a direction, symmetry was broken). One possible way to account for the asymmetry would be if the rotation of the galaxies is somehow because matter predominates. If the universe were anti-matter, the rotation would be in the opposite direction. Remember — if you were removed from our universe, flipped 180 degrees in the fourth dimension, and then replaced in our universe, you would then be made entirely of anti-matter — with the obvious and messy result antimatter would cause!
• Black Hole Theory: If every time you form a black hole, a new universe is formed, and if the black hole is rotating, then the matter inside would tend to rotate along a preferred axis. Note that there could be similar theories using this same trick: the Multiverse Theory, the Brane Theory, etc. The only requirement is that there is something outside our universe which our universe can rotate with respect to. And yes, one can argue that this is also the "Bigger Than We Can See" theory, as we all know we are inside a Schwartzchild boundary, beyond which light can never get to us nor come to us from outside.
• Weird-Shaped Universe: Some have argued that a different analysis of the WMAP data indicates the universe is shaped something like a cornucopia. The galaxies rotate weird because of where we are — near the moth or tail of the "horn of plenty." It still averages out, but the weird shape means we're not averaging correctly.
• Artificial Universe: This universe was created to have a particular rotation and the anomaly is either an artifact caused by creation or a "signature by the "builder" of the universe. Humans may be close to being able to construct a universe in the lab; the creator of the universe need not be anything we would call "God."

Along with the Billion Light Year Space Void (empty of all matter, even dark matter), it's clear that current astrophysical models are inadequate. Insert "seat belt and bumpy ride" remark here.

This is how people reporting fraud by U.S. companies in Iraq are treated:

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”

How can this go on?

How can we allow it?

Why is the government supporting this abuse of the whistleblowers?

Why aren't the conservative blogs talking about this abuse and demanding it be stopped?

Why aren't the liberal blogs talking about this abuse and demanding it be stopped?

Pleasant Hills has National Night Out a week early so we can get all sorts of emergency vehicles to show up for the National Night Out parade. Our street gets together to have fun together. My idea of fun this year was to take my camera and photograph the fun:

During dinner (great as always), I spotted the perfect opportunity to get a wonderful father and son photo. The child, however, was quicker than my camera:

There was a State Trooper helicopter flying low and rapidly overhead:

The helicopter did not crash, despite my expectations. Soon after the flyover, the polite motorcycle gang came rumbling up the street:

The cyclists gave out candy to the kids:

And no, the kids aren't stupid. They understand that ordinarily, one does not take candy from strange people who drive up on motorcycles.

Next came the public safety procession:

I played around, trying to get a photograph while panning. Here are the best shots I came up with:

We all had a great time.

No, I didn't find out anything more about why Chief Floyd Nevling was fired last night by the council.

These are some of the photos from John Edwards' campaign stop today at the Hill House in Pittsburgh. Lighting was terrible, but I managed to get some good photos.

After the main speech, Edwards did some interviews for the camera, including this interview with someone from CNN and a local interview.

Here's the traditional "candidate facing the cameras" shot:

Edwards was asked about the crazy blogger/photographer who was disrupting everything today:

I was walking through the Macy's tunnel (formerly Kaufman's tunnel) on Cherry Way in Pittsburgh and noticed a truck was stopped strangely.

Oops.

And yeah, if you're wondering, the driver was letting the air out of the tires!

Update:

I forgot I had a picture of the damage: 

The damage is minor on the outermost portion of the tunnel, worse on the next "beam" on the roof, and worst on the "beam" on the roof. I don't know if the missing facade is part of this accident or not.

Venus and Saturn continued to be very close to one another in the twilight sky:

Looking to the south, Jupiter was bright in the sky. The star Antares, thanks to it's red color, was easy to mistake for Mars. It's always been easy to make that mistake, which is why the star is named "Anti-Ares," the adversary of Mars.

The International Space Station computers crashed, and so far the Russian experts have been unable to successfully restart them. The leading theory is that the new solar panels are emitting a magnetic field that's messing with the computers. On the other hand, who knows what porn sites were being surfed and what computer viruses were picked up along the way? The computers control, among other things, station orientation in space and oxygen generation. If the computers are not fixed, the space station eventually might need to be abandoned.

How do you say "Blue Screen of Death" in Russian? Are they using Microsoft Windows?

I've got a million of them. I'll be here all week, try the veal.

Update: I wonder how close this is:

Синий экран смерти

Update 2: I just searched on the above Russian phrase. Apparently that's exactly it. Then again, should I be surprised Google knew exactly what it was in Russian — and probably any other language?

The International Space Station passed over Pittsburgh at 11:17 to 11:23 tonight, going from the NW to the NE at a maximum of 10º above the horizon. With the new solar panels unfurled and the space shuttle attached, the station would have been a magnificent sight.  Of course, the clouds kept me from seeing anything…

Pedro Guzman, a mentally handicapped American born in the United States was deported to Mexico by the United States Federal government. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that they did nothing wrong in deporting an American citizen to Mexico and possibly having caused his death. The U.S. Federal government has refused all requests to help find Mr. Guzman.

Pedro Guzman  made one phone call home from Tijuana in May. The phone call was cut short, and he has not been seen or heard from since.

The statistics are clear. Every time someone is executed, an average of 3 to 18 fewer murderers occur. The quicker someone is executed after trial, the more lives are saved. The quicker someone is executed after the murder, the more lives are saved. It doesn't matter if the person deserved the death penalty, or if they were even guilty of the crime. The perception of "Take a life, lose your life" is what makes this work.

Every time someone is freed from death row because of DNA evidence or the discovery that the wrong person was convicted of murder, people die — innocent people. Every time the police fail to announce that they don't know who committed a murder, people die — innocent people.

The effect is strong enough that, were the police to simply pick out someone at random, the prosecutors convict that innocent person using trumped-up evidence, and then the convicted innocent person immediately executed, many more people would live. Wouldn't you kill one innocent person so that 18 or more people might live?

One might be tempted to do away with the trials. One would think that executing the purported murderer immediately would save lives, but that's not the case. Executing murderers only works if the case is advertised and if the people believe the correct person has been executed. So you have to keep the trials. But remember, every time someone is found innocent, more people die.

Now, some might object to innocent people being executed as murderers. To object, you'd have to ignore how many lives are being saved, though. A good compromise would be to select known undesirables if a murderer can't easily be found. Not only is someone like that more believable as a murderer, but society benefits from their elimination as well. Drug dealers, pimps, mob bosses, and those the government finds "inconvenient" will, for once, benefit society by dying. If usable organs are removed, even more people will be saved. And since these people are far from "innocent," any moral qualms about executing an innocent person are removed.If the actual murderer is later discovered, that person can be executed as an accomplice or for some other unsolved murder.

Finally, it's worth noting that this study supports the idea of televised executions. If the mode of execution were made more exciting, the protective effect of executions would be even stronger, and executions might become more popular than NASCAR. Government sponsored wagering on the death — how long it takes the person to die, do they defecate when they die, etc. — might even be used to reduce taxes. I bet a game show format would be popular, giving new meaning to the titles of such shows as "Jeopardy" and "Survivor." Of course, anyone "winning" such a game would not be allowed free, but could simply be allowed to come back for the "next round."

There's no question about it. The statistics are clear, it's right there in the cold equations.

Executing the innocent saves lives.

Alli will become the first anti-obesity drug available over the counter.

Supposedly, Alli  (the over-the-counter version of  Xenical (Orlistat)) works by inhibiting the breakdown of triglycerides in the gut. You don't absorb the triglycerides, you don't absorb Alli. I can't help but wonder if the real mechanism of action is because this drug enforces a 15 g maximum of fat per meal  by causing — how do I wish to say this? — gastrointestinal distress. All that fat remains in your gut, causing flatulence and diarrhea.

They use disulfiram (Antabuse) for alcoholics; Alli is for people addicted to food. I'd almost forgotten about the folks who'd take their Antabuse, go out binge drinking, and then call 911. We're talking super unhappy major Godzilla hangover (which might be a great name for a Japanese game show).

That said, I'm seriously thinking of it.

Note: Talk with your doctor before you start this. Vitamin supplements are needed, and I have to wonder if this drug messes with birth control pills. I'm definitely curious, but that's not something I have to worry about!