Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Mammoth in the news
Siberia isn't the only place where you can stumble over mammoth parts while minding you own business.
Mr. Schmuck deserves a lot of credit for producing a student like this. And Walker is a pretty classy kid for giving Mr. Schmuck that credit. This is the kind of thing that can change a kid's life and send him off into a life of science and dirty fingernails.
Patrick Walker, a groundskeeper at Morrison Lake Country Club, says he's glad he paid attention in high school science classes.
That's how he knew he was probably looking at the tooth of a 10,000-year-old mammoth while grooming the course last week.
"Mr. (Douglas) Schmuck always told us to keep your eyes open, you never know what you'll find," said Walker, a 2009 graduate of Lakewood High School. "He's into archaeology and taught us about that kind of good stuff."
[...]
[Scott Beld, a research assistant at the Ann Arbor museum] said the mammoth probably lived 10,000 to 12,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. It was probably a young adult or a female -- about the size of a circus elephant -- and weighed more than 2,000 pounds.
Mr. Schmuck deserves a lot of credit for producing a student like this. And Walker is a pretty classy kid for giving Mr. Schmuck that credit. This is the kind of thing that can change a kid's life and send him off into a life of science and dirty fingernails.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Why we love Barney Frank
Barney does a town hall:
More like this, please.
You want me to answer the question? Yes. As you stand there with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.
More like this, please.
More social networking
Brad told me I need to have a public Facebook page so my many blog fans can be my friends. I thought that's what the blog was for. Still, as part of my bold experiment in social networking I've decided to give it a shot. The name is John J. McKay. The middle initial is important because, according to the census, there are more than three thousand John McKays in the country. I've never lived in a city with fewer than two. So far there is nothing on page except for a few pictures. I suppose I'll use the page for blog and book news.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Social networking
I'm suspicious of the whole social networking thing. First off, I'm not very sociable. Secondly, I'm pretty private, I don't want to tell the whole world about my every action. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I don't really need another time suck, I'm a blogger. Still I'm told there are some practical uses for it--publishers like prospective authors who can contribute to the marketing of their books--so I'm giving it a shot. I just set up a Facebook page. If I'm feeling especially bold, I might even try Twitter later this week.
Friday, August 14, 2009
I've heard...
Obamacare means the National Endowment for the Arts will create death panels to decide which new teevee shows get canceled next fall.
Eat the rich
The federal income tax was enacted by constitutional amendment in 1913 at the peak of the progressive era. It was enacted to meet several goals. The first goal was simply to raise money to cover government expenditures, such as the cost of building a larger navy. The second goal was finding a better source of revenue. Tariffs and consumption taxes, for a variety of reasons, were not meeting the needs of government. The third goal, and the most idealistic of the three, was to reduce income inequality. For over a decade, populist farmers and laborers had been demanding an end to the concentration of wealth into the hands of banking and corporate elites. In part, it was the popularity of the social engineering aspects of an income tax among farmers and laborers that made it possible for thirty six state legislatures to pass bills in favor of an income tax. Did it work?
In a word, yes. There is a chart floating around the blogosphere today showing the increase in income inequality over the last thirty years. The chart comes from an update of a paper by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at Berkeley. Since 1978, the amount of the national income controlled the top ten percent of the population has risen from thirty-four percent to fifty percent. the rise in the wealth of the top one percent and the top one one-hundredth of a percent has risen even faster. Saez's chart for income share of the top ten percent is in black below. I've added the top tax rate in red.
The match isn't perfect because things other than the federal income tax influence the distribution of wealth. There are other taxes that the red line doesn't show including state income taxes. In boom times, the middle classes do well. The lowest percentiles will have a larger share of the national income during times of low unemployment. In addition, how that top bracket is applied has changed over the years. But in general, the trend is clear; if equality is our goal, the progressive income tax is a proven success.
In a word, yes. There is a chart floating around the blogosphere today showing the increase in income inequality over the last thirty years. The chart comes from an update of a paper by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at Berkeley. Since 1978, the amount of the national income controlled the top ten percent of the population has risen from thirty-four percent to fifty percent. the rise in the wealth of the top one percent and the top one one-hundredth of a percent has risen even faster. Saez's chart for income share of the top ten percent is in black below. I've added the top tax rate in red.
The match isn't perfect because things other than the federal income tax influence the distribution of wealth. There are other taxes that the red line doesn't show including state income taxes. In boom times, the middle classes do well. The lowest percentiles will have a larger share of the national income during times of low unemployment. In addition, how that top bracket is applied has changed over the years. But in general, the trend is clear; if equality is our goal, the progressive income tax is a proven success.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Make mine a triple
Two months ago, on June 10, the asteroid 1994 CC passed the Earth at a distance of 2.52 million kilometers. That's about six times the distance of the moon, which is pretty damn close as astronomical distances go. Since our killer laser defense systems aren't ready yet, all we could do was watch as 1994 CC flew by, but it turned out to be well worth the look. Asteroid 1994 CC is a triple system. What that means is that the asteroid that we were aware of has two tiny moons.
The central object is about seven hundred meters (less that half a mile) in diameter. If it hit the Earth, it would be big enough to cause a nuclear winter, but not big enough to kill the dinosaurs. Some estimates put the frequency of such impacts at around one in a million years. The satellite asteroids are estimated at least fifty meters across. If either one hit the Earth, it would cause a Tunguska sized explosion--big enough to destroy a large city. Its affect on the climate would be equivalent to a medium sized volcanic eruption--somewhere between Mt. St. Helens and Krakatoa. We have a couple volcanic eruptions in that range every century. Asteroid strikes of that size happen maybe once a century.
The impact danger isn't what's interesting about 1994 CC, there are enough dangerous asteroids that this one doesn't particularly stand out. It's the triple nature and small size of 1994 CC that makes it interesting. This only the second triple near earth asteroid that we've discovered. The first was discovered just last year. The first triple asteroid anywhere was only discovered in 2005. That asteroid, 87 Sylvia, is much larger that 1994 CC--a half million times larger, or large enough to have a name. Sylvia's satellites are each at least a thousand times larger that 1994 CC. The idea of something as small as 1994 CC having its own system of tiny moons was cartoon material when I was a little kid.
This isn't life changing news, but it's pretty cool.
The central object is about seven hundred meters (less that half a mile) in diameter. If it hit the Earth, it would be big enough to cause a nuclear winter, but not big enough to kill the dinosaurs. Some estimates put the frequency of such impacts at around one in a million years. The satellite asteroids are estimated at least fifty meters across. If either one hit the Earth, it would cause a Tunguska sized explosion--big enough to destroy a large city. Its affect on the climate would be equivalent to a medium sized volcanic eruption--somewhere between Mt. St. Helens and Krakatoa. We have a couple volcanic eruptions in that range every century. Asteroid strikes of that size happen maybe once a century.
The impact danger isn't what's interesting about 1994 CC, there are enough dangerous asteroids that this one doesn't particularly stand out. It's the triple nature and small size of 1994 CC that makes it interesting. This only the second triple near earth asteroid that we've discovered. The first was discovered just last year. The first triple asteroid anywhere was only discovered in 2005. That asteroid, 87 Sylvia, is much larger that 1994 CC--a half million times larger, or large enough to have a name. Sylvia's satellites are each at least a thousand times larger that 1994 CC. The idea of something as small as 1994 CC having its own system of tiny moons was cartoon material when I was a little kid.
This isn't life changing news, but it's pretty cool.
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