A team of scientists has announced that they have detected direct evidence for one of the key elements of the inflationary model of the universe, that there was a rapid rate of expansion soon after ‘the beginning’, i.e., at times shortly after t=0. They did this by using a radiotelescope located at the South Pole called BICEP2, looking for signs of the imprint in the cosmic microwave background caused by gravitational waves triggered by the event.
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It happens to me quite often. When I encounter people, especially in a location other than where I usually meet them, I often do not recognize them and cannot place them or recall their names. The problem is that those people seem to recognize me at once and smile and wave and even come up and talk to me. My strategy in such situations is to also smile and wave and to engage in small talk, desperately hoping that my memory will kick into gear and rescue me or that the conversation will elicit some clues as to their identity.
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News reports have emerged that Fred Phelps, the founder and patriarch of the virulently anti-gay church based in Topeka, Kansas that his large extended family dominates, is near death and in a hospice facility. This is not a surprise since he is 84 years old and videos from a few years ago already showed him somewhat feeble, as if he were in poor health.
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Via Marcus Ranum, I read this report about Mark Zuckerberg writing on his Facebook page that he had called president Obama to complain about the way that the NSA’s activities have harmed the internet and thus companies like his.
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Those above a certain age will remember Anita Hill and the explosive confirmation hearings over Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991. I recall following those events and right from the beginning I believed her story and felt that Thomas was a sleazy character personally with extreme views and should never have been confirmed to the court.
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There has been much discussion about the benefits and costs of social media. On the one hand, it enables people to form communities and relationships with like-minded people without proximity being a factor. This has been a boon for people in low-density population areas or who have interests shared by just a small fraction of the population. But one downside is that immediate physical communities may suffer as people withdraw into their virtual worlds.
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There has been a disturbing rise in the number of people who refuse to give their children the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine because of the bogus fears, stoked by some celebrities, that the vaccines can cause autism. Those claims, revealed to be not only without any basis but based on initial fraudulent studies that resulted in its chief proponent Andrew Wakefield losing his medical license, have taken on a life of their own and efforts to counter them seem to have no effect.
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Stephen Colbert looks at the concerns expressed by Fox News that president Obama appearing with Zach Galifianakis on a web comedy show demeans the presidency. In their weird little minds, starting illegal wars, torturing people, engaging in a vast global spying program, waging cyberwars and the like do not harm the presidency but appearing on a show widely watched by young people (over 13 million people have so far seen the 6:30-minute clip) to promote his health care plan is somehow hugely damaging.
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The US government announced yesterday that it is transitioning to relinquish direct control over the administration of the internet by ending its contract with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) which is the organization that exerts stewardship over the internet by establishing protocols, assigning domain names, and bringing some order behind the scenes to the seemingly anarchic nature of the internet. The move by the US government has been welcomed by ICANN.
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