Entries this day: Fake_flight_to_moon Gettin_stuff_done Komatsu Work dudes-take-on-the-lhc

Fake flight to moon

1:15pm JST Tuesday 9 September 2008 (day 14048)

Quite compelling video that there are some misrepresentations with the Apollo flight to the moon. permalink

Gettin stuff done

2:05pm JST Tuesday 9 September 2008 (day 14048)

At work. Chatted with Sach about intranet connectivity; moved some stuff from wiki to trac; chatted with Beans about her painting and being my Beans; got 19 out of 20 in an English test on BBC (to be clear, I semi-guessed on one (but got it), and missed one); watched vid from fake moon stuff. Interesting how history hides the truth behind something I can't describe in one word.

Komatsu

2:14pm JST Tuesday 9 September 2008 (day 14048)

Headed to lesson with Komatsu now.

3:32pm JST Tuesday 9 September 2008 (day 14048)

Gah. The lesson is Thursday this week, not today. I had it right in my timecard, but not in my calendar.

Work

11:33pm JST Tuesday 9 September 2008 (day 14048)

Hmm. I happen to be sitting next to a forgotten bag from Disney Land. I wonder what's inside. (*)

But that's not why I'm writing. Today work started pretty un-productive; I needed to chat with Malek or Andrew to get some help on next steps for takeout.

But then, once I got those, I was able to re-skin takeout with the sbstrm skin, including copying almost verbatim the code for the blog admin. (Had to comment out the trackbacks and blog comments, but we'll probably add them back in at some point.)

Um; that's sorta all I guess, though I got a nice email-rant from Dude, which I posted as Dude's take on the LHC, without his permission. (!)

Oh! And Chiemi sent me a link to iknow, which I used a bit to learn me some Japanese. (**)

11:42pm JST

(*) Nevermind. Not forgotten.

(**) Poor grammar in honor of Benny(?) who hung around with us in Junior (?) year high school lunch, famous for the phrase, "will you borrow me a dollar?"

(!) But I got this response:

Dude Spellings
 to Rob
	
tight!!

dudes take on the lhc

##22:36 Tuesday 09 September 2008

This is from Dude, regarding the possibility of creating a black hole with with the LHC. I agree:

This supercollider is the one that was going to be built in Waxahachie, Texas before he Republican Congress dubbed the "Republican Revolution" came into power in 1994.  This work could have been done in the United States.  Instead, we have outsourced our place as the leader of innovation and cutting-edge science to other countries that do not spend over half of their annual budget on making military contractors rich.  Furthermore, Jesse's knee-jerk reaction to condemn science is so typical among Americans these days that we now have a country in which the majority of people (a) think its a good idea to teach the Bible in public schools, (b) think that Creationism should be taught in science class, and (c) deny that Global Warming is even happening despite the mountains of evidence.  where did my country develop this irrational fear of science????  and what's so crazy is that they are not scared of science that they should be scared of such as genetic modification of food and so-called "clean coal" power plants.

and the thing that really gets me is that the west has been in this position before:  a position in which people wanted to cling to religion for questions that religion is not suited to answer, where men of science were scorned and even jailed for the mere publication of their scientific findings, where other cultures embraced science while we shunned it and made quantum leaps over us, controlled the world, and subjugated westerners.  This period was called "the dark ages" for a reason, and coincidentally it was also the period of history in which the Muslims contrlled Europe for 700 years!!!  We shun science at our own peril.  Taking risks like the one being taken at CERN is what keeps the west on top.  If the U.S. is too scared to do it, we all should be grateful that Europe will take up the mantle.