I'd scream but I'm hoarse, also, too.

This really pisses me off.

It's a tweet/twat by Sarah Palin (twat) that says her "Drill,Baby,Drill" mantra was meant for land-based drilling.

I had a long screed prepared but I just don't have the fortitude to publish it. I can't do it. This woman has become a bad parody of herself.

When is somebody going to take this idiot down? I've been waiting for it, it hasn't happened yet. It hasn't happened yet because this clown won't answer any questions.

Here's the deep question: I wouldn't vote for Bozo (or Krusty for that matter) based on his ability to run a bucket toss. I would vote for him if he offered insightful, substantive questions on foreign policy, energy policy, immigration, civil rights, etc. that offered real solutions that our country could agree on. At this point, the only thing separating Sarah Palin from Bozo (or Krusty) is the make-up.

This country better wake up pretty God-Damn soon.

We're All Anti-Semites Now...

I think like a majority of those of you who read this blog, I was shocked about the Israeli raid on a Turkish humanitarian mission to deliver aid to Gaza. For those of you stuck in a bubble hugging a tree Travolta style, Israel military personnel boarded a Turkish ship in the Mediterranean Sea, in international waters, in the middle of the night using nothing more than (allegedly) paintball guns.

I know what you're thinking right now: "Shut the fuck up, Motherfucker!"

How could this happen? That's an honest to God question. I would really like to know how Israel could be so hamfisted in its execution of thwarting a "terrorist plot". Let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that Israeli intelligence was 100% correct in their information that thousands of very bad brown people were ready to funnel unlimited amounts of pop-rocks and coca-cola into Gaza to induce untold mayhem on its unsuspecting citizens. The execution of this raid, even in the face of unquestionable evidence, was so amateurish that it made a panty raid on the Omega Mu's look like fucking D-Day.

Was I surprised a month or so ago when North Korea allegedly sunk a South Korean naval vessel? Not really, in fact it's about what I would expect from a foreign leader who recently suffered a stroke and has a penis the size of a cashew and who's only diplomacy experience is brinksmanship. Not really someone who is mature enough to date your daughter.

But Israel is a very serious, necessary, precious, mature, adult ally of the U.S. So I was pretty surprised when the raid was announced, and I was shocked at the lawlessness of the act. Just between you and me, I wouldn't let Israel date my daughter either...not so mature.

Just to refresh your memory, Turkey is a NATO ally. Israel is not. Let's go back, I don't know...20 years. What would've happened if a non-NATO member attacked a NATO ship. I'll tell you. WWIII.

Israel has been systematically dismantling its creditability in the international community for the past (generously) ten years. It's disappointing to find out that the U.S. supports state sponsored terror. Because that's what this is: state sponsored terror, by Israel. But the official U.S. response is muted because we don't want to look "weak" in support of Israel. We're even willing to throw a cold-war ally under the bus to not look "weak" in our response to an Israeli clown act.

The world is outraged. I'm outraged. Even Krusty is outraged.

Daddy, Iz a Ziontist...

This could be the winning paragraph (it may not be...check back!):

The chamber is kept at around 10-5 torr. This is done through a series of pumps. The first pump is called a roughing pump (Alcatel 2063). The roughing pump is general pump which is used at all times to keep the chamber at low pressure. The next pump in series is called the roots blower (BOC Edwards EH500). This pump is a positive displacement pump which utilizes a pair of meshing lobes in order to pull air out of the system. The roots blower is connected to the chamber through a foreline. The foreline is a series of PVC pipe which connect to the diffusion pumps (Varian VHS 10). These pumps use high heat to boil oil, the vapor of which causes a jet of vapor which pulls air down the pump and out the exhaust. The diffusion pump closest to the sample is covered by a water baffle (Varian F8600310). The water baffle is used to keep the oil from boiling up into the chamber. Once the chamber is at a low enough temperature there are two different microwave setups which may be used in order to take data.

Unedited.

I'm sure that for most of you, you look at this as a grammar nightmare. For me, it's a scientific nightmare that you can't believe. But the grammar, too, also.

Daddy, This is Why I'm so Smart...

The beginning experiments determined that CP-FTMW spectroscopy is a good candidate for studying combustion reactions. In order to test the experimental setup 2,3-Dihydrofuran was utilized. DHF was a good prospect for testing the microwave setup since it's combustion process has been studied before. The pyrolysis studies of DHF previous to this research have determined many of the products formed. Since these studies give such a good background for further research, this compound seemed to be the perfect candidate for these studies.

'Nuff said. Please look at the punctuation (this was unedited).

Here's why I'm Doing This....

I got this in my inbox over the weekend. It didn't really make me feel good about myself (I've removed all names to protect the innocent):

My daughter XXX put her trust in you 3 1/2 years ago when she set out to get her Doctorate Degree. In this 3 1/2 years XXX accomplished all XXX University requirements to earn her Masters Degree. XXX needed your help to accomplish these goals. After finding out how much longer she was going to have to attend XXX to accomplish her original goal of Doctorate, caused by your lack of dedication to your students, XXX decided she would be happy with her Masters. Is it your intention to squash your student's goals because of your own inadequacy? XXX had worked so hard to accomplish her goal, just to have it wasted by a vengeful professor. You are an embarrassment to this fine institution and why the head of the XXX Dept can't help her is also a mystery. XXX needed your help and you let her down. I hope you're proud! You don't deserve to go on as a Professor at XXX University or any other University for that matter, without dedicating yourself to the STUDENTS!

I could look at this and say it's just angry parent syndrome. But there are some pretty serious accusations leveled against me, not just personally, but as a mentor as well. I will add for the record, because this irrational screed has been leveled against me, I do take it personally. And not in a vindictive manner. I want to be a good teacher. I spend hours a week thinking about how to be a better teacher, mentor, adviser. I will say one thing, that after XXX has left my graduate students, the attitude in the group has become exponentially better.

I have two female graduate student still in the group that joined at the same time as XXX. I have other graduate students that joined after XXX was in the group that are excelling in their role.

OK, I'm justifying. Maybe I need to do that after getting the irrational screed above from a complete stranger. That's what blows my mind. What kind of human being are you that sends the above email to a complete stranger?

I think that sums it all up.

One of My Favorites

Here it comes, the conflagration of isolators and circulators:

Then to the knob attenuator and to the circulator that is used as an isolator.

This is supposed to be a sentence (It is completely unedited from its natural form).

Here's a good One

A quote from my student's thesis. This is describing a very, very, very, basic device, not only for electrical engineers, but also to chemists who use this device for their own research.

A circulator has 3 input and output connections. The 1st input/output connector goes out the second input/output connector, the 2nd input/output connector goes out the 3rd input/output connection and the 3rd input/ output connector goes out the 1st connector. In order to use this as an isolator the 3rd connector is terminated so that anything coming in the first connector goes the second and anything coming into the second connector gets terminated.

Gack! I want to remind you that this was inserted in a Master's Thesis. Maybe you don't understand the operation of the device. That's not your job, when you write one of these things (a thesis) you write it with the expectation that your colleagues have a basic understanding of equipment. This student should have written (and which I substituted into their thesis) was: "The circulator was capped with a 50 Ohm terminator at output three".

Painful, verbal diarrhea.

My Graduate Student

For those of you who think that graduate students (particularly in science, which is my field) are smart, I offer this. In a few days, I will show you why I have decided to do this. Here is the first example. It is the lead-off sentence of my student, for their second chapter on why you should be interested in the techniques (implemented by this particular student, by they way), is this:

Along with studying combustion chemistry another main focus of these experiments was to show that microwave spectrometry is a good candidate for studying these types of experiments.

Believe me, it gets much, much better (or worse, depending on your point of view). For me personally, as a teacher, it's really sad. I want you to understand that this is just as much an expose on my failure to teach,  as it is what I have to work with. This is what is sent to me, not out of high school, but out of an institution that grants Bachelor's Degrees (and I use the caps only out of respect for an accredited institute of higher learning).

Shorter Weekend Palin: Word Fucking Salad.

Let me open with my favorite Palin line from the Teabagging(c) Convention '10:

"It's one thing to call a pay raise a job created or saved; it's quite another to call it devastation that a homicide bomber can inflict a man-made disaster."

I defy you to find sense in that sentence (and I use the word 'sentence' loosely here).

From her literal rants on the "Lame-Stream Media" to reading notes off of her fucking hand. I'd give her the hand if one of the words wasn't crossed off. The original telepalmter. But really, the whole thing was a hoot. It was epic fail on grand scale.

In closing, if you want to vote for this woman in 2012, I reserve the right to show up on your doorstep and beat the ever-loving shit out of you with an aluminum baseball bat.

See you in two years, dipshits.

Republican Idealism

I saw that Roger Ailes (of Fox News fame) was on ABC's This Week today. I certainly didn't watch it, but from the commentary I read Paul Krugman and Arianna Huffington gave him a "smack-down". I'm not linking to it for two reasons. First, I think you can find it on the intertubes with minimal effort. Second, it wasn't the epic smack down purported to be. I think the best description is that Ailes seemed dis-interested in the clips I saw.

Then I came across this NYT article via digby and found this little bit:

Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, agreed with me that the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” She and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person “a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere.”

Despite what the critics think, Abramson said the problem was not liberal bias.

This is in reference to the ACORN-pimp-propaganda promulgated by the now infamous James O'Keefe. The ACORN story was run almost non-stop despite the fact that the video was heavily edited for content.

Something in my tiny little brain clicked at this point. Why should Ailes care if some effete liberal pwed him on a talk show? Through Fox News, he drives the media narrative. He could care less about how he comes off personally. I guarantee that Fox will have some serious push-back tomorrow about some completely made-up, borderline libelous, issue to placate his fat ego. He knows nobody will call him on it. He knows the rest of the media will breathlessly follow whatever lies he chooses to propagate. Assholes, all of 'em.

Fuck it, we'll do it live!

Our History

The conventional wisdom is that without knowing history, we are destined to repeat it. I think that a more accurate statement is that humans are inherently stupid. Humans are inherently narcissistic. For some reason, humans are puerile. Ultimately, (I have no idea historically about guns) we cling to religion.

Cling is too nice a word. We gravitate towards it. We seem to need it. Religion. It is the last bastion of stupidity on the planet.

Personally, I don't think religion is stupid at all. In fact, I think it is a noble philosophical pursuit. Fundamentally, it is an attempt for humans to understand not only what happens after we shed this mortal coil, but an ultimate meaning for our existence.

However, historically, that is not the case.

I blame the Romans and Muhammad (yes, that Muhammad)

Why, you may ask?

First, the Romans. During the first Council of Nicaea, Constantine allowed the divinity of Jesus to become doctrine (see Arian Controversy). A great philosophical debate at the time because it could be neither proved nor dis-proved at the time of the argument. It was, however, a great mechanism for ruling a large population. It is no coincidence that the birth of Christ coincides with Saturnalia, the Roman new year associated with gift-giving.

Second, Muhammad (I've drawn much of my understanding of the man from Edward Gibbon). The Prophet of Islam. His sole claim to legitimacy is his final victory over Mecca, a city that cast him out because of his lifestyle/beliefs. His victory was not a diplomatic one, he was able to organize an army to destroy Mecca's leadership to allow him to move back home. Nevertheless, he set the precedent of one religion at all costs. He guaranteed benefits that he could neither deliver nor conceive. The real indictment, IMO, is after Muhammad's death when the Sunni and Shia sects were formed. Historically, this is a political decision on who is most qualified to lead the religion after the founders death. Politics in religion. Which brings me back to Christianity.

For those of you Christians reading this, check this out from the Spanish Inquisition:

The methods of torture most used by the Inquisition were garrucha, toca and the potro. The application of the garrucha, also known as the strappado, consisted of suspending the victim from the ceiling by the wrists, which are tied behind the back. Sometimes weights were tied to the ankles, with a series of lifts and drops, during which the arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated.[57] The toca, also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua, consisted of introducing a cloth into the mouth of the victim, and forcing them to ingest water spilled from a jar so that they had impression of drowning (see: waterboarding).[58] The potro, the rack, was the instrument of torture used most frequently.[59]

Last part sound familiar? Stuff a rag in the mouth and pour in water. Done nearly 500 years ago, how quaint. Read the whole post, it was primarily a tool to extract false confessions from Jews and Muslims who were forced to convert to Christianity. Hopefully, you learned this in high-school like I did.

Unfortunately, many did not. That is why we had eight years of the last administration. Which brings me back to my original point: Unless we learn from history, we are destined to repeat it. Indeed, we already have.

As an American, the use of religion by political leaders as a talking point is obscene and goes against the Constitution. Period.

Based on what I've said here, it isn't religion that should stay out of politics, it is politics that should stay out of religion.

There is a popular saying: "Those that can, do; those that can't, teach". As a teacher I find this statement almost ridiculous. Almost. Just remember that power, in any form, relies on you being stupid.

Don't be stupid (and I'm not talking about religion). I find it sad that today's society can mock science, while depending on it so deeply (this will be the subject of my next post).