Saturday, October 27, 2007

Pollution warning over US fires

Residents hit by the deadly California wildfires have been warned to beware of extremely hazardous air quality.

read more | digg story

Brandon Carter

This British cosmologist working in France started the modern version of Dirac's big number hypothesis. I find it interesting that Dirac was the son of an Englishman born in Switzerland that worked in England, and Carter is British and working in France. Coincidences, but then again at some level the Anthropic Principle, as it is called now, is all about coincidences. At another level from my perspective as a Mexican working in the United States; England and France are the same thing. Actually now Sarkozy, President of France, seems to be closer to Bush than Brown, Prime Minister of England, is.

Carter's revision of Dirac was going nowhere, until String theorist got lost and could not predict the mass of the electron, so they chose the best next thing, put all fundamental numbers together and make number soup. Maybe this number will come out of it if one just stirs it just right, like a modern day Goldilocks would.

In his recent note I posted below, Carter tells us that one second is the scale of human consciousness, and one can calculate it, by requiring that we move around 10 m/s with a given complexity of our proteins. That tells us our size, and the time it takes for one thought.

So I guess I could say that this is the time in the history of the Universe, and the place where thoughts can be made. Just like many billions of years ago, time was ripe for hydrogen atoms.

Our purpose then is to make as many thoughts as possible.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Glare of Fires Pulls Migrants From Shadows

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 26 — Out of the burning brush, from behind canyon rocks, several immigrants bolted toward a group of firefighters, chased not by the border police but by the onrush of flames from one of the biggest wildfires this week.

read more | digg story

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Objective and subjective time in anthropic reasoning

Contribution to Time in Science, Anthropology, Religion, Arts,
ed. A. Nicolaidis, SR21 workshop, Thessaloniki and Athens.
Objective and subjective time in anthropic reasoning.
Brandon Carter
LuTh, Observatoire Paris- Meudon

September, 2007.

Abstract. The original formulation of the (weak) anthropic principle was prompted by a question about objective time at a macroscopic level, namely the age of the universe when “anthropic” observers such as ourselves would be most likely to emerge. Theoretical interpretation of what one observes requires the theory to indicate what is expected, which will commonly depend on where, and particularly when, the observation can be expected to occur. In response to the question of where and when,the original version of the anthropic principle proposed an it a priori probability weighting proportional to the number of “anthropic” observers present. The present discussion takes up the question of the time unit characterising the biological clock controlling our subjective internal time, using a revised alternative to a line of argument due to Press, who postulated that animal size is limited by the brittleness of bone.On the basis of a static support condition depending on the tensile strength of flesh rather than bone, it is reasoned here that our size should be subject to a limit inversely proportional to the surface gravitation field g,which is itself found to be proportional(with a factor given by the 5/2 power of the fine structure constant)to the gravitational coupling constant. This provides an animal size limit that will in all cases be of the order of a thousandth of the maximum mountain height, which will itself be of the order of a thousandth of the planetary radius. The upshot, via the (strong) anthropic principle, is that the need for brains, and therefore planets, that are large in terms of baryon number maybe what explains the weakness of gravity relative to electromagnetism.

You can read this note; here

Some California Fires Brought Under Control; Winds Ease

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 24 —The fierce Santa Ana winds that have driven wildfires across Southern California began to diminish today with the National Weather Service saying it would lift its wind advisory for the Los Angeles area, although wind and fire danger warnings would remain in effect longer for areas to the south.

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Santa Ana Winds, Frequent and Troublesome

By KENNETH CHANGPublished: October 24, 2007Those often furious, sometimes deadly Santa Ana winds, blowing east-to-west across Southern California, are a phenomenon of geography as well as meteorology.

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Rice wants oversight of private guards (yeah right)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday ordered new measures to improve government oversight of private guards who protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, including cultural awareness training for contractors and a board to investigate any future killings.

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Illegal border crossers brave flames, get burned

By Leslie BeresteinUNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITEROctober 24, 2007 * Damaged Tecate luxury spa plans to reopen this weekend The Harris fire along the U.S.-Mexico border is affecting various aspects of immigration in San Diego County, in particular the busy human-smuggling routes surrounding Tecate and Campo.

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While many shy away, some illegal immigrants brave California wildfire...

The Associated PressPublished: October 23, 2007DULZURA, California: One of Southern California's largest wildfires has frightened many illegal immigrants from hiking through a popular corridor to cross from Mexico even as the Border Patrol has withdrawn some agents.

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50 Illegal Immigrants Surrender After Fleeing Fire on Mexican Border

Around 50 illegal immigrants have surrendered to Border Patrol since Sunday to escape the California wildfires.

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Illegal Immigrants Coming Through Border on Fire

Fires and the Border, 12:01 p.m. So far, the areas of Mexico abutting San Diego County have not been hard hit by the wildfires, at least directly — the burnt acreage south of the border measures in the dozens, not the tens of thousands, and the smoke and airborne ash disrupting life in Tecate and Tijuana is coming mainly from fires north ....

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Time 2

Recently I wrote about cycles. Now I continue with this. There was a time when Hydrogen atoms were fashionable, i.e. the conditions of the Universe were such that electrons were trapped by protons in big numbers. Never since then, and very likely ahead of us, is there a time when so many Hydrogen atoms are made.

Some times somewhere, more Hydrogen atoms are made, but these cycles of Hydrogen production are not equally distributed in the total history of the Universe, whatever that means. This cycle is not very regular.

There are more regular cycles in the history of the Universe. Something I will call the persistence cycle seems very robust. Every second most of the objects in the Universe stay. In the beginning one second was a long time, now it is not much. But in both cases at the end of this second most objects that were there before the cycle started, are there when the cycle ends. Right now this cycle is evident to us here on Earth. Look around, objects around you survive the second test. The second test is the following. Look around, concentrate on one object, test if it is still there after one second, the object passes the test if it is still there. In the beginning of the Universe few objects passed this test; the change was very fast in the second cycle.

Persistence of the Universe goes by small steps. The average size of this step may change as the Universe evolves, but right now it is our perception time. We perceive objects in one second or less. In the beginning this was a long time, now is our perception time, and I wonder if in the future it will be almost zero, i.e. too short for our consciousness to register.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Time 1

The previous note with the name Time is here. There are other notes on this subject in this site. Now I add a little more.
As far as I am concerned time appears from nowhere. There is permanence of objects around me, I keep perceiving the objects, but I know it is a different time, even more I feel I cannot stop time. I make more and more connections, I am more aware, my consciousness is increasing; that is time. Time is an emergent component of my experience. I believe that if I stop perceiving, time will continue to come and organize, i.e. set in a cause effect line, events.
Time is as real as energy or information.

Massive evacuations ordered as onslaught of fires spreads

The number of blazes and their wind-whipped ferocity strain the area's firefighting resources to the limit.

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Monday, October 22, 2007

Time and the Maya

My father was born in Guatemala, so I have some Mayan blood.
I am obsessed with time, the Maya were.
Here I start a few notes on this subject.
Newton says: time flows independently of everything else.
Einstein says: time depends on the mass nearby.

What does it mean?

For Newton time is absolute, for Einstein it is relative. None of them tell us what time is made of. Einstein is more precise, because he wrote equations that tell us how matter curves spacetime, and how spacetime moves matter. It is a two way street.

Here is something I thought recently.

Energy and time are intimately linked. When one eliminates time from motion equations one ends up with energy equations. It is not possible to measure time and energy with more than a given precision, because the product of the errors in these measurements is a constant (Werner Heisenberg).

Either time is constantly created or it always exists. Either way this idea is disconcerting.

Finally, time without cycles is difficult to measure. One needs a reference process that last a second say, to measure how many seconds are there in another process.

The Maya were interested in cycles that were multiples of thirteen and twenty.

I do not know why.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Cycles in Time or Linear Time?

We perceive time because there are cycles. Without repetition we will be living in a timeless way.

Imagine that nothing changes, How will you know that time has passed?

Now we go to predictions. Predictions are possible because events repeat. I predict that the Sun will come tomorrow. If there was no change there is never a Sun coming up. No way to predict, no notion of time.

Nevertheless the future is never exactly like the past, I believe we have a combination of linear and cyclic time. Something like lines and circles.

Einstein's General Relativity admits closed time loops. What do they mean?

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Network of Friends

Maybe is the software. I am getting more invitations to networks at digg.com. Maybe my time has come, if the network resonates I may be more helpful to my friends.

NYT Editorial Pages

I have put several links in digg,com to the opinion pieces of Rich, Freedman, and Cohen. I find their views professional, and should I say middle of the road. Nevertheless I am surprised that I don't get that many diggs. Maybe nobody is following what I do. Maybe as time passes I will collect a group of friends that will read my posts. Live and learn.

Save the Planet: Vote Smart

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMANPublished: October 21, 2007People often ask: I want to get greener, what should I do? New light bulbs? A hybrid? A solar roof? Well, all of those things are helpful. But actually, the greenest thing you can do is this: Choose the right leaders. It is so much more important to change your leaders than change your light ...

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Suicide Is Not Painless

By FRANK RICHPublished: October 21, 2007IT was one of those stories lost in the newspaper’s inside pages. Last week a man you’ve never heard of — Charles D. Riechers, 47, the second-highest-ranking procurement officer in the United States Air Force — killed himself by running his car’s engine in his suburban Virginia garage.

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Leaders of Venezuela and Colombia, Ideological Opposites, Are Tightening Ti

Colombia and Venezuela are rapidly moving to strike energy deals, resolve a boundary dispute and increase trade.

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The Marvelous, Mysterious Maya

An illustrated introduction to the history and culture of the most accomplished of Native American civilizations.

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Friday, October 19, 2007

BREAKING: Dodd will FILIBUSTER the FISA Bill if his Hold is Ignored

Senate majority leader Harry Reid plans to disregard Senator Dodd's intention to place a hold on a FISA bill that includes amnesty for telecommunications companies. In this video, Dodd says he will go to the Senate floor and filibuster this bill if necessary. This is Real Leadership!

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Thursday, October 18, 2007

High winds hit states from Florida to Oklahoma

Tornadoes and strong winds tore up buildings in two states Thursday, damaging a shopping mall, a day-care center and a church in Florida and killing two people in rural Missouri. Another 30 people were injured in Oklahoma late Wednesday when two tents collapsed at an Oktoberfest festival.

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Draft Gore!

I just watched a video with Greg Palast against the Draft Gore campaign:

Draft Gore

I like both men, I guess this shows the complexity of the issues in front of us. Palast concern is with NAFTA, and for him that trumps the environment. For me is a very close call and I have not made my mind.

Guillermo González and Gliese 581C

I recently asked Prof. González from Iowa State University about Gliese 581C, this is his response.

"Yes, I know about this planet. I think the probability of life on any planets orbiting M dwarfs is very small. M dwarfs provide very poor habitats for life for several reasons, including water freeze-out on the dark side of a synchronously rotating planet, weaker planetary magnetic field resulting from the slower rotation and greater doses of ionizing radiation from host star flares. In addition, terrestrial planets more massive than Earth are less likely to have dry land, since there is less surface relief for more massive planets. And, the planets around Gliese 581, in particular, are probably very water rich since they likely migrated to their present locations (given the presence of a neptune-mass planet in the system)."

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Arctic warming threatening caribou, northern wildlife

The Arctic is under increasing stress with warming temperatures changing wildlife habitat and local climate conditions, researchers said Wednesday.The amount of sea ice has fallen below previous record low levels, caribou herds are declining in many areas and permafrost is melting, according to the annual update of the State of the Arctic report.

read more | digg story

Business Cycles

Time is based on persistence. There was a previous cycle of dot-com companies. It ended with a few winners taking all, maybe I can mention Yahoo, Google, but not AOL. I put money on AOL, I couldn't keep it there, but recently AOL announced that their business model will change. Now I do not pay them for my e-mail account.

Now we are entering a second cycle, Web 2.0, I think that the companies that survived are going to do well; I also hope that some new companies grow now.

Marc Andreessen

Andreessen developed MOSAIC at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. That was the first Internet browser that I used at Fermilab in 1994. I got excited about the possibilities of the new technology. When I went back to Mexico I tried to convince a few friends to start on-line businesses, but failed. As it turned out most of the Mexican telephone business, including Internet, went to Carlos Slim by the power of monopoly.

As the note below states Marc Andreessen is still in the business of creating new things. His company, Ning, may have a better success chance, than if I go back to Mexico and try to convince Mr. Slim of the potential of this new medium.

"Second Earth" found--20 lightyears away!

Scientists have discovered a warm and rocky "second Earth" circling a star, a find they believe dramatically boosts the prospects that we are not alone.

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Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again

Investors, showing symptoms of irrational exuberance, seem to have forgotten the dot-com bust.

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Hurricane Fears Cost Homeowners Coverage

GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Oct. 15 — It is 1,200 miles from the coastline where Hurricane Katrina touched land two years ago to the neat colonial-style home here where James Gray, a retired public relations consultant, and his wife, Ann, live. But this summer, Katrina reached them, too, in the form of a cancellation letter from their home-insurance company

read more | digg story

Signs

Yesterday I wrote about tornadoes in Brooklyn. Not since the fifties have there been tornados in that part of the world. Maybe is not a big deal, after all fifty years is nothing compared with climate. But somehow it caught my imagination, there is this man in the center of one of the biggest metropolis in the world, not able to go to his house after two months have passed because of something that very likely he was not expecting.

I imagine myself in the middle of suburbia, maybe with a house underwater and having to take my family to a hotel or something. This is unsettling.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Tornado Hits Brooklyn; Subway Back in Service 1

Two months ago I posted the news of a tornado in Brooklyn in digg.com. You can read that article here.

Now I found out that at least one family has not been able to go back. What is going on?

Waiting to Go Home, 2 Months After a Freakish Tornado (Brooklyn, NYC)

In stark contrast to the bright, sunny morning, the Eshra house on Bay Ridge Avenue was dark and forbidding, the smell of moldy carpet and uneaten food from two nonworking refrigerators permeating the dusty and debris-filled rooms.

read more | digg story

Rocks From Space

It is a widely accepted story now, that a huge object hit Earth sixty five million years ago and killed all dinosaurs. What about the future? One would expect that NASA and other world organizations would be monitoring the sky for the next big one. Today I read in the recent issue of Discover Magazine in the library near my house, that this effort started through the initiative of private citizens like the Shoemakers. I could not stop the thought that this must have been going on at the government agencies but without informing the public.

The reason for my suspicion is an older event. In the seventies X-rays were monitored by both US and Soviet governments to verify that neither country was exploding nuclear bombs. As it happened these instruments had recorded several events, but coming from up in space not from the ground! Therefore the first strong evidences of the existence of black holes were kept away from the general public.

It seems to me that now the issue is the Star Wars program started by Reagan that kept this more important information away from us. We could literally die during this century by the impact of a big object from space.

I hope they give us enough warning to try to save our lives when that happens.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Ron Paul

This doctor from Texas is running for President. He believes in liberty and does not accept welfare money. When patients do not have money he arranges special payment terms, all the way from working for free to all the money a patient will pay.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Al Gore 1614 Diggs!

Maybe I should not underestimate the mainly young and technically inclined community in Digg.com, that I belong to. But somehow their intense interest in video games and libertarian politics sometimes confuses me. In any case right now 1614 diggs is heartening.

Maybe we will finally have a green president in the US. That will be something!

Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change....Draft Gore Now!http://draftgore.com/

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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

German Wins Nobel in Chemistry

A German scientist whose studies of chemical reactions on solid surfaces have affected agriculture, manufacturing and environmental science won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today.

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Mario J. Molina

This Mexican-American Chemist from MIT, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry , for his work on the danger of ozone depletion due to chlorofluorocarbons; is participating in a meeting in Germany, to choose a new type of Nobel Prize. You can read about this in the note from the NYT below.

This "green" Peace Prize may go to Al Gore. We will soon find out.

This great politician recently went to the Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico; where I taught for eighteen years.

These are dangerous times, I hope something good comes out of these efforts.

A Climate Meeting Packed With Nobel Winners

POTSDAM, Germany, Oct. 9 — Sixty-two years after the victorious Allied leaders convened in this stately Prussian town to create the post-World War II world, 15 Nobel Prize laureates assembled here this week for another momentous task: saving the world from global warming.

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Tuesday, October 09, 2007

For Mexicans, Little Surprise Over Madrazo’s Shortcut

MEXICO CITY, Oct. 9 — Having spent his life as a stalwart in the corrupt political machine that ruled Mexico for decades, Roberto Madrazo has never suffered from a reputation for honesty.

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Monday, October 08, 2007

Noam Chomsky Speaks About Human Destiny 1

Before I posted a link to a Chomsky talk. Now I comment on the digg.com link I have below this note.

In both instances Chomsky touches on a very important subject. If nuclear weapons are not controlled, human civilization may end. One could feel that it is impossible, because our species does not want to commit suicide. My worry though, is that it only takes a few ignorant and greedy people to do. It is thinkable that in the search for profits, some agents may not even see the danger they, and us with them, can end up in, if the recent build up of nuclear weapons continues.

US/Indo Nuclear Agreement:Derailing A Deal

This Indo-US agreement richly deserves to be derailed. The threat of nuclear war is extremely serious, and growing, and part of the reason is that the nuclear states - led by the United States - simply refuse to live up to their obligations or are significantly violating them, this latest effort being another step toward disaster.

read more | digg story

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Death, Havoc and Heat Mar Chicago Race

CHICAGO, Oct. 7 — As temperatures soared into the upper 80s, hundreds of runners in the Chicago marathon fell ill and at least one died on Sunday, prompting officials here to halt the annual race for the first time in its 30-year history.

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Saturday, October 06, 2007

Latino Congreso focuses on voting power

With the election year approaching, activists at the five-day conference in downtown Los Angeles want to make sure new citizens register to vote and cast ballots.

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Chilean Court Orders Arrests of Pinochet’s Kin and Close Allies

SANTIAGO, Chile, Oct. 4 — A Chilean judge on Thursday ordered the arrests of the widow and five children of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and 17 of his closest military and civilian collaborators on charges of misappropriating public funds.

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Friday, October 05, 2007

High Energy Gamma Rays Go Slower Than the Speed of Light?

The speed of light is the speed of light, and that's that. Right? Well, maybe not. Astronomers studying radiation coming from a distant galaxy found that the high energy gamma rays arrived a few minutes after the lower-energy photons, even though they were emitted at the same time. If true, this result would overturn Einstein's theory of relativity

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Rice Reins in Blackwater

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday ordered federal agents to ride with Blackwater USA escorts of U.S. diplomatic convoys in Baghdad to tighten oversight after a shooting in which private guards are accused of killing 13 Iraqi civilians.

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Is the Sky Falling?

I saw Medea Benjamin from Code Pink taken out of an Iranian principal presentation. Eventually she was brought back to the meeting, I guess she agreed not to interrupt the presentation. Also today I saw Ted Glick in Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. He is in a hunger strike because environmental deterioration is not been taken seriously. I had a student in High School that felt the scientific worldview I was presenting was in contradiction with the religious one he preferred. Is the sky falling?

My student turned out to be very civil, he followed my instructions, learned physics, and got an A. Is Medea Benjamin going to agree with Dr. Muwafaq al-Rubaie? So far, as I watch him talking in C-Span, she is listening attentively. Will I join Mr. Glick in his hunger strike? I am not planning to, but I take the Medea Benjamins of the world, seriously, this is a time of change.

U.S. Issues New Rules for Iraq Security Firms

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered new security procedures today for American diplomatic convoys in Iraq amid continuing repercussions over the shooting of Iraqi civilians by employees of the Blackwater USA security company.

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Vicente Fox outlines a 'Revolution of Hope'

Mexico's former president relates his dramatic rise from precinct leader to his victory over the dictatorial PRI.

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LATimes: Mexican politician runs into time warp

A presidential candidate whose past is marked by charges of dishonesty turns in a fast but questionable time in a marathon.

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Thursday, October 04, 2007

House’s Iraq Bill Applies U.S. Laws to Contractors

The House overwhelmingly approved a bill that would bring all U.S. government contractors in the Iraq war zone under the jurisdiction of American criminal law.

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Misleading Spin on Children’s Health

Trying to justify his ideologically driven veto of a bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, President Bush and his staff have fired a barrage of misinformation about this valuable program.

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NYT Krugman: Conservatives Are Such Jokers

In 1960, John F. Kennedy, who had been shocked by the hunger he saw in West Virginia, made the fight against hunger a theme of his presidential campaign. After his election he created the modern food stamp program, which today helps millions of Americans get enough to eat.

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Korean Summit Results Exceed Low Expectations

SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 4 — Expectations for what could be achieved at the first summit meeting between the Koreas in seven years had been low. Worries that South Korea’s president, Roh Moo-hyun, a lame duck criticized for being soft on the North, would give away too much had been high.

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HAWC

A new observatory will be built in Puebla Mexico. HAWC , is a big pond of water high in the mountains with light detectors inside. The purpose of the ten year operation, at a cost of six million dollars, is to produce a map of the sky of the gamma ray sources.

If you can read in Spanish here is the announcement:

La Jornada

S-Chip

I feel that if Bush looses this battle over health for kids paid by charging those kids or older people that want to smoke tobacco, then a new more liberal stage of American politics has started.

S-Chip stands for State Children's Health Insurance Program; it is a creative way to address the health care catastrophe the US is going through. By concentrating on the needs of the more innocent and vulnerable among us, the program shows to the whole country that we are moving in the wrong direction. By making those that do not see the connection between habits and health pay for this, it is giving two good messages for the price of one.

Bush has shown a moral deficiency beyond any one I have seen this man have. His defense: it is wrong to make poor smokers pay for the health of rich kids, come on!

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Down to Earth

Most of us live our lives taken care of immediate needs. Maybe once in a while, and a few of us more frequently than others plan ahead. Here I write some down to earth ideas that may apply no matter what, in the next few decades.

For those that have followed these musings may remember that I am looking for a job. I am trying this exercise with that in mind.

It is likely that green technologies are needed in the recent future. I can see at least three levels of participation by somebody like me.

  • Discover a wholly new physical phenomenon to convert one form of available energy into electricity or something easily usable

  • Apply known physical properties to develop alternative energy (alt-energy) devices

  • Join a company already working in alt-energy applications

    The first requires that resources in sufficient levels be secured. The last one are already funded and preferably one would expect that they are proven solutions already accepted by consumers.

    I know of one case in Mexico, a friend of mine built a water solar heater for his house. It is a low tech device.

    In all cases it make sense to consider any alt energy device only if we have reached the moment of opportunity. Right now I am studying the environmental conditions that will make any of these devices desirable today. For instance are we getting more or less solar radiation than twenty years ago when some of these efforts started?

    Are we getting enough solar energy down to Earth?
  • Structure of Reality

    There is space: right, left, up, down, front, and back; but there is also past and present. Time: cause, and, effect, are linked. The concepts I present here make a proposal on the relation between causality and reality.

    Why are humans on Earth?

    The Anthropic Principle states that since we know that we exist, then this part of the Universe is special. Which is it, first the Principle, and then our existence, or the other way around? I say, we cannot place a cause and effect relation between the Principle and our presence here. Our problem has been to postulate the need of a linear flow of time. Without this Archimedean time concept, there is no need to state first principles.

    Nevertheless we see patterns. I think these patterns are produced by lock-in events. All of a sudden everything comes together in harmony and a persistent pattern arises. Once these patterns are there, there is no cause-effect relationships, I think it is more descriptive to say that processes support each other in a bootstrap way. In the sixties Geoffrey Chew studied the idea of bootstrap. In his view the proton was not more important than the neutron, or any of the other strongly interacting particles discovered frequently in those days. What made sense was the mutual interaction of all particles, that in a sense then were producing each other.

    In my view then, time is not visualized like a one dimensional Archimidean line with past events always behind future ones. It is more like a fractal stream where complex interactions and lock-in phenomena produce the permanence of structures that gives us a sense of reality.

    Project Green: The Power of the Sun

    By Daniel McGinnNewsweekOct. 8, 2007 issue - Brad Mohring had reached a crossroads. Until recently the 31-year-old design engineer had worked for a Toledo, Ohio-based company that builds manufacturing equipment for automobile plants. With the auto industry struggling, he figured it was only a matter of time before he'd be laid off.

    read more | digg story

    Tuesday, October 02, 2007

    39 Years Ago

    The Second of October of 1968, as a young student, I almost went to a demonstration in a place where students were killed. I chose not to go because I saw army tanks near my house going that way.

    Thirty nine, is three times thirteen. I feel like a cycle has been closed in my life, I guess I was under shock. I was close to suffer direct trauma, I saved myself, but now I feel that emotionally I was bruised. I feel better now. I can start another stage of my life.

    Anthropic and Discoverabillity Principles

    Guillermo González wrote a book with Jay Wesley, "The Privileged Planet". There these authors argue that not only our planet is the best place to be for life, but also is the best place to find the laws of Nature by intelligent beings like us.

    I believe that one problem with that interpretation is their search for fundamental causes, and therefore of God. This hypothesis is not necessary, there is life on Earth because this is a good place, and life keeps it that way, with a give and take that does not require external intelligent action, beyond the structuring character of time that I mention below.

    The way I see it, both the Anthropic and the Discoverabillity principles are not caused by the environment, any more than the environment is caused by the realities behind them.

    Only in a place where there can be life, there is life; only in a place where discoveries can be made, are they made. There is no hierarchy. The Earth is as important as the observed presence of life and scientific discoveries, as these processes make the Earth environment what it is.

    Amy Goodman 1

    Yesterday I wrote that this journalist had facial paralysis. Today she told us, her concerned viewers, that she has Bell's Palsy. She expects to be better in a few days.

    Time Structures Reality, Reality Produces Time

    Here I propose new conceptions of cause and effect.

    Cause and effect are two sides of the same reality. According with the Aharonov, Bergman, and Lebowitz view of Time Symmetric Quantum Mechanics, we cannot separate past, present, and future.

    This has to do with the logical relation between the maximum speed, and the smallest action in our Universe. To put them together one has to reconcile the relativity of time and the existence of the minimum action. One way out is that proposed by these three great physicists in the fields of Quantum Mechanics, General Relativity, and Statistical Mechanics.

    Here I state how I think our conceptions of cause and effect have to change. If the past-future relation depends on the motions of the parts of the Universe, there are only interacting events, one causes the other and vice versa.

    To paraphrase John Archibald Wheeler, matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move. That dialectical view, to my mind is the more concise expression of how our Universe works. If we start to consider a hierarchical structure of reality we get into a chicken and egg conflict.

    Now I state my conclusion.

    Time is a large scale dimension of our Universe. Causes are before effects, this is called the Causality Principle. This view is untenable in the most straightforward interpretation. Aharonov and Tollaksen postulate that causality has to be preserved, as a consequence reality becomes uncertain. Nevertheless something must produce the structure we perceive in our Universe.

    I postulate that time structures reality, and vice versa, neither reality is more important than time nor time more important than reality.

    One example is the following. If a ball is kicked every fifth of a periodic motion, with a force proportional to the position cyclically; one finds numerically that a fivefold symmetric structure appears. Only at well defined instants effects add up in sync, this synchronicity produces a structure one can see in the screen of a personal computer modelling this situation. If the time between kicks is not a rational fraction of the period, there is no web one can give a predictive interpretation. We just do not know where and how things can happen.

    In my view it is because of this predictability that we are aware of time. Time then structures reality, and reality produces time. Reality and time are two faces of the same thing dialectically.

    No Pole No Ice.

    The magnetic poles may disappear around 2012, also the ice in the North Pole. That will be interesting.
    Like a saying states, may you live in interesting times.

    2012 or 2013?

    "Experts say the ice retreat is likely to be even bigger next summer because this winter’s freeze is starting from such a huge ice deficit. At least one researcher, Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., projects a blue Arctic Ocean in summers by 2013."

    In today's Science Section of the NYT one can read the quote above.

    I find 2013 too close for comfort from 2012.

    Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts

    Scientists are unnerved by this summer’s massive polar ice melt, its implications for the future, and their ability to predict it.

    read more | digg story

    Monday, October 01, 2007

    Amy Goodman

    I was saddened today by the facial paralysis that this courageous woman recently suffered. She kept on working, I hope she regains full control of her face muscles.

    Time as Schedule and 2012

    We know the month is October because it is cooler. We know it is morning because the Sun shines. Time is measured by periodic, i.e., repeating events.

    Still time is indistinguishable from timeless. Change and time go hand in hand. Are time repetitions that last more than ten years? Yes. It is known that the Sun repeats cycles of spots of around ten to twelve years. During the high intensity of Solar spots electromagnetic waves are affected on Earth. Right now we are in a lull. The expectation is that by the year 2012, there will be a maximum of activity on the surface of the Sun that will likely affect human communication. It is expected to be a particularly intense one.

    Apart from this very well known phenomenon, some people are expecting that the magnetic poles will disappear for a few days, or maybe hours due to a shift of the North and South magnetic poles around the year 2012. The intensity of the Earth magnetic field is decreasing now.

    Apart from this some people expect that the Solar System will be crossing the Milky Way equatorial plane around the year 2012; I think that this event will also be accompanied by a reduction of any magnetic field the Galaxy produces around here.

    So what?

    Maybe nothing, but maybe our brains that do have electromagnetic energy going around, will change, maybe for a few hours or days. Or maybe they will switch to a new state of consciousness.

    Some people are waiting for Quetzalcoátl. The last time this entity was expected to come around Mesoamerica, the world of the first people of this continent changed radically from 1492 to 1521.

    Some people claim that the Mayan calendar ends on the Winter Solstice of 2012. All I can do is wait and see if anything special happens then.

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