The Most Astounding Fact

Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked to designate "the most astounding fact" about the universe. Here is his answer: As I listened to deGrasse Tyson's poetry I was reminded Lawrence Krauss indicating that the atoms in your left hand came from different stars than the atoms in your right hand. This is an extraordinary claim. I decided to look at a few technical articles on heavy element synthesis, and there is very good reason to think that the heavy elements on earth were synthesized in stars. See, for instance, this Wikipedia article on nucleosynthesis, which includes the following chart on the abundance of the various elements throughout the universe. And see this article on supernova nucleosynthesis. Here's an article on stellar nucleosynthesis. Finally, here is a Nova video that includes explanations by scientists themselves.

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Proposed new federal law would invite thousands of paranoid strangers to secretly read your most private thoughts

Its sponsors call it the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act" (HR 3523), but its main function is to invite Big Brother into all aspects of what you assumed to be your private online existence. Perhaps you are thinking, "I have nothing to hide." Good for you, but what about the fact that this horrifically vague proposed law would force you to share all of your most private online communications with the hyper-paranoid geek-goons and geek-thugs of the NSA? Under CISPA, the Federal Government will have the right to look at that emotional email you just sent to your mother last week. The government, including many thousands of people with security clearances, will have access to the pin numbers and passwords for your bank accounts and investments. After all, you do use the Internet, and all they want is anything connected with or associated with the Internet. They want to know what your read and what you buy. It will be like they are sitting right next to you while you use your computer. CISPA is a blatant attempt to shred the Fourth Amendment, while offering offenders explicit immunity for their misconduct. Even if they use your private writings merely to show sympathy for the political goals of someone the U.S. is attacking with drones. You can read the bill here. Here's how Free Press sums up the main provisions in its call for action:

  • CISPA would allow companies and the government to bypass privacy protections and spy on your email traffic, comb through your text messages, filter your online content and even block access to popular websites.
  • CISPA would permit companies to give the government your Facebook data, Twitter history and cellphone contacts. It would also allow the government to search your email using the vaguest of justifications — and without any real legal oversight.
  • CISPA contains sweeping language that could be used as a blunt weapon to silence whistleblower websites like WikiLeaks and the news organizations that publish their revelations.
  • CISPA would create an environment in which we refrain from speaking freely online for fear that the National Security Agency — the same agency that has conducted "warrantless wiretapping" online for years — could come knocking.
The centerpiece of this bill is that federal agents will only read your private information for purposes of "national security." We've heard that word over and over and over for the past ten years. It has justified anything and everything for the federal government, including spying, maintaining secrets from the People who supposedly run this country, torture and endless war at a cost of billions of dollars per week. This bill invites the government to spy on every American for no damned good reason. [More . . . ]

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Getting back to square one

On Saturday night, I decided to improve my home computer, a PC. I was attempting to swap out an external hard drive to that contained an iTunes library with a different external hard drive. It's not as easy as you might think, because iTunes is twitchy when it comes to connecting up with its data. The details of my attempt aren't important, but I suspect that my overall experience is universal. My attempted fix didn't work out, and that was clear in 10 minutes. OK, then all I need to do is undo the fix, but that wasn't easy. In fact I ran into many snags, including trying to turn my external G Drive back into the H Drive that it used to be, but there was a ghostly obstinate H drive in the way and it wasn't clear how to change that letter (it turned out to belong to a printer and I eventually figured it out using the "manage" function under "Computer" of Windows 7. In the meantime, iTunes half-reverted to a past configuration, and after trying to stay patient for a couple hours, I decided that I was a very smart person for deciding to make a full metal-to-metal backup the night prior to trying engaging in this job. Thus, I turned to an excellent backup/restore program that I've been using for several years, ShadowProtect, by StorageCraft. I went to bed and let the restore function do its thing--when I woke up, everything was back to the way it was before I caused all of the trouble. Cool. Several things come to mind. First, there is often no way to fix things unless you're willing to break some things along the way. Second, if you don't have a metal-to-metal backup program for your PC, You should seriously consider getting one. There is nothing quite like the feeling of getting your machine back the way it was after something goes wrong (which could include something like a lightning strike or the natural death of your internal hard drive). The home edition is less than $90 and the only other thing you need is an external hard drive or two. I keep one backup drive at home, a second one at my office and a third in a safety deposit box. If this sounds obsessive, consider that my computer is probably a lot like yours. It contains almost every photo and video of my family. It contains all of our digital music, all of our tax and financial records, all of my writings, all of our emails and contact information (Outlook), all of my digital books, and much more. I can use to turn any PC into my PC (It takes only 2 minutes to set up the backup routine and hit the go button; I then go to bed while ShadowProtect simultaneously backs up my entire internal hard drive and a permanent external drive). Third, I'd like an "Undo" button for real life. I would like to make use of it at least several times per week. Fourth, my adventure getting back to the beginning reminded me of Oscar Wilde's quote regarding the craft of writing:

"This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again."

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The size of many things, large and small

I've seen similar websites allowing you to compare tiny and large things of the world, but this is a new one called "The Scale of the Universe." I spent ten minutes enjoying the comparison, then decided to share the link to the site. Here's one thing that I noticed for the first time: The distance from the Earth to the Moon is 250,000 miles. If you traveled that long distance, starting from the surface of the sun, traveling toward the center of the sun, you'd be only 1/3 of the way through the sun.

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