Barack Obama for President

The editorial board of Radiation Scientist has been meeting weekly and now has unanimously voted to endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States. The board concludes that the country has an overwhelming need to change from the disastrous policies and practices of George W. Bush. The decision was helped by considering that John McCain seems to be re-fighting the Vietnam war to vindicate his personal failure (crashed 5 fighter planes and got captured by the enemy). The brand of the Republican Party is so tarnished and disgraced that McCain seems to be running (flip-flopping) on Democratic Party principles. We need a true Democrat and progressive, not a foxhole convert.

The high risk antics of McCain (escalating troops in Iraq, Palin for VP, “suspend my campaign,” socializing Wall Street, personal attacks on Senator Obama, etc.) show he is not fit to be President. In fact, when we examine McCain’s “maverick” positions, we see that they were always aimed at promoting his own political visibility and not for the good of the US citizens. In McCain we see a desperate elderly man with no moral compass except tax cuts for the rich and lobbyist’s clients.

Barack Obama is a strong, principled, smart, articulate and compassionate senator who is the outstanding candidate for President.

Piebald Deer

I saw a piebald deer today. Here is a picture of the same deer taken about 4 months ago. She is about 80% albino.

Earth's electric charge

This seems quite challenging. How would one measure the net charge on the earth? There are certainly local hot spots of electrons, e.g., lightning.
One simple minded way is to observe a single electron in the vacuum of space and see if it accelerates toward or away from the earth. I suppose the force of gravity would be much less than the electrostatic force, but I have not calculated this yet.

Electric charge on the earth

 Is it positive or negative? Is it dynamic?  I.e., is the net charge maintained by cosmic rays, solar wind, cosmic dust, meteorites, or something else? The space around any planet is pretty much an excellent insulator. So, I ask again, "What is the net electric charge on the entire earth?"

supermassive black hole

The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is still there. How do I know? Well, if it had disappeared, I think we all would have noticed the giant graviton flying past by now.

Gibson 3/4 Electric Acoustic ca. 1950

This is my Gibson 3/4 size electric acoustic guitar. It dates to about 1950 and has an incredible sound with new strings. The ivory tuning things had crumbled with age and but were repaired with new tuning gears in 2008. Now all is well with my Gibson.

Supermassive Black Hole

The center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole. Of course no one has ever seen it. Nobody actually "sees" a black hole because it sucks up all the light near it. So how do we know that they exist at all? Well, if you use an infrared telescope to look at the center of our galaxy, you can see and plot the orbits of dozens of stars that are whizzing around some invisible center. The small tight orbits can mean only one thing.... a super massive gravitational object. Cool.

Opening Day

Well, this is the first blog of my blog. Looks like Jessie Helms and Bozo the Clown both died on the Fourth of July 2008. It was sad to learn of the demise of Bozo. I could easily do without Jessie Helms.

What a spectactular confluence of fun and evil.