TTBrown

Nobel Laureates Endorse Barack Obama

Not that I want to get political or anything on a site dedicated to science, but 61 Nobel Laureates speaking in unison warrants some attention:

An Open Letter to the American People

This year's presidential election is among the most significant in our nation's history. The country urgently needs a visionary leader who can ensure the future of our traditional strengths in science and technology and who can harness those strengths to address many of our greatest problems: energy, disease, climate change, security, and economic competitiveness.

    We are convinced that Senator Barack Obama is such a leader, and we urge you to join us in supporting him.

Not that I needed any persuading.

Another Crazy Idea?

Personally, I love it when critics say some novel Idea won't work. I say, just build the thing, and we'll see:

Chinese researchers claim they've confirmed the theory behind an "impossible" space drive, and are proceeding to build a demonstration version. If they're right, this might transform the economics of satellites, open up new possibilities for space exploration –- and give the Chinese a decisive military advantage in space.

To say that the "Emdrive" (short for "electromagnetic drive") concept is controversial would be an understatement. According to Roger Shawyer, the British scientist who developed the concept, the drive converts electrical energy into thrust via microwaves, without violating any laws of physics. Many researchers believe otherwise. An article about the Emdrive in New Scientist magazine drew a massive volley of criticism. Scientists not only argued that Shawyer's work was blatantly impossible, and that his reasoning was flawed. They also said the article should never have been published.

"Circumstantial Physics" ??

Now there's a concept.  And there are actually people who are promoting "circumstantial physics" as a viable form of investigation.  For example, follow these links, or click here:

...to listen to some excerpts from a Coast to Coast AM program last month with Richard C. Hoagland, joined later in the broadcast by Joseph P. Farrell.  The program is described on the C2C website like this:

Hoagland presented his thesis that during that during the launch of the Explorer I rocket in 1958, von Braun discovered an anti-gravity effect was taking place. The effect, related to the craft's orbit, defied Newtonian physics and was kept secret, said Hoagland. He explained that he pieced it together using "circumstantial physics."

Farrell outlined Nazi connections associated with the anti-gravity discovery. A "post-war Nazi International" group may have employed alternative physics for a secret space program running parallel to NASA, he stated. Von Braun was obsessed with Mars, and Hoagland suggested the Nazis believed their ancestors came from Mars, and their goal was to return there. For more, see the Enterprise Mission report Von Braun?s 50-Year-Old Secret Part 1, Part

One wonders how anybody can piece together anything credible using "circumstantial physics" as a foundation.  But then we also know that if you throw enough weasel words (could have, maybe, may have, possibly, etc.) together, you can get people to believe just about anything. 

And apparently there is no shortage of media luminaries who will lend credence to such theories in order to fill the hours and hours of air-time at their disposal. 

Maybe this is why it's so hard to tell pseudo-science from the real thing.

 

It Was 80 Years Ago Today...

...that Townsend Brown and Josephine Beale were married in Zanesville, Ohio.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter 18: Wagner in the Trees to mark the occasion:

On September 8, 1928, the one-hundred or so guests at a Thursday afternoon gathering at Hawthorne Farm — the Brown family’s elysian “country estate” on the outskirts of Zanesville — thought that they were attending just another late-summer picnic and swimming party. Some were still dripping wet, fresh out of the pool, when the sound of Wagner’s wedding march suddenly began to radiate from loudspeakers that Townsend had earlier hidden among the pine trees.

The ensuing nuptials were fittingly detailed in the journalistic style of the period in the Society column of the next day’s Zanesville newspaper:

Surrounded by members of their own families and intimate friends and in the midst of tall trees through which the setting sun shone in benediction, Miss Josephine Beale, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Beale of Merrick Avenue and Townsend Brown, only son of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis K. Brown of Adair Avenue, were united in marriage, Thursday afternoon at the Brown farm on the Newark Road.

The marriage was to have been a surprise, but some of the many birds who live in the trees on the Brown farm must have heard the young couple whispering their secret and made haste to tell it to their friends for every one was expecting “something to happen.”

After a delightful picnic supper had been served to the guests who numbered over five score the music of the Lohengrin wedding march was heard faintly at first, as though from a great distance, then as the voices of the guests were hushed, more clearly. The music seemed to be wafted from the tops of the trees by angel voices in the most entrancing fashion and had been so arranged by the young bride and groom and as the guests all arose and moved up to meet them, the young couple appeared walking together over the brink of the wooded hill and proceeded to the place where Dr. Austin M. Courtenay of Delaware a personal friend of the Brown family and a former pastor of Grace church awaited them.

RIP John Henry Reitmann 1920-2008

John Henry Reitmann b. June 21, 1920 in Red Wing, MN to the late Mary Buchholtz and John H. Reitmann, died September 2, 2008 in Dallas, TX.  Preceded in death by Francis Dean Reitmann.  Survived by their three children, John David Reitmann, Jane Kass-Wolff (Don), and Ann Stout Schatzkin (Paul), & "adopted" daughter Cindy Anderson; 5 grand-children: Chris Kass, Robert and James Stout, Tim Reitmann, and Brooke Naegele (Matt); and two great grandchildren, Grant and Reese Kass. A sailor, bridge player, traveler and photographer.  A graduate of U. of Minnesota. Medical School and U. of Cincinnati.  Captain in U.S. Army Medical Corps, three years of service in Germany after WWII.  Resident of Dallas since 1961, practicing psychiatry at Timberlawn and private practice.  Member of AMA, Dallas County Medical Society, North Texas Chapter,  American Psychiatric Assoc.; faculty at UT Southwestern Medical School Psychiatric Dept; after retirement at age 86, a volunteer docent at Dallas Arboretum.  In lieu of flowers, contributions to American Cancer Society or Dallas Arboretum.