Year: 2004

Wormhole Physics

A reader writes:

I have a question that popped into my head while watching the Sci-Fi Monday marathon.

If all energy/data is one-way in a worm hole, how is it possible for an off-world team to communicate with the SGC?

Please don’t underestimate that a reasonably mature ____ year old man, who evidently doesn’t have enough things on his mind, is asking. Please don’t tell my wife!

Will do! (Or perhaps that should be, “Won’t do!”)

Happy to oblige on this question. Here’s the answer:

When a body made of matter approaches the event horizon of an active wormhole, it is instantaneously translated into patterns of energy that can only travel one way (whichever way the wormhole is flowing, to or from a particular stargate). Trying to force matter through a wormhole the wrong way results in it being disintegrated (as normal) but the resulting patterned energy stream can’t flow backwards through the wormhole and so it is never reintegrated.

(Also, wormholes normally only transmit bodies in their entirety, not parts of them, so you can pull a partially-disintegrated object back out of a stargate and have it reintegrated. It’s only when the object wholly goes within the event horizon that it is transmitted along the wormhole–assuming that it has entered the “transmitting” end of the wormhole.)

This is what happens with matter, but ordinary energy (i.e., not energy that is matter patterend by the stargate for transmission) isn’t affected by the one-way rule that applies to converted matter. As a result, normal E/M energy can travel two-ways through a wormhole, as when the M.A.L.P. communicates with Stargate Command by radio.

Got it?

MORE INFO FROM DR. SAMANTHA CARTER ON WORMHOLE PHYSICS.

Earth Vs. Soup!!!

Giant_soup_1

A giant bowl of California Cornucopia Vegetable Jubilee slithers towards a man on all fours, it’s hellish maw gaping . . .

[Actually, it’s a wire photo captioned: "A man looks at a Chinese soup sculpture displayed at a shopping mall in Hong Kong. (AFP/Philippe Lopez)."]

Props to the first person who can point out in the comments box where this joke is from.

Pointing Out An Opponent's Behavior

A debate strategy that I learned a long time ago was that when your opponent is doing something unreasonable (e.g., trying to hog all the time, refusing to address your arguments) that the thing to do is point out what he is doing. This alerts the audience to the behavior he is exhibiting and leads them to think about why he is doing it. It also may motivate him to change his behavior.

I recently had two occasions to use this tactic on a couple of radio shows.

The first was on the KPBS stem cell debate. In this debate my opponent kept doing the "oh, one more thing . . . " tactic for hogging the airtime and preventing me from responding, and the host let him get away with it. This was unfair. At one point he said, "I don’t want to ramble on, but . . . " and I jumped in with "But you are. And at such length that I haven’t been given remotely equal time to respond," which I said while looking the host in the eyes, signalling that he wasn’t doing his job.

I started getting more time.

After the show the host tried to justified his mishandling of the situation by saying (off the air) that "from an editorial perspective" it was "justifiable" that my opponent got "a little more time" because he had to sell people on the stem cell proposition.

I responded: (1) It wasn’t a little more time, it was a lot. (2) That I disagree: Both viewpoints should be explored equally.

If I’m confronted with a similar situation in the future, I will add: (3) I didn’t know our purpose here was to sell the listener on his viewpoint. And I may even add: (4) And people in the media wonder why the public thinks that they’re biased!

The second time I had the occasion to use the tactic was on Seattle talk station KIRO. Guest host Allan Prell–an excitable leftist attack dog of an interviewer–had me on to talk about the voters guide. First, though he had me explain what an apologetics is, because he learned a new term when his producer told him my title. Most of the interview was pretty low-key because I kept sidestepping the inflammatory things he wanted me to say. Here’s a paraphrase of some exchanges:

PRELL: You’ve got these five non-negotiables in your voters guide–abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and gay quote marriage enquote. Who knew George W. Bush was such a good Catholic!

ME: (Reeling from the fact that the host has put to me an absurd statement rather than a question) I couldn’t comment on that one way or the other except to note the point of fact that he is a Methodist.

He then went on to accuse us of putting out a disguised endorsement of George Bush over John Kerry and I had to be rather firm with him pointing out that this was not the case and why it was not the case (e.g., the guide says not to vote based on party, the guide is a set of general principles to be used in all elections rather than just the presidential one, the guide was written long before the candidates for this election were known, and that we will be teaching the same principles long into the future).

He thanked me, and that was the end of my segment.

But then I got a voicemail from his producer saying that a question had arisen from their listeners ("Why wasn’t the death penalty non-negotiable #6?") and could I come back on the air to talk about it.

I did.

He put the question to me on the air and I said:

ME: The death penalty isn’t listed because it isn’t a non-negotiable in the sense that the guide uses the term. The Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that the state has the right to use the death penalty . . .

I was going to go onto to say " . . . but it counsels that it be used infrequently" but couldn’t because at this point the host FREAKED OUT and interrupted me and kept interrupting me each time I tried to finish the sentence. After repeated tries, I decided it was time to point out the host’s behavior.

ME: I’m sorry, but are you going to let me finish my sentence or not? Is that the kind of host that you are–that won’t let a guest finish a sentence? Do you want a serious answer on this or do you want me to hang up right now? [This was the first time I had ever threatened to walk out on an interview.]

PRELL: Well, I dunno . . .

ME: Well, while you’re thinking about that, why don’t I finish my sentence?

I did, and it got the interview back on track. Yet the excitable attack dog host wouldn’t take the fact that the Catechism acknowledges that the state has the right to use capital punishment (despite the fact that he declared "I’m not a Catholic–in fact, far from it"). He also would not take the fact that most people in world history have seen a difference between killing a guilty person and killing an innocent person.

At this point he turned personal again.

PRELL: What is your view of the death penalty?

ME: I’ll be happy to tell you the Church’s position . . .

PRELL: (interrupting) I don’t want the Church’s position! I want to know what you think!

ME: I’ll be happy to tell you the Church’s position, but it is a matter of my professional ethic that I stick to stating the Church’s position rather than advancing my own opinions.

PRELL: (hyperactive) Profession! What’s you’re profession???

ME: I am an apologist. [I had explained this in the first segment, one will recall.]

PRELL: (incredulous) You get paid for that???

ME: I do. And I try to be very scrupulous as a matter of professional ethics to state the Church’s position without putting my own spin on it.

PRELL: (mocking) Sounds to me like hy-po-cri-sy!

In fact, abandoning all pretense of observing normal ettiquite, he mockingly repeated this accusation of hypocrisy (at one point repeating it in a way that led me to think he was also accusing the Church of hypocrisy). This led to a second instance of my pointing out the host’s behavior.

PRELL: (mocking) Sounds to me like hy-po-cri-sy!

ME: (calmly) Sounds to me like you need a lesson in manners that your momma didn’t give you.

At this point Prell said thanks and hung up abruptly, ending my second appearance on his show.

Afterwards I got a voicemail and a couple of e-mails from KIRO listeners thanking me for my appearance on the show and telling me about how leftist the station is and how much ugliness followed both of my appearances.

I doubt I’ll be invited back anytime soon.

Pointing Out An Opponent’s Behavior

A debate strategy that I learned a long time ago was that when your opponent is doing something unreasonable (e.g., trying to hog all the time, refusing to address your arguments) that the thing to do is point out what he is doing. This alerts the audience to the behavior he is exhibiting and leads them to think about why he is doing it. It also may motivate him to change his behavior.

I recently had two occasions to use this tactic on a couple of radio shows.

The first was on the KPBS stem cell debate. In this debate my opponent kept doing the "oh, one more thing . . . " tactic for hogging the airtime and preventing me from responding, and the host let him get away with it. This was unfair. At one point he said, "I don’t want to ramble on, but . . . " and I jumped in with "But you are. And at such length that I haven’t been given remotely equal time to respond," which I said while looking the host in the eyes, signalling that he wasn’t doing his job.

I started getting more time.

After the show the host tried to justified his mishandling of the situation by saying (off the air) that "from an editorial perspective" it was "justifiable" that my opponent got "a little more time" because he had to sell people on the stem cell proposition.

I responded: (1) It wasn’t a little more time, it was a lot. (2) That I disagree: Both viewpoints should be explored equally.

If I’m confronted with a similar situation in the future, I will add: (3) I didn’t know our purpose here was to sell the listener on his viewpoint. And I may even add: (4) And people in the media wonder why the public thinks that they’re biased!

The second time I had the occasion to use the tactic was on Seattle talk station KIRO. Guest host Allan Prell–an excitable leftist attack dog of an interviewer–had me on to talk about the voters guide. First, though he had me explain what an apologetics is, because he learned a new term when his producer told him my title. Most of the interview was pretty low-key because I kept sidestepping the inflammatory things he wanted me to say. Here’s a paraphrase of some exchanges:

PRELL: You’ve got these five non-negotiables in your voters guide–abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and gay quote marriage enquote. Who knew George W. Bush was such a good Catholic!

ME: (Reeling from the fact that the host has put to me an absurd statement rather than a question) I couldn’t comment on that one way or the other except to note the point of fact that he is a Methodist.

He then went on to accuse us of putting out a disguised endorsement of George Bush over John Kerry and I had to be rather firm with him pointing out that this was not the case and why it was not the case (e.g., the guide says not to vote based on party, the guide is a set of general principles to be used in all elections rather than just the presidential one, the guide was written long before the candidates for this election were known, and that we will be teaching the same principles long into the future).

He thanked me, and that was the end of my segment.

But then I got a voicemail from his producer saying that a question had arisen from their listeners ("Why wasn’t the death penalty non-negotiable #6?") and could I come back on the air to talk about it.

I did.

He put the question to me on the air and I said:

ME: The death penalty isn’t listed because it isn’t a non-negotiable in the sense that the guide uses the term. The Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that the state has the right to use the death penalty . . .

I was going to go onto to say " . . . but it counsels that it be used infrequently" but couldn’t because at this point the host FREAKED OUT and interrupted me and kept interrupting me each time I tried to finish the sentence. After repeated tries, I decided it was time to point out the host’s behavior.

ME: I’m sorry, but are you going to let me finish my sentence or not? Is that the kind of host that you are–that won’t let a guest finish a sentence? Do you want a serious answer on this or do you want me to hang up right now? [This was the first time I had ever threatened to walk out on an interview.]

PRELL: Well, I dunno . . .

ME: Well, while you’re thinking about that, why don’t I finish my sentence?

I did, and it got the interview back on track. Yet the excitable attack dog host wouldn’t take the fact that the Catechism acknowledges that the state has the right to use capital punishment (despite the fact that he declared "I’m not a Catholic–in fact, far from it"). He also would not take the fact that most people in world history have seen a difference between killing a guilty person and killing an innocent person.

At this point he turned personal again.

PRELL: What is your view of the death penalty?

ME: I’ll be happy to tell you the Church’s position . . .

PRELL: (interrupting) I don’t want the Church’s position! I want to know what you think!

ME: I’ll be happy to tell you the Church’s position, but it is a matter of my professional ethic that I stick to stating the Church’s position rather than advancing my own opinions.

PRELL: (hyperactive) Profession! What’s you’re profession???

ME: I am an apologist. [I had explained this in the first segment, one will recall.]

PRELL: (incredulous) You get paid for that???

ME: I do. And I try to be very scrupulous as a matter of professional ethics to state the Church’s position without putting my own spin on it.

PRELL: (mocking) Sounds to me like hy-po-cri-sy!

In fact, abandoning all pretense of observing normal ettiquite, he mockingly repeated this accusation of hypocrisy (at one point repeating it in a way that led me to think he was also accusing the Church of hypocrisy). This led to a second instance of my pointing out the host’s behavior.

PRELL: (mocking) Sounds to me like hy-po-cri-sy!

ME: (calmly) Sounds to me like you need a lesson in manners that your momma didn’t give you.

At this point Prell said thanks and hung up abruptly, ending my second appearance on his show.

Afterwards I got a voicemail and a couple of e-mails from KIRO listeners thanking me for my appearance on the show and telling me about how leftist the station is and how much ugliness followed both of my appearances.

I doubt I’ll be invited back anytime soon.

Advertising Becomes Even More Evil

There’s a scene in the original, 1960s version of Bedazzled in which Peter Cook (the devil) is complaining to Dudley Moore about what a slump he’s been in lately.

“Take the seven deadly sins,” he says. “I thought those up in one afternoon. The only thing I’ve come up with lately is advertising.”

How true!

Well, the devil seems to have been tweaking the concept of advertising lately to try to make it imitate the infectious properties of a virus.

The idea is to give you something neat bundled with advertising so that you’ll become “infected” and share the infection with your friends and loved ones, allowing the advertisers to exploit your personal social network and infect those you know and love.

Things like this have been going on throughout the history of advertising, and I don’t mind in principle advertisers providing you with something entertaining or valuable in exchange for the chance to pitch their product to you. Heck, that’s the principle on which commercial TV and radio work. So individual viral marketing tools may be fine in and of themselves.

What I am annoyed by is the dehumanizing attitude displayed by the ad executives who have framed “viral marketing” in this manner. Advertising frequently involves a dehumanizing manipulation of the masses, and consciously modelling your techniques off of viruses is an expression of this attitude.

LEARN ABOUT “VIRAL MARKETING.”

AND LEARN ABOUT ONE VIRAL MARKETING TOOL: “THE SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN.”

Oh yeah, ALSO LEARN ABOUT “ASTROTURFING.”

Pro-Abort Victory in 2004 = 24 MILLION DEAD BABIES

READER INVITE: I STRONGLY encourage fellow pro-life bloggers to link to this item! I also strongly encourage folks to e-mail a link to friends and post a link to this piece on web boards.

A while back I did a couple of posts pointing out the cost in babies lives every time a pro-abort president is elected.

HERE’S THE FIRST (AND LONGER) ONE.

HERE’S THE SECOND (AND SHORTER) ONE.

Those posts used numbers based on how many kids will be killed on average by electing a pro-abort president who will nominate pro-abort Supreme Court justices who will continue the abortion holocaust.

But all elections are not equal. Now I want to do the numbers on how many kids will get killed as a result of a pro-abort victory in this election.

With some help from Steve over at Southern Appeal, I did some number crunching and determined how many Supreme Court nominations the next president is likely to get. The answer is three or four.

Here’s how that works: The average age at retirement among SCOTUS justices of late (meaning, the generation of justices that just retired) is 78. The current batch of justices has three members (Rehnquist, Stevens, and O’Connor) that already are past that age or will be within the next four years. Two of these three (Rehnquist and O’Connor) have had significant health problems. In fact, Rehnquist will almost certainly retire at the end of this year’s term if he doesn’t do so before then.

In addition to these three, there is a fourth member likely to retire: Ruth Ginsburg, who won’t hit average retirement age until 2011 but who also has had health problems.

How will this affect the abortion holocaust?

Currently there are three votes on the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade: Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. There need to be five votes to overturn and let the process of ending abortion in America to begin.

What will happen to that if a pro-life president is elected tomorrow?

Assuming the right replacement justices are picked, we would get five votes to overturn in the next president’s term: Rehnquist would bow out but get replaced with another vote to overturn. So that would still leave us with three. Then Stevens and O’Connor (both refuseniks on overturning Roe) and get replaced with votes to over turn. O’Connor would be expected to retire last, in 2008 unless health concerns intervene.

THAT’S FIVE.

If Ginsburg retires and is replaced with another anti-Roe justice, that would be six.

Add a year to let an appropriate case come before the Court, and we could have Roe overturned around 2009.

If a pro-life president is elected Tuesday then there is a good chance that the abortion holocaust can begin to be ended in the next four years by the removal of the chief legal impediment to ending it (i.e., Roe v. Wade).

But what if a pro-abort is elected?

Rehnquist goes and is replaced with a pro-Roe justice, reducing the number of votes to overturn. Stevens, O’Connor, and possibly Ginsburg also go and are replaced by pro-Roe justices, leaving the number at two.

The next batch of SCOTUS retirees wouldn’t be expected to retire until 2014 (that would be Scalia and Kennedy) with another in 2016 (Breyer), one in 2017 (Souter), and one in 2026 (Thomas).

All of these dates are after the 2008-2012 presidential term, so the president in that term likely won’t be able to make any adjustments to the SCOTUS lineup and the number of votes to overturn will be stuck at two. The abortion holocaust thus continues through 2012 if we have a pro-abort elected Tuesday.

When is the soonest it could end on this scenario? If President 2012 is pro-life then he could replace Scalia with an anti-Roe justice, preserving the number at two, then replace Kennedy with an anti-Roe justice, returning the number to three. He also might get a chance to replace Breyer with an anti-Roe justice, bringing the number to four. But President 2016 would have to be pro-life, too, before we could get the number up to five. That would be expected circa 2017. That’s the soonest it could be expected to happen if a pro-abort is elected Tuesday.

What’s the other possibility? What’s the worst case scenario? Assuming that Presidents 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 are pro-aborts, what would happen to the number of votes to overturn? We’d lose one with the retirement of Rehnquist in 2004’s term. Then we’d lose another with the retirement of Scalia in 2012’s term. The final anti-Roe justice on the court would then be Thomas, who would be expected to retire in President 2024’s term.

Beyond that it gets too hard to see when the needed four votes could be put on the court, though the most likely window is the term of President 2028, when the appointees of President 2004 start to retire. That would be the soonest we could get to five votes if 2004-2016 are pro-aborts.

So if President 2004 is pro-abort then the best case scenario involves extending the abortion holocaust until around 2017. The worst case scenario has it extending until circa 2031. Add a year to each of those to let an appropriate case come before the Court, and we have 2018 and 2032. Average these since the likelihood is that history won’t go either best case or worse case, and we have the year 2025.

So, if a pro-life president is elected Tuesday, Roe could be overturned around 2009. If a pro-abort president is elected Tuesday, Roe can be estimated to be overturned around 2025. That’s a difference of sixteen years.

How many kids will die in those sixteen years? With 1.5 million kids being killed by abortion on average (including emerging forms of abortion that are usually hidden, like via in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and cloning), that would be TWENTY FOUR MILLION KIDS KILLED.

A normal election only results in six million kids dying due to a single pro-abort presidential term.

This time, because of the current composition of the court, the election of a pro-abort president is likely to lead to it’s twenty-four million additional deaths.

These are only estimates, of course, based on average lengths of time on the Supreme Court, but one has to reply on the best estimates available in order to make an informed decision about the gravity that must be given to this issue and what kind of reasons could be proportionate to it.

You’ll have to decide for yourself whether there is something proportionate to that. Nothing short of a theromonuclear war between well-armed nation states would do it. Terrorism isn’t even close. Nor is the War in Iraq or the whole War on Terror.

Vote pro-abort on Tuesday, and TWENTY-FOUR MILLION KIDS DIE.

(Oh, yeah: What’s Mine Is Mine.)